Shawn Ryan Show - #189 Thomas "Drago" Dzieran - Navy SEAL / The Terrorist Terrorizer

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Thomas "Drago" Dzieran is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL, author, and software engineer. Born in Communist Poland, he spent time as a political prisoner before immigrating to the United States in 1984. After becoming a U.S. citizen in 1991, he joined the Navy and served 20 years, including stints with SEAL Teams 2 and 4, and as a BUD/S instructor. Drago deployed to Iraq multiple times, earning numerous commendations for his valor in combat. He’s the author of The Pledge to America and a vocal advocate for freedom, using his tech skills to combat threats to free speech. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://roka.com - use code SRS https://tryarmra.com/SRS https://BetterHelp.com/SRS https://Blackbuffalo.com https://boncharge.com/SRS https://MeetFabric.com/SHAWN https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD https://Helixsleep.com/SRS https://hexclad.com/SRS https://hillsdale.edu/SRS https://PatriotMobile.com/SRS | 972-PATRIOT https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/SRS Download the app today and use code SRS https://RocketMoney.com/SRS Thomas "Drago" Dzieran Links: The Pledge to America - https://www.dragodzieran.com/book   ConnectZing - https://connectzing.com IG - https://www.instagram.com/dragodzieran X - https://x.com/DragoDzieran Website - https://www.dragodzieran.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When I were 50s open on the envies, that was like, whole hell broke loose. I could shoot the guy, but he was not armed. As I'm working with the guy, the car comes in, hey, Drago in to stop the Grom guy, the Grom element that's moving on the backyard, and there are three guys in ambush lanes. I'm going to knock his front teeth out,

and I'm going to make a necklace out of it. So actually, I woke up to him, I'll very carefully lift his upper lip and just drove his two front teeth in, just pull them out. Did that affect you at all? No. No?

Killing never affected you. Drago! Welcome to the show. Thank you for the invitation. It's an honor to have you. So we have a ton of mutual friends, and I've heard about you since I was in the SEAL teams, and you just have a phenomenal reputation.

And I can't believe we haven't not crossed paths until today. Well, you know, I was watching you, and I watched your channel. subscribe to your channel, but I never thought, you know, some small guy, a little guy like me will show up over here because, you know, the guests that you have, there's like world-class leaders, world-class people. So I never even thought about it, and here I am. So I guess miracles happen. Thank you, brother, for invitation. I would disagree with you. You're definitely not a small guy. So. Basically, I'm still 65 years old, but still holding my...

65? Yeah, I'm 65. Wow. Well, you know what I mean? This is how the show started. You know what I mean? Nobody's a small guy, you know, that we have on. Some people don't have the exposure that I think that they should have. And, you know, when I started this, that's how I wanted it to be. I wanted to get guys that have, and women, you know, that have had phenomenal careers and very interesting life stories

and have been through a lot of, just a lot of everything, operated at the highest level, traumatic experiences, and how they got out of those. Because I think, you know, somebody like yourself, that brings a lot of hope. And, I mean, we're both very aware of what's going on in the veteran community right now.

You know, I think we're up to, what, 40 veterans a day commit suicide? And I think that, you know, the show and getting stories out like yours, it puts it on display and it brings veterans from all walks an example. And it just proves that there's a way out of that, out of that rut, you know, in that gap from service into finding success in the civilian world. And that they're not the only ones that are going through that kind of experience. there's a lot of us. And I'm one of them, and I know you're one of them. And pretty much everybody we've ever had on this show

from a military standpoint is also one of them. And so I've been, you know, I saw when your book came out and I've been kind of watching you from afar on social media. And I just, I think you're a great person. And so it's an honor for me to have you here as well. Thank you very much. It's great to hear it. I appreciate your kind words.

I'm just a regular person. I'm American, so I want to be like you guys, and that's what drives me. You are like us, because you are one of us. I'm American, yes. Yeah. Before we get, when did you come over? I came in 1984. How old were you?

I was 24 years old. So I was leaving Poland. I left prison when I was 23 years old. And then I came to U.S. Embassy, I asked for help, and I was given status of political refugee and flown to the United States when I started my life. The funny thing is I came to America not knowing English, having no money. I had a 10 Phoenix German coin in my pocket and bag of clothes. Wow. Well, we'll get super in depth on that.

