Julian Dorey Podcast - 😤 [VIDEO] - "STOP Funding Ukraine!" - Ukrainian Battalion Commander GOES OFF | Mark Turner • 162

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

- Get 20% OFF SHEATH UNDERWEAR (PROMO CODE: “JULIAN”): http://sheathunderwear.com  - Julian Dorey Podcast MERCH: https://legacy.23point5.com/creator/Julian-Dorey-9826?tab=Featured - Support Our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey  - Hosted, Produced & Edited by Julian D. Dorey (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Mark Turner is an ex-Recon-Marine who now serves as a military trainer in Israel, Ukraine, and other countries. Currently, Mark is the founder and CEO of Overwatch Foundation –– an organization that recruits, trains and deploys high-level former Special Operations Military Veterans to warzones and natural disasters. In the past 2 years, Mark has instructed Ukrainian platoons and Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) Soldiers on the Gaza and West Bank borders. DONATE to Mark’s “Overwatch Foundation”: https://www.overwatchfoundationusa.org/  Mark’s 1st Episode w/ @Shawn Ryan: https://youtu.be/zzjBAJk_DRw?si=ZTqpTO0lvy1mzDQu  Mark’s 2nd Episode w/ @Shawn Ryan: https://youtu.be/MxJJSGN_WCc?si=dbbcHmq-qee9rMn6  ***TIMESTAMPS*** 0:00 - Shawn Ryan Connection; How Mark ended up in Ukraine 13:30 - Meeting w/ the Ukrainian Colonel; Ukrainian Snipers 23:50 - Training Ukrainian Soldiers 32:45 - In your face tactics; Falling from helicopters, Citizen Seamstresses 50:30 - Creating Overwatch Foundation; Previous knowledge of Ukraine 58:00 - Mark’s childhood; Joining Military 1:15:10 - Chasing Al-Zarqawi, VETPAW, Protecting First Iraqi Election 1:21:20 Mark’s Post-War Difficulties; Finding Faith 1:41:19 - Mark’s “It should have been me” story 1:54:00 - “We all share the same aftermath” 2:01:58 - Operating Special Forces guys in Ukraine on tight budget 2:07:05 - Back to Ukraine battlefield situation 2:10:44 - Why Ukraine is an unwinnable war for both sides 2:14:28 - Mark trains Ukrainian Battalion  2:21:28 - Ukraine and Russia Casualties; Donbas & Crimea; War Reality Check 2:29:43 - Ukraine Funding from US Government; Repopulating Ukraine 2:33:56 - Why Mark is against continued funding of Ukraine 2:36:27 - Bipartisan support for Ukraine in War w/ Russia 2:40:56 - Supporting Overwatch Foundation ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “JULIANDOREY”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier Julian's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey ~ Music via Artlist.io ~ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 162 - Mark Turner (PART 2) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up guys, if you're on Spotify right now, please follow the show so that you don't miss any future episodes and leave a five star review. Thank you. He asked us to do a site survey. Can you kind of go over all the locations, this location and all the locations we have and see where our guys are and give us your assessment. So we start doing that and they were putting snipers up in a clock tower. It's like you've been watching Saving Private Ryan too much. It's not a good place to put a sniper. Contrary to popular belief, you don't put snipers in up in a clock tower it's like you've been watching saving private ryan too much you know like it's not a good place to put a sniper contrary to popular belief you don't put snipers in clock towers right why is that because they're easy to pick off up there yeah you're stuck up there

right you're stuck up there one tank rolling through takes care of everything i mean you've seen that in saving private ryan right i mean i don't know why everybody thinks that's the thing that guy actually he was a cool character in that movie but he got blown away by a tank because he's having a bell tower or whatever in that last podcast we just did about israel i forgot to give a shout out to our boy mutual friend sean ryan i did two awesome episodes with you so everyone make sure you go check them out i'll put those links in the description as well but you had done one like three four weeks into the Ukraine conflict in 2022 right after you got back so you you were on the ground there like immediately huh yeah we went um the the whole reason it happened and obviously this is on Sean's show um that first podcast I did, was a friend of mine is from Ukraine. He's part of

my Jiu-Jitsu Academy. And the whole buildup leading up to the thing, he was worried and, you know, this built up for a little while before. And I just would check in with him. And the kind of the day that everything kicked off, I had said to him checked in with him again but i had said to him hey let's go shooting let's go to the range and and get some training in he he's you know from ukraine but he's a new he was a new american was getting into his concealed carry and all this kind of stuff i was teaching him how to shoot a little bit and um so we went to the range kind of burned some hours on a saturday get his phone his head out of the phone off the tv that kind of thing and you know it's february in chicago so

it's freezing and we're standing out in the parking lot and he goes i think i'm just gonna go back to see my family and he hadn't been back in 11 years or whatever and he wanted to go back and i just you know i said look it was right then and there i didn't even think twice about it i just said you can't go back. You have no experience. You don't know what you're doing. You don't know what the situation is. I said, let me see if I can get somebody, some people,

and help get you back there and bring you back here safely. And I had no plan. I had no plan. We weren't the Overwatch Foundation, so I didn't have even kind of like an apparatus or an infrastructure to do this. What work had you done in the context of what was pre-Overwatch, but like some of that work? stuff, the Afghan pullout stuff. And then we went to, um, hurricane Ida, two trips to hurricane Ida. And then when we got back from that hurricane, we had done a couple of trips up to the military base in Wisconsin, Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, where they were housing a lot of these Afghans. And, and, and we, we kind of worked with that big army and the State Department there and just kind of doing some stuff up there with everything that was going on with that mess.

But we were at that point after that was when I got with my business partner and kind of said, look, maybe we could put something together. I didn't even know what it was. I didn't know anything about the nonprofit world. I didn't know how we would maybe structure this whole thing, but I said, we're showing that we can help people and we have good guys that are really eager to do this kind of stuff. And for not knowing that we're, what we're doing, we're okay at it and we definitely could learn and get better. And maybe we build this out and create something. So we were, it was just an idea. idea we never we're just kind of roughly talking about it um and then when yuri wanted to go back i just grabbed another recon marine and i just said hey

will you go with me and he was like yes and i kind of was surprised because i put some feelers out and it's kind of hard like hey do you want to go to Ukraine as soon as possible and it was very early days in the war obviously a crazy situation it was a major conflict kind of thing it's it's hard to you know I'm not asking anybody if they want to go to like a resort in the Bahamas with me um but he just said yes right away and how'd you get in there we flew to a country in eastern europe and drove a whole bunch of hours like we when we arrived in eastern europe it was um like five o'clock in the evening and we had maybe a eight nine ten eleven hour drive because we were had to stop and all this kind of stuff so we drove all night and we're trying to get to the border i think i think we got to the border poland and ukraine or um no not poland um so we you can get the map and

try and figure it out um but yeah so we we get to that border and it was middle of the night. It was, I can't remember exactly, maybe three o'clock in the morning or something, zero dark 30. And the border was unbelievable. It was a mass exodus and there was a whole bunch of cars kind of lined up on the non-Ukrainian side of the border, kind of waiting to receive people, pick people up. There was some vehicles trying to take stuff in, like big trucks and all this, early days. And it was cold and it was snowing. And we had a contact in this country that connected us with this driver. He couldn't speak English and we couldn't speak his language.

And it was crazy. It was just trying to figure this out and get yourself ready for this unknown. And we tried talking to some of the border agents and being like, can you let us, here's who we are, here's what we're doing, can we get in? And he's like, look,

the camp at the border at the moment is very, very dodgy, right? Especially at night. There had been some unfortunate circumstances, women getting raped and just some crazy stuff going on. It was, as you can imagine, just this almost like a refugee type camp. And so he says, you're going gonna have to wait till the sun comes up and then we'll start letting people in. So we basically just hung out on the side of the road

and the poor guy that drove us had to drive us for all these hours. We're stopping, we're doing this. We had stopped on the way and tried to raid as many pharmacies as we could for as many supplies, medical supplies that we could make,hift ifax or whatever. We don't want to go empty handed.

So we're stopping and all these pharmacies and all these roadside pharmacies. Were you afraid you weren't going to be able to bring that stuff across the board though? Maybe I'm overthinking it. No, I figured we, you know, what do you have in the boxes? I mean, look, we were the only we were the only idiots trying to get into the country. It wasn't like there was a big, like it was us and, you know, a couple of stray dogs or something thinking there was food on the other side. I don't know, right?

It was us. Alessi, there's a Vice video on YouTube. I'm just remembering this from when that war broke out. I don't know if you can look for it, but like on YouTube, a Ukrainian border crisis Vice vice something like that let's see if we got it but i i've seen i'm picturing in my head some of the imagery i've seen what you're talking about and yeah it is everyone else coming out of that country not in i don't know if we'll be able to get it but yeah and we and we were trying again so it was very crazy yeah anyway all

right i'm sorry keep going and so this this poor guy drove us all the way up and the intent was that we had set it up to where he was going to get a hotel uh a bit away from the the border in one of those border towns and spend the night before he drove all the way back to where to where he's kind of from and um so he was thinking this has been a long drive because we're making him stop and then we're hungry and we're trying to sort this out and we didn't really have a time hack to get there i mean we could have taken our time but we didn't know that at the time obviously and uh we just told them i mean it was freezing cold we told them you know all right we're going to go talk to these guys

yuri gets out and and talks to the guys comes back to the car it's like yeah we need this guy to stay with us because he has a car and it's freezing cold and we have to spend the night on the side of this road this dark road in the middle of nowhere, and wait to cross. And he was not happy about that, this guy, right? And so he was kind of voluntold to stay with us and all that kind of stuff. Did Ben Franklin make him feel better? No. I mean, we took care of him, but we didn't extra take care of him.

That's part of the deal, right? That's part of the deal. Your job is to get us there. What happens in between getting us there and us actually getting there that's all included it's all it's not like a cheap border day it's all inclusive at that point right um but no he did a fantastic job and you know he wasn't cut out for it it's not kind of his thing you know if you ask our guys to do anything they reach down and they've, I mean, they've done it all right. But this guy was just a regular guy. And so, yeah, so we did that and we ended up crossing.

And when we crossed, again, it's cold. We're carrying everything. We have like, you know, a pack on your back and a box on the front to full of all these these makeshift supplies we were gonna you know kind of fabricate these ifacs we just didn't want to go empty-handed again and um we just start crossing the border we do all the checks and then we're just wandering around kind of at the border area because we were waiting for someone as you can't make this up someone in a blue van to come and pick us up. And we're walking and it's kind of like,

you know how borders kind of have that no man's land area where nothing's really happening. It's just kind of white space, just a big open space kind of thing. So we're kind of there and there's snow everywhere, three inches of snow and it's snowing and it's just cold and it's early, early morning and we're exhausted and everything and

we're just waiting and i'm like yuri's obviously tried to coordinate some of this stuff with some ukrainian guys and i'm like we're waiting on a blue van i'm like i'm wandering in eastern europe into ukraine in the middle of the kickoff of this massive war and i'm waiting for some guy who i don't know to pick me up in a blue van it's like okay well where is this guy we're just wandering we see this little guard shack and we're just walking past it and this guy kind of is like hey what the heck is this guy doing in this i mean it was why there was someone in there i have no idea and so yuri starts talking to him and he like, let me see your papers kind of thing. And you must be thinking like, who the heck are these guys, you know?

And so we're like, all right, well, where do we go next? He just kind of pointed and he's like, just go that way to Ukraine. And like, none of us really said anything to him because what are you going to say? It's like, okay. So we just kept walking. Well, sure enough, the blue van rolls up and the door opens and we just hop in and then that was it. The guy ended up being, this guy, Sasha, he's an incredible guy.

He now lives, we moved him and his family to Chicago and he lives in our area now. What he had done is he had set up this kind of like community underground kind of humanitarian organization, like a charity fund where people in that community could just get together and help support the guys on the front lines with gear or or all kinds of stuff um and and it was like early days they had just they just mobilized this thing and kicked it up obviously i think the day we got there they had started it the day before but when we went in there it looked it looked like something out of a movie. It looked like when we walked in, it looked like this thing had been running for years. It was so well done.

People moving in every direction. Stuff getting moved in. Stuff getting moved out. They had security guys. I mean, it was dizzy walking in there. And that was kind of our first thing. And he kind of was very well known in that town that Yuri was from. And he got to the local army colonel.

He was in charge of kind of like in the US what we have is called MEPS. It's like Military Enlistment Processing Station. It's kind of when you enlist, you go there to kind of get all your, you get poked, prodded, sign this, do that, all this kind of when you enlist you go there to kind of get all your you get poked prodded sign this do that all this kind of stuff he kind of had one of he was in charge of one of those it was like a regional kind of office for for that but it had been turned very quickly into it's now a hardened military base and you know the guys that were coming into the military were going to be charged with defending their town kind of thing. And they had set up some fighting positions and just different stuff, fortified this and sorted out that. And this guy asked if we would meet with him. So we said, sure.

Right. And so we went in and we meet with him and he was a colonel. Right. Colonel in the army. So sitting in this guy's office. right and so we went in and we meet with him and he was a colonel right colonel in the army so sitting in this guy's office and the vibe was they kind of needed help but we didn't really know how to talk to him and i don't mean just a language barrier i mean i don't i've never done this before right i was in the military a bunch of years very i mean i never sat down with colonels

and had discussions over things like this right i? I mean, if a colonel, a battalion commander level is talking to you or above, you're, it's, you know, you're not talking to me kind of thing about anything planning wise or anything. And he didn't really know how to talk to us. Obviously he knew there were these two Marines in there and his town and it was just kind of, let's see what the deal was and and i kind of was tired and and just didn't know if it was going to be a waste of time or not and and you know zach and i zach zach's an incredible marine he um you know just he's very down to earth very calculated very um quiet guy but just an incredible incredible you know recon marine sniper he's just he's just amazing and i'm very just kick you square in the face kind of thing so

we we this turned into like a good cop bad cop thing when it went as as we as we went down the line but um i was kind of like i want to see if there's any real purpose for us to be here and i just start firing off questions that i shouldn't have been asking just because i wanted to see how receptive this guy was and if we were actually like what's going on right we had no thoughts of going and training anybody or we just wanted to know what the deal was and we're going back and forth and I actually started asking him about troop movements and stuff like that. And he did the right thing. He basically was like, not getting into that.

So I was like, okay, well, at least he kind of knows what he's talking about. Because if he started being like, oh, this, that, and the next thing. Yeah, it's bullshit. Yeah, or it's just going to be too wild or too, you know, it's just not a good vibe, right? If we're going to try and do something, I want to know your heads on straight and um because i don't have to do this my job's to babysit yuri for a week or eight days or whatever and get them back home right that's it that's it that was the whole purpose of going there was nothing else kind of we were learning this on the go right now what i'm just thinking of like the earliest days of the war. I can't remember. I mean we all saw the pictures or videos from Kiev and from outside there and how they were trying to mobilize to get down towards Odessa.

