Jocko Podcast - Jocko Podcast 24: Canadian Sniper-Jody Mitic, “Unflinching” Interview & Book Review

Episode Date: May 25, 2016

Jocko reviews excerpts from Canadian Sniper and Ottawa (CANADA) City Councilman, Jody Mitic's book, "Unflinching" with personal, in-depth commentary from Jody himself.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 24 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. And our guest tonight is Jody Middick. Jody is a former Canadian Army soldier and sniper who served in Afghanistan. He now serves as an elected member of the Ottawa City Council. He got second place in a second place in a Afghanistan. a show called The Amazing Race. He authored a best-selling book about his experiences. He's a husband and a dad.

And beyond all that, Jody is a real hero. An absolute inspiration to anybody that knows his story, which is what we will be talking about tonight. Welcome to the show, Jody. Thank you, Jocko. Did I miss anything? Jocko mega fan? Thanks, man.

I appreciate that. Also with us is Echo Charles. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Now, before we dig into your book, I wanted to start off with an excerpt of a poem by Rudyard Kipling. And it's called the Young British Soldier. And I think this is a little bit appropriate since Canada is a former part of the Commonwealth of England.

and now part of the Commonwealth. And while Kipling was never actually a soldier, he did attend the United Service College in England, which kind of prepared young men for the army, although he never joined, but he did spend many years abroad in the British colonies. And he also lost his only son, John, in World War I, at the Battle of Luz in September of 1915.

where there was just about 100,000 casualties in a matter of days. John Kipling was last seen lurching through the mud blindly, crying out in agony, after his face had been ripped apart by an exploding shell. And this poem that I'm about to read a part of is not about World War I. It's about the British wars that took place from the 1830s to the, early 1900s in a part of the world called Afghanistan. And here is this latter part of that poem. When first under fire and you're wishful to duck, don't look nor take heed at the man

that is struck. Be thankful you're living and trust to your luck and march to your front like a soldier. Front, front, front, front like a soldier. If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white, remember it's ruined to run from a fight. So take open order, lie down and sit tight and wait for supports like a soldier. Wait, wait, wait, wait like a soldier. When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's planes and the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your God like a soldier.

Go, go, go like a soldier. And I think that poem sets a tone for what kind of a place Afghanistan can be. Yeah. It's been a while else to hear that. Yeah. That last line is not a joke either. No, it isn't. And we're going to get there in your book here in a minute.

Your book is called Unflinching. This is the book right here. And I kind of made that connection with the unflinching part. You being a sniper, you obviously can't be flinching when you're taking a shot. And this whole thing kicks off the first chapter, which the name of the first chapter is awesome, because this is something that I believe is something that a lot of people have. I know I damn sure did. The first chapter is called The Soldier in the Child.

And I think that describes a lot of people that joined the military. It's the thing that's in there. They're born with it. You were born with it. I know I was born with it. It's all I ever wanted to do. It's all I wanted to do. Believe me.

Now, your mom, how did she feel about all that? she resisted like any 80s mom right you're how old are you again 44 so you're a little older than I am but my mom being a foster kid read all the books and all the books at the time said boys should play with barbies and girls should play with tonka trucks and and treat them gender neutral and blah blah blah but guess what if you put boys in a room and girls in a room with toys the boys play with tonka trucks and the girls play with the barbies that's just the way it is yeah as a matter of fact my son, I had two daughters that were young in our house, and I didn't want them, and I'm not going to have them have all these Barbies.

I don't even know where they came from, but they showed up at my house. And guess what? My son was born, and I was all worried, oh, he's going to be playing with Barbies. That kid didn't care about Barbies. He didn't care about dolls. They don't even look at them. Anything that had wheels on it. Yeah.

It's just, and it's just, boys and girls are different. Yeah, they're just different. And, you know what? I know lots of women that are great soldiers. I'm not saying that they don't have it, but mom wanted, you know, No guns. G.I. Joe's, but no, you know, couldn't keep the weapons. And, you know, and I love her for it because who knows who I would have been.

If she had, maybe if she had fostered it, it would have fizzled out. I don't know. But, yeah, all I wanted to do was soldier since I was a little boy. So your mom had that attitude, and then along came Uncle Jim. Yeah, yeah, Uncle Jim. And Uncle, tell us a little bit about Uncle Jim. Well, I mean, I just saw him the last weekend, actually. was in Victoria where Mr. Echo was born.

When you're a child, right, there's nothing more impressionable than a three-year-old, really, right? And when I was three, he would, back then, if you were in uniform, you could ride the train for free and get the bus for free. And so he would ride the train in uniform when he had his leave, and he'd show up at the house, and he'd bring me teddy bears. And I was like, this is obviously the coolest dude ever. And whatever he does, I want to do it. And he would tell stories about what he did, you know, and he was, you know, he was an infantry soldier, same regiment that I joined. And that was the seed, I assume. No one really knows.

This is just family lore. Right. Because mom didn't like it. Dad was a blue collar auto worker. His dad was in the army, but it was like conscripted into the Serbian border guard. When the German army showed up, he basically threw his hands up, was like, yep, I'm cool. Don't shoot. You know, mom's dad apparently was in the army, but no one knows because he died when she was 10.

No one's really sure what he did. You know, apparently he was in Korea, but there's no record of it. So anyway, it's just, it was there. And Jim, I think, was the catalyst that sparked it. It sparked it when I was just a young, little impressionable boy. That happens. Now, when you got to be a teenager, you know, you kind of sounded in the book, you sound like, yes, you sound like, yes, you sound. like a teenager.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I mean, just to go here in your book, you say, I was a loner who didn't fit in. I still dreamt of being in the Army probably because I wanted to belong to something. Yeah. And it was definitely clear I didn't belong in school. I hated school. I hate, especially because when you get to high school, and I don't know how you guys,

well, I've heard you talk a little bit about it. It sounded like you had the same issues. Definitely. Couldn't connect with any your teacher. The only teacher, I remember I had this one teacher. I forget his name, but he was Scottish originally. And he was my history teacher. Like the only subject I cared about was history, really.

And he would tell stories about everything else he ever did in life before he was a teacher. And I was like, okay, this guy actually has some shit that I need to hear because he's been around the world and he's done everything. The rest of them? I joined, I became a teacher at a college. this is how you type and I'd be like why am I even here? What am I doing here? Doing math I you know snipers you know we eat ballistic

charts for breakfast and math was useless to me in high school and yeah I just the last thing I wanted to be was in school and I actually because this was the 90s right so that was still when you could quit school to join the army and I was like oh I'm just going to quit school and join the army and my parents like basically had to beg me to stay they let me join the reserves

which in Canada is called the militia and it's like once a week and a weekend a month and they're like you can do that but don't quit school, finish school all right but it was like completely against my will but they finally got you

they finally let you join you join the militia right and then but you weren't still weren't active duty well the militia in Canada you can be called up to active duty but it's not like we chatted a little bit about this

on the way here where you guys have a different system here because yours is much bigger, but also, like, the militia in Canada was the military before World War II, basically. So regiments were local, it was a part-time thing, you know, it was kind of like, it was the, what is that, what do they call it, the citizen soldier? And the regular army was just there to kind of give them an enemy force and take care of the machine guns and the howitzers, like the dozen or so that we had at the time.

And it wasn't until after World War II that it flipped. because it was, you know, the Cold War started and all that jazz. So, you know, at any time, the regular army now into the 90s, could say, you know what, we need 10 reserve soldiers to fill in a platoon here. And if you could volunteer. And I remember when I showed up to my reserve unit, there were sergeants sewing private stripes onto their uniforms because they were called up to the regular army. But you're not a sergeant, like, you're qualified.

Because to keep guys. in the reserves, they promote them faster. But when you go work with the regs, they're not going to call you a sergeant. You've been in as long as Corporal Smith. Uh-uh. Private Striped, bitch. Yeah.

So, but guys, guys, guys would fight each other to get those slots, though. Yeah. Because there was nothing better, more honorable than to deploy with a Reg Force regiment. Absolutely. And go, you know, peacekeeping, but, you know, there's still a few gun fights here and there.

I thought this was cool in the book. You talked about this here. You're basically starting boot camp. And you say, you just get your haircut. You get your head shave for the first time. Once the barber was done, I studied myself in his mirror. I barely recognized the young man staring back at me. The eyes were the same, but everything else was different.

I wasn't Jody Middick, lay about loner, high school, good for nothing, another floundering adolescent with no ambition and no life plan. That kid was lying under a pile of hair on the floor. looking back at me was Jody Middick, Soldier in Training. I had goosebumps. So legit. Yeah.

So I had, at the time, Lethal Weapon 2 was my favorite movie ever. So I had, like, attempted. You were getting your straight Mel Gibson heroin? Oh, dude. It was glorious. Oh, you should have seen it. Who's next?

Yeah, oh, yeah. Walking around smoking cigarettes and pretending. Anyway, just being ridiculous. But, you know, it happened to me again recently because I had grown my beard out and I had a bit of, I had some long hair. And I did, I did it. I shaved the beard down to nothing. And I went to the barber who usually, like, does his best. It gives me a little bit of length, but still make me look professional.

And I said, I want you to give me a number one all around. That's what I'm talking about. And this was just, this was just like a month ago. And, you know, he did all that. You know, your skin feels cold because now the air is on it. and I looked in the mirror and it was almost the same feeling. I went, oh, there he is.

I was like, there's that soldier. And I remember the feeling because the guy's name was Marco. He was this Italian guy who cut my hair. And he couldn't believe it because he had fostered this ridiculous mullet for the last two years. And now I said, shave it off

because I showed him a picture of a Marine. I said, I want to look like this guy. And when he shaved it, and then it was like, I was at the starting line of like the biggest race I'd ever going to run in my life. And all I could think about was getting to the end and being successful. And it changed my life, man. It changed my life.

Yeah, you know, one thing that, because when I was a kid, you know, I was into, this is going a little bit tangential, but I was into the hardcore scene on the East Coast. Yes. Hardcore music. That's what I grew up with. And it was like, yeah, shaved heads getting after it. But one of my my best friend at the time, he's like, listen, you know, we're part of this where there's nowhere to hide. You can't hide behind your bangs.

It's all right there. You've got to face yourself. Nice. And it also strips away, you know, any kind of, I mean, hair is basically a, what's that word? It's basically for show. I mean, that's what hair is. It has no purpose other than I look good. So let's just go ahead and remove that.

I don't care what I look like. I'm here to win. So, yeah, I guess that might explain my haircut in some way. But I'm glad you picked that paragraph because when I did this a month ago, it was when I started my training for a bodybuilding show I decided to do. And I was having trouble getting into it, you know? I know how to do everything. I know how to eat well.

I know how to work out. I've been working out so I was like 16. But I just wasn't, it wasn't clicking, you know? And I went to the barber and I did that. And it was like the switch went off. Boom. And there it was. It was like, oh, I'm back at that starting line.

I'm going to be 40 in January. So I want a six-pack before I'm 40. I don't know. Since I got blown up, I haven't had one. That's been 10 years. Right on. All right. So now we get into this next section.

Now you're kind of learning about what the Army's like. And here's some stuff that you said about it. There was a system for everything in the Army. A way to stand and a way to sit. A way to dress and a way to sleep. There's also a way to assist them for how to properly eat at the mess hall. Our routine was an endless, monotonous cycle. We woke up, made our cots, folded our sleeping bags in the exact way we'd been taught.

Once the tent was in shape, it was on to barrack boxes. We had to lay them out as instructed with everything in its proper place, whether it made sense or not. We had to stand beside our kit and cots, everyone perfectly still, as the officer did inspection. At the time, I thought that so much of this discipline was overkill. Why did we have to stand at attention when the officer was on the other side of the tent looking at some other dude's cotton kit? Why did our barracks boxes have to be identical? It took me a couple of years to figure out that the skills they were drilling into us

are actually really important for a combat leader. If you can't stand still long enough for morning inspection, how can your commanders trust you to hold your post during a mortarber? How will a leader know he can count on you to be a useful soldier if you can't even follow through on an order meant to keep you and your comrades safe, even if you don't know it at the time? All these drills were training me to put self-discipline above my instinct to flinch or flee. When everything in me told me to break my posture, to stand down, I learned to obey a different order instead. It was basic training, but I was a simple way. some important skills that would later make me a better sniper now I talk about discipline all the time

Yeah, and that's obviously why I honed in on this because you kind of captured the kind of things that they're teaching you discipline They're teaching you discipline and if you don't make that connection for all you young troopers out there that are getting ready to join the military Yeah, there's a purpose. There's a reason behind it a definite purpose and you know that's part of my book is the book that I wrote with Laif, one of the chapters called Discipline equals Freedom. There's another chapter in there. It happens to be called cover and move.

Yeah. And, you know, we related to everything we do. To me, there's no other tactic. And again, I had to call this out in your book. And by the way, I'm reading your book right now.

Yeah. And I was trying to figure out how to do this. Yeah. Like, should I say, okay, can you read this section? And then I thought to myself, it's going to be different for you to hear it

coming from someone else to hear the words and when I looked up at you after reading that first section I was like he just enjoyed that because you're hearing it you can never hear it when you hear yourself read it you're it's like I don't know it doesn't I have my own reaction because they're my words

but especially from someone like you someone who's shared relatively common experiences and, you know, I was a sniper team leader. You were a task force leader, and for us to have a similar reaction to the same types of things, is it's very interesting for me to see as well, to see someone like Jocko read the same thing that I went through and go, yes, exactly.

Because you got it. It took me a couple years to realize, like I said, why am I standing here? This is stupid. Let's just go out. Let's just go out there and train. Well, you are training, bitch. You're learning how to do what you're told.

And you're learning how to back... Because if you take off from your barracks box, well, guess who's going to pay for it? The guy next to you. And, you know, beyond doing what you're told, even in that paragraph, you pointed out, look, the inspectors look in the other direction. You could easily break your posture.

Yeah. You know, he's not going to see you. He's never going to catch you. But guess what? You held the line. Yeah? You held the line. And that's what you're learning.

