Shawn Ryan Show - #118 Nick Irving - "The Reaper"

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Nick Irving is a New York Times bestselling author and former Sergeant and Sniper with the Special Operations unit, 75th Ranger Regiment 3rd Ranger battalion. Nicknamed "The Reaper," Irving has 33 confirmed kills in a single, three and a half month deployment. His authored works include: The Reaper and Way of the Reaper, hit thriller novel Reaper: Ghost Target and Reaper: The Board. Irving also starred in the FOX reality TV show American Grit.  Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lairdsuperfood.com - USE CODE "SRS" https://shopify.com/shawn https://moinkbox.com/shawn https://mypatriotsupply.com https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD #goldcopartner Nick Irving Links: Book - https://a.co/d/gCmhu9c IG - https://www.instagram.com/officialreaper33 X - https://x.com/irving_nicholas FB - https://www.facebook.com/officialreaper33 Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram | Download Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The Scorebet. Trusted sports content, seamless sports betting. Download today. 19 Plus, Ontario only. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to ConnixOntario.ca. Nick Irving. Welcome to the show, man. Thank you, brother. We have, I've been tracking you for a long time, years,

and been trying to get your attention, and then finally, what, about six months ago-ish? Yeah. Finally got through to you, and man, I'm just honored to have you here. And I think you're a great representation of the community that you come from, and man, I'm just honored to have you here. And I think you're a great representation of the community that you come from,

the Ranger community, and I'm really excited to dive into this. So thank you. Time worries, man. Thank you, thank you. My pleasure. Hope I live up to it, you know? You will.

There's not a doubt in my mind. But starting off with your introduction here. So you're a husband and father, you've been married for 16 years going on 17. Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. It's crazy, man. I've been getting, you know, there's like a 90 what is there like a 90 something percent divorce rate in special ops? Yeah. And about the past five or six guys I've had on have all had lengthy 10 years plus married.

That's a good thing then. It's a rarity. Like you don't see it often. I think it's just, it's a good thing. Yeah, I say it's a good thing to be able to stick with someone that long. The deadliest sniper named the Reaper with 33 confirmed kills over the course of just four months. New York Times bestselling author of The Reaper and Way of the Reaper, author of Reaper the

Board, served six years in US Army Special Operations, 3rd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. You're the first African American to deploy into the global war on terrorism as a sniper in your battalion. Owner of Hard Shoot, you train personnel in the art of long-range shooting and former mentor on the Fox reality show American Grid. That sums it up pretty good, yeah. Did I miss anything? No, no, no. I don't even care anymore about that stuff. There's a few TV shows and movies, but no. Yeah, yeah. I don't even care anymore about that stuff. And, to be honest, like, there's a few TV shows and movies, but no, I don't even care, man.

Do you like doing the TV stuff? Not anymore. I lost that itch. I was doing a show for Discovery Channel, and I lost the itch thereafter. The show was called Master of Arms. It was like a forge in fire where you make, they would forge stuff.

I was one of the judges, but I would just test the weapons. And I just had a bad experience with that. And then thereafter, I was supposed to do a TV show with Tim Kennedy and a few other snipers. And it was my second go around with that stuff. And I just kind of lost the itch after it. The, I guess the Hollywood lifestyle. I've done like the Transformers stuff and.

You were in Transformers too? Yeah, Transformers. Then I helped with the show, or the movie, The Wall. Terrible movie. It was like, it's like a two-star movie on Amazon. But it's called The Wall and it was a cool experience because I got a chance to hang with one of my good friends is John Cena.

We've been hanging out since like 2015, I believe, 14 or 15, good guy. And it was cool to work with him, but other than that, and the guy who did Jason Bourne, the director. Cool experience, but it was cool to work with them, but other than that, and the guy who did Jason Bourne, the director. Cool experience, but it was just, I lost the taste after that. All the stuff that is going on in Hollywood that you hear about, I've had my taste of nothing

along those lines of just weird stuff in Hollywood after my last show with Discovery. Discovery Channel, yeah. Yeah, definitely a lot is coming out about the circles in Hollywood. Oh yeah. None of it seems to be positive. No. By any means, but moving on.

So I have a subscription account on Patreon. They have been here since the beginning. They're top supporters. And so, I give them an opportunity to ask every guest possible a question. And so, here is a question from Steven Casey. What is the best decision that you've ever made and how has that helped you? What is the best decision that you've ever made and how has that helped you?

That's the first question. Yeah, that's a tough one. That's a deep one. Wow. What's the best decision I've ever made and how has it helped me? Stop caring so much. That's probably been the best decision. Stop caring so much about the outside and been the best decision. Stop caring so much about the outside

and care more so about what's on the inside. Meaning, what's going on in my life, observing that, how I'm feeling emotionally, the issues that I've had, acknowledging that, taking care of that. Even if you're not, I wasn't taking care of it, you know, when I first started to acknowledge it. It was just-

Are you talking about quit paying attention to external influences? Yes, yes. Man, that's crazy. I was just on a podcast yesterday and I said the exact same thing. Really? That's crazy.

Hey man, I was remote viewing and I heard you say that. That's what happened. But that's like the best thing or best advice that I've taken from myself was, so yeah, stop caring so much about the external forces and things that are out of my control. I can't control what other people think, what they believe, what they, you know,

want to believe about me or anything. I can't control that. Only thing I can control is myself. So not worrying so much about the outside, just more so about taking care of me. Like when we die, we're all gonna go in that casket by ourselves. And I think that that is my biggest takeaway,

knowing that at the end of the day, it's just gonna be me anyways. So I really shouldn't have to care about the outside forces and other things that I can't control, you know? I have to stand before the judge by myself at the end, so. Yeah, you know, that's, man, that's great. I'm glad you said that. What led you to start looking internally

instead of externally? And how did that, I mean, affect your daily life, maybe your business life, anything? I would say the birth of my son. So long story, I've always wanted a family like a kid. I wanted two originally. I still want two, just the way things are. I don't have control over that.

But I knew before I turned 30, I said, before I turn 30, my 30th birthday, I wanna have my first child. Fast forward, my 30th birthday, on the date, my son pops out. Being there and witnessing that, seeing that, and the struggle that he had to go through. He was born with like a weird heart condition. This, you know, it's healed up thankfully now. But it was, uh, it was

hard to watch and not have to feel so much power of wanting to, dang, I'm gonna already choke up, dude. But yeah, having no control of that circumstance and realizing, like, I guess how important life really is, you know, it all came in that moment. And that's when the switch went on of, you know, like nothing really matters, and I wanted to be there for him in the long run. So that's when the switch definitely changed was, yeah, I wanted to stick around for him.

How did it affect your life? Oh man, drastically. I was too caught up in outside circumstances, outside forces that I had no control over. I was too caught up in outside circumstances, outside forces that I had no control over. I was too caught up in the outside world. And having that center point, that center focus being my son and like everything,

I guess went away if you want to, all the issues that I had, not issues, but my perspective of what was important in life changed. And what was important for me would be able to raise my son and be there for him. So it definitely helped out as far as ignoring what everybody else thought. I wanted my son to think, you know, my dad is the,

you know, coolest, I can go to my dad at any time. No matter what, I'm always going to be his dad. I can't always be what some guy on the internet or some family member wants me to be. I can't be that. I can't be all those things at once. But what I can be is better for my son. So yeah.

Man, thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it. But before we get in, man, we're already starting to get deep here, but before we get into your life story, and that's what I want to do, we're gonna start the childhood, go into your military career, go into your transition civilian career, the businesses that you run, and but before we do that, everybody gets a gift. What do we got, man? Everybody gets a gift.

We just talked about this. We did. The gummies, man. We did. Now, those are made in the USA and are legal in all 50 states. They are legal. Yeah. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don't know.

I can make it work, man. I can make it work. Dude. I can make it work. Dude, my wife used to send me pounds of these overseas. Pounds. I ate in one sitting a full pound of gummy bears, and by the time it came out, I had one large gummy bear in the toilet. I was like...

Oh, man. But, um... Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. But so let's dive in. Let's start with childhood. Where did you grow up? Grew up, well, born in Augsburg, Germany.

Both of my parents were counterintelligence in the army during the cold war time, copying Morse code, deciphering Morse code and sending it off to the NSA, I believe, at the time. After they left the Army, or during that transition, we moved from Augsburg to Florida. I stayed in Florida for about a year in Pensacola, a year or two. My parents, my mom retired. My dad stayed in for a little bit longer and we moved to Maryland at this place, at a place called, uh, what was on Walker Drive near Fort Meade near NSA. Um,

not on Fort Meade the base, but near it. It was like a government housing and stayed there for, And stayed there for from 80, geez, I forget the 80, 80, I want to say 89 or 90 to 93. Stayed in this haunted house that was built on a graveyard and cemetery and- Legitimately haunted? Legitimately haunted. All right, we got to dive into this. Legit, bro.

Hold on, how old are you? I was at the time, let's, four or five years old. Okay. Four or five years old. That was my first experience when I, I'll never forget this experience. So I'm laying in bed on this,

you can look up this old place, it's Walker Drive, Fort Meade, near Fort Meade. There's no more houses there. It's just all built up and torn down. But lived in this all brick house that was connected to another home that if you poke the hole through the wall, you could see the neighbors in the adjacent room.

Few hundred square foot home, very, very, very small. And my dad would always say, if you stood in the front door, you could spit and you'd hit the backyard. It was a very small home. So as a kid, we would always hear, like, people running upstairs, footsteps. And my parents would ignore it. It's just a house creaking or whatever.

And these footsteps would start to come down the stairs. You'd hear heavy footsteps just going around upstairs, and they'd start to go downstairs, and they would stop. A few other times, you would hear conversations, but like whispers, or like staticky whispers on a radio station you couldn't tune into all the way. And as a kid, you don't think too much of it, you just hear stuff.

But the scariest, most traumatizing, if you want to call it that experience that I've had, I was laying in bed and to this day, I'm paranoid of sleeping on my back because of it. Laying in bed on my back and something woke me up. And I see a soldier who, at the time I had no idea what his uniform looked like. It was different than my dad's.

I didn't find out later that it was like a old Civil War style uniform. And I see a soldier walk past my doorway. I rub my eyes, put the blankets over my head, rub them some more and look back down. And now it's not just one, there's soldiers, a line of them walking and they would turn to go down the stairs into the main living room space.

Maybe 10 soldiers passed by. The last soldier, he got in my doorway, turned, looked, and started to walk into my room towards me. Jumped out of my bed, ran through him, into the bathroom, curled up on the toilet, and started screaming. My dad runs out, and I'm screaming at him, please don't spank me, please don't spank me,

because that's what normally would happen. And he came in, grabbed me, held me, and I told him what I saw as best as I could. And he says, I know, son, I know. I saw it too. That was my first real ghost experience. Whoa, he did see it too? Yeah. Well, to pass by, his room was to the left of my room. And yeah, I guess they were coming out the wall in the hallway, walking past his door and my door before they went downstairs.

And he saw it, I saw it, terrified me. And the looks of their clothes, I'll never forget the uniforms they wore, the long gun with the musket, or not musket, but it had a long, not sword, but knife, bayonet at the tip of it. And they were marching with the little cap hats down the stairs.

I had never seen that uniform a day in my life, and I won't forget it. And the last guy walking into my room, yeah. Did you have more experiences? Yeah, yeah. I've had one, I guess more recent when, within the past 15 years or so, I was working at a gun range called Rifles Only.

It's a big precision rifle training facility. And me and one of the instructors, his name's Wynn, and we're driving down this dirt road to get to where the facility is. It's at nighttime, we had just gotten back from the bar. I wasn't drinking, I was designated driver, but I was sitting passenger seat. But regardless, we're driving and I hear,

it sounded like a radio came on, the static, and I heard this old lady chuckling, laughing, and saying something. I couldn't understand what she was saying, but it sounded like she was in the floorboard. That's what it sounded like. And I look at him and he looks over at me and it completely went off, it stopped. He looks over at me and he's like, did you hear that?

And I'm like, dude, you heard that, right? And he's like, it's not my? And I'm like, dude, you heard that, right? And he's like, it's not my radio. He had an old pickup truck. The wires are all over the place and it's an old beat up pickup truck. Radio does not work. And we just kind of ignored it after that.

Never talked about it. He didn't want to believe it, but we both heard what we heard. It was an old lady in the floorboard talking, I don't know what she was saying. There was an old lady in the floorboard talking, I don't know what she was saying. So, oh, whoa. When if you're out there, you know what I'm talking about. Damn.

But that's my experience. Well, let's go back to childhood. So you grew up in a haunted house in Maryland. Yep. And it was built on a cemetery. That was like pretty much, and as a kid I remember, okay, so this is the weird portion. My mom, her side of the family, my grandmother, they've been introduced to like voodoo, or magic. And I knew this trick as a kid of how to listen to hell

with a sewing needle and a cup and, you know, to listen to the screams of hell. I don't know if I never heard anything, but you hear, I think it's just the echo inside the cup. But we would leave a devil pie for the devil or whatever. We would make it out of mud and stuff like that. Me and my next door's neighbor, Kea and Tasha, two girls. And we were doing stuff like that as kids, like weird stuff like that. My sister, another scary story for you.

She, we hear a knock on the door, or she did, and she goes to the back door, and there's two women standing there in all white. There's no white people where we live at. There's two blonde hair ladies standing at the door. They took her out to the playground, and when she came back, she learned how to make a, where you take a gallon of milk, cut it out to make a bird feeder. And she came back with that and the ladies taught her how to make it, but there were no ladies. So yeah, that was another incident.

Wow. I don't know, but she knows that one vividly. Very strange. Yeah. Very strange. Yeah. Very strange. How many siblings did you have? At that time, living with this, we had three.

So me, my younger sister, and my older sister. And I have another sister I just found out about a year ago. And my brother I thought was my friend when I first met him in Florida. I thought that this kid was cool, but turned out he was my brother, I thought was my friend when I first met him. In Florida, I thought that this kid was cool, but turned out he was my brother too. So I have, that I know of, yeah, five. Holy shit.

Yeah. Yeah, my dad was getting around, man. He was getting around. Right on. Let's go back. So you grew up around voodoo? I knew about it. Like different spells and stuff like that,

if you want to call it that. Like how to make a woman fall in love with you, how a woman, she makes a guy fall in love with her, how to listen to hell and stuff like that. How would these subjects get broached in your household? My grandmother, at the time when she, she grew up around it more. My mom had a spell put on her, supposedly.

And it made her stomach swell up with, they don't know what. But she used to steal oranges and stuff off of people's trees in Georgia. And one of the neighbors where she lived at on this dirt road and told her to stop doing it, or she was going to put a spell on her. And she hung up something in the tree.

My mom ate it, and she got inflated or something. So that's where we got, I guess, introduced to it. And my cousins, the older ones, they would teach us stuff, too. Like, don't eat spaghetti from a chick you just met, or if she offers it to you. Why? Because, do you want to know, I guess?

Yeah, yeah, let's hear it. Well, it's nasty. But her menstrual cycle blood, making the sauce for the pasta, they would use that and give it to the guy to make a guy fall in love. Yeah. Or that attachment. And for a guy to do it, he would use his underarm sweat and cook it in that noodle water, put his underarm sweat in it to make a female do the same thing. Are you serious?

Is this stuff real? I mean, what are you thinking about this? I've never, I've never been. You didn't pull that on your wife, did you? No, and if I did, I wouldn't tell her. No, no. That was, that was destined to be, I think. How prevalent was that in your household?

I mean, was that... My parents did, they had like a Ouija board and stuff, and back before they had, I guess, their religious awakening, we had a Ouija board and stuff like that, but I was never exposed greatly to it. It was more so like my dad would show us how to lift people when they sit in the chair and you stack your hands up on top of them until you all feel the heat rise up

and then you lift the person out of the chair and they float, stuff like that. But that's like... He taught you how to do that? Yeah, yeah. Let's go into that. I've never heard anything like this. Really?

I've never, I've never. Yeah. I've never, I've never. Wow. I don't know anything about this stuff. So you sit in a chair, right? Like a stool or a little chair. And you have one person on each,

so you have one person on this knee, this knee, this elbow, this elbow, and one at the back of the face of the neck. Like touching or sitting or? Not touching yet. Then they're all standing around you. The person in the chair is sitting, everybody else is standing around you.

Then they take their hands and they stack their right hand first, and then they stack their left hand on top of that. So it's a big pattern. Each one is stacking over and over until all the hands are complete. Then when the top person, the top hand says they feel the heat, and everybody's gonna be calling out,

I feel the heat. When they feel the whatever is rising up through their hand, when it gets to the top person, they all go like this and they touch this side, this side, this elbow, this elbow, and the person at the back of the neck does that and you lift the person up and they touch this side, this side, this elbow, this elbow, and the person at the back of the neck does that, and you lift the person up, and they float. You're saying this happens? Yeah.

Yeah, I've done it to my sister, me and my cousins. Are you serious? I swear to God, yeah. I gotta look this up. Yeah. What do you call it? I don't know. I have no idea.

Like they're legitimately floating? Legitimately. Well, you're touching them, and they're in the air. It's like some levitation stuff. Like that. But they're not, you don't let go. You keep your fingertips on them. And I think that's where the energy goes back into them,

and they lower back down. Yeah. Whoa. You should look it up. Yeah. I will lower back down. Yeah. Whoa. You should look it up, yeah. I will look it up. Definitely. Wow. We'll do it one time.

It needs some more people. But it's legit. Holy shit. Yeah, my dad used to do, he did it in the Army during a, what do you call those things where, like a talent contest or something like that where they were just, like some people would go up and like sing or a talent. Yeah, talent show.

Talent show. And that's what my dad did with some of his coworkers. And they had the biggest guy sit in a chair and he had females do it, all women. And he lifted up the biggest guy in their unit out of the chair. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah.

That's crazy, dude. Totally wasn't expected to go down this road. Yeah. Yeah. 100%, man. So what, I mean, what is it? Is it a religion? Well, not really, necessarily.

Like, voodoo comes from Africa and it was like, according to who you talk to or what the belief is that was our original religion, but it was not religion. It was just a spirituality of the manipulation of the spirit world. And that's what they practiced before religion was introduced and they were killed and stuff like that for practicing. What they perceived to be is black magic from black people's magic. So they said no more and introduced a different form

of spirituality, which I'm not against. I think that there's a, I think all religion is a form of magic. Even religion is a form of magic. Even prayer is a form of magic, you know? It's just the, you're the belief that you're putting something into the spirit realm, asking a deity or an entity to whatever you want, asking you shall receive as above, so below,

as within, so, all these things. So they all coincide with each other. I think all roads lead to Rome. This is how we interpret and practice different beliefs. Very interesting. Yeah. Back to childhood. Yeah.

So what were you, other than Voodoo, what were you into as a kid? What grabbed your interest? Wow, I love space. I used to want to be an astronaut. My dad was a big space geek. He was always taking me outside to look through the telescope, to look at the moon and look at the stars

and show me where Orion's belt was at and how to find the North Star, the Big Dipper, Little Dipper. Like, I teach my son this stuff at his age now, and he's seven. But how to find North, South, East, and West, and different star constellations and how to read them. So I've always wanted to be an astronaut. Like, originally, that was my first dream.

So for fun, pretending I was an astronaut, making cardboard boxes, and wanting to blast off into space, that was like my original dream until my dad showed me Chuck Norris Delta Force and Charlie Sheen Navy Seals. Then my whole perspective of what I wanted to do changed. And then school. I got into school and I wasn't like too great at it.

And the astronaut thing was out of the window. Why weren't you great at school? You weren't into it or? I wasn't really into it. My first grade was easy. Anybody can say that. But I just like to play. And I like to joke around. And I don't know if I had like ADHD or something like that, but it was hard for me to focus.

And the way I used to read, and I guess I still do read, like for me, I would read one sentence and build that story as opposed to reading the whole paragraph and then building it or building it as you go along. I would break each sentence out of that paragraph or chapter into my mind to build that story. And I guess it just took too long and, you know, I wasn't great at math and anything. So I started to and I wasn't great at math and anything so started to realize I

wasn't great at school like the second or third grade and that's when I used to get into a lot of trouble at home for not bringing home you know good grades so yeah and after, after the Haunted House, I moved to a little bit near, in the, near the city portion of Baltimore, Maryland. Not this city, but in Maryland. And that's where I stayed from 1993 to 2004 when I graduated. And that's where we spent my entire life, pretty much. What did you enjoy doing as a kid?

Were you an athlete? Like, you liked to be out in the woods? I mean, yeah. I loved, well, I loved being in the woods with my granddad. We would take trips to a small place called Hogan'sville, Georgia. Small, small spot in Georgia. And my granddad had a lot of land.

So, yeah, the whole like slave lineage, my great, great, great, great granddad was a slave and, no, a slave owner, I'm sorry. And ended up raping one of the women. And so we come from like that lineage and that land and that plot of land. ended up raping one of the women. And so we come from like that lineage and that land and that plot of land ended up staying with the family because the guy who is a white guy,

who was a slave owner, of course, and having a relationship with one of the slaves and mistress is whatever you want to call her. And somehow that land, because he loved her, got inherited to our family. And he has a bunch of land out there. And yeah, my mom, my grandmother and my mom picked cotton and cleaned homes for people.

So yeah, it was like that. But I would go down there in the summertime and I loved being outdoors with him. He would take me hunting and show me how to shoot my first gun, which was a 20 gauge shotgun and how to farm. So I love to, I like farming. Not, I'm not a farmer, but I like to grow

and plan and maintain the crops and stuff. I like doing that as a kid. Very cool. Yeah, and then I guess around middle school is where I got into the whole sniper thing. And well, the sixth grade, my mom helped me make my first ghillie suit out of yarn, green yarn, sewing yarn,

and a black jumpsuit that I had. And I called that my first ghillie suit, laying outside in the field or in the grass and trying to scare people. And then I actually learned how to make a ghillie suit in middle school with the burlap on an old uniform. And yeah, hiding out in my front yard, sneaking home from school or pretending to be sick so I could come home from school early

so when the kids got off the school bus I could scare them when they got off the school bus and sometimes take pop shots, I don't know, pop shots with a little BB gun and stuff like that. They were all my friends and stuff but that's what we used to do as kids. Shoot each other with the one pump, BB guns. Yeah, so that was like my thing, I guess as a kid. Sports wise, I was never great. I tried them all, minus tennis and golf. No, my best friend Andre, his granddad is a Vietnam vet

and he had golf clubs and we stole his one day and I ended up getting in trouble. But it was cool to, I guess the concept of golf, I think was okay. I just never like could hit the ball good. So I wasn't good at that. Sucked at soccer. Football, I was okay. I just liked to hit people and I was like never really great though, by far.

I had no future in it. Basketball, too short, you know, not great at it either. So sports, no, not so much. So pretty average kid, not a tremendous amount of athletic ability, not great in school. What was the home life like? Were you close with your parents and siblings? No. So my older sister, our second oldest,

she was in and out for the beginning portion of my life, my younger years, she would be in and out for a year or two. So we never really had like a close relationship. She had my back when I would get into fights. I got into a lot of fights, and she would help out when she could. But she was always gone, too.

My younger sister, she's always been there. We have the same mom and dad. we're tight, we're close. Just like your average brother and sister, like we fight. We used to always fight. She's tough, but other than that, it was, I think, as far as my family, my mom and dad, no, we were, they didn't know how to love and their defense and they've been open about that. As far as my family, my mom and dad, no, we were, they didn't know how to love. And their defense, and they've been open about that,

they didn't know how to love. They come from a broken home that, you know, for fun, my dad would get beat up by his dad and his eight brothers and sisters, and my mom's eight sisters and brothers. Like, that's what the dads did in the household. They would get wasted and beat the kids with whatever objects they could find.

Oh man. Yeah. So they didn't know how to, and that lineage has just, you know, gone on and gone on. So when I popped out and we did it, it was, they didn't know how to love or how to show emotion. My mom was never told by her dad that he loved her for, you know, her entire life.

My dad's dad died when he was in the sixth grade and yeah. And then it was just a hard lifestyle for him. They were both poor. Yeah, very poor. So it was, they didn't know how to love. So for me, how my parents would deal with anything was violence, or yeah, was by that. So it was like that, yeah.

Do you think that affects you to this day? 100%. Really? 100%. Me and my sister were having a conversation about it because she has issues too. She was raped as a kid and... Shit. Yeah, by a close friend.

Yeah, it was not the best childhood, but as far as it affecting us now, 100%. I tried and I don't know how to explain it, This is not the best childhood, but as far as it affecting us now, 100%. I tried and I don't want to be like that, so I stay away from that, because I know what it does to a child, and I don't want that for my son. But for my sister and I, it's 100% effects us to this day.

Not many friends, I think. We push people away a lot, you know? This is gonna sound weird, but like, we weren't allowed to have friends growing up. My parents were very, yeah, controlling in that nature of who we could hang out with, who could be our friends. And yeah, it was very- Yeah, controlling in that nature of who we could hang out with, who could be our friends. And yeah, it was very...

Why do you think that is? I don't know. I've questioned that so much. I don't know. At one point, I thought it was because they did not want the word to get out. That yeah, I get spanked and beat at least three, four times a week, you know? And that was normal.

That was extremely normal. But whether you didn't do anything or if someone was having a bad day or it didn't matter, you just always felt that you weren't good enough. So it was my fault that I just was not being a good son. So it was in my mind, it made sense why I would get spanked and beat. Looking back at it, of course,

I don't think that that was the reason. I know I wasn't a bad kid, you know? But then also growing up, I had my next door neighbor, the only friend, my friend to this day, Andre. We've helped each other a lot. I've seen his mom be beaten by her boyfriends and I've had to help with his mom

and I've seen him and his brother get absolutely destroyed by their 250 pound dad or stepdad at the time. I just grew up around that. So it wasn't like my next door neighbors sold drugs and I've seen them fight and, you know, with people who owed them money or whatever. And it was just normal. So I didn't feel like I had it that bad, you know?

How did you, I mean, how did you and your sister navigate your way through that? Stayed in our room. Yeah, mainly for her. I would stay outside as long as I could, but it always felt like if I was having too much fun, my dad would cut it short. Yeah.

Like come inside and do something. Go clean up something. Or, yeah. Was never yeah, it was never really, it never really felt like I was allowed to be me or have that much fun without having mom or dad or whatever pick something out and bash you for it. You know? Damn, man. Yeah.

What would you say to kids that are growing up in abusive environments today? Wow. If you had a piece of advice for them? Man. It's going to end one day. If you have someone to talk to, talk to them. But it's just the whole, you have to to talk to, talk to them.

But it's just the whole, you have to be careful about it. I get it that you don't want to get anyone in trouble in the wrong way, and you don't want to also get yourself in even more trouble. That's a tough one. I mean, for me, what I did, but I don't think it's the healthiest way, you just know it's's gonna end one day.

And I wanted to leave my home at a young age, you know, young age. And couldn't wait to leave home. I haven't been back since like that. So it's gonna end one day, staying strong and yeah. That's like, it sucks not having, I've never thought about that. I don't know.

It's a really tough one. I can just, you know, go by my experience but also see what that's done to me and my family. It's not saying, yeah. Did you ever run away? Yeah, yeah. How young were you when that started? Oh my, old enough to where I thought running away

was where you take a stick and a bandana and you tie it at the end of it and put your stuff in there. And I went down the block and stayed for a few hours and realized I don't have anywhere to sleep. So I went back home and I ran away to my friend's house one time and I knew that if I stayed away too long that when I got back my parents were gonna destroy me so I just came back and got the lesser spanking as opposed to you know getting laid on pretty good. Wow so you graduated in 2004? Yeah. And what happened then?