But Ukraine is a big, wide country. It's not like they were everywhere day one. It's like the size of Texas, yeah. Yeah, so you guys are – without revealing your location, you guys are – West of Kiev. without revealing your location you guys are west of kiev yes you're somewhere away from the main part of it you can just you can smell that there's something up in the air obviously yeah but they they were freaking out i mean they had this town so so what happened was and this is a good example of of illustrating where their heads were at was, he asked us to do a site survey. Can you kind of go over all the locations,

this location and all the locations we have and see where our guys are and see what we've done and give us your assessment? No problem. So we start doing that. You need sandbags here. You need to not do that there. We'd go into different

adjacent structures that they had kind of commandeered from the town and I mean at one point they had a guy in every window like every window and we're looking at that and they had you know you need to move this kind of machine gun position 50 yards that way or you know whatever they just something's off something's really done they had they were putting snipers up in a clock tower it's like you've been watching Saving Private Ryan too much you know like you it's not a good place to put a sniper contrary to popular belief you don't put snipers in clock towers right why is that because they're easy to pick off up there yeah you're stuck up there yeah right you're stuck up there one tank rolling through takes care of everything i mean you've seen that in saving private ryan right i mean i don't know

why everybody thinks that's the thing that guy actually he was a cool character in that that movie but he got blown away by a tank because he's up in a bell tower or whatever um but yeah so they had all this stuff and and we just kind of told them you know hey you're gonna burn these guys out it's early days and and you know there's nobody right on your doorstep right now. So you don't have to be this, you know, you can move into this kind of stuff. So he kind of liked that. So he left us with one of his majors and said he'll do the rest of the stuff and come back and see him in the afternoon.

So we did that. And when we went back, long story short, he says, look, I'm a tank commander. The major, he's an artillery commander. We now have all these infantry guys and we don't know anything about this. We don't know anything about small unit tactics. We don't know anything about, you know, trying to get guys trained up or anything like this. Can you help us? And we kind of just said, yes. We just were like, sure. Yeah, we'll help you. I mean, that's our thing. We know shoot, move, communicate. We know how we do that. Right. And it's very basic stuff. You need to teach these guys, obviously. So sure. We'll do that. We're going to be here the next eight, nine days. No problem. Okay. Come back at zero eight tomorrow. Does your underwear get uncomfortable, too tight, riding up your groin, or even your Well, I have the solution for you. The sponsor of today's show, Sheath Underwear. Sheath makes the most comfortable boxer briefs on the market. In fact, I'm wearing a pair of my Sheath underwear right as we speak. It's my favorite boxer brief I've ever worn. Go get yourself one pair, just

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J-U-L-I-A-N, to get 20% off your favorite new underwear today. We work out some of the details, and then we get back to where we're staying. And it was like, is this legal? Like, can we do this? You know, like, can it was like is this legal like can we do this you know like can we actually is this allowed like are we going to get home and there's going to be like ninjas coming out of the ceiling tiles to to roll us up or whatever like i i mean i don't know if we we both had done like foreign internal defense like trained trained with and trained foreign militaries um but that obviously was

in a official military capacity right but are you worried I mean you're talking about training here but this is a burgeoning opening up war like are you worried about the potential context of like if someone went really wrong and like one of you got shot or one of you shot someone else for some like if you got too close to the battle and then there's potentially an international issue because an american's on there no um no and that never crossed my mind i don't know if at that time zolinski was had created the foreign legion or anything like that i think it was very early they did that i i just can't remember in my head if that was a thing while we were like before we were there the first couple of days or if it came after but no i mean that thought never crossed crossed my mind i mean

you know if anything came in that town our plan was to leave right was to leave um we weren't going to stay there and try and take up arms or do anything like that it's nothing to do with me and i can't take you know i can't take on a whole russian army by myself right i mean it's not gonna work out i mean i think i'm i'm pretty dangerous at a cocktail party but, but I mean, I'm not ready to go ramble and, you know, and Zach neither. I mean, our plan was anything really goes crazy, we do what we need to do, but we're out, right? And we're maybe taking it at that point.

It's just, is Yuri's family coming with us and how are we going to do that? And, you know, that kind of was the plan. So yeah, we never once thought, like, anything like that. And we show up the next day to start the training with these guys. Now, here's what happened. The war started, like, if I remember correctly, end of the week. It was a Thursday.

Yeah. end of the week and thursday yeah and so that weekend from from when it started until like we were there early the next week um 200 000 plus people had voluntarily joined the ukrainian army now their army prior to this conflict was not very well trained not very big relative to the threat that they have um and and very underfunded and just depleted in general dilapidated in general because many of the politicians in the ukrainian government had been in bed with russia different business ventures and obviously the whole kind of blurred lines in the east with, yeah, they're not us, but we're not them. But we're, I mean, that's a whole other story and we'll probably get to it. Don Bass and all that.

Yeah. We'll get, we'll get to that and kind of how, how that, that the politics with inside Ukraine affect all of this. But, um, you know, the military military was very weak so they're not able to handle that much intake number one it was it was amazing julian it was like to see that to see that many people stepping up when your country gets invaded like that it was a beautiful thing to to hear and see and to to be to be immersed in right that this was going on because you have these, I always say the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker just going down and signing their name, you know? And yeah, that was amazing.

But at the same time, you're the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. It's not, you know, we've talked about this previously. You cannot just pick up a rifle and go to war. Right. And I wouldn't advise trying either to try and prove me wrong. You can't do it, believe me. But you said 200 around 200 000 people sign up right away yes so it's not like

it's not like they're prepared to hand out 200 000 uniforms and get a march in line these are people fighting in in civilian clothing on streets trench warfare now so we show up the next day and i kid you not you know um the movie the mighty ducks yes and emilio estevez pulls up and he gets out the limo and the team's standing in front of him and they're just a bag like ragtag group of shit bags yeah that's literally what happened right you had guys there you know i call it the eastern european tuxedo they had the the adidas sweatpants with a leather jacket and the polo shirt on underneath and you know the the the running shoes or whatever and it's just like oh my goodness you know and and everything in between there was old guys

like really old guys i mean there was fathers and sons and it was it was amazing but we just kind of looked and was like all right um we'll work with this this is this is what we have let me stretch out my hamstrings here you know and guys obviously not in physical shape i mean just guys that are not soldiers and had no ambitions or no you know know, they were not trying to be soldiers. But now they're soldiers. Right. And so just kind of looking at that, we're like, all right, well, let's just see what they can do. Like, let's see.

Can they walk? Like, no shit. Can they walk? Can they walk in a straight line like a ranger file? Or can they, you know, can they do can they hold a weapon? Like, can they hold a weapon? And that was the other thing. Probably less than probably about half of them had weapons maybe less than half of them had weapons some of them you were using sticks off a tree or like two liter water bottles to simulate yeah we saw a video can we find a video of that ukrainians

i have ukrainian soldiers using wooden guns to practice oh this was this wasn't even it wasn't even that this was a this was a stick off a tree yeah i remember seeing these videos like oh boy yeah i mean and it was it was uh it was pretty wild and and yeah that's how it started we started teaching them just very basic, you know, school of infantry type tactics, you know, again, basic patrolling. Yeah. Yeah, not even that, man. See, that's fancy. We'll put that in the corner.

That's fancy in the corner there with that wooden rifle. Like, I'm talking a stick off a tree, you know, and I could send you some stuff too. I could send you videos and pictures but i mean yeah not even that at least that maybe you could get some familiarity of actually handling the weapon as far as where you would put your hands i mean that's not a two liter pepsi bottle no that's what our guys were using and that's crazy yeah yeah and then but this is so early on you know obviously the country's going to be

getting support it was pretty clear right away but like what did you have any idea what the timeline of weaponry was going to be to arrive no i was going to say no and i think we had asked kind of like hey this is day one no problem you have what you have but um you know we're gonna be here the rest of the week what are the chances and blah blah and there was some rumblings of hey maybe this maybe that so you didn't have any access to weaponry at this point did you we could have got some stuff if we really needed it like i'm talking to you and your guys we could have got some stuff if we needed it but you didn't get it no you taught them you taught them without weapons yeah well we used the weapons they did have okay all right yeah like we some of them had some stuff yeah

and but again it was like everybody had some different variant of the ak platform um and you know the ak platform in general in in different parts of the world it's like what the heck is this it's like just a you know they're they're it's not the not the best of gear for sure and um yeah we just started training them like you know two man rushes team rushes like how to move and how to like move in coordination with each other so if you need to move and shoot you're not shooting each other right um and you can actually get from where you are to the place that you're trying to go tactically using movement and fire to cover your movement and and trying to build that out um to get them to a point where they could actually be functional um patrolling simple

patrolling you know just columns you know walking in a in a in columns or a ranger file like a single single file type patrol and kind of just um covering concealment basic stuff right like hey a bush can conceal you but it's not going to stop a bullet like this is where we were with these guys and I keep picturing Mel Gibson and the Patriot training all those guys. Oh, and the dynamic was great because here's the thing, and I'll illustrate this in terms of how we do it in the Marine Corps. You enlist in the Marine Corps, and let's say you're going to be an infantryman, infantry soldier.

That's going to be your job. You go to basic training for three months, right? At the end of that, you're a basic, basically trained Marine. Like you've basically just earned a title of Marine. From then you go on to the school of infantry, which is another two months where you learn the basics of. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup. Pick any two breakfast items for $4. New four-piece French toast sticks, bacon or sausage wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small hot coffee, and more. Limited time only at participating Wendy's Taxes Extra.

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Of being a warfighter a little bit of shooting a little bit of moving a little bit of communicating and when you get done with that you you know you're not going to trip over your own two feet you kind of know how to run different um or not run them but you know how to function in different patrols and different formations and and you know how to set an ambush you know counter ambush some stuff but it's very basic level right you've done it a little bit in an urban environment you've done it you know in a woodland environment um you've done long kind of marches with weight on your back i mean you're basic basic basic then you go to say say you're going to be an infantry. You would go to that unit and you're the low man in a fire team and you're learning, right? Fire hose type stuff. So you're looking at that and you're saying, just to get to that point to where you can be the

least trained guy in your actual unit, you're talking it's five, six months, right? We had to do this with these guys in a week. And not only that, in basic training, you're learning discipline. You're getting to the point where you're at a decent level of physical fitness and that continues obviously. Like a manageable level of physical fitness, right? And you haven't even started at the end of basic training, any kind of long humps, any kind of long marches with weight on your back or anything. It's just kind of long humps like any kind of long marches with weight on your back or anything it's just kind of you're physically fit um and you're disciplined and and you kind of have this military mindset that you're beginning to develop at the end of that which is very important along with everything else these guys had none of that they had no discipline there and so we didn't have

time to break them down and build them back up. Marine Corps basic training is very good at taking some idiot 18-year-old, making him not an idiot 18-year-old, and turning him into a U.S. Marine that can then become an incredible war fighter. Right? At this point, do you still have a limit on the days you're planning on doing this? We know we're only going to be there for like nine days total. So eight days left.

Wow. Right. And so we know that. And so Zach and I's talk was like amongst each other was we don't have time. Like, and we knew we didn't have to break them down too much. They already were pretty broken down with, but they just didn't have that discipline. They didn't have, and there's no way we could instill in them the gravity of what was going on. They kind of knew from as much as you'd know

if your country got invaded and you're the local mechanic and now this is kind of on your doorstep and you're being affected by it. But then now you're in the army and you're gonna have to one day go do something. You can't put that to them in eight days. And so we just tried to do the best we could with them. And we got them to a pretty decent level

in that amount of time. And it was good. He played bad cop because I said, look, I'll just get into their assholes and chew them up a little bit whenever they're slacking off or they're like, if I teach you something, it doesn't matter what I teach you,

there's time that you need to learn that thing. It could be, you get it on your first try. It could be, you get it on your fourth try. And even if you get it, whatever, whatever repetition you get it, let's say to whatever we define that as, you're still not good at it. You just kind of, you might go lucky, but you did it correctly. Right. And you might not know the why you might not understand, but like you did it. We didn't have time for everyone to take six reps to get there. And so it's like, you need to be paying attention and you need to be plugged into this. You can't be thinking about going home and banging your wife, or you can't be thinking about dinner, or you

can't be thinking about the air raid sirens going off you have to be totally immersed in this because and and you know and i was the one like i don't have to be here i've already done this you know and i can help you but if you're going to be a bag of ass what am i wasting my time for i'll go back to yuri's house and drink tea and hang out in ukraine for the next couple days and make sure he's good to go right and and meet his family and all this kind of stuff so and and zach played the good cop and it was it was really good well i mean for for not doing this before and being thrown into it and look we've we had taught at various levels throughout our careers of doing different stuff i obviously have a instructor background from you know what i do now with jujitsu and all this kind of stuff. So, you know, teaching people stuff that we could do in our sleep was not difficult. It was the whole dynamic of everything else, the environment and the language barrier and just everything else. And poor Yuri, it's like, all right, Yuri, here's what we need for you. now have to be this incredible interpret and interpreter on a subject matter that you know nothing about shit yeah you got that going on too yes because

he he's never been in the military and he did outstanding it was incredible i could you couldn't have written it any better but i'm saying like you you have to you gotta get the language interpreted and everything to these guys is it yeah you don't speak ukrainian yeah i have i have some funny videos of that kind of stuff as well but they can tell when you're angry and not oh yeah and that's it right and and that's it and look i had no problem getting in guys faces and a lot of that was like i'm i'm mickey mouse compared to what you're gonna go do right you can't handle me yelling at you for a couple of days. Like you could have just mailed it in and been like, I'll take this guy.

Chewing me out for six more days. What does that look like when you do this? So you get in a guy's face, you start saying motherfucker get in line. And then does Yuri walk up and say in Ukrainian, like motherfucker get in line. Or is he like, he says motherfucker get in line.

Yeah. He tried, he tries to match my, I mean, he got, he's his motherfucker get in line. Yeah, he tries to match my, I mean, he's so good at this now. And he's so good now because he understands the tactics. I mean, you know, kind of getting a little bit off on a tangent. But when we go and do training trips and we're working together, our teams are working together, we take, he goes with us. And he's involved in like, Yuri, here's how you do a fucking L-shape ambush right

and he's he's what so he he could we have a joke he could go and be some drill instructor in Ukraine right now and teach them our tactics by himself he knows how to do it now you know he's he's done it all these times um and he really he you know we get back every night debrief a little bit you know we're kind of having some whiskey and eating food and and he's asking questions now okay this and that and then you could see he was really plugged in and he really was you know because it meant something to him obviously oh yeah these are his townspeople now you know and when he left you know yuri now is i mean he was he was a teenager when he left you know i mean and so this is little yuri coming back and and he's he has this thing now

where he's like affecting the war effort in the town he's from it was how many years since he left 11 years it was you know and and and some a lot of people would just be walking in the street and kind of he'd stop somebody that he knew and be like, do you remember me? And they're like, no. And he would tell them and they would like freak out that they remember him, you know. And Yuri's a tall guy. He's like 6'7", I think, 6'6". Oh, shit.