Is that no matter what, no matter if people are looking or not, you're going to do your job. That's your duty. Right. It's your job. It's the job, right? It's the job.

And people, what makes a good soldier? It's someone who understands their job is to be that soldier. And I know, okay, I know what I'm saying and you know what I'm saying, but you've got to go through that to really understand it. And me and you can give advice all day to people, like new guys, we get, when you tweeted out, I was coming, oh, I'm getting ready to go on selection. I'm getting ready to go to, I want to be. a sniper, I'm joining the infantry, what do I do, what do I do? I can give you advice all day, Jocco can give you advice all day,

but man, there's some things you just got to learn on your own, and that's that standing there with your boots polished, at full, you know, standing at the chow, wondering why you had to iron your shirt again is going to help you later on when you're under enemy machine gun fire

and mortars are coming down. Trust me, that shit's going to help you. But you're going to learn that on your own. Now back to cover and move. here you go talking about cover and move in our pairs one guy would move forward while the other guy would shoot to provide cover the mover would yell moving and jump up and move forward about three steps saying in his head up he sees me down while his partner covered him

at down the mover would take cover going to ground taking up a firing position and yelling covering once in position then his partner would move forward the same way the idea was to always have a foot on the ground which means one sort of soldier is covering while the other is moving. Boom. And you just had to break that out on your own team at work now in the civilian sector, right? Yeah, we had lunch. And the best thing I got out of reading your book, my transition was a weird one.

Okay? Politics is not business, but there are some business aspects in that I'm now dealing with people that aren't, you know, I'm used to working in small teams with people that are professionals at what we do, you know, so snipers. And even though that was 10 years ago, that's basically my last real working environment. That's what you know. That's what I know. So even if I'm the boss and you're my sniper and I go, Echo, I need you to take up this position, I can go away, come back, that position's taken. But when you're dealing with civilian staff who have never operated in that kind of, or we say operated, they've never worked in that kind of

environment, if I tell them to do something and walk away, you better come back and check because they're not used to that kind of freedom. Because it's discipline, but I'm giving you the freedom to do the job I gave you. You don't need me to double check that you took up the proper sniper position. And then also the cover and move, the foot on the ground, I realized, after reading your book, I went, so Jocko just basically was like, listen to Dummy. That's how I felt. I felt like a dummy.

I'm like, of course I should have implemented this in the office. My people were operating in silos because I'm the sports commissioner for the city. So I had a sports. One of my assistants was on sports. One of my assistants was on the policy. And one of my assistance was on constituency work. And that's where you deal with the voters who call it. But none of them were talking to each other.

And I was only talking to them sporadically. So I said, okay, guys, starting today, I didn't tell them why, though. I wasn't like, I wasn't going to say, hey, this guy, Jocko gave me an idea. I said, hey, guys, I got an idea. From now on, you're going to CC him, and you're going to CC him back whenever you send an email, and then I'm going to CC you and you're going to CC me. Within that week, our productivity, like, 100% improvement. Because now, instead of everyone was just aware of what the others were doing.

and there are things that I already know, but now I've got to learn to apply them in my civilian life because I'm not working with highly trained snipers anymore. I'm working with people that are good at their jobs, but not necessarily the way that I expect them to be. And, you know, there's so much, we were talking about it right before we pressed record about, why is the last podcast was The Art of War?

And to us, it's kind of like a, you know, Joe Roebate. says all the time, it's a duh. That's a duh thing. But there's so much you can take from that book. And there's a reason why Fortune 500 CEOs keep it in their desk, because you can apply a lot of what Sun Su said 3,000 years ago to right now. And just to your daily life, to your interactions with your kids, interactions with your boss or your subordinates or your supplier or your, you know, your colleagues. It's all right there. It's just, you got to translate You know, it's not a difficult ground. It's, you know, it's a position you have to take on an issue.

So, yeah, like, I get, it's a trip to me this whole life, this whole thing. It's human nature. Yeah. That threat of human nature runs through from 2,500 years ago at Sun Tsu, through war, through life, through business, through the relationships that you now have with your kids. Yeah. It's everywhere. Kids. Now, since you were a militia, you actually went back to school after you went to boot camp.

So you get back to school, and this is very typical. Before militia training, I'd been so bored at school and found everything tedious and pointless. But after eight weeks of soldier training, school seemed like a breeze. I started arriving on time and paying attention to lessons. In the military, you can direct your career, a course. according to your aptitudes and interests. So I decided to do the same at school. Instead of taking classes I hated, I picked ones I knew I would enjoy.

My grades improved because I was doing more of what I wanted to do. For the first time, I had discipline and self-direction. And instead of all that energy being repressed or coming out the wrong way, I had focus. I went from being a loner and keeping to myself to becoming more outgoing and popular at school. That discipline goes a long way. It really goes along. And see, I went to college after I'd been in the SEAL teams for eight years. No, sorry, 10 years.

So when I went to college, I was like, oh, bring it. Bring it on. I'm going to study every little thing you say, and I'm going to know it better than you. But I found I was a better student. Oh, absolutely. After going through boot camp. No doubt about it. And basic training.

It just, like, learning became easier. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Even if I didn't want to know what they were. talking about. Yeah, and that's something that the army imposes on you is they'll teach you something. And for the first time, because in civilian world, when you're a kid, they go, you've got to learn this and you don't study.

And next thing you know, you don't really know it. And then you take the test and you're like, oh, I'm not smart. I'm an idiot. And the army, like, no, you will learn this. And then you learn it. And you say, oh, okay, that's how I learn. I actually have to apply myself and study. And now I'm going to get an A.

Yeah. Which is awesome. So then, now you still weren't active in the military and you weren't to get. your factory work on. Yeah. Well, I was as active as I had to be. Because it's,

you know, it's part-time. Right, right. And then, you know, there was a girl. Just beautiful Russian girlfriend. And,

you know, dad got me a great paying job. But I'll let you say it. Yeah, no, that's good. And then finally you were like, okay,

I'm ready to, I mean, you worked in that factory situation for so long and you said, I'm going to go. Well, it's about a year.

and I was making money that, like, it was like $25 an hour. Dang. I was 19. What was it, 96, I think. And I hated it. I'm sorry, Dad, if you hear this, because he got me the job, and it was with his parent company, because he was in the union. He was in the, we had the Canadian auto workers. Right, right.

Down here, it's the United Auto Workers. And, uh, it just, it just, it just, it was soul crushing. For me, for me. Nothing against guys that can do it. There are guys that have worked their 30 years. They put the same rivet in over and over and over again for eight hours a day. And they're masters at it. And they love it.

And they punch their card and they go home and they do their thing. Wasn't for Jody. No. So you get back. Now you go full active duty. You become a soldier by profession. Right. So I do what we call a transfer to the regular force.

And then on top of that, usually you're supposed to go through training again, depending on your level of experience, because that was only about three years. So I should have gone through what's called battle school. And that's the regular Army's battle school to become an infantry soldier. For whatever reason, the decision was made that I wouldn't. Okay, so you don't go back in, but you are back, active duty, and now you'd think that Jody was all super squared away now, but you weren't, were you?

Well, it was a rough transition, Jocco. You got arrested. Well, yeah, that came after. You're active duty, right? Well, yeah, I'm a full-time private. I was a corporal in the reserves, right? Busted back down to private. Show up.

There's a lot of politics going on right now at this time because the regular army is being told that has to take reserves, whereas before it was like, if you need them, you can take them. Now it's, even if you don't need them, you're going to take 30%. So you have a battalion of infantry guys. Let's say one RCR at full strength is usually, at this time, it was about 700. Cut 30% off of active duty, good-to-go guys. And now they're put aside and 30% reservists show up to take their share.

spot. Ouch. Yeah. So that, and this was mandated by our headquarters. And so the politics within the unit was, can I, we're allowed to swear on this, right? Yeah. Yeah. The Reg Force guys were all like, fuck you and the horse you came in on, and that horse's

mom, and anybody else associated with that horse, I show up. They thought, because I was a, they thought I was a reserve, because the RCR has a reserve battalion. So they thought I was a reserve RCR. And then when they found out I was a direct entry, which means I go directly from the reserves into the Reg Force, without going through the RCR battle school. Huh? So they just gave you that cat badge?

Well, yeah, but I did basic training in the reserves three years ago. Oh, you did, huh? And I got, man, it was rough. It was rough. But it... And it got rougher because you got in trouble. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I don't know why you... By the way, just so you know, you wrote this in the book that's been published. Yeah, yeah. Acting like this didn't happen now is a little bit too late. You got arrested. I did get arrested. I don't trust anyone who hasn't at least been handcuffed. Yeah, that's a good point.

Right. I made a mistake. So we were... Now, well, the preamble to this was that I did eventually get sent to the RCR Battles School. And that's where I did get arrested. Another one of the trainees and I, well, the whole platoon went out. Of course, being young men, we somehow found ourselves at a gentleman's nightclub. And we were enjoying our evening.

And one of the guys who decided he wanted to get some cocaine. And I was, how old was I, 20? I had never even seen the stuff except for in Miami Vice. And I'm like, what's the point? We're already here. We're having fun. I'm already got a few drinks, got some girls sitting with us. Why leave?

And he was adamant. So I guess in his civilian life, this was something he got into. And in my mind, I was just like, okay, so he's going to leave on his own and go somewhere where, like, in Miami Vice, it's always like the worst part of town. Guess what? It was the worst part of town. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to go with you. I don't need any, but I'll be there. in case they try to mug you or jump you.

Turns out he was buying it from an undercover cop. Because, you know, like, who else are you going to buy it off, right? And then, after they bust us, so we're, like, walking back to the club. I'm like, okay, finally, right? I can get back and start hanging with the girls again, start getting my drink on. We get tackled by guys bigger than you and I. And, like, they're the undercut, they're the NARC guys. And they're like, what are you doing?

They look at our ID. You guys are in the army, and you go on and smoke crack. And I'm like, what? I look at the guy, I'm like, what's he talking about? He's like, well, I might have. They might not have had any Coke, so I might have bought it. And I'm like, oh my gosh. I'm just like, but now that's the reality of my life.

And I can't, there's no going back. There's no changing it. And it was, at the time I described it as the worst year of my life, but maybe it was the best the subsequent year because it taught me a lot about myself and that's the main reason

why I kind of wanted to tell that I wanted you to talk about that because number one like you said it's a mistake that you made that you know I've had that feeling too before where you're just like

okay this is my reality now there's no you can't go backwards you're cuffed and yet you had you transitioned from it and in the book here's how you kind of talk about that transition because they're going to send you back to

Meiford. What's it Meiford? Meifred was the battle school. So they're going to send you to the battle school for another crack at it. Your third crack at it. Well, my second crack at battle school, but my third infantry... Incoctrination. So here's what you did. And by the

way, you were teeter tottering this whole time. They don't know if they're going to kick you out. They might let you in... Because just so everybody knows, the cops even took your side and they said, hey, this guy didn't have anything to do with it, but it didn't matter. The military will sometimes... Guilty by association. Guilty by association. Yeah, so the police department was like,

Jody, you clearly had nothing to do with it. But yeah, guilty by association. Right. And so they go back and forth, find that you get orders. Okay, we're going to let you stay in. And now you say this. I had two choices.

I could be pissed off forever and feel hard done by or I could go back to Mafford with a new attitude and make the best of it. I could keep my head high and get off the bus with the shiniest boots. the best pressed uniform, the best laid out kit, and the best attitude, and be in the best shape of anybody there.

And that's what you did. That's what I did. So anybody that's out there that's listening to this podcast that hit a little bump in the road, that's what you do. You show up with the best attitude, the best shape, with your head held high, and you get after it.

Extreme ownership. You've got to own it. There's no hiding from it. There's no explaining your way out of it. There's no sideways maneuver you're going to make. You're that guy. I was that guy. Oh, there's that guy.

Yeah. So now fast forward in a little bit. You deploy, now you're legit part of the regiment. Yep. Finally. And you deploy to Kosovo, which at the time was a real world mission. I'm sure you were fired up. I know I would have been fired.

I didn't go to Kosovo, but I would have been fired up to go to Kosovo because it was the only game in town. I still remember when our commanding officer said, we gathered up in the parade hall, and he said, when our CR is going to Kosovo. And I still remember I was, you know, I have it at ease, you got your hand behind your back.

My hand went into a fist, and I had to stop myself from doing a fist bump. I was just like, yeah. You are going to become James Bond, Chuck Norris, and Rambo all in one moment. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's going to be glorious. So you go to Kosovo, And you know what?

We're kind of joking about it, but it was a legit mission at the time. There was stuff that was happening there. I like this little section here. You're talking about the Russians because you're stationed near some Russian folks, and you said this, we like to think we're tough as Canadians, but it turned out this Russian unit where were Russian airborne who had come from the fighting in Chesnia. And we've gone into some pretty deep... You guys talked about Cheshney.

We talked about Chesnian here. These guys took things to a whole new level. They were hardcore soldiers. We would complain when our showers weren't giving us warm water. Then we'd look over to the Russian camp and see soldiers outside in minus 25 degrees, washing themselves with snow. Or out in T-shirts cutting firewood. These guys were sleeping in World War II-era tents while we were sweating inside our heated barracks. And every morning they'd be outside in the ball freezing cold, running, doing chin-ups and bench-pressing big truck tires.

these guys were legit yeah yeah and we didn't know there was some there was some stuff going on at the Pristina airport at that time

that's why they were there do you remember do you remember this situation at all brief me so NATO did its bombing thing right bomb the Serbians out of Kosovo basically and then it was like

okay so a NATO stabilization force K4 the Kosovo stabilization or whatever it was was gonna move in and you know everyone was going to get a sector, British, Russian, or British, Canadian, French, blah, blah, blah. Right as we're, like, loading up on our vehicles, that brigade or, I don't know how many big it was,

of Russians just basically showed up in the middle of the night at the Pristina Airport, which was also a military airport. And they set up a perimeter around this, like, mountain bunker in there, which just recently, I read an article about it, and they were like, yeah, hey, guys, it's been, however, it's been 20 years. this is what was in there. Oh shit. It was full of stuff that shouldn't have been there. So that's why everybody was like, well, what are they doing here?