Immediately thereafter. I signed the contract while in high school. I was, so in the 10th and 11th grade, I went to Annapolis. I was in ROTC, and I was in Navy Sea Cadet Corps. And I went to this baby seal program, where you have to, like to get in, you take the real seal PFT or test where I think it was like a 500 meter swim in 12 minutes, 30 seconds or something

and two and a half mile run and pull ups, sit ups, and it's to the standard. But did that at 16, got scuba qualified. My whole route was Navy SEAL, and it didn't pan out that way. I'm colorblind and Navy didn't want me. So, and my senior year is when I signed the Army contract and I had to get the parental consent

from my parents to sign me off. And two weeks after I graduated, I was on the bus heading to airport to go to Fort Benning. Real quick, so you wanted to be a SEAL. Yeah. You couldn't get in because you were colorblind. How did Rangers come up? How did that get introduced to you?

So I failed the color vision test the first time. And it was called the easy horror test, like this book and they, you see the the numbers and that pattern of colors. And I didn't see any number except for the number you're not supposed to see. And they told me I was colorblind and I could not be a SEAL or anything of that nature. I had like a very small, I guess, list of jobs that I could do in the Navy, none of which I wanted to do. And my ASVAB score was not high enough to get those jobs. So I came back and I studied online dial-up internet. The, not dial-up, it was the, it ran on a modem,

but I downloaded all the Ease-A-Hara tests that I possibly could think of or find on the internet at the time, and I studied them and the answers. So when I went back, hopefully, when I retake the test, I could pass it because I studied the test and I know the answers to it. I went back a month or two later,

not even two months, maybe like a month later, and instead of the Zahara test, they had this weird light test. And it looked like a traffic light, but different colors of light, and I completely failed that one too. So I broke down, I'm crying, and next door this army chick, a nurse, she heard me crying. She came in or as I'm walking out, she peeked her head into the doorway and said, you know, come over to her room. Went over there and it was an army recruiter there she was talking to and she introduced me to him and he started talking about, She introduced me to him and he start talking about,

do I know what Army Rangers are and Green Berets? I was like, oh, I know what a Green Beret is, but I'm not too fond of what a Ranger is. I saw them in Black Hawk Down, but I didn't like what they were doing. It was not what Delta was doing. So I thought, I didn't really know what a Ranger was. And he said, well, they're like Navy SEALs, but they don't swim. I was like, okay, well, that's fine. I can do that then. And the lady who was going to administer the color vision test, she held out the book and

she traced her fingers on the number. So I just called it out. I was like, oh, 12, five. And I couldn't see anything. And I still have the document where I had zero out of 14 to 14 out of 14 of my color vision test. Wow. And that's how I got into the Army. Damn. No kidding. Yeah. And 9-11 had already happened.

Yeah. So we're already, it's this 2004 time frame. So we're already at war. I mean, is that what you wanted to do? 100%, 100%. After I saw what happened, and like some of the seniors during that time were in ROTC, they were gonna go off and join the military too,

and I just didn't wanna feel left out and missed the party. I already felt like and missed the party. I already felt like I missed the party, but I wanted to at least get in and contribute some type of way. I had no other option. I was not, I couldn't do college. I graduated with the 1.7 GPA from high school

and I barely pulled that off. So it was the only option for me was the military. And yeah, I went there after 9-11 and knew I was going to deploy once I found out exactly what Rangers do. Granted, as long as I made it, if I made it, then I knew for a fact that I was gonna go to combat. So that was partially my driving force.

The other was I grew up telling my best friend Andre and my family that I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to. I can't come back. So to fail and not make that would mean, yeah, it was not an option. I couldn't let it happen. I had to do it.

What about the sniper thing? Always, well not always, wanted to be a sniper. Since Ghillie Suit days is always, wanted to be a sniper. Since Ghillie suit days is when I wanted to be a sniper. Like I was a decent shot as a kid growing up and going out to the country. I was okay but not like you know anything that would make me stand out but the sniper thing came after. So for us, it is you go through, at the time it was called RIP. This was after Basic and after Airborne. Make it through Airborne, overcome my fear of heights,

my shattered tibia fibia, pull that off, and going on to RIP, Ranger Indoctrination Program. It was like a month, I believe. I want to say it was a month long. And all it was was just a beat down fest of, you just get smoked. We had 98, 95 or 98 guys going in, and we graduated six from that original class and seven with the rollover.

So we had a seven man graduation and made it through that and got into battalion. So that's less than a 10% success rate. Yeah. That was a weird class. It was a brutal class. It was bad. It was a smoke fest. After that is when they slowly started to come out with RASP. How long is RIP?

At that time it was like a month long, a little over a month I think. What is, is it a selection process? Yeah, yeah. It's a selection to get to Battalion the 75th. Now it's called RASP, Ranger Assessment Selection Program, or some, I forget what it's called, but now it's RASP and it's essentially the same thing, but they've extended it to where they teach you something now so when you get to the battalion

you're just not like some guy who's just a beat-up weak private who can't Do the basics of a door breach or breaching a door or clearing a room. So now they've incorporated that um Back then it wasn't like that. So yeah, we graduated, I go into battalion. I get there right as my guys were coming back from Afghanistan. I did an entire train up with them

and I deployed to Crete, Iraq. Hold on, hold on. Before we get into the deployment to the regiment, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about what it was like for you showing up at the regiment. Oh my, yeah. Perfect.

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You're checking into the regiment. How did that feel coming from RASP walking into the regiment? I'm guessing this is probably around 2005-ish. A very hot time in both wars, both the Afghanistan war and the Iraq war. I'm sure there's a lot of experience coming home that had to be pretty intimidating. Oh yeah. Dude, it was like...

When you put on that tambourine, you feel like a ranger, you look like a ranger, but, and I felt like I had really accomplished something, you know, which I did, but. Do you get, so do you get the tan beret after rasp? When does that happen? Yeah, as soon as you graduate rasp, you get the tan beret.

So you start off with the black beret, which used to be the ranger's beret. Then regular army adopted the black beret, rangers got the tan, and as soon as you graduate rasp, like you're doing your ceremony, you do your ranger creed, and you get your tan beret, like you're doing your ceremony, you do your Ranger Creed, and you get your tambourine, you're doing your tambourine.

And from there you, I had to walk across the street, do this big privacy brown fence, and like 200 yards away, and that was third Ranger Battalion. So I didn't have to like get on the bus or anything. Just carried my bags, went over to the compound, checked in, got my room.

And I had two duffel bags, my bed, and some empty drawers in my room. And I lived out those duffel bags, like my entire stay at the barracks. But yeah, my first day there, no one was back in Battalion. They were all coming back from that deployment. So I had it pretty much to myself for like two or three

days a weekend or so. So I didn't really know what to expect. I sat in my room most of the time and stared at the four walls, called family every once in a while. What's your family think now that you've made it? I mean, it sounds like your parents were really hard on you. Yeah. They...

That's a good, I tell you. Sounded like they were pretty upset that your grades weren't phenomenal. Yeah. You weren't a stellar athlete. It's, forgive me for saying this, I feel the same way about my childhood. So it sounds like you felt like you were a very unimpressive human being at the time.

Yeah. So what was it like when you got your tan bray? Oh wow. And how did that feel to tell your family? Or did you even care? They didn't, it didn't, well they cared to the degree of, well at first no one thought that I was gonna make it. So in basic training, I didn't like it.

You know, I didn't like waking up at 4 a.m. I wasn't used to that, I wasn't used to running, rucking and all that. So I wanted to quit basic training like early on, very early on. And I remember calling home on the payphone on a break we had during basic. And I called my dad on the payphone

and I'm telling him I don't wanna be there and I wanna come home. And I was just going through it and he told me, you can't come home. Like, no, stick with it, suck it up, I guess. So I never really wanted to be there until like after, I don't know, the first seven weeks or so out of the 14 week basic is when I kind of fell

in the groove of things and it was not smooth sailing. I messed up, fractured my tibia fibias and both legs. It was kind of smooth sailing. They came to that graduation. To your boot camp graduation. To my boot camp one and they came to the airborne graduation where I got honor grad. You got honor grad. And- You got honor grad.

Yeah, from the kid who, I still struggle with heights to this day. Anything above 10 feet, it's like, I could black out, bro. I could black out. So it was traumatizing, but it was cool to overcome that. And I don't know if that's why I got honor grad, but I got honor grad and they came to that graduation. And I think that's when the realization of,

he might actually go through with this. And I became a ranger and it was like, they were happy, but I guess scared at the same time because they knew what comes after that was going to be combat or war. So I think they, at that point, wanted to separate themselves from that. My mom, she claims to this day,

or she says that a lot of her depression comes from that time in my life, was the constant deployment. But I just never understood that because I didn't feel that love at home. So when it came time and I actually did become what I've been saying all those years, it was like the realization for everybody kicked in,

but it was too late. Can we backtrack just a second? Because I excuse my ignorance, sometimes I get it confused between Ranger School and RASP. It sounds like RASP is the biggest kick in the ass out of the two 100% 100% So I'd like to revisit brass. I mean, how long is brass about a month a month long. It's a month Yeah, Oh a rasp now. I'm not sure it's over a month when I was you were it was a month a month long

No, they were does that entail? Oh yeah, Monday through Monday, physical, like a beat down. It really kicks off, for you guys you have hell week and for us we have cold range. We march out, I believe it's a 12 or 15 mile ruck to cold range and the time limit given, which was like, I forget, three hours, four hours and I forget the time limit given which was like I forget three hours four hours and

I forget the time hack forward but we make it there we march out there a lot of guys normally don't make the time hack um so you've lost let's say 10 guys out of that portion you get to cold range and there's no like facility you live in it's all outdoors and it's just like hell week, I guess, minus the water and all the boat carrying. Like we carry logs and a lot of running, a lot of just physical beat down. You do land nav, there's no sleep. You sleep maybe out of the three days, I believe, four days.

Maybe we slept once, but it was a short sleep. I remember during cold range, just like mass exodus of guys just quitting, quitting, quitting, 10, one day, 20 the next day. And for me, it was like, I thought that I was gonna be that guy, because I looked at everyone else, and I'm like, man, they're taller, they are built like,

you know, rest his soul, Pat Tillman. Like many Pat Tillmans, like football players, they were built good. And I just wasn't built that way of, you know, what I expected a Ranger to be, our spec ops guy. I mean, Rangers do have a stereotype of being skinny, yeah, wiry, and short individuals. Yeah, yeah.

I've always got seals to be the opposite. I think to be a swimmer, I always thought you had to be like Michael Phelps height or whatever. But yeah, I can tell a Ranger out of a crowd is a very distinct personality and look. But yeah, so it was just a mass beat down. And we're talking like a 90% attrition rate. Yeah, it was brutal, man. It was brutal.

And it was the biggest shock for me, but everything was kind of like a blur. It all blurred together of no sleep, little food, and just a continuous, just beat down, man, physical beat down. Everything's hurting, everything hurts. You're never on time, nothing's ever good enough. It was just a massive smoke fest, a smoke fest.

Like you might get put in a room and do pushups for, I don't know, a few hours until the room sweats. That's what we make it rain. So a bunch of guys in a room sweating. It's hot, humid. They crank the air up and turn the heat on. And it just looks like it rained in there. There's just so much sweat all over the place.

And sometimes you'd have condensation build up on the walls and a small room. It was stuff like that. A lot of running. It's like every ranger was a marathon runner and I'm just, I was never built to run like that. I could do my five mile in 40 minutes. I'm like a 38 minute five milerer, and that's like my max. The mile runs those guys could do, the fastest I've seen was like a 5.30, 5.20 something. 5.30 something.

Holy shit. And fastest I've ever got was like a 6.30, and it was on one occasion, fluke of nature, maybe the clock was wrong, but that's the fastest I've ever been. Normally a seven minute guy but um and Rangers just run and run and run and that's what I didn't like about it was that's all we do for PT

and that's all like we focused on was the endurance and long distance running and I hated that hated that, hated that. And rock marches. A lot of that, a lot of physical beat down. And like I said, by the end of the class, it was dwindled down to six guys, and we had the rollover come in the last portion. The last week.

Is there any team events? Are there any team events? Yeah, in RAS. Not really. It's all individual. Yeah, it's pretty much individual. Like, especially at Land Nav and Night Land Nav and, yeah, I would say it's a fair amount

of just being by yourself or doing things to a standard just for you as opposed to a team. And if one guy messed up, then the whole class would get, you know, in trouble for it. But at the end of the day, it was, it came down to just who wanted to quit and who would not quit. They had, um, like one event at Cole range where we're standing in formation. We had just got done getting our balls smoked off and we're standing in formation outside of the, the big tarp trucks, the deuce and a halfs, and the instructors are by this big barrel fire,

and they're cooking and roasting hot dogs, and they had pizza out there, and they're like, all you have to do is just come over. You know, we know you're hurt, we know you're sucking, it's cold. Just come over, got hot coffee, we got pizza and hot dogs for you guys waiting on the other side.

But if you come over here, you can't come back. And a few guys left to go get the food. And that was it for them. They told us to all get on the back of the trucks. We're heading back. And they drove around for like 30 minutes. And you think you lost all concept of time. So you're thinking, oh, we're finally going to go back

and hit the sack for a little bit, at least be in a room on a nice bed. And we drove around for a little bit and they opened the tarps and we're still at Coal Range where we started off at. And that was a big demoralizer. So the more guys quit after we arrived back at Coal Range, got smoked some more, got back on the trucks,

and then we finally went back to the barracks. Was there ever a time where you wanted to check out? Every day. Every day. What kept you going? Watching other guys quit. Watching other guys quit, I would, I guess, not feed off of it.

I guess you could say feed off of it, where at least I wasn't that guy. So if I wasn't that guy, I can go a little bit longer until maybe somebody else quits. They can't have us all quit. I just have to outlast that guy or the next guy or someone else. But every single day I wanted to quit,

more so in Ranger School. But every day I wanted to quit. I think I was just too stupid to even even do it at the time too much ego Too much ego to get up there and and you get respect for quitting They respect you and they don't treat you and call you names. They don't treat you bad So it was more so of an ego thing for me of not wanting to quit. But yeah, I wanted to every day Interesting, so they make it appealing to quit. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Huh.

So that was the biggest thing about RIP. And I think that's what I think made it hard too is it was different than basic training. You're more on your own and you're given a set of instructions to do something and you do it. You're not like in basic training where they hold your hand the whole way. It was different in that aspect too. And just how mean they were. Like these guys were demonic, it felt like.

I was terrified of Rangers going in. I saw a guy with the tambourine. As a kid I'm, you know, avert your eyes and I would always say to myself, oh my gosh, this guy's probably killed people. And I would terrify me because they, a Ranger to me always looked very neat, very, you know, yeah, very neat, very well put together. And knowing that this guy or thinking that, you know, this guy has taken a life was like weird to me.

It scared me. So I was always scared to look these guys in the eye of, yeah, that. So I was scared of all my instructors. Interesting. Yeah. All right, so let's move forward again. You're checked in.

You're at Third Ranger Battalion. Mm-hmm. What's it like when you meet your team? Terrifying. I heard a mass, like a stampede, coming through the barracks. They're screaming, loud, doors being kicked, and they're screaming, where's the fucking new guy? And I'm huddled in my room, sitting on my bed, terrified.

Like there's no way they're gonna find out I'm in here. And all of a sudden I locked my door, and I see my door shaking, and they're picking the lock, then they kick my door and I see my door shaking and they're picking the lock, then they kick my door open. All these guys come in and they flood my room with beers in hand. And I, you gotta drink all this. I'm looking at them like,

I'm not even a drinker like that. I've haven't, I had like one Heineken in Airborne and I hated it. So now I'm stuck with this room full of Rangers shoving beer down my mouth and throat and I'm, well, let's take that back. That sounds really bad, but they're giving me a bunch of beer and stuff like that to drink

and I remember getting just absolutely shit-faced and that next morning we had to run like six miles and me throwing up. But it was it wasn't as bad as I thought. It was just terrifying that these guys in my mind all just came back from killing people in war and had no yeah yeah they were in Afghanistan during that time and they did a few recovery operations with the SEAL team and most of the stuff in Afghanistan, that's when they were getting into more the direct action type stuff. So they were upping their package and their amount of combat that they did see.

Prior to that, it was a lot of working with Delta and pulling security and stuff like that before, you know, I guess they got their hands full, Delta, and we started picking up the more direct action and purely just direct action raids and sometimes doing side by sides where Delta's hitting one building and we're hitting the other building and, you know, working

with them in that nature. Yeah, it was terrifying, but also at the same time I felt like it was good to be a part of a group like that. I just wasn't sure if I could hang because they were animals, physically fit. And I had no idea if I was gonna be able to even keep up with these guys. So I thought my time was gonna be short lived because these guys could be hammered one night

and the next morning running six mile runs, like it's nothing. And it was, I didn't think I was gonna be able to keep up with these guys. And then we went on to the training cycle. Six months training cycle, Started off with airfield seizure and that was my first introduction. This was like two weeks, a few weeks after I arrived and my first exercise was taking over an airfield and had no idea how to do it,

except for how to jump out of a plane. And it was my first nighttime jump in full combat gear and equipment. And as a new guy, you're stacked onto this C-17 and the humvees are in the middle of the the formation lined up on the bed of the C-17 and watching them get sucked out the the back ramp as a new guy, never seeing this, my mind's blown of like, wow, this is pretty neat. I'm actually doing like cool guy stuff and it's time to jump.

My first jump in Italian, I'm weighted down. You jump out into this pitch blackness and my risers got stuck under my left leg. I ended up tumbling, tumbled through my risers and I get a cigarette roll. So I'm falling and I knew something was wrong because I can still hear the wind of the whistling of the wind and the black figures bodies like passing me at a higher rate than what I knew was you you know, not right. And I can hear people as I'm following up,

pull your reserve, pull your reserve, screaming, pull my reserve. And I watched this thing come out like slow motion. And it, you know, comes out and I'm looking down. I don't have much room left, maybe 500 feet, a little less than 500 feet or so. And I'm coming in on the tarmac of the runway. So I'm trying to slip and pull my risers on my reserve, but those don't steer the way your main parachute will,

and I'm all tangled up and tied out. My gun, a Mark 48 machine gun, is flung out somewhere and lost in the field. It popped out, and yeah, bad experience. I landed on one leg, tore up my pants, had no weapon, and I show up to the rally point in the middle of this airfield about to take over the airfield.

And I'm mimicking like I have a gun because I didn't want to say, hey, I lost my gun. As a new guy, my first jump. So I'm mimicking like I have a gun and hoping no one's gonna notice. And the first thing they notice like, Irv, where the fuck is your gun? And I say, I don't know, Sergeant,

it's somewhere in the field, I lost it. And he blew his lid. So I had to mimic the entire taking over the airfield without a weapon, just nods, a helmet, and yeah, nothing. So got the entire battalion in trouble. We all had to go out there. It was very, and not on top of that, the next morning we had to all get on formation,

the entire battalion pretty much, and walk the airfield. While I stood on the back of a truck and watched all the guys look for my equipment to make me stand out. So that was my first experience. Shit. Yeah.

After that it was never happened again. I mean that can create a lot of hatred. Oh yeah, it was a lot. How did you rectify that? Didn't fuck up anymore and performed to my best, or as best as I could, not failing anything. I wasn't allowed to, like that's the whole, I guess the big thing about Rangers is the standard.

Like if you mess up a standard or if you don't perform to standard, you get RFS'd, which was released for standards. At any point in time in your career, you can be released. So I guess to rectify that was keeping a, staying the gray man for as long as possible until my first deployment and keeping my head down and just performing.

And I figured, and which happened, was after my first deployment is where I started to get respect and become a part of that that team of doing my job on deployment I think that's where most of it came from. It was on deployment? Yeah. When did you figure out where you were going for your first deployment? Oh, like the last month, a month prior, it's always fluctuating.

One minute you're going to Baghdad, maybe Afghanistan, Jalalabad, or you're going to Tikrit or Mosul. It's always a toss-up. Like at the last moment is when you kind of find out within that last month or so. We found out we were going to Tikrit, Iraq, and they were saying it was a pretty hot environment

at the time, which it was. And we ended up doing that deployment, 120 missions, and that 90-day deployment. We were doing 90 days at a time before we went to the 120 to keep up with the delta's rotation. But the 90-day, missions was like average for it. You did 120 missions in 90 days? Yeah.

Yeah. What's going through your head when you figure out you're going to decrypt Iraq? I was scared. I thought it was going to be like saving Private Ryan, where you get off the, for me, I thought when we lower the ramp on the C-17, it's because we get picked up in our backyard,

so we don't go to like the airport. It's not announced when we're leaving. It's just the C-17 lands in the back runway behind our compound. You get on and we fly to Germany. From Germany, we go to where we're going. I thought when they lower the ramp, it was gonna be bullets flying, I'm gonna come out charging,

and that's how you enter war. But instead it was the exact opposite. We, and I kinda got that picture as a new guy when I was also high on Ambien. I took the Ambien pill before I was supposed to, and I didn't know what Ambien was. I knew it was a sleeping aid, but I took it before I was supposed to, and I didn't know what Ambien was. I knew it was a sleeping aid, but I took it before I was supposed to.

So I had to fight staying awake while on this C-17 waiting to taxi off the runway. And as I'm sitting there waiting, I started to see faces pop out of the chairs. I'm hallucinating. Like, I'm cracked off this Ambien, and I'm hallucinating, and I'm cracked off this ambient and I'm hallucinating and I'm seeing stuff and my team leader Salazar,

he's like, did you take your ambient before? I'm like, yes, I'm tripping. And he's like, dude, just wait. Finally get an opportunity to sleep. But yeah, we get off the C-17, we're running off, or I think we're gonna run off. And I don't have a mag for my gun with bullets I'm like, where do we get bullets that I missed that that meeting where they handed out the bullets before we go on this deployment and

I'm saying to myself when we run off the C-17 I'm gonna pick up the first guy's ammo that drops like saving private Ryan, but You legitimately thought that's what I thought thought that's how we come into war. And they lowered the ramp and you see people walking around, little coffee bean shops and Burger King joints and stuff like that and food places and it smelled like, not bad, it smelled like, well, Iraq, but where we first landed at,

it just smelled normal. I didn't smell like bombs and anything like that, burning bodies, no. It was pretty chill when we landed. Drove to our compound. It's a compound within the big compound, but it's all sectioned off with big 12 foot T-barriers and satellite communications in there,

and you have to have a badge to get into this compound, and stuff like that. It was pretty neat. And within the first eight hours we were in country is when we got our first mission. And I remember going out that night, landing from our, we were on a Black Hawk helicopter, feet hanging out off the side doors,

and we land and get off, and I see them raid this home. I'm a machine gunner at the time, so I'm pulling security and just hearing the stuff going on and inside and how they got to the objective. What was they up? Direct action. We were going to go killer capture a high value target, and they got there.

The assault teams went in, did their thing and looking at it through nods was just like, it was like watching the news almost of it didn't feel like I was really there, it was like an outer body experience, you know, of watching these guys do their thing and I had been watching them my entire training cycle but seeing them in combat do it

and I wasn't sure if it was a nine banger going off or just a regular banger, or if it was gunshots going off inside this little home we were raiding. But it was cool seeing them do that, and I got a chance for the first time to see how fast they were and how good they were. But it was just surreal.

I didn't feel like I was really there. Like, did I really earn my spot to be here as a new guy? Or I didn't feel like I was really, I was ready yet. I didn't feel like I was ready yet. Six months went by really fast. Yeah. You know? So I felt like that, but got into the groove really quick.

Got a really good team leader. Who were there any engagements on that first stop? Not the first one, no. Just bangers going off that I thought were gunshots, but it was just, I guess, a normal routine op. We didn't start getting into firefights until maybe a few ops after that. It was very, it happened pretty quick.

Within the first three or four ops, five ops, we were getting into pretty good contact how How long after you got in the country were you on your first? Operation eight hours. Yeah eight hours. Yeah eight hours. Sometimes it's fast I've we've done some where as soon as you land It's you're getting geared up and you're heading out the door within a few hours You know, it's really quick. Wow.

And it's, I think, the way we trade off. So there's always a battalion overseas. So for us being third range of battalion, we would replace the outgoing battalion, which would be first. Our first would come in to replace us. So we were replacing second. And the way we would pass off information and the packages and the intel that we've gathered,

we just pick it up and continue on with the missions that they were gonna be doing anyways if they would have stayed for another three months or so. And we build our intel and stuff like that from the homes that we raid and build more packages and stuff that way. So if I remember correctly on your first deployment, you did 120 operations within 90 days. About...

We were doing multiple a day sometimes too. Five or six. After five or six is when you started getting into full-blown engagements. Oh yeah. Let's talk about the first operation where you and your team and or team yeah got into an engagement. Yeah we were in what was the operation? I'm not too it was regarding Zarqawi, around that time. We weren't going after him yet. It was around that time going after somebody else with the group that he, the guys that he ran with. And I remember landing on the Blackhawks.

We get off and walking to the objective. We were walking down this long field through like palm groves. And we get to this compound with like scattered buildings around it. And my back is up against this brick wall, partly destroyed brick wall. My team leader is next to me. And I have, we call him Ramrod, another machine gunner next to me. I have, we call him Ramrod,

another machine gunner next to me. I'm a machine gunner and waiting for the snipers to gain position to overwatch the objective before the assault team goes in. And I started hearing, at first I thought my Peltor, my hearing protection, I forgot, I thought that I forgot to change batteries and it was malfunctioning because I heard these weird clicks and snaps in my hearing protection.

And all of a sudden I can feel like gravel crumbling and hitting my helmet and my back a little bit. The next thing I felt was my team leader shoving me to the ground, rams down on the ground, and I'm confused, like, what is going on? And he's like, dude, we're getting shot at, and that's what that noise was. I thought gunshots were like, the movies are boom, boom,

you hear that, and not that snap that goes by. That's what I was hearing thinking that my hearing protection was like malfunctioning. So he pins me on the ground and I started to hear the snipers engaging on the rooftop and I'm hearing the snaps coming more and more. We pick up change positions, set up a support by fire line. The assault team goes on the rooftop and I think they smoked like 14 guys or 15 guys up there. Like, we have a newspaper article. I have a newspaper article from that engagement.

Helicopter goes down, a little bird hits a power line. It goes down. And I see that, and I never saw anything like that. It just looked like maybe he popped flares or something. I was not sure what had happened. But then I see the helicopter go down into this big wide open field. Then we get the call over.

Coms. He loathes down. We have to go rescue this helicopter pilot and get him out. So they're still engaging the main objective. Small team, me, my team leader, two or three other guys, we all pick up and we run to the down helicopter, like a mile away, a little less than a mile away. We pick up, run there.

It's the fastest I've ever ran a mile in full kit. We get there and you see the helicopter pilot, the little bird pilot, like huddled down. He had a small MP5, like the short MP5s. He had one of those and his eyes are as big as saucers, man. And he's scared. We set up a support by fire line overlooking him. And that's when AC 130 started kicking in

and laying down people that were, they were all coming in from that village nearby coming to get the pilot and helicopter pieces. I don't know. And yeah, we started, that was a pretty intense operation on that one. Damn. That was the first time that I've been,

I was engaged and had to like witness and experience that. Yeah. Everything after, I'd never pulled the trigger. Like that was the first time I would say, not out of fear, but more so out of like, I didn't know what I was shooting at. You know, it was to put fire down in this general direction and you traverse and search, if I'm correct,

where you traverse and search with your, like a heartbeat. You're doing that with your machine gun, and helping the AC-130 and all the other things we had going on, mortars and stuff, but I never like saw, line my laser up on someone and pull the trigger on them. That didn't happen until, oh, shortly after and it was weirdly with an M4. I had been in a Mark 48 Gunner that entire time, but also drove Stryker's that deployment. So I was to go to Stryker driver school in Seattle or no, it's in Washington state. It's where, I forget the place now.

