Julian Dorey Podcast - #254 - "REAPER" Sniper on the Bloodiest 5 Days in Afghanistan | Nick Irving

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

WATCH PREVIOUS EPISODE w/ Nicholas Irving: https://youtu.be/HevUhJjolB4 (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Nicholas Irving 'The Reaper' is an American author and former soldier. He was a special operations sniper in the 3rd Ranger Battalion for the U.S. Army. PATREON https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey  FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/   INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/   X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey  NICK LINKS BOOK 1: https://www.amazon.com/Reaper-Autobiography-Deadliest-Special-Snipers/dp/1250080606 BOOK 2: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CY9YNT6T?plink=GmU1SUhQkWbgFt4z&pf_rd_r=31WN1SFB91BP0BSKEDTK&pf_rd_p=fe481a04-2a3d-4d8f-9976-3312f3fd8e70&ref_=adblp13nvvxx_0_1_im IG: https://www.instagram.com/officialreaper33/ X: https://x.com/irving_nicholas LISTEN to Julian Dorey Podcast Spotify ▶ https://open.spotify.com/show/5skaSpDzq94Kh16so3c0uz   Apple ▶ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trendifier-with-julian-dorey/id1531416289  ****TIMESTAMPS**** 00:00 - Gnarliest Deployment, 1 Goal in Mind, Most Dangerous Battle Ground 09:02 - Terrified of Dogs, Opium/Drug Issues Today & Connections 17:47 - Drone Warfare vs Sniper Tactics 26:39 - Nick’s Colleague & Him Sniping Enemies Down 38:21 - Emotional Roller Coaster of Emotions, Getting Title by Rangers 46:17 - Bolt Action Guns (Pemberton Getting Jammed 56:31 - Most Intense Operation (Near Death) 01:12:01 - Accepting Death in Firefight, Taking the Fire from ‘The Chechen’ 01:25:37 - Ordered to take out ‘The Checen’ Sniper, Gory War & Safe House 01:35:06 - Evacuation Starts & Marine’s Recovering Them, Immediate PTSD 01:46:29 - Benjamin Cops Legacy, Going Out that Same Night in Kandahar 02:01:00 - Beginning to Leave Army, Wife Finding out Nick’s Reputation 02:09:31 - Becoming a Private Contractor & Leaving, Baghdad Operations 02:16:53 - Officially Leaving & What’s Next, Familial Complications 02:29:49 - Reflecting on Fall of Afghanistan, Pointless Wars CREDITS: - Host & Producer: Julian D. Dorey - In-Studio Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@alessiallaman Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 254 - Nicholas Irving Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By now the sun is just about almost all the way over the horizon and I'm like this is this is gonna be bad man people are starting to come out and interact and I see this moped with two guys on it they're coming into or up the road into the area where the objective is at and I take my red dot laser and I put it on the guy's chest and he stops his bike and he looks down looks up he can't see us you know pretty concealed in the tall grass and stuff and he's looking bike and he looks down, looks up. He can't see us, you know, pretty concealed in the tall grass and stuff. And he's looking, but I just had this, like, never forget the look in his eyes of, like, disdain, angry, empty look. Like, okay.

He backed up, did a Yui, went back to wherever he came from. That's when the sniper or the reconnaissance team lead was like, he just said, I got a bad feeling about this. Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please take a second to hit that button and leave a five star review. It is a huge, huge help to the show. You can also follow me on Instagram and on X by using the links in my description. Thank you. All righty.

Let's get into it. Afghanistan. Oh, nine. It's your at that point. Third time. Third deployment. Afghanistan. Fourth deployment. Afghanistan 09 it's your at that point third time third deployment Afghanistan fourth deployment

oh to Afghanistan yeah that was my yeah third deployment to Afghanistan okay yeah third deployment

now this is the one where you know some people online who have heard you on Sean Ryan I've heard you on Vlad over the years,

have heard you talk on some other platforms, like this is where the shit popped off and where you became the Reaper. Yeah. Yeah, man. That was a, let's say, I forget the month we deployed. It had to be around March, April, May, April timeframe, April or May timeframe is when we set off on that deployment. And leading up to that, it was like, everyone was expecting it to be like another sealed team six deployment. You know, you're in the action, but not really in the action.

So I'm telling my wife before I leave, I'm like, hey, this is a boring deployment. Everything's going to be fine. Don't worry about it. It's a chill deployment. We were going to a place called Kandahar, Afghanistan. And little did we know, or at that time, that like the missions we were going to be doing were all in, I i guess support are in conjunction with not with the marine corps we were going into kandahar specifically helmand province to clear that area out area before the marines went in uh and that big push i believe it was like late 2009. they had this big push of uh marines to take over this Taliban safe haven area. And our mission was to kill, it was as simple as that mission set could be, was to just kill everybody.

Not every body, but every terrorist, every person with a gun, everybody who shot it, destroy them um and that was the whole mission set was to accumulate and wipe out as many you know talent terrorist uh cells and that we possibly you know encounter could encounter how hard was it to be able to tell though who was a terrorist cell versus who's a civilian versus who's a civilian who's been pressured to help out a terrorist cell? Are they a terrorist? You know what I mean? Like a lot of gray area. A lot of gray area. Our interrogating skills were pretty good. We could find out who was associated with the Taliban or who was directly, you know,

with the Taliban and others who have been pressured. But initially going after a target, we would have the CIA guys, the intel guys, accumulate this package. They're using everything from cell phones to drones to all types of electronic surveillance and human surveillance to figure out who was bad and who was good. They have this package. They send it off to us, and we would go execute the mission we're going to this you know location in helmand or kandahar and that's i mean who knows if they were really bad people we were just told they were bad people who knows but once we got there it was pretty evident like well they were up to something they had you know tons of guns you know normally get into some

pretty good shootouts with them. A lot of bomb making materials, mainly that we were going after a lot of IED makers, a lot of bomb makers during that deployment. And the presence of like landmines and remnants of the Soviet era landmines, they were all out there in the field. And a lot of the guys, like I said, we were going after just made bombs, just made IEDs and facilitated different foreign fighters. And we were like hammering those guys pretty hard. But once we got on target, you'd find out quick. Between client meetings, managing your business, and everyday tasks, who has time to worry about website hosting? With Kinsta's managed WordPress hosting, you don't have to. They handle the technical stuff, delivering lightning-fast load times, enterprise-grade security, and 24-7, 365 human-only support.

Simply switching to Kinsta can make your site up to 200% faster. Kinsta's custom dashboard makes managing sites easy, with powerful features designed to save you time and effort. Plus, their free expert-led migrations ensure a smooth transition. Ready to see why Kinsta is trusted by thousands of businesses? Get your first month free at Kinsta.com. That's K-I-N-S-T-A dot com. Kinsta.com. That's K-I-N-S-T-A dot com. Kinsta. Simply better hosting. Discover the exciting action of BetMGM Casino. Check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer, or enjoy over 3,000 games to choose from like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Blitz.

Make Kinsta deposits or same-day withdrawals. Download the BetMGM Ontario app today. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. 19 plus to wager Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates

pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Who is bad and who is this like, hey, I'm just here. You know. And a lot of the I mean, you're going into like villages so to speak speak like in the mountains yeah that's pretty much what it is somewhat um helmand province was a lot a lot like a um if you could imagine damn it's kind of hard to describe what this area looked like it was

afghanistan less mountainy more desert but just a bunch of small one-story huts and homes um and you had your tribes in there too like your little sections of who was who but it was uh i don't know it was yeah there you go that's that's what it looked like less mountain oh yeah okay so almost like yeah no it almost feels like vegas but in afghanistan there you go yeah yeah that's exactly what it looks like now try uh that's funny as shit helmand afghanistan h-e-l-a-m-r-m-a-n-d so some of it some of it's going to remind you a little bit of the urban feel of Iraq. Yeah, yeah, yep. Okay.

That was a brutal place. That was the most deadliest place in Afghanistan in 2009. Why? Why do you think that was? Just untouched for so long. Most of the coalition forces focused their missions and their operations like – what part of Afghanistan was that? Dude, I forget. I know it was not in Helmand Province.

It was a lot of – it was like a Taliban safe haven at that time, 2009. Most of the coalition forces there, operations were in other regions of afghanistan and for some odd reason and then you had the huge opium trade going on it's like 98 of all the opium that ends up in the united states came from there 98 how'd that make you feel um i don't do heroin so i didn't feel like anything i was just like man this is kind of weird and strange how they're you know pulling in that much opium from the place that i was at 98 anybody who in america who's ever done that it's like it came from that area and that's how it was funding them so i was a little pissed that people who were abusing or using opium back stateside, I was like, man, you guys are directly funding the war in Afghanistan, like whether they knew it or not, like that paid for their guns, their bullets to, I guess, digest.

And you saw it. They fought the hardest I've ever seen people fight. These guys at Hellman were a different level of beast. Tough, tough, tough guys. How so? They wouldn't quit. And they were not scared to bring the fight to you. They would definitely bring the fight to you. And they were not afraid to die the fight to you. They would definitely bring the fight to you. And they were not afraid to die.

Death was not their concern. I would imagine you captured some prisoners along the way. Oh, yeah. Was there something that was just different about them and talking to them afterwards? Yeah. This one guy flat out said, like, F you, asking him questions. And after being captured, he wouldn't talk. He was just a hardcore fighter.

And most of those guys over there were just hardcore fighters. That's where you're – the worst of the worst went at that time, during that time. If they were not in Pakistan by then, they were in Helmand Province. And they were tough, man, tough. Different mindset. They were were not in Pakistan by then, they were in Helmand Province. And they were tough, man. Tough. Different mindset. They were just not afraid to die. They were not scared of U.S. soldiers or... They were terrified

of our dogs, but that's about it. They hate... They look at dogs as rats. Really? Oh, yeah. They hate dogs over there. So it was... Why do dogs hate hate i don't know and everywhere you go in afghanistan there's like a stray dog somewhere barking that's what i'm

saying i always picture the dogs around in these towns they is their rats they look they're considered like rats how we look at rats in the u.s is how they look at dogs over there they don't eat them did i i don't think so i don't know i don't know that'd be a bridge too far for me uh-huh yeah i've never i never smelled cooking dog luckily while i was out there they ate a lot of chicken and so you know what cooking dog smells like no good answer right in today's society of course i don't know oh my god how would they even though like i think about this all the time because you'll see some of these pictures with soldiers standing in front of the poppy fields yeah it's just like holy shit yeah but during this this time like how were they

so easily able to get it out of there considering we have presence exactly i don't know i've heard weird stories too i've heard of uh please do tell yeah like just uh marines guarding opium fields at one point um heard about that never seen them um but i did ask one of our we would be deployed with um like sometimes fbi hrt guys um dea and you and guys from different agencies and whatnot. And I remember asking, or the question got brought up, how is all the opium getting from these little fields to the United States? And I think they were going through China at one point. They would do their stuff, however they procure opium or poppy, whatever.

They would ship it through i think china or something from china to here um i'm not sure but i think that's how their trade went uh weird but i don't know but even getting it into china who's like a geopolitical rival of ours yeah crazy and yeah i mean you're right that's how like with the fentanyl trade yeah common emanating from there yep it's weird it's almost like i don't know maybe we're my conspiracy side says maybe we might be facilitating some of that to what end to bringing it over to bringing it over to some, I guess, pharmaceutical grade, but I think other is of the questionable things that I would do is be involved with the drug trade. It's a lot of money to be made off the books, tax-free, off the books.

Yeah, and it's also – it has a backstop to like even in the legal pharma industry because you look at like the Sackler family and what they did to society. It's the same drug. It's op's the same drug it's opium opium right so whether someone's taken perks or taken heroin it's all the same thing one just operates behind the veil of a legalized company the other one has to be you know yep yep so that shit under table. And now all of a sudden we have this big, you know, crisis going on in America. And a lot of that stuff comes from there. So I don't know. I don't know. It's weird.

It's weird, man. It's weird. But they definitely, you know, they got bank off of it. Oh, yeah. They made a lot of money off of it. And it supplied a lot of their weapons and you know equipment too but primarily we were going after those guys and that was fun um it was it was scary at points but and mainly like the threat of ieds the firefights over there they sucked because it was hard to see um like exactly where it was coming from afghanistan or iraq was

like uh some face to face like a two feet away three feet away but then you had the issue of you know one minute this guy is shooting at you the next minute you turn your back or you look to see where it was coming from and it's like i can't tell who within that crowd was shooting at us they all they dressed the same. There's, you know, it was weird that aspect. But Afghanistan, it was just, it was hard to, it was like fighting ghosts over there, big time. So luckily, being able to work at nighttime and when we did do our operations at night, one-on-one, not one-on-one, but we would go after very specific groups of people in a very specific location. And if that entire location is deemed hostile, no one's really going to make it out of that alive.

I forget how many. I think we set the record this deployment for the most kills in like a few months. It was close to 2,000. But, oh, yeah, we did a lot of damage over there a lot not just my um it was the ranger battalion not just my platoon so he got first second third platoon um putting the hammer down big time close to 2000 kills that might be on the internet i'm not sure army r. We can pull that up. Oh, yeah.

Army Rangers, it's like 1,900-something kills, something like that. But – and that's not all by bullets. Like there was a lot of ordnance dropped. We dropped a lot of bombs when we could. Oh, yeah. And, yeah. How far had drone warfare come at this point? It was very one-sided.

