School of War - Ep 38: Ocie Vest on the Marine Corps’ War in Afghanistan, Part 1 of 2

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

Ocie Vest, retired Marine infantry officer, joins the show to talk about his experiences as a platoon commander in the Battle of Marjah and later as a combat leader in Nimruz Province, lessons learned in training and in combat, and how the war can continue after the fighting ends. First of a two-part conversation. ▪️ Times  • 01:46 Introduction • 02:24 Joining The Marines • 03:55 Quantico • 09:00 Becoming An Infantry Officer • 20:22 Camp Lejeune • 27:21 False Start • 35:06 Crossing The Line Of Departure  • 40:49 On The Job Learning • 44:40 Marjah • 50:43 First Combat     • 59:11 Sustained Combat • 1:02:45 Different Neighborhood, Different War

In December of 2009, President Obama ordered a surge of American troops to Afghanistan to do battle with the Taliban and to fully implement General Stanley McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy. The first infantry battalion to leave the United States under this plan, First Battalion's 6th Marine Regiment, out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, would ultimately be directed to assault the Taliban stronghold of Marja in Central Helmand Province. O.C. Vest was a young platoon commander in that battalion, more or less fresh from his training in Quantico, Virginia. He led his Marines through sustained combat during that deployment, and then returned to Afghanistan the following year for a very different kind of deployment,

a different kind of war. Then he came home to the United States and embarked on yet a new battle. This episode is a two-parter and more personal than our usual affair. Osi is a great American. He's also my friend. We serve together, and I'm proud to share his story. 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. The people who are not seen it. We shall fight on the beaches.

We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron Laplaine. Thanks for joining the School of War. Delighted today to be joined by O.C. Vest, He's retired Marine Infantry Officer, two-time veteran of Afghanistan, and my friend.

And we served together in Afghanistan on the first of his two deployments, this rifle platoon commanders. So this episode is going to be a little bit more personal than some of the other ones we've recorded so far. Osi, thanks for joining. Thanks for having me, but it's good to be here. So I thought we might just start, you know, we're going to, I think spend most of our time talking about Afghanistan and about the Marine Corps as it was in Afghanistan in the years you and I were there,

which was nine and ten for me and you. And then you went back in 11, is that right? Yeah, 11 to 12. 11 to 12. So that's kind of the period that we'll focus on. But why don't we just kind of introduce yourself to listeners like, you know, where did you grew up? Why did you decide you wanted to be a Marine?

Was it running in your family? Just tell us a bit about yourself. Yeah. So I was born in Dallas. My family's all from Texas, North Texas area. And then when I was like five, we moved out to Southern California. my dad got a job out here is actually one of the first in our family to go to college so it was you know striking out west after that and i grew up here in st clemenia which is where i live now

and it's adjacent to kent pendleton so as a kid you know i mean i watched amphibious ops on the beach and 18 flyovers from school and you know all that stuff so i mean those guys are coolest dudes we'd moved back to dallas when i was a teenager and i kind of went you know finished school there I went to cup and that when I really kind of decided to join the Marine Corps because, you know, September 11th had happened. I was trying to play football, it was trying to be a walk. And, you know, to be honest with you, it was just kind of like a calling. And the guys felt the call and, you know, we joined right after that.

And that's where we ran into each other. I remember. I remember you, just for, for listeners, OSE looks like someone who would play college football. I did not, I do not and certainly did not at the time look like that. I think I briefly had a nickname in infantry officer's course of Skeletor. That's correct. Reference to my stature. Okay, so what, let's, you know, I don't know if listeners are going to have a great

sort of measure of what Quantico is like or like when you and I went through there. I went through there in the fall of 07. When did you go through OCS? Yeah, I think it was right behind you. I was in the fall class, 07, I can't remember if it was January or not, somewhere around there. Yeah.

And what's, what is, you know, I think people know what recruit training or, you know, what people call boot camp is like, people can kind of close their eyes, the picture full metal jacket.

What's OCS like? How does it differ from, from what people are probably picturing with boot camp? Yeah. In what ways is it the same? Yeah. So I really kind of had a fortunate opportunity to go to both, even though it kind of started with,

unfortunate circumstances. So after graduating for college, I went straight to Austin candidate school and didn't pass the PFT. I ran like a 24-12 or whatever. You know what I mean? It's about like 12. I'm laughing because I've run and you ran a little faster than that. Yeah.

I'm never going to let that happen again. So from there, I was like, you know what? This organization, this is where I will be. So if I have to start at the bottom, I start at the bottom. And so I've listed and went in as a business. private, graduated as the PFC, and it just kept working my way up. And then once I got to my unit, which is a reserve unit, which is a reserve all opinions, you know, I had a college degree, had a first class PFT.

And they're like, dude, you're going officer candidate school. And I was like, all right, here we go again. Yeah. And but, you know, slated the second time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Now this was, and this was a period where the Marines were desperate for, for personnel, just in

general. Yeah, that's actually how I kind of got tagged was because the common on hit sound on a white letter. He's like, listen, we're fighting two wars right now. We need officers. So if you have people with college degrees, like, they need to get screened for officer candidate school. Yeah. And so you know what I went. So back and ran the initial PFT at Quantico. I ran in 1930 at 225 pounds. And they accused me of cheating. It made me run it again. I ran a 1920. It's outstanding. Go away.

There's a three mile run, by the way. Just show folks that it's three miles, not one mile in 19 minutes and change. Yeah. You know, it was pretty heavy Christian in my company in tune. We lost about 40% of our platoon, as I recall, going through. But it was easy. It was not super challenging to get to OCS, which I think has changed over the years. I think it is much harder now to OCS to take your shot.

But the standards once you were there did not seem to me to be appreciably lower in any way that would have been, you know, at a quieter time for the Marines. But it was not a quiet time for the Marines at all. No. And you know, like in the training, like boot camp and officer camp in off your panic school, like you still, you get out when you put in. Right. And it could be the most terrible experience you have or you can use it as an opportunity to like learn how to bind together. And then it becomes like one of the best things you've ever done. Right.

it's really not that hard. And it's not accomplishing a standard. You and your, you and your buddies are pushing to your standard. Right. And if you do that, like, standard's no problem, right? You're getting more out of it.

And time goes by. You're done. And what did you, what was different about OCS than for, than recruit training? Given the, um, we would recruit training.

One, like, there's no escaping. Lays, You got a three-month ticket, bro. You're going to be here. So that's a different environment. It was different in the way that I was a little bit older when I listed, right?

I was like 23. And so we had young, 17, 18-year-old kids in there. So immediately they're looking to me, right? For guidance, to help, for leadership, stuff like that at a time. And, you know, you know me. I'm never going to pass an opportunity up like that for that to help somebody out. So, you know, I took that mindset into boot camp. And it was good.

You know, it was a great experience. I greet Joel instructors. I mean, did they push us hard? Absolutely. Did they just wear us out? For sure, but we were all better for it. But also at a candidate school, the ability to quit was more of a mental challenge. Right?

Because now people are doing, you know, what we call self-selecting, right? They're like, I'm never going to make it. I never, I can never do another three months of this. I can do one more, you know, PT session and two feet of snow. Yeah. You know what I mean? And they quit when the fact of the matter is if you just take one step at a time and you have the right mindset, it's no big deal. So you graduate from OCS.