It's in Washington state. If I remember, I'll bring it up. But it's where we drive Strikers and learn how to drive Strikers. It's that 40 ton vehicle. So I was a driver and as a driver, you keep your M4 in the cockpit with you. And I was the guy that would pop out the hatch

and use my M4 if need be. And my first real engagement where I saw a body drop was, I take that back, I'm going too far ahead. The first person I ever saw was the 50 cal guy. And that was my first experience with killing someone, but he was not shooting at us he had a vehicle full of the ID of V bed but in the back at the time they had the what's that chemical uh did you clean pools with chlorine chlorine yeah they had the back full of chlorine and explosives, like a chlorine bomb or whatever.

That was their thing then. That was the first time I ever had to engage a person on the top of a striker on the 50 count. And when I got the call to engage this guy, I was like, what the, you know, why? And he's coming V-lining straight towards us in our convoy and he's maneuvering to come right at us and I wasn't understanding what was going on. I never trained for that, you know? And he's like, my PL slaps me on the helmet

and he's, shoot this mother, you know, cussing me out and I'm like, all right, put the sights on the hood of the car, this white car and put the butterfly switches on it, the butterfly trigger and skip the rounds, nine round burst on the hood of the car, this white car, and put the butterfly switches on it, the butterfly trigger, and skipped the rounds, nine round bursts from the hood all the way into the driver's seat. And he went, veered off the road. We got out, and the assaulters did,

and did their little SSC and investigated what had happened and found the explosives. And yeah, but when they opened the car, did their little SSE and investigated what had happened and found the explosives and yeah. But when they opened the car, I remember him like spilling out the car. How did that feel knowing that you had just taken another man's life for the first time? Did not make sense to me.

It didn't make sense until I got back and I went to sleep. And that's when I had my first weird dream of, like I didn't feel anything. I didn't feel, it didn't feel real because it's not what I expected. I thought it was going to be like in the movies, you know? Big decision making process. Yeah, yeah.

This was like, I'm not even being shot at. This guy's just driving at us at a high rate of speed and I don't, I didn't train for that, you know? And yeah, it was just, it was a weird feeling. I didn't have a disconnect. I didn't feel anything. But I went to bed that night and that's when I had the dream of that guy

was the ceiling fan and his arms were the blades and his head was the centerpiece where the light would be. And he started spinning and I'm strapped to my bed and it's spinning faster and faster until his body like starts to rip apart in my room and he just bathes my, or soaks my room with blood and I'm like bathing in his blood and his face stayed still, it was just screaming,

but no sound was coming out. And that's when I was like, oh, I guess, I don't know what I, I just felt, I woke up scared, but I guess that was the first real moment where I had a chance to say, or say to myself, man, I killed someone, you know? But after that, it was like, not a normal thing, but it was, as a machine gunner back then,

it was a lot of shooting, you know? A lot of, yeah, a lot of laying down fire during ambushes and things of that nature. So it was different, but it was not what I expected. The first time I shot someone with an M4 was, I was hanging out the hatch of the striker and my guys were just, the assaulters were in this, it was almost like a trench warfare scenario

where they had this trench thing, there were foreign fighters, and they had this trench system that the assaulters had to fight through. My vehicle blocked off the portion of the road so they couldn't scroll it across across. One guy did and I remember I'm parked next to another striker, Rico 2 or whatever, and I

remember him looking at this guy and he puts his laser on the guy and in his floodlight when his floodlight hits him that's when you see the AK and he's running back looking at our guys and he's running with an AK that guy starts shooting my guys start shooting at him, so I'm like, well we gotta light this guy up.

And I'm, my first time doing that with an M4, I clicked, I hit the safety, or not the safety, I hit the mag release on the side of my M4. Mag falls out, click, boom, one bullet comes out, hit the guy in the back, and he falls down, tumbles, and I was like the first experience I had with shooting a person and seeing the laser go on the guy and pulling a trigger

and watching him collapse. But I wasn't like the sole contributor. I didn't like, I don't think I killed him myself. It was a joint thing where he was being shot up by- Lots of lasers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was my first experience. But with that though, you know, but I don't contribute to know my bullet dead. It was a few lasers lighten this guy up. Yeah. It was like that

for pretty much that entire deployment was just a lot of direct action. But the firefights were never to where we thought that we were being overrun or going to lose a firefight. It was pretty one-sided. It happened. It was over pretty quick. Did you guys lose anybody on that first deployment? No. No, we did not. We lost somebody in a different platoon. I believe second platoon. We lost one guy during an IED blast

that blew up his striker and a nut that goes onto one of the screws in his striker blew and punctured the back of his back and went through him and he bled out. That's the only guy we lost on that deployment that I knew. Sounds like a very kinetic deployment. Yeah, yeah.

Most of them were, except for one. And I was working with Seal Team 6 and Jalalabad. And that's the difference, yeah. I got my, it wasn't fun. We'll get there. we'll get there. So you do a 90 day deployment, about 120 raids or ops. What is it that you think, I mean if I remember in your outline,

we'd talk about that you, you know, your first, I mean how did you gain your guys' respect? What was it about you that... I went along with the program. I just fell in line. I didn't, like I got in trouble for stupid new guy drunk stuff that everybody was getting in trouble for at the time. You know, barracks fights and stuff like that.

One time I mouthed off to a team leader because we just got back from Kentucky. We were doing some air assault stuff, like fast rope, and somewhere in Kentucky. And a team leader who was not my team leader wanted me to re-clean some 240s and Mark 48. And everybody else was going to bed. And I'm like, dude, I'm not going gonna do that. And he chewed me out and the next day

when I went back to work, there was a handful of team leaders who were waiting for me and ready to take care of things, the way they take care of things in battalion, behind the back of the shed. So they got rectified quick, fall in line quick, and I was like, I'm not gonna do that. the way they take care of things in battalion behind the back of the shed. So, they got rectified quick, fall in line quick, yeah. So let's wrap up your first poem and you come home.

I mean, very kinetic employment. Sounds like a lot of killing. Yeah. How are you processing this at home? I really wasn't, man. I just, uh... I felt like Robin amongst a bunch of Batman. You know, I was just Robin.

Just a sup... Just, yeah, I was just a sidekick, it felt like. So I didn't really... Nothing really processed, I was just a sidekick, it felt like. So I didn't really, nothing really processed, I think. It happened relatively quick and I got wasted, you know, to be honest with you. Like, that was the first thing we did when we got back, was just drink and drink and drink and drink

for like two days of binge drinking. And as soon as you're done that, you're back in the training. Like there was no time to, we had two weeks, 13 days. We're allotted two weeks per year, one month per year. So two weeks before deployment, two weeks after, you're allotted for that. So yeah, I went home to Maryland, stayed with my friend,

did some cool stuff, I guess, got drunk and just hung out with friends. I didn't really think about too much of anything. Like I didn't have bad dreams or anything like that. It just felt weird. I felt different as, I tell you what, I felt that I was never gonna get picked on again. Like my senior 11th grade and 12th grade was, I wasn't allowed to, my last year in high school, I was not allowed to get suspended anymore for fighting. I had been, I had used up all my fight

days, if you want to call it that, before expulsion and I would have to come back and repeat and just go to a different school. I got was bullied a little bit, I guess you could say, because I didn't fit with the crowd of guys who just lived a different lifestyle. You know, I wasn't, I couldn't afford to. My parents would not let me be that guy. So not being able to fall into like the guys with the streets or whatever, you would get picked on. But so I had to fight a lot, you know, and after that deployment coming back, I knew I was never

going to get picked on ever again, because it was yeah, I felt like that, that I've killed people, you know, and I don't, it was not a big thing to me. Like I didn't cry about it. It wasn't like the movies or anything. It just was, it just was what it was. So I carried that back and I, you know, I still to this day carry it of, I don't ever want to kill anyone again,

but because I think it does take a piece of your soul every time you do it. I don't know, my opinion. But if I had to, of course I would. I would, yeah. At what point did your wife come into the picture? 2006. Oh, so during that deployment, during like the later portion, I'm on Myspace.

I had snuck out to go to the MWR. So that was the only place where Myspace was allowed. We were not allowed to have it on our compound or anything like that. I go across the street to an MWR that the legs used, the regular Army guys, and I go in there and I hop on Myspace and this girl, Jessica, she messages me

and her picture didn't pop up at first and she just says, hey, we went to school, elementary school together, just wanted to reconnect or see how you were doing and I thought it was a different Jessica that I did not like. So I clicked X and I was like, there's nothing there. But it ate me up for the rest of that day

and because I wanted to see if it was the right Jessica. I go back the next day and her page loads up. And it's the girl that I went to school with in elementary school. In the first grade, the girl I used to pick on and threw a frog on and a spider on and stuff like that. And dated elementary school style. Same girl, but just looked way hotter.

And I looked at my friend who was next to me. I'm like, dude, I'm going to marry this chick. And he laughed. He chuckled about it, printed out her picture, messaged her, got her phone number, came back, and I called her from a sat phone. And we talked. She knew I was in Iraq, but she didn't know what I was doing. She

knows in the Army and I was overseas in Iraq. Like, it's all I was allowed to say at the time or whatever. And I met her that after that deployment. I got a flight to Maryland and I got a flight to San Antonio. And I went to go see her and stayed with her as a friend for a few days. I couldn't afford a hotel. I had spent all my money on some rims, 20 inch rims. And I got ripped off. They charged me like 10 grand for something

that didn't even fit on my car. So it was a bad story. But spent all my money on that and plane tickets. So when I went to go see her, I was broke, but I was broke balling. I made it, you know, it was a good time. And yeah, she liked me, but I guess not the way I wanted her to like me. She wanted to be friends, but I'm the type of guy who's very, that's not going to happen.

And she was just getting out of a relationship. And he was still trying to talk to her. And my way of telling her I'm the right guy was, I will beat your guy's ass. And yeah, I just did my little, worked my magic, no voodoo. And we ended up dating in 2007, got married in 2007, November, after my second deployment in Ranger School,

yeah, our third deployment, got married. So, second or third deployment, Ranger School, and then my second deployment, got married. Okay, so you came home, you met your wife, you go on another deployment. Yeah. When did it start getting serious between you and her? Well, okay, so it was always serious to me. I introduced her to my friend Andre, the one I grew up with,

and I introduced her as my girlfriend, and she was like, no, we're just friends. And I was way on to her early on, more so than she was me, all the way to when I proposed to her. Like her parents, they're old fashioned Mexican. And I was a gentleman. I approached the mom, told her my plans. I don't know how she felt about it.

She seemed like she was cool about it until it was time to talk to the dad. And I kind of understood it, that he said no, but I didn't understand the why of what he believed in. So it was, when I proposed to her, it was tough because the parents were not for it. They did not want any of that intermixing. So she was disowned really quick, really quick.

And it was more so after we had our child. She was pregnant before that, had a miscarriage. I think during my, I had to move her down, so it was like 2008, and the backlash she got from that initially was pretty bad, and it just went downhill from there as far as like, you know, they just don't like, they don't believe in interracial, you know, at all, and interracial, you know, at all. And they told me things about what they believed about what I was as a black guy and what their stereotypical ideas were

and why they didn't, you know, necessarily want me dating their daughter or marrying her. So it was like that, still is. And now they just don't talk and haven't in forever. Oh man, they never got over that? No, no, no. that still is and now they just don't talk and haven't in oh man we ever got over that no no no I remember when we had our child and yeah her dad held him and like disgust gave him back and never saw him again and never has not talked to his daughter and almost a decade shit Shit, man, I'm sorry to hear that.

Dude, it's all good. I think people like that are just, hey, man, you know, you can't change that mentality. One, two, it's not my first rodeo as far as being like, not liked because of what I look like. So it was nothing like new. It was more so new to her. But that's what she was, you know,

she grew up hearing that was, you're allowed to be friends with them, but you're not allowed to be in a relationship with them. So she was already going against that from what she was brought up with. But I don't know, it's, I can't, I'm not mad at it though. I think it hurt her more than anything else though.

You know? We'll dive into that more later. What, so you meet your wife, you haven't won her over yet, but you go on a second deployment. Yeah, oh after I proposed to her, she says yes, and as I'm leaving to go on deployment, she said no.

Parents got in the air. So that bummed me out. I'm hurt, dude, you know? Going on this deployment, I just got that news that she doesn't want to anymore. So my whole focus going over there was winning her back, you know? So I spent like that first month or so just constantly typing and trying to call and talking to her and trying to win her back over.

And she finally did during that deployment. And we made the decision we were going to get married finally when I got back. And then I got the news during that deployment in 07, we were in Mosul. And that was the second deployment. Yes. That was a second deployment. Yes. That was a terrible deployment of mainly IEDs,

a threat of IEDs. And yeah, like my first day in country, the first stop we did, we were supposed to be driving around. We had a guide who had been there and showing us different routes we could take around the city of Mosul. We go through this one place called RPG Alley. Nothing happens, there's no RPGs.

And then we go down to where, going down this neighborhood or segment of this route we were taking. And the guide says, yeah, there's nothing ever happens here. It's, you know, silent. Don't have to worry about anything here. And a striker in front of me blows up, lifts off the ground, boom.

And I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. So I call IED over the comms. We go to our procedure as far as how to secure that site and provide cover. And that was within the first few hours in country, like watching my roommate get blown up by a, it was like a 50 pound or something IED, but they buried it too low or upside down or something

that it didn't split the striker in half. But it lifted it off the ground by a few feet and snapped the axle on it and they had to you know come get it out with the Big ask of our big machine big crane or something was anybody injured. Yeah, the driver was he was injured nothing too serious though. He just covered in oil and Like I think he broke his ankle or something like that. Something small, minute, but that was my first experience being in Mosul and it was like that every day.

And we ran about the same amount, 110 plus missions in those 90 days and that was a brutal deployment as far as the pace that we were trying to keep up and being run to the ground and that was a deployment where I went dry on all my ammo. The 50 cal gunners all went dry on all seven strikers. The Kiowa helicopters all went dry. The pilots are hanging out.

The side of their doors on the Kiowas doing strafing runs with their M4s and on full auto doing strafing runs on a, we were going to go take down this apartment building, like a big apartment building. We were introduced to it, this leg unit who lived nearby to our compound, knew who we were, and our rules of engagement were different at the time.

So they came over and they needed help because every time they went down this road, they would get ambushed. Their SOP was to just blow through it, but they were tired of constantly getting hit. So they asked, you know, could we help out using our ROE? So we dressed up like them, put their patches on to look like them, went down the road and drove down that route and no shit man we get ambushed by this big like apartment building, a few hundred guys in there and dude we parked the vehicles all turned

50 cows that way everybody dismounted except for the drivers and we start hammering this building and it was like playing whack-a-mole like I'm looking through the ACOG of my M4 and a head would pop up and you'd send off a round or two and you don't know if you hit the guy but another head would pop up and another head would pop up. And we were just, we stayed there I think it was like six hours we're just laying into this building until everybody went dry, drive back, and

they dropped two 500 pound bombs on it after we left and leveled the place and yeah. Damn. Yeah. No idea how many people, anybody. It was just chaotic, chaotic of, yeah, leveling this place. How did you get your head right from being basically turned down for your marriage proposal by your future wife and walking into an extreme, hostile, engaging environment full of combat?

Being shot at. Yeah, that was the only thing that made it, you know, take my mind off of what was going on back at home. The only thing. It's up until that point, like there was a, you know, you're just waiting to get, I guess, shot at or get that rush of,

your only focus is kill the bad guy and make it home. Once you make it home, and once I made it home, then I would go back into, rush to the phone to call Jess and try to work this thing out. But I was always going into the mission prior to that, like, I guess you could say depressed, crushed. I wasn't used to that. So yeah, just the firefights.

And it was a constant. We were always getting into firefights. So it was a constant, we were always, you know, getting into firefights. So it was easy to keep your mind off of it. But it didn't have to last long. It was like a month into that deployment and she was okay with it. And we decided to get married. And I was back on my A game after that mentally,

I guess you could say, mentally. She was the only person to ever be there when I got back from deployment. Like family never, I never had family members. Your family never did come around? No, on after my deployments. And like my first deployment I was sad. You'd watch the guys have girlfriends meet them and family.

I just got off the bus and went to the room, got drunk with the guys and you know, so having her and she was there for all of them after that, you know, always there was really, really good. At what point does the sniper come on the radar? I always had it on from day one. It was just the process of getting there. I knew I had to go to Ranger School.

And I wanted to stay far away from Ranger School as possible because it was a 62 day course if you go all the way through. And it's rare that guys do. And- Why do you say that it's rare that guys do? From my experience in battalion, it was rare you saw a guy unless he was really on his A game.

He could, even if you were, it was just luck. You know, you could still be peered or somebody, you could have a bad, a bad, I honestly forget what they call it, where a graded portion of the school, where you take lead and you're in charge of all your guys, you plan all your routes and, you know, basically like mission planning, your op award.

So when did you go to Ranger school? Was it after your second deployment? After that in 2007. So we're pushing almost winter time now and I'll never forget when I'm watching 24 with Jack Bauer, 24, and my team leader comes in, and he stuck his head through the window,

and he's like, Irv, when we get back, pack your bags, you're going to ranger school. And I was like, fuck, man, there's no way. I planned on, I wanted to get married when I got back, and I thought they were doing that to be a dick, and just wanted to throw off that wedding thing, but in order to be a ranger and stay a ranger, you have to go to ranger school anyways, or else you get kicked out.

So I knew the time was coming. I just wanted it to be after I got married. So I'm depressed because of that now. Kind of have to call off the wedding a little bit, push it to whenever I graduate. I said best case, 62 days plus, maybe 70 days. Worst case, I stay there like another guy in a battalion and stayed there for almost a year. You know, just trapped in the school.

Don't wanna quit. Because if you fail, you get kicked out of battalion and you go to like Korea or somewhere, Italy. So, go to Ranger school. somewhere, Italy. So go to Ranger School. Like first day was your PT test, your what, your 15 or 12 mile ruck march, five mile run, no, PT test, five mile run and all that stuff. Your road march comes after the fact.

You do your water confidence stuff, which like I'm, I grew up like wanting to be a seal and I could swim, but I'm not too comfortable with heights. So like that was my only thing I had to overcome was my height, the fear of heights. And that was all on mainly day one until you get into mountain phase of Ranger School, but it sucked. Not so much physically, it was just I was hungry a lot, you know. I was always hungry. I lost 35 pounds and like I got sick in Ranger School. I drank some water that I didn't purify and had the worms and I got really, really sick. Painted some trees behind me one day while walking to an objective and just enough to put my pants down

and spray the bushes behind me. And the ranger instructor was like, what the hell is wrong with you, man? Go get checked out by the medic, get some IVs, stay for like a day at the hospital and come back out in the field. But I wasn't able to eat solid foods for a while, you know, before it would just pass straight through.

Lost 35 pounds, couldn't feel my big toes for like a year after, my nails stopped growing. And yeah, got married, extremely malnutritioned and yeah, skinny and frail. Got married in the courtroom, in the courthouse, like 25 bucks, 75 bucks or whatever it was, and her dad didn't show up, so her mom, I believe, walked her down the aisle.

My grandmother showed up to mime. Rest her soul, she just recently passed away too. Sorry. Oh, I hear that. Oh, good, yeah, I'm losing, lost all my grandparents now. So all in like two years, this past two years, man, it's been crazy. So, yeah, she showed up and my aunt did and that was it. Had a little small wedding after Ranger School and ended up deploying

right after that again, like a couple of weeks after, to Baghdad. So when it comes to Ranger School and RAS, from what I understand, Ranger School, Ranger School is actually more of a leadership course, correct? That's exactly, yeah, exactly. And anybody can go, like we had chefs and green berets

and I think like a Navy SEAL or two Navy SEALs in that. Yeah, we had a couple of guys go. Yeah, okay. But it was just like a leadership course though. What did you find more difficult, Ranger School or RASP? I would say for me, RIP. It was harder. It was, RIP was harder.

Like. Does Ranger School have a 90% attrition rate as well? No, it's like 60% 60% but it's not so physical it's just fighting sleep hunger and still being able to lead people and plan and find your way around the mountains the the swamps, doing water operations and stuff like that. It was tough, but your day-to-day job in battalion was way tougher than anything in Ranger school. It was way tougher.

It was the structure of Ranger school that made it hard. Like my first go around, I didn't make it all the way through I had to recycle Darby the first phase and after that I went all the way through but no it wasn't too too tough it just sucked so you get done with Ranger school you're married and then you're going on your third deployment mm-hmm where's your third deployment to? Baghdad. Baghdad.

So Iraq, Iraq, Iraq again. And that wasn't, that deployment, it wasn't like as intense. It was fun. We got to work, we got a chance to work with SEALs on, I think they were Mark V boats or some, like a SWIC boat. They had machine guns all over it and it was like

a riverine type like a rib almost I got mark five is like a speedboat no wasn't that then like a rib okay yeah um that was cool working with them and you know I didn't know anything about those boats but it was cool riding down the river and stuff like that and And what was your experience? I mean, it sounds like you wanted to be a seal. Yeah. Colorblindness thing didn't work out. You went Rangers.

Now you're working side by side with seals. What was your experience like? Working with the regular seal teams was not bad. They were cool. They weren't as, it wasn't what I expected. And I talked it up to, I just, my personal belief, I think they're really good at water operations. Like, no ranger could ever do that, you know? But I think when it came to land work and direct action, we were pretty good. And we just had a lot more time with it. It wasn't like until I worked with SEAL Team 6 that I didn't

like I didn't want to be a SEAL anymore. You know, I didn't like yeah it was not a good experience working with them. They were dicks man. But, yeah. There were a few times where, it was back when McChrystal was the, or was it McChrystal? Who was a SEAL at one point. And he was in charge of like the SEALs or JSOC or whatever at that time. And he had to...

Are we talking about your experience with six or? Yeah, with six. Let's, we'll get there. Let's keep it in chronological order. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It helps me. Yeah, you're good. It helps me.

That's my ADD kicking in. So you go, so you're back in Iraq and I think I know what this is. Like it was they, they stood up a new task force. And I can't remember what they call it. It was like task force 21 or something. I was on remember what they call it's like task force 21 I was on that yeah one two one or something like that something I can't remember exactly what it was but it was it was TF red and the that's it yeah and

the in the teams yeah yeah and so did you guys get to I mean what were you doing together a lot of direct action. Like, my... Like, one of my coolest awards, I guess, came with working with Seals and doing joint stuff with them. They were cool guys. It was like working with Rangers, but I just knew they were Seals, you know? Mm-hmm.

And you guys had... They had cool equipment. It was different than ours, and your guys' weapons cool equipment. It was different than ours and your guys' weapons were cooler. It was cool in that aspect and- How so? What was different? You guys had the boats with the machine guns on them.

Okay. Yeah, some of your weapons were different, like your handguns, we had Berettas at the time. Your handguns were different. Other than that, like we both had Mark 48, so I thought that was cool. It was like working with Rangers, but you guys had a little bit, like little cooler stuff,

like the boats and- Which had a better budget. Better budget, yeah. It was cool in that aspect, seeing the things that you guys had. The missions were pretty routine. It wasn't like I got a chance to see, you know, SEAL seals do anything

Like spectacular we weren't doing anything what I consider spectacular just regular You know gonna go kill bad guys in this building or capture bad guys if we can It was just pretty much that and we would get there by water sometimes, and I thought that was cool Yeah, it wasn't like anything that really stood out we never butted heads or anything like that And we would get there by water sometimes. And I thought that was cool. Yeah, it wasn't like anything that really stood out. We never butted heads or anything like that. They pulled their weight. We pulled our weight.

It wasn't until I got to SEAL Team 6. Was it competitive at all? No, not well. The only competitiveness that I saw was with 6 of like when we would be clearing one objective or side by sides, who could, you know, who was getting their objective cleared the fastest and first. We would win.

But, and I have a crazy story, I don't know if I want to embarrass anybody, but with working with them. But regular sales are pretty cool. They were cool. Longer hair, I was envious of that. Longer hair, seems like you guys, as standards, were a little bit more relaxed

and hands in pocket, first name basis, it was cool, you know, in that aspect. We were very strict, you know. So I liked seeing that. I didn't want to cross over. It didn't make me want to cross over. I felt that we're kind of doing the same stuff and I really didn't want to be cold and wet and sandy

after being a ranger and that I don't like the water like that, it takes a different breed. That's just not for me. I'm glad I was not a seal because I don't think I would have been a good seal, because I don't like water that much at all, and I don't, I'm not comfortable with scuba diving. I got scuba certified young, but I'm not like,

I'm terrified of it at the same time, you know? Claustrophobic, scared of heights, and yeah. I don't like swimming that much. And the ocean freaks me out, you know? Doesn't sound like a spectacular deployment. No, no, it wasn't spectacular, no. But it was cool. Do you think maybe it was also with the fact

that you're doing, this was your third deployment to Iraq. And so it, I mean, were things becoming very routine? Yeah, routine. And it was kind of dying down at that time, too. It wasn't as hot as it was like in 06, 05, 07. No, far from it. It was not, we were not running like 120 missions at that point.

It was like maybe 70 missions, 80 missions, 90. Lower amount, not triple digits. In a 90 day deployment or are you up to 120 now? This is 120 at this point. Okay. So it was not a lot more free time and it just was not as intense, you know? But it was, you're right, 100% routine.

The change up didn't come for me until Afghanistan. Had you lost anybody that you know up to this point yet? At that point, no. Not personally, no. I knew guys who were, who happened to, you know, be killed in combat or blown up or something, but I wasn't like, I knew of them. We, you know, butted heads a few times walking to Chao and I might have seen them in Chow or PT or something, but I didn't know them like that. When did you find out you were going to become a sniper? After my wife told me to go ahead and pursue it

and I knew 100%. I was skeptical after. This is after the third deployment though. Yeah, after that, I was skeptical of going because I had built such a bond with my guys. I didn't want to lose that, you know. So when you go, I got questions about this because that is, correct me if I'm wrong, did you go to RRD?

Is that what it's called? Negative, no. Okay. We get an invite, just like we get invites from Delta or whatever. What is RRD? Ranger Reconnaissance Detachment. Back then it was RRC, Ranger Reconnaissance Company, at the time. And it's like our only tier one unit.

Um, the first, I had no idea they existed. I just would randomly see guys with long beards, long hair, never in uniform, on our compound. And I didn't know who they were. I thought they were workers or contractors or something. Never knew who they were. It's like, it's rare you see these guys. I don't know where they even stay, to be honest with you.

My entire time in Battalion, I may have seen one or two of those guys throughout my entire career. And I always thought they were contractors or something like that. Worked with them twice overseas, and I have no idea what they were even doing. I just know that they did a halo jump into Afghanistan. And we went to go pick them up and drop them off somewhere in the

in the mountains and I have no idea what they were doing. Interesting. Yeah we don't know too much about I mean we know a little bit but it's very very secretive yeah. So you get home from third deployment what's the what's the discussion between you and your wife with going to cyber? Should I go? I didn't want to lose that bond with my guys and the selection process, you're not even sure if you're going to make it.

You could fail the board and they could simply not like you for a person and you don't make it. So I didn't want to experience that and I would have still gone back to my to my guys or whatnot but I just didn't want to experience that that fail that failure and I didn't want to leave my guys either. So I was kind of and I was so tired of schools at that point and deploying I didn't have

like free time it felt like with my with my brand new wife at the time. So I was skeptical on it. I asked her and she's like, you know what? You should follow your dream. I had told her since we first got, we were dating, I've wanted to be a sniper for a long time. And up until that time, she knew I was a ranger, but we never talked about deployment stuff.