The only like like, the... There we go. Oh, yeah. We have the single Ranger Battalion deployment leads to 1,900 terrorists killed or captured, several Valor Awards. The first Ranger Battalion's members ran 198 combat missions that resulted in 1,900 terrorists killed or captured in the most recent deployment. Oh, that was for this one, yeah. Mine, we got 1,700. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, there's just a bunch of details about that. the most recent deployment and that was this one yeah mine we got 1700 yeah yeah yeah it's uh yeah there's a bunch of details about that that one was from like 2019 yeah that's the different set of type in nick irving on the end of that let's see what we get you might find oh if you probably what is that no let's see it was the deployment where I got an award for, and that would put Sergeant, you had to put Sergeant Nicholas Irving. Valoris Award.

It was that deployment. I forget. Valoris Award? Yeah. That's a sick name. That's what they call it. I don't know if it was Valoris. It didn't feel like it at the time why not i just dropped some bombs on people and shot a few people it wasn't like a like a big

deal at that time yeah it was um what was that an r-com army commendation medal i believe with valorous device um yeah but no it didn't feel valorous at the time it was just dropping bombs on people business in a way yeah yeah but you were before we were looking at it yeah talking about the drone warfare being one-sided i think it like back then they had drones or we had drones, but it was just for like hellfire missiles and stuff like that. I never heard of – mainly surveillance. I'd never believed or heard of a drone like dropping bombs how they're doing now. Are you talking about the drones where they fly them and blow people up with it? Yeah, I've never, no. That wasn't until, like, I had a drone.

Um, way after I left the Army, I had that Digi, DG. You were blowing people up after that? No, no, no. I had the, uh, the one you can buy from, like, Best Buy. Yeah. And I was thinking, man, somebody could strap a bomb to this and... Yes.

...that would be, you know, insane. And lo and behold, that's, like, somebody could strap a bomb to this and that would be insane. And lo and behold, that's like all warfare now. Yeah. I would be scared to be in a war with drones. They could do that as opposed to like just being in a gunfight with someone. Right. Big time. I think that's way more terrifying.

Because they talk about like the George W. Bush didn't have access to those until like the end of his presidency. To what? To drones, to call in strikes and stuff. And then he started using them pretty heavily. Then Obama used them and Trump used them and it's just kind of continued. Like it's a major part of – Yeah. Like maybe the most major part of like warfare strategy these days.

It is, yeah. Just drop a fucking drone on them. Yep, yep. I don't know. It takes the – i don't know it takes the it i don't know i think it it definitely changes like the atmosphere of how we fight wars now and it reduces i guess the risk of uh you know losing soldiers lives but collateral damage yeah but it's just a weird way of fighting a war i think i think it's

damn i'm not gonna say it's cowardly but it's not it's just a weird way of fighting a war now of a guy can sit behind a desk and just didn't blow somebody up it's just a weird way of fighting war but there's no different than being a sniper it's like i get the luxury of i want hiding in a bush and you know someone has no idea so it's it's and if you had depending on who you ask like back in the vietnam war they looked at them as like a coward's way of fighting snipers yeah and even way further back than that like the revolutionary war they were like highly highly looked down upon of was it the revolutionary war where how the red coats shoot back then with the muskets not too far but they would hide out in the uh the tree line and yes pluck people off yeah what was that guy's name this the the swamp

swamp fox or something like that oh swamp fox Swamp Fox. Yeah. Dude, are you talking about – oh, man. That's the dude – he's one of the three people they base Mel Gibson's character in the Patriot. Got it. Got it. I think it is. I think you're right. Was it Swamp Fox? Yeah.

Why does that sound so familiar? I might be thinking of – Can we look that up? Swamp Fox, Revolutionary War? When you say that, I'm thinking – my mind goes to when I was a kid playing Metal Gear Solid. And there was a guy i think named swamp fox and there's something well that might be it yeah francis marlin there you go francis marion yeah a south carolina militia read leader known for his guerrilla tactics against british forces in

the swampy regions of the state earning him the nickname due to his elusive and cunning fighting style and his nemesis was the british dude who they based no idea the other guy in the patriot off of the british guy with the long black hair ponytail i forget what his name was but yeah that's probably i would imagine that makes sense what you're saying because it was viewed the british were very into like wolf how, how do we do this correctly? And then you got these fucking Yankees going, not today. But I think that's a smarter way of fighting a war, though. I don't want to line up and have you shoot at me with your muskets and then I return a volley.

No. Oh, it's so stupid. It's very stupid. Very stupid. It's like, who's going to lose? It's just attrition. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Dumb way It's like, who's going to lose? It's just attrition. Yep. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. Dumb way. I mean, yeah, it's a stupid way of fighting war, I think. If I were back then, I would want to be like a swamp fox. So it depends on like how your definition or what your definition of a coward in war is, you know. I guess it changes without or throughout the way we fight wars. Back then, he was a coward.

Vietnam snipers were cowards and today we look at drone guys it's like not a coward i'm not going to say coward but it's just a weird way of fighting a war like you're not there you know you can just press a button and use a joystick and life's ended it's weird weird. Eventually war may and probably will be like AI. It just gets weird. To your point, you're just talking about the evolution. Yeah. And it's like anything else. As we see new things come on, what's one former generation's cowardly fight is a current generation's only fight.

Gotcha. It gets real weird. I feel you yeah who knows what war is gonna be in the future i hope it's not ai i hope it's not all right because we'll lose that i think we'll lose that but yeah afghanistan was uh i didn't yeah i didn't see too much of the drone stuff we only use drones for like surveillance okay but as far as the the fighting goes it was um for the most part i guess you could say one side it didn't start getting sketch or i felt like man i'm gonna die um until after like midway through that deployment we were

going after a high value target um and it turned into like this five-day operation. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I was lucky to be on that mission, but I also like, I was way too cocky to be on that mission. Like I probably, not going to say I shouldn't have been on it. I was just the only, well, it was another sniper team. They just had way less experience than I did during that deployment.

And I was the only team with the amount of operations under my belt. So these reconnaissance guys, they were like, hey, you want to come do this mission with us? And they presented me with this problem of if a car was coming down an alleyway straight towards me at like a thousand yards away, could I shoot the driver? And I'm like, yeah, I can do that. But just no, I knew I could have not done it. I just said yes to go on the mission. And I thought that the odds of that happening were extremely slim. I was like, that's not even going to happen.

I don't have to worry about it um and it didn't happen but that's what allowed me to go on this operation with these guys and it yeah five the operation the first three days uh i stayed with we were embedded with um a marine element um they were getting ambushed every morning from the schoolhouse, this abandoned, I'm going to say abandoned, it was a bombed out old school, Afghani school. And every morning these Marines were getting ambushed and because of their rules of engagement, it was, they had to wait until they got hit before they could start. That's how most of the military was back then. And our rules of engagement were different. You know? They're like, can you guys come out with us?

That's crazy that one part of the military has a different rule of engagement than another. Yeah. Dude, I first experienced it in Iraq during a convoy. So the regular army guys from 10th Mountain, I believe, or 101st or 10th Mountain, they would ride up and down this strip of road and every day they would do it, they would get ambushed. And their rules of engagement, their SOP, standard operating procedures, were to just blow through it. And they got tired of it. So they came to our compound and they knew our rules of engagement. They were like, hey, can you guys help us out? So we dressed up like them, put their

patches on, rode in their vehicles. But it was just us. And we rolled through through and lo and behold we got hit and instead of us blowing through i remember them like they stopped firing because we stopped our vehicles and turned all our 50 cows towards them and damn near leveled like this place it was a small apartment complex and it was full of iraqi fighters and we killed a lot of dudes that day. Dropped, I think, two 500-pound bombs on them after we all went dry on ammunition. Helicopters went dry on rockets and bullets. And their pilots were doing strafing runs, like hanging out the helicopter, shooting up this, like an apartment building. Killed everybody there. and they never had that issue again um but their sop their rules of engagement they weren't even allowed to do that so

and i encountered it again with the marines in afghanistan how much of that is also like there's such a fog of war too that sometimes can you even figure out if you, if you broke the rules of engagement? Cause it's, it might, after the fact, it might feel impossible to know. Probably. I mean,

ours were so much like, um, it was cut and dry for us. You know, if we felt that our life was in danger, your life was in danger or someone else's life was in danger. Like it would authorize us to shoot right and like if you did not have a good head on your shoulders it would be easy to tweak that

you know oh it was in fear of my life so that's why i shot that guy you know but that we'll come back to the to the five day yeah story because that's that's really like that that part of your book hit me right between the eyes yeah that was like whoa i felt like i was there yeah before that you come back to afghanistan you're thinking again all right you know not gonna be that much going on i'm here for three and a half months yeah and immediately you and your partner pemberton get put into some sort of hvt situation where you got to take action right away and it and i guess at that point you're like oh this one might be different oh yeah the very first mission we went out on like within 24 hours a few hours not even a few but within 24 hours of being in country that first day

me and him and the platoon were out on an operation and we killed three people that day um i killed two he killed one and from that day on it was just like wow this is weird of like afghanistan it's not supposed to be like this, you know, where, you know, you're engaging targets like that. Where were you shooting from on this kill? On top of a rooftop, yeah. And how far away? About 300 yards. Most of my kills came from on top of rooftops.

And what were they doing? Like, because you had to identify that they were obviously enemy combatants. Setting up an ambush. So they had your little RPK machine guns, AK-47s, and they were skirting this tree line to set up an ambush spot where we were about to get picked up from, have the helicopters come in. And I think we were exfilling some captured personnel that we had captured on target.

Me and my sniper team, we broke off from the element and got up on a rooftop to overwatch the guys as they're exfilling off the target about to get picked up and we're going to be the last guys on. And as we're watching, we can see these guys in the tree line. I spotted them and kind of was like, man, I must be tripping because I see this guy with the gun and he's got a gun and he's got a gun. And it was just a weird blur. First time as a sniper about to kill someone. So I was like, no, there's no way. Called it up and got permission to engage, which was not even. You had never sniped anybody because the first kill in Iraq was machine gun.

Yeah. Every kill after that was m4 machine gun i had never killed anyone with the sniper rifle before so yeah lined up on the guys pulled the trigger and start dropping them and it was uh it was just a weird surreal feeling of holy shit this is it's different than shooting someone with a machine gun it was more personal more just one bullet you know just one bullet and normally it was multiple bullets you know i never prior to that it was you know you're shooting people anywhere from like three two to ten times depending on you know what's going on yeah, it was different just putting a.308 round,

like a deer hunting rifle round into another person. And what it looked like, it was way more devastating. It was just a different experience, yeah. You're also, like, watching through the scope, too. Oh, yeah. So you see, and it's got, like, the half a second delay. So you see. I see everything.

You see everything. You see see everything at that distance especially yeah seek enough to make it seem like oh wow that was weird that was not weird it was just a different experience you know and they don't have a clue that you're out there maybe they do maybe they did that they saw us on a rooftop but they don't think that they're gonna get saw us on a rooftop, but they don't think that they're gonna get plucked from that distance. That's, I don't think so. They didn't seem like it. They were just like, where's that coming from? And we're dead. It's pretty quick.

And then you added another one shortly after that, right? That was the first 24 hours, and then they came right back? No, I was killing, or getting in engagements, like, almost every few missions or so. hours and then they came right back no i was killing or getting in engagements like almost every few missions or so every few missions the guy after that well the ones i remember uh i was on a rooftop and i shot this guy in a blue like man jammy dress and he was running away from this uh i had no idea at the time i was on top of a mosque i just knew that the roof was different um it was like i didn't know it was like a bad deal

too um it was a very flat sturdy roof everything prior to that had been you could fall through the rooftop and some of them had no rooftops it was just an opening and i just knew this rooftop was different and it was sturdy and really solid and sound and i saw this guy fleeing from underneath me and he was running towards our blocking position point and he was doing the whole suicide you know deal and um our guys in the tree line were shooting at him. They were missing. They popped off some like 203 rounds to try to deter him. And he was still hell bent on doing his thing.

And I remember lining up. I got to a knee, lined up. And the first shot I took missed. I just got pissed at myself for missing a shot like that. Second shot lined up on his back. And I remember pulling the trigger. And by the time the recoil went down, there was no,

no, no person there. And I got the call up of, Hey, he's down. And then went up, investigated the body and took the pictures. And,

but I remember his mom crying from inside the mosque um that like really stuck with me i remember that one um i remember the guys on the rooftop we were going into shortly after i killed the first two guys um maybe you're talking about this one we were going into helmand province and as soon as we stepped foot like within the side the city perimeter we just started getting ambushed just lit up from this rooftop and there were you know three individuals up on the rooftop lined up and shooting at a downward angle at our element that's like, we're just trying to patrol through, march through the city. And they're ambushing us from on top of the rooftops.

And I remember me and my spotter lined up and I go to engage me and him both and his gun goes click. It didn't go off for some reason, malfunction. So I just had the opportunity to clean up that rooftop, and that was an experience. That was like the only headshots that I took because that was the only thing that was exposed. I was never one to shoot people in the head.