Oh, he's a huge guy. Yeah, he's so tall. So, yeah, just, so we did this and we got the guys to a decent level. And part of it too. In eight days. Yeah. I mean, look, they weren't, I, you know. They weren't special forces, but.

Yeah, but they weren't even, they weren't good. They just weren't as bad as they were. So they might not get, yeah. Yeah. And so we, you know, and what we would do is we would train those guys. And then later on in the day when when they needed a break and we got done with them we would go and we would kind of work and and figure out what we could do and on the in that humanitarian group the the charity group that they had built and and we did

some amazing things there we developed there was a team of seamstresses there i talk about in sean on the sean ryan show where this woman had a team of seamstresses and zach actually had um some experience zach got hurt real bad in the marine corps he was fast roping out of a helicopter with one of those big saws the the saws that you see in the movies like jaws of life type saws and he fell off the rope helicopter movie fell off the rope his his uh you can watch you can watch the video it's horrendous video he basically falls 30 40 feet wait the video of this exists of zach falling out the helicopter yeah like blackburn style and black hawk down where's the video on his instagram what's his instagram oh i'll have to i'll get it to you on one of the breaks it's a long tag but um yeah he fell out of the helicopter and landed back first

on the deck of a ship um he fell out of the helicopter landed on his back on the deck of a ship on the saw and so he got heart had recovery i don't know exactly lived oh yeah yeah well zach you're not killing zach um apparently not you're not killing that guy and um he i don't know when in relation to this next thing i'm going to say is but he got into a position where he was on different task elements, I'd say that were helping to design gear and give input on kit and gear and things like this, right. For the community. Um, and so he had some experience with gear. And so we were trying to come up with, um, trying to come up with, well, you have all these seamstresses kind of connected to this. People were just walking into this place and like, I can do this.

How can I help? I can do that. How can I help? I have, I know about this. How can I help? And, um, this woman had this team of seamstresses and we were like, maybe she can make, Zach was like, maybe she can make chest rigss so he comes up with this design and she's like yeah i can get a prototype for this in a day or whatever and so we keep checking back in and and i knew something was kind of wrong because they kept kind of delaying and i was like look whatever they have we just need to see it right so they brought it in and it was terrible it was terrible like i mean trying to say to a little old old Ukrainian lady, like go out and develop a chess rig. It's not a normal, it's not a normal thing, right? It's not a normal request.

And of course, Zach's like, yeah, we'll have her turning these out and it'll be great. And, you know, and it was way too big of an apple for her to, for her to bite. And I just kind of had this idea of, well, let's just design a bandolier. Like, kind of had this idea of, well, let's just design a bandolier. Like kind of like three magazines that you would have on a – A bandolier?

Yeah. So I was thinking like if we take like the placard and for you guys that either are military, please forgive me. I'm going to be rudimentary as I explain this to the non-military people. But like a thing that would attach to your plate carrier, chest rig that will hold three rifle magazines. You've seen them. Yeah. Right.

Like a placard for, for carrying ammunition. But then what we would do is because they don't have gear at this point, they don't have plate carriers. They don't have plates. They don't have chest gear, like chest rigs or any kind of deuce gear or H harnesses or anything. So if we take that and turn it into a bandolier basically put like a uh strap on it so you could wear it like a man purse kind of thing because i did that in iraq when i was when when my team

was in a vehicle i was a turret gunner and it was hard to be in the turret with all kinds of gear so i would just take two actual bandoliers the old school molly type bandoliers that i had kept from previous gear and i would strap them down on my side so um and so i could be in the turret and would still have access oh there's zach yeah so um i would let you look him up yeah yeah oh is this it this is the video this is the video all right we'll put it in the corner so this is the video of him let's see here oh wait so so wait that's the uh oh that's the the spoof he made there's a newer version no go up to the top go up to the top up to the top um did he pin it is that why he may have no oh there's zach look i'm handsome man um hold on see if it won't be on his story you know what i'll do i'll get the video so

zach the other night it's obviously we're getting we're very close here to the um anniversary of um black hawk down right oh yeah it just happened last week and so he made a he made a video that he put on a story of him falling out with a helicopter spliced with blackburn falling out of the helicopter oh shit and so it shows him actually hitting the deck um but you could see in that video there you can use your imagination and see what the rest of that video would have looked like, right? Yeah, so there's one. There's a raw one, you're saying. Yes.

This one's just like. This one's like the dumb ways to die one. This one is. But yeah, the helicopter just kind of moves and he falls off the rope. And yeah, he falls and lands on that thing. And that's one of those big saws. And it obviously has messed up his back. He's still having a bunch of issues and all that kind of stuff with it. But it looks painful.

Oh, I couldn't even imagine. Couldn't even imagine. So yeah, so we designed this bandolier and they still use those bandoliers, you know, and it was kind of cool. We kind of just drew it up and they made them. And so we would go and do was kind of cool we we kind of just drew up and and they made them and so we would go and do that kind of stuff after we were done training the guys how i think you said this at the beginning but how many guys approximately were you training this first round this was probably about a platoon size um so i think it was probably like 25 guys 25 to 30 guys something like that and did you have contact with like the ukrainian military commanders that they were yeah with the cardinal and the major the major was there um the major

was there every day he wanted to see and i and i said i want your officer there and we would go check in with the cardinal every day as well got it so these are the townspeople who were part of those 200 000 that signed up from the whole country and then they were assigned to some sort of military unit yeah right right away and you were basically coming in and taking the training off the hands of their okay yeah now did their commander speak any english or was this i was gonna say also a translator too yeah i mean a couple of them could say hello and all that kind of stuff but yeah there was kind of hello i think i think there was one or one or two guys that spoke

English, but a lot of it was kind of like, you know, Yuri was like, oh, maybe he could help me translate. It's like, no. Right. Like, I don't know that guy. I don't know. You know, like it's, you just can't, it's like, no, we were controlling how this works. Like we're not, you know, it's great.

He can speak English. He's not going to be a help. Where were you crashing during this time you're his house you were yeah and so with his family i assume you were there and he didn't he didn't tell them that he he didn't tell them he was coming until we were 15 minutes away from the house well they probably were happy to see him they were definitely were happy how big was his family um so it's his mother his father his sister and his his grandmother okay so it's not like 12 people in there no i mean they had he had some family that were kind of more east that were moving west and and would stop in

and stuff like that um you know so but yeah it was yeah it was crazy we just kind of stayed there and it was good because we had good food every night his mother would cook for us every night you know big ukrainian meals and you know were you afraid of like air fire coming in um potentially no i mean so the sirens were going off all the time rockets were being detected and all that kind of stuff nothing landed but look i've been mortared before um you know we've had all kinds of stuff landing we understand how that works it's like you know if you're hearing impacts you can tell the distances of how close that stuff is and all that kind of stuff and and that's actually that actually happened we were out on the training field one day and this and it was a beautiful morning and it's snowing it's like picturesque right like something out of freaking narnia and um the the siren starts kicking off and these guys start freaking out and they start

running to go inside the building and all this kind of stuff and uh zach we both kicked off. Zach actually kicked off, and it was like, look, what are you doing? All the sirens are sirens. What are you doing, right? Like, this country's at war. There's going to be sirens. There's going to be worse than sirens. You can't go running every time you hear a siren.

We're training, and until we hear impacts that are landing close to usiren we're training and until we hear impacts that are landing close to us we're training and they kind of were like you know it was a little bit of reality for them or a little bit more of reality for them you know because that was a natural reaction for them yeah it's a natural and and i can't put myself in their shoes. It's a natural reaction. At the same time, their country – it just goes to show you. There's things we just can't control. You don't know until you're in that situation because to these guys' credit, at the same time, they're volunteering to fight for their country that's being invaded. And they obviously, to their credit, feel that desperation to have to be a part of holding this off and yet

you know the first time you don't know what it's like to get punched in the mouth until you actually do i think i think about the human side of that a lot because obviously i was i was 17 when i enlisted i was 18 when i went to basic training in the military and again you don't know anything. But I think there's something in our minds that, okay, I've enlisted in the military and I understand what this is. Maybe I'm not going to do college. I'm not going to do this. I'm going to make this a career.

I'm going to do my four years ago. But like, I've put some thought into that. I've probably talked about it. I've had conversations with friends or parents and I've made this conscious decision. I've went through a lengthy kind of in processing situation. And now I'm about to go start that. Or now I've started that I'm in basic training after the, the, you know, in Marine Corps bootcamp, the first night you take a shower, everybody stands in the same shower bay. The drill instructor stands in the middle and he tells you to get your left arm wet.

Now get your left arm soapy. Now rinse off your left arm. And so you're doing this. It's called showering by the numbers. So you're being told what to get wet, what to soap, and what to rinse off. And if you are getting the wrong body part wet or the wrong body part soapy, you go back out to the squad bay. You stand in front of your bed, in front of your bunk bed, pretty much as naked as the day you're born.

You can put underwear on your wet body, no towel, and you just have to stand there until everyone's done showering. Right? And so you learn, you do what you're told, when you're told to do it, how you're told to do it. All the way down to that. And you do that for about a week. You do that that you shower like that for like a week right and it's the same with eating it's the same with how you get dressed it's the same you know inspection before you go to bed and it's to build this kind of stuff and so yeah you have some reality checks in there when the first guy just like i'm just gonna wash this and it's like you know you get

screamed at and sent to his then you go you go out there and you see him standing there still kind of wet, still half soapy. It's like, yep. Okay. You know, this is real now. Right. And, um, you know, you have these little things as you tick along in the process that, that keeps you aligned to what you're now doing with your life. These guys never had that. I mean, yes, they understand they've enlisted in the army.

They understand their country's been invaded and they're at war and all this kind of stuff. But that all happened in like, you know, two swishes of a cat's tail kind of thing. And I just don't think you can process that properly. And so, yeah, you hear these sirens and you just, I mean, I didn't hear an air raid siren until I was in the military for years and I went to Iraq and, you know what I mean? Or like things like that, right? You hear a warning that there's mortars coming in or something.

So I had tons of preparation for military things before that instance ever happened. And yes, you do kind of get like, you do get squirrelly about that. But by the end, you know, by the end to say one deployment, you don't care when the air raid siren goes off or you don't care if the mortars are landing, you know, all the way over there and you can even see the end. You're like, okay, it doesn't matter. I'm going to get used to it. you just get used to it where they had that reaction but our job

at that point was to try and lock them on right and get it into their head like that's not a thing anymore right for you your wife can do that your mother can do that they can run for cover when the sirens come you That's not your thing anymore, right? You need to continue the mission and we're training. And so, yeah, you kind of, we had some of these moments. And look, it was long days. It was tiring days. We're pushing these guys.

They don't have the level of fitness that they need to get the work done. And, you know, we did a good job of kind of playing them like an accordion, pushing them when we needed to push them, letting them breathe a little bit when they needed to breathe and then getting right back on the accelerator again. And, you know, we did a really good job. And look, Zach's an incredible professional and very experienced. And we just really did a good job. And the Ukrainians noticed that. And so when we left after that first trip, I remember it was like, oh, man. We both wanted to stay longer.

That car ride, which was very, very long, was very, very quiet. A lot of reflection. And it was like we could all hear each other's thoughts. You know what I mean? We weren't done was like we could all hear each other's thoughts you know I mean we weren't done and and we could help more and and some of those guys you may never see again right and and and some of this was you know the head spinning on what else we could do and things we could do on the humanitarian side and what we're gonna do when we get home I had talked to my business partner during that trip and and signed paperwork to create an entity um to be

the overwatch foundation and then we obviously turned it into a 501c3 um and so like all this stuff was happening and it was kind of like for me it was like okay we're doing this thing now right how much did you prior to going over there the first time, because like you said, the war had literally just broken out. How much did you know about Ukraine before all this? Not much at all. I had never thought about ever going to Ukraine. I, yeah, not much at all. I mean, I knew where Ukraine was was i knew the history of the country i knew

the chernobyl stuff i mean basic knowledge you know okay you obviously go over there because of something personal with yuri and you wanted to protect them cool but then it it seems to me not even seems to me. It's obvious. This all happened so fast where like you got there. You have this opportunity. Boom, let's do it. The next day, you're a fucking platoon commander. And so a part of me wonders like – because we'll talk about your career a little later too.

But like got out of the military in 2012. Fast forward, you did some contracting. How long after that did you do almost four years okay so call it 2016 since then no action right yeah and i kind of from 2016 until 2020-ish i'd say i had basically disconnected myself from the community the veteran community from kind of my past life. I just looked at it as, you know, I had a bunch of problems that a lot of veterans have, the anger stuff, just trying to figure out what's next

and just these common things that, you know, you've had guys on the podcast and we all kind of are starting to hear about and know about some of those same kind of problems where it just is difficult. And maybe there was a bunch of help back then available if there was i didn't know about it and didn't take advantage of it and didn't even care you know and um so i tried to look at it as not closing a chapter in my life and trying to find the next one i looked at it as closing that book and trying to start a new book and now the first second you had an opportunity though you kind of no i had i had earlier in that year

started to kind of reconnect with the community and kind of get back into training a little bit what made you want to do that i don't know i think i just i really don't know. I think I just, I really don't know. I didn't have a, I didn't have a motivation to do it. I didn't think if I do this, maybe, maybe something or what I just, it just kind of happened. I came across a couple of people and it just was very organic how it happened. And it was, it felt okay. It felt right. And, and I just kind of was enjoying it, getting back into the swing of things and training a little bit and helping others who were interested in that kind of stuff. Did you get a rush out of it? No, no.