She didn't know about any of that stuff until one of my guys, she went to come pick me up after a deployment as I'm downloading equipment, guys come around and they talk about me smoking some guy with the 50 count. And she's like, what the heck is going on? She had no idea. Like I would always tell her, man, we go over there.

We watch stuff. Nothing really happens I say Marines do most of the work like those are the guys who were you know first to fight with all your might Those are the guys and we don't really do much, you know And I was like how much can you possibly do in that little amount of time? But you don't have time to do anything. So she believed it to that point and She didn't really care or ask any questions about it until she overheard it about me and my guys were talking after a deployment.

And that's where she was kind of like, wow, I didn't think about that. You guys are doing stuff like that or killing people. So kept it from her for a while. Did it change? Did your relationship change? Yeah. When that came out? Were there a lot of questions?

I think there were a lot of questions that she wanted to ask but didn't know how. She mainly asked, like, did I know anybody who died or was I scared of coming back or anything? But after that, mainly it changed for her when she would drop me off the tears, man. She would bawl her eyes out because now she knew that I was on the ground fighting. But she never really brought up, she's very quiet at the time, reserved, you know,

very quiet. She didn't wanna bring that stuff up because she didn't know how to approach reserved, you know, very quiet. She didn't want to bring that stuff up because she didn't know how to approach it, I guess, either. And I didn't really talk about it, you know, at all. I mean, she's seen me cry in the car once, but that's about it. And she didn't really ask, she just asked if I was okay. I wanted to talk about anything.

She's always been open to talking.. I wanted to talk about anything. She's always been open to talking. Do I wanna talk about anything? And no, you know? At that time. So it was more so with that with her. She didn't change any other way. Like she still loved me the same and treated me the same. Just was more asking if I was okay.

You know, I wanted to talk about anything. Did she have any support group or anything when you were gone? No. I mean, you're, you don't have a healthy relationship with your parents, it doesn't sound like. Her parents had written her and you off. Yep, yep.

For racial issues. And what about the team? The team, my guys? Do you guys have a support network? We had an FRG, a family readiness group, but that was like a lot of drama. A lot of drama. Yeah.

Yeah, so she stayed away from that. Her, I feel so bad for looking back at it. She moves to a place she's never been before and experiencing these long durations of just not having me around. And she had a job at the mall and the bank for a little bit. And other than that, she had no like, we had a dog.

And that's about it. She didn't, but I would call her every day whenever I could. But no, she was a lonely person too, a lonely person too. You know? So I guess we kind of fit good in that aspect. We matched of, we could both deal with loneliness together, you know? How was it getting into Sniper? I mean, what is the, do you put in for it?

Yeah, you put in a packet, you, through your chain of command, like your squad leader to your platoon leader, platoon sergeant, platoon leader, a first sergeant, platoon leader, all the way up to the chain of command. And they review it to make sure you're good to go. You go qualify with the M4 open sites

to make sure that you can hold a group to get in. And then that's where the selection portion starts, which is your basic PT test, more shooting test, and then a board of a panel. You go into this, or you take a psychological evaluation first, a couple of those written, then you talk to a psych. Then depending on what the psych says, and if you've passed everything else,

the physical portion and the shooting portion, the psych portion, then you have to go to the board, and they sit you down and interview you, interview you about your basic knowledge of what it is to be a Ranger, different operations, who you are as a person, family man, and just to get to know who you are. Then they send you out the room and you'll find out later

that day or the next day if you've been selected. And out of the, I think 14 guys we had, seven of us got selected and we joined the sniper section and there was 12 total at that time. Students? Snipers. Not full fled snipers at that time. The seven who were, made it through the selection process, plus the guys who were already there. Most of the guys had gotten out.

So we had the, you know, the veteran snipers who had been there for a few rotations go in. And after that, you get sent to sniper school. But for us, it was we had to do, it was when we got like an increase in the budget. So we sent guys to like these civilian courses that for, I went to like long range precision, mountain precision, this place down in Corpus Christi or Kingsville, Texas that does all types of crazy type of long range

and moving target stuff. And it was a sick course, man. The best shooting I've ever done, the best I've ever been at shooting was after that course. Then I went to sniper school. No shit, so they're sending you to all these civilian courses leading up to sniper school. Yeah. Is the sniper school army sniper school? Army sniper school. Or is it specific to Rangers? No, it's army sniper school. Okay. At time it was, I think it was an eight week sniper

course or, I forget. I think it's, I forget. Had you done any stalking? Or was it all shooting courses before you went to sniper school? Most of it was. Army sniper school. Most of the civilian courses were shooting.

We did a stalk here and there. It wasn't like harped on or focused on. Like the extreme long-range shooting course was strictly shooting and the mountainous stuff in California, high angle stuff, not the marine high angle. It's a civilian course that that was all 100% shooting. The only physical thing was getting up to the top of the mountain. And then we learned like... on top of the mountain. And then we learned like, like eight of-

Were there other civilians in the course? No, not at that time. It was just you guys? Yeah. Okay. So it was basically, what did you say, seven of you? And you guys are just filling these courses, these civilian, that's pretty badass.

Best shooting courses I've been to were the civilian ones. And by the time you get to sniper school, the shooting is the easiest part. The stalking is where it gets like, okay, well, this is a whole different ball game. All of us should, I mean, all the guys pass that. And then from there, we'll start to send out guys to Marine, Scout Sniper, their high angle course. What did you find the most challenging portion of Army Sniper School to be?

Target detection. That was the hardest portion of it. Stalking was easy. I never, like I was, I could have gotten honor grad, but I was being a Ranger in a regular Army school and taking off with my other Ranger guys and being sneaky doing stupid stuff so we were I wasn't allowed to get you know honor grad from that but stalking was easy. My last stalk so it's like a

tradition where you wear whatever you want to wear, and you do your final stalk or whatever after you've passed all of them. Like one of our guys, keep his name, I'll call him M, legend, really, really great guy, good sniper. He did his in like a yellow t-shirt, and he stalked and made, he passed his stalk in a yellow t-shirt. So for me and my spotter, we went in t-shirt and jeans

and we managed to pass the stalk in t-shirt and jeans. And stalking was the easiest portion, but target detection was like the hardest for me. Hiding or finding the hidden objects in the field. And that's just, I don't know, it takes a different, and I'm not the best. Can you describe it a little bit? Yeah, so, target detection would be,

imagine 10 military items. Bullet casing, compass, protractor, dog tags, bootlace, things of that nature, and they put it out 50, 100 yards in front of you and they hide it in the woods or in an urban environment. One example, like one of the hardest ones I had to find was a protractor, the clear square protractors that you use on maps was taped on the side of a brick wall,

a white cinder block wall. Taped to the side of that, and the only thing that stood out, which you had to look for, as you're looking on the edges or the edge of the building, you're looking for that irregular. It goes from hard edge, hard edge, smooth, and now you have little ticks on that one. Let me focus in on that. Oh, there's a protractor there, but it's clear.

But I can see the ticks on the protractor. So okay, I can outline that. Or taping a toothbrush to a branch in the woods or whatever. And I'm looking for the irregularity from crooked branches, nothing in nature goes straight lines. I'm looking for the straight line of the toothbrush. I see that. Now I see the bristles on it. That is the hardest portion of sniper school. Finding glints, that's always easy.

It's the objects that don't have glint blends in and you're only looking for a straight line or something that just does not fit. And yeah, that was the hardest portion for me. That doesn't sound easy. No, man, that was the most stressful. I failed... Finding a clear protractor at 100 yards?

On a wall in an urban, yeah. That was the... Do they give you any parameters or is it a 360-degree environment? No. So there's like a tape line in front of you. And they give you your sectors, you know, left and right field of sectors, and everything in front of you from the tape line to 100 yards or further, whatever, it's fair play. There's 10 military items in there. Write them down, identify them, describe them, and draw a picture of them, of where they're at. So you're looking for shape, color, description, dimensions,

and you're putting all this down. Sometimes they would put a hand grenade right in front of you, like right across the line, and that would be the only one you don't find, because it's right in front of your face. But I took that mentality with me, and I carry it to this day. That sometimes things can be so close that you don't even see it or notice it.

It's like your nose. You know, if you focus on it, you can see, oh, I have a nose right there. But how often do we really see the nose that's sticking right out in front of our face? It's rare. So most of the stuff that we're looking for, nine times out of 10, the hardest things to find

can be the things that are right in front of your face that no one thinks to see because they're too busy looking elsewhere. So I was like the biggest takeaway I learned from sniper school. Interesting. Yeah. Hope it makes sense like that.

It makes perfect sense. So you get done with sniper school, you go to a couple more schools, you went to a Marine High Angle course? No, we would send guys to Marine High Angle. I didn't go to Marine. I was one too long of a course, and I had seniority at the time,

so I sent one of the newer guys who came in right after me, I sent him to Marine Scout Sniper, and then he went to Marine High Angle, where the Green Berets go. They have their sniper. Was it Sotic? Sotic, there you go, yeah, we would send a lot of guys to that.

I wanted to so bad, but their course, dude, I was married, I did not wanna do any more long schools, so I passed it up. Looking back at it, I wish, I really do. I did not want to do any more long schools, so I passed it up. Looking back at it, I wish, I really do wish I went to that and Marine Scout Sniper. I really do. More so Marine Scout Sniper,

because those guys are, dude, so badass, man. Working with those guys overseas was like working with Carlos Hathcock. What I think, my idol at the time, and I to this day think is the greatest sniper, is Carlos Hathcock. But, who is that?

A marine sniper with 93 confirmed kills in Vietnam. Like one of the deadliest ones. His spotter had more, but his significance, the role that he played, you know, the reason why we have a Barrett.50 cal today is because of Carlos Hathcock. He decided to put a scope on top of the Ma Deuce and single fire the.50 cal using a scope mounted on top

that he mounted to it. Dropped a guy with it too. But, so I think he's the best, and his stalking story of stalking this NBA high value target, thousand yard stalk, taken out his target. He was not supposed to come back. It was a suicide mission. And his whole story about that, dude, it's like cutting slits in the back of his uniform

to shove grass through to makeshift like a little ghillie suit and stalking this guy and taking him out was just so bad ass, man. Never got a chance to do anything like that, but close working with the Marines. The Marines, I got a chance to see them work their good magic, man, and it was phenomenal. Let's go back just a little bit.

Let's talk about the sniper spotter relationship. How does that happen? In regular Army, you have a traditional spotter and sniper. In Ranger Battalion, there is, we call them spotters, but they're snipers too. There is no spotter in Ranger Battalion. You're kind of both snipers, just know how to do the spotter work.

You only practice spotting in sniper school just to get qualified and to pass the course, but after that, there's no more spotter stuff. We know how to do it, but the work we're doing, direct action stuff, there's really no need for it. You know, it's more typical engagement is, closest I shot someone was like 20 feet,

and the furthest was like half a mile. And, but that was an extreme rarity. Most of the engagements was- Which was an extreme rarity? The long distance half mile shot. What would you say the average shot was? Like 100 yards, within 300, within 300 definitely within 300 average about a hundred yards yeah. Well before we get into your sniper work you get done with the sniper school you've

been talking about being a sniper since you were a little kid. Yeah. I mean how did that feel graduating sniper school, knowing that you're going to go to combat as a regimental sniper? A dream, man. A dream. Like, dude, everything that I, as a kid, wanted to do and imagined myself doing, laying around in a ghillie suit,

to be able to actually do it and have the title now was, meant everything, you know? All the days that I wanted to quit didn't matter anymore. It was like, I'm glad I stuck with it and stayed with this dream because I could have talked myself out of it so easily. It was, you know, had it not been for my wife saying, no, pursue it, I would easily. It was, you know, had it not been for my wife saying,

no, pursue it, I would not have pursued it, you know? But actually doing it, it meant, it meant everything. It felt, you can't describe it. It was, it was a legit dream come true, man. A legit dream. Legit, you know? Right on, man. Yeah.

Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll get into your next deployment as a? Right on, man. Yeah. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll get into your next deployment as a sniper. Oh, good. Ladies and gentlemen, we're getting closer to the edge of collapse. We see things falling apart around us, and this is just what we're being told in the mainstream media. Folks are fighting back and investing in emergency food storage. You should, too. We need to prepare for when the facade falls, and we're emergency food storage. You should too. We need to prepare for when the facade falls and we're gonna be left on our own.

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Go to mypatriotsupply.com today, order by 3 p.m. and your order will ship that same day in unmarked boxes. Mypatriotsupply.com. MyPatriotsupply.com. The show starring Jeremy Allen White, Iowa Debris, and Mattie Matheson is ready to heat up screens once again. All new episodes of FX's The Bear are streaming June 27 only on Disney Plus. All right, Nick, we're back from the break. You had just gone through all your sniper training. You're now a regimental sniper, getting ready to go on deployment. Where are you going?

I'm going to Afghanistan. For the first time. First time. What year? 08, early 08, early 08. So it's our mid 08. Jalalabad, that deployment we hopped around. It was like a terrible-

Is this the deployment you go and work with six? That's it, yeah. So I'm in Jalalabad, Alalabad, and Bagram. Asadabad? Asadabad. One of the, it's a weird name.

Asadabad is a hot zone. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't as hot when we went though. I mean, it was hot and the SEALs just did more stuff. Like, they treated us, dude, it was really bad. Like, they would make us carry their equipment that they could not carry. They'd pass it on to us.

We almost got into a big brawl with them and their general, some general had to come in. I think it was McChrystal. I know he signed an award for me and gave me a medal. And that was the only time I shook his hand and met him. But I think it was him or one of their generals came in and gave a speech. General or an admiral?

Admiral, admiral, admiraliral i'm sorry um admiral and he came in and gave a speech to the seals and us because we were bumping heads one guy we were on this mission doing a hostage rescue a seal team six up in the mountain somewhere and one of my guys walking up the mountain he fell down and where he didn't break his leg, but it folded back in. So like dislocated his, whatever tendon is right here or whatnot, he snapped his leg back.

Had to carry him out. When we got to the debrief room, there was a bottle of Vagel Seal that the SEAL guys had placed where he used to sit and we got into an argument about that almost got into a fight Admiral came in he's like set us down had a big speech and basically said there's way more Rangers I don't care how badass you guys are there's like 35 of these guys and a handful of you guys like you know Probably not gonna end up the way you wanted wanted to so they put up this green fence in between our compound the seals team six compound and the Rangers and we had different child times to eat and

I remember we were going into Well, we were doing a mission with SEAL Team Six and I won't say we were going, we were going out of Afghanistan. We were going out of Afghanistan to a different place. Something happened. One of their guys drowned. And we came back without the body and we were told to we had to go out

and get that guy and this happened yeah around 2008 there's a story about it he drowned and went down the river into very familiar with it what's that I'm very familiar yeah there for that one that? I'm very familiar with that. There for that one that was a weird operation and how we were treated thereafter and like we wanted to do the cool stuff with them they just seemed like that they were just way better and we didn't know anything you? And we had been doing DA operations with, you know, tier one units long before we were doing stuff with SEAL Team Six. And like we were getting really, really good at it.

We were good at it. You know, we had one of their CAG commanders, our first sergeants come in and give us awards. We took over one of their missions. They had to go do something else. They were originally supposed to do this hit and we ended up doing it and they were impressed by it. You know, came in, congratulated us and thanked us

and went on about their way. We were good at what we were doing but it was just working with them. They were like, it was not fun to work with. Like you didn't not get a chance to show what you were capable of doing. It was like they just brushed us off to the side so they could get the glory or whatever it was. And I will say this every hostage rescue that I have been on with them, dude I remember

the hostages getting shot, you know. I remember carrying out one female and I was a kid. So I kind of made a joke about it. But I said, man, this chick must have done like a cartwheel because she was shot in her arms and legs, and that was it. We had a carrier out in the stretcher. They made us carrier to the helo, and that was basically what we were used for, just like the carry, all their equipment,

all their weapons that they couldn't carry, and stuff like that. And once we got to the objective, they would take it from us, and they would do their thing. It was like that. So we were pissed. But the whole deployment was like that? Yeah.

Damn. Yeah. Working with CAG or Delta was way better, way better. When they came into Afghanistan, I got a chance to work with their vehicle interdiction team. They were doing a lot of that at the time, and that was like the first time I'd ever seen a vehicle interdiction.

And how- Are we talking keg or are we talking- Keg, yeah. Oh, God. And how good they were and professional. They treated us like little brothers, but with respect, taught us a lot of stuff. And yeah, it was cool working with them

because you got a chance to see how fast and good these guys really were. Like phenomenal, phenomenal. So you're basically saying Delta took you guys under their wing. Big time. And took what you, took your knowledge and improved upon it when their counterpart, six,

basically just kind of pushed you off. Yeah, exactly that, exactly that. Most of the guys in CAG come from regiment. I knew a lot of guys who went to CAG. I had the opportunity, but something about walking 40 miles? No. I sucked at 15. So 40?

No. That's Roger the Lion. Damn. Well, that's, that's pretty disheartening to hear. Yeah, yeah. Put a bad taste in my mouth. I can imagine. I can imagine.

Well, let's skip that deployment. Yeah, unless you have anything else you want to bring up from that deployment. No, that was a pretty, yeah, it was like that. Saw some weird stuff, weird stuff. Like what? I don't know if I can say on this, but just, their ROE was different.

Their ROE was different. Their ROE was different. The use of bombs were different. And I had questions. And I've also seen them get kicked out of country a couple of times. Interesting. From questionable, you know, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

I was too young to understand. I chalk it up to that, you know. Yeah. Well, let's move forward. Yeah, yeah. I was too young to understand, I chalk it up to that. Well let's move forward. Yeah, yeah. How was the next? It was a, it was a. I mean what, I actually do have some questions. So you come home from that,

what's your leadership telling you after a deployment like that? I mean that could discourage a lot of guys into getting out and I mean that could discourage a lot of guys into getting out and and I mean I could imagine a very disgruntled team. Yeah we never wanted to work with them again. Not necessarily get out. It was just never ever wanting to work with them again. You do such a big train up. Most of the guys at that point they've had you know three four or five deployments and to go on a deployment and you're told to, you know, stand back and stand by. It's

disheartening, but it just is, you know, you're never going to do it again. If you have the opportunity to work with CAG, if you can. And during Afghanistan, like they were not even CAG wasn't really in country like that was mainly SEALs and yeah, you know, CAG was't really in a country like that, it was mainly SEALs and you know, CAG was still in Iraq. But I remember when they first came over, their small element that they took over and are brought over to Afghanistan,

they attached to us for a little bit and went out on our missions and helped out and one of the coolest CAG guys that I met, like an E6 or E7, cool guy. But he came over and deployed with us, did missions with us, taught us a lot. It was one of the first times I had a compliment from somebody of that caliber I looked up to, of like, dude, good job, man.

It's rare to, you know, normally it's just, hey, you did your job, and that was it. They were more like, you know, congratulating and, hey man, that was some good work you did out there, you know, like that. So it felt good hearing that from CAG and working with the FBI, HRT guys that were coming over and attached to us and stuff like that was pretty neat.

So yeah, it was a cool experience in that aspect, yeah. So we're coming to your last deployment, right close to yeah so Is that to have that's I know that's to Afghanistan back to Afghanistan. Yes, this is 33 kills in four months Mm-hmm. Let's talk about this deployment rough man that deployment was at the height of, I guess when, who was the president? It was Obama at the time.

And he had that big influx of sending the big troop, or the wave of troops coming in to Afghanistan as the largest influx since the invasion of the war, something like that in 2009. And we were mainly working in Hellman and Marja. Marja was like the wild, wild west, and they hadn't cleared it out yet since early on in the war.

You had a few guys here and there, but it wasn't like, it was at the time Taliban safe haven. So I didn't know it at the time, but when we went on. What year is this? Do you remember? 2009. Oh God. It was, you see, cop died in July, so March, March, April.

April, April, May timeframe is when we got there. And yeah, April or May timeframe. We get there and first few hours routing country and I'm I'm coming with the mindset of like Afghanistan is lame dude there's not much going on unless you're you know in one of those very few hot spots up in the mountain somewhere to outpost or whatever and I wasn't expecting too much so I told my wife the same. I'm like, you know, after my last deployment to Afghanistan, like there's nothing that's going to happen.

And it was the exact opposite, dude. It was the omen of me being on my last deployment. And normally guys on the last deployment don't make it back or they get hurt. They get shot. You knew this was going to be your last deployment. I knew on my contract. Okay. Depending on how it went, determined if I was going to sign up again, or re enlist to do another,

you know, two, three, four years or whatever. But we get there. And shortly like a few hours in country, we go to Marja. And that's the Taliban safe haven and I remember landing the Chinooks outside the city of Marja or town of Marja or whatever the outskirts of it and as we landed there I just started seeing traces go up in the air that's pretty pretty neat or weird I didn't think too much of it and it was their early warning system so as we we, when we step foot in the city and start walking through the homes and little huts or whatnot,

we get ambushed our first mission out. And I remember, you know, the first mission is where I had, we didn't get ambushed. I had, I killed three guys in a tree line. They were countering to cut off our avenue to our extraction area. And I plucked three guys, me and my spotter. They had AKs and RPKs or PKM machine guns

and was trying to set up an ambush point. And I was my first kill as a sniper. And- How did that feel for you? What was the distance? 300 yards. 300 yards. Yeah, 300 yards.

A little over 300. But I remember being on top of the rooftop, and the sun is coming up, so I can see now. Normally, like, 98% of our missions are at night. This is the first time I remember seeing, like, Afghanistan or overseas in the daylight like that. And I see these figures in the tree line moving and bobbing up and down.

And I'm like, that doesn't seem right. So I look through my scope and that's where I see they are carrying the weapons. And one guy is setting up here, one guy is trying to set up and take his little friend further down in the tree line. So I'm looking at them and I'm like, wait, this doesn't make any sense. We're not being shot at, but they have weapons.

I called it up to our ground force commander and he's like, anybody with weapons that is deemed as a threat, engage. And I remember looking at my spotter and like, dude, we're gonna smoke these dudes, man, before they start shooting at us. Took the shot, my first shot missed, but I remember the recoil of the, and the smell of the, when you first fire that round and you've got a clean weapon, it's oiled up and you get that gas

blowback. I was shooting an SR25 and shot the first guy, first shot missed, hit him the second time, went down to the second guy, my spotter picked up the third guy, and shot missed, hit him the second time, went down to the second guy, my spotter picked up the third guy, and I remember with his.300 Win Mag and it didn't, it felt good, but it also didn't feel like it was real. My first time shooting a three dimensional moving human target, I was not expecting, I don't know, just felt weird of, normally with the machine gun, it's more bullets. So with the AR or M4, it's way more.

But just putting one round and watching the body go down was just, it was weird. It was weird. But it felt good to know that I was like doing my job of, hey, I don't ever like to say I did something of I saved the team or prevented something. No, it was just right place, right time. And it felt good to facilitate the extraction for the guys and taking these guys out.

That was first day in Afghanistan, got those kills, and we were going out every day thereafter. The next day we went to Marja. And that's where I get into the story. We're walking into the, we step foot in the perimeter city of Marja and we get ambushed. And I remember this tracer, to me, it looked like a lightsaber.

It was long and a glowing like lightsaber. And it went past my head and it felt like slow motion. Like, what the heck was that? I knew what it was, but it took a minute. I got down, and that's when we start getting ambushed from the rooftop. Forget how many guys were on the rooftop. I'll pick it up in a minute.

But I was at the back of the formation, and me and my spotter, our sniper, Pemberton, we, I pick him up, I'm the sniper team lead, so I say let's go to the middle of this formation, provide precision fire so at least our guys can get out of this kill zone and make their way down to the objective. So I get in the middle of the formation, me andemberton There's an m203 gunner next to me and I remember telling him hey Shoot some 203 on the backside of the House that these guys were on in case they try to flee out the back and we went to cut that Avenue off

So he launched off a 203 and I remember I didn't have my ear pro in and that Boom that the crack of that 203 going off was like didn't have my ear pro in and that boom the crack of that 203 going off was like wow woke me up a little bit. For those in the audience that don't know what a 203 is that is a grenade launcher. Yeah. Mounted on the bottom of his M4 and he shoots off two rounds of that it thuds in the back. Me and him set up I go prone prone, put my bipods down. He's kind of behind me and he's using his floodlight to, infrared flood laser to illuminate the guys on the rooftop. And I could see like their heads pop up and

just the whites of their eyes would glow when it bounces off their eyes or what not. And I lined up and I tell him, hey, we're gonna pick these guys off. I'm gonna start on that side. That's how we would work is I work on the outside, work our way in. And we go for the countdown. I shoot and I hear a click on his end.

And I'm like, what the heck was that? And he chambers around he goes click click again no nothing no fire and I think when it ended up happening not too sure but I think Sam got in his bolt action and prevented the hammer from fully striking the primer I'm not sure but it never happened again it's like the only time I've ever chewed someone out and you know was pissed but I guess the good side I got a chance to kill all the guys myself but as they were popping up I just said hey keep your flood laser on them and walk with me meaning I'm gonna engage one guy and go to the next guy

and illuminate his head. So they were popping up and they're shooting at us and I would just line up the scope and pull the trigger first shot I remember hit the the lip of the Top of the roof where they were peeking over and it struck low Not sure if the distance was off or the angle I was shooting at I don't know or jitters who knows what I was rarely a first shot impact guy Mainly because of the range you don't have time to I was doing everything mil dot formula so if I know like I always used if I have your body from top of the head to groin I knew the constant for that was what is it 40 times 25.4 and I think that's

like 1016 if I'm not mistaken. That will be my constant. And I would just quickly divide the mil dots into that 1016. But I would just make it a whole number, my constant to 1,000, to get me within close range. So let's say if I measure you from top of the head to the groin, two mil dots, I know that's 500 meters, you know, two into a thousand.

So yeah, I would play it, I guess, by ear like that. The distance was off, I'm not saying that they were 500 meters away, they were relatively close, like within 150 meters away. Shot the guy, cleaned up my second shot, shot him in his head, and I remember his head busting, and it sounded like a gallon of milk, spoiled milk being poured over the edge of the rooftop.

How close were you? It was within 150 yards. You could hear that? I could hear the chunks, or I could hear splashing. Shit. I could hear splashing. My distance, hear splashing. I could hear splashing. My distance, dude, honestly, could be off. It was not, it was no long, no more than 150.

Nighttime, I don't know, it was within, no more than 150, it could have been less than that, less than 100, less than. I don't know, I don't know if I'm not going to say I heard it. I could have been making that up in my brain from what I saw. But I don't know. I think the body... It's scriptive.

Yeah. Like even the first guy that I remember a sniper shooting overseas, my brain registered pack sack of potatoes. And that's what I saw. I thought someone dumped over a sack of potatoes off of a ledge. And that's what my mind made up. You know, of, I don't know, the mind. Who knows where.

It happens all the time. I'm not saying it didn't happen. No, no, dude, no. No, there was also no sack of potatoes, obviously. But no, I know that. I don't know if it's the way my brain makes sense of things or whatnot. I'm not sure.

But to me, it was like a jug of milk being poured off the side of the ledge. That's what my brain told myself. Whether or not the sound was audible or not. Did he fall over? No, it was like his head was lying over. Or did he fall behind the ledge? No, he was not off the ledge, but hanging off the ledge,

like from this portion up. So his body was on the roof and he was halfway spilled over. The second guy, I shot his head, he disappeared. And at this time we have ISR above and they're describing what's going on on the rooftop. And I thought it was a dog, the third guy, but he was crawling on his hands and knees. So I just saw the long portion of his back

or his spine, and I thought it was a dog, so I shot, and he went down. I didn't find out it was a guy until we went onto the rooftop, and I saw the dead bodies there. Yeah, my guys after that, they pushed onto the objective. We got ambushed thereafter. I think we got ambushed like eight times that night before we got to the objective.