It was just a smaller target, and it always moves around. The body's broad. And even for a small Afghan male, they're skinny and frail, but it's enough to... Yeah, it's different than the head. I didn't like shooting people in the head. But yeah, I took care of those guys on the rooftop and every... it felt like every 30 minutes after that,

we were getting ambushed. And there's another book that a guy i was on that he turned out to uh he became a sniper after i got out his name is paul martinez me and him were on that deployment together and he describes it like every like 10 20 minutes we were getting ambushed ambush we're calling in you know a10s we're calling in apache helicopters and mortars and all types of stuff to to help us out with that but i think that was what you're talking about like short shortly after my first mission is when i got the guys on the rooftop then after that one was when i got the guy in the blue man dress and then then I got like five or six in one day shortly after that.

This is all within like a couple weeks. Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying. My point was, you know, you're coming back to base and you're like, holy shit, we're getting hot spots every time. Yeah, yep. and you're like, holy shit, we're getting hot spots every time. Yeah. Yep. I'm not a baseball guy, but the first time I had ever heard someone refer to baseball,

to me, was another platoon sergeant. He was like, dude, you're batting 1,000. I had no idea what that meant. I was like, you know? He was like, every time we're going out, you're killing somebody. I was like, wow, yeah, I am. But I didn't think of it like that at the time. It was just weird.

It hadn't set in yet of how rare it was for a sniper in our platoon or as a ranger, for that matter, to even kill. We're more so like intel guys, if you want to call us that. We're just saying, hey, I see someone here. There's guys here. Rarely do we get a chance to shoot. So it was weird for other people, I think, to see that. You talk about the one example when you're on top of the mosque and you hear the mom and that sticks with you

because you just took the guy out. Now it's like, look, you're not out here shooting little kids or anything like that. The guys you shot were bad guys. These were guys who were doing bad shit. And those are shots that looking back on it in hindsight, you take 11 times out of 10. Oh yeah.

But you're still extinguishing a human life and you're doing it now at a for you and for many people unheard of volume after these first few is there ever a moment when you're back at the base you know a couple weeks in where you're like shit that's heavy or like you know what i mean like like where the gravity of it is almost almost as if you're second guessing like well we're all of them bad yeah i don't think i ever thought that i think this is going to sound weird but i was getting like addicted a little bit addicted and back then i didn't look at it as i don't know Back then it was just like, wow, this is cool. You know? And I'm, I like it maybe too much. And will this stop? You know, how long? Cause I didn't want to continue an army career like for the rest of my life or nothing like that. But at same time i also did not want to stop doing that but that's

the only place you can find it or or do it was in the army continuing to do the job career that i had um but no i didn't never i never like thought about how i was a few times i thought about how heavy it was and that was just mainly like from bad dreams and stuff. But right after the fact, it was more so of guys wanting to come over to me and look at a picture that, hey, who'd you shoot or what happened? And, you know, you have the pictures and you look at the pictures and stuff like that. But it was never, it was getting to be a problem, I guess. Yeah, I was, I got in trouble for keeping a picture and hanging it up above my bed at one point. It was the guy in the blue dress, the blue man dress.

Is that the guy you'd get the dream about? No, that was the first guy I ever killed with the.50 cal on my first deployment. This guy just had a picture up on my bed um i don't know why i was just i don't know why man to be honest with you but yeah i think that's when i don't know there's some sort of subconscious there yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that was the only time it got weird i guess but as far as like feeling anything i always had that roller coaster ride of emotions of joys excitement happy and what are we doing you know

what am i doing what is this for like i'm gonna kill this guy and then tomorrow i have to kill an another guy and two more guys after that it's never gonna end and then you just kind of i question that like what is this what is this for you know because it every time i did i felt like it was a piece of of soul being taken away from me like i was never i just carried this strict robotic mindset or emotional state where i'm just like kill kill and no emotion whatsoever no i was it would hurt sometimes you know or i felt like a piece of me was taken away like you're taking a life at the end of the day and the way that i was taking life it's they had no idea it was even coming it was one minute he could be talking to his friend and now he's gone. That was weird to, that's weird, you know, to comprehend, I guess, at that age or for anybody, you know, anybody.

It takes a special certain breed. And I was never like the greatest or best sniper. It was just right place, a lot of right place right time but i've i dealt with my own like mental um troubles are yeah my mental troubles emotional troubles of when it came to killing all the other snipers that i've talked to and read about it's like you know no remorse whatsoever and that's the sniper motto without warning without remorse but guys if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button please take two seconds and go hit it right now thank you i could do the without warning part it was the without remorse part that i was battling with

big time you know after the fact after the fact after each kill when i I'm alone in my room, after each one, it was an internal battle of you have to suppress that, man. Like I would tell myself that, like, dude, you got to suppress it. You can't – this is going to eat you up, you know. It does sound to me like – I could be wrong here, but just the way you're describing it it seems like consciously you were very confident all these guys were actually the bad dudes they were said to be and some of them you could tell because you could see like they're wearing a suicide vest like that's no question asked yeah but there might have been you know one or two floating around in your head where you're like maybe maybe not you know like like like even if it's a small part of the

subconscious it's enough that one percent is enough to make you think fuck this is one thing you want to be a hundred percent on oh yeah oh yeah even if other guys even if you're told to shoot someone it's still some some just are they could stick with you in a different way i always felt something i never even the bad guys that shot, like I knew that they were fighting for something. I knew that I'm in their land essentially and I'm on your rooftop or on your neighbor's rooftop. And you come outside with a gun because you want to check it out. I would do the same thing. And it was just it

didn't work out that way for them they came outside with a gun and are something as simple as that could be enough to to warrant you know to get shot easily easily when they start calling you the reaper that was like midway through um an assaulter initials wr um it didn't start off as the reaper he just was like dude you're like the angel of death and i was like yeah i guess and my spotter pemberton he's like oh like uh the reaper blue blue blue oyster cult i'm like what the hell is blue oyster cult and he's like you know the band i'm like no i don no, I have no clue what you're talking about. And he's like singing it to me. And I'm like, don't fear the reaper.

And he's like, yeah, you're like the angel of death, the reaper. And I was like, all right, cool. And that's where that came from. And then I got back and got into Blue Oyster Cult. Oh, you are now. Just that song. Just because are now. Just that song. Just because of that. Just that song.

There you go. You like play that when you wake up in the morning, like the beginning of a TV show? No, no, no. No, it's before I go. The reaper's awake. Got my morning coffee going. No, I put it on a CD a cd uh old cd roms and uh we had these deployment videos after we came back and behind like we took videos and pictures and stuff and our little cd we had a blue oyster

playing in the background for me and my spotters. And I listened to it like every once in a while, you know, going on a ride or something like that. I just love the song. It's a pretty damn cool song. Yeah. Yeah, it's a pretty good. It's a classic. Just so happened as it was, you know.

And now it's time to be forever. Yeah. Now it's like that. So it's a cool song, though. When you keep saying spotter, though, because you use that term throughout our whole sit down today, like we brought up pemberton yeah your partner like i think a lot of you know the armchair people out there like me when we hear that we just kind of assume like someone who's like all right the wind's at five meters all right oh yeah but also like pemberton shooting

too that's you start to lay that out as well. Yeah. So in traditional army, traditional military, you do have a sniper and a spotter. Your sniper is going to be the shooter. Your spotter is going to be the guy who's, yeah, your wind is this, he's this far away. And Ranger Battalion, we have, we're only working with like, there's only like 14 Rangers, snipers during that time throughout the entire battalion which is not a lot at all to cover like you know a thousand guys or whatever um but we're trained in both roles sniper and spotter so for him i call him my spotter because I was the senior E5 sergeant and he wasn't there yet. But and I was just a sniper team leader.

So that made him my spotter. But he was a sniper 100 percent, just as much as I was. You know, he never he's only called one for me like one time. Other than that, I'm doing everything. I was a sniper and spotter and he's a sniper and spotter for himself and i am for myself um he had like 14 kills on that yeah yeah and then went on to do more than that uh his next deployment after the fact so yeah i was long gone after that but not long ago i just got out and he he went on to to do his thing but yeah it was uh traditional

that's what you're thinking you got the guy who's saying turn here look here wins here but for us it's just the title he was a sniper i was a sniper but to assume roles one have one of us has to be a spotter and me being the senior guy i I'm not – yeah, I wanted to shoot. Right. Yeah. What was that that – you mentioned it a few minutes ago, but what's the death click thing? I don't understand that. So like when he would pull his gun and once in a while like it wouldn't shoot and then it was as if he couldn't shoot after that.

Like how does that work? Yeah. Had no idea how it worked. I think it was just a dirty bolt. He had a bolt gun and a bolt gun in the desert. I know we talked about the bolt gun, but bolt guns in the desert, they just sucked a little bit because of the sand and the grit would, if you don't, good maintenance or whatever, it could jam your gun up. I'm not sure if that's why his weapon jammed, but there's a bullet in the chamber, and you pull the trigger, and all you hear is click. You just hear the hammer drop and the pin going for it, and nothing happens, no boom. That's the click of death.

And it happened that one time, and I chewed him out for it, and it never happened again. And I was never a guy to chew anyone out. I've only chewed him out one time ever. He's like the only person I ever chewed out. And I didn't even chew him out. I was just like, dude, don't let this happen again. I need you.

That was it. That was it, man. So that five-day deployment, though, that was the one in the middle. That was where shit got real. really started to talk about it. But take me there to the beginning of it, like what the what the mission was and who was all supposed to be on it and where it was again. Yeah. So we're in Afghanistan, Kandahar, Afghanistan. It was all going to be Kandahar helmand province area and we were tasked to go out with the recce team because they were tracking a very high value target is a really high up value target wasn't bin laden but he was up there and

he happened to come across our radar and our area of operation. Reconnaissance guys were tracking him through all kinds of different spooky means. And they pinned him to this location. They came and they asked me and Pemberton, could we go on it? Asked if I could take this shot. I was like, yeah, I lied. And I got on the operation and we hopped on a chinook helicopter the chinooks the they had the two blades on top and um just six of us so it's four reconnaissance guys and me and pemerton and we're the only guys

on the back of this helicopter and we took like like a 35 minute, I forget how long the ride was, flight. Dropped off in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It was just desert field. Did some walking. And we had enough, like all with our rucksacks on everything to last for a week. And then some. We get out there, meet up with some um i forget the marine unit they were marine corps one five two five

one or one five two five i have no idea how marine corps stuff works um but they were marines and they were having this issue with this school. We linked up with them. They're like, hey, can we stay with you guys for a little bit? We're tracking some target. They're like, who the hell are you guys? We're like, we're in the Army and spec ops, special operations. They're like, okay.

And we start working with them for a little bit for those couple of days uh basically the reconnaissance guys were setting up their little satellites i have no idea how they track people with electronics i just know it was cool and they could find you if you ever have a cell cell phone and um yeah so me and my spotter or me and my yeah pemberton we um had no idea how to do this stuff so we linked up with their sniper team and their sniper guys were doing the stuff that i wanted to do in the army which is you know my entire sniper career which you put your uniform on your ghillie suit and you go live out in the middle of afghanistan just you and your spotter and that's it you know away from everybody so it's if anything goes wrong it's just you guys that was like remember the movie shooter with mark walberg yeah like that first

scene when they're just they got like the they're like blended into the environment they're just sitting out there completely alone like that kind of deal yeah when the movie first opens up yeah yeah i was doing that yeah um well the marines were you know they mastered that um this was going to be my first time ever doing that and i decided to do there it is yeah yeah we got it we probably can't show this alessi to be honest with you but we're watching it right here they're like under they're underneath like reeds and shit but yeah sorry go ahead yeah that's the stuff we were doing. And I remember they were like, hey, can you help us out? Every morning we're getting ambushed. I'm like, yeah.

We made a phone call to our commander, and our commander's like, sure, go for it. Help them out. We set out that. They gave us some maps, and they're like, hey, we're going to be set up over here. And you guys set up wherever you can over here. And it was one of the most coolest things I've ever done. We left that night on foot and started, like, making our way to the city, this little village area, and picked some lock on the front of a door,

broke into their home, silently secured the home. Nobody was in it. Me and Pemberton set up an urban sniper hide in the kitchen of this person. An urban sniper hide? Yeah. So you have an urban sniper hide. It's just in an urban environment, a sniper hiding location. Okay.

Different types of setups you can use it depending on where you're at um ours was really basic just punching some holes in the wall and allowing us to see uh what we want to where we want to potentially engage targets and it allows us to stay inside of a of a building not be exposed and shoot through a little hole that we punched out the side of a wall. Didn't like that position after like a few hours. So we decided to go to the upper level of this little hut house thing and set up there. And we stayed up there all night long and waited for sunrise um me pemberton and we had a reconnaissance guy he had a radio so he can call back to uh base if anything went down and that morning as sun broke like rose over the horizon i remember like the city waking up that little town and

village and you can hear people talking and stuff like that and i saw the marine convoy like rolling through this portion of the city i was overlooking and no shit a guy pops out with an rpg from around the corner and he's lined up on this humvee. And I had been looking at this building. Me and Pemberton were doing a bunch of like, hey, to this building, from us to this building this far, us to this building this far. And we had our little sectors of fire, and everything was designated to, you know, if someone came up between me and this Luigi-igi looking rock is what we you know something like that like that's 200 yards from here to the smurf house we just made up names and that's like 800 yards and it goes along like that so if he yells out smurf house got a target i know where to look

or if he's like luigi rock i know what's on this side or you know so you do it like that and you gotta shoot where he's gonna be if you like especially if he's in a moving vehicle no he wasn't in the vehicle this guy just popped out from around the corner i misunderstood that yeah the marines were in the humvee um riding through the city or just a little village and when he popped out is when it was like holy shit um this is really happening and it was the furthest shot I was going to take or have taken since that deployment started. And pulled the trigger, and luckily, you know, everything prior, that planning prior to it,

knowing the distance, panned out, and I watched him get hit smack in his chest or in his torso area. And him go down and save the Marine convoy. And we started getting engaged and had some orders. Our RPGs launched at us. And I have the picture from that. And then at a book signing, it's the weirdest small world coincidence that's ever happened. I was at a book signing.