You head off to what the Marine Corps calls the basic school, which is this like six month course and basic officership and everyone learns how to be a provisional rifle platoon commander. And you got to compete for your job when you're when you're at TBS, which is right across the highway, still in quantity. from OCS. When did you decide you wanted to be an infantry officer? I decided that when I was enlisted. Yeah. So I went through after boot camp, I went through Marine Combat Training out here at Pendleton.

And I had probably one of the most influential Marines that I'd ever had was a Marine infantry sergeant. And he was a combat instructor here at SOI. And he was, he is an infantryman. He was always like, listen, this isn't, the training gets so much better in the infantry. Like, and he was explaining to me the difference between an infantry Marine and, you know, regular Marines or whatever, whatever we want to call him. And that just stopped to me because, you know, like I said, I felt this calling to join the Marine Corps. I wanted to be

there. I wanted to fight. And, but I didn't really know how to get there. And, you know, sort, like, we're right this way. That's all, you know, again, for folks who are not, you know, have not lived in this world, you know, there were always hierarchies within hierarchies. Like Tom Wolf has this great book about the Mercury astronauts, the right stuff, which he's always talking about, like, there's this, excuse me, this pyramid of men competing to be at the top and like Chuck Yeager's at the top. You know, it's the first to go around you. Right.

And so, you know, that's like the Supreme at the time. That was the supreme hierarchy for pilots like that. That was the innermost hierarchy. And the Marines, obviously people admire the Marines, look up to the Marines to be a Marine is like the first and most important title. you'll learn. But then once you're inside, there are, there are additional games. There are additional games and the infantry likes to see itself kind of as a, as a community apart. And then, of course, when you get into the infantry, there are games, there are games within the infantry. And now

you have, you know, recon, you have Marsock, you have all these other sorts of communities. So how, how, what was the pitch that this influential sergeant gave you? Why, why did he, why did he push you towards the infantry? He pointed me towards a book, Nate Fixbook, We bullet away. And I was actually the honor grad of MCT, and that was the book that they, that sergeant gave me, right,

as a gift. And so I read, I read that and in there, you know, he says that the marine infantry, it's the last place where you can slay the dragon. And I was just like, I'm down with that,

bro. Let's get it. Like, this is the spot. Let's get it. I actually, they tried to change my MOS when I was enlisted, but because I had signed up as a reservation.

they wouldn't let me do it. So I couldn't go infantry. So once I figured out I couldn't go to emperature as enlisted, I was like, well, there's only one other way. And that's as an officer. So, you know, we're going to officer getting at school. And it's not a sure thing. Like you're in Quantico, there's no guaranteed MOSs for officers.

You have to compete for it. So, you know, how, how, you know, at what point in TBS were you, were you relatively sure this was, this was going to work out? Was it right down to the wire or tell us about that? You know, I just had a feeling. like that I was performing near the top in some ways, you know, mediocre to some other ways. But it really did, you know, at the end of the day, it really did come down to that announcement, you know, when they let you know.

Yeah. Because you're never really sure. And I think that our, you know, staff platoon commanders, our SBCs, the guys who are, you know, in charge of our platoon as we're going to this training, I think that they did a really good job of keeping us focused on being basically good. And if you're basically good and we think you need to be an infantryman, like, that'll take care of itself. Yeah. Right. But just do the task in front of you and do it as good as you can.

And it was like, all right. You know, so you got down the wire, you got it. And you were like, I win. Yeah. Yeah. I remember, you know, for me, it was in terms of my, my preferences, because I remember filling out, I think there were 19 possible communities. You had the list from one to 19.

Yeah. And my, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to put infantry first or ground industry. which is this community. It's a part of the intelligence community, but you still go to infantry officers course and, you know, have the opportunity often to serve in infantry battalions and so forth. And I can actually picture it. I can remember like my pencil or whatever hovering over the form as I tried to decide what to what to put first. And I was not, you know, I ended up putting infantry first. And I was very, I felt very lucky actually to get it because as we alluded to, unlike you, I did not exactly look the class, aside from being tall. Other than that, I did not

exactly look the classic part of the infantry officer. But my my in was I was very good at land nav and a decent enough shot. So those are the two things that I think got me over the, otherwise the natural skepticism of the instructors. Well, we knew we needed to have a smart guy. Literally. One person who's smart. Someone had to be able to write the emails. It'll become, as I briefly did, if you recall in our battalion, the investigations lieutenant, which was by far one of the absolute worst things to happen to me in my. my state side marine career.

O.C. Now, we're not going to do what Nate Fick did, which for those who don't, I mean, I think every lieutenant of our generation read that book. I read that book. I would think we'd be hard pressed to find somebody who didn't read that book before going to Quantico. In part, you know, look, credit words, too, it's well written and he's a smart guy and had real, real world experience that we all wanted to learn from.

He also kind of dished about some of the training at IOC, which we know you're not supposed to do. And we're not really going to do that here. They actually had to stop a couple of the, at least one training evolution that they were doing prior to him writing that book because he went into detail on it. Now they can't do it anymore because the uncertainty was a big part of IOC. So to the extent that you can without, you know, forcing them to stop another training evolution, you know, for me, IOC of the three components of Quantico I. I see was the real challenge. I never at OCS and TBS, not to not to pet myself in the back or anything, but I never, you know, I was stressed and tired and everything.

but I never really questioned, like, you know, am I going to cross the finish line here? Was it I OC? I definitely did. I absolutely did. Oh, man. Yeah, like every day. Yeah.

So, you know, for me, IOC was, well, first of all, our IOC class still overlapped with TBS in the beginning. That's right. We're going to do TBS and IOC for the first, like, couple weeks, which was rough, especially because it's like the very beginning of IOC, right? So you're nervous, you're anxious. right, you don't know what to expect. But I'll tell you that my experience in IOC was life-changing, right?

It was the first place where, you know, that I felt like I was learning not what to think, but how to think. Yeah. And I was learning how to solve problems. And I was learning how to analyze situations. And I was learning on how to deal with the stress and just in a certain environment, right? That fog of war, right? That's always in front of you.

And like I said, like, you know, I love it. I loved the challenge. You know what I mean? The harder it was, the better I liked it. You know, I just, this is kind of how it was for me. But thinking about quitting every day, absolutely. I can remember it was starting to rain. And I was like, pray if lightning would just strike this tree.

And maybe it breaks my ankle. Totally. Oh, man, I could just, didn't I have a reason to like eat and go home go to sleep. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Cry, you know. Oh, please, Lord, strike me with like, but, you know, but I could have just dropped my pack and quit, but that's not an option, right? No, no, no, no. It's so funny you say that. I mean, I think this is like,

it's probably like a near universal, certainly a common experience, but, you know, you don't want to be that guy who actually quits. And I don't, I don't know if we did, I can't remember if anyone straight up quit. We did lose a few people, but, you know, you want that, you want that excuse. You want, you're really bad day. you want an injury or something that permits an honorable, an honorable exit. Right. It would not come. There was no escaping.

But it's funny what you say about the thinking, too. I remember thinking exactly the same thing and more at IOC by far than at the previous two schools. Because I was, you know, I expected, of course, to be physically challenged and sort of morally challenged, you know, by Quantico and by IOC in particular. and I certainly was. But I don't, I did not really expect to be like intellectually challenged. I expect to have to remember, you know, procedures, stuff you got to learn, of course. But like, you know, you're right. Like we really went.