It was an eight hour running ambush, but that was the normal for Marja. That was normal of one of my good friends, Paul Martinez was a sniper, came in after I did, but he was on that deployment with me. He was in charge of all the interpreters, or not the interpreters, the ANA, the Afghan Army guys. And I was always around him,

and he got a chance to see me do a lot of cool stuff, and that's what made him want to be a sniper. But it was, in his book, he describes it way better than I ever could, of the amount of rolling ambushes every few hundred meters or so we're getting ambushed, ambushed, ambushed before we even got to the objective. And then by the time we got to the objective, the sun is coming up, so now we have to run

out to the pickup location, the extraction. That was like routine for that deployment. That mission, I remember, so I killed those guys on the rooftop and then I may be tying these two missions together, but if I'm not mistaken, after that is where I called in the AC 130 to drop 105s on a handful of dudes like five or a handful of guys and to help blow these guys up. But I also might be tying these missions together too. It was like that, but in my mind I think that was the

at the tail end of that mission is dropping the 105 Howard surrounds. I'll look at the date on the award and I'll send you a copy to maybe mixing two missions together, but in my mind that's how it feels. It was all one. And dropped those guys. And I think that was the first time where I got a chance to feel like a sniper, where you're using air assets, precision rifle. And prior to that, I was shooting guys in the tree line. We were being ambushed again. And an assault team went up to this tree line.

And I'll never forget looking through the scope. They had to walk across this field. Me and my spotter, sniper, were tucked in another wood line. And there's a couple hundred meters or so to the next tree line. Some guys had squirted off the objective and had hunkered down and was setting up an ambush point in the wood line. ISR fed us that information

and the assault team started to press him, and they have a dog with them, the dog's barking, he's honing in on something in the wood line, and I see these like flashes. I'm like, oh shit, those are eyeballs, you know, blinking in the tree line. I don't have a clear shot, nothing's really happening, and then you just see sparks erupt from the tree line,

and long goes down, Keith goes down, our dog starts running weird shooting through the tree line and making a circle. I'm like, what is going on? I start shooting, then I see Long, one of the team leaders and he's picking up Keith and we hear man down, he's shot in the head and all this stuff, right? And I'm like, what the fuck, or what, excuse me. And I start shooting guys in a tree line, but I'm not as, I can't really see where the bodies are. I could see flashes of light.

I know I hit one guy. After that, my spotter, he's calling guys out. I don't know what happened. If I'm hitting anybody after that, I'm laying down more so like suppressifier as they're dragging their guys back. The dog is just running weird. He finally comes back to his dog handler.

He gets picked up. The dog is shot. He took around in his side. Keith took around through his night vision and Long took around through his helmet. We took around through his night vision and Long took around through his helmet. We called up a Carl Gustav. He puts, I think it was flechette rounds, I think, into the treeline. A what round? Flechette. I've never even heard of that. It's like a bunch of, it's the big ordinance, but when it explodes it sends out like shrapnel like razor fragmentation yeah something like that I was not a Gustav guy but I'm pretty

sure was called flechette rounds and it would shoot out these like a like shrapnel in you know into the treeline and he shot that it didn't really do much or anything that we could see I think think it hit low. And that's when we called in the AC 130. At first the rounds were hitting, like they were to the right and behind the guys, off quite a distance. So I call up and I'm like, hey, I say like left 75 plus 50.

I'm given calls like that to bracket the rounds. Once I saw the rounds hitting where the ambush was coming from, where I knew the guys were at, in this sector of the tree line, you know, fire for effect. And they just started raining danger close, like 105s down. Then I remember walking close in the distance after the rounds were expended, walking across the field and the smoke is rising up.

It looks like something out of a movie. And I'll never forget this guy. I think he was in shock or something, but he's walking. I don't know where he came from, but he's walking through this smoke and I had changed mags by this point. I lined up with him and he turns to go do his thing.

I don't know if he was out of it or what, but he's about to shoot, I perceive, or what. I don't know what he was gonna do, but he was just dazed. And he's got his AK with the wrapped up tape around it. And he turns, and I remember plucking him but it felt like my gun didn't go off or nothing ejected and I thought I had like a squib round. I fired an assault team lights this guy up so I'm stuck looking at empty out or take my mag out looking at what's going on trying to figure out

if I have a squib or whatever my guns guns jacked up. I had no idea that I was shooting subsonic. I had pulled the wrong mag, so I shot subsonic at him. And with the subsonic, you have to re-chamber around each time and sign enough blowback to chamber the next round. I had no idea I was doing that. Finally figured it out, changed out my mag, and we carried on from that mission. But I remember going into the tree line, seeing body parts.

And the first thing I came across was a hand. And it looked like, here again, my mind does a weird trick where I say Mickey Mouse glove. Like the swollen Mickey Mouse hand glove. It looked like that. Then I saw the arm, legs, like butt cheek, I think. Heads popped off and weird stuff like that. So we were told by our commander,

we have to figure out how many guys for our AAR, or after action report, and call it up how many EKIA. So we're putting the bodies together, essentially, to see how many bodies there were, and it got called off pretty quick after, you you know guys are gagging and it's like Do you guys were picking up limbs? Yeah and Piecing bodies together. Yeah for an after actions report Yeah

Oh, yeah To make to see how many guys that we killed and we called it off early on like after two or three bodies The ground force commander looks at me, says, Sierra, my call is on. Hey, how many guys were in here? I'm like, five. I know for a fact, five. So we left it at five.

Had no idea. I'm pretty sure it was- Is that like standard SOP? Have you done that before? Yeah. I mean, not to that degree. We've done missions where- What's wrong with just an estimation?

Like, I don't know, five bodies. I don't know. We've done BDA BDAs... What's wrong with just an estimation? Like, I don't know, five bodies. I don't know. We've done BDAs battle damage assessments where you have a big Hellfire missile or something. We had one in Iraq. A Hellfire missile gets called in on a Hilux vehicle, blows up. We drive out to do a battle damage assessment and examine the bodies, take pictures and see how many

guys that we, you know, took out. But that was, yeah, not routine, but it happened often. Damn. Damn. Where, yeah, if we weren't cutting off fingers, you know, but that was not my job. I've seen the assault guys do it. But yeah, taking off or taking teeth. We had a suicide bomber working with the FBI and suicide bomber blows himself up in the back of a pickup truck as we're approaching him. I remember seeing one of the assault team leaders. I didn't like him.

So I'm just going to call him M. He lifts up, he flies back to the air and like something out of a movie, we get hit with the blast and luckily none of us got injured or hurt but I remember hearing his body parts falling and his head was sitting in the back of the, no on the ground near the back of the truck and the FBI guy put it up there and we pulled some teeth using our Gerber knife and stuff like that. Yeah, it was routine for us to do that,

like cutting off our fingers and, you know, taking it to a compound that was not ours. I'm by one of those agency, you know, places. And yeah, that was my first experience in Marja. And it was like that every mission in Marja and it was like that every every mission in Marja all the way until we were about to do our final mission our push in Marja before the marines came through that invasion and our mission was to have two platoons one was going to be on the east one was going to be on the east, one was going to be on the west. We were going to close in and kill everybody outside at night deemed a threat. And luckily that got called off. I was sure we were going to have casualties, you know. Luckily it got called off and we ended up doing a

mission out in Kandahar. And we got hit by the Afghan police out there and that was a hell of a ride. But Marja was like that and some days I would kill one guy, some days I'd kill five, six guys, you know. But it was Marja was all like that. I didn't find out until I got home. I was watching the news in my apartment with my wife and I saw the Marines were going into Marja and that's when it all made sense of like what we were doing there. Of like, oh, you know, we were supposed to, our whole job was to kill as many fighters,

enemy fighters as we possibly could in Marja before the Marines got there. And we killed that deployment, like, over 1,000 guys total. You guys killed over 1,000 enemy combatants? Yes. Oh, yeah. My wife was there during the ceremony when they announced it.

We got our awards. I got two awards from that deployment. One was a valorous. The one where I dropped the bombs was the valorous award. Then I have some joint accommodation medals from that deployment, but we smoked a lot of people on that deployment, a lot. Wow. Yeah.

A thousand. Not all bullets though. It was a lot of bombs being dropped. And we were killing people every night though, every night. The ground guys, we were killing people every night though, every night. The ground guys, we were killing, like as the entire platoon, you could get, man, nine, 15, 20 guys in a night.

And that was a good, you know, good night, a good night. But most of it was a lot of 500 pound bombs, a lot of ordnance, a lot of 105s and 30 mic mics and yeah, a lot of that. Let's go back to that first mission. It sounds like two Rangers were killed that night. Oh no, cool story. Keith, when he got shot through his nods, the bullet did not penetrate all the way through

and deflected, so he ended up not getting hit. That's the second Ranger I knew who got shot in the head. Woman caught it. Well, the guy, other guy who got shot in his nods, he was climbing up on a rooftop on a ladder, a sniper. He got shot through his nods, but I think the bullet went into his brain. It didn't kill him.

He fell off the ladder and I remember him chunking a grenade up there to kill the guy that shot him in the head. And he killed that guy. And Keith is the other guy that I knew who got shot through his nods and the bullet didn't kill him. But when we got back, I remember Keith from when he first came in. I'm like, dude, what did that look like? He's like, bro, I thought it was a beach ball coming at me. I'm like, you could see the bullet?

Did you see Trace? As a sniper, I'm like, when you're sniping, you could see the trace of the bullet. I wanted to know if he could see the back end of the Trace. And he didn't know what I was talking about. But he said he thought it was a beach ball. Someone threw a beach ball at him. And it got big, and he was knocked down after that.

Long got shot in his helmet, and he was fine, too. The dog survived. We had to carry him out. And I remember his helmet and he was fine too. The dog survived, we had to carry him out. And I remember the ambush and walking through the water, this river ravine, and the dog handler, he patched him up and he's carrying his dog Chico on his shoulder and us getting ambushed. And that was the closest one where I shot someone. 20 feet away. It was an older gentleman who was a, I guess he felt that Allah or whoever was on his side, and he wanted to just run through us for whatever reason. And we got the call to drop him.

He didn't want to stop. We gave him commands. I remember shouting at him and posh too, and putting my red laser on him and circling his chest with it, putting around at his feet, putting around next to him, and he is just focused on coming at us.

And I was like, damn, he's wearing all white. Never forget it. And I looked through my scope and I put the scope on. It looked like a button on his shirt or a pattern and I pulled the trigger it was just all white I didn't see body parts or anything it was just all white what he was wearing the garment and shot and I looked and then he was down I was like wow that was I never shot someone that close before but a 308 you know that was weird and took the dog out got ambushed the

entire way out and got picked up and did it again the next day yeah of course minus a dog and Keith and long yeah they got back in the fight pretty quick though wow yeah I got pictures from that when I have to send you or I'm sure they get posted up. Yeah, we'll put them up Yeah, we'll put them over up while we're speaking here. Yeah, we're speaking about but you know It's what was your as a sniper and you guys are getting after every night. You just we just mentioned a thousand plus Killed mm-hmm and what what, four months? Four months, yeah.

But it's a combination of like different platoons. Our platoon was, we had the lucky spot of going to Marja, but we were right next door to, I want to say second platoon or third platoon. So let's combine, you know, 50, 60 guys, yeah, killed about a thousand. Holy shit. Yeah.

That is a lot of work. Yeah. What is, is a sniper that's getting that much action? What do you prefer to carry? Oh, semi-automatic sniper rifle. I wanted to take the bold action, but it didn't carry enough rounds and it wasn't fast enough to like traverse targets. My spotter, he carried a 300 Win Mag

and I saw that not the struggle that he had, it was just slower. But when he hit someone, it was definite, you know? Yeah, it was, I would definitely, I would pick the SR25 any day of the week. Before that I had the Mark 13, the 556, was it a Mark 13? My nomenclature's off.

It was a 556 DDM rifle. Yeah, was that the Mark 11? Mark 11, one of those, yeah. So I've always been like a semi-automatic guy, not as accurate, you know, yeah. So I've always been like a semi-automatic guy, not as accurate, you know, past, I was gonna be cocky and say like 800 meters, bro, but in all actuality, semi-automatic, I think I'm really good up to 700.

Bolt action, past that to, if it's a 308, like I wouldn't, I could pull off a thousand yards with it but not first shot maybe not second shot it would take a minute maybe and that's just because you know the like density altitude I knew played a lot with the ballistics and how far I could reach out accurately, or before I hit transonic, or the bullet started to tumble at a certain distance, and it just wasn't as accurate as it would be.

Let's say if I'm shooting a target at 600, 700, but reaching out to 1,300 wind mag, bold action, is what I would go to. And the luckiest I've ever been was at a thousand yards, a little under a thousand yards with the SR25. And that was my longest further shot. And I think a lot of it had to do with luck. But, and I didn't, yeah, like I said, not first round impact.

I remember when the guy looked at the splash on the ground and when he looked up, the second round was already in flight. And I remember when it hit him and Martina, as he looked over at me, he was like, dude, bad ass. And I just looked at him and was like, holy shit. I didn't want anybody to know that, dude, I didn't think I could hit this guy that far away. But they were shooting at us from, as we were extracting,

we were getting ambushed from the side. There was this big wall. And we had Kiowa, our Cobra helicopters, flying in. And I remember hearing grass being mowed or something like that, like a lawn mower going off. And that was the machine gun from the helicopter shooting over us into a courtyard that was ambushing us trying to shoot through the wall.

And we're leaning up against this wall and had no idea. Well, we had an idea. I just didn't make sense of it that we were getting ambushed on that side and they were trying to shoot through the wall to shoot us. And then we were getting ambushed across this, like a dam almost, like a small dam or ravine, concrete ravine, and up on this hill,

being ambushed from machine gun fire. And the first group of guys at that distance I missed, he had fled behind a house, or the backside of his, wherever he was shooting from, a house hut, whatever you want to call it. Then the second group of guys is where I redeemed myself, and I was like, no, I'm going to get this sucker. I had made a bad judgment call in distance.

I was way off, like two miles low, and I was half a mile to the left of him. And off on distance, so I compensated for the second group of guys I was going after. First shot missed, I was still low, but I was within enough of a, where I could make a second shot correction, just copied and paste the splash of, you know,

splashes here, let's say half mil, low, mil low, and just pulled it up and held a little bit right, quarter mil right, to compensate for whatever wind that was out there that day. And the second round, I'm pretty sure hit him square in his chest just based on the way that he fell, like in his own footprint, the way he fell. But that's my cleanest shot. And working with the Marines he fell. But that's my cleanest shot. And working with the Marines and saving, I hate using that word, man.

I didn't save anybody. I just shot a guy that had an RPG, he popped around a corner, and I was overwatching this Marine. I was attached with them on this five-day operation with recce guys, and like the third or fourth day, they were, every morning they would get ambushed by the surrounding town.

They had overtaken the school. Me and the Marine Scout Snipers, we stalked out, broke into some abandoned home, cleared it, set up a sniper position, waited all night, and waited for the ambush to come. Ambush didn't come. I don't know if they knew we were out there. I'm not sure.

I don't think they knew. But for some odd reason, they did not engage that day. The Marines decided they were going to, they called it movement to contact, I believe, where they just got in their vehicles and went out to the city and waited to get shot at, or get engaged. And I remember that being weird.

I had never done anything like that. I'm over watching them, and I see the Humvees come out, and I could see the Marines in it, and no shit, there's a guy. Well, they started getting shot at, and I couldn't tell where it was coming from or couldn't pinpoint it. We had some mortars laying beside, or not beside,

it was pretty far off, but mortars landing near our position and you could hear snaps of bullets and the Marine convoy as it was rolling through, this guy popped out with the RPG and he lined up, pointed at the Humvee, the lead Humvee, and it was a snapshot. Like I had been out there all night, so I had pretty good distance of where different buildings

were and, you know, landmarks that we had determined. And I shot that guy and that was a, I guess luck. I don't know. It was a really good shot, really good shot. And I hit him and I remember they brought me back his sandal, couldn't take it. And their Marine commander or whatever, shook my hand, Pemberton's hand,

and wanted to give us an award and a write up, but our commander was against it. And we were out that night to do the worst mission of my life, man. Yeah. But I met up with one of the Marines at a book signing. And he shook my hand and, you know, he says I saved his life or whatever.

And I always just feel weird about that. Like Keith, he emailed me years later, dude, years later. And he was like, you know, people call you the reaper or the angel of death, but he was like, dude, you're my guardian angel. And I'm like, I don't know. It feels weird, I guess, because I don't, it's a weird, I don't know.

It's just weird to think, I guess, that you saved someone. I don't know. It's just weird to think, I guess, that you save someone. I don't know. I just don't, I don't think I like it too much. You know? Why is that? I feel weird about it. It's just, I feel weird about it. I don't know, I feel like,

I don't, like I'm not that good to have that like, I don't know, responsibility or honor to do that, yeah. To save someone's life is like an honor. So yeah, I don't think I'm, I don't know, I feel weird about it, you know? Feel weird about it. If I did, if you feel that way, then cool, but I don't know. Keep it, I don't know. I feel bad saying you feel that way, then cool, but I don't know.

Keep it, I don't know. I feel bad saying keep it to yourself, but I just don't want that, you know? Let me just, I was just, I was just there. Right place, I guess, yeah. But I don't feel that way, yeah. Well, if you wouldn't have been there. Yeah, Yeah. I don't know. I don't think of it like that. I don't know. If I go too far down that rabbit hole, it's like, well, what if, you know, the guys that did not make it back? Did I not do my job? You know, yeah. Yeah.

Do you wanna go into the worst mission of your life? Are you all right? Yeah. One second, bro. It's all right, man. Yeah. You don't get this a lot, do you? All the time.

Man. Yeah, whenever you're ready, bro. It's all good, man. We're on your timeline. Yeah. I don't call these tears. I don't know what they are. Just sweat, bro. it's hot in here.

Yeah. Yeah. We don't have to do this. No, I'm good, bro. Open book, man, open book. Open book. Yeah. But, yeah.

After that mission, yeah. So in the beginning of that mission, like it was a five day op, I was approached by the reconnaissance guys and they had caught wind of the good work I was doing and I had racked up a pretty good amount of kills at that point. So they came over to my sniper team and they're like,

hey man, what do you think about this? They gave me a scenario. If a car was a thousand yards away, coming down an alleyway and you had a clear line of sight to shoot the driver, could you pull that shot off honestly no but I told them yes because I really wanted to work with these guys and they're like cool get your team together we're gonna go after we've been tracking this high-value target we're gonna go after them and yeah we want you guys to tag along.

Five day op, at first we were gonna like infill like a 20 something mile walk. And I'm like, geez, I picked the wrong time to do this. You know, I didn't, I'm not a big rocker. And we were carrying everything we were gonna need to survive with, batteries, ammo, food, everything for five days. And it was a five, six man team, me, Pemberton,

radio, medic, team lead, so like six guys. And yeah, six man team, and I remember calling my wife, telling her, because I was used to calling her every day. So I'm like, I won't be able to talk to you for like a week and can't say much, but I'll call you when I get back. Don't worry about anything if I don't call for, you know, a week or whatever. So, and to do that, I had to use the FBI's sat phone

because our phone calls were always monitored at the, where we phone because our phone calls were always monitored at the Where we had our little phone area? So I use the FBI as my roommate or live next door to me. I use a sat phone called her told her that and I was on my way. I remember being on the back of a Chinook with six guys and the The crew chiefs were like who are you guys And we couldn't tell them who we were or whatever. He's like, this is it, the six of you? And we're like, yeah.

And I slept for a little bit, like an hour, not even an hour flight, a 30, 40 minute flight to get to where we were going. And we had maps. That's all I knew. We were going to this location and I'm tagging along with the recce guys. And they're going to do all their communication, satellite stuff, however they track, phone,

I don't know how they do that cool guy stuff. But I was just there to, you know, provide support by fire with precision rifle. Didn't sleep for like the first three days. Maybe got cat naps here and there. We teamed up with some Marines from two five, the two five Marines and being attached with them for a little bit, helping out with their snipers and learning some cool stuff from them

and how they operate and things of that nature. We finally tracked the guy, we had him pinned down to this location. And after I had that engagement with the RPG guy and the Marines, we were on a flight sooner after that night to conduct this mission, to capture the high value target. So we called in the platoon to facilitate that.

And we had the guy pinpointed, the assault team was going to go in and get this guy. And the mission from the get-go just felt weird, man. It felt rushed. It felt pushed. Like this particular platoon had not had a chance to do its thing, that whole deployment. And I think a commander wanted a ribbon, you know, so we had a lot of that.

And we don't work in daylight operation. We don't really do that. So we start off the mission, and I remember, dude, getting there was like hell. Riding on the back of these marine trucks. I don't know what they were called, like deuce and a halfs. Like big trucks, very uncomfortable. We drive out there, we get dropped off, and I remember it looking like a scene out of Aladdin.

The sand dunes and all the stars in the sky looked like that. That was pretty peaceful. And I remember falling asleep, nodding off, and I was like begging for a firefight. I was like, dude, I'm sucking right now. Tired, day five, going on day five now. And the walk there took forever.

Started off at night, by the time we got there, it was like the sun was coming up. So I already had a bad feeling about that to begin with. But they kept pressing on with this mission. And I remember when we, so my plan for my team was to set up like a blocking position a good distance away from the actual where the target building was at and to you know block this avenue of approach that was going into the town where the house was at we set up in this open

field but I remember walking through the open field and there's these craters like holes in the ground like what is'm like, what is this stuff? So I look back at my spotter and something told me, I was like, dude, if something goes wrong, we're coming back to these holes. No shit, man. Make it past this hole, maybe 50 meters or so. We lay down, I'm pulling security along this long road,

and the town starts to wake up, and I'm just getting these bad vibes. Took my night vision off, try to blend in with the terrain as much as possible, and I see this, the mopeds, what do you call those little, like a moped. And there's two guys on a moped, and he rolls up, and I put my laser on him.

I'm like, dude, he's going, you know, to the objective. Put my laser on him, my laser light, and he sees it, and I'm waving around in his chest. He can't see me in the grass yet, but he looks down in his chest, he stops the bike, and he looks down in his chest, and he looks up in that direction of where I was at. Never forget to look in his eyes of hate, just hate, bro. And he backs up, and he looks up, and he looks down in that direction of where I was at, never forget to look in his eyes of hate, just hate, bro.

And he backs up, does a U-wee, and goes away. And I was like, this isn't good, this is not good. And then in front of us, a huddle forms, like a football huddle. These guys get into a huddle, and me and my spotter are looking at them. I call back to the recce team lead. I'm like, hey, can we smoke these guys? He's like, do they have weapons?

And I'm like, no. But I just got a bad feeling, man. Like, the way they're, everything about them, they were planning and looking around, looking at where they thought we were, and it just felt weird. They were all in this huddle, and then no shit, bro. They were like, ready, break.

They scatter a minute or two later, bro. Like the grass was like waist high that we were in. And I remember like, dude, the grass being mowed around us It just started getting chopped down in all directions all 360 it lit up and I remember looking back at my spotter The recce guys are already breaking contact. We go back in four of us jumped into the hole. I'm Second guy in the hole. We had the recce team lead go in, Pemberton's on top of me. I'm sorry, the other guy,

he's right on the outside of the hole and he's in a star for like sprawled out. And we had the medic behind him also sprawled out. And dude, we were getting lit up, bro. I cannot describe how intense the fire was around us. And then it, like, stopped. And we just heard pow, just one crack at a time. But the intervals were very consistent

and very accurate. And I'm like, oh, shit, we're getting engaged by a sniper. And then it clicked. What the Marines told me before coming into that area. They were like, dude, one, we cannot go with anything less than a brigade, and we're out there with less than 35 guys.

Two, there's a Chechen sniper that's working that area, and he's been out there for a while. He has a supposedly a big kill record. He's been fighting for way longer than your average fighter, supposedly like the Soviet days or whatnot, and has been like a mercenary in that area, and from a Chechen sniper. So I deduced it down to this is him.

He's good, really good. So I call it up, we're being engaged by a sniper. So I'm trying to do a snap bang where I hear the crack and I wait for the rapport of the rifle like lightning and thunder and I'm getting a general idea of how far away the sniper is. So I pinpoint him to this tall building. It's the only it's where I would be if I were a sniper. Zoom in, I'm looking, and I'm not too sure, so I go to pick up my head and crack. Bullet goes by.

Look at Pemberton, he goes to roll over, crack. Bullet snaps and pops up dust next to him. Then it started getting way more accurate. Me and the, I call him Jay, the team lead from Recce, me and him pop up, and we're almost call him Jay, the team lead from Recce, me and him pop up and we're almost helmet to helmet, bro. And a bullet between us, he pushes off of me, I push off of him, and the next thing I heard

was the medic screaming, who's hit, who's hit? Team lead thinks my head is gone, I think his head is gone. He's like, I'm good, I'm good. Are you good? Check yourself. I'm checking my face like, dude, I'm hit. Something's happened. Nothing.

And that went on for three hours of playing volleyball with the sniper. And the small hole and the fire just got more accurate. Every movement that you would make make he'd take a snap at it. He was going off of movement and I would put rounds to where I think he's at but I know I'm not going to hit him because I think he's shooting from back inside of the room outside the window or this little slit or a hole in the side of the wall or yeah the building but he's backed away from it so I know I'm not going to hit this guy. But he's backed away from it.

So I know I'm not gonna hit this guy. So I'm just putting rounds into it. Then we started to hear the enemy closing on us. And you can hear him, Allah Akbar and all that. And at one point they got close where you could hear the footsteps. My spotter starts engaging guys who are close, bro, close to us with the 300 win mag.

And he's laying some hate down and it gets picked back up. We're calling in for airstrikes. I'm, damn, they're crying, bro. I've never cussed out a colonel in my life, but cuss this colonel out like we we need bombs, we need help, bad. We're about to be on CNN getting our freaking heads chopped off, you know? Yeah, so, yeah, they could not drop any bombs.

Why? Obama's rule of engagement, bro. We could not have anything with 0.1% collateral damage, meaning if we dropped a bomb and their home got hit with shrapnel, that would be a bad deal for, it was all about winning the hearts and minds. So getting a bomb dropped at that time was impossible.

And we couldn't drop it to where, I had pinpointed where I figured this guy was at, the sniper, found his location on the map, we called it in for an airstrike. The best that they said they could do was do a flyover, show of force. The first thing that came over was a, I suppose an F-16 or F-15, one of those jets. He came over, didn't do anything. Next I looked up and I thought I saw a UFO. I'm tired, borderline hallucinating,

so I'm like, yeah, that's a UFO. And it's just this thin black, looked like a disc, and it's low, bro, low. And as soon as it gets closer, I'm like, that's a B-2 stealth bomber. I've never seen one of these things before in my life, except for like on TV. And it was way bigger than what I expected

and thinner than I expected. And I remember he had his bay doors open and he dropped flares. And that didn't do anything. So then we called in for bombs to be dropped on our location. So I'm calling up like, drop them on us because we're getting, you know, overrun.

And I'm playing volleyball with a sniper I can barely see and I picked some machine gunners off on a rooftop who was shooting at us, picked some more guys off in the field. And then, yeah, when we thought it was over, I look at the recce team lead, and I'm like, dude, do you have a grenade? And he already knew I was going with it. If they get in close, we're going to pull this grenade, hug it, and we're gonna kill them with us, right? So he pulls out his grenade. Man, one second, bro. Yeah. That's where I fist bump Mike Pemberton.