And then one of the Marines who was in that Humvee also lives in San Antonio, Texas, and came to a book signing, and we had our moment, and that was the weirdest, like, holy shit, dude. You saved my life. Yeah, but it doesn't feel like that. I was just out there, man, doing my thing. I don't think I saved anyone's life to be honest with you i mean if a guy has an rpg and he's about to aim it at at a convoy of marines i think that's kind of fair to say he

could have saved their life he could have missed i don't know i don't know man or he could have hit yeah yeah i don't know it's a weird weird feeling to i don't know weird but shot that guy and they brought me back his flip-flop um i blew him out his flip-flops when i shot him or his flip-flop popped off and uh i heard that wrong when you first oh would you hear i i thought you were saying like the situation flip-flop me it wasn't what you thought you were literally talking about oh no his his literal like flip-flop popped off his foot and oh my god i couldn't take it back um snuck out of that situation and how many days in is this this was three days in okay three and a half um as we're getting as that mission's my, uh, platoon of rangers, second platoon, they were coming in to help, uh, facilitate this HVT capture. The reconnaissance guys had them pinned down to this location.

They're like, hey, he's going to be here. We know he's going to, you know, X, Y, and Z. We're going to go get him. We couldn't do it with six guys. Um, maybe we could have i don't know um looking back at it absolutely not but we called in for another platoon of rangers to come in to help us out with that and plan for like a day a lot of planning to you know take care of this uh hvt capture or kill mission and leading out into like going into the last day um is when like the whole mission sucked by then i only slept like a total of i don't know maybe an hour or two max little cat naps here and there. I didn't sleep at all during the, like the first day and a half I didn't sleep.

And then the Marine mission, our operation I did with them, I didn't sleep. I slept like little cat nap bursts off and on. In between those, and I slept on the ride out there. We rode out to this mission on these marine like uncomfortable trucks don't know what they call them like a deuce and a half the terrible terrible truck um very uncomfortable get out there uh i slept like maybe 10 or 15 minutes there and i slept pulling i was like on a knee, taking a knee. And I had fell asleep doing that when we first got there.

Then we walked like, I don't know, a few miles into where this guy's location was at. But it took us forever to get there. We're walking up sand dunes. It was the weirdest Aladdin scene style of infilling into this area. It looked like Aladdin. Beautiful skyline, twinkling stars, sand dunes and all that. It just sucked walking up. And by then, the sun is rising. So it's like, i don't know it's like at this point maybe five something in the morning and we have to be and like we hate doing missions in the daylight because it's yeah daylight you can be sane and it sucks but i knew for some odd reason just had a weird

vibe about this like man this is getting, we're going to be pushing time. Big, you know, like noon-ish by the time this whole thing is done, which is terrible. We get in. Me, the reconnaissance team, and my sniper team, we planned on setting up like a mile and a half, like a mile from the main element. They were going to be taking over this compound, securing the target. Me and the reconnaissance team, my sniper team and reconnaissance team,

we were going to set up like a blocking position so no one could come up this road and, you know, go into the objective. Well, we get there, set up, and by now the sun is just about almost all the way over the horizon. And I'm like, fuck, this is going to be bad, man. People are starting to come out and interact. And I see this moped with two guys on it.

And they're coming into or up the road into the area where the objective is at and i take my red dot laser and i put it on the guy's chest and he stops his bike and he looks down looks up he can't see his you know pretty concealed in the tall grass and stuff and he's looking but i just have this like never forget the look in his eyes of like like, disdain. You know, he had this angry, empty look, like, okay. He backed up to the Yui, went back to wherever he came from. Then I see a huddle of guys in front of me. And they're, like, in a no-joke, like, a football huddle, planning something.

And I asked the reconnaissance team leader, I'm like, dude, can I just smoke these guys, me and Pemberton? We just want to just smoke them because I had a weird feeling looking over their shoulder, trying to figure out where we are. And they're talking all like weird, like a football huddle. I knew they were planning something. And he's like, do you see any guns? And I'm like, negative. And he's like, well, no. Looking back at it, I'm like, shit, I wish I never asked him that question, you know, and just went ahead and did what I was going to do. But morals and shit. So I'm like, I don't want to.

But yeah. OK. Yeah, I'm not going to kill him now. I'll wait. we i did and like right after i asked that question these guys football huddle ready break and they all disperse out into their i don't know respective hiding spots wherever they came from and um that's when the sniper or the reconnaissance team lead was like he just said i got a bad feeling about this he said maybe we should get down i'm like yeah so i get down lower as he's starting

to get down lower get in the prone position it's like the grass all around this was being mowed down you just heard a lot of snaps and the grass was being mowed. Damn near like a 360 ambush. Just getting hammered. Me and Pemberton, the reconnaissance team, we jump up. And leading into that area, there were like these holes in the ground. And I'm like, if anything bad happens, I look back at Pemberton. I'm like, we're going to jump in this hole. How deep?

Like two meters? Something like that? It wasn't enough. It was like, we're going to jump in this hole. How deep? Like two meters? Something like that? It wasn't enough. It was like a... Meter deep, two meters wide? Yeah, yeah. About a meter deep, two meters wide. I'm like, if anything happens, we're going to jump in this hole, man.

Don't know why I said that. It just looked weird. These holes scattered throughout the field. And he's like, Roger that. We start getting shot at. We jump up, go back to this hole, and we all dive in, as many as we can. There's only two people left outside. Pemberton had to roll back out because it was just way too cluttered inside the hole.

I'm on top of the reconnaissance team lead. He's on top of me. Pemberton jumped on top of me. Then I get on top of the reconnaissance team lead. He's on top of me. Pemberton jumped on top of me. Then I get on top of the reconnaissance team lead, crawling up. Pemberton hops out. Then I have two reconnaissance guys on the outside, like in the star spread eagle position, like cannot move as flat as you could possibly get.

Pemberton's next to me, and I'm watching bullets ping up next to his arm and face and everywhere. And you can hear the snaps of bullets. And do you know what it is? Is it a sniper? At this point, it's just machine guns. Just machine guns. Yeah. We had just tons of machine gun fire, hundreds of rounds coming in. Um, and we didn't know it was a sniper until maybe like 10 minutes after being pinned down like that. It's like all that went silent. And then you just heard this single crack. It was just a, and I'm like, dude, this guy's got a semi-automatic, very accurate.

Every movement that you would make, he would aim at that movement and it would the bullet would get with like within inches of you inches sometimes um dude it was like within an inch um now you're the hunted yep it's the first time and only time i've ever been hunted um bullets got so close at one point that the medic reconnaissance guy, he's freaking out because he thinks me and the reconnaissance team leader were hit. We go up to try to see if we could see where the sniper is at. And we're almost helmet to helmet. And the bullet goes in between our helmets. And he pushes off of me.

I push off of him. I think his head is gone. He thinks my face is gone. And the medic thinks one of us is for sure hit. We're like, no, no, I'm good. And he was good. Pemberton, he starts calling out targets that are like danger clothes, danger clothes measured in feet, you know.

And I'm like, dude, start taking guys down. He hits a guy um i see three guys on a rooftop like four or five hundred yards you're in this hole yeah so you can see like up above just above it yeah and i see guys on a rooftop setting up a machine gun nest i start engaging those guys i got two but one uh he ended up running away. Pemberton is dropping guys behind us within, like, feet. And, yeah, you could hear them screaming, like, Allah Akbar. And you could hear, like, the ground pounding from them running. They were extremely close.

We're hammering guys at danger close. This feels like Vietnam. It felt like. This feels like just they're fucking they don't care they're just running at you ready to die yeah that's what they were doing man it was like that so we're i mean this is scared the most fear i've ever felt how's how's time at this point does it feel no time there was no time It was just, time stopped at that point. Time stopped. I didn't know until after the fact how long we had been pinned down.

How long? We were pinned down for three hours with that sniper. But to me, I had no concept of time. I just knew it was not ending. It felt like a long time, but three hours of just constant, you know, one bullet being pinned down. And I would try to shoot back to where I thought he was at. And then after a while, I'm like, dude, I have no idea. I have a general idea of where he's at. We pinned it to this one location of the tallest building in that area. Shots were coming from, and there was a section of the wall that was cut out or blown out of the side of his building.

I'm like, dude, I'm a bow or a sniper. That's where I would be. And he is using, you know, he's shooting through this little, like, a loophole, if you want to call it that. I tell the reconnaissance team lead, I'm like, dude, let's hop on comms. We're going to get bombs dropped, level this place, kill as many people as we can who are out here. This whole place was bad.

Then we found, you know, way later, come back to it. But we were surrounded. Depending on what sources, what you look up, it's a few hundred people that were yeah no shit that's uh how many are you are pinned down again five at this i was gonna say it's five yeah it's five or we're going to survive this. We called for. Why did they deny it? of engagement where you could not accept anything with a 0.01 0.1 collateral damage so if he dropped a bomb on us and if that building got hit with a piece of shrapnel that's money that you know is going to be owed to it was just a big political game um but his rules of engagement were extremely strict.

Yeah, I don't know why, but they were just extremely strict, and it was really hard to get bombs dropped at that time. It wasn't like before. It was relatively easy to drop J-Dams. Yeah, they were turning the page on the George W. Bush, we going to find you, MMOs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was hard as hell, to get to get a bomb dropped and um like i'm cussing out a commander uh you know like dude i need i'm livid man like we're gonna die if we don't get anything out here um any type of ordinance and i'm like okay we'll drop them on

us then because they're danger close if we can get bombs dropped on us I'm like, okay, we'll drop them on us then. Because they're danger close. If we can get bombs dropped on us, I'm like, well, 500-pound bomb is going to suck. Probably going to die. But at least I'm going to kill some of them too, you know. Yeah. And they deny it. They said the best that they could do was send in a show of force. So we had a B-2 bomber, i thought was a ufo when i first

saw it i'm like there's a ufo hell yeah i'd been awake for almost five days i'm like i look over my shoulder i'm like dude that's a ufo and it's just this flat black line coming into this um my field of view i'm like yeah that's a ufo and then when it gets like almost yeah like abduct me if i would have gotten abducted that'd have been better then you know sitting through that whole firefight but uh he comes over i'm like holy shit that's a b2 i've only seen that um it's the stealth uh bomber plane that's the only time i had ever seen one in real life was i had it's way bigger than i expected and it's extremely flat it just looks it's surreal to see like as opposed to seeing it on that's the thing right there man yeah i'd be thinking the same

yeah and from head on oh yeah that looks like a freaking ufo man that fucking thing's from zeta reticula yeah and when dude i'll never forget that and it came over top of this and i could see the the bay doors underneath it and i'm like oh the shit they're gonna drop bombs and they didn't it was just a show of force they flew within like a thousand feet overhead wow and i'm just trying to i'm seeing the the shape of that it's just like you described. From below, that would feel like a hovercraft. Dude, exactly. It looks like a UFO coming in.

I'm like, that is sick. Hodge didn't think so. They just kept shooting at us. And, yeah, it didn't do anything. Then they – what was it? F-16? F-15 or F-16? Oh, they sent that in?

Yeah. What was it, F-16? F-15 or F-16? Oh, they sent that in? Yeah, they sent the F-16 and F-15 in, or one of those two planes, the second time, and they were going to, they dropped flares, flares to, I guess, scare the enemy away, and that also didn't work. So me and the recce reconnaissance team leader were like, dude, you know, I i'm like you have a grenade he's like yeah and i'm like we're gonna hug this thing if when they get in close we're just gonna

hug it all of us pull the pin on it and we're just gonna blow ourselves up because there's no way i'm you know getting decapitated on for my parents to see on on the news you know uh luckily that did not happen i already i fist we already said our goodbyes you know i'm telling pemberton like dude love you bro tell my wife if you make it i'm not a bitch bro i fought and then we fought hard he's like no you're good man are you you were saying like time stopped doing this and this is all during that three hour period. Yeah. Like. Are we still got Mike? What's the. It doesn't feel to me like you have the luxury of the presence to really take that gravity.

Is it more just like going through the motions? Well, this might be it. Yeah. And you don't really get to appreciate that. You're just doing it because that's what you're supposed to do almost. No, it's not. No, I think it was just we didn't want to die and get our heads chopped off like that. No, no, no.

I mean, I'm sorry. I should have said that better. It wasn't clear. The actual saying it to someone else like, all right, because we don't want to die and get our heads chopped off, like we may just have to blow ourselves up. Like the of holy shit we're about to blow ourselves up this is it you feel that maybe a little less yeah yeah you don't train for that it was just what made sense you know um and i had accepted death at that point like i was ready for it i was before that i was scared and then after like i guess we're approaching like hour three at this point. And I'm like, I don't even care anymore, man.