Why do they only want to be there? Because they were like, yeah, we're here to help, guys. We're just going to be right here in this area. Don't ever come in here or we'll kill you. But we'll be right here. We're just here to help. No big deal. We want to be part of the exercise.

But they were there to guard this bunker. And there was like a lot of, there was like, I guess there was some nuclear and biological weapons in there and some migs. that should never have been in that part of Europe, apparently. And in the middle of the night, you'd hear planes taking off, and nobody knew what they were. But, you know, nothing really of substantial events happened in Kosovo. You get home from that, and this is when you get the opportunity to go to sniper training,

which is, you know, outstanding. And I thought you did a great job here of pointing out what a sniper is. People have little ideas in their heads about what a sniper is. And here's Jody's version of what a sniper is. A true sniper is someone who's willing to do pretty much anything to accomplish the mission. The sniper has a particular mindset, and shooting is actually one of the easier parts of the role. I've seen men at the rifle range who are amazing marksmen, but who would be terrible snipers because they don't have the patience.

they lack the ability to deny their own needs and to put the mission first. A true sniper will make himself uncomfortable just to make the shot. That is something so true. The guys think that what a sniper is someone that shoots really well. Yeah. Yeah. That's the least, that's the easiest thing I can teach you. Right, right.

If I need you to be a sniper, that's the easiest thing I can get you to do. You know that movie shooter with our buddy Mark Wahlberg there? I have not seen it. It's based on a book about a Vietnam-era sniper or something. But anyway, he takes this, like, guy who just teams up with him for the movie, and he makes him the shooter, like the, he teaches him how to shoot, because that's the easy part. All that other stuff I talk about, that's the part I'm looking for.

That's what I'm looking for in a sniper. You can shoot all day. I could put you on the rain. and you can shoot bullseyes from 900 meters all day. As long as you got your Gatorade, as long as you get your 10-minute break, as long as I'll let you get up and go pee-pee. But what if I don't let you do any of that stuff?

Then what? Oh, is it sunny out on? That's too bad. Yeah, it's sunny out. Oh, is it going to rain? Yep. Don't get up. Your target might come up.

But what if there's ants crawling in biting your eyes? The eyes is problematic. I would allow you to scratch the ants out of your eyes, but your target might come up while you're scratching. I wouldn't get up if I was you. All the sniper courses, definitely, and you talk about it in the book,

you talk about stalking. That's something that no one, I haven't seen that movie, but no one really understands the difficulty and the challenging. And the self-discipline. It's an exercise and self-discipline to crawl, you know,

one meter every 10 minutes. It's hard. To get to a position where you can see your target and take the shot. Because you have to, Yeah, because you have to have the patience to, and the mindset, too, like, I don't know if it made it into the book. I can't, I know, you should know your own book, but I remember I was leopard crawling with a guy, and we were on, it wasn't even a sniper thing.

It was just like a field, like a, like a field craft thing. So we were learning how to just stock just as soldiers. And we were, we were side by side, but he was literally on an elevation, maybe four inches higher than me. I remember I was looking at him and I was like that's not a good spot to be freeze boom Walker came over got him I was in direct line of sight

but I was just that four inches lower you got to like have the patience to look at the ground and go I'm going to go this way even though it's out of your way because you can't be within sight of of the spotters or of the enemy and that guy went on to become our tier

he joined our tier one unit he's a JTF guy. But I remember at that time, so it's not like he was a dummy or anything. He might have learned a value of a lesson. He probably learned a lesson, but that's the mindset I'm looking for from day one from a guy

that I'm going to put through sniper school. Because we don't have a lot of numbers in Canada. You know, like I was telling you, at any given time, there might be 150, maybe 180 snipers active at any time in the forces. And that might, you know, if you add in our tier one, tier two guys, or maybe there's 200.

So I don't have time to go looking for the best guys. You know, you have to come, you basically got to come to us. And so I'm looking for the patience. I'm looking for the guy who's going to take that extra five minutes and look at the ground. He's who's not going to, when I tell him, okay, you can go, go start stalking, who's going to sit there for another five, ten minutes, lose that time, but study the route on his map. You know, because it's easy to start, run. and then you go, oh, man, oh shit, I should know where I'm going.

No, no. Time spent on the map is time saved on the ground. Right? So you're looking for that guy, and there's just, it's a, it's probably the same with seals. You just, you don't, it's hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. So you get done with sniper school. You spend some more time, and then September 11th happens. Game on.

and the opportunity comes up for you to go on deployment. Now, you'd already been through sniper school. You were a sniper, but the opportunity, there's no opportunity for a sniper to play. What they need is a driver. Right. Which. A driver slash security.

Yeah, which is, I mean, it's definitely a dangerous job. It's definitely a monotonous job. It's not a glorious job by any stretch. but and also what's rough about being a driver is you have a lot less control over your own fate I mean you're basically in a defensive situation when you're driving in a convoy you're in a defensive situation that's all there is to it so here you are you're a target yeah you're a target you've been trained to be the hunter and now you get an offer to go on deployment to be the hunted basically as a driver and of course because you're a warrior you say oh you need a driver you don't need a

sniper, but I'm going to go to Afghanistan. All right, bring it on. Yeah, that was it. It was stay home or be a driver. Pretty easy choice for Jody. Pretty simple. So now you were, what were these little jeeps you were driving? Elthus.

So it's, what do you guys got that's comparable? Nothing. Is it just like a little land rover type vehicle? Yeah, but it's like not even, like it's almost a class of a, own. Is it armored? No. No, it's like a little, um, dune buggy looking thing. It had like a four-cylinder engine built originally by Volkswagen. Um, we, they were roughly the same like look as an original Willie's Jeep. Okay. But that's where the similarities end. And you get to Afghanistan and your, your, your drive, where are you? Where were you in Afghanistan? That was Kabul. And so

you're driving people around the city. Yeah. From base to wherever. They got to go do it. the airport to our main base, which was the name of that camp again. Sorry, I forget the main camp we had in Afghanistan, but it was between the king and queen's palace. Got it. And, yeah, they'd go there, or because it was officers and liaison officers mostly that we worked with, right? So it would be like go liaison with the Turkish guys, go liaison with the Germans, go liaison with this Afghan warlord. So you'd take them to a dinner somewhere, you'd sit around and wait and drive them back. Yeah, yeah, basically.

And we'd be his bodyguards when he was there and stuff. And, like we said, there's a threat. You obviously were prepared for anything, of course. But, you know, there wasn't a super high threat. Right. However, there's always a threat. And I'm going to the book here. The Iltas Jeeps were not designed to withstand an attack.

This fact became starkly apparent when three, three RCR guys were driving to Iltus and hit a landmine. Two of them, Sergeant Robert Short and Corporal Rob Beerenfinger, died immediately. And the driver, T.J. Sterling, a friend of mine, survived though he was injured. After the incident, T.J. was brought to the hospital at Camp Warehouse. And me and another one of the guys from the regiment went to see him. This was the first time I'd seen one of our guys hit by a landmine. In fact, it was the first time I'd seen a casualty at all. T.J. was pretty banged up. A couple of his teeth were broken and he may have had a broken draw. He had lacerations all over. There's always a particular odor in the hospitals around people

who have suffered traumatic injuries. I remember smelling that odor like blood or maybe just what I thought blood smelled like. T.J. was on a stretcher with big wheels. We'd use this kind of stretcher before in training. To me, it was a kind of prop. This thing we used for simulations. But this was not a simulation. This was the real thing. T.J. was still in shock. It had taken a few hours for him to be extracted from the scene of the explosion. Shorty and Beerenfinger are gone, he said. Yeah, man, we replied. We heard. I need a smoke man I need a smoke T.J. said. The doctors and nurses wouldn't allow it, but as soon as they were out of the vicinity, we lit a cigarette for T.J. and gave him a couple of drags. Ah,

that's way better. Thanks. We stayed and chatted with T.J. about some inconsequential things trying to keep a fellow royal in a good state of mind. For me personally, I was learning from what was happening, facing the reality that when things go wrong, you have to keep a fellow royal, you have to get that smell in your nostrils and look those sights right in the eye. Sadly, a few years later, TJ ended up taking his own life.

I was a pallbearer at his funeral, and as I carried his coffin, I wondered if he carried guilt for being the lone survivor in that incident. So really, to me, that's like you're welcome to war. Yeah.

And when you talked about getting that smell in your nostrils and looking those sights right in the eyes that's i think an important thing for people to remember yeah you know when things are bad some people want to deny that it's happening they want to hold their nose and shield their eyes from it wrong answer breathe it in yeah in our gig especially

breathe it in you have to that you have an our line of work that's the norm and I'll tell you having working with worked with a bunch of different companies and bunch of different industries they run into these situations too you know where their company's going to fail or there's there's a problem there's things go wrong and no you know what lives are not at stake and I say this all the time but livelihoods are If you're the CEO of a company, you're going to have to now lay off 500 people, 1,000 people, three people. And now that person's not going to be able to afford their mortgage or pay for their kids or get food on the table. That is serious business.

You're ruining someone's life. And if you want to shield your eyes at that moment and you want to hold your nose so you don't have to smell it, you're wrong. Yeah. And obviously this too here for T.J. this is you know we're talking about the psychological wounds that people get yeah which for him were worse than his physical wounds he i remember one time after i got hit um because he he he actually came back with us in in o six on the tour i was wounded on and he stayed in the talk the whole time but um i remember we were back and i you know i was hit and we were at his house

and we were having a little bit of a party and he he was crying because he he was he was crying because he He couldn't believe that he, because he got, you know, he was wounded and he got a monthly stipend for his injuries. And he was still, but he was still active duty and stuff. And when I got wounded, we had a new veterans system come in where I just got like a lump sum payment. And he was crying about, you know, how, how is it that he can get this money, but I only get this money. And Jody, what happened to you is so much worse than what happened to me. And I was, why are you worried about, I'm okay, man, I'm alive. we're here, we're having some drinks.

But he was so tore up inside about what happened to me versus what happened to him, what happened to Shorty and Barrenfinger. And he just carried that. And you hear about that Survivor's guilt thing. And you don't realize how real it is until you see it. And even after I got wounded, when I came home, I felt like shit because my boys were still back there. and then when they went back in 2010 because our unit rotated back into theater

it killed me I was dying inside those are my guys they're over there without me and I'm letting them down because I told them I was going back with them I said don't worry guys I'll get better I'll go back and I had to like really

come to grips with that and you know TJ couldn't you know we lose too many guys to that stuff but I've all I don't know I never had those thoughts

I never thought of of ending my own life ever but I've known enough guys that have done it that clearly it becomes an option to some people and I'm at the point with it

because it just happened maybe a month ago with a guy I worked with in the green berets and I just don't think we can save them all I don't know if any year guy I mean, I think I texted you when it happened. Yeah, you did. You texted me. And that one really, my wife, Atlanta, she's never seen me cry, and I cried that night for Johnny.

And it was because we thought we had him. He was living at one of the guys' house that was on the team that we worked with. You know, he had a girlfriend, and things were looking good. And, you know, I've had to come to the conclusion in my own mind that we're not going to save them all. And this is a side effect of the gig, of the life we chose, that some of our comrades are going to go that direction. And if you, if I was to dwell on it the way TJ did,

then I, I would become like TJ. And I can't afford to do that. You know, you use the word dwell. And that's a word that I use as well. I use the word dwell. And I, and I always say that you got to face these things. You've got to understand these things. You've got to actually embrace these things. You've got to bring them in, but you can't dwell on them. That's right. And I think that's the key is to,

is honestly, to do what you, what you said is to breathe it in, to look it in the eye, deal with it, but don't dwell on it. Don't stay there. That's right. Move on. Accept it as a consequence of the actions you've chosen and move on to the next step. Otherwise, you'll be that guy talking about that high school football pass that you caught. And it's an analogy that fits here because we talked about this in your car. There's some guys, I was a sniper, I was a Navy SEAL, I was a paratrooper, I was a machine gunner, whatever it is. I was a jihitsu black belt, whatever it is. And that's where they're stuck.

That's where they're dwelling. They're in purgatory in that whatever ring of hell you want to call it. stuck in that moment. And you've got to move on. You can't dwell because that's where you're going to die when you dwell. And real simply, what you've got to do is you've got to just take a step. You've got to take that step forward. You've got to look it in the eyes.

Then you've got to walk away. And you've got to walk forward and move forward and make go in another direction. Go forward. Yeah. Don't go backwards. Go forward. Yeah. And the other part is accept that maybe you can't change things.

Well, you can't change what's happened in the past. Yeah. You cannot do that. It happened. It happened. Yeah. And you're not going to change it. So what are you going to do?

Are you going to let it drag you down? Are you going to dwell on it forever? Don't. Don't do that. Man, I know. I know it gets a hold to you. I know it's a tough one. It can.

But deal with it. Except that you can't change it. Except that you're here for a reason to do something. You have the opportunity that maybe your buddies didn't get. They didn't get. Never mind, maybe. You have an opportunity that your buddies did not get. You think they would want to have you kill yourself?

No. They'd want you to live. And that's what you. you need to do. Yeah. Honor them. Yeah. By living an awesome life every day.

Make the change. Be the difference. You know, you can't change the world, but you could change somebody else's day. You can be the positive influence in your little tiny sphere. Your, my influence in the world, yours echoes. It's not the world, but it makes someone else happy. Yeah. You can be the difference between a good day and a,

Bad day for someone. You know, when I decided that I was going to try and become an officer in the SEAL teams, part of that, part of my decision was because I'm not like I was going to be an admiral or whatever. It's going to be like just, and I said, you know what? Because I had a prior enlisted officer that just made our lives awesome because he was such a great guy. Nice. And I said to myself, you know what? I might not change the world, but I'm going to have a cool SEAL platoon one day.