Yeah, we said our goodbyes. You know? One second. Okay, man. Like I said, this is the worst one, so I'm good after this one, but, and I haven't talked about in a while, so I think that is this one. But, and I haven't talked about it in a while,

so I think that is different. But, yeah. Say our goodbyes, our fist pound, Mike Pemberton, and I'm like, dude, tell my wife I was not a bitch. And he's like, dude, I'm not telling her anything. She's Mexican, she'll cut me. I'm like, yes, she will. And yeah, he did our little, she's Mexican, she'll cut me. I'm like, yes she will.

And yeah, he did our little goodbyes or whatever, waited to these guys to overrun us and look over my shoulder and here's my dumb brain again, my kid brain, I thought it was the Road Runner. Like when someone's running real fast and you can see the dust kicking up from the back of their feet, it was a machine gun team. Cop, Eric Ennis, those guys. They heard the call.

Man, dude. Yeah. They heard the call of, you know, we were pinned down pretty good. And they came in and extracted us and we popped smoke. Murphy's Law. We popped smoke and the wind blew it the opposite direction. So we had no cover, like screen cover or anything like that to bound out we were gonna bound out bound out in twos and Me and Mike Pemberton were gonna be the last guys to bound out

covering them as best as we could as you know, they made it back to the machine gun team on this on the road that we were originally overlooking and Snipers trying to pick us off as we're running so I tell Mike I'm like dude zigzag and I learned this from just you know right grew up I'm like dude you're getting shot at zigzag uh I didn't zigzag I just v-lined it and it's the fastest I felt like I was running on clouds man I could not feel the ground beneath my feet v-lined it to the machine gun team. Mike's right behind me,

and you can hear the cracks of the rifle, and you see the ground pop up, and made it back to the machine gun team. I look at Cop, I'm like, dude, I am sucking. I need water bad. Haven't had water in, you know, I felt like a day or whatever, and really thirsty, and mouth was sticking together,

and couldn't form any spit. He gives me water out his back, his backpack. I drank half the bottle, gave the rest to Mike, and it's up to me, you know, hey, where are we going? I'm like, well, let's bound, make our way back to the main element where you guys came from, and we'll join up with them and finish out this mission. And as we pick up to move out,

I see some guy pop out from the backside of this little house, and I put my rifle over Pemberton's shoulder, we're both facing that direction. I use his shoulder as a brace because we're standing. And I shot this guy as he poked out from behind the house and like a walking firefight. And I made the dumbest call in my life, man, of skirting the tree line. Yeah. Yeah.

Should have went in it. And skirted the tree line, probably tired. Wanted to get to the element as quickly as we could because they were also in a huge firefight throwing grenades and back and forth. Borderline hand-to-hand combat in this little ravine. It was intense, bro. Making it back to them, skirted the tree line and shit you not, I saw the ground open up.

Like a guy come out the ground, he lifted up the grass and he came out of the ground and it's a team of guys and they started engaging us from, dude, meet at that wall, it's danger close. Shit. And we get ambushed and I remember diving head first, I didn't care how deep this ditch was or what was in it, dove in, hit water, like chest deep water,

we all jump into it and I look over and I can see Cop, the guy who had just rescued us. He's got his leg up on the embankment. Yeah. Laying down the cover fire. And I'm, I can see the, like, like the dudes heads and in the ground and I start shooting and what I could hit I know I hit one and got back down and as I get into my cover from the embankment portion,

I'm like this high in water, chest high, neck high at this point. And I hear this loud sound like an M4. An M4 was right by my ear. And I'm like, I go to look over, like dude, back away a little bit. And there's no one right there. But then I see the embankment behind me, the mud

like blowing up and I'm like, holy shit, that's a, that's gunfire. So I move off to the side a little bit and that's when I'm going back up to engage and I hear this weird slap and I heard cops scream. I look and I see like a water hose, dumb brain again, pumping red water like squirting into the field. Like what is that? Then I see him fall and he's screaming bro, screaming, cussing and screaming. His femoral artery was hit, snapped up into his body, and he took two rounds to it. And I remember the ravine, the water we were in,

like turning different color, dark brown, and it tasted like pennies. And look at the commander of the lead who's with us. And by this point, he's next to me so I grab him I pull him in close to I could talk so I could talk to him in his ear screaming we need to get this like 300 meters down this ravine or down here to this uh opening that's where we take our dog leg and go across this field in the safe haven, the safe house was gonna be there.

We have to go now, we're screwed in this little ravine and is, yeah, screwed. And as I'm talking to him, I feel a splash of warm water slap my face and then he just got weightless. And I thought, I don't know what I thought. I just thought he just sat down really fast. And he goes down, I wipe the water off my face and it wasn't water, it was his blood.

And I see this right above his body armor, this gaping hamburger meat hanging out of his chest. I go back up against the embankment, Pemberton comes over, he just puts his hand inside the wound. And I remember him like screaming. Yeah, and I went black, bro. I went, it's the only time in combat where I like blacked out for a second.

I'm staring in his eyes and watching his chest open up and Pemberton's hand in it and him screaming and cop had stopped screaming at this point and our medic is working on him. Badass medic Melvin. His kit bag is floating in the water and he's doing like surgery bro, you know? Shit. Put on two tourniquets, bleeding wouldn't stop. He's packing it, trying to get it to stop. Walken's got hit in his foot, or his ankle. So we're down three, and uh...

and one of the recce guys came over and slapped me on my helmet. He slapped me on my helmet and he's like, dude, get back in it, you know? I'm like, oh shit, yeah. And he's like, come over here. The sniper, he's not engaging him. And he's like, come over here to me behind this weird little fallen tree and as soon as I get up next to him to get eyes on anything we get shot at and he pushes me was like dude he's targeting you you know everywhere I went down this ravine crack crack and uh the cries, and, you know, everybody's jacked up and cops going in and out of consciousness and we finally made the decision to, let's just move, we can't get pinned down here. So he passed his body up on the stretcher.

And I remember him passing by and just white. And I remember him passing by and just white. And like when we would take cover, we'd shout like, yeah dude, hold your breath, you know? We'd have to go underwater to get him to safety. And yeah, he, you know, was out of it, lost a lot of blood. And we get to the end of the river, ravine, and I remember popping out the other side

and going into the safe house, and dude, it felt like World War III opened up and I go down Pemberton looks back at me he's like thought I was hit he comes and grabs me and starts pulling me I'm looking up at him like dude what the what are you doing and he's like I said we're getting shot at he's like no those are our guys we had support by fire machine guns up on top and I was just so you know out of it a little bit and uh we get into the safe haven the little house we had taken over and the first sergeant was in there and he's like hey you guys get up on top and uh we were the first ones to get up on top to provide cover as you know a cop and everybody else was coming out and uh

we were just told to engage everything that was a threat and uh i remember looking out and dudes were getting dropped off in like vans with the sliding doors taking off and mopeds and bikes with like four guys three guys on them and RPGs and ammo and machine guns piling out into the city. Pretty far away and couldn't engage them too far away and tried some shots too far away and just picked off everything else that I could pick off and Yeah, and We called for reinforcements the Marines to come in and they couldn't do it They had to have more people like I said a brigade and we were told that the best they could do was park their

Vehicles like a mile away and we had to run to them That was like not really an option at the moment. We were going to stay and fight. So we had the guys who from my platoon put speed balls together ready to go ammo and stuff like that. They were gonna fly the helicopters in low, drop off the speed balls and we were gonna get it out and fight all night. Watch the Medevac come in and provide a cover for them. It was an old school like Medivac with the big cross on the side.

And watching the guys carry out the wounded and covering them and stayed the fight. Had 210 bullets and had six when it was over, left. Did a lot of shooting. And yeah. We had to, that was the initial call, was to remain overnight. Luckily that wasn't the case. And as we were running low on ammo, I'll never forget the call my first sergeant was like,

if you got a bayonet, if you got a knife, get ready. We're going hand to hand if, you know, these guys are gonna overrun this compound. So in my mind, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to smoke a guy, get his AK and fight with that. And if we go hand to hand, hey, Hodge is pretty small. We're good. So luckily that did not happen.

We did make the decision to run out. Everybody was like timid. Not timid. It was a rough day. Like hour 8, 9 at this point. We have to run out the wide open field a mile to get to the Marines that finally made it. And I volunteered.

It was like, you know, I wanted to kill myself so much that day. It was like, after, yeah, after, like I saw the third guy was had debated standing up, just getting my head taken off, you know? Just tired of it. Yeah. So I was like, you know, I'll volunteer and,

you know, I'm not like crying too much, am I? You're all good, man. I've never heard anything like this. I'm sucking, bro. But so yeah, I volunteered to lead us out. I had like lead us out. I had like six bullets left. And I told Pemberton, I was like, you take up the rear for the assault team, make sure we're good

and I'll get the front. We're just gonna book it. I don't have time to shoot, you know? So we just start running when they open up the big blue doors, the gates. I have a picture of it of, yeah, before we ran out, I just booked it, man. See the Marines on top of the hill and they didn't have enough vehicles for us or whatever, so yeah. We had to fit like 30 guys and four Humvees and all in Humvees and piled in.

And I had a big 500 pound Marine 50 cal gunner laying on my chest and I'm laying across Pemberton's lap and another Assaulter's lap, he's being stood on. It's cramped in there. Some guys are piled on and we drive out. I asked for a cigarette and Smerine was like, gave me one and I go to flick it out the hatch and it landed back in my, I always say that was like the worst part of that whole mission, was having that cigarette burn my back and lions are this other guy,

an assaulter, pouring his canteen out on me, dousing me. I'm like, dude, it's just a cigarette. But we get back and we got the target we were going after, captured him. And I remember doing the quick AAR when we got back and I'm sitting next to a prisoner before we fly him out to where we have to fly him out to. And I'm sitting next to a prisoner, and I'm leaning up against my rucksack, and I'm dozing off, and I do doze off, and I heard a clear as day, man, a bullet snap past my head.

So I wake up, I'm looking around, I'm wondering, you know, why is no one else freaking out? You know, everyone's just pretty calm and chill waiting for the helicopters to come in. I'm like, damn, that was not even a gunshot. I'm still hearing bullets snap, you know? And I knew I was like hurt after that. And then a few days later, yeah, a cop died.

The first hospital he went to, power went out. So we had to take him to another hospital. Yeah. So that's the guy who saved my life. I've never heard anything like that before. My bad, bro. Oh, man. Haven't talked about it like that in a while, either.

But, yeah. Think about it every day. Every day. every day. Every day. Every day, man. You wanna take a break? Let's take a break. How many guys out there are worried about brain health?

You know, all we hear about is fitness. Everybody's getting ready for bikini season because spring's right around the corner. I'm personally more concerned about my brain. You look around, you see all these brain diseases that are getting out of control. I'm gonna take everything I can to improve the health of my brain and I'm gonna tell you about my five favorite supplements from Laird Superfoods that help with brain health. All right, the first thing I do every morning is I have Laird's Superfood Creamer. It's got adaptogens and functional mushrooms, which are great for brain health. I put this in

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I think they taste like shit and so I take one scoop of this put it in my water and I don't have to eat beets anymore All right. We're winding down the day now. This is the next supplement I take every single night layered sleep and recovery Helps me sleep helps me recover from my daily workout and guess what? Yep, you're right. It has mushroom extract. Guess what? It's good for your brain. And I saved the best for last. Most of you know this.

My favorite supplement at Laird's is performance mushrooms. Has a ton of mushroom extract. Super, super good for your brain. Take it every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. These are my five favorite supplements from Laird's Superfoods. You can go over to LairdSuperfoods.com, use the promo code SRS, save 20%. Ladies and gents, I would not have partnered with this company if I didn't believe in them. They take the cleanest ingredients.

They try to source everything in America, unless they find a better ingredient that's more quality somewhere else. I think we can all appreciate that. Once again, Lairdsuperfoods.com, use the promo code SRS, that'll save you 20%. I want to give a big thank you out right now to all the Vigilance Elite patrons out there that are watching the show right now. Just want to say thank you guys. You are our top supporters and you're what makes this show actually happen. If you're not on Vigilance Elite Patreon, I want to tell you a little bit about what's going on in there.

So, we do a little bit of everything. There's plenty of behind the scenes content from the actual Sean Ryan show. On top of that basically what I do is I take a lot of the questions that I get from you guys or the patrons and then I turn them into videos. So we get right now there's a lot of concern about self-defense, home defense, crimes on the rise all throughout the country actually all throughout the world And so we talk about everything from how to prep your home how to clear your home How to get familiar with a firearm both rifle and pistol for beginners and advanced we talk about mindset We talk about defensive driving

We have an end of the month live chat that I'm on at the end of every month where we can talk about whatever topics you guys have. It's actually done on Zoom. You might enjoy it, check it out. And if Zoom's not your thing or you don't like live chats, like I said, there's a library of well over 100 videos on where to start with prepping, all the firearm stuff, pretty

much anything you can think of, it's on there. So anyways, go to www.patreon.com slash Vigilance Elite or just go on the link in the description, it'll take you right there. And if you don't want to and you just want to continue to watch the show, that's fine too. I appreciate it either way Love you all. Let's get back to the show. Thank you All right, Nick, yeah, that was a heavy segment man, dude, I've that chef is finally gone man He was cutting up all those onions. I'm surprised you didn't you know know? I'm glad you kicked him out. That dude was rough, man.

Yeah. Man, that's, you know, I just, I've not heard of anything that intense. Really? I don't think ever. That's what caused me to get out, man. That was it. That was it.

I finally, yeah, I was on my way out the door, but that like sealed the deal of learning of cop's death and just that whole mission, man. And I watched guys get Bronze Stars for just saying, go do this, and never step foot on the field, never had to do anything like that, but they walk away with a Bronze Star.

I'm never about medals anyways. I was supposed to get a Bronze Star with V, but they pulled it and reduced it to a a Archon Joint Commodation Medal or Army Commodation Medal with V, reduced it to that. Only because they told me I was just doing my job,

so there was no point of, and I don't care, you know, but I watched the guy who was sitting behind a desk at a Bronze Star. I remember when we came back from deployment in Iraq, and we did some really good sniper stuff for conventional guys. Mm-hmm. And which opened up a lot of routes, you know, a lot of logistical routes.

We came home and I remember watching a guy get a Bronze Star who stayed back in Little Creek, Virginia for stocking the candy machines because the candy machines were stocked every day. What? Yeah, we're sitting there at, you know, the morning muster and that's, we're watching this guy get a fucking Bronze Star for stocking candy machines at Seal Team 2. I couldn't believe it. Wow.

And that is about the moment I knew that I was making the right decision to get the fuck out. And that is about the moment I knew that I was making the right decision to get the fuck out. Mm-hmm. But, you know, we had a... We just had a good conversation off camera and I kind of cut it because I think it's important to have it on here about... About the ego, you know, that runs within the soft community and the competitiveness, the characters that come out afterwards. We had talked about a couple of individuals that we both know that will remain nameless

on camera, but the conversation kind of started with how do some of these guys live with themselves? You know, people that you knew in service, people that I knew in service, and then you see them on social media, you see them on YouTube, you see them on the news, you see them everywhere, and you know, that's... Not that guy. That's not you.

Yeah. And now they're trapped into being that character likely for the rest of their life. There are some very controversial individuals from the vet community, especially from the, especially from the soft community that are living a lie. And, um, and that brought us up into, you know, the killing and how that, I mean, I'll let you pick up the conversation. It's yeah, from the killing portion. Um, when it comes to ego. Oh, the why you're overseas deployed?

Yeah, you know, the competitiveness on killing. And it becomes, you know, I think it starts as you're killing for the country, you're killing for your team, and then it gets competitive. I think you go in with the mindset of that. Like, I would say my first deployment, I felt like I was doing it for the country. After payback for 9-11, I'm finally here and I get a chance to deal out my payback. But then I want to say maybe my third deployment is when I started to see and notice that more so when I was a sniper.

Like killing the bad guys or whatever you want to call them, killing people, getting back, and the guys who did not get a chance to go on the operation would show jealousy or envy towards that. And it became a competition really quick, as who could get... And I never thought it was a competition, you know? I was right place, right time,

and I didn't have to look forward. I enjoyed being a sniper, and I enjoyed looking over my guys so that they could do what they had to do on the ground. I enjoyed it and I liked working by myself and having that leadership role but the killing was never something I expected like especially as a Ranger sniper it's rare that you even get a chance to pull the trigger so I'd never went into it with that mentality or mindset.

I thought I was gonna do more. I wanted to do the stalking, setting up hide sites. That's what I wanted to do the most. I thought that part was the coolest thing about being a sniper. The shooting portion, it's cool and all, but it's so rare. So I didn't expect it. All the snipers that I knew, some had zero kills.

My replacement sniper, so after Pemberton fell down this 75 plus foot well, had to get medevaced out, I was replaced with another sniper who had, I think he was in the section for like two or three years and never had a kill until he started working with me. And that was just because we were getting ambushed, like literally every day, and he had to shoot people. But prior to that, he'd never killed anyone.

So I was used to that. The snipers that had been in the section for so long, they never talked about killing because it was rare. You might have guys with two or three kills, some guys with zero. But it wasn't a big thing that we harped on, you might have guys with two or three kills, some guys with zero. But it wasn't a big thing that we harped on, you know? Until I started to see that competition, when that's all it became about was just killing and killing and killing.

And well, I have more than you, and I have more than you, and I'm catching up to you. And I'm like, dude, I don't care. You know? I don't really care. And no one knew what I felt like after the fact. So after everybody I've ever taken out or anything, I've always felt bad about.

I've always felt that, I guess coming from a religious background, I felt that it rips out a piece of your soul. I think that spiritually we're all connected in some way, shape or form. We all share one thing in common, and that's the soul. And we're all connected by it. So eliminating or cutting that tether

of somebody else's life, it's like you feel, I felt the same way that a tether was connected also. Because you know deep down, I don't know, some people in our community, maybe they are telling the truth when they say, oh, I don't feel anything and I don't buy it. I don't buy it. And did you feel anything at the time when you were killing?

After the fact... Or was it, was it years later? No, during the killing. So it was, I would ride like this weird roller coaster of emotion, of a big rush, adrenaline dump. I'm about to kill this guy. I can see he has a weapon or he's shooting, and I get like a rush before a hunter would shoot a deer.

After that, though, it was like this crazy, like you reach the peak of a roller coaster, and right when you come down, it was like that freefall of... It didn't feel... It's a weird... You don't... it feels weird. It feels like remorseful. The remorse part came when I got back to my room and I had privacy away from the guys and I didn't cry.

I just felt weird. I felt sad. I did feel remorseful. Like man, and my mind would play tricks of like, did he have a family or, you know, who was he before that? When he woke up that morning, it was always weird to me that, like, when a person wakes up, they have no idea that they're going to die, you know? And if they did, would they change their life leading up to that point?

If there was no getting around the fact that you're going to die in two hours from now? What would you have changed differently? And that part is what I played with in my mind. Like, did they carry on about their day? Did they have a good day? Did they, I don't know, you know? So it was weird in that aspect of like, wondering their life prior to that of the kill.

And I felt like I was a young guy killing grown men, which was weird to me too, you know? It was just weird to kill someone that was like my dad's age, you know? And it was weird, it was weird. But I always felt remorse thereafter. I never, I didn't show felt remorse thereafter. I never... I didn't show up to the guys. I didn't show anything until I got back my last deployment.

And that's where my wife saw me crying in the car after cop died. And I had called my dad. This is the only time I've called my dad on that deployment. I masked my cry with the sounds of the jets taking off on the runway and this big generator behind our barracks overseas. Called on the satellite phone and I didn't say anything. I just waited for the afterburners on the jet to kick in before he took off. And I used that to cry so the guys wouldn't hear me. And that's like the only time he was pretty much like, it's okay son.

And I guess he understood, I'm not sure, but that's all he said. And yeah, that's the only time I cried like that and let it all out pretty much, yeah. And then of course when I got back. But I didn't really care about the competition of killing or who had the most. My career leading up to that, all the guys in my platoon,

like the assaulters were, and I was not an assaulter. I was a machine gunner, machine gun team leader, designated marksman, and sniper. I served a brief role when I first got the battalion as an assaulter, and then I lost my gun on my first jump in and like no I just was never that guy to always kick in the door and go kill bad guys you know that wasn't my thing those guys were doing all the killing to me like they were really doing it a lot but I didn't look at them and envy them because they killed more people.

It was just cool to be amongst them of, hey, these guys are really good at what they do, and it's like a dream come true, being in a special operations community and doing these cool jobs at the time, at that age. But I never looked at someone and said, man, I want to have as much kills as you do. It just turned out that way.

And I don't have, like as a sniper, I have quite a few. But like my entire career, there's guys, I'm sure out there who have way more, way more. But I don't look at them any better than what I did. We all did our job, and it is what it is. We're here today, and hopefully we're making today count. And yeah. You know, you mentioned off camera that every kill that you had, you felt took a piece of

your soul. What do you mean by that? Like literally a piece of your soul. Like, it gets disconnected. I think we're all connected, bro. Like that's my belief now. And from what I've seen, from my experience in spirituality, I believe that we're more connected than we think we are.

It's just that this realm that we're in, this place, this earth that we're in, and I read the Bible, and the ruler of this world is Satan. You read the Bible? Every day, every day. I thought, okay, we're gonna go down some rabbit holes here. So we had talked about, let's talk about your, Okay. We're going to go down some rabbit holes here. Yeah.

So we had talked about, let's talk about your, we'll call it your journey to God. Mm-hmm. How did that, I mean, what sent you down that rabbit hole after, what were you searching for? I mean, you've had some of the most kinetic deployments that I've ever heard of. Some of the most descriptive combat accounts I've ever heard. And so, I guess I should make any assumptions, but I would assume that your transition was... Rough.

Rough. Yes. Well, like so, Ranger Battalion, it's crazy you say that, like, to me it doesn't seem like a lot because we know, and anybody can look it up, it's the only unit with the most kills and captures and continuously deployed since GWAT began, is Ranger Battalion.

It's the most killed, captured, combined, more than the Marine Corps, Air Force, Green Marais, you name it, combined. We've killed and captured more enemy high-value targets than any unit combined. And that's Google, whatever you want to use to look it up. So it's not weird to me that it was like that. Like, the most deployments that I've seen a Ranger have used to look it up. So it's not weird to me that it was like that.

Like, the most deployments that I've seen Arranger have was like 14, 14 deployments, and thought he was badass. But I think he's badass. But I think that for my transition was, like anybody else's, I think, who's been through that. A lot of self-medication in the wrong way. I struggled a lot with alcoholism. It runs deep in my family. Depression and thoughts that I wish I didn't have, you know, not wanting to be here anymore, you know,

still got the scars to prove it. Yeah, so I've struggled, I struggled with that for a long time. What do you mean you still have the scars to prove it? Internal or external? External. What happened? What's that? Is this a suicide attempt? Not that one per se, just hurt. I just wanted to see blood.

Just wanted to see blood. What happened? Decided to take a razor blade bro and start carving. Yeah. In front of? yeah. In front of? My wife, she saw it. She saw that? Yeah. Holy shit. Yeah. Did that and had a bottle of Jack one day and decided to do

my life was crumbling down when I got out. Uh, I had no idea what I was going to do. Did contracting, got out. Wasn't for me. I was tired to do. Did contracting, got out, wasn't for me. I was tired of being away from home, you know? So I bought a home, and I just felt empty. I felt just useless, empty. I couldn't apply all the stuff that I learned

and was good at. I was terrible at school, wasn't a good kid, tried to be a good husband, but I just felt like empty. So decided with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a Glock pistol to go outside in the backyard and stare at the stars and have a conversation with my inner self. And yeah, scary times, scary times, man, scary times.

What did that conversation entail? With myself? Yeah. Why am I here? Basically, why am I here? And is there any importance as to why I'm here? Why am I here and why are my guys not? And the message I got out of that was,

if I do this, everything that they did would have been in vain, you know, by not living life. And that's what kind of, I guess, pulled me out of that at that moment. But I teetered a lot with depression, anger, resentment, a lot of that, and just nowhere to fit in. You know, nowhere to fit in. So I would self-medicate daily until I couldn't remember

and I felt like I didn't exist anymore. I would just drink until I was in, I call it my dark space, where nothing exists anymore. No feeling, no emotion, just darkness. And I liked being there for a while, you know? A while. You liked being there. Yeah.

You liked being there or you didn't know how to be anywhere else? Ooh, that's deeper. I didn't know how to be anywhere else. Yeah. I didn't know how to be anywhere else and I didn't know how to be anywhere else, and I didn't know how to process the outside world as far as struggle.

Like overseas, when you get mad and you're faced with a situation, it was easy. And being overseas, everything was cut and dry. You just stay alive. That's it. You don't have to worry about your light bill. You don't have to worry about the water bill. You don't have to worry about the water bill. I Had no job after I got out of contracting everything seemed like it was, you know falling apart Just got a new house in Texas and I had nothing, you know, I was

empty bro empty hadn't I was losing everything everything and Decided one day to lock myself in a room and I just started to write my whole deployment. And I called it Team Reaper at the first because the Reaper just did not, and originally, I don't know if I've ever really told this story because I don't care, but the original, the The original The Reaper term came from that deployment. And I called after an assaulter, WR, because I don't like this guy anymore. Well, whatever.

No judgment. That's his path. But he gave me that title, The Angel of Death. And I was like, our Pemberton was like, oh, like the Reaper, blue oyster cult. I had no idea who blue oyster cult was or anything. And he's an older guy, Pemberton, so he introduced me to it, the baby don't fear the Reaper,

and that stuck. I always called us Team Reaper. I don't like, we're a team, you know? Me and him, we're a team. He was just as good as I was. I was just on a semi-automatic, I guess, and I was a sniper team leader. But my original, when we got back,

we had a deployment video. And on that deployment video, Team Reaper blew oyster colts playing in the background, and that was our thing. The first book I ever wrote was Team Reaper, Blue Oyster Colts playing in the background, and that was our thing. The first book I ever wrote was Team Reaper. I didn't want to be the Reaper. That came up along the lines when I got into the big book publishing company, and they did not want it to be a team. It wanted to be about me.

Regardless if it was Nick was the Reaper in battalion or not, I wanted my God to be a part of it. That's why I incorporated Pemberton in everything. And I still keep in contact with Pemberton. And he's always been my guy, loyal, my guy, you know? So the first book I ever wrote was terrible. I wrote it completely wasted, sitting in my computer room, trapped myself in there, and just wrote.

Team Reaper, unedited. That was the first original book. So it's always Team Reaper from the beginning. I just didn't want to be singled out as the Reaper, regardless of what some other title someone gave me. And it went along with that. But the first book I ever wrote was not even about me. I just wanted to talk about the things that me and my team did and that's

why I got out of the hole. After the first book, I was, that it was just me out there, no, my spotter and the guys on the ground were just as good, if not better than I was. I was just right place, right time, you know? And that's why I got out the big book publishing world and stopped doing the autobiography stuff and made up my own character that he can do whatever he want. Like, I grew up reading like Tom Clancy and those guys.

And that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to build a character that is not real, not me, but is what I would envision a spec op guy to be and what he would be like when he's out, the life that he's trying to live. So I started going along, that's why I write what I write now. It's to take me out of it, now let me just show you, like I've been writing since I was a little kid. My mom has one of my original books

that I wrote in elementary school based on The Haunted House, bro. And yeah, it was a Goosebumps style book, but I called it Goose Lumps and me and my friend Andre made it a short book, scary book, supposed to be, but I've always loved telling stories and writing. So that's been something I've guessed before the sniper thing. It was what I've liked doing and I continued to do and I'm not the best at it, but I've gotten really good at it.

