School of War - Ep 39: Ocie Vest on the Marine Corps’ War in Afghanistan, Part 2 of 2

Episode Date: August 2, 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. Second of a two-part conversation. ▪️ Times  • 01:27 Violent Months • 06:15 “Do Whatever Those Guys Do” • 09:42 Tactical Adaptation • 13:32 A Fighting Exit • 18:03 “That Sucked…Why’d We Want To Do That So Bad?” • 21:29 Dispersed Operations • 26:36 Nimruz Province  • 30:43 Hope For The Future • 34:39 Leadership • 36:11 Medically Retired, Twice     • 38:53 The Work Works • 45:47 “Now Its Up To Them”

The Battle of Marja in 2010 was a signature marine engagement of the war in Afghanistan. This episode is the second and final part of my conversation with O.C. Vest, who served in that battle as a young platoon commander and who went on to a second deployment in Afghanistan the following year. He tells the stories of the Marines he led, the Afghans he led, and the legacy of the war, including its physical legacy personally for him and the challenges that he faces today. The first part of our conversation aired last week. Please check it out. And as always, Thanks for listening. I learned, you know, in addition to just dealing with the Afghan army, you know, those,

those guys had a way of working with the locals that commanded a certain degree of respect and balanced, you know, their tremendous capacity for violence, which obviously was real and not just what they were capable of as a small team, but the assets they could bring to bear in terms of aviation. So they could, they could muster combat hour well and well beyond what you would think 10 men could do, which is why they got really shalact, you know, in the, in the actual original operation. The Taliban saw, you know, one six in the middle, three six in the north doesn't seem too appetizing to take those guys on. But down the south, there's just a bunch of Afghan. So they surged some guys down there at the beginning of the fighting. And, you know, if you

looked at these lines of Afghan soldiers moving through the fields, you know, you're looking carefully, you might notice that one out of every, you know, 30 or 40 of them like seems a little bit better put together, has a little bit of gear, you know, maybe a radio of some kind, about a foot tall, better nourished. And yeah, those guys could really, really, really, get things down. But I, you know, I learned a lot about, you know, I mentioned this before, but for me, obviously the first part of the deployment was super intense in terms of combat. And then that continued at sort of a reduced but steady drip through like February March. And then, I don't know if you remember, we had a total like one-sided truth.

Like, we didn't, we didn't agree to anything. But the Taliban stopped fighting in April. Pappy harvest. Because everyone wanted to go harvest the poppy. And then in May, things like absolutely kicked off. And then May, June, July, where I know you guys saw a lot of combat out west. And then third platoon saw, I mean, honestly, we all did. My platoon in the middle saw a lot of combat as well. Like those were very violent months. And then on top of it all, for me personally, there was this very complicated, like, set of political circumstances.

Kind of like at every level, honestly, like at the Afghan level where, you know, for reasons that if you want to know why listeners are welcome to like to give OCME a call on ourselves, we were represented. we were representing me to the Afghans as the company commander. So I was dealing with Afghan politics. There were marine politics that I was dealing with. And then, yes, OSCE, as you point out, I was making requests and emailing with people. I probably, strictly speaking, shouldn't have been emailing with. But that part of the deployment was very intense for me, almost psychologically. And by the end of it, when our company executive officer redeployed back to the states,

which is standard, your second in command goes back to America early to get, they come, to Afghanistan early and they leave early, to get things ready back at home. And I became sort of the acting XO running the combat operations center. You know, that'll last, I don't know, six weeks, two months, whatever it was, I left the base much less free. I left our combat outposts much less frequently than I had before then. I would basically just go out to meet with Prometed Afghans and do Shuras and stuff like that.

But for the most part, my patrolling days were largely in the past. and I was in the combat operations center and some of my most vivid memories, honestly, you know, you talk about anxiety. Like if I'm likely to think back to anything in Afghanistan, it's those experiences I had on the radio in the combat operations center in those last weeks of the deployment

that really vividly stick with me. It's funny. I don't entirely know why. No, I remember you were in there. We got ambushed on our last day. Yeah, I remember. It was literally the day before the Marines and out and Matt and the ODA guys

are the guys that came to our rescue. The TRF and helped us out. And yeah, me and you were on the, on the hook trying to figure it out. I wasn't actually, that was one of those scenarios where it was very pulp fiction, right? Like, oh, by the way, we got ambushed by two saws that they had stolen from H&S company post. That's right. I forgot. I do remember.

Now that you mentioned it, I don't remember that. Right. So I old a grudge. But I've also, like, had the experience of being shot at by the saw. And I tell you, quite quite a quite. experience. Effective weapons. Yeah.

I remember. I love that rock that was about two feet tall that we got behind. I remember talking to you right after that. Squad leader. And unfortunately, the lieutenant who was supposed to be replacing me was with me. Yeah. We literally took him on the patrol to be like, this is the coolest area. It's the most chill.