The Marine Corps gives serious, serious thought to decision making and how to think practically and how to solve problems. And we were really exposed to that in I see in ways that I still, I still profit from. I still, I've learned from and, you know, kind of go back to and refresh. myself on and you know it's it's funny there's nothing you know after what three three months of oCS 10 weeks of oCS and then six months of the basic school there are only so many more infantry tactics to teach like only only so many ways you can use a machine gun you know you know what i mean like there's right there's not like some some super secret way of using a machine gun they haven't

taught you yet it's it's how to do it under increasing stress increasing exhaustion you know sort of increasingly sort of semi real world type conditions. And then as you put it, like solving problems, solving complex problems in those conditions. I still think, and, you know, of all the schools I've been to, academic and otherwise, it was probably the best, the best school I've ever been to. Yeah, I mean, 100%. Yeah, I tell people, like my operating system is the Marine Corps. Everything else is just an update.

You know what I mean? Like, I just, I have to use it because it makes sense to me. It helps me organize data and information, right? And in a way we're aware of it. So, yeah, that was great. And like you said, the increasing kind of physical pressure, but also just that dealing with uncertainty. Right. And, you know, now that we think about it, we know a lot more.

Like, that's really helping us control our anxiety. That's helping us focus in the current situation. It's helping us burn away that fog of war, right? Because we're learning how to focus in those situations. And it still be effective in that. That's, you know. I had a great lieutenant colonel in time told me that burning away the fog of war is what makes us predators.

And I was like, you're absolutely right. Like, we're the masters of that chaos. You know what I mean? And that's where I really think you learned that. And then as you apply it, you realize that it's true. Right. You keep planning like, oh, man, this is, you know, this is the way. We're at it.

So there. So there we are. We meet at IOC. We hit it off instantly. Fast friends. Best friends. If the listeners can't tell, we didn't exactly hit it off instantly. For some reason, we didn't rub each other the right way right at first.

There was one moment where I actually literally thought you were about to kill me. In California, we were out in 29 pumps. It had some sort of disagreement over some sort of role playing scenario. We were engaged in with them with Arab players. But you didn't kill me. It was really wrong. I'll say it up front. Like, and I believe I apologize later.

Yeah, but I'm, I'm quite confident I was a jerk in the way, which I was expressing my opinion. Yeah. In any event, we for our, because there's because there's no justice in the universe, or maybe because there's a lot of justice in the universe, we end up assigned not only the same regiment, not only at the same time, but indeed the same company, which is a group of what, about 120, 130 people, 130 Marines. In Camp Lejeune, and it was Camp Lejeune at the time, not Camp Lejeune. So in the old core, we called it Camp Lejeune.

North Carolina. Tell us a bit about what was that this is an enormous Marine Corps base out there in the East Coast. What was that place like, you know, when we showed up there at eight, nine. Man, that was interesting, you know, I mean, as far as like, especially us, like, you know, I think the thing was we were both so competitive, right? Like, we were dead instead on being the masters of our craft. But we definitely had two different approaches, right? And neither of them were right or wrong, but it was just different approaches. And that incident, So everybody knows. Basically, we have these role players out and they're creating all this friction, right,

and like a protest, we've got to go deal with it, right? And as we're both kind of converging on the situation, me and Aaron, he's being diplomatic, he's speaking the language, he's developed and report people and calming them down. Meanwhile, the sledgehammer comes in from the right. It just basically blows the whole thing up. Before, I thought you were going to kill me. I thought you were going to literally.

Me and Aaron, you know, head to head. I thought you were, before you were going to kill me, I thought you were actually literally going to kill that role player. I remember this now. This is all coming back to me. I mean, it's realistic training, bro. I hope that contracting firm had good insurance for, for their role players. Yeah, that dude, that, he definitely broke character, though.

You know, it's a battle of wills, time one. So, yeah, that poor guy. Again, I apologize. He's all. I got, you know what I mean? You'll heart to paint. So we were competitive and there we are in Lajun. And there's like paint a picture for folks.

Like, what was it like? I mean, this was the center of, you know, we got two wars going on. There's Iraq and Afghanistan. The Marine Corps is deploying to both simultaneously when we show up. What do you, what do you remember about the place? Well, you know, we got there right after 160 came back from Barnsh. And, you know, everybody was deploying. Like, everybody was going to combat.

Everybody was coming back and having Purple Heart ceremonies. It was just kind of the norm, right? It was just, hey, this is what we're doing this week. And it just kept going from there. The environment, you know, training was hard in Camp Lejeune, right? I believe it's Camp Lejeune if you have a low reg. And as your hair goes up, it becomes Camp Lejeune. But, you know, it was, you know, everybody is competing for training.

We all know that, you know, combat is on. on the horizon, but at the same time, we're in our 20s, you know, and we're, we're trying to live life and we're trying to figure out how to balance that. And it's a tough time, especially since everybody was already combat veterans, like we were rookies. Yeah, you know, the sergeants knew significantly more than us, right? And so you had to humble yourself immediately, right? And also, everybody's exhausted, given there's mental health issues, there's all these things going on. And you've got to refocus these guys on another combat deployment in another seven months when they haven't even processed anything from the last one. You know what I mean?

So you had to be kind of that humble leader to get these guys motivated because they had to go do it again. Yeah. With another rookie. Right. They got to do it with a rookie every. Train another lieutenant. Right. Exactly.

And it's just, you know, exhausting. So you had to, in my perspective, you really had to empower those guys because the more. decentralized and the more kind of power you give them over their own fate in my mind, the more motivated they were to train and get ready. And you, I mean, you'd have a little bit of experiences in enlisted Marine, but just only a little bit. And, you know, the Marine Corps, the military really, is not just the Marines does this incredible thing where you're, you know,

granted, you get a year of training, but still your, your first day on the job, you are given the complete responsibility for 40 Marines, a Marine rifle platoon, 40 Marines, give or take. Tell us, tell, tell, tell listeners about First Platoon, Charlie Company, First Battalion, 6 Marines. Cold Steel, one. Well, I mean, first of all, it's obviously the greatest rifle company that there's in the history of rifle companies or warfare.

These guys are great. They have their own swagger. You know what I mean? like they got their own like oh we don't find the regular guide on we got our own like like we're our own tribe and within a tribe right and that mindset just clicked with me I was like well yeah these are my guys and we carried that swagger and you know kind of that mentality that was what first platoon was all about right we were aggressive we were arrogant you know what I mean we were strong and fast that's how we like to do it and we're professionals and so we've been

When you combine that, we got into, you know, into Marcia and took those guys in there. We were ready to go. And, you know, it was a special group of people for sure. It's definitely something that I've continually tried to create, you know, an environment and a group of people like that. All focused on quite similar to all that was great. I remember, you know, we're going to get through just one minute because obviously it's kind of the center of what we're going to talk about, which are the deployments.

But just right before we do, you know, I think the hardest time for me as an infantry officer in Campbell's unit, not overseas, was if you recall, we didn't go in the seven months. We got there in October of 2008 and then we didn't leave until December of 2009 because we had an Iraq deployment that was canceled in the sort of spring summer of nine. And, you know, there was also, this was the time when the Marine Corps was basically stopping to deploy to Iraq in any significant number. But we hadn't really ramped up in Afghanistan yet. And there was this crazy period for a few months when you couldn't find a place to park to save your life. And I remember joking with you at the time that we need to go back to war because there's starting enough parking spots for the secondary division on this base. But on a more serious front, you know, we had all trained up.