And like the feedback that I get from it, I like the feedback and I like not being the main focus character. I don't, I think it's, it can be not good for your health. It can be dangerous and you can start to believe whatever thing that you're building up, the character that you've made on yourself, and the praise that you get for being this one guy,

it can kind of not be good. And I don't want to be singled out. Like, dude, I was telling you, I don't want to, on my tombstone, I don't want to be the reaper. You know? I don't want to be that. I'm know, I don't want to be that I just I'm a writer. I love to write I Love to tell stories. I'm not

Tom Clancy or Stephen King. I'm not those guys. I don't want to be those guys I just want to tell my stories that I Spend six months planning and about the same amount of time writing telling those stories of things that, you know, Tom Clancy would write about or one of those guys. But just from my perspective and how I would do things, like I'm into conspiracy theories. And if anybody like reads my books, especially like my latest ones or whatever,

they can see I'm more than just a sniper. Like I'm a nerd, bro. I love conspiracy theories. I love, I'm big into space, aliens, things of that nature, you know. Everything is not about war to me anymore. I'm trying to leave that away from me as much as possible because I know where that leads to. So to stay away from it is by writing fictional stories that I would read as a kid.

How many books have you written? Close to 20. 20 books? Yeah. Close to 20. I have five major published. No. Yeah, five major published. And I've written... This is going to be embarrassing if people look this crap up, man. But... Because it goes back. They're going to. I wrote... It's like a picture book about survival.

I called it... Basic and Intermediate Combat Survival. Lame, bro. about survival, I called it basic and intermediate combat survival. Lame, bro. I wrote Team Reaper, and Team Reaper one and Team Reaper two. I've written three other people's books. I have a pseudonym that I go by. I've written books, yeah, other people's autobiographies, and I've written on my own fictional books,

like five more additional books on that end. So in total, close to 20. Maybe I'm having reached 20 yet, but close to 20 books. So did writing, I mean, did, how did you pull yourself out of the downward spiral? Was it writing? Writing. Writing was-

You found that therapeutic? Very therapeutic. I don't, I didn't never, I never used to talk about this stuff. Ever. Ever. I never, I didn't, I didn't really care, you know? I wanted to, I was, yeah, I just didn't really care. I didn't think I was that big of a deal, you know? I just wanted to tell my side of the story other people found out or found it to be a Big deal or a cool story and I didn't advertise it that way I got in go the traditional route and pitch my script I wrote it on my own self published it and so like five copies and I didn't care, you know

but I Got in touch with the Navy SEAL and he liked the story. He thought it was really neat and he got me in contact with the St. Martin's Press and it was on from there. But I left that major publishing book company or book roll because I felt that it's too controlling. You don't have much say so in the way things are done. And I want to tell the story the way I want to tell the story. You know, no filler, nothing, from my perspective, the way I want to do it.

And that's why I left it alone and started doing my own self-publishing and started my self-publishing book company. And like I said, I've written for other people who've had number one really good bestseller books. Number one on Amazon, should have had a New York Times bestseller, but because the way that book world works,

it's not in physical stores like big books would be, so they don't count it on the Nielsen Book Scan. Even though I wrote a book for someone and they sold, not gonna see how many, but they were number one on Amazon and out did Oprah, or Michelle Obama's book at the time. Damn. Yeah. That's incredible.

Yeah. So it's been a lot of my writing the way I want to write and a lot of, if someone else has an autobiography they want to write I've helped them and I've sat with them and wrote the entire thing in their voice and stepped away from it I don't really care for it I like to write I like to tell stories you know but that was the beginning of the therapeutic healing session was by writing. And then the birth of my son was when, of course, it really took a big turn as far as wanting to stick around and just be a dad and not be, my son does not care who I was.

He sees me on YouTube and and he asks about the interviews, and he was excited about this interview. He was like, I can't wait to watch it. And he likes stuff like that, and he doesn't really care what dad used to do. And we don't talk about it in the household. He might see a few things here and there and ask questions. Like, oh, were you in the army?

Did you go to war? And what is war? I explain it the best I can. Two people have a disagreement, two countries have a disagreement, and they fight over it. Sometimes they kill each other over it. And he's just like, okay, you know, he's more into F1 driving

and he wants to be a race car driver. So I'm all about that. If he can be an F1 driver, dude, go be it. Just make sure you take me along to all the cool places you go. I'll be front and center, you know? That's what I want to stick around to see. You know, not following my footsteps. Like he's told me recently, bro, and it hurts, so, not hurt, but brought me back down all the way he said uh he's like dad I want to be like you when I grow up I know you don't know you don't don't do that you can walk beside my

footsteps use mine as guide but don't walk in them never don't walk in my footsteps you can observe them and see all the way as I went, where I messed up at, where I stumbled, where I've fallen, could barely get back up, where I slugged along. But don't walk in them. Walk beside them, observe them, but do your own path. Don't do Dad's path. No, don't do that. So to stick around and help him to be that guide is like,

yeah. And he's, dude, I want to see him explore life the way I didn't get a chance to, you know? He's writing a little children's book, or he's writing one, I'm helping him. But I think that's the coolest thing ever, you know, to not put it out for sale, just like, dude, here's your own book, you wrote that.

That's your book. Keep it. As a memory of a, I don't know, not even a trophy, just a piece of something that you can be proud of and know that you accomplished that at whatever stage he is in life right now of like, hey, man, you took your brain. You had an imagination. And you helped. You wrote that.

Like, be proud of that, man. That's an avenue you can go on and explore. you don't have to have the guns and pack on a parachute and rucksack and do what dad did yeah you also won't have to write books I'm a decent driver but I'm no f1 driver so dude do that do whatever you want to be whatever you want to be that's awesome man let's go want to dive into a whole bunch of different topics here, but you know, let's back to the Bible. Yeah.

What, what along your journey took you to dive into all these different things you said, at the very beginning of this podcast, we had talked about voodoo. And it sounds like, I believe you said you had explored that again in a cult. Freemasonic lodges. Yeah, where did you start and what got you there? What were you looking for? Started as a Christian growing up.

That's what I believed in. So my parents believed in later on and they became really big Christian followers. And that's what I grew up on. It wasn't until that last deployment when I lost faith and didn't really believe anymore. It was like, I just didn't believe anymore. I just didn't believe. I saw a lot of stuff and I lost one too many friends

to make me question stuff. I was just sad, being rebellious, against the Most High, God. That was my way of, I guess, showing that, of by, well, fine, if you don't want to be here for me, then in my time of hurt, then I'm not going to worry about this anymore. I'm going to go and explore other things.

So about a year or two, I didn't believe in, I didn't practice or really give too much thought to anything anymore, but crossed my mind from time to time. But I would brush it off like, yeah, right, you know? And then I got into, I wanted to get into something or find a higher power, you know? I felt and I always felt that there's a higher power. I don't believe that anything is a coincidence as to why we're here, why we're here at the

time we're here, why we're here at the time we're here, the experience that we have. I don't think it's all for absolutely nothing. There's something. There has to be a creator. Nothing can, nothing, creation has never came from a nothing. There has to be a something for something to be created, whatever that something is. So I believe that.

So I found myself dabbling in witchcraft. What led, I mean, was it, I know you dabbled with psychedelics as well. Oh yeah, that was after the fact. This was after. Yeah. I got into witchcraft. My older sister, half-sister, she was a, she does stuff like that.

And that's where I kind of got the, I guess, idea to want to give it a shot and try to see what it was about. So I tried witchcraft for about a year. Bought all the books you could buy, read the knowledge, practiced it, did my seances, all that weird stuff that you could. What is it? I don't know anything about witchcraft.

It swathers light and dark magic. I was not involved with the dark stuff. Mine was more light focused of not what you see in the movies, witchcraft. Your stereotypical bad witchy stuff. I didn't know. Mine was more so of using different powers that are outside of this world to help me become

what I thought was going to be a better person and influence certain things in my life, certain guides I would call upon to help facilitate with certain things to help me become better. Like what? The spirit world. Like what, is this like manifestation? What is this?

Conjuring. Spirit world. Like conjuring. So if I, chanting,. So, if I, chanting, chance. If I wanted to, what's one? I was gonna say that one, no. Let's say define peace. There's a chant, define peace.

There's candles and chance and certain, for me, what I would do, I would open up a pentagram, spiritual pentagram by tracing a pentagram with my, it would look like a wand, but it's not a wand, it looks like a witch's wand. And opening up pentagrams, chance to open up and facilitate this new enlightenment in my life to call in spirits from another world to help guide and help facilitate certain things

that I want to accomplish or want it done in my life. But I think I got out of it because I got scared of it. Did it work? It felt weird. I don't know if it necessarily worked, but in the back of my mind, I had Christianity. That's where I grew up. So I'm thinking, what if something I open up,

because I haven't practiced this stuff long enough. I've read Alistair Crowley, Crowley, and I've read Manley P. Hall, and I've read Albert Pike, and all these guys with the occult, the Freemasons. I was in a Freemasonic lodge for a short stint, very short stint, and... How was that? Interesting.

It was mainly... My dad was a Freemason, so I was introduced to it early on. I would just see him dress up from time to time and go to a lodge. He wouldn't talk about it. I didn't find out until much later what he was and what it entailed, and he didn't stay long either. But as far as I know, he made it to like, I don't know.

I don't know what degree Mason he became. He was nowhere near like the 33rd degree Freemasons or anything like that. I made it to like, I don't know. I don't know what degree Mason he became. He was nowhere near like the 33rd degree Freemasons or anything like that. It just got out pretty early. I made it as far as you can go as a new guy, if you wanna call it that, the third degree. When you get that initially,

when you first go into the lodge and you... It's a bunch of old rituals, or reenactments of different things that happen, like storytelling through certain rituals. Like- What kind of rituals? I don't know if I really want to say, if there's a story of Haram Habef in there,

and the building of a temple. And you mimic like being a lost traveler and you mimic getting, I don't know if I really want to give away so many of those secrets. I'm not a Freemason. You know, I don't claim to be. I've dabbled in it and I just know that they hold what they have secret and I don't want to...

I'm not going to push you then. Yeah, yeah. But do you have, why are you reluctant to bring that up? Do you have fear about it? Not fear, just respect. Okay. Like, what I believe is to respect everyone's altar, and that comes from the 42 laws of Ma'at,

and that's one of the 42 laws. So whatever your rules, whatever you do at your altar, I should respect that. And if your thing is to not give away secrets and what happens in a lodge or some of the things that they talk about are what they know, I shouldn't respect it and just not share that.

If people wanna find out, I mean, sure, there's pretty good books out there. Or just go to a lodge, ask questions. I just don't want to, it's just like, let me call it rituals. It's like, imagine a play, right? Imagine a play and you just reenact stuff that happened and has been happening.

And that tradition has been passed down for hundreds and hundreds of years. And they maintain the respect of keeping those traditions alive. And in summary, being a Freemason is about the building of man, the how to become a better person. I've heard other theories, and I don't know if they're true,

about what you find out when you reach the highest level or anything like that. From my experience, it's just about becoming a better, building Solomon's temple. You're building yourself through different things and understanding of things. And in every Masonic Lodge at its centerpiece, there's a Bible. And you don't have to be a Christian, believe in the Bible.

You just have to believe in the higher power. But they use the Bible for, I guess, a means of guiding them. And they use what the Bible is, the codes within the Bible. They have Masonic Bibles, correct? They do, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know how those differ?

Did you get that deep in? I know in the, they have some ancient like Egyptian stuff in there, you know, Ma'ad, Ra, Isis, stuff like, I don't know, I don't really know too much about it. I know it's a Bible and it's basically the same exact Bible, but just with the Freemasonic, you know. Interesting. The energy.

Let's talk about the occult. Is that how you say it? Yeah, yeah. What is that? If you wanted to, I guess, sum it up, it's like, I think a lot of people think of like, you know, Alistair Crowley is, or Crowley the big, I have some people say he's crazy,

but he was in the occult, or dabble, not dabble, but he wrote plenty of books on, and he's messed with Freemasonry, he's messed with all types of the Scottish Rite, and all these things, and the occult as well, and I picked up one of his books and found it interesting. And there's a book that's called,

not the secret teachings of mankind. I forget the title of his book. The Alistair Crowley book I'm thinking of, 777. The, I had to send a picture of it, but it's a, that's where I started off at, with Alistair Crowley, and found it interesting, and did a lot of reading into what he believed and practiced, read a few other books

about what they believe and practice about the occult and the higher secret societies of knowledge and learning. I found it intriguing. And do I believe it to be real from what I experienced? Yes. I think that they know how to tap into or use ancient knowledge that we all possess to reach- What kind of ancient knowledge?

I would say to reach a higher state of enlightenment. Are you talking about, are we talking about consciousness? Very much so. Very much so. And the meaning of what this body is and what it holds and possesses and the powers that it has within it and how we can change reality. Very much so. Very much so.

But at a higher level of understanding that your average person wouldn't consider, think about, or simply would not believe, because it is kind of crazy, I think, when you, I don't know, if you're just diving into it, it doesn't seem real. Can you give me an example? What is it? What's that, a cult? Or, Alistair Crowley, what is it?

What's that, a cult or Alice in a Cradle, what he would practice? What is something that I wouldn't believe? Like if I wanted to get into this, I mean what? What you, things that you would not believe. Let's say if I told you. Like what is our body capable of that? Our body's nothing more than a vehicle for a soul.

Nothing more. Nothing more. And our body is not who we are. It's not who we are. All we are is a projection from a higher being in a three-dimensional world. And this is the projection that we get. And we're not really here. We operate on a higher plane. The only reason why we're here in this physical body

is to experience limitations, things of that nature, because of what we are really capable of doing. Nothing is impossible. So we come down to this place to experience limitations and what it feels like to not be a God or a part of God. But we're all lowercase G gods, which is also stated in the Bible. Where Jesus, Yeshua says, have you not forgotten or that it is written into your law that ye too are also gods? And yeah, it's a lot of that.

We're all lowercase G gods. We just haven't realized it. And that's one of our main purposes in this realm and in this thing called life. I think it's a dream, whether it's our higher consciousness that's dreaming in a different realm, or it's the most high, the God's consciousness, dreaming. I mean, what point of the Bible did God wake up

when he fell asleep on his, what point of the Bible did God wake up when he fell asleep on his day of rest in the Bible? He didn't wake up yet, still dreaming. This is all a dream. Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. The boat, the stream of life, can also look at Jesus walking on water,

the significance of water, what that is, the calming of the storm, be able to walk on top of the waves and the tribulations and all the things in life, to be able to walk on it is what I think that entails or what that means, just like rowing your boat down the stream, this vessel going through life, the stream of life, the steady flow of life that's continuously,

forever running on, to row it gently, not to get so caught up into things, attached to things, to row it gently down your stream because life is nothing more than just a dream. And we're living, this is a dream world that we're in. There's a higher consciousness that's dreaming. And that's what we all share as humans to remind us that. Every living being dreams.

And that's our. So do you think, see, I don't think that's so hard to believe. Really? I think a lot of people believe that the body is just a vessel. Mm-hmm. And we're living in a dream or a dream world? I don't think that people think that,

I mean, I don't know. You know, I don't, I don't. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have, you know, a lot of thoughts on a lot of different things, and I'm in my own spiritual journey as well. But yeah, I do.

I think that our body is just a vessel. And I think that we are all, I mean, you talk about being connected. Everything is connected. We're all part of God, I think that we are all, I mean, you talk about being connected. Everything is connected. We're all part of God. I think, I think God, I think that consciousness is God. There you go. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think we're all connected through consciousness. And I think as time goes on, we're all becoming disconnected through what we consider technology. That's the Antichrist, bro. We consider technology. Mm-hmm. And the Antichrist, bro Yeah That's what I think. Yeah in very Short simple terms. Okay. So yeah, we're along the same lines. I believe that and I believe that

There's different aspects of consciousness like there's a feminine and a masculine and aspects of consciousness, like there's a feminine and a masculine, and it's represented sometimes in like the ancient Kemet, the ancient Egyptians used to believe that, you know, how it was represented, you have, you know, it's not a male or female, it's both entities combined into one, and it's representative, it can be in the sun and the moon, the feminine and the masculine, and it's represented throughout all nature. God is and what it is, and it uses these signs and symbols to remind us that in the heavens. Yeah, I believe that.

And I don't believe, I believe that the prince of this world and who controls this world is the evil one, Satan, devil, Lucifer, the fallen. I believe that. And that's why things are the way they are here. Like reading the Bible, when the fallen, a third of the angels were sent down to earth, they didn't go to hell, they were sent down here, the same place for all sent.

This is all one big testing ground to see if we can, as gods, maneuver through something that was designed or set up from what we see by something that is not of this world. Some would consider the devil or Lucifer the the morning star, you know, the light bearer. That one, I think, has used politics. Everything that we're involved in that makes life, that takes away from life, the meaning of life. Everything that is designed here to do that was on purpose and designed by one of the fallen, or the fallen, and we're here to be tested, like Job in the Bible. Well, when you say, I would love to get into that too,

but when you say we are, when you say our consciousness is center to this vessel to experience limitations, why do you think we need to be center to experience limitations for a blip in time? Because time doesn't exist, But it does in this reality. Because we would not... In order for a God to be a God, it would have to experience all aspects of experience. So to only have the experience of I can do everything

and all things and not the experience of having limitations would not have a complete being, one that has full experience. Like to have only one good experience, then there would also be no purpose in life either. Life would make zero sense. If everything was just perfect, then there'd be no point of coming here.

So we have to have challenges, and we have to have limitations in order to have a full experience of all that is called reality. Reality cannot be experienced in just one form. We're already doing that, or it's already doing that at its higher state. So to be a full God and an all powerful God, we have to have limitations,

as well as the good, the bad. Everything that's good, there the good, the bad. Everything that's good, there has to be a bad. Well, to get the full experience just of this world, you would have to live a life of every human being on the planet. Is it not, isn't that what it's doing though? If we're all from that, everything, everybody,

we're all have, we all have our own experience, and we're all a direct descendant connection. Imagine the sun and those rays of light. Each ray is a soul being shined down onto the earth. And each ray goes along its own path. It does its own thing, has its own experience. So it's living through all of us and our experience to have one full experience, all the good,

all the bad to complete itself. You get what I'm, you know? So it's, yeah. It has to experience all things, and that's by living all lives, all different paths. No one's life is exactly the same. So are we individual souls or are we one collective soul? That's the thing.

It's almost like saying, is the Holy Trinity separate or is it all one? Is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit all separate or is it all together? According to biblical scripture, it's all one. Is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all separate? Or is it all together? According to biblical scripture, it's all one. They can't be separate. The Trinity is all one.

Yeshua, when he walked this earth, he was no different than what he, or his father, just in a human form. It left us with the Holy Spirit Spirit and it had the Holy Spirit, all existing all at one time. So the way that the Holy Trinity has been described to me, maybe you've heard this.

This made a lot of sense to me. Water, vapor, ice. It's all one thing, but it's all different things. Thank you. Yeah, exactly. So I look at it that way too. We're all different, but the same thing. That's how we're all connected. That's we're all from the same source.

We're just different down here. But all experiencing things differently. But we're all from the same being. We all share the same soul. Your soul is no different than mine. This outer limit, this outer boundary maybe, our life paths maybe, your experiences will be different than mine.

But the thing that we have, the same thing that you're made of on the inside, I'm made up of. And just like someone else down the street, we all come from that same source. There's no, there's only one entity that provides soul and spirit. Only one entity. We get that from one being.

And it's just nothing more than a light ray being shined down into a body to occupy that flesh vessel that we are in. But once you take away all that, we're all from the same thing. We're all the same thing, just in a physical limitation body, limited body. That's what reality is, I think. It's just one big testing ground

of to see if we have what it takes to move on to the next level, you know? And what is the next level? What know? What is the next level? What do you think the next level is? That I'm not too sure. I would hope it would be what we call as heaven, rejoining the source, going back home or to the Father or to the Son.

I would believe the next level is that, to see if we're actually worthy of being the gods that we are, of navigating all these tests here. If we're able to navigate that, then we move on to the next one. If not, I don't know if there is a place you go to hell. Or you just have to come back and do it again. Do you think there's a possibility this is hell?

I've thought about that too. I believe that, like I said, that Lucifer rules this place, or he's the prince of this place. He's allowed to roam and do what he wants here. So according to, by definition, that would make this place hell. Maybe we are being punished for something that we all have, which is ego. And ego is the only thing that,

that's what got the devil or Lucifer kicked out of heaven, was by having an ego. And that's the same thing that we all possess here. And it's one of the greatest things we have to overcome on this earth is overcoming our own ego. Our ego's gonna kill us. If you let ego take over, yeah, ego is a bad thing, I think.

That's why psychedelics, when you have ego death, and you feel that, you know? Yeah, so this place could be like hell or the same place that the devil was sent to, I don't know. I was just gonna ask you that. I was just gonna get to psychedelics when you brought the ego. Have you had, we talked a little bit of breakfast about this have you had a full-blown ego death? Yes terrified terrifying. Having cried so much in my life and felt so scared

I felt like I was dying like I said I had a bad not a bad experience an experience with mushrooms after watching Mike Tyson take a handful, I'm like, it can't be that crazy. So I took my handful, looked it up on Google, what does 2.5 grams look like? And a picture popped up and it said 2.5 grams. So I looked at my pile and was like, well, that must be about it.

And it turned out to be way more than that, like five grams or whatever and ate it. And I remember when reality shimmered and went away. And it felt like I was in the presence of God. My wife was sitting next to me and I told her, bow your head, bow your head. So I'm bowing my head, she's bowing her head. And I'm like, I got a message that came through a light

in my house and it was on a scroll. And the message said, the law. And I'm like, what is the law? Follow the law. Like, what is that? Didn't know what the law turned out to be like the 10 commandments, essentially. Follow the law turned out to be like the 10 commandments, essentially. It followed the law.

And I tripped for a few hours and that, or not even a few hours, I don't know, how time was weird doing that whole time. It felt like an eternity at one moment. It felt like I would go away and be amongst the presence of God, just couldn't see him. And messages and information that I had no idea about, like just being force-fedded and having,

the emotion of me, I felt like I was gonna die and being really scared. And at that time, me and my parents were not talking. Had a huge resentment towards them. And something said, call them. Call your mom and dad, because I'm dying. I needed to talk to mom, you know? Wife is calming me down.

I'm like, get ready to call 911. But then I thought if I call 911, they were gonna, it was all one big play. Like when I was tripping, reality went away, and there was a crowd, like of every person I had ever interacted with in life and how I treated them, were like standing up clapping, and then I was judged by them. And how I treated everyone on this earth

is how I'm gonna be treated and judged in the afterlife. And it said, tread lightly. And it was all one big play. And everybody was a part of the play, whether they knew it or not. Some were tests to see if I would lose my cool and temper and act aggressively. And some were, you know, family members.

They were, you know, everybody you can think of that you've come across, passed, passed by, bumped into, got pissed off in traffic, cussed out, wished some bad, you know, something bad upon them. Like they were all there and they were all a part of this big play and this was my life and it was all for me because I don't know. And I died after that, but before I did,

I called my parents. They're freaking out. They had never heard about psychedelics or psilocybin mushrooms. And like, where'd you get this stuff from? You bought it online? I'm like, no, I can't tell you where I got it from. But it felt like I was dying and sinking into this void,

whole of blackness where no love existed. And I didn't exist, my family didn't exist, and I was just alone and like naked in front of judgment and void of all love. And what I perceived as God was hell of incomplete darkness and void of nothing and being stripped of everything that I thought I was and made myself to be.

And I felt like a vulnerable, I couldn't do anything like infant, but just void and disconnected from love. And it said, well, it told me that was hell and the disconnect from love, fighting so much to stay away from that, pushing people out of my life. And like, I'm building my own hell and this is what it's gonna be like.

And I felt myself like I was dying, called my parents, and I forgave them because I got the message that if I hold on to this, it's going to cause me to go into this bad, negative place when we die. We never know where we're going to die or when we're going to die. So it would be best or behoove me to rid myself of all the negativity that I had because I'm building my own hell

and I want to be full of love and as much as possible throughout life, walking into Christ consciousness. And because you never know when your time is gonna go. And then when that time comes, all that grudge that I had towards my family and my parents, God the Most High told me, who am I to judge? And I shut up after that.

Like I don't, who am I to judge? I'm not perfect. They're not perfect, but I'm, I'm a non-perfect person judging also a non-perfect person, because I don't think they're perfect, but it's coming from tainted non-perfect person, because I don't think they're perfect, but it's coming from tainted, non-perfect eyes to begin with. The only one who can judge should have perfect vision or be perfect, and none of us are.

So who are we to judge? And we're going to be judged accordingly in the afterlife. So yeah, it's best not to judge, because because we're gonna be treated the exact same way. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And that is as above, so below. You know, how we should carry ourselves that way here because it's gonna happen there if you believe in the afterlife or not.

And sometimes the judgment may come from our own selves. Sometimes we can be the biggest, hardest, hardest judgmental people on the planet is our own self. We will judge ourselves more than anybody else will and being hard on ourselves. So I think it, yeah, judgment was a big message. So I forgave my parents, forgave them, told them who am I to judge.

I don't, I can't do that, you know? That's your path. It is what it is. But to hold on to that grudge is only doing me bad. You know, a lot of darkness and a lot of resentment. I didn't need to carry that. You know, I didn't need to carry that. I've always looked at the pictures on the hieroglyphs,

that little bag they're carrying. If you look at those, I've always looked at it as, that's the bag of memories that we're going to take in the afterlife. There's not many, so make them count, make them enjoyable, because that's all we're going to take with this, is a small bag of memory. So either you want that bag full of good memories,

or you can have it full of terrible memories. But there won't be many, so make it count, you know? Hope that makes sense. It was a great segment. I hope, man. On that note, let's take a break. When we come back, I want to talk about, do you believe in what we were doing over there?

That's a good one. Good question. So I saved the answer. Thank you for listening to The Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave The Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you.

Let's get back to the show. All right, we're back from the break. This might be the long, we might go for the record here on the longest podcast ever. I think my longest one is with Cody Alford. And I want to get into eventually, we were going to get into was it worth it over there, were we there for the right reasons, are Americans, not Americans, is America the bad guy?

Because I often wonder, you know, what, there's just so many things that people don't know about that were going on behind the scenes over there that they need to come to light. I think a lot of people do know, but they don't understand the significance or they just don't, excuse me, believe what... Sometimes the truth is hard to believe.

But I wanted to, we were on this kind of biblical topic and I want to talk to you about, you know, maybe not spiritual warfare, but there's all these signs that are, I mean, look at what the world is right now. It's a disaster. And it's not, you know, Americans think, oh, it's just this country, you know, with everything. I mean, the fentanyl crisis,

the woke agenda that's gone way out of bounds, the crime is on the rise, the border's completely wide open. Everything, what's up is down, what's black is white. I mean, it's nothing makes sense anymore. And that's what brought me to faith finally, is I just, everything that I stand for is being ruined. But when you look at it from a 30,000 foot view,

or whatever you want to call it, bird's eye view, this is the whole world now. This isn't just this country. This is everywhere. Yeah. And I think a lot of, it seems biblical to me. And so I just want to get your take on that. Yeah, I think this, we're in the last leg, man. I think that Revelation, if you want to call it that, we're in that last leg of, before something biblical happens. And it does talk about in Revelations,

like you're going to see plenty of signs in the heavens to let you know that the time is drawing near. And like I'm into conspiracy theories. And I think I'm into, yeah, I am in a conspiracy theory. You'd be surprised that what I dabble in as far, I go down the rabbit hole. Like, I don't believe the earth is flat. Some compelling arguments, but I don't think it's flat.