It kind of was just, it kind of was maybe nostalgic, I guess. Right. It kind of was, it kind of just was like, Oh, I can do some of these things that I liked about what I used to do, but not have any of the bullshit that goes along with it. Whether that's the politics of stuff or just the function of stuff or, or whatever it was. Right. It just, there's none of that. There's none of the bad stuff I can go and I can can train or I can link up with a couple other guys. Or sometimes it was even just like

learning about the community. Like I didn't know that there was this flourishing, budding, kind of empowering community of veterans doing things, right? I thought you just get done and you feel like crap and you have to try and figure the world out and because you're not with your group anymore you're not with your guys anymore you're not with that unit anymore that you have to do it on your own and i didn't know that there were i didn't know that this was going on kind of and it was

kind of fueled by the internet right like this group this group of, and you know, you're, you're involved in it as, as facilitating your podcast and having these guys, these incredible guys on as guests. It's like, I didn't know that this community kind of existed and was functioning the way it does. Um, and, and so seeing that and, and, you know, it kind of just did happen through the internet and social media was kind of starting to really pick up with some of that stuff at that time. And it was like, okay, this is okay. Like this is, this is actually kind of cool. You know, um, I can do the good stuff and not have to deal with any of the garbage that goes

on and I can find cool people right um and so i was doing that somewhat kind of locally with people around i you know could see and touch and and go and have experiences with and so it kind of all happened at the right time you know what i mean yeah it just kind of was and it was such a slow thing there was nothing behind it there was no objective there was no there was no trying to be this veteran guy of doing anything like no podcast no social media presence with that it was just me doing activities let's call it right training or you know that kind of stuff and um and then all this other stuff the afghan pull out and then us having this idea to just go to the

hurricane and and um you know previous to that couple guys asking hey will you help me train with this or will you help me you know do this i'm i just got this new firearm can you help me and you know that kind of stuff with on the civilian side i was like sure that would be fun right to help you out i know you you don't have any experience with this i'll help you and then it all came together so that's kind of what that's kind of how all that came well can we actually take a detour and talk a little bit about your your previous life that we got here because that's actually like a really good cliffhanger with after the first ukraine one right there because you've done a lot of work there since yeah but you know you were born in scotland so you weren't you you

came here at what age i was like 10 11 okay and you settled in the chicago area yeah i would spend like most of the school year here and then my mother every chance we had a break she would send us back to scotland have a big extended family in scotland um so it was really important for us to go back kind of multiple times every year and and see everybody and all that kind of stuff um and so i got involved in the military here because i um my uncle was in the Black Watch, the very royal prestigious regiment in the British Army since he was like 16. And I always looked up to him. If I would have stayed in Scotland, I probably would have followed his footsteps and joined that unit. And in high school, I had the opportunity to do rotc an rotc program it was the first year that my high school was implementing it when i was a freshman so i got to do all four years it

was air force rotc and i got involved in the rifle team and the drill team and became you know the assistant commander and commander for both of those teams and and just really liked the whole thing right and and was getting into the i was doing the flight simulator thing that we a program that we had there and and all that kind of stuff and i was just i was trying to i wanted to be an infantry officer in the marine corps and got accepted to a couple of different military academies. And I was kind of leaning towards one. And then I said, you know what?

I don't want to wait four years to actually be in the military. I'm just going to enlist. And so when I was 17, my mother signed the paperwork for me to enlist. And I got my uncle's advice on what should I do. I knew I wanted to be in some kind of combat role. And I asked my uncle and it was basically obviously between the army or the marine corps and he was like the marine corps I've done

some training with the marines and do that kind of thing if I was you do that and so that's the route I went and that was back at the time where the the commercial was the slaying the dragon and the dress blues and all that kind of thing so it was the cooler commercial anyway um and and yeah so that was the that was the the route i took did you feel a real like was obviously like you wanted to do that kind of thing like you were saying but did you feel a real by that time of enlistment like connection to america what it stood for i did and, I'm from a really kind of poor place in Scotland, right? There's not a lot of opportunity, not a lot of jobs, and people really struggle.

It's a lot of drugs, a lot of suicide. It's the most beautiful place that you'll ever see, but it's tough, right? It's very tough for people. And obviously I knew about about I've always been a history buff so learning about the history of America and what America is and what it stands for and everything I just totally connected with that and and and you know saw the difference from the country I was from and saw what opportunity is at a very young age right and where I think so many people grow up in America

and they they don't they hear there's a lot of opportunity but they don't know what opportunity is because they're just kind of they're around it that they don't even see it and and my whole reason kind of for joining the military was it was I know it's cheesy but it was like my way of giving back to the country for allowing us to come and stay here. Wow. It was important. It was like, I'll go do this. And I don't know what that meant.

I didn't know if it would just be, I didn't know what it meant. I just was like, I'll go do this and I'm interested in this. And I know the history of this organization that I'm going to join I mean I didn't know as well as I know it now but I knew enough about it that the Marine Corps was a a serious institution with an incredible history and I was like okay I get to go do that you know did you wonder why because I would imagine like a lot of your normal high school classmates didn't go the military route because it's not like we have a draft or anything here but did you wonder like as someone who i guess at that point is like six seven years in the country you know and clearly loves being here and the opportunity of it a lot did you kind of wonder

why some of your friends like took it maybe did you think to yourself they're taking it for granted they they why don't they want to serve like i want to serve like you're trying to give back for being here but at the same time, like there's, it's what it stands for, you know? Yeah. I mean, I, I think that I did kind of think that, I mean, I think being in the ROTC program, I was around a lot of other like-minded people. I was around a lot of people that did join the military.

Yes. Right. And, and every day I was in that. But just in that program now. Right. But I think it kind of insulated me a little more than if I didn't have that program. You know what I mean? Yes.

And there were some guys on the other shoe, there were some guys who joined the military but never were in the ROTC program. And that always stuck out to me too. I was like, why? If you're interested in joining the military, you're going to join the military. Why didn't you do the program? Because it really, it really helped me. Number one, I got promoted right away. Um, and I had learned all the close quarters drill that, that, that you need to have. And, you know, I was able to have a good position and, and, and bootcamp and, and kind of be a leader in, in basic training because of the experience I had had with some of the drill

and some of the bearing, military bearing. And, you know, I just kind of had, some guys were just completely lost in the sauce, as you can imagine, right? But yeah, I mean, for me, I kind of believe that, especially in this country, there should be some kind of national service. And now I know a lot of people are probably, you know know i could almost like hear the groans coming through the internet saying that

i hear why you're saying this but but that doesn't mean joining the infantry in the army or the marine corps right national service there with this country there's so many things that young people could do as part of national service. Obviously the military, if you don't want any kind of combat job, you could, there's tons of jobs in the military. You can hand out, you know,

towels at the rec center in the military for two years. Or yeah, if you want to, you can take whatever job you could also work for the post office. You could work for the national park service. There's so many things that this country i'm probably leaving out a bunch of ideas that uh we could have as a national service but from 18 to 20 years old you're an idiot you're an idiot absolutely you're

you're an absolute idiot you don't know your elbow from your arsehole yeah and you know you're gonna go waste a couple of years in college and and waste a bunch of money set yourself up with a bunch of debt you don't know what you're gonna do anyway you're probably gonna switch a major and and end up spending more money getting and and still you come out of college you've had zero experience doing anything you might have worked at subway or something just to get some spending money on the weekend at college, but you haven't done anything. And you've never done anything for anybody else usually. Yeah, see, that's the thing.

And so having some kind of national service where we take young Americans, male and female, and we're teaching them what the country is and how to serve not only the country that gives you all the opportunity, but people that live in that country as well there i mean to me there's no reason we shouldn't be doing that i think you have a great case i i think about this often and obviously like we didn't have it when i was coming through and we don't have it now and it's not like i went in the military or or even worked at the post office or something like that. But I was still a complete fucking moron when I was 25. And there's – you look at this. I mean you and I were talking with Mikhail and Ron in between these podcasts.

And obviously they're from Israel and like they've been out of the service for a while. They've been living in America here as citizens. And what did they say? Right. At the snap of a finger, they'll fucking go back. They're ready to go right now. This war is,

this war, exactly. Because they know what their country is. They know what it means. They, you know, and, and here's the other thing.

And this kind of on the backend strengthens my argument is, do you know how many people say to me, and I get this a lot now I'm lucky I'm kind of opened up to a whole bunch of people that would never know who I was if it wasn't for the Overwatch podcast like this and podcasts like Sean Ryan where they'll say to me I was never in the military but I wish I would have joined and they're not even really specific about that they just say I wish i wish i would have done something i think part you know what i think part of it is too when when the people because i hear

that line a lot too and i've probably i probably said that myself at some point like because i i think about stuff like that a lot but it's also probably like a little bit of a search for meaning you get something in that that is bigger than yourself. In society now with social media and all these distractions and people comparing themselves with other people and you have people, it's more of a secular time, which is perfectly fine, but there are these individual crises that are happening with people going within to try to find things and they tell themselves there's nothing there so they they put something outside and and put all their force into that and sometimes it's a lot of times it's not a positive place you know if you had something like this it'd be a positive place right to put that well and not only that but you're learning

a lot about other people yeah you know i mean i'm sure you'd have, if everybody's doing this, you're going to have a lot of really good people that you can connect with. You're also going to have some shit bags that you're learning to stay away from out in the real world. And you're just, there's so many learning opportunities that could come out of something like that on so many levels, a personal level, an interpersonal level, an interactive level with others and service. And just there's so much different stuff that you could learn as a young 18, 19, 20 year old if we had the national service requirement.

And, you know, and I mean, there really is no excuse. There's no excuse for doing it. It's not, it's not. I mean, look at the national service in Israel. It's a great program yeah you know and i mean we would still have people that would try and skate out of it and you know we would probably give some provisions for that but whatever if we i think if we had a huge chunk of people that were doing it i think it would only be beneficial to the country i mean how can you argue how can

you argue there'd be anything negative to the individual or negative to the country by having that you'd have to get into semantics to do that but yeah i i think i think it'd be i i think something something in the service of the country yeah okay you want to argue it shouldn't be military okay something would be good and also it might also like open some eyes up to certain aspects of the college industry that are a racket these days right right you know what i mean like it's saturated let's be honest you know and people feel like that's the only thing they could do even this i mean the way it goes now let's turn it into like a civics discussion which is great what we do here but they um look at now the average american and you've seen this on the late night spoof segments and all this kind of stuff the average american

you know i used to say the average american knows nothing outside of la to new york you know and that's kind of a thing is American ignorance outside of their own country. Now, the saying needs to be revised. And even there's a massive subsect to that that doesn't know New York to LA either. Right? How about like New York to Philly? Exactly.

Yeah. New York to New Jersey is the extent of stuff. But it's like, you know, people don't understand how their government works they don't understand you know i mean whatever national service could be you work in some local political office stuffing envelopes or learning about this right you you you take i mean i don't know what it is for this state but in illinois you take the constitution test when you're in eighth grade so you have to study for that a little bit and then after that there's no more requirement for you to be involved in any kind of you know american civics type in eighth grade you're 13 years old and you're going to vote five years later you know i mean

it just gets into there's so much loss like there's people right now that think that the politicians are the leaders of the country. It's like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I mean, they might tell you that they're a leader. It's like,

hello, you know what you are? You're an employee of us. Like you work for us. And, and not too much leadership happening. And I always say to people, I said,

if you don't like what the politicians are doing, you can fire your politician. You're like, how can you do that vote for somebody else like how do you not understand how this works right and and so whatever i think if we did some stuff where there was some kind of something like you said something and this country's so big and there's so many creative people here we could come up with all kinds of ideas. It doesn't have to be military. But we'd see a big change in the culture of America if we had that. I think that also you talk about the lack of civics, for example, in schools and in our school systems. I wonder about the mistakes that just kind of compound year in,

year out with these school programs and stuff that we do it's not just civics but like basic basic skills and stuff like they don't teach that in schools right it's almost like they want people and i'm not saying they do i'm saying that the end result makes people think they want people to be like ignorant of stuff you know and that's not that's not american i mean that's not good look at something simple as well like look at taxis right now first yes first of all this country was founded on i don't mean less taxation as far as dollar amounts but less issues with taxation than what we have right now like by a by a, right? Because it's so complicated. Exactly. And so taxes now to the point, you don't learn about it in school.

The only thing you're probably taught is take your papers to somebody at the end of the year and they'll do it for you. So you're still not even trying to learn the process yourself so that you even have a grasp of what you're doing when it comes to that and what's going on in your state and what's from a tax perspective and what's going on in the country from a tax perspective and what changed year to year or administration to administration you're losing those little lessons because most people turn in their tax papers and the one question they ask at the end is how much money am i getting back and or you know i have the people that say to me oh i got all this money back on my taxes i'm like

you're an idiot you gave the government an say to me, oh, I got all this money back on my taxes. I'm like, you're an idiot. You gave the government an interest-free loan for the better part of this year. They wouldn't do that to you or they wouldn't do that for you. And you just did that for them. Right. And they don't understand the concept. And so, you know, and I, you know, there's the tinfoil hat stuff is, is this all purposeful? Yeah, I, I tend, and it's's some people think this is like a cold take I

tend to think a lot of it isn't I think I think when you get groups of people with systems that are in place they don't want to change it up because it's too much work and no one stops the other people from doing it and it continues on down the line and spirals yeah I think that's just human nature yeah I don't think it's purposeful it's truck month at gmc tackle the open road with added confidence in a 2025 sierra 1500 pro graphite at zero percent financing for up to 72 months with an available 5.3 liter v8 engine 20 inch high gloss black painted aluminum wheels off-road suspension with available two inch factory installed kit, plus a towing capacity of up to 13,200 pounds. You'll be ready for anything this Truck Month.

Truck Month is on now. Ask your GMC dealer for details. It won't take long to tell you Neutral's ingredients. Vodka, soda, natural flavors. So, what should we talk about? No sugar added? Neutral. Refreshingly simple. Well, I think it's obviously very convenient for the people that it benefits.

Absolutely. So they're not going to change that, right? Absolutely. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. There's not like an incentive to like go in and be like, all right, let's burn the house down. You know what I mean? Because also all these people, including the people who aren't voted to office, they work for people who are. Yes. And so at the top of every food chain you see, whether it's in the courts, whether it's in the bureaucracies, whether it's in the agency, whatever it is, there's somebody on a motherfucking Tuesday in November who's going to be running commercials for two months on Sundays during football and on Mondays during the 6 o'clock news, whoever the fuck still watches that, to say, vote for me because we did ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. And if they can't say ba-ba-ba-ba-ba with number, number, number, number, they're fucked. So if they take a risk to improve something long term, God forbid we did something like that, in the short term, what happens? They get fucked and they get voted out of office. That's the problem with our system.

Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. So anyway, whoever's listening that has the power to change this, start some kind of national service or something like that. Yeah, but so anyway, so you go in. You said you enlisted at 18 and you were done training at 19? No, no, I enlisted at 17. My parents signed for me, and I went in at 18.

I went in June of 2000. And then, you know, my military career was nothing spectacular as far as individual doing anything crazy. I'm not Kyle Morgan or DJ Shipley or- That's a high bar. My goodness. Both of those guys, I'm lucky enough to know both of them, and they're just both incredible human beings. Yeah, crazy. Great podcast with Sean.

And Kyle, yeah. Kyle's an incredible human being. And his story is, I mean, it's a very, very tragic video game, basically, right? But yeah, so went to Iraq, was honored and fortunate, I say, to be able to participate in combat and in a major war. Were you there for Operation Iraqi Freedom at the very beginning? Yeah, I was there in 2004, 2005. I was there during Fallujah 2 and all of that kind of stuff.

And what were you doing uh we were we were very very active very very busy we were kind of in the area where the zarkawi network was functioning and flourishing and um you know after our work up to go it just kind of turned into it was a hornet's nest got woken up, and it just was hot and heavy. It was every day something going on. So you were chasing Alzaqawi? Yeah, our whole area was where his whole guys were running everything. Did you know Ryan Tate? Ryan Tate.