We were ready to go by June, July, 2009. And then nothing, nothing. No deployment, no more high-end training. Like all our boxes had been checked. And we just sat there for six months. And for me, for second platoon, Charlie Company, First Battalion, Six Marines, I mean, we had one, one disciplinary issue, one more kid doing something stupid. Most of them, most of them, the veterans, the guys who had already been over one time, Lance Corporals, just doing just doing stupid stuff, just doing just doing Lance Corporal stuff on a Saturday night because, you know, because they should have been overseas and they weren't. did you have did you does this period ring a bell did you have the same experience in first

but soon yeah i mean shout out to the assault section right in my machine gun attachments right they i don't want to tell too much because it should probably be a netflix special but you know being so this was where like i kind of understood being a land school right this is one many reasons why they should never promote a lien squibor and second time. So, but I guess understood the guys a little bit more. And, you know, what they were trying to do was exactly what we did in college, right, that they're not getting to do because they're working, you know, in the Marine Corps infantry. Also, like, all the mental health stuff that we didn't understand. Right. So if you think about it, as soon as they hit that

seven month cycle and they don't, they don't deploy, right? They all crash. because now they have enough time to think and let that stuff start catching up with them. And so they're drinking all this, but they're self-medicating. They're doing all these things, right? And you're just trying to reason with them to not do it. And to focus on a mission that should be coming anytime now. And we've been saying that for six months. Yeah.

So I did my best to help the guys out. Obviously, there's situations. And that's what I told him. I was like, listen, if you do something bad enough, I can't help you. But just keep it low. and cool and I'll sweep it on the rug for you. And that was kind of a deal I made with them. And so I had a little bit better,

because I was willing to kind of make a drug deal with them, right? It was a little bit easier. I had to give a little bit. But fights, broken glass, you know, alcohol poisoning, all that was just an everyday occurrence. Yeah.

I remember counseling young midshipment at a later assignment, but shipment at the Naval Academy, who wanted to go Marines, and they would be anxious about, you know, can they actually lead Marines, you know, in combat? What are they going to need, et cetera, et cetera? And I would always reassure them. I'd say, look, believe it or not, you know, Quantico will prepare you for that. Like, you will show up to your platoon.

I'm curious to know if you agree, O.C., I felt like I showed up on day one. And if our company commander, a major motor at the time, Major Motor had said, Lieutenant, you know, go destroy the enemy at, you know, 1, 23, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. I would have, sir, and I would have done it. Because I knew how. I knew how. What I had never did, I had never bailed anyone out of jail. I'd never, I'd never put anyone into the brig, an experience I had during this period in Quantico.

You know, I'd like that whole range of experiences was all new to me. And I was a little bit older, but for whatever reason, my life experiences had not like taken me on that particular journey. And, you know, it was all new to me too. And I would tell them, I would tell them, it was like, you know, this is the stuff that like, you will have to figure out on the job. like you will just have to grow and grow up and try to help these Marines grow up probably faster than they're ready to. That's like the human challenge on top of the tactical challenge. Well, for sure.

There was just a lot of these guys were coming from, you know, a diverse set of backgrounds that were, you know, not good. Yeah. You know what I mean? Later on out here on the West Coast at 2.4, you know, I would have gang members opposing gang members. You know what I mean? I would have, you know, a lot of stuff like that.

And so bringing these guys in, like, when you bring them in, it's like, so you don't know where you're really getting. Right. And so a lot of ways you had to teach them to be a man, like a human being, like a productive citizen. Like, hey, here's how credit card interest works, bro. Totally. You can't get that Mustang at 25% for zero down. That's a terrible deal, you know.

And the kids are like, I'll probably not make it to the next appointment. It's like, don't say that. I'm still infuriated. I'm still infuriated at the Marine Corps. Federal Credit Union on Camp Lejeune. As I recall, they had a branch right there in like the parking lot of the shopping center or whatever. And they would give out these, but they would, they would provide these loans like 18, 19 plus percent to these kids. And I went in and complained once to some, some Marine bought a car who, I can't even remember who it was at this point, but submarine

bought a car at an interest rate that was definitely unsustainable, and even if it had been sustainable, was straight robbery. And I went in and I demanded a meeting with the manager. And she basically told me accurately that what had happened was completely legal and completely okay with with the base and so you know what exactly were we here to discuss and what you know like knowing what I know now like I should I should have written a congressman like like I'm sure it's still it's actually outrageous the level of predation that is permitted on these kids and they don't really have that much to help them and it's completely different on the west coast so when I came to two four out here in same so I'm back in St. Clementine kind of where I grew up.

We were able to buy a house out here and our 2-4 is sponsored by the city of San Clement. So we would have events with them. They would do they do homecoming parades for the guys. They come back from deployment down here. Like the support is just unbelievable that we get from our community out here. And it's so different the Camp Lejean. That's interesting. Like it is the opposite end of the spectrum.

Weather's nicer too. It's pretty good. I still remember. It was crazy. It was different, right? I had been to Lajun, I'd been in Virginia. I'd been to, you know, bases in Japan. Like, all those places that we've gone to,

it was like everybody really wasn't stoked that we were there. Yeah. Right? Or they figured out some way to rip us all. And then you come out to the West Coast and go through the bush. I still, I promise we're going to get to the deployment, but I still just after, after my time in the infantry going to the Naval Academy, I was sent out for a summer program that the,

ABLE Academy does at Pendleton to work with the midshipman. And I'd actually never been, this would have been the summer of 2011. I'd never been to Southern California in my life. So I got off the plane in San Diego. And I had, I don't know if I ever told you this. I had the opportunity at IOC to go to First Battalion Fifth Marines. An instructor pulled me aside out in the field training and said that whoever was supposed to go had fallen through for whatever reason. And I had the golden ticket to go to California. And for personal reasons, family reasons. I wanted to be on the East Coast. In retrospect, you know, if you put me back, I mean, of course, life would be very different, you know, in ways that it's just, it's just hard to,

hard to think through and contemplate. But, you know, I definitely would have just purely on weather alone, would have made a different decision knowing what I know now. And I remember being driven up the highway from San Diego up to Pendleton with like the ocean, you know, glittering off to my left and the gently wind swept foothills, you know, to my right, you know, like 75. degrees thinking, you know, man, camp lesune sucks. We was robbed. Yeah. Yeah, we were robbed for sure.

But I will say this, you know, Camp Lejeune and its proximity to the flagpole and those things like that, like they do a lot of good work there. Oh, yeah. You know, what was going to the beach? Right. All right. So it's December 2009. and we're going to Afghanistan.

Talk us through, you know, what the first few weeks in Afghanistan were like. You know, what's it like to take a rifle platoon overseas and get them ready to cross the line of departure? Yeah. So I had really crazy time, too, because I don't know if you remember, but I had like one of the best platoon sergeants ever, right? I had Travis Tilly, was my brother from Oklahoma, right? So I think the Oklahoma, Texas relationship, we became great friends. we're still friends this day. As a fact, I was just out there about a month ago. But right as we're getting up ready for deployment, he has a very unfortunate situation

when now he's the sole caretaker of his kids. And we're like three, we had already come, like, we're three weeks from leaving. And so I was assigned a new platoon sergeant, right, who had zero experience. He is brand new. And you're going to take this very tight group of Marines. right we were extremely tight and like he's going to try and fit in that group in three weeks before we're in combat right and he was just an impossible situation and so you know up to leaving I mean we had people not show up to leave on the bus just disappear you know just tap out right at the end and we and I had a couple you know we got to count like oh we're missing two where they at well they ran off and was like oh fuck those guys let's roll I had one I had one I remember

as I recall his significant other talked him out of showing up. And I, you know, these last second, I remember the last sort of second efforts to get in touch with him and like communicate to him. Like you can't, can't do this. I mean, forget legal repercussions or whatever. Like you'll never forgive yourself. But he didn't, he didn't get on the bus in the end.