Let's get his feet wet and then we'll do it. And we did make it 100 yards outside the base and we just got ambushed. Our Afghans came up with RPGs and maneuvered on them. And then those guys down actually killed them. And as we kind of maneuvered out of the ambush and stuff like that, but an pure Afghan fire team showed up, got on the roof. One of my team leaders, Robert Wood, who's one of the greatest warfighters I've ever seen. And they maneuvered on them and suppress the enemy so we could get out of the ambush.

And no communications. We didn't talk to anybody. We had just been in combat so much they had learned how to do it just by following this. And that's what Matt taught me. Matt was like, listen, dude, imagine if, because Matt's a football guy too, right? So he realized how to communicate with him. His dad was a quarterback. Yeah, professional quarterback.

Yeah, exactly. So he knew how to kind of communicate with me. It was so great. He was like, dude, think about it. Think about it if you were playing high school and all of a sudden you're going to go play an NFL game. What are you going to do? you're going to do whatever those guys do, right? And you know what I mean?

And if they're not doing, you're going to do whatever they do, not what they say. Yeah. Right. It's the most purest example of leadership by example. It is. And that's all it requires. And that's what Jim, what Crystal was saying.

That's what Matt was saying. And it finally just dawned on me. Like, I need to stop trying to like figure this out like it's a problem and just lead these guys. And they'll get there. And that was in a critical moment in the middle. because we were transiting around the poppy harvest, right? We were transitioning because there was no more contact,

more into the clear hole bill, right? We're doing more key later engagements. We're doing those things just because there's no combat, not knowing that basically the Taliban is getting their own offensive ready. When their offensive started, we actually picked up their comms on the little crank radio. Yeah. And our interpreters were able to identify it as the language in Pakistan.

Ordu. Urdu, right. And they're like, that's Urdu. that's Pakistan Taliban. And what we ended up finding out was there's about 50 to 70 of them. And they were coming in. And what they would do was they would come in and attack my position on the West, withdrawal, come back, attack them.

They were using that outside desert to move around. They would come attack Jay on his side, right on the deep side. And they were just the same group. They were just kind of moving around. And they were doing the same thing they always do. They were just trying to pull us into an ambush, right? just try and beat us into it. And that's when we started.

So we had some really great lessons from Matt about how to employ these guys. And then tactically, we needed to change our tactics, right? Because the Taliban was adapting to our tactics. And they knew who was outside the patrol base, who wasn't, right? If they didn't know, they're very opportunistic. They were very disciplined. If they didn't know who was out of the, how many people were out of patrol base, there would be no ambush.

They didn't attack. But the moment we had everybody in, or at least what they thought was everybody in, they would attack us from all four sides and try to overrun our fault. And that lasted for probably a couple weeks. And the day that we kind of cured them of that was a great day. Our gunner, Matt Harris,

who is one of my best friends to this day, who was a great American, showed up on a convoy with the 50 calendar of Mark 19. He said, we're going to solve this problem today. And so we placed them up underneath the HESCO, go. So the Talban against the East just looked like a great bit. We signed a patrol. We brought everybody back.

Here they come. Coming to. But this time, we had a little bit different recipe for them. And that was the last time we saw those guys. Yeah. So we took a great amount of them off the battlefield too. But as soon as we got the attack, we put the 50 in the Mark 19 up, the two different directions to start wreck and shop.

Yeah, that was it. So it was a great, great time to get to ambush the Taliban. You know what I mean? It was very satisfying. It's funny that the things you would learn that were, sort of counterintuitive to anything you'd been taught just because of the local tactical realities. And it's this constant cat and mouse game of evolution. You know, as you do a certain action, the Taliban will try to exploit it in a certain way. As you figure that out, you change,

then they change because of your change. And for me, the one that sticks with me is, you know, their tactic very early on of trying to push us onto terrain that was essentially mined. But with fire that, because, you know, there were a handful of Taliban, you know, I won't even use the word snipers. There were a handful of them that could fire accurately with single shots. They were really not that many of them. You could get unlucky and run into one. But for the most part, and by the way, I mean, that's that's at range, you know, 200, 300 meters. For the most part, they would push themselves out even further if they could just to get some survivability with respect to the Marines, because obviously we were good at, you know, five, six football

fields with our weapons. And when we realized that their fire was genuine, I mean, the first couple times you get shot at by an AK-47, it's a little unnerving, but over time, when you realize that actually these guys were just not very good shots, like generally speaking, not good. We realize that actually the right thing to do when you're getting shot at is not not take cover. Let me take a knee. You reduce your profile. Right.