And those guys are going to, those guys are going to be fired up and we're going to kick ass. just my little world, just that little thing. And no matter where you are, you got that little world. Maybe, like you said, maybe it's one other person, maybe it's just yourself. But you make that little part of your world a little bit better. Yeah. You wake up in the morning, I firmly believe you decide how that day is going to go. Absolutely.

Whether, you know, I missed my flight to come down. I should have been here yesterday. I missed my flight. I own that. I had a bad morning. And I was, I think I was even on the phone with you. And I said, yeah, extreme ownership. My fault.

And you giggled at me and you said, yep, own it, whatever. And then I, my one assistant called me and I said, you know what? I'm done being pissed off. You know, because I can't, I'm not going to let this one thing ruin the rest of my day and the rest of my weekend. How's that helping you move forward? How's that help in the rest of your day? How's that help you get here right now? It doesn't help anything.

That doesn't mean be a robot either, though. No. Deal with it. Process it. Don't get me wrong. I was really mad yesterday morning. And it takes a lot. I had steak waiting for you down here.

I had all kinds of good shit planned. I'm like, of all the things to be late for it. Yeah, that's right. A guy like, you want a guy like Jocko to think you're a shit, you know, your plug and can't make a timing. But, you know, everything's going to be okay I'm here

we're still doing the podcast it's beautiful weather I got to see my kids I got to pick them up from school because I didn't think I was gonna I got to you know I got to see some friends walk the dogs that day

and I and I but I made that decision myself though I was sitting on my on the edge of the bed I didn't have my prosthetic legs on yet and I said okay you're pissed off now you're done

and I got up and I carried on with the day because and I okay it's easy to say what's easy for us to say take that step don't dwell move on but I firmly believe

if you decide you can change your circumstance that's a decision you have to make in your own mind I firmly believe it and it might not feel like it today but try again tomorrow and then try again the next day and you know what call me

before you make any decisions. Just please, just call me first. Call or if you have Jocko's number, call him. Because the world is definitely better with you here than without you. No doubt about it. And I hate to keep hammering this nail, but it's just a theme that I'm tired of here. A buddy of mine, another sniper, had a heart attack

not long after that guy killed himself. He's a great dude. He's a legend in the Canadian sniper world. And he was diabetic, and he smoked a thousand cigarettes a day and drank a million beers a week. And they said the heart attack was so fast he probably was, because they found him in bed. He was crawling into bed and probably went,

and it was dead before his head even hit the pillow. That's how massive a heart attack it was. When I heard it was a heart attack, I was actually happy. Because when I heard it, I went, I just went shooting with him. He was in a great movie. They're like, oh, no, no, no. It was a heart attack. And I went, oh, thank God.

That's, that's, that's the point I'm at with this, with that subject. So anyway, let's move on, man. Let's talk about puppy dogs and rainbows. Okay, we're not there yet. No, no, I don't know. I don't like that was a good reference, you know, miss my flight, good. I can bring my kids to school. You know, all this good they came on in it.

That's right. So, I would like to go rainbows, but we're not there yet. All right, brother. Hit me. So now you're, you're coming back from Afghanistan. And, you know, you've got your girlfriend and whatnot. And here we go.

My first tour in Afghanistan ended a few weeks later, and I headed back home. I was still haunted by all the things I had witnessed in Kabul. Images played over and over in my head, whether it was small children begging for money, a mother holding a dead baby in the streets, or my buddy T.J. bloodied up from a roadside bombing. My girlfriend expected me to return as the same guy who had left six months earlier, but I was a different man now, a different Jody.

Everything around me looked different too. Maybe things hadn't changed much, but I felt like I was on an alien planet. My girlfriend had redecorated the house, moving some of the furniture around and repainting the bedroom, and I found it upset me. life had gone on without me and that fact was hard to take people around me kept saying what's wrong with you jody you've changed and that would make me even more upset not because they were wrong but because i thought i was the kind of soldier who could just walk it off but few soldiers can it takes time after a tour of duty for a soldier to readjust a civilian life and i wish i'd known that earlier. I was expected to continue life just as I had lived it before my tour, but I couldn't,

not right away. I couldn't step back into my normal routine as if I hadn't witnessed anything on mission. I couldn't just hop in the car and go to the grocery shopping like everything was fine. It's interesting that you kind of felt like you were weak sauce because you were not the exact same before you went on deployment. Yeah, you feel like a pussy. Even though you know you shouldn't feel like a pussy, you feel like a pussy. It's the most frustrating, at the time,

it was one of the most frustrating things because you want to be that guy for your woman. Yeah, of course, I'm still that awesome alpha male that you fell in love with and whatever doesn't blink at anything. Except that water bottle at the side of the road. right there. What's that pile of garbage doing right there? What do you mean? I should just drive. Oh, right. Yeah,

this is our street. Sorry, it's not a road in Kabul. And, yeah, I just, I like I said, I wish I'd had that advice that, you know, be prepared for the fact. Because when I went to Kosovo, like, because I've had the people ask me, well, you didn't have that reaction when he came back in Kosovo. Well, I lived in the barracks. all my shit was in storage.

I didn't have a girlfriend. I had a girl that I was dating. She picked me up when we got home, but it's not like we were going to get engaged or anything. And, you know, I didn't have any real belongings. You know, I, you know, I still lived at the unit. This was a house I had bought. You know, my girlfriend had moved in.

You know, she was talking about kids and marriage, and we had a dog. And I came home and I was like, what happened to my house? And what is going on? And, like, you know, what I told my dad when I went to Kosovo, you know, in the book, I talk about my dad, one of the three times I've seen him cry in my life was when I deployed to Kosovo for the first time. And I said, hey, man, don't worry about it. It's six months. Hey, what's six months, right? It's like six haircuts. It's six mortgage payments. It's nothing. Don't worry about it. And I come home and I couldn't even think that way myself.

and you know and I know I don't know if you felt like that after your first deployment but this one was different because I guess I had a life to come home to besides the unit I've always been very compartmentalized in the way I think right sometimes probably to a detriment to my family a little bit but I've always been very compartmental with like work come home I'm not I'm not at work anymore so just stop thinking about that stuff And it's usually pretty positive, but the problem is that when you get to, you realize you're compartmentalizing your family out of the picture, kind of, which I would have a tendency to do somewhat. And I mean, that's probably part of one of the things that. But even when you were a real young guy?

Like, how long have you been married? I've been married for a long time. And I've always been like that. Okay. Honestly, it's wrong, I think. but the SEAL teams was always the biggest priority in my life. And you know, people will be like, oh, family first, that was not true for me. And luckily, my wife understood that.

And she didn't hold it against me. Right. She knew that someday, she knew the SEAL teams wasn't going to last forever. And all you guys in the military, I'll tell you what, the military does not last forever. Well, the big green machine rolls on. Yeah, exactly. With or without you. Exactly.

And the people that are there when you fall off, those are the ones you got to worry about when you're still on. Yep. And so that's why I think I just was able to compartmentalize what, you know, away. Right. And I would basically be almost a schizophrenic of this is a guy that works. And this is a guy that's at home. He's dad or whatever. And boom, I just had that really good split.

And I think it was beneficial to me. probably was probably is yeah yeah i guess i assumed i was that guy too because that's i you know i approached most things that way but maybe just having that little home of my own for that one tour and then also you know losing a couple buddies for the first time maybe i don't know i don't know what the thing it's not like it didn't wreck anything like my career was fine like it was just well i mean i lost a fiance out of it, but. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what happens next. So she announced, this is back to the book here, she announced that she was leaving. I was shocked because I didn't want to break things off.

I just wanted to postpone the wedding. But for her, this was all too much. Our relationship was over. While I was certain, this was the right time to get, well, I wasn't certain this was the right time to get married. I was certain about one thing. I want to. wanted to go back to Afghanistan. And this time, as a sniper. And that's something that... Yeah. I mean, that's something that's hard to reconcile the feeling of just want to go back.

I mean, that's... I want to go back right now. Yeah, of course. Like, people... Hey, what's it like... You asked me. What's it like to be in politics? I'd rather be killing ISIS, frankly.

And, you know, I'm not ashamed to say it. I was good at it. and I love the people that are out there doing it for us, even though I'm not one of them anymore. You know, we kind of skipped over, but 9-11 happened during my sniper course. And sniper courses, we don't just have a rotation of them going on in Canada. We're a very small military.

If you're on a sniper course, holy shit, like you got there. They run like one or two a year or something? Maybe. Oh, so it's not even every year. No. Well, now I think it is, but back then, mine was the first one in three years that had happened. 25 of us tried out, three of us passed. So it's not like you get on it and it's, okay, you just got to pass.

But 9-11 happened on like day five or six or something. And, you know, as the towers fell, we watched it fall on TV. Like they interrupted a class. We thought it was like a Cessna, right? The guy comes up, someone just flew a plane to the World Trade Center. And we're in the middle of a, you don't interrupt a class. You know, right? You don't interrupt a training session.

We're like, okay, man, thanks. And the duty sergeant runs off. But we think a drunk guy in a Cessna. And then he comes back. And so we go down to watch at the duty station. And as the towers are falling, I'm hearing like the starting bell, right? I'm hearing like the horn at the start of the Super Bowl. And I'm like, oh, it's on.

Because I was considering retiring because of the lack of action. So you did get your, I hate to call it a dream. But you got your dream. Going back to Afghanistan. Oh, yeah. And this time. This time you're going as a sniper, which is awesome. You're back in Afghanistan.

And there's some heavy fighting going on now. There's some legit fighting. And the Canadians are actually leading operations, which is the first time in quite some time, I think, since Korea. Yeah, well, this, this, what we won't, well, this was the first time we'd let operations. that were non-peacekeeping ever since Korea. Yeah, you're right. And this, but what we walked into was the first offensive in NATO's history ever.

Think about it, right? NATO's never been on the offensive except for an Afghanistan. Kind of weird, but North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But anyway, this one was called Operation Medusa. This Canadian-led NATO operation was going to be different from anything we'd done so far. It was a bit of a wake-up call. So was the fact that my buddy Jeff Walsh had been killed and friendly fire

in an accident that happened in August. Clearly, we were entering a high-risk situation. That didn't deter me in any way. In any way, if anything, it made my resolve stronger. I'd trained for this, and I was ready. It's a good feeling. What was the friendly fire? Was it aircraft or was it shooting?

No, this one was unfortunately, it was his buddy in the vehicle. They were sitting next to each other. And I guess he got in with his rifle, not paying attention to the muzzle, and it went off and shot Jeff through the face and killed him. No one really knows exactly what happened,

but that's basically pretty much what everyone figures happened. Muzzle discipline. never point your weapon at something you do not want to destroy and keep your finger off the trigger keep your weapon on safe now as you guys are getting ready to go into this operation Medusa

one of the orders that comes out is if anybody gets hurt during this mission we're going to stop right away and take care of it we're going to make sure the casualties are dealt with and then reassess the situation before moving forward That was during the company commander's orders.

Right. And you were kind of thinking, wait a second. Yeah. Yeah. For those of these that don't know, which is I'm sure people that aren't in the military, when you're going on an attack, your idea is to maintain the momentum of the attack. And you take casualties along the way while you're attacking, you keep attacking. You don't stop.

You know, you're going to take casualties. You're going to get hit. Things are going to slow you down. You don't slow down. You try and keep pushing. forward. You keep pushing forward. I've said it on this podcast before.

Aggression will mitigate risk. So you get aggressive, you move through the target, you get the target secure, then you can deal with the guys that are down. Yeah. Not that you're going to ignore them and you can't drop off a medic here and there to handle a situation, but you're not going to stop. I mean, literally, you know, stop. No.

You can't stop the whole battle group. You can't stop. But, you know, I don't know if the order. was delivered the way it was intended, but that's how it, that's basically what was, that's to paraphrase what was said. And that's why, you know, a couple of us were just kind of like, yeah, and what's really, to your point of,

you're not sure if that's what was meant, what's really important is that the main thing you want to get across to your troopers when you're going on to assault is you want the main point to be, get aggressive. That's the main point that you want to get across to them, not, hey, the main point that you're going to take away from this is if we take casually stop. Yeesh. No.

We're going to get aggressive. We're going to finish through the target. We're going to secure the target. And nothing is going to stop us from doing that. I don't care what happens. That's what you want to have going into an assault like this. That was always my impression. I've never been a company commander, though.

But you've received plenty of orders. Yes, sir. All right. Now, we're starting it on the assault. The assault is going down. And here we go. Up ahead. The first vehicles were closing in on the White Schoolhouse.

The Zettelmire cleared away for the lead platoon, comprising of four LAVs and a G-Wagon to take position next to the schoolhouse. It was at this point that the Taliban decided to make their presence known by firing an anti-tank recoilless rifle round at the softest vehicle of this lead platoon, the G-wagon. The round went right through the front windshield, causing immediate casualties. Next, our whole assault opened up all at once. every cannon, every co-actual machine gun was firing. Taliban were coming out of the weeds all around us,

out of tunnels, windows, mouse holes. They had their head, they had held their powder to the last second, and then it was game on. They had the defender's advantage, and they used it. The call went out on the radio that one of our vehicles was hit, and we had casualties. As this was happening, one of the LAVs that was stuck next to the schoolhouse went nose first into a ditch.

was stuck. I was trying to listen on the radio when suddenly the troops who were sticking out of the top hatches of our LAV yelled, Holy fuck, they're right there. They let go a burst from their C-7s followed by grenade from a rifle-mounted grenade launcher. At that moment, our artillery began raining down and air support started dropping bombs on the Taliban. I felt helpless during all this chaos because the plan for us as snipers was to get involved only one subjective rugby had been achieved. At that point, we would get up on the school's roof and provide cover for the bounds of the next objective. But in this situation, Barry Cash, those were your sniper teammates, Barry Cash and I were stuck inside the LAV right at the time when our shooting skills were needed up top. Needed most up top. I was working the radio, doing my best to keep everyone in the vehicle informed of what was happening up ahead.