Yeah. My guy's just dipped out. I just really didn't give a shit. Like, if you don't want to be here, right on. I'm only thinking dudes who want to go fight and win. So my dad still talks about it. Like basically, you know, picking my seat bags. I was like, all right, boys, let's go to work.

And to me, like, that's when I got, it's one of the things that I loved about deployment so much why I stay in the record is there's this point where you become extremely focused. And everything out just disappears, right? And you're only focused on the mission and bringing these guys home. And when I get in that mindset, it's that competitive mindset for me. Right. I go back to football, right, where I'm bringing the passion. I'm bringing emotion.

we're going to do this, we're going to do it together, and we're going to kick ass. You know what I mean? And that's just, I'm that type, like, that's me, right? I bring that to the table. I'm not trying to call me everybody down. I'm trying to get fired up. You know what I mean? And so on the bus way, on the whole way there, I'll never forget.

I did this for every deployment. I printed out every after-action report from Afghanistan. They put it in a binder, every single one. And I read every, from the whole AO, they read every single one all the way until we got up to Kyrgyzstan. and I would offer it to other people to know if I read it I just don't let the trash

and off we go because I'm not going to carry that thing with me but at that point I had read every combat engagement they are in all of Afghanistan right and I was like

I don't know if this is going to help me in Marsa but I need to understand tactics I need to understand how they fight and so that was my mindset right beginning and we're going to work

and we get there we still don't know what our mission is right everything's top secret So we mill around for six months. We finally go on this deployment. We're stoked about it.

And we get there and it's like, Paul is again. Yeah. And we're just like, it's Christmas. Yeah. Christmas is like, this is bullshit. Camp Leatherneck, right? We were at Leatherneck. Yeah, Camp Leatherneck.

And then we didn't finally get the mission to we went to Camp Dwyer. Yeah. And what was the mission? What were there to do? We were in there to take the largest Taliban stronghold that existed. We were there to break their back. we were you know president Obama gave that speech at less point right he said hey we're going to surge in afghanistan like bro that was me and you like we were the surge and and that's what we were to do

but we didn't know and then i don't know if you remember this not we had that meeting with jillian crystal oh i remember right and he's sitting there he's talking about and like we're going to partner with these guys everything like that and i just remember asked the question was like like how what do i do with these guys like like like look like look at like look at like look They're here to fight for their country. And like, are they a little bit different than us? Yeah. But like, dude, what do I do with these guys?

Like, how do I fight with them? And his answer was just, just lead them. Just be a leader. If you just be a leader, they will follow you. You know, it's funny. I actually emailed him. I've actually emailed back and forth with him a couple of times talking about that scenario and talking about his bloke team of teams.

And he's always replied. He's a great guy. I really appreciate him. I've had a couple opportunities actually just in groups talk with them since then. But I actually remember two things from that meeting. He talked to our battalion, then he took all the officers aside and kind of talked to us. I also remember. So it was that sort of talk about working with the Afghans, which we were partnered to, you know, down to the, you know, virtually man to man level.

Each, each marine platoon had an Afghan platoon of what, roughly similar. Maybe a little smaller, roughly similar size. I think I did it up like 22 or something like that. So half the size, half the size. Roughly. So two to one almost Marines to Afghans. And then the other part of that brief that I remember is him saying that actually, keep on this is the peak of sort of counterinsurgency theory and fervor.

And I'm not, you know, there are guys out there who sort of grouse about coin and think it's the worst thing that ever happened to the military. And so I'm actually not in that camp. I do think that it was misapplied and we were somewhat over enthusiastic about some broad concepts that were not super well tailored to the specific area that we were in. But I still remember him saying, you know, we'll get out there and the ideal scenarios, we'll array our forces in the desert around Marja and the Taliban will see this and they'll just go away. They'll just decide not to fight or go away, maybe not in the sense of retreat because a lot of them are local, but go away in the sense of, you know, disband. can't, you know, recognize the legitimacy of the Afghan government and choose not to fight. And I remember thinking at the time, a couple things like, one, I don't, sir, I'm not sure the Marines

want that. A. B, I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen. You know, I just like, call it a hunch. I just don't think that is the likely thing that is going to come when we array our forces in the desert. And indeed, it did not. And I just, I still reflect on that as like, there was, there was a lot of weird sort of, magical thinking at the time that I felt like I spent I spent seven months of this deployment

getting a very rough education in in war but also like in a weird way in politics like I kind of where I we'll talk about this but like where I was in the battlefield where you were too like we're dealing with all these Afghans and things that I thought I understood about the world and about politics and about Afghanistan were just simply not true like not founded in reality and the reality of that society was was complicated and in ways that I was not sufficiently prepared for. But on the Afghan, I mean, I had, you know, I don't know how you felt about your Afghan platoon. I ended up working with, you know, two, I think we all did. I ended up working with two over the course of the deployment. I definitely ruined that first platoon, you know, like we, they were not, the lieutenant who was with them,

who was who was partnered with me, was a good guy. He was very brave. He wanted to do the right thing. A lot of those soldiers were very brave and wanted to do the right thing. But as a fighting unit, they were ineffective and they were ineffective largely because we and I made them. So we had no time. We had no real, you know, we were not, we were Marine Corps infantrymen. We had, we had done some level of preparation for fighting with indigenous forces, but we weren't professionals at it in the way that US Army special forces are. You know, we hadn't done, we hadn't done this sort of tailored coursework to know exactly

like what makes an Afghan unit successful. And so we just, and there's an education there, right? You have to know. And so what they did in retrospect, right, is they took a Marine rifle platoon and they said, you're now a special operations unit and you're going to do a FID mission, a foreign internal defense mission, which you're not trained to do. Right. Carry on.

Yeah, yeah. And so what we did, what is what I did. Yeah, totally. I can speak to my own experience. I just tried to treat them like Marines who I knew would never be Marines, but like maybe they could be like 50% Marines. Like maybe they could be good enough much of the time that like we could figure it out. And it was just like slamming my head. I think this was a universal experience, like slamming our heads against the wall because they always kind of disappointed. And by the end of my time with that

platoon, though, again, though I had reason to be impressed individually with their valor and frequently was, you know, I did not succeed. And I was, I was coming to a view that it was not, it was because it was because there was no way to do this. This was ridiculous. The African army was a joke. And then, of course, what a couple months into our deployment, we, we encountered. another Afghan battalion down in the south of the city that was actually working pretty well. And I realized that, no, actually the problem is me. I don't know how to do this. And later in the deployment, I kind of figured out a little bit better how.

Okay, so you're partnered with this Afghan platoon. And we go and we are rare forces out in the desert. And, you know, what did Marjor look like? Like, tactically, what kind of problem did it present? Oh, man. It was, to be honest with you, it was a great problem, right? Like I loved it. The thing was, right, so we go and we do shaping operations down to the south.