But we, but it was early on, it was the taking cover that was getting us because the cover was mine. So we found ourselves, you know, by the middle of the deployment early. I mean, honestly, by the second, third week of combat, we under, under, you know, we, under, fire. We just take a knee. I mean, it felt very 18th century in some ways. But like we, we took far fewer casualties once we adopted that practice. Yeah. I mean, listen, I'm up. He sees me. I'm down. There's a reason why we do it. It works. You turn around and engage the enemy. We're taking their cover. Like, it's very hard to do mentally because you're trying to seek safety,

especially when they're shooting directly at you, right? Yep. Like, if you do the dung with tenant things, like you're out in the middle of fill with the map and the antennas and you're like, I think it's this building. You're probably going to get shot it. You know, I had a bad habit of that. But I agree. You know, at some point, you really be kind of come known to it. And like, I remember being able to tell when the marksman would shoot because it was

shoot at a greater distance. It would shoot one round. When it would go over my head, I could hear the round tumbling. Yeah. When you snap and whistle, it would be like tumbling, like spinning. And I knew. I was like, that's an AK-47 is outside of 400 meters. Right.

If it's a Marks rifle, he's in the same distance. He's shooting high. So he's got to be in this area right here. And I could, like by the sound of the rounds, I could kind of figure out where those guys were to be able to maneuver on him. And that was that adaptability that we talked about. Like just by being out there doing it, going 100%, being out there with the guys, being in contact, you learn so much.

You, your Oolooop, right? Your process becomes so fast that you can, like, you're just, front of the enemy all the time. Right. I developed something like a six cents for spotting IEDs. I could, I could guess accurately where they all were. I think we probably all could by the end of the deployment. You know what was crazy was when we cleared that Western Junction, we found like 120 IEDs

because it was the southern area, right? And they had made them, it was brilliant. They had the road, they engaged, they had machine gun bunkers, and they had these IEDs that were set for pressure plates or command right from their machine gun positions and it was the exact same tactic right the vehicles were going to come in and they were going to engage and then what are we going to do we're going to heroin bone that's exactly where those iEDs were so we found like three and we're like these are pretty uniform and we started looking at it and like if that's the case then there's iEDs here here here yeah boom boom boom we found all 120 of them yeah so it's it's july july of

2010. We've, we've all seen a lot of combat, and it's time to go. What were your thoughts, you know, getting on the heloes to leave Marja? Well, you know, I had lost Pete Rod, Corporal Pratera Regis. We had lost him. That was very much weighing heavy on me. Because we were so good and so lethal, it had made it through this unbelievable deployment with no casualties. We got that right down to the very end, and one of those marksmen was able to kill Corporate Parer Rodriguez while he was umptial. Of course, it happened in a scenario where there's a dust storm that blows our antenna down. They need a meta fact. They just got in contact and I can't talk to anybody. Yeah. Right. And so we're like standing on the roof, I'm sending QRF, I'm standing the roof trying

to talk on small, back to you on the microphone. And that day, and I know I hate on these H&S cats, But in that day, we had some combat engineers with us and they had a female com operator. And she pulled up in her vehicle and I gave her the information and she processed that metafact force. And, you know, if P.rod had a chance, he had a chance because of them. And she jumped right into the fight with us. And from that moment on, my respect definitely changed. You know what I mean?

I saw combat support when I needed it. And that was a very, you know, humbling. Right. Just because of our arrogance being who we are. And it was very impactful on me, obviously, losing Marine, nothing I have to tell you, right? But because of like, it's almost like my competitiveness. Like, it was so hard for me to give up. Yeah, I mean. And so when we're coming back to get on the Helos, I actually volunteered to stay. Volunteered to stay twice. I had a campaign plan for the West, and I had the guys, I had the Taliban on the run, to be honest with you. They were trying to exploit, that transition time, and I knew that they were going to be coming in from that area,

from my area, and setting up to attack these bases, right? And they're going to have green guys out there, and I wanted to exploit that, right? I was trying to exploit the transition in our favor to go and get these guys, but, I mean, really because they killed B. Rod, you know, and so luckily, of course, they didn't let me, right? And we left, but I wanted from that point on, I wanted nothing more than go back to Afghanistan fight. And, you know, the Marine Corps manpower was trying to not let me do that, which is ridiculous. You know what I mean?

Like, especially, you know, all the cowards we saw, the dodging deployments and, you know, or just staying in the fob, you know, our little fobbits, you know, their eye. Can I brag about the, can I brag about the one thing that I actually am quite proud of from this is I never once, from when we left Camp Dwyer in January, to where. when we returned at Camp Dwyer in July. For me, I think it was July the 4th. I can't remember the exact day. The day in July when we returned,

I did not set foot on a forward operating base. I'm very proud of that fact. And at one point, it looked like they were going to send me through Fob Marja on the way out, and somehow I wiggled out of it. I can't remember. But it was like with days to go.