I mean, I know there's a lot of marines but i i had him on the podcast he's an amazing guy who i should definitely connect you with because i know you're looking to do some stuff in africa he runs that organization vetpaw oh i know were you telling me i think i told you on the phone about this but ryan was a marine he was in afghanistan and then iraq and he was chasing al-Zaqawi in Iraq. It was it was intense. Now that was when that was like right before we got al-Zaqawi right? Yes and I actually I chased them too. This was badass. So we have this vehicle checkpoint and out of nowhere and it comes in on the radio and then there are Amtrak tanks the amphibious, just flying over the Euphrates River. Yeah, that was a crazy time.

It was, you know, there was so much, you know, we lost a ton of guys. We did a lot of amazing things. I mean, one thing I like to talk about is we were there during the first Iraqi elections. And, you know, that obviously was a heavy, heavy time. And these people came out to vote. And there was no mail-in ballots in Iraq, right? And this was the first time they could vote. And they had to dip their finger in the ink.

You've probably seen the famous, you know fingers the blue fingers purple fingers and so the the terrorists kept attacking the polling stations and you know, we were defending polling stations and and helping those people and all this and you know Trying to repel some of that stuff and to see those people that are getting mortared and, and rockets and all that kind of stuff still stand in line because this is their chance to vote. It was like, man,

heavy, heavy, heavy, like part of history. And then that night we got to take, it was like middle of the night. We got to take the guy with the, the handcuff briefcase with the results of the election from our area.

We had to run him up to Baghdad in the middle of the night to deliver that stuff. Was that hand shaking a little bit? Oh, he was shaking. And I remember we come out and we're getting all briefed up and we're getting all ready to go and locked and loaded and all that. And he was sitting in our vehicle. And I'm up in the turret and he's kind of down to my right. And he was scared you know he was he was very very scared and I remember you know I'm sitting up in the turret

and get myself sorted out and ready to go and all this kind of stuff and I could hear the jingle of the of the you know the little chain on the on the handcuff thing i was like oh man and and and you know it was it was a very uneventful trip we were kind of preparing for the the worst i mean back at that time as well that was when the whole roadside bomb and and um you know the the big ieds and the the v beds the the vehicle born ieds it was such a massive thing and and it was all the time it was and in our area you couldn't you know you couldn't go outside the wire without there being IEDs somewhere it was just it was a really heavy time but yeah we made it all the way up there you know we did it kind of late for that purpose um you know and and and it was kind of uneventful to take that guy back up there.

But, yeah, that was a pretty cool kind of mission that we had was doing that. And, yeah, I mean, we had some big involved in some big battles. You know, we lost a bunch of guys. Like I said, some guys did some amazing things. It just was something I'll never forget, obviously. And it's one of those things where it has caused me a lot of, not issues, but it sticks with you, right? And when you're that young and you come back from combat and you hear this story now countless times, I remember we'd come back and you're on this kind of downtime and it's like, okay, go see doctors, go see head shrinkers, go do this.

And if you just kind of say like, I'm okay, everything's good. Nope. Nothing hurts. You can be done by noon and you can go to the, to, to the beach and drink beer or whatever. Right. Like you're, you get done for the day cause you're not working. There's nothing to do and you're just waiting to kind of go home or whatever. And, um, and everybody kind of did that. Everybody was just kind of like, Nope, everything's okay. We're young, dumb, bulletproof, you know, like um and everybody kind of did that everybody was just kind of like nope

everyone's okay we're young dumb bulletproof you know like all of that kind of stuff and and and then it's because you just don't know and and you don't think because you've done that stuff and you've you know you've returned fire you've you know you've done this you've done that you've kicked in doors at three in the morning you've all these kind of things that you've kicked in doors at three in the morning, you've all these kinds of things that you've done on, on a heavy combat deployment like that in that kind of role, you just kind of think it's part of the job, but it's not normal for humans to do that stuff. It's not normal. Right.

And, and you train for it because you have to be able to get through it, but that's it. The training is just, the training is just to give you the capability to actually be able to do it. But it doesn't stop at that, right? I mean, then you go home and then this happens or then this happens to your friend or, you know, there's, and you just, you could drive yourself. People have done all kinds of terrible things based on these silent things that happen after the fact that they don't think anybody knows. They think they're on an island and nobody kind of helps you with that.

And sure, I'm sure even back when I was that young, there were resources, but I wasn't going to ask for them. I wasn't going to ask for that. I wasn't going to do that because of the stigma of it or I probably wasn't even thinking of it you know what I mean and now I hope there is a huge kind of learning lessons that have been done through 20 years of you know Iraq and because of of stories like you know kyle's and and and djs and and zacks and and you know myself and and everybody else that we know of sean ryan and and everybody else that's been been had participated in this the names go on and on and the stories go on and on hopefully as a as a massive military we've learned those lessons and it's like look

he's not showing any signs of anything but he needs to go do this he's not showing any signs of anything but he needs to go do that and and get people from day one into those kind of channels to to deal with some of that stuff because it does you know i'm one of the lucky ones sean sean's story is incredible sean's one of the lucky ones kyle is one of the lucky ones sean sean's story is incredible sean's one of the lucky ones kyle is one of the lucky ones the shit the shit i mean i talked a lot with sean yeah i'm a lot off camera but i was really and i could say it's about a bunch of people i've had in as well not just military guys but i was really grateful for how much of an open book he was when he came in here and it's hard to do that it's hard man when you're in baghdad in that time period you could just hear the car bombs going off

all day all night hear the gunshots hear the gunfights and it was just bombs terrorists suicide bombers all the time people coming back off seeing these vehicles getting blown up seeing what's left of them if anything i mean it was this guy died this guy died this guy died this guy died and that's why we're so busy we were killing these guys they were making the bombs we were killing the guys that were planting the bombs we were killing the guys that were detonating the bombs and it was saving American lives. I can't, I can't imagine. It's hard. It's hard to do it. And I'm, I'm going to be open and I'm also not going to be open. Right. I mean, it's, it's very difficult to do that. Um, and, and the thing that gets me now being in the community and, and being able to connect with some of these people is just how many people went through that kind of stuff.

And they all say the same thing. When they're going through it, they think it's just them. I thought it's just me. So you were conscious of it early. No, I wasn't. I mean, I knew I had a lot of problems. Yeah, you weren't making it sound like it. Yeah, no, now I'm saying.

Now I look and I can see that. It's making it sound like it, but that did. Yeah. No, now I'm saying, now I look and I, and I can see that, you know, it's like, I wish I knew back then that everybody else was feeling how I was feeling. Oh, I'm sorry. You know,

I said that wrong then. I'm saying you were at least conscious that you were feeling a certain type of way right away. You just bottled it up. Um, yeah, well, I knew I was feeling a certain type of way. I didn't really bottle up i kind of was

very angry i was very violent person i was very like but you weren't asking for help no no no no i mean i you know i could i could ruin any kind of friendship or relationship or anything in a second and not care i was very violent and very you know i patience. You know, I'd go from zero to a hundred just in half a second and nothing twice, you know, and you can't function like that in society and you don't know why. And, you know, I never did any drugs. I've still never done any drugs. I just, it never was for me. I don't knock anybody that does any kind of drugs. It just was never for me.

I never got into pills. You know, there probably were times where I drank too much, but I never had like a problem. I never was like alcoholic or anything like that at all, right? But for me, it was the anger and it was just kind of the not giving a fuck about anybody or anything and just kind of having that. It was just such a weird thing. And it was so hard to relate to anybody because nobody acted like me. Because remember, at that time, I took myself out of any kind of connection to any veterans groups or the community or people and so i really was on an island right by myself and and maybe if i was staying connected to people who were similar to

me maybe i would have seen that they also maybe were like that and maybe that could have helped me get on the path of something or it would illuminate something In me, but I couldn't see all I knew was I was different than everybody else and I couldn't figure it out and and nobody In society acted like me so you're talking about I want to make sure I'm straight here because I try to keep a timeline of like People in my head and and when they're telling me their story and what they went through and when they went through it But it sounds like based on what you just said you are specifically really referring to that at at least post 2012 but probably post 2016 period rather than immediately post like no even before yeah i mean i'd say after after kind of the initial

i'd say after kind of that initial heavy heavy deployment and combat exposure and that grind and, and kind of not being able to, not being able to separate from that or not being able to turn that off or not being able to, to kind of see anything outside of that. It just, I just felt very alone as far as like the island I was on or the lane I was in. And, and yeah, that just kind of affected every part of my life, you know? And then I didn't want to, when I got done in the military, I didn't want to, everybody was doing kind of like the stuff that, that Sean did, for example, where like, okay,

you're going to contract some way and go back to the middle East. Right. For whoever, right. A company, an agency or whatever, some kind of contracting and get you back to the middle East. That was the hot thing at the time.

I didn't want to do that. And so I took a contract doing stuff in Mexico and Central America. And it was like a surveillance thing. And it was good. I liked it. It was a lot of singleton type stuff. It was very interesting. It was kind of a lot of stuff in Mexico, the kind of budding of what is now the cartel stuff problem um it wasn't anything like it is now

but it was just a lot of kind of activity down there and and doing stuff down there and various other places but kind of centered around that and i loved it but it didn't really help me with anything and i there kind of was no future in it. Right. Cause you're just getting contract and there's not really a future unless you're just going to keep doing it. Yeah. And,

and I wasn't happy. I still was having all kinds of problems and the schedule for it was kind of crazy and erratic. It was, it was tough to plan anything. It was kind of go, go, go all the time.

If you were on something, you didn't know how long you were going to be on it for. You didn't really know how long you were going to have a break for it was just it was all over the place and i was trying to get a life together i was trying to i was trying to move on past all of that stuff and i said okay well i'm not going to really do it with a schedule like this and and then that's kind of when i decided like let's just try and get away from all of that and then he continued to struggle because now it's like now i'm trying to function in real the real world with real normal people and i don't feel like i'm normal you know and and so how do i how do i do that and and tried a whole bunch of stuff and and

you know and and so eventually just kind of what i did to pull myself out of it was I said, look, I don't have anything that I'm living by. I'm just and I'm struggling. Like I'm struggling. I'm angry. And then I'm even more angry. And then somehow I'm even more angry. And I'm taking that out on everybody. And it's just it's hitting it's hitting people close to me it's

hitting family and friends it's hitting the guy standing in front of me in the grocery store like everybody's feeling this right like it doesn't matter like it's I'm the dragon and yous are all getting the fire kind of thing just you know and so I decided to kind of plug into my faith and and find something to live for just to find a purpose and to find a i'm very good i'm a very analytical person like i said i'm very into history i'm that kind of thing and i said look if i can if i can align myself to this and i can really learn what this is and what it means to me not what it means to you or not what it means to some guy who's in charge of some group or like let me look at it for me um and explore it kind of that way and i

chose to look at you know my faith through language history and context right and so i learned the language of the bible i you know hebrew i learned um the history of the bible like how it relates to real history um and then the context of of what actually was happening at the time politically socially all that kind of stuff to why this part is what it is not what it means now not looking at that say us sitting here in 2023 how can i relate this to my life today it wasn't written for our life today it wasn't and it wasn't written in 2023 and so when this was written what did it mean to the people who wrote it right and why because there is a lot of political implications for what was happening

that day there were a lot of different sects of people that were functioning within that society there was internal struggles between what this guy believed and that guy believed, even though they believed the same thing. And a lot of that stuff, when you illuminate it, to me, it means that's alive now. That's a living thing. It's not me listening to some guy put some spin about how I can relate it to, to my life today. Right. What I need to do and more, what I've done is I've taken what this meant to their life at that time. And then taking that, how it applies to me. I haven't taken what that says and applied it to me. How did that function in the time it was written for the guy who wrote it to the people they wrote it to and how can i somehow learn from that you're truly putting yourself in their shoes

yeah i'm not reading it like they wrote it for me and i think of many people make that mistake because then it could be totally open i can take something that was written 2 000 years ago right or that happened 2 000 years ago and I can bend it and twist it and I can mold it any way I want to my 2023 life. Right. And that's not what that was intended for. And so, um, that's really helped me and it's given me something, you know, it's endless learning. Um, and, and it's, it's kind of of difficult it's hard to speak to people about that because most of the West if they look at that book they don't look at it through that view right like look at Christianity Christianity has 39,000

official sects 39,000. It's a lot. How, how can you take something and split it up 39,000 different ways? It just, but the, but the, okay, so then what do we do with that? Right?

Like, how do you figure that out? And Judaism has much of the same kind of thing. So to me, it's not about that. It's about, okay, if I was alive when this thing was written or when people were talking about this, how would I view it? How would the guy next to me view it? And then now, how can I apply that? And that's really worked for me. And that really helped me because kind of immersing myself in that really, really, really helped me. And I learned how to just interact better, you know,

because now I want to interact with people that can answer questions I have or can help me do this. And so that really helped me and that really kind of turned things around. I know right now. When did that happen? Around like 2016, 17 and and since right but those kind of early days of that 16 17 18 right in line with the disconnect yeah yeah and and that really helped me kind of just build myself again you know um and and get something under me that i could stand on

and it's very funny i mean and i'm and I'm not slighting anybody that said this. Everybody's experience is their own experience. And really, I always say, like, I don't really care what you believe, and I don't care how you believe it. I don't try and evangelize anybody or convince anybody of anything. I mean, I don't care what you, I mean, what am I going to do, twist your arm until you say okay, right? I mean, I could do that.

I'm pretty decent. I'll bet you could. I like you could but um stay on that side of the table but but some people have this story of these weird things happening to them and everything some like big sign in their life and all this and and everybody wants to have that abraham or moses moment right but look abraham was one man in the entire world moses was one man in the entire world you're not abraham and you're not moses and if you're sitting there saying that this guy that guy or this guy appeared to you in the shower while you're washing your nutsack and told you how to change your life i'd be sure about that before you base your life off of it or you have some dream and or

something happens where a leaf falls off the tree and lands in the right thing and it showed you some sign that's great and if that really happened to you fantastic but just make sure that happens to you make sure it really did happen like that because you're not abraham and you're not moses and and remember at that time when abraham was alive and moses was alive and that stuff was happening a bunch of other examples they were that one guy and it didn't happen to everybody every no not everybody had that abraham experience or that moses or whatever the case is and so i i would just say like be careful of that kind of stuff you know um but if that really did happen to you it's

nothing for me to say it didn't just make sure you know yeah yeah i think people it's similar what we were talking about a little bit ago in another context people you know they're always looking for something bigger than themselves something that subliminally explains what's on the other side and the reason why they're here on this side and and for the time being and you know where people where people find peace in things i'll respect yes but i'm the same as you it's like when you start bringing it on to everyone else in in a forcible way and we've seen this when it gets bastardized in the worst way right it's it gets a bit annoying it's like okay stop but i'm glad you found that. I'm glad that you had your own very, as you point out, very personal, relaxed, individual, unplug from everything experience to kind of create a fountain to unleash your emotions.