Tired of being shot at. So I didn't, I had accepted it. You know, I had already, I guess, felt what it was going to feel like for me not to be here anymore. You know, and I didn't. You felt what it felt like for you to not be here anymore. Yeah. Like what my parents would have to go through. my wife was going to have to go through and it was something i wouldn't have to worry about because i would be dead so all the fear that i had of before like man my parents

would you know once you accepted death it's like well it won't matter to me anyways so what's there to worry about i won't even have to worry about. That's for them that they're gonna have to worry about. I won't even have any idea of the grief and the... the grief that they feel or the pain that they feel. Like, I'm not even here to experience that, so it doesn't matter anyways. And I had accepted that. And that's when, legit, no shit, I look over my shoulder

and I see, like, the Roadrunner coming in and it's Benjamin Kopp, Eric Ennis, and his machine gun teams. Their machine gun teams. They're running so fast, it was like kicking up dirt. And they fought their way under fire for like a mile on foot to get to us. A mile?

Yeah, dude. It was a long distance. Maybe not necessarily a mile. It was a little over half a mile, like three quarters Yeah, dude. It was a long distance. Maybe not necessarily a mile. It was a little over half a mile, like three-quarters of a mile. That's a long way. Under fire. And they came in to lay down, cover fire, and get us out.

We popped smoke instead of the grenade, and the smoke, like, blew the wrong direction. So it didn't even conceal us. So we all start bounding out by twos and as we're bounding out the sniper's just picking away at us just trying to trying to shoot at us from behind did you know who this sniper was you called him the chechen you knew at this point that's who it was no i i i had an idea um that's because the marines like before going into that area the marine snipers are like dude um there's a guy out there. He's a Chechen guy, Chechen sniper. He's been here since, you know, the seventies era fighting with them. He's a paid mercenary and he has a little team and dude's got like 300 something kills or whatever. That's what they say. I don't know if the, I mean, you could have had 13 kills. I don't know. He was damn good.

He just wasn't, he wasn't great. He was good, though. Really, really good. He had some experience, big time. But, yeah, I knew it was a sniper. I just had no idea. It was like the Chechen guy. And that didn't hit until a little bit later.

And it hit me like, oh, the Marines were talking about the Chachanguy. Um... But... yeah, we didn't get shot, thankfully. But when we made it to, we all bounded out, um, made it to the machine gun team, and dude, I'm thirsty, I'm like, I need some water. And Benjamin Kopp, he gives me some water out of his backpack,

and I drink half of it. I was initially going to be a dick and drink the whole bottle of water, but I was like, my spotter needs some too, so I saved half for him. But that water was so good, man. I was being a good leader. So, yeah. And he drank the other half. And as we're leaving out.

We're physically like where I want to make sure I'm picturing this right. So you come out of the two-meter hole. You go to where the machine gun team is. Where are they? Undercover? Yeah. So it's like imagine a road, but it has two sides. Like two, the roads go up.

Like dunes. Yeah, like that. But it's just a long dune to make a road on top. And we were on the other side. So we ran from here, went over, and we're on this side now. So the sniper from over here can't shoot. So we're on this side. But that's where we were seeing the huddle of people at before

in that little football huddle meeting that they were having. Right before we pick up, I make sure I'm like, hey, we're going to – I tell them the plan. We're going to go back this way. We're going to cut across this way and boom, boom, boom, right? You guys go first. Me and Pemberton, we we're gonna be the last ones that want to make sure everybody makes it out as they're leaving um me and pemberton we're i'm standing up or i'm on a knee and i see a guy pop out with the ak-47 i'm like come here and i put

my rifle over his shoulder and click, dropped this guy. But that was like, that's one kill I kind of felt good about. I really felt good about because I was just tired of the bullshit, you know? I'm tired of this shit. Yeah, that's the like rare ones I was like, I don't even care about this guy. He was being an asshole. So I shot him, and we we kept moving and tides changed like shortly after that we as soon as we started to skirt across this tree line right in front of this tree line um dude like the the ground opened up from when you talk about vietnam that's what it reminded me of, of like you see a slab of ground pick up and a guy pop out of it and start shooting.

Or you see flashes coming out. Yeah. And next to us, this is like a ravine, Ches High Water Ravine. I did not know it was Ches High at the time. I just see cover. I'm diving in it. Dive at the time. I just see cover. I'm diving in it. Dive into this cover. Hit the water.

And you just hear just screaming and bullets snapping overhead. And they're only like 25 meters away at best. Do you see any of them coming into the water? No, you can see them hitting the embankment. So they're over here. And I jump. We all jump into the embankment um so they're over here and i jump we all jump into the embankment and they're just shooting like into the over us and into the embankment wall behind us but it's not enough to you'd have to be standing on top of us to shoot into it um

so yeah hop in the water we all do and i get my bearings of like, what the hell's going on? I pick my rifle back up and I see muzzle flashes and faces and people running. So I start engaging best I could. Everyone's lined up on the line. We're all shooting back. And Benjamin Kopp, the guy who just came in to save us, he's on the left side of me. He's on my far left. The furthest down you can get to the left of me. And we got like maybe, I don't know, five guys in between me and Kopp. And his leg is up on the embankment.

And he's shooting with his rifle into, you know, at the enemy too. Laying down cover fire for us so we could like continue on this you know ravine to make it to a safe house and long not long story short it gets a little bit longer but i start to hear this loud pop like somebody had an m4 right next to my my left ear and i'm about to tell this guy dude dude, back away a little bit, man, because it was like extremely loud in my left ear. And I go to tell someone, I'm like, dude, back up and no one's there. But what I do see is the ground behind me exploding. I'm like, holy shit, I'm getting shot at. So I move off to the right a little bit. And as soon as I do that, I look back through my scope to see some people. And as soon as I do that, I look back through my scope to see some people. And

as soon as I do that, I hear the weirdest slap. Like if you took a ruler and slapped it on your pillow two times in almost rapid succession, like pow, pow, like kind of like that and i heard benjamin copp scream like just a weird scream and shortly after he screamed he's like i'm hit i'm hit i'm cussing and all that stuff then i'm looking at i look over at him and i just see a water hose like someone turned on a water hose and was just uh they would spray it and cut it off like that. And it was spraying out like 20 feet into the field over. Yeah. And I was like,

that's not good. Obviously he goes down and the water, it was already brownish muddy water, but now it's a dark, dark Brown. And it tasted like a mouthful of like, if I took took a mouthful of pennies and put it in my mouth. Oh, it's getting in your mouth. Yeah.

I still got pictures of it. Yeah. And just completely soaked in it. And the medic, Doc Melvin, he went on to be a Green Beret. Badass medic. Yeah, this dude sounded like it. Yeah, dude. He went, ran over there, you know, treading through the water, and he puts down his medical kit, and it's just floating in the ravine,

and he's damn near doing surgery on this guy. And the guy's, like, floating on the top of the water, essentially. Yeah, yep. He puts a tourniquet on, and it does not stop the bleeding. Puts another tourniquet on, doesn not stop the bleeding puts another tourniquet on doesn't stop the bleeding and i remember the platoon leader who is now with this he's like hey we got to start moving now we're getting pinned down um and the doc he looks over at him and he just shakes his head he's like i need more time and i'm like fuck this is bad. He's damn near doing

surgery, like trying to pinch off his femoral artery. They got snapped up into his pelvis region. And I start laying down some suppressive fire, but I'm having a hard time because it's just hard to even lift your head up at this point, you know, getting shot at. There's a sniper still engaging. I turned to the PL and I'm like, sir, we need to, you know, make it 300 yards, 300 meters down this, this, uh, embankment. We're going to take a right and a safe house is going to be right there. And he comes back and he's, you know, I'm screaming in his ear. I'm pulling him in by his shirt or his, uh, body armor just screaming in his ear. And I just feel like a warm splash of water just slap the side of my face.

But along with that, his body went completely limp. And it was just like trying to hold up 200-something pounds of a man. And he goes limp. I look down, it's just hamburger meat that's just hanging out of his upper part of his chest. And there's this weird hole in it. And his eyes were has this weird hole in it and his eyes

were like just weird look like big eyes man in shock complete shock and i look down at him then i go down i'm like i knew what happened but it it didn't it it messed me up enough to put me in shock it's the only time i've ever been in shock, man. And I'm just sitting up against the embankment. I'm looking at this weird hole in his chest and he's doing weird body movements and breathing weird and screaming and asking questions that don't make sense. Pemberton comes over, he puts his fingers and damn near his whole hand inside this, you know, the hole. And he's looking at me finally, or in my mind during this time, I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to stand up. I'm going to stand up and just

take one to the head, man. I was checked out at this point. I'm debating it. And I'm like, you know what? Maybe I'll just lift up my hand. I just want to go home, you know? Luckily, it didn't do either. But the reconnaissance guy, he came, he called, communications reconnaissance guy. He comes over and slaps me on the helmet. He's like, hey, Irv. That's what everybody called me. You know, Irv, get back in it.

And slapped me in the helmet, rings my bell a little bit. And I look back over the embankment, try to engage. I'm like, I can't. He's like, come over over here to me that sniper he he's not even shooting at me so i go over here follow him uh like underneath this fallen tree um come up behind or underneath the tree and as soon as i come up we start getting engaged by the sniper again so So he pushes me away. He's like, no, dude, fuck that. He's after you.

And I'm like, what? I make my way back up the embankment. And that's when the PL is like, Irv, get this son of a bitch. And I'm like, Roger that, sir. You're back in the game now. Back in it as best as I could be. I just knew I couldn't get this guy. And it was a hard weight to carry, I guess, a heavy weight to carry to have your commander, your platoon leader be like, hey, get this guy because he's just shot me.

He shot cop. We didn't know he was going to die. And he had shot Watkins. So I forgot another sniper who was attached to us. He got shot in his ankle. So we got three down, and he's like, Irv, get this guy. And I'm like, yeah, I will, you know. Never did.

But we did – ended up – we ended up picking up and moving the wounded. We're like, we have to get out of here. How long were you in that ravine? Do you know? About an hour. An hour down there. Yeah. It was a while, man.

How far into that was cop hit? Like 20 minutes? Oh, no. As soon as we jumped in. Right away? Like 45 minutes to right away. As soon as we. So he's in there for a while.

Oh, yeah. It was surgery in the water. He's bleeding out. By the time I saw him, he was as white as like a sheet of paper and he was checked out like when he passed by me and we're passing his body up i volunteered i'm like you know what i'm gonna cut off i'm gonna go to the end of the formation that way if anybody hops in the ravine and starts to shoot, I'm just going to eat it with my plates on my back. And that allowed them to keep going.

So I volunteered to go to the rear. Pemberton took Cop's backpack full of ammo and stuff. And we start moving. But by the time I saw him, he was barely hanging on to life. Did you say anything to him? Yeah, hold your breath. Because they were going under to get cover and every time they went under like he would oh my god yeah and he wasn't like really holding it he

was checked out essentially but every time we did go under you hold his breath and come back up to get cover it was brutal for the whole 300 meters damn near get up to the 300 meter mark and i'm like all right me and pemberton we're going to volunteer now from the back of the formation to go to the front that way we can get into the compound and get the high ground so that way once we have the high ground the rest of those guys can make it into the compound and as soon as we like it, it was waterlogged, everything was waterlogged, half my mags were, like, jammed full of mud and water and all types of crap, man. I get out, start to make my way to the safe house, and, like, the earth opened up.

That's what it felt like. It felt like World War III. Like, the earth just shook. And I got down thinking that, dude, I'm down. I thought I was dead. Like my body was chopped up, you know, from just machine gun fire. Pemberton looks back at me and I just saw his eyes big as shit. And he comes and he just handful of me. Pause.

Just grabbed it. He just grabs a handful he just grabbed a handful of of me man and he's like oh we finally got a pause in here i bet my tongue i've had such good self-control not saying pause to so many guests but i'm glad you did it oh good you gotta have the breaks every once in a while. Yeah, he grabs me, man. He starts dragging me back, and I'm like, what the hell are you doing, man? Get down.

He's like, I'm like, we're getting shot at. He's like, no, no, those are our guys. So I look up above him, and I see the safe house, and up on that rooftop, there's a long, not a long, it's like four or five guys with machine guns up there. Lighting them up like the 4th of July. Just like that. And it was all like balls to the wall, man.

Like I've never, even in training, I've never heard a machine gun team just lay that much hate down. It scared the hell out of me. And finally make it on to the inside and there's a picture on the internet of me and finally make it on to the inside and have a there's a picture on the internet of when we first made it through that into the the safe haven the walls of the safe haven that's what we called it this little building that we had took over this compound

and i look back at pemberton made sure he was okay and the first sergeant who was in there he's like i need you guys on the rooftop and i thought when i got in there i was gonna just let me just catch my breath you know no no time for that get on the rooftop i look back in pemberton i'm like dude we're killing every body everybody and anybody who posed a threat you were going to get hit um he just shook his head we went up there and went to work essentially and yeah is that it that's the one with the marine corps so that's where i was up on yeah with the marines that's where i shot the guy with the uh rpg and the picture down there is right after we were getting lit up right there with the Marines. Yeah.

Oh, wow, they even got a little karate picture up there. Oh, that was cute. I stayed in karate for like two weeks and quit. They wouldn't let me break a board. That's the reconnaissance. No, that's the reconnaissance comms guy. Pemberton's down there on the bottom. Yeah.