I was like, I got to keep this streak. I got to keep this streak and I did. That's a good one. That's a good one. I only had one day on Fob Marja. Well, you founded Fob Marja. think that gets you some kind of pass. Like you, you, you established,

established on February 2010. Via speed, surprise, and violence. Yeah. No, yeah. Yeah, that's actually a great, yeah, I'm the same way. I never, I enjoyed being out. You know, I mean, at the point of friction,

that's where we're supposed to be. Yeah, I mean, we're not supposed to be in our ivory tower casting judgment. Yeah. Right. Like, we're Marines. Go fight. Go fight and win.

That's my spiel. But anyway, So after we left, we came back. I don't know if you remember, but I actually ended up being a company commander for Charlie Company. Yeah. It was supposed to be for like two months. And ended up having to do the whole workup.

Yeah. During the time, I was experiencing a lot of symptoms from PTSD and head trauma from TBI. So I would get lost driving to the battalion or driving home, I was having cognitive issues. And then obviously it was so great to be home. I was going to drink every night. You know, I remember forgetting about going back is that day at the beach.

Yeah. We're out there. We just had hamburgs with these beers. We're float out the water. We're like, America's such a great place. Why do we ever want to leave? I know. Actually, I remember, I remember like it was yesterday, you turning to me with beer in your hand.

We may have been sitting down and you said, man, that fucking sucked. Why'd we want to do that so bad? Well, that's, yeah. I know. It was like, sign me up again. Yeah. So it's funny. So at that point, I did the whole workup and then changed, you know, companies in, in a tournament

palms to actually company commanders who were actually mostly our IOC instructors. Right. Which was fantastic because I had PJ Trimbley, who was my, he was my mentor in TBS IOC and threw up. And then now he's going to, I was at the opportunity to work with them in the fleet. Right. I had Eric Quist. Yep. Carl Quist, they come from a great Marine Corps family.

Carl Quist is one of our peers, great friend of mine. Still in today. As a matter of fact, his son and my son play a little league together. No kidding. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. I love a great family and, you know, I was going to get out. Ashley was pregnant.

And I was like, I got to get out. I got a family now. I can't go back and do this again. Like, you know, it's time for me to get out. So I actually denied career designation. and I was going to the transition class when George Benson came and got me. And him and Anthony Pichoni. Yeah.

Listen, we got an admission I think you'd like. I was like, what is it? Because I was going to get out. I was going to go special forces. Yep. I was going to go join Matt in those guys. Like I had seen what I thought was extreme, like master of the craft. Right.

And I was like, that's the place for me. Right. Just like we talk about, right? Like, I'm a Marine. Well, I got to be an infantry, right? Hold up. These guys are the next level. I got to get to that.

You know what I mean? That's the next challenge. That's the next thing to drive me to be better. And so that was the plan. And then we ended up getting a mission where we needed a divisor team, right? It was going to be a small group of guys. And we were going to run this Afghan battalion and we were going to employ them in the fight and all these things like that.

And I was like, man, that's my kind of party. Yeah. Yeah. I can't pass that up. And you had training in the sense that you had. You had done it in common. We had Matt. Yeah.

Right. So we bring. So I actually talked Colonel Benson and let me go to Bragg. And I trained with Matt and Grady and those guys for about 10 days, which was, I mean, an unbelievable experience. You mean? And I had its chance to talk with Jim Gant, who was there. And it was like, I mean, it was like getting to talk to Michael Jordan, LeBron James, about for internal defense and how do I employ those guys.

Yeah. Right. And I'm a high school quarterback. You know what I mean? Like it was just like the wealth of knowledge is unbelievable. And their willingness to help and guide and do their things. Like they're just, they're fantastic people. Absolute warriors.

And that's where I really learned about how to employ these Afghans, how to influence them, right? And how to lead them and how to use their command and how to do those things in order to make them successful. And a lot of it was just letting them be themselves, letting them fight the way that they need to fight, right, that they want to. And for a lot of them, the way that they were used to fighting was being garrisoned and then going out on a mission and coming back, right? Which is fair because it's basically how every military operates, right? We were the only ones doing this dispersed operations, decentralized type of combat operations. So it was very familiar to them. but our key task was to secure this road.

So what Matt and then talking about was, hey, if you align their security with force preservation, the road will always be secure. And so our plan going in was to use them in the, similar as we had done in these checkpoints, right? But the resupply came from checkpoint to checkpoint. So they had to clear back if they wanted resupply.

And what they created was a clear road. And we allowed them to fight like they could fight, right? They want to garrison up and then go out when they need to. And that was very successful. That was a very successful tactic. And it was very Afghan first. We were there if there's a problem. And they knew that I'd be there.

I remember you sending, I think it was while you were there. You sent me, was it a video? There were definitely pictures, but I think there was a video of you riding like a motorcycle. down a paved road. We're out now. They can't get you now. We're out now. But what struck me, not only was that hilarious,

but what struck me about it was, as you kind of, there were open spaces in Marjorishore, but you know, you might get shot at it as you try to walk across one of them. But for the most part, the deployment that we did together felt extremely claustrophobic.