Right. And we do those shaping operations, right, to kind of focus on southern Marcia, right? And focus the enemy there. And then what we do is, right, we do a helo insert into the city. And I remember specifically talking to some of the company commanders about why we decided to do that. And it was based on what happened in Fallujah 1, right? they were worried that we would come if we just surrounded the city we tried to work our sons and we were running to another fall into one issue so the only way to do it was to insert into the middle

and fire away out right there's also the more fun way so that's the it's the great chesty puller line where you're surrounded like that simplifies the yeah yeah and i mean and that was you know And that was Ryan Sparks. Yeah. Right. He was our company commander. He is an unbelievable warfighter, right? The definition of a warfighter.

And, you know, he's up there really running the ship, right, when it comes to planning. And he's having his influence. This is a man that was a force recon Marine up to a sergeant, right? He's one of some of the first boots on the ground. And after 9-11, Getsat becomes an infantry officer, does full. Lusia, does Marcia, right? This guy knew what he was doing. He was a great influence on me.

I was very proud to have him as a mentor. And his vision for that was insert in the middle fire way out. Yeah. And that just goes to show you what kind of guy he was, and how aggressive he was. And he was right. Was your, I've tried to remember your platoon,

because you went in with Alpha Company. Am I remembering that correctly? This is kind of coming back to me now that we're, talking or did you go in on the trucks with Charlie? Oh, man. We just went, yeah, we were just basically free gunning out there in the desert. So they took us, everybody went back to prep for the invasion, but they left us out to hold the insert site.

So we actually dug into a conventional defense. I replay, Bravo Company originally held it. They did their, it was basically to do a rehearsal for kilo insert. Right. And so they do that. They establish this defense outside of margins, which is supposed to be holding the assembly area, right? So as everybody goes back to prep for Moria, my platoon gets sent to rip out the Bravo company. So I take 30 Marines, the 20 Afghans, to provide a rifle company. And we set out

in the desert for almost 10 days, sitting in the defense, holding the position with, I mean, Moria was three clicks away. We could see it from there. Yeah. And we were, we were completely in the open in the desert. So, you know, the only thing that we could do was dig in. and wait for IDF. Yeah. I mean, that's what I was doing. I was sitting up every day

just waiting to get shelled. Indirect fire. IDF, indirect fire. Yeah. Not the Israeli defense. Through a host of, yeah, 107 rockets, RPGs.

I was really concerned about the 107s because I knew they could reach us if they could fire it right. You know what I mean? It's also the AFGate. Like, those people's got a cannon for all I know over there.

You know what I mean? Like, who knows what these guys have. So, now, I remember it being very eerie because we were, you know, for my platoon, actually our artist combat, I mean, we saw plenty over the course of the deployment, but the most intense combat was there in January before the actual operation kicked off, mostly because we were in this similar scenario to the one you're describing just a couple kilometers away where kind of we had, the Marines had front lines

and the Taliban had front lines, which seems crazy, right? If you just reflect on that for a second, it seems insane. like the United States Marine Corps with our billions of dollars and our high-end equipment and our, you know, excellent training, you have a very fine infantry fighting force, you know, against a, you know, no matter how you cut it, rag-tag band of, I don't know, you know, in the end how many Taliban fighters were in Marja, whether it's, you know, a battalion, a couple battalions, like what the, what the actual number was by the day of the actual attack, February the 13th. But, you know, there weren't as many as us and they weren't as well.

equipped and they weren't as well trained. But, and this is the key, but the rules of engagement were such that when we would look at their positions and look at what we knew that, we knew that they were Taliban observers watching us in return. You know, they were no dummies. They weren't carrying weapons. They weren't, they, they were working hard not to meet our legal definition of hostile intent. And so, you know, you just stare at each other all day and not be able to do a thing about it. And so we had actual lines and we had an actual no man's land. And the no man's land was mined. And as you point out, the Taliban was not a super technically sophisticated force, like not super great at shooting straight. Half their stuff doesn't go off. But some of their stuff does go off. And what they would try to do is like force us into areas they had mined with, you know, semi-accurate fire. And they were successful. The two Marines I lost, Zach Smith and Daniel Angus was right there at the start of the deployment in those sort of shaping engagements because they were all masked kind of on one side of the no man's land. We were on the other.

And so with our artillery and our air kind of taken out of the picture, which they were. You know, our mortars were virtually taken out of the picture, but for rare exceptions early on, it was, it was approaching a fair, only, only, only if you wanted approval, that's true. That's an excellent point. That's an excellent point. That's all for a second. But for you was, so you got, you took some indirect fire there. Was your platoon's first real experience of like a sustained direct.

fire engagement was that that actually the D-Day? Yeah, yeah, it was. When you guys were in contact, we were in that adjacent space. We were so spread out that we couldn't get there. And so we were trying to figure that out. And it was the first time any of us had really been in combat in the company, right? And, you know, you're in the fight. And even though to that point, like we were still kind of competing with each other,

it's like, we tell our athletes, right? Like, you could poke your brother in the eye, but if somebody else tries to poke your brother and I, like they're going to get a mouthful of fist. Right. Yeah. Like it was that way. And if we very much felt that way.

And I think that that's the moment when our company at the platoon leadership level and below came together. Yeah. And it was no longer first, two, second platoon, hey, we're all in this together. And we're coming out of life. You know, man. It was,

it was serious time. And the fact that they kind of fucked with you guys just didn't sit. right. Yeah. Yeah, we had two. A rupture getting wounded was a huge part of that because we all, and still do love rep. And he, you know, the fact that they messed with him set off the beehive, you know. Yeah, but second platoon, we had two really intense days of combat. The first one of which amazingly, like to this day, I don't quite know how it was possible. No Marine got hurt. Not so much as a scratch on it. Certainly nothing that anyone reported. on any of us.

And then obviously the second day, not so much. But in a very similar kind of, I mean, both the fighting both days was very similar, you know, similarly intense. I remember thinking the first day how actually like, like I consciously thought, this is pretty intense, you know, like just the scale of it. I mean, there were quite a few bad guys. They had quite a few guns. There were moments that it did kind of, you know, to like use the cliche,

it did kind of feel like the movies. But just somehow none of us got hurt. I think mostly because we were, we were living. literally probably like stepping within inches of IEDs without knowing it. Yeah. Or step, I mean, it's quite possible. We stepped on them and they just didn't, they didn't click off. Very positive.

And then the second day, not so much. Okay, so tell, this is, this is the first platoon story. So tell us about, tell about your insertion. Tell us about D-Day. So we were the trap platoon for the initial version, right? So we had to be prepared to go, I'd be prepared to go to any one of the company's AOs, if anything happened to Helos and, you know, recover that aircraft personnel and then be, right, that unit into the fight, right? And replace them.

We're in reserve. We got put in right away, right after the insert went smooth. We inserted to the east side of the city where I actually lived up with Lieutenant Bull Barrett. Yeah. A great man himself and who was unfortunately killed me in that marvellous requirement. He was also like my mentor. He was my first lieutenant mentor. So when I initially inserted, right, we come out of the ospreys and we're all, you know, doing our thing.

And then there's Bull standing up there. He's like, dude, we already cleared that. Come on. He showed up for me to that. My really bad day in January. He was the one who actually got to me when we had our mass casualty situation rocked up in his truck. Any bad situation, Bull showed up. He was there for everybody.