Yeah. And I mean, I didn't, again, I didn't plan for that. I just know I needed something. And I really didn't know what else to do. Right. And it was like, well, here's something that I know is a thing. I don't, I know a little bit about it. I don't know enough about it, but I know it's a thing. And so let me align myself to something. And that's what I chose. Cause that's what I, you know, I, I mean, I believed to some degree of something at that time. And so I chose that. And look, it doesn't have to be that.

I'm not saying if you're a veteran right now and you're struggling, I'm not saying that. By God. Yeah. I mean, maybe yes, right? I mean, that worked for me. And I'm not saying what I did is the answer for you or what anyone else who has a good example of how they turned their thing around. I'm not saying

that's the right example for you either, but what I will say is find something. There is something that will snap you out of this, right? And maybe it's finding an accountability person. Maybe it's going to the VA. I don't think that will help you very much, but maybe, right? I mean, maybe it is, right? I don't know what it is, but my advice would be keep trying to find that thing because that thing is there and just don't give up on that, right? Because there's so many guys that just give up and they're just not here, you know country and you know i feel like we talk about on so many podcasts especially when i'm veterans in here but it's i mean that right there is is a good piece of advice and and i you know like even when we get people through the podcast we do like reaching out to me we're you know i'm just hosting a podcast here to be clear but like i take that very seriously when people talk about that stuff. And it's like, I'm not the guy to tell you how you're going to handle this.

But, you know, I can at least, I can take some of the experiences I've heard in here and parrot some of that. And I try to do that because I feel like one of the beautiful things that has happened, luckily, about podcast is we have some good examples of that so I always I always appreciate people sharing that kind of thing but you know in in all the in all the kind of underlying causes getting you to that point like you've laid out a bunch now about how you were feeling angry short with everyone kind of disconnected from other people who maybe didn't get it didn't get your experience and you had talked about a while ago you had said something about especially like in 0405 when you're going into iraq you lost a lot of friends and a lot of guys over there so i always kind of wonder because i i don't have an experience like that at all with my friends and

seeing buddies die next to me and or in any kind of situation let alone war but like it do you think a part of what you know could have been an underlying driver of what was happening with you with some sort of survivor's guilt i don't know i have i have um and i've talked about this recently to somebody, I have a situation where, and I've never talked about this publicly, publicly. I don't know if I want to, but I have a situation where no one, I was in a position and somebody,

and it was to do a specific role. I'm going to kind of be vague about this because I don't want someone to tell this person. Okay. And I don't want anyone to figure it out. I was in a position that somebody would always, like doing a role during certain missions or ops, and somebody always bugged me to be in that position, right? Let's just say it's, I don't know. I'm making this up. You're not going to be able to figure out what the situation is, but let's just say there's something that one guy does something. Another guy does something. A third guy does. And the third guy wants to just switch and do the thing that the second guy does

right and i always said no to this person and sometimes they were asking come on like really let me do it and sometimes it was just i'm just gonna chance it and ask and see if you'll let me for this up right and um i said no all the time because I took it serious and I was preparing for that. And, and there was a lot going on and it was like, you know, I had to have my, I had to have myself kind of focused on, on what I was going to do and didn't want to be switching stuff at the last second or anything like this. And there was one night I said, yes. And it was weather related and um it was raining and it was cold and that thing i would have been wet and cold more than everybody else and i just probably was in a bad mood and and just finally was just like fine okay you can do it we'll we'll switch out right and that no this i mean i can't tell you how many times this guy asked me

and that night i said okay and that night we got hit and this guy got very badly injured he's he's you know he's not he didn't die but he got injured um injured in a way where it like changed the way his body looks right and um and there's there's a funny story about kind of the medevac and some of the stuff that happened after i'll tell you offline because it is kind of funny and i don't want to tell that side of the story here because it to the people that know it illuminates that story but for you know i've always thought like that was my thing like that that should have been me and i know i shouldn't think like that you know i know i shouldn't think like that and i've talked to a couple people about this and i know i know i don't have any kind of thing about you know that should have been me and then this and the next thing but i do often think like maybe i would have been able to

handle the after that better than he could have has that kind of you know i mean and so yeah there are things like that that happen just in that kind of line of work where you do get stuff like that. You know, I know Kyle has a bunch of things that he has that kind of linger like that. And I know tons of other guys, too. And it is weird because it is silly, right? Like, there's no way that that happened. Like, he asked for that day. i did say yes that was just another that was just what was supposed to happen but then the after thing you're like you just it drives you

crazy yeah you know i mean even just trying to explain it like this it drives you nuts right it's like and so you do think about stuff like that. And, and it's weird because, you know, we had another situation where someone else in like very close got, got, got wounded pretty bad. And long story short, we kind of got a call from the hospital and Baghdad was like, Hey, you need to come get your guy. He's fucking, he's crazy. He's, he's not leaving. He, you know, he needs to go home, but he's not leaving. He's, you know, he's all he's crazy he's he's not leaving he you know he needs to go home but he's not leaving he's you know he's all messed up physically heart and stuff but he's not leaving you guys have to come get him like he's godzilla king kong all rolled into one in here he's not going so we had to go up we had to go up and get him and so he kind of became and i'm not saying this in a derogatory way he obviously was combat ineffective He couldn't go out on any kind of missions, but he was, he kind of turned into our, like, I'm not saying this derogatory, but like a mascot.

Like he was there, he still was with the team. He still was helping facilitate stuff whenever we were, you know, like he was, everything was good to go and he was there and it was great. It was so great, right? Because he went through a really kind of crazy um thing and was really badly injured and um and and this guy kind of thought the same thing like oh i almost said his name he came back i'll just be able to go back but obviously this guy due to the extent of his injuries needed multiple surgeries

and all kinds of stuff and so i know that affected him too right because this has happened to you and and now you might be thinking well he got to go back why don't i you know and and so and he was always that guy he loved being he loved being a marine loved being a marine loved being around other marines always a very motivated guy funny guy um and so you know taking the guy from that environment you just know what that's going to do to that guy and then having to deal with what happened all by himself and all that i just i always thought about that and now i know I've kind of been updated on him. Never tried to reach out to him or talk to him.

I wouldn't bring up that scenario, obviously, about talking about that because there's no need to, right? I know that's not a thing. I know that that should not have been me. I know I don't have survivor's guilt about that, but there's elements of that that pop up in your head. You know what I mean? There's, there's a twinge. Yeah. It's not me sitting around thinking that should have been me and looking at certain body parts or, but you're always going to ask the question a little bit, but yeah, it's in your head for sure. You know? And so, so yeah, there's, there's that kind of stuff comes up a lot. Um, but here the thing, during all this time that we've just talked about, it's stuff like that that you're dealing with with yourself.

But I know tons of guys that have that kind of thought now, or that have things similar to that. And I don't know, if I was around them, or I was connected to them, or we could share some of those experiences, that might have helped. Yeah, absolutely. Instead of sitting around with nobody to talk to that too.

Like, hey, I have a best friend now that I do a lot of things with, but I can't talk to him about this kind of stuff. Or I have this woman or I have this whatever and I have parents or, but I can't talk to them about that kind of stuff. You know, and so you just feel even though you're surrounded by all these people that love you and know you function in your life and all that kind of stuff you just still feel pretty alone and then you start throwing anger and stuff on top of that you know i just i guess i was just always able to not do anything too bad to myself or with myself.

That's good. You know, but you hear those tragic stories, you know, I mean. Did you have a family when you retired? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, it's, yeah. But I mean, I was terrible, you know, like I wasn't, you know, I just, I just wasn't a good person to be around.

I wasn't a happy person to be around. I wasn't a happy person to be around. And then if I was, if I was having a good day, that could change in a heartbeat. And then I just totally disconnect. I mean, I had times where we'd be going to an event or a party or something, and I just would, all right, I'm just going home. Like, I just can't do it. I don't want to go, right? Like, I don't want to go and sit with these people and play beanbags and eat a hot dog and i just don't want to go i don't want to talk about

the shit that they're going to talk about i just we're just going home and there's no reason right there's no reason it's just no reason there's no reason it's just how you feel yeah do you think underlying like you don't have a reason when it's happening maybe it's like you're kind of on i'm just imagining here maybe it's a little bit like your own cruise control and you just feel this type of way but do you do you think maybe some of the underlying thought is like god damn all these people have no idea how it really is out there yeah i i don't know right i mean i don't have that now and it's great yeah it's great i mean i'm i'm a total like 180 from how i was um and it's taken years though right i mean much like it has been for everyone else that you talk to and share their

stories with some of that stuff um but it's crazy you don't you don't see that stuff in the video games you don't see that stuff in the movies you know i mean there's um we were talking earlier about the the anniversary of black hawk down obviously, was this week as we're filming this. And I know, like, Tom, Tom Satterly's been, you know, the All Secure Foundation. He's been on a couple of podcasts recently talking about, you know, those events. He was there, a Delta operator, and he was there. And it's the same kind of thing. Everybody's story.

You have these things, and it's just like, yeah, I i thought it was just me and i'm going through all this and these huge events that are going on in your life that you just think that nobody has a connection and you know organizations like his are really helping a lot of people um you know build these connections and get through some of that trauma and and some of those scenarios and and it's just yeah you just you just think though that it was only you and there's no answers like you literally i'm so lucky i was able to figure it out but i i mean i didn't figure it. I landed on a solution that worked for me. I didn't know. Like, I didn't know.

But I've been able to kind of turn everything around, and I need to be a lot better about sharing some of that so that maybe I can influence others who hear a podcast like this or hear a podcast like some of the other ones that you've done or Sean's done or Mike Ritland's done or any person that puts veterans on and they share some of the other ones that that you've done or sean's done or mike ritland's done or any person that puts veterans on and they share some of this stuff um you know we always talk about we have and we do this with the overwatch foundation we have 20 years of the global war on terror that we we kind of became as a as a collective superheroes we What we did now is writing the new book on war

for the future, right? Through our lessons learned over that 20 years, we contributed to that. And that's fine on the manual of arms type side or the tactical side or the gear development side. We can all kind of throw a little bit in and say that we've contributed to that what we need to do and what we need to also add to that is the aftermath because we've learned a ton of lessons through

that as well and and those are probably more important than um than the the tactical stuff or the the gear stuff because you could argue we had better tactics and better gear than the tactical stuff or the gear stuff. Because you could argue we had better tactics and better gear than the guys in Vietnam had. They had better tactics and gear than the guys in Korea and then World War II. But we all share the same aftermath, right? And so developing a new system of how to help each other after the fact should be what we're focused on and we all kind of have a part to play and we can all come on podcasts and share our story of whether it's our non-profits or our companies or just the story we've had or the things we've done and we can share little pieces of that and and get it to the new batch of guys that hopefully never have to go through 20 years of war again but

probably are going to have to or they're going to do some stuff, right? And they can learn those lessons that we had to learn the hard way and avoid some of those pitfalls and not add to some of these tragic numbers that we're having after the fact. Well, I think this resource of the world we live in now and being able to share these stories and seeing so many people who do is, if it's not a solution in and of itself it is a damn good start because i i think i i think a lot of guys

and i i see it not just from some of the people i mentioned earlier who comment who may not have a military background but not to be lost within that there are people with military backgrounds who are part of those people reach out and you kind of wonder like damn if they hadn't heard this guy talk about it that day in the way he did that connected with them in that way maybe they maybe they wouldn't right even just had the awareness that this is something going on you know i'm not saying we're solving their problems that takes more than that right you know it's it's it's important. And I like how you tie in all those other past wars, like the major campaigns that we've had in, you know, modern history with the U.S. Because you can hear some of those stories from family members passed down about, you know, dad or grandpa and some of the things they would do late at night and the struggles that they had silently. And you wonder how many how much damage

that did to their life and how many years it took off their life in many cases because you know there wasn't this ability to talk about it and it's not it's not to be you know some people talk about like well you know uh they're they're certain the veterans all have definitely all have something to talk about for sure because of the things they're forced to see. But then other people who aren't in there, sometimes we're just always going straight to trauma with stuff. And yeah, I think that can happen. But looking across society, everyone does deal with some scary things in their life, right? being able to not just, I'm talking beyond veterans right now, being able to normalize at least talking about it and getting yourself some ability to have resources and help for it is huge.

So we're always going to do that in here. And like I said a little bit ago, I really appreciate you sharing that with us on this platform. Yeah, and thanks for giving me the platform, right? And, you know, I try not to talk about this stuff. I know I probably should do that more, you know, but because I think,

yeah, it can help people, you know, but I mean, I think there's, I always just kind of think, yeah, there's people better than me that can get this message across,

you know, um, when, when this whole overwatch thing started, I kind of wanted it to be, I want it to be the green, but I wanted it to be totally gray. I didn't want there to be, I wanted it to be the green, I wanted it to be totally gray. I didn't want there to be a face of it. I didn't want anything.

And then obviously we start learning very quickly about the nonprofit world that you need to raise money and you need to get your story out there. And somebody needs to do that. And I got voluntold that it was going to be me, kind of makes sense i am the one kind of doing it i'm the the one driving it and you're a good talker and i and i have the experience there doing these things so um you know i feel i can communicate a wee bit you know like i'm probably not the best but no no you're you know i'm trying my best um so yeah it kind of fits part and parcel and so i'll develop some of that where i can speak about some of those things more and and and open up and hopefully that helps

people and you know because i see in the overwatch foundation as well i mean we use a lot of we use all special operations veterans who have done some video game movie style stuff and and have had their own struggles and have and have been through it and and that's kind of what's so good about what we're doing now yes we're helping in these places right and and and that's amazing and some of the stories that have come out of that have been have been fantastic but we're helping these veterans as well and they're helping themselves you know that getting the getting guys back together and and small units figuring out the problem from top to bottom and and just being involved in the planning and and you know doing everything like i said the whole spectrum of of

planning this stuff out and hopping on a plane and and being somewhere in a few hours and and really you know get your feet on the ground and making a difference using skills that you developed, you know, in that kind of environment to do that kind of work now to help people. That's been a massive benefit of what we do with our teams that I never predicted and I never planned for. Well, you are not, for what you're talking about, it's not like you guys have had to or are planning to go into battle again. So it's not combat. But to spell out what you're saying a step further now, you are giving that purpose back to the guys you work with who were in for a long time because every veteran i've talked to on this podcast a common theme with like a struggle that happens when they're out is that they're like damn i did something with the highest stakes life and death to help people and serve my country of

course like that's why i did it but i'm also my my idea my the the best case scenario is that i'm helping people, and doing this is hard and is horrible, some of these places I got to be are, and so when you come home, and they say, all right, go get a job at fucking State Farm. Right. Like, you know what I mean? Like, oh yeah, I'm helping people with their fucking policy for their homeowners insurance. Save them $169, yeah. You can't simulate that, you know what I mean?