Okay, we've got three wounded in action and one killed in action, I say. relaying the message that there were three wounded soldiers and one who was killed in the G-wagon that had been hit. Every soldier had a zap number, which would be used as an identifier in case you were wounded or killed in the field. Standard operating procedure was that if someone died in combat, you never revealed their name during the battle. At this point, we didn't know which soldier had been killed in that attack on the G-wagon. And no one seemed to know the zap number either. Finally, the major got on the radio, I need to know now.

Who the fuck just got killed? The radio crackled, and a voice came on. It was worn officer Rick Nolan, sir. Rick Nolan was the soldier I had a brief argument with the day before. I've always felt bad that our last conversation was a little strained. Rick was a good man and a great soldier. Sitting in the front seat of that G-wagon, he had no chance of surviving a direction.

wrecked rocket hit. I looked at Barry and cash. We were all stunned in silence. No matter how much do you prepare for that moment when a soldier you know becomes a casualty, there's nothing that compares to the actual feeling. On top of that, it was jarring for all of us because we just didn't expect a soldier with his level of experience and status to be the first one taken out on the mission. That section right there reminded me we were, I had guys out. they were clearing the sector of Ramadi and big gunfight broke out and I'm I don't know three or four hundred meters away maybe 500 meters away whatever it was I can just hear gunfire mayhem radios I get up to a rooftop and I'm you know hey what's up and I hear the element commander got on the radio and he says, hey, we're going to need casually evacuation. We've got one killed and one

wounded. And they were with, I don't know, probably 20 Iraqi soldiers and five or six seals, but you don't know who it is, right? And so I'm waiting. And you don't want to say anything on the radio

and I'm waiting. And finally, I just said, is it Iraqi or American? It was like the longest pause of ever heard in my life and he comes back and he says both Iraqi and it was like they

no offense to the Iraqi but uh to the Iraqi soldiers but you know I was relieved very relieved at that point and you talk about that too and hear how somebody gets hurt or somebody gets wounded or somebody gets killed and you you know it's one of your guys and you feel guilty when you hear the name and it's not whatever one of your what are your better friends or whatever, and that's one of those strange and freaking horrible things about war. Yeah. You guys were, I mean, this was like a shit sandwich out of the gate. Yeah.

You got to remember this is the first time Canada has been on the offensive since Korea. And doesn't matter how much you train, the first few minutes are going to be sloppy until you get your shit together. Well, I shouldn't have even said shit sandwich. I should have said, this is combat. That's it. Because, I mean, you go into there, you're setting up your positions, you're moving into position. The enemy hadn't really revealed himself, as you said in the book, they held their powder. Yeah.

Well, we wondered if they were there at all, because the day before, we watched as they all drove out of the area. fighting aged guys just drove away in trucks trucks full they left some guys behind they actually you know

the average a Taliban guy you know you don't even have to duck if you're shooting out you're really I mean you should duck but the point is he's probably not going to hit you

but whoever they left behind were guys that knew what they were doing and I give them credit for that like you know they're not soldiers as we can see it, but they're tough guys.

And you guys, you, sniper team, you guys didn't even have your body armor on. Yeah, well, because it's part of the, you know, what's the three rules of special ops, right? Always look cool, always know where you are, and if you don't know where you are,

make sure you look cool, right? So, wearing ball caps and not having body armor makes you look cool. But also, in our minds, and we trained, we have enough shit to hump. you know, why add body armor to it and helmets, you know, we're going to be in a position. We shouldn't, if we're being engaged, we fucked up. But I tell you, I don't know if you're going to read it, but there's a, there's a moment,

a few minutes later where I'm like, I really wish I had some body armor and helmet on right now. I'm not going to read it, but that's why I brought it up. And I was actually, I was actually not going to bring it up. Yeah. But then I circled to bring it up. You know why? Because there's somebody out there that's in the field right now that's going on some operation. And they're thinking, you know what?

I'd probably be better off if I didn't bring my body armor. And I'm going to tell you, bring your body armor. Yeah. Bring your body armor. I did one operation that, for a bunch of reasons, I decided that I didn't need body armor. Right. And, of course, ended up in a bad scenario. And the only thing I'm thinking, as I have a gun pointed out my chest, is you're an idiot.

Yeah. And you don't have body armor on. We had the strike plate in front of our chest rig, but we found out after, if we'd ever been struck in that plate, the spall from the plate would have killed us because it's designed to be inside the body arm, the Kevlar. Because it had a Kevlar wrap around it, around the ceramic. Turns out it's not that wrap is there more just for aesthetics or something.

I don't know. But anyway, so it's like, oh, no, no, no, it has to. to be inside the issued vest in order for it to work. A pocket in your chest rig? Yeah, no, that's not. And the other crazy thing, again, for guys that are overseas right now,

even if you think you're going to be far enough away from a firefight, if you get hit with an IED, you want your body armor on. I mean, that's all to this to it. 100%. I always wear my body armor in a vehicle. Yeah.

It's after this, but but even the night I was hit, I didn't have body armor on. I don't know, it was just a weird thing for me, but, but I, you know, like the Romans, or the Greeks, the Romans, they called it, you know, the first time you see combat, you know, seeing the elephant. So, you know, we, so let's go back to Rick.

So Rick, he's a warrant officer, so do you guys, maybe a petty officer, chief petty officer, roughly he's like a company, he was the company quartermaster, so he's not Sergeant Major, but he's like the next NCO down. I'm going to guess he had about 18, 20 years. He had been a recon guy most of it. You know, I trained under him, mentored under him. You know, it's like when you imagine casualties,

you're imagining Private Smith and Corporal Jones and, you know, whoever. But our first guy killed is a guy who trained his whole life for war and he's the first guy gone. You know, like there's no, there's no status. There's no seniority in combat. It doesn't care if you've trained every day for 100 years or if you've trained one day ever. That bullet, if it's got your name on, it's got your name on.

I was going to say, bullets don't even have names on them. They're going to hit who they're going to hit. Yeah. And that's why combat is so, that's one of the things about combat that makes it so damn awful. Like you said, you can train as hard as you can train. You can make no mistakes. you can be the perfect warrior on the perfect mission,

and you can still get blown up, you can still get shot, and there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, I hate to say it, there's nothing you can do about it. You're getting in, you're going to be trading lead with other people, and that bullet can hit you.

And even if they are dirt farmers with 30-year-old AKs, if it's functioning, it's a threat. And, you know, I've had chats with guys about why was that vehicle even on the objective when you had these perfectly good armored vehicles. Now these are up-armored jeeps.

The G-wagons? They're the German one, right? We'd only trained to this point, right? And in training, that vehicle went to the objective. So why wouldn't it? You know, until someone puts a recoiless rifle round through it and you go, might be best to leave that one behind and maybe just get another lab for the company quartermaster,

which after that they did. But, you know, some lessons have to be learned. So the mayhem continues. You end up helping and collect the casualties. And now you're sitting there, you're at the, what we would call a casualty collection point. Do you use that term? Yeah.

We'd call it. I don't know if you use that in here. CCP? So you're at the CCP, the casualty collection. collection point, and here you go. One of the most important things in the field of battle is taking care of your dead. In fact, the creed of the royals is

never leave a royal behind. On the field, you want to get the bodies out of sight as quickly as possible. It's demoralizing for a soldier to witness a dead comrade during battle, especially when it's someone of Rick's stature. I went in the back of an LAV, grabbed a couple of body bags,

and got to work with some of our other guys. We picked up Rick and zipped him into a bag. One of the other fallen officers was Frank Mellish. For a second, I had a bit of hope because he was on a stretcher, which meant he might have only been wounded. But once I saw soldiers approach and check his dog tags, I knew he was gone, a casualty of the round that took out the Zettlmire.

The sad twist was that Frank Mellish and Rick Nolan had been friends for their whole careers, and now they were lying on the ground together. Next, I help put private William Cushley into a bag. I'll never forget looking directly into his still open eyes and saying, sorry, bro, as I zipped up his body bag. Now, that's obviously enough to crush some people mentally and emotionally at that point. But soldiers don't have time. And they have to do their jobs.

I mean, what, as you went through that emotion, and then you turn around and you go, okay, what's next? Yeah. How's that work? That's what you do? If I had spent more than that one second saying, sorry, bro, what am I missing? I was doing, I couldn't get my snipers into a position to be useful, being snipers. so we were being useful in other ways. And once that problem was dealt with,

because you could see the guy, like, you know, we were trying to reorganize ourselves. We were in the reorg phase. You know, the guys are going the long way around of the vehicle because they were lined up next to the vehicle. And so me and a couple guys were like, okay, we got to fix this. We fixed it.

And people, you felt people relax. And then my main concern, was that's still our objective and we got to get to it so what's next and that's when I went looking for like I'm not even sure who's in charge at this point because we had taken so much of our leadership had been hurt the company sergeant major two of the warrants you know and we had when that Zettlmire got hit you know it it wounded a bunch of guys and you know we had Afghans with us we had some Americans with us what do you call the national National Guard. I think there were National Guard mentors for the Afghans or this.

And my biggest disappointment from that day, and I know I'm going to catch some, I might catch some shit from some guys that were there, we didn't take our objective. To this day, you know, 2016, you know, this is 10 years later almost. In September, it'll be 10 years later. and to this day I'm like we didn't take our we didn't take our objective yeah and part of that you know and and for one thing

when I when I you know was reading that in I mean obviously it's just emotional moment and I knew that you just had to detach from the emotion and I use that term all the time you got to just detach from it and you got to be conscious of that

so like folks that are listening that are thinking how do you do that that's how you do it you cannot you've got when you feel feel the emotions starting to override your logic and your ability to do your duty, that's what you have to do. You have to go, okay, I got to detach from those emotions and I got to do my job now. Yeah.

In that moment, like, I actually don't remember, like, I didn't really have any feelings. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, I get more feeling now out of it, listening to you read it. Yeah. Because that, starting with, especially when TJ got, got hurt, you know. That's our workspace. Like, you know, here we're in an office.

People typing, doors opening and closing. That's the normal sound and vibe of this workspace. We had burning vehicles. We had dead soldiers. We had wounded soldiers. We had about 15 wounded by this point. We had air support raining in. We had artillery support raining in.

We had enemy mortars coming down. and the, you know, that's the norm. They don't, like, when you sign up to be a Navy SEAL, they don't hide the fact that you might get in gunfights. It's like the first thing you read. It's in big, bold black letters. You're going to, you could get killed. It's not in the small print at the bottom of the contract,

you know, clause B of section 4. It's right there. That's what you signed up for. So it's not abnormal for these things to be happening. What you have to do is accept that they happened and carry on with the job. And in that moment, I remember, I said sorry, bro, because I was, it was almost, I was actually probably felt more like, hey, man, sorry you're out of the game. Because it's going to get exciting from here. You know, I, a fallen soldier in combat to me is, especially a volunteer, we weren't drafted.

Did anyone make you join the Navy? No. I fought with my parents to get into the army. Yep. I would have fought 10 of my best friends to get that job as that sniper team leader. And there was nowhere else I wanted to be. And a soldier falling in combat doing the job he chose in a place. It's not of our choosing.

Don't ever feel sorry for me because I went to Afghanistan. Believe me, I wanted to be there. and to fall I get a lot of shit by some people but that's it's one of the greatest things a soldier can do is the fall for with his friends

doing the job that he chose or she chose and uh it's I get in shit sometimes because I think like this well it's I think the reason that is is because it's so hard for people that

don't know what that brotherhood is like, they don't know what it's like to want to do that. They don't understand that that's the soldier in the child. That's the way you've wanted to be your whole life. That's the way I wanted to be my whole life. So for these things to happen is, it's like feeling bad for an MMA fighter because they got punched in the face. You signed up for it.

You signed up for it. And those guys, you know, they're there to fight. And in the military, you're there to fight. Yeah. And a byproduct of fighting in this situation can be injury. It can be death. And like you said, it's what we all signed up for. And, you know, going back to the situation here, one of the things that you talked about the fact that you guys didn't secure your objective.

And one of the reasons that you didn't secure your objective the next day is because you had another friendly fire incident. Yeah. And this is awful. and, you know, the book that I wrote with Laif starts off with a friendly fire scenario happening. And I wish I could explain to civilians. It's really hard for people to understand how these things happen. I mean, we've already talked about it, what, two times in this book? Here's another one. A10s come in.

You're basically like half awake trying to get a little bit of sleep. Yeah. And all of a sudden, you know, you hear the gunfire, you hear things happening. All of a sudden you hear an A10 burst, go, and cash, your teammate cash, he's like, you're not going to believe this, but I think he just strafed our own guys. Strafe is when you fire machine gun, cannon, automatic weapon fires from an aircraft. And sure enough, 30 soldiers, more than 30 soldiers were injured. Yeah. And one was killed.

And by the way, the one that was killed was Private Mark Graham, who was an Olympic spreader for Canada, 1992, in Barcelona. Yeah. I mean, it's a nightmare. It was a nightmare. It was such a, I even got mad at cash at first, because I was like, because I heard it, and you know that brat. It's actually a nice feeling until that happened. And that one sounded weird. because I was half awake

and they were doing strafing runs across because we were each on each side of the Argonob River so there's a bit of distance and that one was like that was real close that's kind of weird and I'm trying to just you know wake up and Cash says yeah they hit they hit us

and I go what the what are you talking about why would he and I look down from our sniper position to where the vehicles were and that's exactly what had happened and on my mind, I know what an A-10 strike does. I'm like, oh, my God, he killed all my friends. And then through the dust. So right away, I'm like, okay, well, if I'm the enemy, I know what I would do.

You know, sound the bugles, boys, we're attacking. They didn't do that. My theory is they had already left after the gunfight the day before. So we reorientate all our focus to the front to keep an eye on the enemy. and I can't help but look down. We had a JTF sniper team directly to our left, and they left their spotters in place, and the rest of them ran down with their medical kits.

And when they were walking away, eventually the team, you know, four guys walk away with a body bag, and I'm like, okay, that's it. And then the, you know, the radio, you know, then it's like, yeah, we're 10, 10 wounded. okay, 12, okay, 17, and then I think we ended up at about 34, 35 or so, and the entire leadership of the company's wiped out.