He was, he was just, it was something special. He really was a special person. But so we link up with him. And in typical fashion, in our battalion, orders were a little bit unclear, right? And so we basically, you know, did combat things for like the first, like, three days. I had a couple small, like, engagements. And then we linked up with Alpha Company, right? The other tactic, you employ the reserve to exploit success, right?

And so Bravo Company was completely surrounded. They were fighting their way out of the poochop. Alpha Company was in the middle, right, by MEP Objective 1, which would later become Fav Moria. And they had pushed the Air and been in contact. And so what we did was basically link up with them at night, stepping over probably hundreds of IUDs, that would be heard, linked up with them. And then we actually became the main effort to do Mb Objective 1.

We were fresh, right? We had fresh legs for two days. other than everybody, talked to Captain Havens, and basically told him I was going to do it. I was like, here's what I'm going to do. He was like, yeah, okay. So. He got sick, didn't he? Because I had the, there was like a flu going around.

He did. That I got. I hit me hard. And then I remember I was just starting to feel better in like mid to late February. We were kind of, my platoon was like on a wandering vision quest through the Alpha Company area. Just like, we were just like walking gradually in a multi-kilometer circle until we finally came to rest down. in the southern part of the city. And I remember walking into the Alpha Company, COC,

their combat operations center, and seeing it was him and his first sergeant, who I later became close with, racked out on the floor of the COC, looking like, you know, like your kid, we both have kids now, looking like your kids when they're like super sick, just like completely washed out,

completely exhausted. I was just starting to feel better from the same thing at that. I know what you got. Oh, man. Yeah. Those Alpha Company, the Alpha Company headquarters had,

Gunny Walgren. They had for this Gunny Walgreens speech who I'd say right now the one of the bravest Marines I've ever met in all the life. He's unbelievable. They had Josh Adamson,

the old man, right? He was like a gunny and then went to Officer Cade in school for somebody to get out of the infantry in it right back. Welcome, Josh. They had Captain Havens

who I thought was one of the better leaders in our company. He was, he had a personal relationship to the Marines. He cared. Yeah. You know what I mean?

That's why he was. was there and it showed and it showed his company. And then, of course, first sergeant was, I think, the best. Yeah. He really did. And, you know, Gunny Walgren, those guys. So it was such a blessing to kind of link up with them because we knew who we're linking up with and we're like, dude, these guys are great.

You know what I mean? Like, this is going to be okay. And they like adopted us basically. You know what I mean? And so we got adopted a few times in the course of this deployment. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of moving parts. So I was basically kind of like on my own working with Alpha Company,

but I still had to report back to everybody. I'd report to our company, Alpha Company, and Batai. Right. And which, I mean, just in combat, why not? When did you come back to Charlie Company? When did that actually occur? When we linked up with Matt in the ODAs. That's right.

So I pushed, after we did the initial MEP one, we took the Fob. that fob area right there, which was intense. We had two machine gun bunkers. They basically set up an ambush. They did what they always do, right? They set up an ambush and they tried to draw us into the track, right? Which they did perfectly. The problem was we didn't care.

And we just fought away out of it anyways, right? And nobody was hurt. We fought for like three or four days. It was actually the first time, I'm pretty sure it was the first time that I ever, like, lost consciousness from an explosion. I took an RPG to the wall right beside me. And then like in a similar time, I also took a black back blast from an RPG

from a very brave Afghan who didn't understand his weapon properly. There's a hole in the back. So stuff comes out. pointing at me, you know. Yeah, I had a few moments. I actually, I think I was luckier than, I was knocked off my feet a couple times.

I never lost consciousness. But I distinctly remember it was actually, back in January in the first of the two really intense days of combat we had in January, looking up to see, you know, the back, like the back of an RPG staring me in the face, you know, 15 feet away about to, about to clack off and just like very Hollywood-esque, like rolling to the side out of it, you know, with moments to spare. Yeah. You know, the saying is, right, you don't, you don't rise to the level of the challenge.

You fall to the level of your training. Yeah. And that was, that was, I tell you, my first, like, intense combat experience was the most, moment that I bought into the military court training. Yep. Because I just, it just, I just reacted. And I reacted faster than the enemy. And we actually ended up killing one of the Taliban commanders in there, you know,

we called in with the AC 130 gunship that night. And this is an amazing experience. I was literally eating a chow on top of the rooftop talking to those guys as they just pummeled these machine gun positions. And God bless America. Yeah. Yeah. So we pushed, so we left from there after about three or four days of continuous engagement, but no casualties, no wounded, and we had taken out a significant portion of the Taliban.

We were then tasked to clear all the way to the west. And in the west, there was a small junction there where you could insert the city. There was a small bridge. It was one of very few crossings, right? There was only four or five actual crosses. So the people know, USAA built Marcia in the 40s and 50s. is an agricultural area and did a phenomenal job, right? The whole outside of, Marjia basically had a 12-foot moat. So, you know, here we're going to be the Mongolians, I guess. You know, here we go.

And then every kilometer, right, exactly a kilometer, there were smaller irrigation trenches in roads. And they all kind of moved in these kilometer squares, right? And I kind of figured, I started to kind of figure out how that setup, help me figure out how the Taliban, kind of fighting in that, right? So we kind of understand basically what they would do is engaged

and then use these barriers to delay them. I think it would disappear. If you look, just for listeners to picture me, you look it up on Google Maps right now. Maybe you'll spot the Taliban down in there. It looks like Manhattan from the air. If you look at a map or satellite photos, it's perfectly geometrical,

does not look like the rest of the Helmand River Valley at all. Yeah. And there's areas where it's wide open for a kilometer and you're doing, you know, open engagements at 8 to 1,000 meters, right? And then there's, you're fighting in a phone booth. Right. It's very tight CQB action, you know, in these alleys.

They're all mine. There's no way to go around it. And you're having to clear your way through it, right? And then you pop out in the open. And you're now being engaged for a thousand year. Okay, you're transition. Okay, here we go. And you get to move across that field, which is also mined.

You know, I mean? So we did that for about four or five days. And we finally made it out to the west. Yeah, I mean, it was another hilarious situation where my task was to clear west. And I was like, like, how far? Until I come around the other side. Like, what do you want me to do here? But that was like all I got.

So that's, okay, here's what we're going to do. This looks strategically important. We're going to, we're going to seize this area right here and control this entry point. And then, like, that's probably the best way we can serve in this AO. Right. And then we'll work this AO, clear hold built, right? Yep. Just like we've been trained.

And so we worked our way out there. And honestly, once we got past the district center, the engagements got significantly lighter. And what we started running into was, again, like kind of like the lines, right? The people who had been behind the lines, these are families, elders, Lula, they're not frontline fighters, right?

And so now we're running into these guys. And we're obviously very keyed up, right? We've been fighting for like a week or so at this point every day. And so now we're, running into these heavily civilian populated areas. And it's like, we've got to transition here, right? We have to transition our mindset because I learned this very important lesson in IOC

about dealing with the local populace from Aaron McLean. Hey, listen, my tactics don't work in those scenarios. We got to be a politician when we go in here. And that's what we did. And so we didn't fire a shot. We didn't fire a shot for like three kilometers. And we went in that area and I met the elder of the area who was a former Muzidim.

He had, he worked with the CIA. He was part of the Stinger crews. And the reason why he approached me is because he said, I know you could have just bombed this area. But you walked in here peacefully, and I respect that. And we had zero issues out there for probably a month or so. Yeah. And they really kept it away.