But I think what's happening now is just a sign of what's to come. You know, the end times before whatever you believe in happens, either the Savior's going to come back and help us out, or we're going to have to go through some tribulation for some time. Like, pedophilia is running rampant. Dude, it's not even called that anymore.

Yeah, I know. Now it's the attracted to minor people. MAPS. MAPS. Minor Attracted Persons. Please, bro. I mean, it's everywhere, man. People are, it's just, it's crazy. The evil one is running out of time.

So he's pulling all the tricks out of his hat and putting them here to get as many souls as it can before the end. And I believe the signs that, you can look at it this way, the signs are the times that we're in, biblically, let's say for the solar eclipse coming up. During that time, you have also Jerusalem,

the rabbis that are gonna sacrifice the red heifer. What is the red heifer? The red cow, it's significant in the Bible. It's only happened, I want to say, seven or nine times. This may be the 10th, where they've had this red cow perfect without blemishes, without never been set on or upset or whatever. Some weird, has to be perfect.

Like not a, only so many black hairs can be on it, has to be perfectly clean, never exposed to certain things, never tied to a post. Weird tradition that the, not weird, I just don't understand it, but it's in the Bible about the sacrifice of the red heifer, what that signified and the sacrifice of the red heifer with that signified and the destroying of the temple

before it gets rebuilt, the third temple. And the sacrifice of the red heifer before, I believe they burn its ashes and bathe in it. This rabbi, a pure rabbi who's pure, I'm not sure how deep down they go into what makes them pure, but a rabbi that's pure is going to bathe himself in it. And that's gonna signify the destruction

of the third temple, which they're also talking about doing, just showing that the temple on the mound are, I forget what, it's that golden cap temple in Israel that the Jews, or not the Jews, the- Israelis. Israelis and the Muslims believe that they go to worship and pray, the temple.

It says in the Bible when that third temple is going to be destroyed and rebuilt, that's going to be like a really good indication of no, we're in the end times. Then you have the total solar eclipse where it seems like America's going just weird, you know, and it's like happening for three days over the course of three days.

Is it this next one coming up on April 8th? April 8th, yeah. That's a three-day? Three-day event. Not three days of darkness, but it's a three-day solar eclipse event. And during its peak of the solar eclipse is where you're going to be, the Devil's Comet is also,

should be visible to the naked eye. Had no idea about that until like recently that there's a Devil's Comet that's going to be occurring the same time that the solar eclipse Had no idea about that until like recently that there's a devil's comment that's going to be occurring the same time that the solar eclipse happens, the total solar eclipse, the Red Heifers being sacrificed. And it just, according to Revelation and the Bible, all these signs have already been talked about, written down, and that said that that was going to mark

or signify the times that we're in, the end of in, the end of days or the end times before the Messiah comes back to rescue his people. But before that, that's why I think we have all this weird stuff happening where nothing makes sense. Everything is the opposite. I know that, or I believe that the mockery of the Most High is to be opposite of it. And that's why we're seeing so much opposite.

Would you believe this up is now down? You know, things that we know as humans are not right, like a male cannot have a baby or a menstrual cycle. But we're taught to believe, or they're saying to believe, no, that can happen. All the things that we know are not right, an abomination to the most high, we're doing here on earth. So I think that the evil one is pulling all the tricks out its hat as one final last-ditch

effort before the creator destroys it and locks it away forever. And we can go back to living in harmony or peace. However many years you believe it's gonna rain or he's going to rain on earth and heaven's gonna be on earth and heaven on earth can be interpreted as we can make heaven on earth by what we practice, what we believe and what happens in here

because where we're at is not as far from heaven or what anybody would classify as heaven. But I think it's just the last ditch effort as it's being backed into a corner, trying to gather as many souls as it can to join the darkness and reap its benefits by eating that soul. Those who don't fall for it, the temptation,

or the lies, the great deceptions, the deceit, the chosen, and be called to stand up against the evil forces in one final battle, Armageddon, and help destroy that force of evil. I think we're in those times. And I think every great civilization has had these times. From Sodom and Gomorrah to the great flood to flood out the Nephilim, the giants that walk the earth.

I think history just repeats itself. What are the giants that walk the earth, I think history just repeats itself. What are the giants? I've heard a lot of, I've heard this subject brought up on several different occasions. I don't know much about it. Well, according to the Bible, when the third of the angels were casted out of heaven

and sent here, they loved women and they wanted to have babies with women. So they had babies, those babies came out to be big giants and they roamed the earth. And that's why they were destroyed, it was not supposed to be that way. So they were destroyed in the great flood. According to the Bible, some religions are Indian beliefs is that

these giants are things that came down, we're not angels, they're aliens or star people, made it with the female and had star children, these special children that obtain certain knowledge. And when these things came down, they gave knowledge to mankind. The Bible preaches that too, just as the Indians without the Bible believed

and other religions believed that some beings came down from the heavens and advanced our civilization, taught us technology, taught us makeup, taught us all these things that separated us from the true innate light and where we really come from, to separate us from that. And there's multiple stories from different religions that talk about star people, aliens, angels,

fallen angels that come down, made it with women, and produced this offspring, whether they're giants or whatever, but that's like throughout multiple religions and I believe something happened. Why we went from being not as intelligent to all of a sudden having this huge leap in technology, you know, in the past 50 years, it's hard to tell from,

you know, what's real or what's not with AI and just video games. Things look so real nowadays compared to Atari that I was playing as a kid and Nintendo. That advancement in technology in that period alone, I think is pretty significant. But to have gotten to that point, supposedly we don't know how we made the pyramids.

We just lost that knowledge. Or was civilization destroyed in some apocalyptic event and we're forced to restart over again, go back to square one, and we keep making the same mistakes of getting ahead of ourselves, whether we're getting ahead of ourselves technologically or I look at it like the story in the Bible

where they were building the Tower of Babel. And the gods looked down and said, because they know everything, they know everything because they speak the same language. So he destroyed that tower and scattered the people and gave them all languages. And that's why, so he couldn't communicate and be able to accomplish anything.

So he scattered us, gave us all different languages. And that's that story biblically. But I think it was not necessarily speaking the same language. It was the, we were all together, all one. We had the same belief system and we got ahead of ourselves. And before, and the tower was being built to reach God,

but not necessarily, I don't believe it was a physical tower. I think this tower was a metaphor for, we're almost as a species getting close to God, or God-like on earth. And to prevent that, it scattered everyone amongst the winds and made them speak new things or speak new, just not being able to relate with one another. And it separated us that way.

We no longer spoke the same language. And I think at that time, the language was love. And it separated us so we could not be all together. And I think that that's what happens in civilizations where you reach this peak and everything's accomplishable. You can do anything and it, for some odd reason, gets recycled and restarted or things just get really bad. And the morals are not, it's not what drives mankind.

The morals have changed, we don't have any anymore. We've become too caught up in the flesh, too caught up in materialistic things, and the things that we can't take when we leave with us, which is our spirit, the only thing we can take with us is our spirit, and we neglect that the most and we feed the external forces to satisfy physical pleasure as opposed to spiritual pleasure.

And that separation, I think is what is driving the forces the way they're being driven today is that we've maybe got caught too much in selfishness, materialism, all that, and forgot the thing that mattered the most. And it's like erasing the drawing board and starting back over again. If you were a God, what would you do? If you look down and you saw your creation

going to absolute shit, you'd probably wanna destroy, I would wanna destroy it too, like what's the point? He wanted the, according to the Bible, destroy it after Adam and Eve, when she ate from, or when they ate the fruit and obtained knowledge. That was the thing that got them kicked out of the Garden of Eden, or if you believe it the thing that, you know, got them kicked out of the Garden of Eden, or if you believe it to be that, you know,

it was too much knowledge too fast, and they were forced out of that garden. And also, you know, free will and all that, but he wanted to destroy it after that. And we've done nothing but a civilization continuously mess up and go against the natural laws of nature and yeah, morals and being kind to one another, we've become dark and abomination to what I believe is God.

I'm definitely with you. It's getting very hard to tell what's real. Thank you. With AI. I don't think we're smarter. I think we are. There we go, yeah. I think we are.

Take all the technology and all that shit away. I think we're dumber. Yeah, yeah. What do they say? We use 10% of our brain? That's what they say. I don't know what that really in, you know. I mean, if you think about,

I had this conversation with another guest, Joe McMonable, which we were talking about earlier at breakfast, but he, and I can't remember if I had this conversation with him on or off camera, but we were talking about our brain and and he had brought up language and he was basically saying, he was saying this this stemmed from remote viewing and he said, I believe that I don't want to quote him, but if I remember correctly the conversation was that we all have the capability to do remote viewing mm-hmm and

We all had a lot more instinct and we were able to communicate a Lot more efficiently in that language When language was developed, it actually hindered communication. And if you think about that, it does make sense because we do still read each other's body language, which is technically maybe all you need

is to read body language. And at the beginning, you know, it was probably grunting and noises, and it was just immediate communication. Not so in depth like what we're having now, but it was immediate, effective communication. And then language was developed, and that basically slowed

communication down and it's kind of been a downward trend since then where we've lost a lot of instinct. We've lost supposed capabilities like, I would just call it tapping into intuition. I think that humanity has lost a lot of intuition. And the barrier which calls that is what? Not only language, but would you say technology is it? Yeah, and then it's just,

that's what it's all spiraled into, right? Technology. Now, I mean, I heard a podcast the other day that said that in 10 years, scientists are predicting that because of how addict how much screen time you're getting on your phone, that they're predicting that we're going to start losing peripheral vision. You're kidding.

I mean, who knows, right? Wow. It's a prediction. It's you know what I mean? But it people think I'm crazy. They'll go, oh, well, what did the science say about flu season? And yeah, I get it, you know what I mean?

But people are gonna push back on whatever you say, but part of me is like, man, I could totally see that happening. Yeah. And I could totally see humanity. I mean, there's a saying, you don't use it, you lose it. Yeah. Yeah. And I get a lot of screen time on my phone, not near as much as what I see kids and other people doing

because I make it a point to put it away. I'm not gonna say I'm not addicted to it, because I am, I'd be lying if I... Be sure open about it, man, there's a lot of people who say, no, I only do two minutes. I'm not in denial about it. And I mean, I talk all the time with my wife about getting up, going back to the flip phone.

Unfortunately, you have banking and everything is done on the phone but maybe if you know I leave my phone a lot of times when I'm when we're doing a family event if we leave the house and I want to be in the moment that phone stays smart man. Home yeah but um but uh I I long story short I mean mean, I think we're dubbed down and dumbed down and I don't know, I just, I got, I feel like this is some master plan. I mean, even with the pharmaceutical in, going way back, the energy, you know,

how we could have gone with Nikola Tesla's model or we could have gone with, you know, fossil fuel model. We took that route because now everybody's stuck on utilities, it's a money grab. You know, the pharmaceuticals. I mean, I had, do you know who Chris Beck is by chance? Brilliant guy, brilliant mind. And had an offline conversation with him about the pharmaceutical industry Yeah, brilliant guy. Yeah, brilliant mind and

Had an offline conversation with him about the pharmaceutical industry and how The was at the Rockefeller family that pumped eight hundred million dollars back in the early 1900s Think about what eight hundred million dollars is today. Yeah, Billy with inflation and you know over a hundred years, yeah of Inflation mm-hmm now take eight hundred million dollars back in the 1900s Billings what is that even? What is that even? Equivalent to now you could do whatever you want exactly. I, it's, I would say it's probably beyond the trillionaire level. Yeah.

You know, and they pumped that much money into pharmaceuticals to get away from natural Eastern medicine. That works. Psychedelics, perfect example. It works. Psychedelic's a perfect example. It works. You know, and you look at all the drugs that we're on, look at all the side effects. It's the separation.

May cause suicidal thoughts, may cause suicidal thoughts, may cause, and it's the food, everything. You know what I mean? Is, I think we're definitely not what we were supposed to be. That's what I mean. It's not, we've gotten smarter. Technology has become the block between us and our natural state or the state we were supposed to be in

or evolve into naturally, I think technology has interfered with that and put us on a, where we thought we were going to go is the exact opposite of where we were thinking we were going to go. Like the internet, for example, was supposed to bring everyone together, all interconnected, but it's, I don't know, I think it's done the exact opposite. At some points you can, I guess I can say that

being able to talk to, I mean, it's how I met my wife, was on MySpace, but social media today and these dating site things and more people are, and that new VR headset thing that you can live in like the metaverse, you know? Cool technology, but we are separating ourselves more and more each day by being on the phone and not interacting the way we used to. And like my neighborhood, it's rare.

I'd tell my kid to go outside and play, go make friends or whatever, but the amount of kids that come outside is so much different from when I was growing up. It's, you don't really see that anymore, at least where I live. And I think we've had, technology has been like an interference, I think,

keeping us more apart, more separate from each other and what I believe to be God, whether that's nature or whatever. But I think it's definitely an interference that it's put on humanity. And maybe that's the thing too. Maybe we've gotten to a point where technology has become too much.

And maybe that's the reason why civilizations fall. You get to an advanced technological level, but you've lost all connection of who you are and what you are, that it gets destroyed. Like you don't use it, you lose it. And if you're not using who you are as a human being, then why wouldn't you lose that too? You're right to be a human.

You know? The lies that we've been fed and the so many things that were labeled conspiracy that turned out not to be conspiracy, I mean, it's now to the point where I already question everything is I think we've all been manipulated a lot more than any of us can even fathom. Oh big time. And I like part of me, part of me looks forward to death so that it's all revealed. Does that make any sense? I don't trust anything anymore. I think we are already at the point where you cannot believe anything that you see

unless it's right in front of you and you can touch it. You know, I think... How would you feel if it was all revealed while you were alive, though? Do you think you feel if it was all revealed while you were alive though? Do you think you could process it all and understand that? No. Me neither. And I think that's scary.

I think there's so much deceit in this world that I don't think that any human could process how much of it is false. I mean... Yeah. I think in our lifetime, we're going to see it though, a lot of it be revealed. I think the veil is already lifting. And that's why I think we are thinking and talking

the way that we are talking now. And I think a lot of people are starting to see stuff is not right. I don't know which degree, but I would hope so, that people are starting to see stuff is not right. I don't know which degree, but I would hope so, that people are starting to see that we've been fed a bunch of BS and lies that. Just on this show, you know, I had a, do you know who Jim Caviezel is?

Yeah. I had a really very interesting discussion with Jim Caviezel on some of the stuff that's going on in Hollywood. And that episode just disappeared. Really? Woke up one day and it was gone. You two removed it or?

Yeah, they removed it. Let's fast forward about six months. Yes, last night before this interview, P Diddy, his house in Miami and his house in Los Angeles got raided for a big sex trafficking operation that was labeled a conspiracy six months ago. Truth is what we're looking for. And it's just keep, and more and more and more of these people are getting,

they're getting the light shined on. Yeah, that's it. And where does the light come from? Yep. And who's the source of the light? The source of all light. That's what I think is happening. We could go on about flu season.

We could go, I mean, there's so many things that are just coming out that, and that's, I don't think we're even scratching the surface. No, no. I think there're even scratching the surface. No. I think there's going to be things in space. I think there's going to be things here on Earth. I think there's going to be history that's revealed. I think a lot of, more than we could even fathom,

is going to be revealed. I think just about everything we think we know on this planet is a lie. Dude, that's scary. It scares the shit out of me. If, yeah, if that's true, which apart, I believe it, but then I think to save my sanity, I try not to entertain the idea that what if everything that we've been told is a lie?

Then what does that put us? Like where do we go from there? Let's go into the wars. Yeah, yeah. You and I both fought in... GWAT. In the GWAT, in the global war on terrorism. Do you think that was a lie?

100%. So do I. 100%. I think the entire thing was a lie. Me too. I mean, let's look. And for those that are going to go, oh, you're crazy. OK.

Let's go. Let's look at Dick Cheney. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Halliburton. CEO of Halliburton. We started war in Iraq. Halliburton is a massive logistics company.

And you were in Iraq and I was in Iraq. And everything there was KBR, which is a subsidiary of Halliburton. The mail was delivered by KBR. The chow was cooked by KBR. The people that built the chow hall was built by KBR or Halliburton. Fuel Halliburton. Everything, everything there, the entire infrastructure was set up by Halliburton and came back. Some one guy in charge of that.

Who happened to be the vice president at the time. Makes you wonder. And if anyone questions that, I mean, I don't believe in coincidence. Makes you wonder. Yeah. I mean, it's right fucking in front of you. Yeah.

You know what I mean? But some people won't even bat an eye at it. They won't. They won't bat an eye. I could dive deeper into the conspiracy thing, but I don't know how deep. I'll just say building seven is weird. You know? Yeah.

And I would hate to believe that we're so money hungry that we would do something to that nature to just get us into a conflict and waste innocent lives. Look at Ukraine. Money, yeah. I mean, Woodrow Wilson, was it Woodrow Wilson, the president? He had warned us right after World War two about the military industrial complex and how it will likely spin out of control Yeah, correct. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah now look at then we just talked about the GWAD and that was just Iraq

Then now we're talking about look at Ukraine. Mm-hmm We you know, it's not we're sending them, look at Ukraine. We're sending them military supplies so that the military industrial complex companies can make more and they pay off the politicians to vote on this shit so that they can make more. And it's all, I hate saying it's by design, because it's so cliche, but it is all a money thing, man. It's a money thing to the politicians.

It's a money thing to the military industrial complex company, it's a money thing to the president, money thing to the vice president. It's all a greed machine. A club and we're not in it, man. Yep. We are not in it. Being at that level, at this level, no.

And I think that to get to that level, like you sell your soul out a long time ago, to even, if the truth came out and it was that, let's say it is all about money, which I believe it's all about money, then that means that the powers that be are willing to sacrifice 18, 19, 21-year-old or anybody for that matter for the benefit of the pocket, which is just the sacrifice, the offering that you do to gain more money.

Who are we controlled by? Then that means that we're evil, bro. Our politics, they're all corrupt and evil. And if that is true, then why do we continue to participate in their game? If it's a corrupt system, if it's evil, that's why I don't believe in voting. I don't believe in it because I think that

if it's as corrupt as I think it is, and back at the last election, there's a belief that, you know, something was going on with that election, then at what point does your vote really matter? And are you the one really voting? Or is it nothing more than a way to keep track of you and a documentation? You know, I don't know, but I know that

if our vote truly mattered, then there would not be lobbyists and people behind the scenes and big corporations and big banks that pay off these politicians to make votes in the dead of night that we don't get a chance to see until the next morning, and it's already a done deal. At what point do we really, the average person who votes, where do we fit in and where do we matter

if they're able to manipulate an election, not just here in any country? So we do that. It's no secret, but at what point do we really matter? You know? We don't matter to them. Yeah, we don't. I mean, look at the FDA.

It could be paid off. You know what the life expectancy is in this country now? 76. Bingo. 76 years old. Yeah. Look at all the shit that gets approved with our drugs, our food, our clothes, our shampoo,

our deodorant, our toothpaste. And I mean, psychedelics alone. Psychedelic, I mean, I did my psychedelic journey to over two years ago, we talked about this, haven't had a drop of booze since. There you go. Not one drop. And it's not, it wasn't, I didn't even go down to do that.

I didn't make it a point to do it, you know? And it's getting, it's curing addiction. It's curing anxiety. It's now they're working on it with Alzheimer's. It's curing TBI. I had a guy, one of my best friends go down there. He was shot in the head in a road rage accident and survived probably the worst car bomb incident I've ever seen

somebody actually walk out on. Guy couldn't walk without a cane, couldn't go outside without sunglasses on, even on a cloudy day, because his vertigo was so bad. Spent three to four days a week bedridden. I've been trying to talk him into going down there. He finally goes, he does an Ibogaine treatment, leaves his fucking cane there,

doesn't need his sunglasses anymore. So sad. Has no more Vertigo. But it's too easy. It's getting people off Benzos, it's getting people off opiates, It's getting people off Benzos, it's getting people off opiates, it's getting people off alcohol. I mean, so there goes the entire Benzo, you know.

Opioid. Valium, Xanax. Yeah. Lorazepam. I mean, there's a whole family of them. That knocks, I mean, everybody's on that shit. Mm-hmm, yeah. I lost a friend too, yeah.

You know what I mean? Xanax, yeah. Oxycontin, hydrocodone,, I lost a friend too, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Oxycontin, hydrocodone, all that stuff cures it, man. Cures it. How is this shit not legal? We have an opiate crisis and a benzo crisis. That's the reason. In the country today, and this shit is illegal.

Like when the fuck are these people gonna wake up? So is science real? They still fucking think that the government, I'm spitting down, I'm so fucking pissed off. No, you're good, you're good. But you know what I mean? When are people, they're not going to fucking wake up. No, no.

They still think that the fucking government has our best interest. And we're going over war that was started for bullshit that we both fought in. Oh yeah. Now we're talking about the fucking FDA, we're talking about pharmaceuticals, we're talking about everything. Everywhere you look is deception.

And it's all powered and ruled by one thing, money, man. Greed and money, greed and money. They don't, we don't matter, bro. And I think that's the part that I get pissed off is that not enough people are waking up. And when we do wake up, what now? What now? Well, people don't know how to get organized.

That's the thing. We were talking about that earlier. So this is where we need a Ferdy box. Yeah, yeah. But I don't want to encourage anyone to read the dec... No, never mind. But yeah, yeah. But I don't want to encourage anyone to read the dec... No, never mind. But yeah, we're not organized. I think to get organized,

one we have to be able to process as a whole. To process and understand what's going on, what's happened. And there has to be, I guess, a leader. The only way you get organized is when everybody comes to one commonality And in common core values and beliefs and that will that happen. That's where the division happens, you know, that's why Race let's divide them on race. Let's divide them on gender. Let's divide them on politics. Let's divide them on let's Every you can't even pick a subject now where they're where people are not divided though So it's you know to. So in order to get organized, it's damn near impossible.

Yep, we forgot they were all human. The hue of man. We're all spirit man, spirit beings. It's sad. And then black, white, yeah, all that. I 100% agree, but I think that maybe we're at a point of no return. I think that maybe we're at a point of no return, you know? I think that too.

And I hope in my lifetime I get a chance to see change, but the road we're heading, man, I don't know if I will. I pray my son does though. I pray he does, you know? I really do, because I couldn't imagine what's gonna happen in 20 more years from now of heading down this road. Where do we end up?

I mean, you know, it's. I don't know, man. Yeah, you know, I think the step one is. People are putting way too much faith in in humans. You know, it's it's putting all their faith into Joe Biden, it's putting all their faith into Joe Biden, putting all their faith into Donald Trump, or Elon Musk is going to fix the freedom of speech thing. It's like, dude, and I'm not talking shit about any particular one of them. Yeah, there's ones that I hate and there's ones that I

There's ones that I hate and there's ones that I don't. But that's because I just look, my beliefs are in my own core values. It's my values, my beliefs, what I stand for. And I think where America's gone wrong in the world is they put, they don't even know what they believe in anymore. They don't know what their own values are and they're putting, it's, well, what's Nick say?

I'm gonna believe whatever Nick says. And I could be wrong. Yeah. Or you could wake up one day because somebody pissed you off and flip the switch and go the complete opposite direction. And the people today are going to follow you in whatever direction you decide.

It's your beliefs and your values that you need to be standing up for. Not anybody else's. You know? Different perspectives are fine, but... Now, people are just being led around by the fucking nose. I don't even realize. Everybody's an influencer.

Everybody's a social media. I cannot't even realize. Everybody's an influencer. Everybody's a social media. I cannot stand that word, dude. Influencer, I don't, what am I influencing? What are you influencing? Nothing. I mean, there's a few out there, but your average, just because our Instagram models,

like what is, what are you contributing to society? I don't, that's where we're at, man. That's where we're at. We've become Yeah, we've lost our own morals man and own beliefs. Yeah, no matter what it is you believe in you follow that whatever's trending Yeah, we're trending people We follow what's trending. You know, I I do want to say I want to wrap this up. Yeah. Yeah, but You know, I heard I watched a clip of you, and it was somebody that asked you,

was it worth it over there? Mm-hmm. Do you think we've made a difference? No. I don't. For every one number one guy that was killed, there's another number one guy today. No matter how many of them we killed, there's always,

and I think we've done, dude, I don't care. We've, I think we destroyed generations and all we did was just piss people off more. Like if I killed your dad, that son's gonna grow up with just as much hate, if not more hate towards me than his dad did. And we're gonna keep that cycle going for what? You know?

I don't... And I've questioned who we were really killing overseas. Like, I don't know if these guys were just farmers protecting their land. I don't know. No... Yeah. We never went to Saudi Arabia after 9-11. You know, we didn't go there. They controlled too much oil. We never went to Saudi Arabia after 9-11.

You know, we didn't go there. They controlled too much oil, regardless if most of the hijackers were from Saudi. We didn't touch them. We flew the Bin Laden family out in the beginning after 9-11 happened. We put them on planes and flew them to safety. We flew Saudis out to safety, but we went to Afghanistan and Iraq. I don't, and from my experience in Afghanistan, I just don't, some dudes in caves did all that.

They were not that great when I fought them. They were good, but not pulling off one of the greatest heists of all times of our terrorist attacks, of flying, I don't know. I think those people, enemy or not, friend or foe, I think some of those people are the most resilient. They, resilient, it's not where I was going, but they stand by what they believe in,

and they are willing to die for what they believe in. And I think that's something that Westerners could learn from. I do want to leave you with this though. Because do I think we should have been over there? No. Do I think there's a lot of, I don't think, I know there's a lot of fucking corruption. But I do think that we made an impact.

And it may not be the impact that we hope to make, but I will say, especially in Afghanistan, the Taliban is a very controlling, oppressing outfit. And since we were over there, yes, there was a lot of death and destruction. I do think we killed a lot of innocent farmers and people that were just protecting what they have. Yeah.

But women were able to go to universities. A lot of freedoms. They got a taste, a small taste of what freedom tastes like. And I think that brought a lot of them hope and they want that. And there's a resistance over there and they're still fighting to do that. One of the resistance fighters is actually coming on this Thursday. Nice.

Yeah, he's flying in. Keep that guy safe, man. What's that? Keep that guy safe. His face won't be on camera, but he's going to talk about what's happening over there and I've talked to him several times and he is very happy that we went over there. He's obviously not happy how we pulled out, but in a weird roundabout way, we showed those

people what life could look like if they aren't so oppressed By outfits like the Taliban. And so we did some good. Well, I'll take that piece with me, man. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, now we have to worry about our own government overstepping boundaries and taking away

some of our freedoms and liberties and our pursuit of happiness as well. Now we're at that crossroad. Yeah. Maybe we've been fighting the wrong, I don't know. Forgot to look here. Yep. I hope not. I know what you're getting at.

Yeah. Well, Nick, man, that was a hell of an interview, brother. Loved it, man. Loved it. And it's one of my favorite ones. I really appreciate it, man, for real. Great life story. I'm glad to see how well you're doing now, and I truly mean this, man.

It was an honor to have you here, and I hope to see you again. Oh, anytime, man. Hey, dude, before I go, it's great to see you where you're at today. And the light that you shine on others who may have not had that opportunity, dude, keep doing your thing, bro. It's great to see you.

Great to see you. Yeah. Definitely. Much love, bro. You too. Thank you. Much love, brother. You too. Thank you. Much love. Hey guys, welcome to the Candy Valentino Show. I'm Candy Valentino. I was a founder before I could legally order a drink and for more than two and a half decades

I've built, scaled, acquired and exited multiple businesses in diverse industries. Now my goal is to help you by sharing the knowledge that I've learned, the mistakes that I've made, and the wisdom that I've developed over my journey. Buy weekly episodes every Monday and Thursday. The Kandi Valentino Show, wherever you listen.