Yeah. With injury. And that's it. That company is now combat ineffective. Yeah, which is, I mean, you hear that in the modern day, you don't hear that very often. Combat ineffective, meaning that they can no longer perform their duties.

You just don't hear that very often. They just didn't have enough bodies left. Like, they just didn't have enough soldiers. that were still functioning. And, you know, we went to Afghanistan in 2002 with Op, was that Anaconda, I believe. We sent a battalion of Canadian soldiers with, and that's where a Canadian sniper set the new record, beating Carlos Hathcock that had stood since Vietnam. But part of that mission was we lost four guys to an American F-16.

And then this happened, and people give, give a lot of shit to the American Air Force or aircraft. Mistakes happen. We almost got lit up by our own guys at the beginning of the assault. You know, we didn't talk about it. But I had to radio in and remind them, hey, guys, we're coming in from your flank. You've looked through thermal.

I've looked through thermal. Did guys like us look anything like bad guys looking through thermal? I don't know how it happens. Yeah. But guys get so amped up and they're so ready to kill something, you just don't want it to be you. In Ramadi, there was incidents where Humvees engaged other Humvees. Right?

Because the enemy had... Does he looks like anything like a Humvee? There's no more distinctive vehicle in the world than a Humvee, right? Especially when you're in the military. But that's, to your point, that's the level of confusion and mayhem and chaos that happens. And just the mentality of guys when they're scared and all of a sudden they see muzzle flash. And, oh, okay, you know what? Boom.

Oh, I see something over there. Engage. Everything looks like a shovel in someone's hand looks like an AK. So I don't lay any blame on the American pilot that did this. He was doing the job he was there to do

and someone told him to do something and they queued off the wrong puff of smoke and that's what happened. It was just a literally, it was one of those it was one of those each little action led to it

right you know from mark lighting the the garbage fire to to him coming over the mountain and the and the sun is in his eyes amen a bunch of small mistakes that compound and not even mistakes

a bunch of situational actions yeah that compound into a tragic situation but I when you consider what a strafing run from an A10 can do for us to only have one killed. It's amazing.

It's incredible. And only, of those 30-something wounded, I might not have the right number, but if I understand correctly, maybe a dozen of them had to retire due to their injuries. Maybe. Crazy. Yeah.

So you guys continue doing sniper operations. you guys continue going on missions. You support SF. You support others. Lots of really solid missions. And now you're out on another operation. You're patrolling through a village. And again, it's your team that you've been with the whole time.

You're following Cash, your boy Cash. And I'm going to go to the book here. Once he was about 10 meters ahead, I turned and took my first step forward. My right foot touched the ground, and a massive orange fireball soared across my face. I didn't hear a sound. For a few seconds, I felt weightless, as if I was suspended in space. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. My ears, nose, and mouth tasted like mud.

and that's when the pain hit a pain so intense that it completely overwhelmed my body and my silence I started punching the ground and screaming oh my god oh my god it was the only time in my life I've ever uttered anything religious the blast was so powerful

that he had knocked cash down and I saw him in the dirt up ahead of me for a few seconds I couldn't see Barry or Gord they had probably done what good Snifers are supposed to do upon hearing the explosion run for cover and prepare for an ambush a few seconds later once they realized what had happened they came running back towards me so there it is did you know what did you know was an ID um not why could have been RPG could be somebody there's for those of you that don't know you don't know big booms are going off I I I

didn't hear anything. Right? Like I said, like, I said, you're not going to hear the one that gets you? In my case, it was real. But my hearing was fine. There was no ringing. There was no... And I've read, um, Colonel, um...

Help me out. He wrote On Killen. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, anyway, so I know your name. I just, I just forget it right now. And he talks about that in his other book on combat. Yeah, the little audible... The body will shut it off.

for a split second. But anyway, I knew I'd done something. Something bad had happened. Once I, you know, my weapon was gone, you know, my night vision is gone, right? And the pain was so bad. And, you know, it technically was an IED, though, under the technical definition, right? Because it was an antipersonal landmine on top of a mortar bomb. Technically, you and I know, that's an IED.

but it's really two conventional munitions put together and it did exactly what it was supposed to do you know it just uh it's one of those it's one of those things of war where there's no rhyme or reason about who's going to get what or when or where because everyone else in your patrol just walked over it

I was the last guy I remember the first time I was ever getting shot I was in Humvees and I'm going over a bridge in Baghdad and again, this is going back to what you were talking about, like when you don't really know what combat's like. And I'm looking up ahead of me at the Humvee ahead of me, and I see these, like, someone's throwing cigarettes out the window. And I go, I'm saying, who the hell is smoking?

We don't even have any, like, who's smoking right now? And how are they smoking a thousand cigarettes at a time? And how are they smoking so many cigarettes right now? And then why are these things sparking when they hit the ground over there? And why is there sparks? Oh, okay. News flash, we're getting shot at. We're under effective fire.

And it's one of those things. But my point is that you don't always know what's happening. And, you know, in the urban environment, you didn't know where shots were coming for you. You'd be going overhead. You could not tell where they were coming from. You know, if they're hitting something, you can kind of get a general idea.

But you don't always know what's happening. And, all right. So now, going back to the book here, my mates were all around me now. The next hour was the longest of my life. I was in absolute agony and trying hard to stay positive. I was also trying hard not to think about the possibility of bleeding out. With each passing minute, I was growing weaker and weaker. Every time I closed my eyes, it was harder to open them again.

I knew that if I lost consciousness, it was over. Barry and Gord were standing over me. Do you think I'm going to make it? I asked Gord. Of course you're going to make it. Never give up, bro. You know that. And you guys hadn't been to T-T-T-T-T-C.

None of us. So for those that you don't know, there's something called T-T-T-T-C, tactical combat, casualty care. It's a very short course. It's like maybe a week? It's two days, maybe three days. because all they teach you

is how to keep somebody alive when this stuff happens. That's what the goal is. And it doesn't take a super amount of knowledge. It takes some concepts. Number one, stop the bleeding. But none of your guys have been to it, but they still saved your life. I mean, between Barry Gordon and I,

like we're all experienced operators. Right. And we still have enough first aid training. You know, the first thing they did is slap the turniquets on. There you go. At the arteries and my thighs. And then they did their best from there. And we're snipers.

We're not medics. And we don't bring, as awesome as medics are, they're kind of in the way when you're on a sneaky, sneaky mission. You know, that was what we, that's how we classified our missions. If they were sneaky, sneaky, sneaky, or really sneaky. If we're really sneaky sneaky, someone was going to have a bad day. And this one was a middle sneaky.

And we were in a spot where there was no LZ. You're not getting a vehicle in there. And the closest medic was 12,500 meters away on foot. At night through an Afghan village. Hours. Took them an hour. The recie platoon, just throwing this out there, they just came.

They just didn't even wait forward as they were just common. I love those guys. That's why I knew I had to say it. I love those guys. Every one of any one of them that listens, I love those guys. 100%. I do anything for them. So they get you, they do get you out.

Yep. They put the phone in your hand before you go into surgery. Right. So we're back in Canterher at the hospital and someone hands me a phone. And I forget how it even went. Like, I was on a lot of drugs by this point. One thing about getting wounded is get to do a lot of good drugs.

Here's what you told your dad. They got me, dad. The Taliban. But I'm alive. I'm going into surgery. I'm going to get through this. Don't worry. I kind of want to compliment you right now.

Because you always hear of, and I'm basically complimenting, like, all my buddies. Anybody that knows that got wounded, they're like, hey, don't worry about it. I would be okay. Yeah. And at the same time, you called your dad like, dad, I'm wounded, I'm going to surgery, don't worry about me. Yeah. You know, that's probably. Actually, what's funny is Mikey Monsor, who was one of my guys got killed in Ramadi.

And, I mean, they were in grueling, sustained combat every single day, firefighters. I mean, he went Winchester on his heavy machine gun so many times that I don't even know. Like, one time I went to visit him in their camp because I was on the other side of town. Winchester means completely out of ammo. Oh, yeah, sorry. Winchester means you're out of ammo. So I went to see, I went to his camp pretty early in deployment, maybe three or four weeks in deployment. And I went over to their camp to see how things were going. And someone's like, oh, go check out the video that Mikey made.

And I go, okay, cool. And Mikey shows me this video. And it's like a firefight happening. And he's filming, he's putting the stick in the camera up above the wall, and then he turns it back on himself, and he says, the name of the part of town that they were

fighting in was called the Malab district. And Mikey points a camera at himself, and he goes, it's the mulab. And so, I'm looking at him laughing, and then, you know, me being Mr. professional, and I go, hey man, And he's a new guy, right?

And I'm, you know, Jocko, you know. And so I go, hey, man, what do you do in filming when there's a firefight going on? I go, you need to get your gun up. Like, I don't want to see this again. And he's like, hey, sorry, sir. But I was Winchester. And I go, all right, man, film some video. That's all you got left.

Be the history, be the document guy then. Yeah. And just, like, in my opinion, to go Winchester for a seal, if he's anything like our machine gunners, that's pretty tough to do. Oh, yeah. It's not like Mikey wasn't carrying a ton around. But like I said, my point of telling this story was that, you know, this was happening on a, you know, fairly regular basis. Definitely fire fights.

He wasn't going Winchester all the time, but he didn't go in multiple times. And he was in, you know, almost daily fire fights, right? I remember this is an actual number. So the first 24 operations that that element went on in a row. they got into a firefight in the city. Yeah. And then they had one where they didn't, and then they went right back to it again.

So they were getting a lot of firefights and in a lot of danger. And when we got home, when I got home and I got to know his family a little bit, you know, his family was saying that when he'd call, they'd be like, what are you doing over there? And he'd say, oh, we're just training some Iraqi soldiers. Yeah. We're just on base. Just, you know, don't worry about anything.

It's just fine. Typical combat soldiers. Right. Stories to the family. Typical badass. Yeah. So that reminds me if you... Yeah, don't worry about it, Dad.

I just got blown up. Yeah, yeah. Then, here we go. I woke up with a doctor looming over me. It took a few moments for the anesthetics to wear off and for me to remember where I was and what was going on. Then it came back to me in a rush. The mission, the landmine, the pain.

the surgery. The surgeon standing by my bed, put it to me bluntly. I had to cut off both your feet. Boom. I believe earlier we were talking about irreversible situations. Yep. And here you were. Was that real to you at that time?

Or would you basically, hey, I'm happy, I'm alive. Like, I got a seal buddy that got blown up. Yeah. And, and actually he didn't get blown up. He got shot. And anyways, one of my buddies was talking to him. And he's like, bro, man, I'm really sorry about, you know, because he lost his leg. He was wrong, man, I'm really sorry about your leg, you know.

And he goes, fuck my leg. I'm happy to be alive. And I got to be honest, I didn't think that. Soldering is done on your feet. and I immediately went into defensive mode. Half my brain said, you tell that fucking guy to go back and get that one of the feet and put it back.

And the other half is saying he's a pro, he knows what he's doing if he took... Because we knew one was gone on the scene. That was the one that detonated the device. The landmine did exactly what it's supposed to. to do. It blew my foot off. The mortar bomb shredded my other foot. And on the scene, I remember as I was getting put onto the stretcher and getting put onto the ambulance that was finally able to get to us because they literally plowed a road to me with a combat bulldozer

and had the ambulance behind it, the medic from Ricky platoon said, hey man, your left foot, we got it back into place. So it looks like it might be okay. So, But your right foot's gone. I was like, okay, whatever. Again, at this point, I'm like so out of it. So when I woke up and he says, yeah, you know, I had to take both feet. Huh? And in my mind, I'm thinking, like, well, how am I going to do this job?

Okay. And then so then I go into, you know, depending on whose manual you're reading or which doctor wrote it, there's certain number of steps to grieving. and they say losing a part, a body part is like losing a family member or something. So now I'm dealing with two deaths in the family. And the first step is always denial. And, you know, and I'm like,

ah, well, it's 2007. You know, how awesome. You know, guys are going to be jealous I had my legs blown off. I'm going to be like, I'm going to be like Astro Boy. Be flying around and shit. I'll have like Robocop legs or something. It's cool.

It's 2007, right? Everything's digital. And I kind of, kind of, whether it was the drugs and or the endorphins from going through all that. But for that first, until I was out of Kandahar, that was my attitude. You know, right up to the boys all came in to see me off because we went from, so I think I spent another day in Kandahar. They flew me to Bagram.

And then I flew to Kuwait and then from Kuwait onto Germany. Yeah, but Lance Stool. Longstool. And so every stop that we picked up wounded American servicemen. And I think there was one other Canadian. So I just, you know, that's how I felt, right? And then once I was in Germany, I was just trying to deal with every day by day. You know, I just was, you know, they put me in a room with another guy who had been hit in an IED.

strike on a, so a lav, you were saying LAV earlier, so those are... The Marine Corps, the Marine Corps has an enact from LAV, so that's why I was calling it that. Yeah, so it's light armored vehicle. And you guys, in the army here, they're called strikers. Except ours have turrets, and I think yours

has like remote 50 cows or something. They're all made in London, Ontario, Canada, by the way. So, yeah, I was just trying to deal with each day as it came, because now I'm in, I've never There's no training for this, right? And casualty simulation, it stops once you're declared dead or evacuated, right?

So now I'm at a stage where I'm like, okay, I'm in a room with another Canadian dude, an American Army hospital, and I don't know, what's next? And every time I'd look down, there's no toes to wiggle. It was just, so I'm like, okay, well, I'm just going to try and deal with this. just deal with it, just deal with it, just deal with it. And I was in that mode for, for weeks. Yeah. I'm waiting, I think I was waiting for a point where someone was going to give me my diagnosis, you know, or my, the conclusion.