You can't simulate those stakes, you feel, I mean, I've never had to deal with that, but based on what these guys tell me, they feel like chained to a desk, even more so, like locked up. Like, what the fuck is the point of this? It's tough. And look, I never thought when we did finally get around to putting some planning together for the Overwatchwatch foundation on what is going to happen i didn't plan we never sat down and said this is really going to help the guys this is going to you know give them purpose it's going to do it never was a thing until i actually saw it happening and i saw these guys light up and i saw i saw their ability kick in and i and you know we have to do some crazy stuff. We have to, I mean, we are in austere environments.

We have to take care of our own security. We have to plan different routes. We have to have communications contingencies. We need to have, you know, infill stuff. We need to have exfill stuff. We need backup plans and contingency this. And, you know, we have to build out a lot of these skill sets just to go to a place or a place within a place that it's not like right now you and I can hop in the car and go to a mall or go

to a restaurant. We don't have to think twice about it. When you're in some of these places that we go to, you have to think about that stuff. And you need guys that know what they're doing. And yes, we're not kicking down a door and raiding a bomb maker's house at three in the morning and hopping on a helicopter or anything like that but some of that stuff that is empowering that is technical that is um you know just has that higher level of skill these guys can do with us to help people and the end result is it helps people and it scratches that itch for them yeah and they're not getting that in their regular lives and and so my

biggest thing now too is you know we're we're off we've been able to operate this thing on a very shoestring budget right i mean the ukraine thing we've done six times we've we've we've upped it we've upped our game every every time and that's been a fantastic thing because it's like you know and i never tried to outdo the last trip it always was we just it just happened that way we just move that way because that's what we do right we we did this we're going to do it better next time and we don't think about it it just works out that way and we build it that way and we've done it all in a shoestring budget but eventually i want to build obviously i want to raise as much money as we can because i see what we can do with limited funds i can't imagine what it would be like if we had you know a lot

more funds it would allow us to do a lot more things but more importantly what it would allow us to do is get those guys more involved like the worst thing about us going on a trip for me is coming home because I know these guys come back and they're on fire and they're wired up and they're happy and they've just done something great and they're connected. And then the letdown that I can't, you know, get, and here's the thing when we go now, it's not six, seven, three, five months deployments. It's, we can go, we can do certain things that we do. We can go halfway across the world or to the other side of the world. We can get something done in four or five days and be back. And so now if you're selling that to a spouse or your kids have a baseball schedule,

you can fit that in right. four five days some of the longer things we've done seven 17 days i have guys that i know i can push out that long i have some guys i know that four or five days is their wheelhouse and that's fine that's great they get that their family's on board their wives used to seven month deployments for 17 years, you know, and, and now, oh, you want to go with the boys and go help people for four days, crack on. Right. And, and it just, it's, we can do this, but we obviously need money in the kitty to, to continue it, to keep it going. I'd love, I'd love to get it to the point where we can have some guys full time and we can be, because, because I see not only the benefit we give to the people where we can have some guys full time and we can be because because i see not

only the benefit we give to the people that are involved in the mission of helping you know i feel and this is not being cocky or overconfident our guys can do that in their sleep and and we're always going to be able to do that we we help a lot of people in really cool ways and and it's it's crazy that we're able to do that and allow it to do that um but how much it helps those guys i mean i have a guy right now i wish i could have him out every day he would if i had him i could send him anywhere in the world and keep him there as long as whatever and he'd be like a pig and right i mean he'd love it um and i have some guys that were like hey if you come to me every three months and I can go do something for four days or five days, that'd be perfect. And it almost is

like, Hey, any, you know, you get the texts come in on the group chats where, Hey, do we have anything going on coming up? I have some time off work or I have this or I have that. And you're just like, I don't have anything coming up right now. Let me, but that does drive me to try and, you know, shake the couch cushions and, and get some kind of money to then. Okay. And I'm doing this.

Yes. To, to further what we're doing and to add another notch on our belt, but it's like, I'm doing it for this guy who I can see is itching to go do something because I don't know, maybe he's having a bad day and, or,

or maybe he just wants that, you know, maybe he's just hungry for it and and motivated for it so yeah it's that that's been probably the biggest um unexpected brilliance that's come out of what we do yeah well let's go back to ukraine and because we left off yeah it was a good little that was a great detour there in the middle yeah so thank you sorry for dumping all that on you guys fucking awesome bro that's like a whole podcast yeah sorry so so yeah so you we left off where you guys left the first time yeah we come back you talk to sean ryan how soon do you go back yeah so we went back six weeks later, eight weeks later. Okay. And we raised a bunch of money. And we bought that, those guys, uniforms, plate carriers and plates. And when we decided to do that, I mean, I was heartbroken for those guys. dress blue uniform i'm obviously biased but it's the best uniform in the military right our black uniform with the blue trousers with the red piping and all that kind of stuff right the big white hat

though the slay in the dragon uniform it's amazing and and to put even to put camis on and you just feel like you're doing the thing right to see these guys undertaking what they're about to undertake and not even have a uniform kind of broke our hearts, right? And so we decided to put that together and buy them uniforms. And so we went back on the second trip and I took a medic with me and I said, okay, your job is going to be to stand up a medical platoon they were terrible at medical stuff zach and i had given them a couple of kind of t triple c classes and just quick kind of here's how you stop a bullet wound kind of thing right stop bleeding and all this kind of stuff how to use a tourniquet on a very basic level neither one of us have you know our medics um i can stick my finger in in a bullet hole and throw a tourniquet on you and get you to higher care.

That's about as good as I can do. So I said, your job, and Tommy, I said, Tommy, your job is to stand up medical platoons, like the whole thing from start to finish. No problem. And so we go back and we had that gear. We had the IF fax as well and we had this objective of setting up these medical platoons and the way the way we picked the guys was we got back and everyone is excited to see us and I was like all right let's see because a lot of the guys were the same guys there was more but a lot of them were the same I said okay let's see if these guys have been training we'll know right we'll know if eight

weeks later if you've been working on this or not where's the front lines at this point if they advanced like a lot closer to where you guys were or no they still kind of were in the same area it's not a very fast moving war right this thing and it hasn't been right. And so the way we kind of found the candidates to be the medics, the Ukrainian medics was, we just kind of said, hey, who's interested in doing medical shit? Reach your hand. And so it was like, all right, well, that's it.

Those guys go with Tommy and we stood up medical platoons and he's Tommy's a wizard, he's so good. He's like our medical director. And we have some medical platoons. And he's Tommy's a wizard. He's so good. He's like our medical director. And we have some amazing medics, SEAL medics and Green Berets and just some really high-level medics that do a lot of stuff. He's sticking the nasal pharyngeal up and down the guys and doing chest decompression and all this kind of stuff. And we stayed for 17 days. So on that trip, we were able to actually level these guys up again. And we got them to where they were doing like ambushes and counter ambush type stuff. And they had really trained and they had really practiced the basics that Zach and I had given

them. And Tommy and I were able to just kind of add to that. And they were pretty good. Now, soon after that trip, that was a very successful trip it was very cool soon after that trip these guys start getting sent to fight right and it was like oh they've come a long way but they're not ready like not to our standards they're not ready our standards obviously Sure. They're not ready. Our standards obviously pretty high. But still, I mean, they're fighting against a trained army. Yes. And, you know, then the after action reports start coming in.

And it was kind of cool. It was like, hey, we saved this guy's life. We saved this guy's leg. We, you know, were able to. The one class we kind of ended on on that was a um was a room clearing class and um just basic like how to walk in a room and not die basically it wasn't any high level direct action cqb anything it was just here's how you go from outside a room and get yourself into that room and and clear it it and be able to take care of some stuff at a very basic level, right?

For all you internet CQB wizards who have never really done it before. You know, and it was, you get that message like, hey, that room clearing class saved my life today. You get that text message. I'll never forget. I was sitting eating oatmeal at the kitchen table and that comes across and you're just like there's monday morning and it's like all right like that's why we did it man well and let's get let's get some more money and let's go back and let's you know what am i doing sitting here eating oatmeal right like what we're doing is

really affecting these people's lives and helping them what are we doing sitting here you know like we need to figure this out we need to get this funding piece in place and we need to try and do this are they getting so when when they're going to the lines now obviously my understanding of it and correct me where i'm wrong here but a lot of the funding at least the way it's been earmarked that like has come from the west and specifically the u.s is supposedly going towards weaponry right yeah i don't know i mean i think it's going to more the high-end stuff the the high mars or tanks or or um you know some of that kind of stuff so less the guns being put in their hands yeah i mean i think there is some of that i think they kind of have that but i think it's more javelin type stuff and you know armored personnel

carriers and big equipment type stuff i think is where the majority of that money is going and you were talking about how this you just hinted at a couple minutes ago but you and i have been talking off camera about quite literally how this war is being fought oh in the trenches on the street urban warfare but i think i'm going to say this wrong but you mentioned something like they're fighting over the same 10 yards for two weeks yeah they they they're not gaining a lot of land right it's it's very bogged down and and they're just not both sides not very tactically sound um on the ukrainian side we were showing them our way of doing things right even at a basic level basic ranger handbook type stuff nothing crazy but they they're higher higher higher ups our units

have been able to kind of do what they want i think they've seen a little bit of a capability in them and they've put them in places to to to do that but as a whole the ukrainian army is fighting with very old tactics with very old generals who see war very archaically and the higher level battle plans just are not where they should be right and and it's just it's very confusing to me because it seems like the small unit tactics thing is working you know like the and they want to play these giant tank battles and all this kind of stuff and it's like when the last time was tank warfare against other tanks effective like when was that thing world war ii yeah right i mean we use my limited knowledge we use tanks we use tanks very well in coordination with light infantry as support, right?

I mean, the way the U.S. does war at a very high level is everything exists to support the regular infantry. That's including special operations. Special operations exist to support regular infantry. Everything is built around that, around your regular grunt, right? That's air support. That's naval gunfire. That's you name it. And they seem to have this very segmented, like if we just get tanks, if we just get this, if we can do this, and instead of using small unit tactics with your individual team, squads, platoons, whatever it is,

and then supporting that effort with all your other assets. It's a pretty simple concept, and it's worked for our country for many years. It sounds kind of silly. You're telling me we take a F-35 jet and that exists to support that. 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. Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale, expertise, and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at Visa.ca slash fintech. That fire team or that squad of infantry guys, yes. Yes, it does. The Predator drone exists to support.

Yes, it does, right? That Abrams tank that's, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes, it does the predator drone exists to support yes it does right that abrams tank that's you know hundreds of millions of dollars yes it does so they just have this very archaic way of doing it but we've seen especially on the medical side too very very good results from our guys and you know on the the third trip we went back um and then did a quick trip more training then we started training their special operations units they have a kind of like a it's like a hostage rescue kind of team they're not really open war type team they're called the court and but they've been tasked now with this and so we went and we trained them um and they have dogs

and stuff we didn't train the dogs but we had our guys were training with the dogs um and and did that kind of stuff and that opened us up to their special operations community and they really liked our training as well um and then on our last trip there we took took eight guys and we trained. When was this? This was February of this year. We trained an entire battalion of guys. And it was so funny. So how many guys is that? Oh, so like three to four platoons.

I don't know how many guys they had in their battalion, but it was a huge. It was, it's a lot of people. It's a very tough task to train a battalion of of guys and we only had eight guys and um and it was a mix of seals and and marsau guys and recon guys and and green berets and this kind of stuff and it was really cool um our team was amazing we did a workup with kyle morup with Kyle Morgan down at his training facility. He's kind of helping us a lot on the training stuff because we can all get together and train. And he has a nice training facility and all that kind of stuff.

And we can take these training trips and get everyone on the same page and do a quick little spin-up to keep us sharp before we go and actually do it. And when we got there, we were working kind of at the state level with the military so with the higher brass right the higher level uh commanders and um we show up and we're in this coffee shop and you know everything we had done before was with these either special operations guys or these regular kind of army groups this was like this huge level where we're talking to these higher up brass guys who it's difficult talking to them because they kind of just see things different so there's kind of a little bit of a standoffish and I said okay well we're here introduce yourselves and tell me who you are and there was guys there from their intelligence services and there's you

know this that the next thing and these guys are explaining so we introduce ourselves and you know they see our experience and all this and then we start talking okay we do the training how many they say how many guys do you want to train or how many guys can you train and i said i'm training however i'm thinking a company or something right and he's like well could you do like 50 guys and i'm like yeah we could do 50 guys like that's yeah sure 50 guys i said but how many guys do you have and he's like well we have like a battalion and i was like yeah we could do a battalion and i had no idea right i'm kind of looking a bit like and everybody's kind of sitting there and they're like hopefully a ukrainian battalion is a lot different than an american battalion you know and uh so we leave that meeting and i said okay boys um yeah we'll

have to just see how this goes and so obviously the guys can do anything and we split it up and the training we gave them was unbelievable like we had how long was this one eight days another eight or nine yeah eight or nine and we had it split up to where we had different periods of instruction and different lanes of training. And then at the end, we did like a big end exercise, like a big kind of like war games exercise where we had split them up into like two big units. And they had to break up into smaller units. And one group was attacking another group. And they were running ops on each other, basically, and over quite a decent-sized piece of land,

and had different objectives, and they were setting up ambushes and doing raids and observing the enemy and reporting. We kind of covered the whole gamut of everything, communication, and it was absolutely fantastic, and the level that the guys you know did it at and and how we got these guys through this training um it just was really cool and they were kind of not newer they were newer guys they were a new unit that was all different ages at this point

yeah and and what happened was so that unit that battalion that we worked on because the ukrainians are taking such heavy losses they have like scraps of a unit over here scraps of a unit over there you know remnant of a unit over there and they had amalgamated all of these remnants to make up a new battalion what what kind of you you're talking about like communications in the field what kind of communications are they working with um really kind of rudimentary type stuff we took a couple of marsoc communicators over with us that really um spun them up on some high-speed stuff which yeah but this is only for like one battalion too that's the crazy yeah that's the thing i mean i wish i wish we could replicate it um and and you know i i wish i again we just don't have the if i could get in front of bigger people we there we can do what we want we have a great network there but like we could really and with the guys we have, I have a roster of about 50 guys. I'm nowhere near able to utilize all 50 of those guys.

But if you sent me anywhere with 40 to 50 special operations veterans, I could take over the world. These guys could take over the world. Like we could do very special things with what they have over there based on our experience already there. We have a track record there all of our units are doing really well um obviously they've taken losses and that kind of sucks as well some guys we've trained and worked with have been killed right i mean it's a it's war yeah um but the guys overall are doing really well and our tactics are working there which i don't understand why they're not trying to i'm not saying replicate it because of me or because of us.