Like walking out the door, like our two positions, where second platoon was and where first platoon was for the second half of the deployment, your take. Couldn't have been, were they 1,000 meters apart? I don't know if they quite were a full 1,000 meters apart. I want to see this right around two.

You think so? You think it was that far? It wasn't two, but it was close to two. Okay. It's over a decade ago. You may well be right. In any event, all the brain damage.

Let's say, let's say it was 1,800 meters. That's about a mile. you know, you can put on your sneakers and do a nice, easy jog of that in substantially less than 10 minutes. But to, you know, put on your full gear and walk there in an infantry squad formation was a significant life decision. Like just walking back and forth between our two positions was quite literally a military operation because there are people trying to kill you in between the two. So like that's the scale, like the kind of micro scale of that deployment for us, you know, and this sort of sense of constant like, like not just, I, I'm sure you had danger in the second deployment as well, of course, but the sense of the danger just like breathing down your neck,

being like literally around the corner. Just across the street. Just across, literally across the street. And then to see that video of you, you know, a province over, this was, was it, is it, is it Nimrod's province? Yeah, Nimran's province. Just like in these wide open spaces, still fighting a war, but like obviously a very different kind of war.

I remember finding that really striking. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, read Jim Gant's book. run a tribe at a time. It works. There's a reason why, you know, they found it in Osama bin Laden's house, right? Like, he had it figured out. And what he figured out was you could take a couple highly trained guys that are motivated, right?

They're good dudes that want to warriors that want to get up there and fight. And they can leave all the Afghans they need to, right? And here's how you do it. And that's what he talked to me about. And so we became, we took a seat back. But when it came time to lead, right, we had to step up in that rule. They needed us to fill that role and close the gaps. And the more we did that with them, the better they got at it.

There was no training we could do. We just went to the operations. And they ran real quick. And that's what Jim and those guys taught us. But, you know, I was set up for success on that point in the very beginning. Colonel Benson had been on an advisor team. He had seen kind of like the good, the bad, and with that. and he said, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to give you opportunity to basically screen and assess the best NCOs we have in the battalion. And all of them are going on your team. Right. And so I ended up, we had two teams. We had like a military police team that I had to send some really great guys to. They kind of held more of a static position. They had to kind of their own deployment up there.

And they had very rough. Same with the group down in Marja that was kind of doing theirs. It was led by a great lieutenant. And he was doing great. things down there. And then I had like my group, right? Originally, we were supposed to be working with the battalion. I was supposed to be the battalion's main effort with these Afghans. Well, as soon as we got in country, we get poached from that by RCTA and Colonel Smith, who's now General Smith, and this is a common, I believe. But anyways, so we go and we work for him.

And he's probably one of the best marine leaders I've ever met. Like, he was fantastic. And my job, first lieutenant the the role was supposed to be a major so now i'm in a major's billet is a first lieutenant and he basically told me oh see i've got musa clay i've got the kajaki dam i have all these issues going on nimran's province i've got 200 kilometers a road that goes straight to iran he's like i need somebody to take care of that and i don't have any more forces i need you to take this afghan forces to secure that road and i mean you know me it's no problem so you get six months to do it I'm all. This is my kind of party, you know. And so we had four gun trucks,

hit up with about 1,200 Afghans, A&A, and we cleared 200 kilometers a road and secured it in about three and a half months. We did. We did, I think, 12 deliberate operations with them. We actually did the first brigade level operation, it's our very last one. And I would tell you that we had the best relationship with those Afghans.

I still have all the gifts they've given me, Great relationship with the leadership. But we didn't teach the individual soldier, right? We taught the leadership and we held the leadership accountable. We gave them real, real, real training. But we respected each other very much. So very early on, the key that Matt told me was you have to be ultra responsive. And if something happens to them, you've got to be on.

They have to realize that trust that you're coming down. to help them and that they can trust you. And if you can build that trust with them, you'll be successful in your deployment. You're not gonna have to worry about them throwing grenades in your 10, right? And stuff like that that was happening. So it was like, okay, so we really, really focused on that.

And I had some key Marines that were also the Muslim faith, right? That were in my COC that were leaders in there. And that initially gave us very good rapport, right? Just comfort, right? And then as it has, I was introduced and I worked with the commander. They began to trust us. The first key to that was the first medevac we did for him for a second chest wound.