Is that him with you, the second one? Yep, yep. Right there? That's Pemberton right there, yeah. Got it. Yeah. So you were, this is right afterwards. And it's a little fuzzy because these aren't popping up all the way,

but your face just looks like you've seen a ghost. Bro, it was bad. i hadn't slept in days i was so yeah i was yeah mentally i was checking out right about there yeah and i just i've seen a lot of stuff but um but they put you right up on this roof to go to work yeah yeah i gotta send you those pictures man but um yeah we did and stayed up there it was so freaking hot yeah it was hot man it was people all over the place i could see um further than what i could shoot people like getting dropped off in vans like a sliding door vans hopping out and they had rpgs and all types of shit on these little moped bikes like five dudes somehow fit on one moped bike and they were getting dropped off

like that it's the weirdest thing man and i'm trying to engage these guys um we shot a lot and we shot a lot of people um the closest engagement was like 20 something feet away and guys were trying to hop 20 something. And guys were trying to hop over. 20-something feet. Yeah. They were trying to hop over the wall, this tall wall, to get into the compound with us. You're hitting them with a sniper from 20 feet away. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Was that like an exploding pumpkin? No. I don't even remember seeing, like, it was so close that when the recoil happened i couldn't see the impact it was like oh my god i put the scope on a button i remember the guy i shot had a plaid shirt um so we did like a simo hit these guys popped from around the building and they're about to come up on over the wall into our compound so all the snipers on the rooftop um picked a guy i'm like i got the guy in the plaid shirt.

You got this guy in the white shirt or whatever. Three, two, one. Yep. Pull the trigger. Stack of bodies just folded on top of each other. Yeah. And I facilitated the medevac, the helicopter in um with the red cross on the side old school like marine huey helicopter landed in the field and i'm laying down suppressive fire for them

watching cop walkins and the pl who's not dead it's just chest is messed up now um he's doing okay though he was still giving out like orders once he gained once the initial shock went over all that dude he was still like making coordinations yeah dude yeah you said it you described it like like hamburger meat is folded out of itself it was disgusting he's out there saying you get on that goddamn yeah you son of a bitch. Yeah. It was like that, man. This badass dude. It wasn't a badass when he got hit. He was like a little girl.

I can say that now. He made it. But, yeah, he was, I mean, anybody. I think if I would have got hit, I would have been a little girl, too. Yeah, you don't know how it would be until you do it. No. got hit in the ankle and like we made fun of him for like a year after that that's a bad place to get hit yeah yeah yeah and he cried i cried like a little bitch yeah me too me too yeah but yeah made fun of him for crying i have a picture of him crying in the compound hang that one right i'm going to now send it to him hey you remember this day

but uh yeah dude um they all get on the helicopter they leave out and melvin's still with him? Did he stay with? He stayed with us, I believe. I'm not sure, actually. I think he stayed with us. I'm not sure. I really am not sure. They had medics on the helicopter. I think Melvin stayed with us.

But yeah, maybe. I don't remember that. That's a good question. I don't know where he went. He was the only other black guy in the battalion. I have no idea where he went. Damn it. Right?

We're stuck together. I always keep track of that guy. Now they all get on, man. They left. And I remember the first sergeant, he's like, if you got a bayonet, if you have a knife, hatchet, get ready. Like, this shit's about to go hand-to-hand. And they had already had a hand-to-hand incident getting to their objective to go capture their high-value target. Like, they were doing grenade warfare.

Are you almost out of ammo, too, at this point? I went in with 210 rounds, and I left with six or seven rounds. And you have a sniper. This is not even... Yeah. But it's a semi-automatic sniper. And one of my mags was completely messed up. It was jammed and I couldn't use it. But I was using the machine gunner

next to me. We have the same essentially the same rounds, the same caliber.308. but mine is a hollow tip boat tail. His is just like a ball. It's not as accurate if you want to. Got it. But I'm delinking some of his rounds and putting them inside my magazine. Like if this goes to shit, you know, but he only has like so many rounds from his machine gun. He's like, I got half a belt. I'm like, damn, you know, that's why the first sergeant was saying, you know, if you have a knife, hatchet, something, they were going to fly in and drop off equipment,

roll them out the back of a helicopter, extra mags, extra water and everything that never happened. What about the HVT at this point? Do you have a status update on that? Yeah, we had them. Yeah.

The assault team, they were doing their thing while we were pinned down. That's why they couldn't help us. Um, we got them so why do you still have to stay there if you keep fighting just to fight the guys who are left hell yeah rangers are about to fight like that's that's what we do we don't it's it's the only time in ranger battalion where i've ever heard of us having to like disengage this is the only time i've heard

of it um we've called in reinforcements from the marines that were like uh the ones we had helped out earlier forget how far away they were but either way they couldn't come out to that area they said we can't go into that area with anything less than a brigade. And a brigade is like a few thousand men for the Marine Corps. And we're out there with like a handful of dudes. I'm like, well, that sucks. But they said, what you can do is run to us. And we'll have some Humvees out there for you guys. We'll pick you guys up.

But there's five guys on each humvee already with the marines you got the driver passenger machine gunner and two other guys in the back seat i believe um there was a few with just three guys in there either way it wasn't enough vehicles and not enough space but we managed to somehow fit on and in all these vehicles. We've ran out to them. So we've decided, Hey, it's not the best, you know, time to sit here and fight this one out.

Um, we're gonna take our chances and just run out the back door basically. And it's legit. This big blue door in the back of the compound, they opened it up and you could see, you know, almost a mile away, Marines on this little rooftop, or not a rooftop, a hilltop, parked their vehicles, Humvees, and I'm like, well, shit, I'll just volunteer. I'm going to go first.

And Pemberton, I want you in the back, in the rear, and everybody else in the middle, we're going to run to these Humvees. And that's exactly what we did. It's like a mile, you said? A little under a mile, yeah. And when we get there, like, one of the things that not pissed me off, it was just weird seeing, like, Marines smoking a cigarette, just chilling. I'm like, we just had the fight of our life. And you guys are, it is what it is.

But they stuffed us in a vehicle. We drove back to the compound. And yeah, I remember sitting next to a prisoner off to my right side, waiting for helicopters to come in. And this guy was just mumbling, talking to himself. And I don't know if I can say this, but I pinched him. So I don't know. I was just fucking angry.

You pinched him? Yeah. I think you can say that. With these knuckles on the back of his fucking arm. Yeah. I was just like, shut the fuck up. So I pinched him. And okay, pinched the shit out of him.

I mean, if they throw you in prison for that, we got to stop. Yeah, I know, right? We got an issue. Pincheded him and i fell asleep after that but i was woken up by the sound of a bullet cracking right past my ear so i wake back up i'm looking around like okay where's the fight and everyone's just chilling hanging out i'm like damn i got resist i knew at that moment like without a doubt it's like like, I messed up, man. I was like, I am into, I'm, I'm scarred. Something's not right. I hear bullets cracking, you know?

What are, what's, what are your, minus like not being, you're not fully aware because you're still back where it was. Minus that, like, what are your emotions? Like, is the adrenaline still pumping through your body? Oh yeah. Oh oh yeah but i'm just so tired at this point like i'm exhausted exhausted dude i was it like the the rush was still there but i was just exhausted to even feel the rush i just wanted to get back to safety relative safety you, and take a shower. Like I hadn't showered in a week and, you know, I was hungry, but. And showered in a week. Yeah. I was hungry a little bit, not too, too hungry.

And I was tired, you know? Yeah. Made it back to the, to the compound. And like a couple of days later is me and Pemberton. We're up on our little balcony of little balcony of our compound overlooking freaking Afghanistan. And our platoon sergeant comes up. And I knew something wasn't right because he was choking up. Like he had tears in his eyes.

I've never seen him like that. And because we were the only ones on that mission out of the first platoon um he was like just want to let you guys know cop didn't make it boom and he cried he's like if you guys need anything let him know but we got to go out tonight and so get your shit ready went out that night but it really messed us up big time was that was that the the first time you had lost one of your guys yeah yeah personal like i had just talked to cop when they got there um and his birthday was coming up and he was going to be old enough to drink you know or get back and get some beers and never got a chance to see that i mean we drank before but he legally you know that old man that that hurt and playing poker i was not a big poker player but i remember

seeing him playing poker and taking a nap and talking to him and like literally a few hours later it was i just had water from him not even three minutes after that like i'm tasting his blood now you know it's weird weird that one sticks with me every day we gotta take a break though yeah sure sure we just left off where you were talking about that where you found out about cop and yeah you know it never these these are the kinds of things that i really appreciate about when we bring in you guys who have been over there doing this stuff and you bring that home for us to understand what that is because i've never experienced something like that obviously everyone out there listening we've had our losses we've had people die around us but to see someone in that case 20 years old yeah cut down so short doing all the right things, and bravely rescuing people on the battlefield.

I can't imagine that. The kid, dude. We were all kids, it felt like. Looking back at it, like back then, like I said, it felt like I was a grown man. But now that I'm older, it's a weird perspective to see the kid that I was doing the stuff that I was doing and the guys that I was surrounded with.

It's just, it's a weird, it's weird, man, to even, yeah, to have live in our lift, do that and,

and witnessed it and experienced it. And yeah, it's just weird that we were that young doing this stuff. It's crazy. Couldn't imagine. It's not like you were doing it for five minutes. You were that young doing this stuff it's crazy couldn't imagine it's not like you were doing it for five minutes you were doing it for six years and as active in the military and you did all kinds of deployments this is a long time yeah but now with so many years passed on that and considering how young you were does it feel like a blink sometimes like it was

it was so fast yeah dude yeah it feels like a blink of an eye it really does it exactly what it feels like but when i sit down and i think about it it's like sometimes new things that pop up like oh i remember doing that i don't know if i'm talking so you've always been picky about your produce but now you find yourself checking every label to make sure it's Canadian. So be it. At Sobeys, we always pick guaranteed fresh Canadian produce first. Restrictions apply. See in-store or online for details.

To like one of the guys again, I'm like, oh, I remember that or I don't remember that. Like, yeah, Irv, remember when you did this and this? I'm like, dude, I have no recollection of doing any of that. But they remember it. And there's stuff i remember um that i used to not remember and there's stuff that i forget you know yeah mostly mostly i guess because on purpose i try to forget a lot of it but there's just stuff that will never ever leave though you know it's it's such a roll of the dice though man i mean it doesn't matter i i've just learned this the hard way through all these stories i hear not just on my podcast but like obviously like all the stories you can see online of of the the dudes who have been out there doing this stuff it's like the best ones sometimes are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the best ones also are protecting the other people and doing – giving the ultimate sacrifice and everything. And it's devastating.

But it's also like the ultimate – you know, like how do you – you just have the mad respect for the legacy that person leaves because the imprint he leaves on every one of you. Oh, yeah. I mean, we can all see it. Yeah. Hearing you talk about it. That's a beautiful thing of it. I agree with that. Yeah.

My son knows about him, you know. That's awesome. Maybe not in depth, but yeah, he knows who the name is and I have pictures on the wall of him. Your son like seven or eight or? Seven. Seven. Yeah. His mom gave me, Benjamin Copp's mom gave me his hat uh he's one of his favorite hats

i have a few of his personal items that his mom gave me met his mom yeah friends with his mom and that's cool yeah so that legacy definitely and he donated his organs i think he saved like 20 lives after that one lady has his heart oh i forget her name um someone has his eyes like yeah there's he's still in that regard he's still alive now that's cool yeah big time i think that's really neat but yeah yeah circle of life shit it really is it really is yeah definitely definitely did he have siblings too uh yeah he did did. Yeah. I believe his brother. But half brother if you are. Right.

Yeah. Half. Yeah. And that's another thing. A lot of you guys do an amazing job of like, you know, connecting and taking care of the families that you never even knew. Yeah. In many cases before, you know, that type of stuff happens. That's cool that you did that.

Yeah. Definitely. Good guy. Good guy. Still is. Yeah. many cases before you know that type of stuff happens that's cool that you did that yeah definitely good guy good guy still is yeah oh yeah but you guys had to go out that same night yeah i found out when we got yeah when we found out when we got back we had we went out to uh canada someplace in kandahar city um and it was a i think it was one of those missions just to, like, get you back on your feet. So it doesn't, you know, you don't sit back in your room and you think about it all day. And then you're scared to do something. That's what I believe. Every time that we've had an encounter with, like, a close call or a loss or something, someone got shot. Like, we're going back out that night, you know, just to not get caught up in that emotion, I guess.

Yeah. And so this one, this is the one with the hole, right? Shortly after that, yeah, where Pemberton fell down. Yeah. What happened? This story was nuts. I was reading this. It sounded like, out of a sick and sadistic movie, the fact that something like this even existed.

Yeah, I couldn't I couldn't picture it because I'm like, what is that? What even is that? Thank you. Yeah, that's what I thought. I still think still don't know what it was. It was a we were doing a mission. We fast roped fast roped in because of the terrain was too. It's not suitable for landing. Fast roped in, and we started this short little walk,

like a few clicks. At night. At night. Do you have night vision on? Yeah. And we're going at night to capture some guy. Before we even make it to his compound where he stayed at uh walking almost a single file line it's the only way we could walk along this portion of terrain and i saw a shadow it looked like a just a weird shadow um and we all walked past, like all 30 of us for some reason.