Or like a prescription, like, okay, here's what you're going to do now. Not just with your legs, but with your life. Yeah, this is what's going to happen. You're going to do this. You're going to follow these steps. and at the end you'll be deploying back to Afghanistan, which is how it was going in my mind. You know, I don't know what you're going to read next,

but I was convinced I'm going back to Afghanistan. That's it. Like, it's just, that's it. Whenever, you know, the Navy or the Army wants to know something, they send you on course. So, you know, I was on sniper course, and then you go on driver course, you go on tactical combat casualty care course, T-T-T-T-T-T-C,

So as you're saying this, that's actually the next portion that I was going to read. And here you go, exactly what you were just about to get to do. From that point on, I made it my mission to learn to walk again. I treated rehab like a military course. When the military wants a soldier to learn something, they send them on a course. So that's the approach I took with my rehab, the mission mindset right there. But at the same time, now we start going into the fact that it was obvious that the military system, the military system just couldn't quite cope with my needs.

Sure, I was offered help with all sorts of things, from rehab to finding a home, but no one truly understood the needs that are particular to a returning soldier. And neither did I. So you didn't even know. I mean, how do you know? But that's what I'm saying. How can you know?

There's no course for that. There's no prescription. There's no course. There's no training. You know, and our military medical system was, like the we have lots of medics we have doctors for things like sprained ankles

and and you know you hurt your back on a ruck march whatever whatever lots of guys and girls to do that no you know our physiotherapist we've got physiotherapist but they've been dealing with tennis elbow

and sprained ankles for 40 years and that's no detriment to them it's not their fault it's um they just that's the military that they were in and you compare that in the book you talk about when you went to the center for intrepid in san antonio

yeah and now you had the american system which has been unfortunately dealing with thousands and thousands and thousands yeah of wounded soldiers for at that point i guess for you guys for five or five years okay four or five years well it was oh well oh seven yeah and i guess you guys started in oh one right after the yep i don't know whoever whenever the guys first one in after the towers dropped. And so they had experience, and they have a giant amount of money. I mean, this is America, and we do have a lot of money, and they put a lot of money into it. And at the same time, you had some Canadian folks that were like, we don't need that kind of stuff.

We don't need those kind of things for rehab. Right, right. Well, again, we have, I'm trying to think of a correlation here, but anyway, we had these physiotherapists. it's a trade in the military. You're a military physiotherapist, and your job is to rehab guys like me. And I'm telling you you can't do it. I'm telling you that you're failing.

And this is why. So your reaction is going to be, well, I know how to do my job. And I don't, so I don't, at the time, I was furious. In retrospect, they didn't know any better. And that's why I started advocating so hard. I got, because I got home, and I said, this is what we got to do. There's not that many guys like me coming home.

I mean, yeah, there's a lot more than there were last year because we're actually at war. The Center for the Intrepid, Walter Reed, and I believe there's one here, the Naval Medical. Is that? Yeah. The Naval Medical Center, Balboa, and there's Bethesda as well. Well, I've heard of three. Okay. The San Antonio, Walter Reed, and the one here.

Those are the biggies. Yeah, those are the ones where most of the traumatic injuries have been. going from you guys. So I said, let's start sending a pair of physiotherapists down with like, for every physiotherapist we send down, or for every two casualties we send down, let's send down one of our physiotherapist. And in six months, that physiotherapist will get more experience dealing with more injuries with more patients than they could ever hope for on base petawawa, where two brigade is.

Because we're talking the difference between a couple, a dozen, soldiers getting hurt playing rugby or whatever or ruck marching versus actually, yeah, like a parade of guys who are getting smashed and IED strikes and air, you know, whatever was happening. You know, I was standing there and the guy who ran Antonio at the time was, San Antonio at the time was he was a green beret physiotherapist. So I don't know if he was one and then the other or how it worked, but so he's the lead physiotherapist. And I remember this

Marine walked in to the room and he had both legs gone above the knee. So he's on the taller leg prosthetics. And he was blinded by it because he had been burned or whatever. And this guy, he's in full uniform. He like screams the guy's name. He's like,

Jones! And he tackles him. And they start wrestling. And I'm like, yeah, I want that. Because the hospital I was in, and again, no offense to the hospital, I got great medical care for the standard. Right. To their capability. To their capability.

To their capability. And it's not like it was bad, but it wasn't what would have been best for me, me being a soldier. So I'm like, because I'm in a hospital where it's knee and hip replacements and amputations from diabetes. So it's a lot of older people. I was probably one of the youngest people in the hospital at 30. I was definitely in the best shape. You know, like I remember the first physiotherapy session, she hands me a four-pound beanbag weight

with a strap on it. She says, oh, I strap that around your leg and, you know, try and do like, you know, maybe 15 or 20 leg raises, if you think you can. And I'm like, uh-huh. Where's the squat rack? So I strap it. I'm like, four pounds, is that enough?

And she's like, oh, yeah, we don't want to start. start too hard. Nice, sweet lady, great person. I loved her. She's doing the best she can with what she knows. She's doing what she knows.

She's doing what she knows. I strap the thing to my stump, and I start doing leg raises. And she comes back like 10 minutes later. She's like, so how many did you get done? I'm like, I don't know, I'm 180, maybe 250? She's like, oh, oh.

And I'm like, yeah, like, I'm in shape. It was just meat and bone smashed. Like, I don't have any other injuries here. but there at San Antonio, the lead therapist is tackling and wrestling with a blind legless Marine. And I'm like, that's what I need. I need to be around soldiers and people who know how I think. And I can't help.

Again, and I'm not trying to criticize or be overly detrimental to the results of what came. But imagine if I had had that treatment. what, you know, people would say, oh, Jody, you did fine, you did great, you're the poster boy. Imagine if I had been in San Antonio, you know, where... Could have been faster, you think? Not, well, the level of expectation where I was was very, very low. So they didn't, like, so if I had been in San Antonio, they'd been like, no, no, you will be walking by March. You will do this.

And you, whereas where I was, because that's how they do it, that's like, well, we'll see where you're at. you know and this and that and there was no there's no one for me to mentor under or be you know like there's no one to be compared to be compared to okay look at this guy over here he's grappling with another dude even though he's blind is missing a leg yeah and are you ready to get it on yeah you know another guy came in i think he was a marine too and he was wearing uh just like a t-shirt yeah and the same guy's like hey where's your issue pt kit the marine corps doesn't play And, well, this was the Green Beret guy, right? Oh, okay.

But he's, but, but, because they're all, it's, it's a mixed force, right? There's Air Force, Navy, Marine, whoever's there. There was a, there was a Navy, I believe she was Navy EOD who had her arms blown off. And she was recently in that Range 15 movie. I think it's the same girl. I've only met one girl who had both her arms blown off by, by an IED, but, so I imagine it's her. But anyway, he expected you to be a soldier, regardless of what happened to you. You're going to maintain that persona, son.

And I was like, yeah, because I could feel myself slipping at this other place because there's no expectations. You know? And you can only self-motor. Having never had my legs blown off before, I could only me self-motivate to a point for so long. And be the guy, be my own drill sergeant and be my own inspector. There's a reason, and I say this all the time, there's a reason why the best athletes in the world have coaches. Yeah. That's the fact.

It's because somebody has got to show you the way. And furthermore, you can only push yourself so hard. I know for a fact, you can only push yourself to 107%. A coach is going to get you to 117%. They're going to push you a little bit harder. They'll have no mercy. And so that's what you need. That's what everybody needs.

Yeah. You know, and so, but again, I try to give credit where credits do and give, you know, people were worried. When I wrote the book, there were people I heard that were worried. And I'm not, I don't want to shit on anyone and I don't want it to seem like I'm blaming anyone for anything. I put myself there. I'm the one that wanted to be in that spot to step on that landmine. My only expectation was that others would have put the preparation into their mission as I put into mine. and I do feel that there were some at very high levels that maybe didn't take things as seriously as they should have

or realized the consequences of what was coming and take best practices from places like Walter Reed, San Antonio, because when I said, send me to San Antonio and send a Canadian physiotherapist with me and he or she's going to learn in the three or six months I'm there more than she will in 20 years at any Canadian base it was oh well we appreciate that middick but you know we're we're working on a canadian solution and i was like well that's going to be awesome once you figure out whatever the fuck that is what about me right now second we have a facility willing to take us so did they send pTs down there no because here's here's the backroom stuff the politics jody what would the civilians think if we were sending

our soldiers to different country's medical centers. When we got hospitals right here. Now again, what we were getting at the hospital was not bad care. You know what I'm saying? Do you understand the distinction I'm trying to make? Yeah, no, no. It was the best care to the capability and the knowledge and understanding that they had not only of their job, but of the people that they were working. with.

Yeah. In other words, you got, if you got a 72-year-old diabetic that has an amputation, the four-pound weight is good, and that you can try and transfer that over to Jody Middick,

who just got off the battlefield three weeks ago. Yeah. He's a different animal. Probably because you're an exception too, right, to like what they're trained and what they're really good at caring for.

You come in, and this is like, this isn't really typical that we all have to deal with. Yeah. Why are we going to change our whole? whole system. Yeah, exactly.

But even things like, I remember the first couple nurses that came into my room, they were like, oh, hey, honey, what happened? The car accident. Were you in a motorcycle? You're on a motorcycle? Really. Well, losing your foot is very typical of a motorcycle accident. But they didn't.

And I'm like, oh, I stepped on a landmine in Afghanistan. Do we even have soldiers in Afghanistan? Yeah. And I was like, uh. So hence, hence this part of the. the book, ironically, one of the biggest emotional problems I had to deal with was the anger I felt towards a medical system that did not seem to be able to respond appropriately to my needs. Now, you ended up putting on weight because you couldn't exercise, and you do give a little

shout out right here to the dairy queen. And you say, the dairy queen is delicious when you're depressed. Oh, it's so good. Yeah, it's so good. Once it hits the lips. Oh, the peanut butter cups and the swirly ice cream. I might have to get one right after this, Jocco. We might have to find a dairy queen up in here.

So in conjunction with the therapy sessions, I also started taking an antidepressant to help control my moods. And then there was the other kind of pain, the physical kind. I was still using painkillers to dull the pain that was there each and every day. I needed that relief so badly, but in the end, that too caused me tremendous suffering. And I turned into something I never thought I would be an addict. Definitely are seeing this happen with our wounded veterans. And here you go. In no time I was taking more of the drug than I was supposed to in order to relieve my psychological and physical pain.

the addiction worsened and I started crushing the pills into a powder and snorting it to get a better high. Those pills gave me relief from my stress and mental pain if only for a little while. But as soon as they wore off, my demons would return. I worried about my future. If I wasn't a soldier, who was I? And you've already said that a bunch of times. That feeling of, I mean, everything you'd been in your life from when you were a kid, that was what was inside of you, and then you were able to act on that and become that soldier,

serve in combat, get after it on the battlefield. My whole adult life. I became a man in the military. I joined as a 17-year-old, 174 pound, 6-4-Squiny weakling. and I grew into the man that you see. And that question, you know, when I was reading that, when, you know, I had a buddy that retired the other day. You know, he'd 25 years.

And I just said to him, I said, how was it cleaning out your locker? Because I don't know what it's like for you guys, but in the SEAL teams, you have a locker and that's, your whole career is physically represented. And the lockers are big. They're walking. lockers. They're awesome. Oh, wow.

Like, each guy has a walking locker. Every guy has a big, dry, we call them a drying cage. We call them cages, because it's just made with chain link, basic material. But each guy has his own. Everybody has their own. They're almost as big as this office. Right, right, right. And you've got cruise boxes in there, and it's your whole career is physically represented.

Of everything you've ever been issued, anything that you picked up along the way, Trinket, just everything is in your drying cage. Right. And when you retire, you go, you clean out your cage, it's empty. You sweep out the floor, you gloated into your van, you drive home, and that's it. It's over.

And so I said to my buddy the other, I said, you know, how was it, how was it cleaning out your drying cage? Because for me, I wasn't even worried about retired. I didn't even think about retirement. I'm like, okay, I got to go do this, got to do this, remember. I'm all good. Come back, cleaning out my cage. And I'm like, oh, this is over. And for me, I spent 18 out of 20 years out here on the West Coast and all within like a stone's throw.

of the different buildings, I mean, all within these certain number of buildings since I was a kid. Yep. And the question, so when I was reading that you wrote this, that's what I was thinking about,

what my buddy was thinking. If I'm not a soldier, if I'm not a seal, then what am I? And that's a tough question to answer for a lot of guys. It's brutal. And it comes back

to what we were talking about before, dwelling. Right. It was really hard for me because I didn't choose to leave. I'd always imagine I'd be wounded. I don't know why. Visualization is very important,

in my opinion, in our line of work. And so I'd always tried to envision of being wounded, okay? But it was like the cool scar across the cheek or like some shrapnel in the rib cage. I could show off at barbecues, you know, and talk about when I'm like 80. I'll be like, yeah, I still got some Taliban metal in there. But no, you know, like, it's that or it's a body bag.

You don't think about the in-between. Even our system, right, our medical system in Canada, not the in-between. Lots of body bags, lots of bandages. But the in-between part, they kind of dropped the ball. Yeah, and years ago, World War I, probably World War II, you wouldn't have made it. They wouldn't have had to deal with you.

No. Because you would have bled out. They didn't know T-Triple-C. They wouldn't have got you Kazivak. I mean, it would have been, you would have died. That's all there is to it. Yeah, double amputation, yeah. Forget about it.

So they just didn't have that back then. Vietnam got a lot better in terms of the Kazavak situation. They get helicopters and they're a lot faster. That's why you got a lot more wounded. But figuring out what you're going to do next. And you held on to it. You held on to it. You tried to hang on to it.

Because you decided, you know what, I'm going to still be a soldier. Yeah. You got done with you did a half marathon. Yeah. But after that half marathon, you were just too beat up. Yeah. From that. Yeah.

And you decided that, well, here's what you put in the book. I tell people that Jody the soldier was wounded in January of 2007, but it took him about two years to die, to let the soldier in you go. And I'm going to continue. Of course, this wasn't an easy decision. for me and I was filled with rage and anger. And again, I started using oxycotton as a relief from the pain of loss. It became my problem yet again. But I deluded myself into believing I had it under my control.