As soon as we got it, we bounced QRF. And I mean, we were on that guy in like 32 minutes. Metafact him in under an hour. And the Afghans were just like, holy shit. These days were jup. We responded like two days later, we responded to an attack on one of our positions and was able to maneuver on the Taliban and take them down. And it just solidified everything.

everything. So from that point on, it was one operate, operate, right? We would plan, prepare, do the operation, recover, and we just did it over and over and over again. Right. And we just repeated that same process. And they just fell into it. And I mean, I had sergeants that were fleeing the rules as captains. Right. My intelligence officer was an 0351 sergeant. He was a smart man I have. And he was brilliant. You know what I mean? These guys, these Marines, because even though they were NCOs and off street bullets, I could, I don't have time to make me as those guys. We really didn't even know what we were doing, right? And so they just took ownership of it. They had to. All our lives were dependent on it. And then you see those guys performed at that level.

It's just like, they didn't need us. Probably prefer not to have us. For sure. So 2012, you come home from this second deployment. And I want to talk to you about the the aftermath. And we'll let's talk big picture and kind of politics in Afghanistan first. And then I don't want to talk to you about personal aftermath. On the politics side, I mean, just briefly speaking for myself, like, you know, by 2012, things that in 2010, I thought were unlikely had actually occurred. Like the Marine Corps had had pacified the Helmand River Valley, kind of amazingly when you consider how violent it was when we got there. And things were, things were broadly speaking,

going, going well, at least at a superficial level, I think at a deeper level. It was obviously unstable. And so this is my point, at least to my question, like to me, when I left in 2010 and then watching kind of from the sidelines, you going back, it was pretty, very little that happened later when the Marines started to draw down, you know, 13, 14 and on. Very little that happened after that surprised me. It depressed me. It upset me. But I was, I was unsurprised to watch the whole thing fall apart as rapidly as it did. you know, as soon as you basically took Americans out of the area,

it kind of went back to Taliban control. And I was unsurprised last year at the pace of the final collapse. That, that, I was like, well, what were you expecting exactly? Yeah. Of course. Did you have, I'm curious, do you have a similar experience? Did you think things were going to hold on for longer? Yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, we went back on that second deployment,

we were like, holy shit, this works. Like, we're winning. Yeah. We're winning and we're winning big. You know, and I know, and I know there's a lot of experts out there, right, who know everything about coin and how it's not effective, but I'm here to tell you, there's going to be a local population no matter where you go. Yeah.

Right. And it's always going to be a factor as a part of warfare, right? You just have to adapt to them and stop complaining. Even though that means you have to listen to people who deployed to Afghanistan, I get it. But anyways, like, we were winning, hands down. I mean, was it perfect? No. Was it better than before?

Yeah. Right. And the definition was not in, hey, there's no contact. Really, it was, look at how prosperous these bazaars are. Look at how many people. Like, Aaron, I'm telling you, when we went there, we went to Marja first, and we went to seven times, we're like, what's our route? And they're like, oh, let's go out of elephants.

We're like, fuck you. Just my ass, though. It's a bad neighborhood in our deployment. Anthony, me and Anthony Bishone were like, no way, bro. And they took us out. Sure enough, we get there and people walk around no gear. There's, I mean, crowds of people at these bazaars and things like that. And it was just prosperous.

Yeah. And I was like, holy shit, this works. Like, we're doing it right. We're going to my advisor team, right? And we're able to work with those guys and it really influenced them, right? And be one of the most successful advisor teams that we had. right? Like I did more operations as a first lieutenant advisor team leader than any of the other majors, right, in our advisor group because they wanted to go teach them stuff on PowerPoint.

You know what I mean? And I taught them combat. So when we left after my advisory team deployment, I wanted to go to Marsock because obviously I'm going to get back to that the answer. Right. And we were winning. Right. I felt like the momentum was on our side. And I didn't want to do anything else but push that pile over the goal line. You know what I mean? And I really thought that I had the keys to do it. Like, I really felt like I had them figured out. And I knew how to do it and not going back because that would have to go on a B billet was like,

is killing me. Also, I was having a lot of mental issues because in the second deployment, we hit an IED with my vehicle and little contact from that. And then right after, and I had pretty bad, like it rang my bell pretty bad. I could tell. But it was my first time getting blown up. Right. And I was like, I wasn't so bad. And then the next one hit. And, you know, it was definitely a feel of difference. But I'm so focused in the fight we fought through. The next day, we're back at our patrol base. And I'm walking to the COC and I just pass out. And the Corman, you know, look like I get to the Corman. And he's like, oh, shit, sir, like, what's wrong with you? I think I'm having a heart attack. And so, you know, you give us some meds or whatever.

I took a rest. And I was like, I feel better. He was like, no, we're going to get you checked out. So, and we need to do a resupply anyways. We were doing a resupply to get ready for our next mission, right? We were in that recover phase and we're getting ready to plan and execute the next mission. But really, we were in the planning phase at this point. So I went back and they checked me out.