The Taliban eventually killed him and inserted in that AO. And there's a very famous, very great picture of me. I don't know if you remember this or not, but the Taliban would basically use the gas stations is like their little headquarters. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, back in there, like the first. There's a little biker games, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

It's like this little deal. So they were coming in the area and we knew that somehow, like the elder had gone missing, right? So it wasn't hard to put two and two together. So I said, you know what? We're going to go up and we're going to talk to these guys. So unannounced. we showed up at the, you know, the deal with all the Taliban are in. Their other bikes are set up outside.

And I took off all my gear and just walked in there. And I told them, hey, guys, like, here's the deal. Like, this is my area. I'm protecting these people. You guys want to come in here like it's on you. But I'm going to kill every one of you. Or you guys can just leave us alone and leave these people alone. It's up to you.

But on my gear, walk back out. Never saw those guys again. Yeah. And that was when we moved to Southern Marcia, to connect up with you guys. That's right. And his crew. And that tactic did not work down there. Well, it's, you know, there were, there are different, like, it's a pretty big place.

Like the size of Marja is, it's not that much smaller than Manhattan. Actually, I think, maybe half the size of Manhattan. Something like, that's pretty big district. Yeah. Though much less densely populated, obviously, much, much less densely populated. But the little pockets of sort of built up areas could get a little bit dense. And then, you know, depending on where you were, depending on what tribe or what, you know, mafia, multi-tribal mafia group dominated, you know, the space you were in, the attitudes towards

the Taliban would just differ naturally in ways that were, you know, it was also not, it was an area that had been, it was populated by folks who had been forcibly resettled there, resettled there in one fashion or another by the government long before we got there. So it was like very mixed up tribally. It was not like, oh, well, on this side of the city you have, you know, the board acts and on this side of the city you have etc. It was much more intermixed than that. So as a consequence, much harder to understand. It was very metropolitan way. Right. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Because you had, oh, you know, we've got this small group of people, this small group of people, all in these areas. And I believe the reason was, was because Mujahideen commanders had been given, like, you know, that it served in that war, served honorably. They were giving plots of land in

Marsha as reward. And so you had these people and they brought to bring their, you know, bring their families in, their tribes. So they were getting these parcels. They were kind of coming away from their main tribe, but then still keeping that stuff in Marshall. It was very interesting, like kind of how that all developed, right? But the thing about Southern Marjor was it was outside the ring, right? It was outside, really, of the whole area right there. And the Taliban had great access to it from the West, right?

And there just wasn't anything we could do to interdict those guys. Like again, we're on foot. They're on dirt bikes. They see us. They just drive away. You know, they don't have weapons. We can't do anything about it.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, you know, it's funny, this really intense. I can't run fast, but I can't run that fast.

Hey, you look kind of like an inverted pyramid when you run. I've seen it. You know, that really intense few weeks you had around the actual insertion was, I mean, we saw it there was plenty of shooting we saw plenty of combat during that time as well but not as intense i think it's you like we had it very heavy prior to in january then kind of a moderate

steady burn through february until as i remember the day february 23rd february 23rd the talban stopped all across the district all across the district just hard stop and it was clearly a command decision they were running low on ammo taking too many casualties etc and then we kind of move south And then we all, you know, it's funny. I remember what I thought about Southern Marja before we all went down there. You know, because you had first battalion six Marines in the middle of the district.

You had third battalion six Marines with all of our IOC buddies leading those platoons up in the northern part of the city. And in the southern part of the main effort, just one clear. Not being the main effort, indeed, indeed if any of you guys are listening. And then in the southern part of the city,

very mysteriously, there was just this Afghan battalion. And we knew there were special forces guys down there with them. And in good sort of tribal, you know, military chauvinistic fashion, we assumed that these guys must all be a bunch of enormous fuck-ups, that they must have no idea what they're doing. I remember they got hit one night, they being their Afghans, stepped on a really big ID. I still remember, I could hear it very clearly

from where I was, was an enormous explosion. Then there was some shooting afterwards, and I, you know, it didn't, it didn't sound good. It didn't sound particularly, but it didn't sound like we had the initiative, we being the Americans and our Afghan partners just to hear the whole thing. And I remember standing around our company COC that night, trash talking, you know, these idiots who must be running the southern part of the city. And then, you know, basically, within a few days, I found myself on a on a truck down there to go meet these guys. And I'll never forget rolling up to the first Afghan army checkpoint that it was sort of ringed the concentric circles of security around the bazaar, the Balakino Bazaar, it was the center down there. And

there are a couple Afghan soldiers there wearing their uniforms. holding their weapons more or less correctly, standing roughly where they ought to be standing with ballistic glass, like, or at their posts, and not quite understanding what I was looking at, because I had never seen the Afghan army act like this. This was news to me that, like, basic professionalism was within the realm of possibility at the unit level. Again, I don't want to, I don't want to denigrate individual courage. I saw a lot of it. And, you know, we got the, we went further in. We went through more posts like this and this place looked like. kind of like it was under control and there was not an american to be seen just afghan after afghan

and then we finally got into the bazaar and i saw the first two americans that i had seen you know and a couple miles on the road down to get there walking around in shorts and t-shirts with their weapons on a sling on their on their persons no body armor big bushybeards and those were the first americans i saw and then we met this this this army special forces team that was running the showdown there and clearly had figured something, or maybe figured out as the wrong way, but knew how to do business with the Afghans in ways that we were, you and I were both figuring out as we went along. Right.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and that's, you know, why, it's probably important to train people for those missions. Just in retrospect, like, you know, I mean, even if we get a PowerPoint class, you know what I'm saying? But, yeah, I mean, and that was such a game changer when we met those guys. It was like, to me, it was like, I had fought for three months. I was doing the very tactical stuff.

I was trying to be good at the coin, but we're just fighting every day. Yeah. Right. I'm just like, it's going to be like, how many of these guys can there be? Do you know what I mean?

And to start talking to Matt and started getting his kind of mentorship when we first met. And I was like, I'm employing these guys completely wrong. Yeah. I'm doing this almost backwards. What did you learn from him? What did,

what did he teach you? This is the commander of the Army Special Forces team in Southern Marja, who was with us for several weeks on the front end when we moved down there. Then those guys, he and his guys left for a couple months, actually. And then they came back at the end of our deployment and a different, different guys. Literally, they were in Afghan Army uniforms when we showed up. And when they came back for a different mission, they wore the local man. Yeah. Yeah.

And to be clear, the only reason those guys came back is because of you. You reached out to those guys and got them there. Yeah. And you know what? That was such a huge deal because it was a game changer for all of us. We started operating in a different way when those guys got down there. And I think that that was like, you know, I know, like, oh, I'm not the typical empty office, whatever.

But what you did there and what you bringing assets to us while we're finding figuring out how to do these things, even though it's not your job. And you really don't have the authority to do any of these things. I did a lot of things. I got very good at that by the end of time. deployment. Yeah. It was very influential in all of us.

It was huge getting those guys down there. I think it saved a lot of lives. Really do. That concludes the first of two parts of my conversation with OC Vest. Next week, we'll discuss what happened when Charlie Company went to Southern Marja, where we worked closely with the U.S. Army Special Forces team and found ourselves embroiled in more combat and also a whole new level of political complexity. We'll discuss OC's second, very different deployment to Afghanistan in 2011.

and 12, where he led Afghan troops securing a major route to the Iranian border, and the story of his homecoming, which is still ongoing. Thanks for joining School of War. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.