But I don't know why they're not looking for other strategies and other tactics. Do we have a ballpark – I don't expect you to know the number. I don't even know if I expect you to know the answer to this question. But do we have a ballpark of at any given one time right now how many soldiers in the field on the field of battle there are for ukraine i don't know i know that they've lost more than double of what they originally had before the war begun in their entire army holy shit how many people i think i think they had i think they had about 82 000 in their army before the war started i believe is what i've heard and they've lost over 200 000 all right so this is the previous public

estimate by biden administration dated back to november 2022 u.s chairman the joint chiefs of staff mark milley had estimated that over 100,000 soldiers had been killed or wounded on each side since the start of the invasion. He also put the number of Ukrainian civilians killed at 40,000. So I'll highlight – That's a year ago. Yeah, these are – well, is that – because it says they dated back to November 22. So is he referring to that's when the estimate ends? Can we click the actual source? Or is that when the estimate ends can we click the actual or is that when they

ask them from can we click that lessee we don't have access to it oh no hit accept just accept things just get okay give them what they want or you can hit reject breaking down the figures can we go up all the way up oh published in july so published in july 2022 yeah this is from lehman So either way. Yeah, I mean, they've had, so they started off at the beginning of the war. The army was estimated around 82,000 people. Crazy, man.

Or I think it was their whole military was estimated at 82, which seems small for a population of 44 million, but maybe not. I don't know. And then what about those East regions though? I don't want to bury that lead because you brought it up earlier. Like, you know what?

Here's a bigger question because this is going to tie it in. How do you solve this war? Yeah. I mean, we kind of talked about this. This is where I get hammered on the internet now. Cause I'm supposed to be the, you know,

the, the Ukrainian love guy. And apparently that's been,'s the Ukrainian love that's been that's been okay added to my i think your patriotism for ukraine has been demonstrated you can proceed yeah but it's no it's not even i i mean i guess i don't have patriotism for ukraine right but but here's the thing i support them in this conflict right obviously but here's the deal they can't they can't win the war. And it's very important everybody hears that.

Ukraine cannot win this war. Why do you say that? Because they can't. They don't have the manpower. They don't have the experience. They don't have the tactical ability. They've been given a couple hundred billion dollars, and not a difference has been made.

But they haven't lost they were supposed to lose in two days no no i think all that was kind of the remember what we've learned in this war also is that russia can't win this war and for years we've believed that russia is the superpower and has this incredible army and oh the russians oh the russians and they've been shown to be a paper tiger yeah they're using civilians in this war right now the same way ukraine is and the fact of the matter is neither side can win this war an all-out military conflict they can't do it they can't even get close it's just churn yeah can you you were this is what you were explaining off camera can you explain why that is because

you're saying neither side very specifically neither side can win right because war this is my opinion war needs to be fought by professionals it's not a game it's not as easy as taking someone with a lot of heart and patriotism and handing them a rifle in a couple weeks training and expecting them to do a job to that level, especially what's going on in this conflict. The reason why we are the best is because of our training. That's it, right? It's training, it's training, it's training. And that's why we're the best. Our budgets for training are massive.

Our results in training are incredible. And then how we relate those, how we take that training and apply it on the battlefield is literally second to none, right? They don't have anything even close to that. And they don't have professional soldiers. They just don't have it. And they don't have it anymore they just don't have it and

they don't have it anymore because a lot of those guys were sent out in the beginning and you know god forbid they're gone right so they don't have a schoolhouse you know i'm in talks with some people in ukraine now who are working to try and create a schoolhouse type thing, training centers, military, like for their military, so that they have actual training programs for the future, right? And it's not gonna help them now really, but for their future of their country, because they need that, we have that.

You know, our training apparatus in the American military is unbelievable. The schools and the level of training that we have across all kinds of different capabilities is unbelievable. The schools and the, the, the level of training that we have across all kinds of different capabilities is, is amazing. And I think we take that for granted. And I don't, I don't think we really notice how big of a deal that is, but when you hold it up to this war, it really stands out. I mean, it would be like if, if the three of us in this room went out and grabbed a few other guys, eight other guys, and then we walked around the neighborhood and found another 11 and we decided to just have a soccer game. Right?

How's that game going to look? Ugly. It's going to be ugly. Yeah. know and we might have a guy that used to play in junior high school or we might have a guy that wakes up early on a saturday morning and watches the epl and can kind of try and throw some strategy together and we might have a guy with a good left foot but it's not going to look like a soccer game and it's definitely not going to be you know the the number one versus two in the english english premier league or you know a world World Cup final-looking soccer game. It's not going to be that.

And to me, that's what war needs to be. It needs to be those higher-level kind of, you know, groups or militaries that have professional soldiers and have them, if you're going to have to do war, you have to do it right. You know what I mean? And that's just not what's going on. And so it's going to continue to be the steady churn.

It's going to be these huge, I mean, look, 200,000 dead on the Ukrainian side. We went crazy. Now here's some perspective. We were in Iraq andistan and major combat operations for 20 years what's that eight thousand seven it's like four and a half thousand people dead yeah iraq and afghanistan casualties or deaths united states i think it's like four and a half either way point it's too it's too many yeah number, but it's not 200 fucking thousand. That's fucking insane.

And so put that into perspective, right? Let's get those numbers for the... Yeah, no, those are the countries. Yeah, those are the countries. No, no, type in United States, Iraqi, and Afghan war casualties. Or deaths, I'm sorry. Not casualties. 7,000 at the end.

Number of United States troops who died fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have passed 7,000 at the end of 2019. Yeah. It's not... That's fucking nuts. 200,000. And look, it's been... There's 46 million people in Ukraine.

And it's been, what, less than two years? Yeah, yeah. It's been since February, end of February 2022, so less than two years. I mean, that's crazy. Imagine, imagine if we had 200,000 dead American troops. Oh my God. What would that do to this country?

Oh my God. Please never, but oh my God i mean yeah and it's it's terrible right and and there's no end in sight there's no again we've given all that money hundreds of billions of dollars and it hasn't made a lick of difference now if you want to sit across the table and argue oh but it's kept them in it it's's kept them as a country. That's not a very good argument, though. To me, it gets... Because Russia's lost a lot, too. Exactly.

It's about the same. They're saying it's very similar numbers, right? So you're talking 400,000 people between both countries. Yeah. I mean, look, just on that alone as a neutral, can we find a way to stop that? Yeah. Like, can we find a way to stop that? Yeah. Like, can we find a way to stop that? Right. And, and here's the deal.

You know why it's continuing is because we're paying the bill and somebody needs to come in and hopefully whoever the next president is does this and says, here's the thing. We're going to sit down at a table. You're going to figure this out and let him kick and scream and complain and yell about whatever he wants zelinski and just get him told okay you want to continue this pay for it yourself and what he can't do at this point he's he can't do anything without our permission at this point just because there's so much it's

just it's a follow the money thing where's the money it's here yeah i mean he's basically that meme right now where the man sneaks up behind his girlfriend and asks for something and she says okay go get my purse he's that meme right you know and and all the other memes him floating around in fort myers on a dinghy asking for money and all this kind of stuff right i mean all those memes are there yeah and look the guy in the beginning of the war was instrumental to his country and did a good job. But I don't think he's doing a good job now. And I don't think flying around the world every four months with your handout is a good way to try and win a war. And I don't think that's doing justice to your people. Right?

And here's the thing. But if he can't pay for stuff, and I'm not disagree disagreeing with you but i'm just asking as a devil's advocate if he can't pay for the stuff to finance that war to continue so they do continue to exist you sit down you sit down and you make a deal and you're probably going to have to give up some kind of land that you that you haven't had for years anyway which is disputed i mean it's that was ukrainian land yeah i mean it is disputed. I mean, that was Ukrainian land. Donbass? Yeah, I mean, it is what it is.

Have you spent any time there? No. No, I mean, some of our units have and stuff, but it's... He's pulling up the lens. Save that one. But, I mean, you know, sit down and make a deal. And you've had your chance, right? You've had your chance.

You've had the money. You've had the bullets and the band-aids you've, you've given it your best shot, but you've also proven you can't get the job done. You just can't get the job done. and yeah, he's outperformed what he was supposed to do. I don't think it's,

he's looking at it. It seems like as an L, if they give up one ounce of land, right. And it's like, no, no, it's not only he

wants back what he had he wants he wants crime in back several then yeah and here and here's the thing that's fine i understand realistic though on an internationalistic level i totally understand that that frame of mind and and but also you have to be a realist and see that you're not able to do that yeah you're just not able to do it you've literally proven that and and look man you've lost 200 000 of your own men you know what's going to happen after this war gets done it's going to be ukraine brought to you by you know black rock and brought to you by morgan stanley right like, it's going to be like, you know, the Morgan Stanley district of Kiev. You know what I mean?

It's going to be this. You're going to have to whore out your country. And second of all, you're going to have to bring in men from all over Eastern Europe to repopulate your country because you're not going to have these men to go back to work. They're not going to have trouble convincing men to come in there. I ain't going to lie. No, no.

There's some good talent. But here's the problem. The problem is you lose your national identity. That's true. Right? Yeah. Because now you're going to have these people. And they are a very nationalistic country.

They have great pride in their country. They have great pride in their history and all this kind of stuff. And look, I don't care what they do with their country. But I don't think I have to pay for it and i don't think my my kids kids kids kids should have to pay for it either right right and and that's kind of the thing it's like look you're against funding at this point yeah you've had your crack at the whip you can't do it if i give you another hundred billion are you gonna be able to do it if the answer is yes and you can show me why how we can talk now but you can't do that so why am i just going to give that to you i mean you've literally been on the ground but everyone i've talked to who seems

to have a brain on this stuff you know and or room to talk a knowledge of how it goes down i don't i haven't heard a single person say there's even a shot they could do their entire goal which is get back all of the east and crimea like it doesn't there's no path to that they can't take five kilometers so yeah so i mean you're telling me what i expected you to tell me so and so here's the deal. Let's look at it realistically. Okay. Here's what I'm going to pass across the table to you. Two more years. Two more years? Two more years, $100 billion.

And let's just say, I don't know, whatever's on the guy's wish list, right? How long do we have on the podcast? When's my flight? And let's just say more tanks, whatever that means. So you've got two more years, another $100 billion, and more tanks until your heart's full of tank fumes, right? What does that do? What does that get you?

Not the W that they're looking for. So you sit down and make peace. So we sit down and we do do something else yeah right we do something else and you think an f-16 is going to make a difference and you think you think you think what 12 if you get 11 f-16s you're going to still lose but you get 12 you're just going to make a difference like what's going to make a difference you can't tell me it's money because you've had money it hasn't made a difference you can't tell me it's equipment because you've had equipment and it hasn't made the difference so what's going to make the difference i mean if you were talking to your son about this

or you were talking to your best friend about this who was struggling with something and say you were trying to save his business and to help him save his business you'd have these simple questions yes what's it going to take okay this okay why do you think this show me your plan for this i can't okay then why am i going to give you that yeah i dude i i think that's i think that's the the real estate on it the the one thing i keep looking at with this is if you go back to iraq for a second the interesting part about that war is that regardless of how we look at it in history now, at the time, there was very bipartisan support for it, right? When it came out. And so part of me says these people never fucking learned their lessons.

But I'm looking now after that and after years and years of the rhetoric from either party actually being like the big mistake of the Iraq War and how we can't have these endless wars and whatever. And in the midst of all this, sub-20 years later, this war breaks out, and during a way more divided time, bipartisan support. And they're, for the most part, with few exceptions on both sides, there's a few holdouts on either side publicly as far as people in congress and senate everyone's on board with this war it's very odd to me we were talking about this earlier

and i think there's different reasons i think different groups have different reasons for the bipartisan support you know i mean um mullah yeah it all comes down to money but it's just different ways of of of money um but yeah i mean at this point i think a deal needs to be made and and the biggest reason why is it stopping the killing like i know guys that have been killed and you know i mean it's war i've known guys that have been killed all over the world unfortunately we war but like i know guys there that are involved in this and they're not fighting for i mean i don't want to say they're not fighting for anything i don't mean it like that but what i'm saying is what they were fighting for that day wasn't

going to make a difference in the war right right they weren't killed on target getting a bomb maker that was responsible for killing 50 u.s soldiers at some point right you go in okay we got that guy that night this guy you know got shot or whatever that's unfortunate but that makes a difference it's a ball maker off the street i get it the next one steps right and but that one's off the street right he's out he's out with a game and that that you could argue that doesn't make a lot of sense but it makes some sense right we're not talking about fighting from me to the other side of the table and we lose 50 guys in order to get to the other side of the table and drink out of your cup what does that mean and then tomorrow we're fighting and you're right back on this side of the table so you just kind of have to i mean i don't really understand what he thinks is going

to happen and how this is going to play out. I think our objective has been accomplished in this. I think our objective, whether it's been talked about overtly or not, was to weaken the Russian army, expose the Russian. I mean, I think that wasn't an objective, but that's happened that we have exposed the Russian army as not being the monster that we have always been told since the Cold War that it was um but we've certainly decimated or helped decimate the russian army i mean they're using prisoners they're using prisoners they're using you know people that have been malnourished they're using 17 year old kids right off the street so we've clearly weakened them right um to a massive degree. I just don't see how we're on board with this thing continuing from the fine.

I mean, I understand the money. I understand there's a lot going on with this. It's easy to get the corruption going and all this. But from a military standpoint, I don't understand why we're continuing to just pour money down the drain into something that's not working. Well, it's very interesting to hear that from a guy who's literally been there, seen this up close. And I have so many more questions. There's so much more to talk with you about,

but you got to get the fuck out of here. You have a flight to catch. It's been a long day. Mark, this was awesome. You did an amazing job, especially for a guy on a half hour sleep. If you're headed back to Israel this week, best of luck with that and stay safe out there thank you for going through everything these were two fucking awesome podcasts and I'd love to get some more with you down the line again as you have updates on things

you're doing but yeah and thanks for all your support you know and for the opportunity and stuff I know we've been trying to do this for a while and it just kind of hasn't happened, but you know it was You know this morning was special with that kind of impromptu kind of thing with everything that was happening And I'm glad we're you know I'd be at home driving myself crazy following this stuff So nuts be a being here's kind of really helped and and you know I'll just drive myself tomorrow trying to get through Well, don't don't go too crazy crazy but one last one last thing overwatch foundation.com or.org it's uh overwatch foundation usa.org okay and then all the links are on my like instagram bio and all that kind of stuff i will put both links in the description okay

overwatch and instagram and people can donate via the overwatch link right yep and that's what funds you to be able to do things like this yeah we can't we can't do anything without funds and that's kind of our biggest that's our biggest need right now is funding okay you know i mean we need funding for this israel thing this week and it's probably going to go on my credit card so oh shit all right well we don't want that and i'm also going to connect you with ryan tate too because i know you're talking about africa i think that'd be really good for you guys to get together but everybody else you know what it is give it a thought get back to me peace