Oh, I'm behind the entire formation. Pemberton's behind me. So he's like the last guy we would fluctuate. Um, as we're walking, I see a shadow and I'm like, okay, I'm going to pass by and just walk in the same footsteps as everybody else because landmines and stuff you know um made it past this weird looking shadow and then i heard like a weird my voice my name being called like my first name like what the heck was that i take my ear pro was halfway hanging out anyways i like to keep keep my hearing protection like halfway in, halfway out, sometimes not in at all so I can hear better or the way I like to hear.

And I heard my name being called and I turn around and Pemberton's not there. I'm like, where the heck did Pemberton go? You know, maybe he went to go pull security somewhere. So I stay back and I look some more. I'm like, no, this isn't right. Pemberton's gone. So I'm walking back to find where could I possibly have left this guy at? You know, I just looked and he was there. Now he's not. and my feet come within like a foot of that shadow that I saw was this damn near like 40-foot wide circle hole in the ground. And it's just pitch black. So I stopped short of that and like, what the heck is that? And I can hear Pemberton in it.

And I'm like, dude, are you down there? And he's like, yeah, um, I need your help to come get me out. I'm like, dude, are you down there? And he's like, yeah, I need your help to come get me out. I'm like, oh, okay, cool, I guess, you know. How far down are you? And he's like, I'm like 10 feet. And I'm like, no, the fuck you're not. I didn't know it at the time. This other guy, an assaulter T he comes over and luckily

because I'm starting to de-kit I'm like putting my weapon down I'm like dude it's 10 feet I can I'm going to clear that jump it's going to suck but I'll at least get down in there and I'll help you get the ladder up we can get out together I'm taking my stuff off and the assaulter comes over and he's

like wait wait he takes a chemlight and he throws it down there. And I watch the chem light tumble, tumble, tumble, and then disappears and go, I can't see it anymore. And he looks over at me and we both have eyes as big as saucepans. Like, dude. And I'm like, hey, are you sure you're 10 feet? Are you down in there?

And he's like, yeah. We didn't learn until till later but he thought up was that way like straight ahead oh shit and when he finally caught wind and saw where we were he's like oh never mind um i'm not 10 feet you guys look like a pin of light um so i call up on the comms i'm like hey we got a man, no, I called that first before T I came over. I'm like, we have a man down. And the PL is like, our platoon sergeant is like, we have a man down. We were getting shot at.

I'm like, no, it was a man down in the hole. And it's like, we'll get him out. I'm like, Roger that. But I need help. So he sent T over and that's where I'm dec, and T stops me and drops the chem light down. So he's like, well, we just fast roped in. I'm going to go grab one of these ropes and bring it over here, and we're going to throw it down and X, Y, and get him out.

But it was just him, and these ropes are like over 100-plus pounds. They're heavy, heavy ropes. And he has to run over these weird irrigation ditches that were like eight feet tall and they go down eight feet and he's doing this and he smoked by the time he makes it halfway and i'm covering him with my rifle i'm still talking to pemberton he's like dude i'm really cold down here it's cold and he's like i don't know i hear some stuff and i'm like dude if i hear you scream or you start screaming i was like i'm gonna dump my entire mag down there he's like no i'm cool i said i'm hoping i'm gonna just kill the bad guys

if there's anyone down there with you i was like he can't see anything so i'm just i'm just gonna shoot down in there man um he's like whatever cool t comes back over he's's smoked. He's like, dude, I can't. He's like, we have to call for CSAR, Combat Search and Rescue, the PJs. They come in. Took them a minute. But it was one of the weirdest things I've ever heard where a PJ goes down and he's like, they come back up without Pemberton. He's like, we need longer rope, more equipment to get him out. And he's like, dude, he's over 40-something feet. I'm like, how far down is he?

And it was 75-plus feet. And they only fractured his tibia, fibula, in his leg. That's the only thing that he had. There was a wooden ladder down there an old like ancient wooden wooden ladder And he slapped it his Helmet was cracked or something. I know his Beretta his pistol was bent his pistol was bent he lost his sniper rifle and

his pistol was bent a Pistol a made of you know metal steel was bent, but just made of metal, steel, was bent. But just his tibia fibula was fractured. That's crazy. And it was water down there. Yep, yep. And they finally went down. It's out of a Stephen King movie.

Yeah. They went down. They got him. And he looked like ass when he came up. But they got him. They were trying to recover his rifle they dove an additional 40 feet and didn't reach the bottom there was no bottom it was just i'm like oh hell no i'm glad i did not jump down i would have probably died or landed on top of him and killed him i would have

just died from sheer panic because that's i don't do that stuff no i'm not built for that i'm built for certain things that's not one of them but he was calm the entire time they got him out we dropped some grenades down to try to collapse it in that on on itself to close the hole up and the grenades are like blowing up six seconds you know after you throw it down and it never touched the bottom oh my yeah I'm like when I finally met up with him at the hospital one the PJs and nurses were just confused they're like how did he survive that what happened he never touched the sides but I asked him like dude how long were you free falling for so he printed up some halo jump wings for him and took him to

the hospital and like he was an official like Navy SEAL scuba skydiver. Gave it to him at the hospital. Wasn't he a Marine before this? He was a Navy before. Yeah, yeah. No idea how he survived it, but he said he never touched the sides, and he had enough time to transition from his rifle to his pistol, whip it out, because he thought he fell over into a courtyard. And he thought when he hit the ground, it was going to be people around and he was going to have to engage.

But he had enough time to get off his sniper rifle and go to his pistol all while falling and never had no comprehension of like how far and how long he was falling but he fell for yeah long enough to do that it's insane and survived survived came back uh that next deployment and like

killed a bunch of guys too wow yeah but he went obviously he went home from this one so this yeah this was a few weeks before you guys were going to be done yeah uh about a few weeks to about a month or so i remember just being sad i was like man that's like losing your best friend you know yeah um then i had another replacement then he left after that i was just by myself for a little bit like for a couple of weeks and that was just boring not boring I was just by myself for a little bit, like for a couple of weeks. And that was just boring. Not boring.

It was just by yourself. And you have no one to talk to or, you know, shoot the shit with. Do you have a thought yet? Because you had said earlier you didn't want to be in the Army forever or anything like that. But now that, you know, you went through these insane different battles obviously highlighted by the middle one which lasted for five days you've had all these kills your partners had all these kills and now your partners back home recuperating you know you end up being alone like are you having the thought like i've done it i've seen it i've had enough of this shit. 100%. I was at that level. I was so done, man.

I was like, yeah, you're right. Been there, done it. Tasted it. I'm good. And I just know that after that last deployment, if I did it again, went back, I'm like, I don't think I would have made it. I honestly don't think I would have made it. on that deployment that next deployment who didn't make it and just got like their entire life change from being blown up and you know just severely wounded so i don't think i would have made it i just was i was yeah tired of it like you can only pull the ace out the deck so many times

before you finally get the joker you know and it just felt like Afghanistan was starting to get yeah yeah yeah I was all the way checked out have no had no desire to do it again I was ready to be married now you know I was married but now have a chance to actually enjoy it I guess you know that whole time we were married the first two years I was training and gone. I was home two weeks out of the – a total of four weeks out of the year. The other months were dedicated to deployment and training. You're only allotted that amount two weeks before deployment and two weeks after. That's it.

That's the only time you're allotted off. You said you didn't tell your wife about any of the stuff that was happening. So she has no idea what you've been going through. No. She had a phone call when Pemberton fell down the hole. And she thought that I died. She's like, well, if Pemberton got hurt, then where am I at? And they're like, no, no, he's fine.

And that's like the most she had ever heard that like, oh, something happened. But he just fell down a hole that didn't make any sense. What's going on? She didn't know I was like killing people until I got back. And I was, people were helping me download my equipment, get my rifles and stuff together. And some guys, and a new guy who was just coming into the sniper section was like,

dude, I heard you killed XYZ number. And she looked over at me and was like, dude, I heard you killed XYZ number. And she looked over at me and was like, this weird look, like, what are you talking about? You didn't kill anybody. Basically that, yeah. That's exactly, yeah. And we were riding down this famous, not famous, it goes into Ranger Battalion, 3rd Ranger Battalion at Fort Benning, Georgia.

And my old team leader, he was a Mexican guy, one of the best team leaders I ever had. And he had this red pickup truck and he rolls up beside me and Jess is in the passenger seat. He rolls up in his pickup truck and he's like, dude, Reaper, I heard you killed her. And she does. She's like, you got some motherfucking explaining to do.

That's where she first got that idea of, yeah, okay, I've killed people. I'm married to the Reaper now. Yeah, but I never talked to her about it. I never, even when she knew about it and she did ask, I was just like, I mean, I guess I killed some people, but I never never had like uh i didn't want to tell her how many and i didn't want to tell her that you know this wasn't my first rodeo like i've probably killed more people as a machine gunner than i did as a sniper by far really hell yeah oh yeah but you couldn't confirm all those because it's like there's so much shit going on

yeah and it was just normal like your average guy in battalions got a lot of killing under his belt it's just as a sniper it's extremely personal personal and and rare but yeah guys are yeah it's it's easy to kill someone in battalion r Ranger Battalion. At the time of war, it was easy. You're always in the fight, always in the fight. How soon after getting back did you make the official decision to leave? Right after, right after. My contract was up in October.

We got back in July. Yeah, cop died July 18th. So around August is when I got back and my contract was up that following year in October, 2010. So I made that decision around that time, August, September timeframe after in 2009, that I was not going to re-up and redo that contract when it came that time in 2010. It's like, nope. And then, yeah, that was just, and because of the way the schedule was lined up, I was going to miss out on that next deployment because it would have overlapped my contract so i just missed that deployment um if i would have re-enlisted and signed up for additional time i would have made that but there was no way game wasn't in you for that i was done man mentally checked out i felt like i had lived the dream that i wanted i thought i wanted to live

um felt like I accomplished it. Do I wish I could have gone back and done more stuff? Yeah. Well, you did get into private contracting, right? Yeah, yeah. But it wasn't like Delta Force. I would have loved to, at a different time and era, throw my hat in for that.

Do I think I would have made it? No. But it would have been cool to try out. Why um do i think i would have made it no but it would have been cool to try why do you think you wouldn't have made it i'm not walking 40 miles bro for no one for no one no no no i you got i'm 12 i'm a 12 mile 15 mile guy okay but they're talking 40 in the mountains and i'm just not doing that no it's not that important for me you know um yeah i got out um did contracting so i remember the day i got out man uh we left the apartment complex and i flicked off the apartment complex and i flicked off jordan like i'm never ever coming back here i freaking i i hate i hate columbus georgia i probably still do i don't like columbus georgia but um we hopped in a u-haul truck we had two german shepherds and a u-haul truck with all our stuff in it. And we drove down to San Antonio, Texas.

Took a little bit over a day to get there. Got there. Had to stay with my wife's mom for a couple of months, a few months. That's a while. That's too long. That's why I went right back overseas to Iraq and picked up contracting. No joke. That's like one of the big reasons. So I was like, there was no other job really out there like that for me.

So I said, I'm going to pick up contracting. Took a shot at that, sent in my packet and got selected, went to a little training course and I believe it was in New Orleans. Who'd you work for? Triple Canopy. Okay. selected went to the little training course and believe it was in new orleans who'd you work for triple canopy okay believe it was uh they're out of not langley um hell uh harman harman virginia or something like that lake harmony is it no no it's new jersey somewhere in um it starts with an h virginia um i forget what it's called but it's yeah in virginia um went to their training facility out in louisiana new orleans somewhere around that area in

louisiana and did like the it was whips uh worldwide protection services diplomatic security WIPs, Worldwide Protection Services, Diplomatic Security. Similar to Blackwater kind of deal. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very similar. And took that route, passed, graduated, if you want to call it that. And within like a week or two after that class was over, I was on a plane to Baghdad, Iraq. What was that like now being on the private side versus being in the military?

Dude, you're so independent. You're so – it was the only time I got a chance to feel like I was a – like, I don't know, like I'm doing my own thing. I didn't have the micromanagement. It was zero of that. It was just like, dude, this is your job. This is what you have to do. Be here at this time. This is the mission.

Do it. Don't mess it up and you get paid good. Are you operating as a sniper in some capacities or doing all different things? I was not starting off. Starting off, I was your basic just private security, a part of a private security detail um i didn't hit the sniper or the designated marksman until my late way later into my contract and you have to go to a training school out in texas for it they had one i think in oklahoma at the time too i didn't go to oklahoma but crazy they got to send the sniper named the reaper to training

school you learn a lot you know it's different type of not a different type of sniping it's just uh yeah the people who you're protecting they want to make sure that you i guess can shoot you know i mean yeah there's a stack of bodies yeah i could probably attest to that. I could shoot a, all right. And made it and got a chance to meet some cool people, do some really cool things. You did this for a couple years? Yeah. Yep, two years. And what were the, would you go there for like four weeks at a time, come back for six weeks, or were you just pretty much there most of the time? That time it was three three months on one month

off so yeah go over for 90 days 100 days come back for a month spend time with the wife go back over and one day i was just like i lived the day i was supposed to leave to go back um we had just bought a house and my wife she's getting ready in the bathroom to take me to the airport to go back to to baghdad and i remember laying on my back i look up at her and just like she's like are you getting ready and i said nope she's like what do you mean it's like i'm not going and just like you serious you're not you're just not gonna go i was like yeah just come to get back in the bed i'm tired and she no joke got back in the bed and my phone start blowing up ringing like hey i just didn't answer it said hey you can come back whenever like when i was up for it or whatever i had an open invitation. I got back in contact with them to square things on my end, and everything was fine.