And they were basically, you know, like listen, you know, we have to medivacue. They don't have a choice. Like, if you don't, this. is going to have lasting effects throughout the rest of your life. Right. We don't know exactly what it is, but something's going on. And we're going to know that. Of course, I said no.

And they're like, it doesn't work like that. Like, you know, you got to go. So, okay, very well, I was like, well, at least let me go brief my guys. Let's say, accept it. No problem. Walked out my corn and it's left the tip of my corn. I told him, if you tell me anybody about this, I'll kill you. I'll shoot you myself.

We got back in the ride and they're like, sure, you good. I was like, I'm good. Let's roll. We rode out the gate never to be heard from again. And honestly that did catch up. That doctor was right. But, you know, leadership's a burden, right? We're there to sacrifice for our Marines.

And all those Marines came home. They're all alive today. And they have families and jobs. And it's beautiful. And whatever it was that happened to me after that, I'm good with it. Yeah, man. I got blown up. And the next mission, I got blown up again.

So I had basically been blown up three times in like 72 hours. And that last explosion was when I could tell a difference. Like I could tell that I was really hurt. Yeah. And, you know, I was just able to push through. Right. They were giving me Valium, which was awesome in a gunfight. I was standing up like, I'm pretty sure they're right there, you know.

But that got me through the deployment. And then we got back and I was going to Morseille. and just had my son, little Losi, and that's a little anymore. But, you know, I was ready to go to Marsock. I was ready to get back in the fight. And, you know, I was having a lot of issues. And Ashley, my wife, you know, she's tougher than all of us. You know, she set me down and I was like, listen, you got to take care of yourself and give

the family now. And you're not okay. And so we decided, hey, we're going to, you know, not go to Marsok. All right. Let's do the right thing here. I'm definitely not talking to any of the doctors because they'll just mentally retire me. And this is our career. So I had orders to TBS to go via SPC, but there was also a billet in Texas and a joint task force there, joint task force in the north to do counter, narcotics, counterterrorism. And so I was like, hey, kill two birds with one stone, right?

I get actually back home to Texas. She's with her family. And I get to go up right on the southwestern. order. Like, that's the ticket. Let's do that. If I can't get to Afghanistan, right, let's let me go fight the cartels. Like, if I got to be home for a while, let me do something fun. And so we did that. And that was the time when I ended up actually getting medically retired the first time. I lost consciousness on a Border Patrol mission. And, you know, there was people around. I lost consciousness driving down the freeway with my full board

colonel. So, you know, there was no hide it anymore. It was so advanced at the time and they were so backed up. Like, they just put me in the HOV lane for bulk retirement, even though I'm like taking and screening. And so I fought it for 18 months afterwards. They ended up putting me, I appealed and I was able to get temporary retirement. Right. And so I was like, okay, so there's a chance I can come back in 18 months.

And they're like, yeah, if you heal up, right, you show progress and everything like that. And you can pass all the change to come back in and you can come back in. So I was like, yeah, well, that's the ticket. I got 18 months. It ended up being about 22 months that I did that. But as soon as I got the opportunity to come back in, I jumped right back in. Yeah.

So. Yeah. And so on this whole like, I mean, not to be dramatic about it, but like this second war, third war, if you count your first two deployment, seeches of war,

you've been fighting against, you know, traumatic brain injury and everything else. What have you learned? What would you say to others who are in a similar situation? Or maybe actually even more valuably, like to those who don't know yet, that they're going to be.

Well, there's a lot of stuff out here. The thing that I tell people is the work works, right? The work works. But you got to go do the work. Right. And I wanted to hide everything so long because I knew it was going to keep me from going back into the fight. Yeah, I mean, and I was just so like, you know, in my mind. And, you know, maybe like, you know, it's a little egotistic.

But I just wanted to be there for Marines. Yeah, I mean, I was. confident in the leadership that they were having in a lot of ways. And so that was that was the struggle. I didn't do the work, right? And now I'm in a position where I was mainly retired twice, right? Gold star and Lou of second award. I think I still think that I'm the only person to do it.

I want to have really man there the Marine Corps. You know what I mean? So they probably don't let people do it anymore. But you know, I didn't really do any work in those 18 months. I just covered it up, tried to put it away, kept training, and we got the opportunity to come back in. I did. Eventually, right, as things are going to do, it's going to catch up to you. And while is it two, four, it's getting ready, I done company commanding deployment, and I started having seizures.

And, you know, obviously, that's the end of the line, right? Active medical retirement. And I went to business school to try and keep my mind occupied from dealing with the graduate different business schools, starting businesses. I was doing all these things. And then I had a massive seizure. And I'm talking about to a point where it took me a couple of weeks just to walk unassisted. Yeah. Right. And the whole reason I like that whole spectrum is because I didn't trust the doctors to do the work. You know what I mean? And so now part of this process for using psychedelic therapies and we're doing these things to help me do these processes, and what I'm learning is

the work works but you have to do it and you have to just like everything and we're right you got to you're going to get out what you put in and there's so many people going off the rails now and you know going Joshua treating is taking a shitload of shrooms and made like I'm healed it's like right you're not healed right it's a process it's word and then when you get to a point where you're stable you have to maintain right and I talk to my best friends from those appointment Ryan Sparks Anthony Picchoni, Matt Black, right? And you and all our buddies. And the one thing is still the same, right?