You talk about this thing where you're reading a Reader's Digest article. And there's an oxycotton addict in there. And he's talking about how he's shooting it up. And you said to yourself, you weren't thinking, oh, that's the, That's horrible. I can't believe. You're like, hmm. Oh, yeah.

I didn't know you could. I didn't know you could. I mean, thought of that. And that is what hits you. Yeah. And I think that is what hits you. Realizing, that's when you realized you weren't in control, right? I mean, that's got to be that moment.

Well, because the story was he was a doctor, I believe, right? Injecting himself in the bathroom when his young daughter walked in. And I had now had a young daughter. And I could just, and now I'm like, And in my mind, it wasn't, oh, imagine if my daughter caught me going to eject. I went, oh, I can inject. And I even went through a second where I remembered how great it was to get the intervenous drugs in the hospital. And then the next second was, oh, this is not good.

This is not good. And then when I ended up buying, I ended up buying Percocet, which is like OxyContin. But like from a guy that I knew. through another guy, and they were in Ziploc bags, basically a drug deal. Remember that thing? They got me arrested 20 years ago. And I went, okay, this is it. This ends here.

Well, that's an awesome, I mean, that's awesome credit to you on that, because so many people, unfortunately, they don't take ownership of that. They don't say to themselves, you know what? I am addicted and this thing is controlling me. And they always say things like just what you said, I got this under control. I can stop if I want to. I just don't want to. I need it.

I'm in pain. There you go. I had to take it. And I would ask the doctors, I would say, how do we get me off this? And this was still, you know, 07, 08, 9, I think it was 2011 before I finished or got off them.

They still had, in Canada anyway, hadn't realized what OxyContin was capable of. And so the dogs, it's like three days of withdrawals, it's fine, don't worry about it. Those withdrawals were worse than being wounded. Those three days, here's your quote. Those three days were absolute horror.

Quitting OxyContin was harder and more painful than getting blown up in Afghanistan. Yeah. because it was three days whereas I was in the worst Jocko echo I cannot tell you what the pain was like because it was so bad and that was the pain from going from withdrawals

no the pain from getting blown up okay so the pain from getting blown up I cannot describe it to you but the withdrawals lasted three days of that kind of pain because your body and your mind are trying to trick you you're still in pain man you're still in pain you should take them, you should take them. But once, you know what's funny, though?

The three days, it's almost like you hit a switch. And suddenly the pain starts to dissipate. The hollow feeling in your chest starts to fill back in. The ants stop crawling on your skin. Because that's, you're going through all that. I was grinding the stumps of my legs into the couch to give it some kind of other sensation other than, I described it as like

You ever watch a dog Chew on a bone When he's got it between his paws And he's just going to town like With his teeth That's what it felt like on the ends of my legs It was like I had like an animal Just gnawing on my legs

And then One day You know whatever the third Or second two and a half For three days later I realize I'm like Oh Most of that's kind of pretty much gone

That's crazy And I tell you there's Jody before he quit OxyContin and then there's Jody. And Jody before he quit was still trying his best and doing well. And if you talked to anybody, was the guy a lot of people looked up to.

But, you know, things really started to turn around after I quit. You know, I really started to become capable of a lot. In my mind, I think there's a big difference. But man, that shit just... My buddy, he's a paratrooper, and he had to get some surgery on his knee. you know, paratroopers are always banging up their knees.

And the dogger gave him codeine or telling all three or something like that. And he literally took it and threw it in the garbage. He's like, I saw what happened to Jody. I was like, I don't even, I don't want anything. That's my advice, kids, out there. Do not take it if you don't. If you can grit your teeth enough,

do not take that shit. Stay clean. Do your best. I wouldn't trust me around it now. If you had one, I might take it. I don't. Good. Let's just take some more of this alpha brain.

Take the alpha brain. I'll get on it instead of getting addicted again. Get off it by getting on it. So now you get through it. You're not addicted to oxycodone anymore. And now it's what am I going to do with my life? And here you go, what did I actually want and what was possible.

And could I really put my military pass behind me and pursue something else that would make me feel fulfilled? But it was time to stop asking questions. It was time to find some answers. Here you're kind of referring back, and it's the last chapter. It's called On My Own Two Feet.

I'm glad you still got a sense of humor after all this. Can't make fun of yourself, man. You're taking life way too serious. So a lot of professional athletes will tell you they miss two things when they retire, the competition on the field and the camaraderie with the teammates in the locker room. It's the exact same thing for soldiers

after we leave the armed forces. When I see soldiers on parade, I still get chills down my spine because I loved it so much. Just letting everybody know that that's completely normal. For all you guys that got out for whatever reason, totally normal. Jody feels it, I feel it.

We all feel that. So then you went and did the Amazing Race in Canada? Yeah, we had the... You got second place with your brother. Second place, and it was the first season. Because the American Amazing Race was the most popular show in Canada. Hmm. So...

Let's make a Canadian one. Let's make a Canadian one. If Canadians love anything more than the American version, it's the Canadian. Then you ended up doing this city counselor thing. Yeah. And that's where you're at now. That's where I'm at now. You know, one part that we haven't talked about, and I'm going to do it a little bit of a...

I'm going to score a few brownie points here at home. So I said they had to plow a road to me, to rescue me, right? They literally plowed a road with a combat bulldozer, and right behind it was what we call a bison ambulance. And it's an eight-wheeled, almost built in the same factory as the LAV. In Ontario, Canada. In London, Ontario, Canada, by unionized workers. and the commander of that vehicle was Master Corporal Atlanta Gilmore of the Canadian Forces Medical Corps, who is now my wife, retired sergeant Atlanta Gilmore of the Canadian Forces Medical Corps.

And we have two beautiful daughters, Aela 7 and Kira 4. And we managed to connect. I was wounded in January we connected in September October-ish of the same of 2007 my girlfriend that I had had when I got wounded had left no fault of hers

I don't blame her one bit you know to get thrown into a situation where you have to care for a wounded soldier a guy who before was like a rock you know and that's not what she signed up for right

and Atlanta and I had recently broken up with her partner as well. When we found each other, though, the fact that she was a hot Irish blonde was just really a bonus. You've got to be honest. And she took one, you know, Jocko. I call medics, they're like our mommies.

You guys have Corman, you call them? Because combat guys were a little, let's that saying, if you're going to be tough, or if you're going to be dumb, you've got to be tough. You're going to be stupid, you've got to be tough. Yeah. And that's us. need the corpsman or the medic to be like hey hey hey jaco why are you limping what come here come here

come here no no no not in front of the other troops mom stop it stop it and and so that's their job so she saw me she took one look at me she's like you look terrible i was surviving on vector cereal and drive-through sandwiches because i was by myself all the boys were still deployed or on course and i was living in my own private uh house on base so i'd moved on to base. I had this little puppy, Charlie, who wasn't, he's not a service dog by any stretch, but he's the only reason I got out of bed in the morning. So I owe him. He's still my buddy. He's still at the house right now. And so she went into medic mode, really. She went, you know what, you should come by my house, bring your dog, you can play with my dog,

and, you know, let's just hang out. And when we got, when we saw each other, though, it was camaraderie. She was one of the last people to see me on the battlefield. She carried my stretcher to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, evac chopper. And, and, you know, if you talk to her, the fact that I was, you know, a bearded hot guy was just a bonus to her too. And, you know, eventually I let her kiss me, guys. Okay. Passively, I'm sure. Yeah. No, she like, she, she, she's going to ask me, did you tell Jocko the same joke you tell

everyone else that I kissed you? but when we got pregnant a little quick Ella's birthday September do the math so but you know we realized we talked about it when we talked about the survivor's guilt

you don't you didn't survive you know your friends live for your friends I didn't survive and she didn't like her vehicle hit landmines and she was and ambushes and all, you know, near death on a battlefield is a bullet going an inch from your head. That's near death. Yeah, you laugh about it after, but that's, so she was in all that too. And so she's pregnant and I should have died and who knows what could have happened to her

and who are we to deny what's happening, you know. So I had to throw that out there that, you know, I have three beautiful blondes in my life with blue-eyed blondes. that, you know, keep me in check. And because I, the feelings I had in the book, they're not all in the past. You know, I woke up yesterday when I missed the flight, man, it was more that I was disappointing you, right?

And hear me out, right? Because I was just like, I was like, I'm the city counselor and a lot of guys look up to me and this and that and all. I got these kids and, you know, Atlanta, and I still can't make a fucking flight, you know, and I haven't even met the guy yet, and I'm already disappointing him. And that went through me. And it's all because I stepped on that stupid landmine.

But I wouldn't even be here if I hadn't stepped on that landmine. I wouldn't have had these kids if I hadn't stepped on that landmine. After my second fiancé walked out of the house and my, you know, like all, that's my joke. I like all good soldiers, I have three ex-fiances and a dozen ex-girlfriends, sacrifice to the queen because we still swear allegiance to the queen because it's real that's like you said the teams come first and uh i had said well i'm gonna retire at about 44 with 25 years in so why don't i just start kids and i'll add then and i'm sure my life would be fine if i hadn't stepped on the landline but would it be as fulfilling would i be as as as broad or would i be as complete

I'm sure I'd be a kick-ass spec-ops sniper somewhere doing something, but I couldn't have, like if I had a wish to not step on the mine, but I wouldn't get to keep the kids, I'd step on that mind 10 times out of 10. And so I had to, you know, I had to throw it in there and give credit to Atlanta for what she did for me. And also my friends and family, right? Nobody does it. No one's a rock. you know,

so I just had to say all that. Yeah, no, and I actually, I have a question about your wife, and that I was going to give you an opportunity. Did I steal some of your thunder? Not at all.

Not at all. I'm glad you put that out there. And also, I didn't want to steal thunder from your book. Right. And I was one of the things that I was going to tell people. I mean, obviously,

I think people are just going to buy this. I mean, obviously, there's, this is a big book, which I've taken some excerpts out of. Yeah. And there's so much more in it when you read it and you get the whole the whole package.

One of which is you explaining these relationships with your wife, with your kids, and how that happened. Which is just, I mean, for all practical purposes, let's just call it what it is. That's a miracle. Yeah. Here's how it closes out. People often ask me if I regret my time in Afghanistan because it costs me my two feet. and completely changed my life. If you live your life with regrets,

then you never move forward. Those six months in Afghanistan before the explosion were some of the best times of my life. I can honestly say, as I look back on my life in the military, I wouldn't have changed a thing. If I hadn't stepped on that landmine, I would never have connected with Alana. I would never have had two beautiful daughters.

My mind and body were pushed to the limit after my accident. And ironically, I came out on the other side a better, more complete person. Maybe life would be easier now if I hadn't lost a part of both legs, but it certainly wouldn't have been any more complete. When I am in public today advocating for veterans' rights or simply going about my daily life, people sometimes approach me to say, thank you for your service. Those five words mean more to me than anything else.

And now I'd like to say something, Jody. From me, and on behalf of every American, Canadian, Brit, Australian, and the rest of the free world, thank you for your service. And your inspiration. To all of us. to overcome obstacles and to make a difference in the world. Thank you, man. You got a tear in my eye right now.

Don't do it. You're on YouTube. No doubt. No doubt. Thank you, Jago. Thank you, too, for your service. Don't thank me. And I think that's going to be enough for tonight.

So if you haven't got this feeling yet, you're listening to the podcast. I know you're going to want to go out and get this book. It's called Unflinching the Making of a Canadian Sniper. By the man right here, Jody Middick. It's what you want to read about. That's right. And you can get it anywhere books are bought, you can get it on Amazon.

I recommend for my American cousins use Amazon through, what is it, the Jocko podcast or the Jocco Store. He wants to go through Jocko Store. I like your recommendations there. Go to the Jocco store, click on the Amazon link, so Jocko gets a little piece of the pie. The paperback is out, so you save a few bucks, and be an honor to have you guys read my book. If you're on social media, the web, the web, the interwebs. J-D-M-E-M-I-T-I-C on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. Snapchat?

I have no idea how Snapchat. Everybody use it. Jody Middick. Yeah. I'm on Snapchat. People use it. Okay. I'm going to take you one for them.

I'm convinced it was... I'm not going to judge. Okay. Not going to judge. Yeah. You can find Jody Middick on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and for all you 14-year-olds out there,

you can get him on Snapchat. Hey, the 14-year-olds need to hear this. That's true. Actually, you probably need to hear it. So Snapchat is. Snapchat is becoming like a real thing now. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it originated as that kind of where it's like, hey, let me send you this. Isn't this kind of cool undercover and it goes away? I'm convinced it was a dick pick. Yeah, you know, for these kids, texting and whatnot. And then someone found a legit way to network or some. So it's a real deal now.

All right. Apparently. So Snapchat is on the Snapchat's. Right on. Right on. An honor, sir. I, the chances of me being,

here tonight are very limited we have Twitter to thank literally one of my fans and one of your fans basically head locked us on Twitter and made us talk to each other and uh and I became a fan when you were on the Rogan show and podcasting you know we talked a little bit at lunch it really helped me when I was going through some rough times and you know I want to thank you for let me come down here to this beautiful city and do this for me and um you know thank you for writing your book and being who you are and echo thanks for for helping him make this happen and you know i got a podcast i'm starting the jody middick podcast and uh there may or may not be an episode up uh in the next couple days but if people want to look for me there as well i'd be honored to try and entertain them

uh as closely as you do and uh and as and as all the other podcasts as i love do and you know i just do this to try and be me you know i don't know who the new jody midig is i call it I'm calling myself Jody 3.0 right now, and this life is a trip. You know, I call myself a student of the human condition, and I'm always learning. I'm always learning, and I love to meet new people, and yeah, that's all I want to say right now, man. I appreciate this a lot. You have no idea. Well, we appreciate everything that you've done, as I've already said, to everybody else out there that's listening.

I think we're going to actually continue this on. And we're going to go to a Q&A on the next podcast, and we'll just roll that out afterwards. But for right now and for this evening, I think that's about all we've got. So everyone that's out there that listen to this that knows that a person can go to some depths and can climb right back out of those depths. Get out there and get after it. Until next time, this is Echo and Jody and Jocco. Out.