And I ended up doing something else, not in Baghdad, but for them. What was Baghdad like at that point? Because obviously you had been going over there before you stopped. Way different. How so? It was cleaner less less bombs being dropped i wouldn't get shot at like that um the girls dress different like it was the first time i ever saw girls in like shorts they were wearing shorts over there and stuff and i guess they had picked up on some of the american culture this is like two three four years before ISIS, though.

That almost sounds crazy to me. Yeah. There were girls in shorts over there. It was not like – it was far different from the Iraq that I saw, Baghdad that I saw. It was – they had like clubs and stuff. Yeah. Clubs and – Clubs in Iraq.

Yeah. Yeah. It was a pretty like big club. They bumping like soldier boy like i honestly have no idea what they were playing um a few of the guys that i was on the contract with on my team they they visited the club over there um then you know we had mainly just uh you know it wasn't like war torn it was it wasn't bad like baghdad at least wasn't like war-torn. It wasn't bad. Like Baghdad, at least, wasn't bad. There were places that were like sketch,

and the back of your neck stood up. But for the most part, it was just far different from what I experienced after the invasion and during some of the height of the war in Iraq. It was way different. Were you working with mostly guys who had been like special forces? Everybody. It was everybody.

I was like the only ranger for a while there. I was the only ranger on my team. We had two Green Berets. My team lead was a Green Beret of like 20 years or something like that. We had a Marine force recon guy and two seals um no it was an army guy no it was two seals two green berets and we had some marsok dudes but i was the only uh ranger and we had a delta force guy he wasn't on my team though there was a couple of delta force guys on the camp that I stayed at.

They call it the man camp. But it was an interesting group of guys. Learned a lot. And you learn your place as far as like the totem pole of spec ops. And like coming from the Ranger Battalion, you feel that Ranger Battalion's the pinnacle, you know. Then you get around these guys and you're like hell no they're extremely smart when it comes to planning and war fighting yeah extremely smart like samurais i mean you got the thing is though like you left but you essentially got right back in you're doing something different but you're back in the game you're back in the action you never really stopped like at at least though when you were going in under diplomatic protection it sounds

like the stakes are lower you're less likely to run into shit obviously it wasn't like afghanistan in 09 no but like where are you emotionally while this is happening because it's it's like since you were 18 all you've ever known is the army and 18, all you've ever known is the Army. And more specifically, all you've ever known is war. Yeah, yeah. Emotionally, I hate it really well. I think that. You maybe couldn't tell that I was not feeling so well emotionally.

But deep down inside, I hated every minute of it. I loved it, but I hated it at the same time because I just wanted to be home. You know, I hated the way Iraq looked. I hated the way Middle East looked. Everything was just brown, sand colored. Everything was, it had a certain smell to it. You come back to America and it just smelled better. You know, I could go to Walmart or I could go here and it just it smelled better you know i could go to walmart or i could go here and it was just a better time i could drink whenever i wanted to if i wanted to have a drink or i could do this or i could whatever and i at least had my wife uh but being over there just around like 50 dues all the time and unless you're nothing wrong with it but unless you're broke your wrist broke

you know it's not really unless your wrist broke i mean it's not really what i i don't want to be around 50 dudes you know every day all day it's it gets old after a while So when you made the decision to get out, staying in bed, did you have any idea what you wanted to do at that point? No. Just stay in bed at that point. That was it. That was it. I knew I had to do something, but I just didn't want to do the Middle East thing, the war thing anymore.

I knew that. That's all I knew. That's all I knew. That's all I knew. So like for a while, I just literally stayed in bed. Not for a while. It was like for a couple of days. And it felt good to just not wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning, you know, and put this on and go do this. It felt good.

A little bit of freedom. Yeah. But then it became too much freedom to where you have too much time on your hands to where you think too much. And that's where it just went downhill from there of... How so? The whole...

Everything, the trauma, I guess, the trauma that occurred overseas finally had a chance to... had time to settle in. Yeah. Big time. I think that was the one thing that I think I take away from that portion, that time in my life was giving myself time to actually not do anything was good.

It allowed me to acknowledge things that I had wrong with me but bad in the fact that I have to deal with this now, you know, and now I'm starting to relive things and feel certain things that I hadn't felt before. I've taken the time to even feel that was the trade off of it. But yeah. You getting angry at all? Cause like you're coming back into regular society, which is like, I mean, you want to talk night and day. Yeah. Yeah.

It was a lot of that. yeah yeah it was a lot of that a lot of a lot of that yeah a lot of self-medicating to try to figure something out a lot of that a lot of that alcohol you name it well not you name it it was alcohol and weed yeah and that one time mushrooms but just every day that's a little different yeah that's better different but every day was alcohol at least alcohol every day from the moment i woke up to from the moment you woke up oh hell yeah yeah i didn't drink water for like a year dude that's what it felt like it was just jack and jack coke and bud light or coronas from like a 40 pack and a bottle of Jack would be like the routine. If I couldn't finish the 40 of beer, I'd finish like half of it easily. And like half the bottle

of Jack I would finish. And that's every day. Did that for about a year or two. Every single day. How'd your wife handle that she barely hung on man barely hung on like i wasn't like a um well i was violent at times towards other people yeah and like she did bring her friends over one time and that was bad call um i think we scared a bunch of people that day um and then like with my family like they were yeah I don't talk to my family anymore and at that point still don't because of that time you still don't talk with your family no no because of an incident that I just wasn't I was yeah it was a little bit I was drinking. And the other part was...

disrespect from somebody in my family that I just don't do disrespect well. And it just got stupid on my behalf. And yeah, it just... People, I guess people, I think at that point, people just saw who I had became from the person I was before I left and who I had became was different, different in that aspect. And I don't think that they necessarily like that person. I didn't either, but it is who I was, you know. But doesn't, I mean, it's easy for me to say on the outside not being there, but at the same time, not to say like when you fuck up and do bad shit, you can always just write it off.

But, you know, it's not like you went to fucking Costco for seven years. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah you know what i mean like like there's we've all many people out there listening have had different members of their family doesn't mean they had to be in the military or something like that but like go through stuff and like you change as a person and sometimes there's very negative shit that happens but maybe this is just how i operate i'm more like okay however i can help them guide them through this situation, I will. Not step on toes where I can't. But, like, they're dealing with something. It's not them at this time.

Exactly. Eventually, they'll get back to being them. But it sounds like that's obviously you weren't given that opportunity. No, no, no, no. That's a shame. It can be if you think about it yeah yeah i agree but your wife hung with you oh yeah oh yeah 100 never swayed awesome marriage yeah never swayed she's known me since first grade man you know so she's seen all the changes from the little kid who

used to play want to be in karate to who i was and who i am today she's seen all the changes from the little kid who used to play, want to be in karate to who I was and who I am today. She's seen all the changes. So for the good and the bad, but she's always been there. And it's like the only consistent thing in life since that has been her. Yeah. The only form of consistency. That's the only one. So you don't, you don't talk with your parents?

Not really. No. No. Like, when I was overseas, I would have to be told, like, hey, Irv, it's Mother's Day. Call your mom. You know? I would go. I would call out of, like, three months.

I would maybe call once or twice. Just didn't. I don't know, man. It's weird. Maybe I'm weird. I don't know. You know? Just don't. Like, I don't know man it's weird maybe i'm weird i don't know you know just don't like i don't i'm not like a really big talker i can talk like you know i am now obviously but um i'm like low-key a loner not a loner i'm just i'm just a very quiet person yeah naturally just a quiet person there's

a lot going on up here like dude i'm probably in a club right now in my head but on the outside you just get the you know quiet me yeah but i don't know. Well, you said earlier, like your parents were always, you know, they, they kept to themselves, like they didn't divulge a lot of stuff. I wonder if that's like kind of, and you're a quieter more introverted guy too. And I can tell that talk with you today. Like I gotta, you do great when you're going, but I can tell like, you gotta,

you gotta get you there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that by the way yeah but like you know maybe that's like you have a similar gene to them in a way but it manifests a little differently and that crosses the chords with you guys i agree i agree it very much so man very much so very much so it's just uh i don't know we're all different you know yeah it just is you know i would a world full of talkative people i think i'd not want to be here you know you gotta have the offsets yeah gotta have the offset how did you get through that period though like where you're where you yeah because you're sober now right yeah i still i still i mean yeah i smoke cbd that's about it that's okay yeah but point being you're not facing calico jack to

start off your mornings no no hell no not anymore not anymore my liver couldn't take it man no i had i've had enough had enough man. Enough Jack, big time. My wife, man, I would say is like the, it's like literally the only one, that only thing that's been like the consistency and now my son, it's like I can't have him see that like that. So that's like the icing on the cake, cherry on top for me is I can't either the stories i want left

behind like when he tells a story about dad i don't want his stories to be like man dad was just a weird drunken dude you know yeah i can't have that you know when i go at least that you know dad might be a weird dude but at least he wasn't a drunk weird dude right you know right way better yeah yeah yeah but you you just kind of stopped it sounds like you just kind of stopped doing that oh yeah yeah like it took a while turkey no no i went to aa one time and i didn't like that quit that the second time when i was like you know what i'm gonna try this again i just went cold turkey but then i almost had to go to the hospital and do that whole thing of like oh yeah just your body yeah yeah it was sick man was sick um wife took care of me and it really wasn't that bad you know

that's good one that bad that's that's a good story a lot of people obviously have trouble with that when they get that dependent too work out i worked out start working out more and that was like a big game changer oh yeah of yeah fill the time like the time where i just i wasn't drinking i was working out or something you know i didn't have to worry so much about, you know, waking up to, from sweats and like, man, I need a beer or a shot to stop the shakes, you know. Ain't no better medicine than working out. Yeah, exactly. It's the greatest thing ever. Yep, yep.

Hell yeah. I'm glad you got through that too. I mean, you know, you seem like you're, you seem like you're in a really good place. Oh, yeah. I want to talk with you. Yeah. I'm a million times better than, you know, from when I first got out. But I don't think anybody's ever going to be, you know.

Right. Yeah. Where we want to be. I don't know. Some people are. Some people are where we want to be. But I think there's always room for some improvement all the time. You can't delete the tape in your head.

There you go. That's the thing. Yeah. It's just how you – obviously you do an amazing job now of managing that. Uh-huh. Yeah. But everyone at different levels to this shit. Exactly.

You got to deal with it. You're at a high level obviously because you saw things a lot of us wouldn't but you know it's when i when i talk with the guys like you who were also spending significant time in afghanistan you know the 500 pound elephant in the room as well as that it didn't end well yeah long after you were already gone from there but you know we all get those images in our head of august 2021 with the taliban back taking control they're using our fucking weapons that we left there obviously the pullout was very fucked up but like you know

i would never want to look at it like guys who go over there bravely like die in vain or anything like that yeah but is there ever you know i'm not trying to be disrespectful with that either but is there ever the thought of like what the fuck were we even doing that's the only thought man that's the only thought like what was it for oh yeah i get what you're saying like not dying in vain but i mean there's only so many words you can, I guess, pick and choose. I just know that that's like the only question that's left for me is what was this all for anyways? And, you know, if you're just going to give them this stuff, we just leave the way we left. Like, goodbye. Good luck. Here's some money and here's some guns and equipment.

And we're still supplying them with millions of dollars to the taliban like weekly monthly um it's like you know yeah i guess yeah what the yeah what was this for you know i know i think i know it wasn't yeah i don't know what What do you think? It's money. Just money. Yeah. That's the only thing. Some families in higher positions of power just needed more money. And that was one way to go about it. Probably the easiest way financially for them. And they sent us out there. Made them rich.

That's what I think. Which, what can you do, man? You know? Yeah, I try not to be cynical about the world, but sometimes there's certain things you can't help it with. Thank you. Yep, yep. And it's noticeable.

Yeah, yeah. What we went over there for. None of it makes any sense. The only thing that does make sense is that, oh, this is for money. Right. That's it. That's it that's it well when guys like you come on to different podcasts like this and put it on historical record

and show people what happened and show people what you know the highest trained people were sent in there to do and and the and the good job they did doing that i think that's important for yeah you know the kids that watch this 30 40 years from now yeah and wonder oh why were we there and things like that it's you never you blame the like i said earlier you blame the people in the suits and offices who don't give a fuck about anything but themselves yeah and that's fine but you separate that from what happens out there and and it's it's it's it's a real honor to hear that type of historical record in the studio every time it happens. So I really appreciate you sharing it today, man.

Thank you. This was awesome, brother. I appreciate it. We're going to have to do this again. It was awesome being here, man. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah. It would probably be pretty cool to see you and Danny Hall in the studio together.

Let's do it, man. I think I got to make that in the studio together. Let's do it, man. I think I got to make that happen in the spring. Let's do it, yeah. All right. In this lifetime. Yeah, let's talk about that. But Nick, thank you, brother. Hey, all good, man.

Fucking amazing story. All good. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. Before you leave, please be sure to hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video.

It's a huge help. And also, if you're over on Instagram, be sure to follow the show at Julian Dory Podcast or also on my personal page at Julian D. Dory. Both links are in the description below. Finally, if you'd like to catch up on our latest episodes, use the Julian Dory Podcast playlist link in the description below. Thank you.