If you do some basic daily health things for yourself, right? And you learn how to decompress and do these things to take care of your mindset and you do the work in between. Like, you'll be good, right? You're not going to be probably as good as you used to be, right? But you're going to be good emotionally. You know what I mean? And that's, to me, it's super important. And I've learned to trust that process.

Right. I've understood what that made. You say it to our athletes all the time, right? You got to trust the process. You got trust the process. But being somebody who's been in processes like that, like, it's terrible. Right. It's terrible.

You really don't feel like you're getting anywhere until you finally see that first glimpse of progress. Right. And if you grab a hold on you use that as your motivation, then you just keep taking those steps, man. It's like every shitty thing that we did, right? You see one foot in front of the other, and eventually you get there. Oh, see, I'm grateful to you for coming on the show. We, you know, a lot of these episodes focus on, you know, not just history, but even, even ancient history.

And this obviously is an opportunity for folks to hear, you know, testimony kind of from not that long ago, from someone who was right in the middle of it. And I have to say, you know, even from our early days together when I thought you might actually literally kill me. And this podcast, you know, it's audio only so we can see each other right now on Zoom. The listeners can't see you. But just know that if you could see us, you would see that OC probably could and would have killed me if he had chosen to at the time. But I knew, I knew even then that you were, you were an amazing Marine. And I have to say, you know, if America just has, you know, a half dozen OCs or so in each of its wars will be okay. And it's my, it's really, it's a great honor of my life.

to know you. Yeah. And you had to be honest with mass, the same about you. You know, it really was. We did something special. You can't see it, but that article from the Swansboro Times of us that dinner before we went always be held up in my house and in my parents' house. Yeah. You know what I mean? That group that we had, us, we were very special and it will always be special to us because, I mean, we left it all on the line out there. You mean, we, it's like I tell an athlete all the time. I'm very fortunate right now as part of my therapy is that I'm, volunteer football coach at Santa Margarita Catholic High School here.

And the coaches are phenomenal guys, a bunch of NFL players. And they've basically taken me in, given me a safe place to work, rebuild myself, motivate and train young men while I'm in this process of still recovering. You know what I mean? And, you know, strictly volunteer. I can kind of come and go as I need. But they've just created this opportunity for me. And that just goes to show you, like, with a class,

of Afghanistan happened, right? And like people losing their mind on social media, we could question ourselves like, was it worth it? Like, do we really do anything out there? You know what I mean? And then you see Americans like this, right? You see Americans like Coach Rousier, the guy doesn't work for, Adam Franco, you know, these coaches, these people that I work with that are just totally willing to say, hey, it's going to take time out of my day. It's going to be a little bit harder, but you're worth it. And it's not. It's unbelievable. It's an unbelievable experience. And it's helping me. You know, I mean, America is worth it. They don't show them on Facebook, but they're worth it. You know what I mean? Like,

they really are. And, you know, the military civilian gap has always been something that's very hard, right, because they're two very different worlds. They're extremely different, right? This world is about materialism and, you know, being the best, right? And the Marine Corps is about protecting your brothers. your brothers and your sisters right your Marines it's about sacrifice the honor courage and commitment like what you know what organization

you know outside the Marine Corps that has keywords like that it's just it's why it's very special and like I said we don't always show it but the thing that gives me hope and the kid keeps me driving is I keep meeting these just unbelievable Americans

and they're just citizens they're not warriors like us they're not, you know, whatever, but they're great citizens. They're great people. And the more you run into it, the more you're like, you know, it went down the way it's going to go. I mean, let's be serious. It was always going to kind of, we had to leave eventually, right? Somebody had to pull the plug.

And it wasn't going to be pretty. And it wasn't. But at the same time, like, you know, we led by example out there. Those people in Afghanistan, no, they know what right looks like. They know what freedom looks like. We've told them, right? They've experienced it firsthand by just knowing it. us. Now it's up to them.

If they want to be free and they want to do these things, they know what they know what it looks like. And, you know, I'm hopeful for them. I really am. Like I know it's not going great now, but you know, the Afghan people, I believe them. The people that I work with, people that, I believe in them very much. And I think that, I think that they will be successful over there. It's going to be their version, not ours, right? But it will be there. And I'm hoping that they finally get some peace out of it because they've had a lot of war on their hands. Osi, thanks for coming on the show, man. Semper five.

Step for five, brother. We'll talk to you soon. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.