But to start off, everybody gets an introduction here and a gift. You know you got a gift coming if you watch the shelf. But Thomas Draggo-Geran, you're a Polish-born warrior who grew up under communist rule. You spent two years in jail as a political prisoner for standing up to a regime that tried to silence you with censorship and oppression. You came to America in 1984 and became a U.S. citizen in 1991. You're a retired U.S. Navy SEAL who served with SEAL Team 2 and SEAL Team 2 and SEALT Team 4 running over 100 direct action missions and Iraq is a lead breacher. You are a recipient of the Bronze Star with V for Baller.

You are the founder of the Navy SEAL Fund giving back to the Brotherhood in Connect Zing, a platform fighting for free speech. You're the author of the book The Pledge to America. You're a husband to Rachel, who is an Air Force Academy graduate, father of four, and most importantly a Christian and devout Catholic. And American. And American. And American.

So everybody kicks it off with a gift. So those are vigilance league gummy bears. Thank you, brother. Made here in the USA. Buy Americans. You mind if I just opened it now? Yeah, I'm all about sweets. You know, like my, I have embargo on sugar and sweet things at home.

but since my wife is not here what do you think oh I love it perfect and then since I found out you're a Catholic I wanted to give you this so

that do you know Dom Razo he was a he was a two he's my generation I know the name I cannot connect with the face yet yeah he's I know what it is brother thank you You're welcome. Yes.

He's a seal and he has these warriors rosaries made and he gave me one a long time ago. And I carried her everywhere with me for protection. I have mine in my pocket right here. It is beautiful, but it's also very important. Important for me. For me, has an extra meaning too. So I really appreciate it. Yeah, you know, I think that just, you know,

I grew up Catholic. Then I kind of fell out of it, you know, in the SEAL teams. I think most people did. And then kind of found faith again a couple years ago. And I'll tell you one thing. I just think the Catholic religion has it right when it comes to protection and talking about demonic entities and all of that kind of stuff. So I carry mine everywhere I go.

But so I wanted you to have one. Thank you. I appreciate the brother. Dom's been a mentor of mine when it comes to... Dom? Yeah. I know who's talking about... Okay, I got it now.

Sorry. Yeah, yes, yes. Yeah, Dom. Hi, Dom. I mean, I've... I just like, if you hear it... Yes, I know who he is. Cool.

And so, before we get two in the weeds on the interview, which I can't wait, I have a subscription account on Patreon, and we've built. into one hell of a community. I think we're at about 60-something thousand members now, but you know, when I was telling you and your wife downstairs, I started this in my attic and it was to it was to basically shine a light on veterans who have done amazing things and are doing amazing things now. And back then when I was in my attic, nobody wanted to touch me. Nobody wanted to fund anything advertised with me. And so and I needed some income, you know, to grow this.

And so I started a community on Patreon. And that community has just carried me all the way from the attic of my house to the amazing team that I have today, to this studio that we're in now. And now we're building a 7,000 square foot studio out in the woods. And that community has just always supported me and always supported our guests as well. And so one of the things that we do is we offer our tier three members

the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. And you had quite a few questions. Okay. So this is from Eric Auger. Do you see any parallels between the tactics used by the communist regime in Poland and what's happening in the U.S. today? And then there's a follow-on. And more importantly, how can the average American recognize and push back before it's too late?

Thank you. That's a very important question. I'm glad somebody asked it. So, yes, not right now at this point, but in previous administration, there was a lot of things that, to me, seems like deja vu from socialist state run by communists. I'm saying socialist state, Poland. was never communist country. People need to understand it. Neither was Soviet Union communist country

nor any country behind Iron Curtin was ever communist country. There were socialist state, very dangerous totalitarian socialist states, but they were run by communists. It is, we say there's communist state, communist country, but in reality they were socialist state.

That's why the distinction now that is being made, that communists was bad, but socialism is. good, it's a very dangerous distinction. And yes, there many things that happen in the last, I would say, four years were very disturbing for me.

And I talked to my wife about it quite often. So, we agree that something needs to change because we're going to fall, like Europe fell the Western Europe right now, into depraved and perversion. What are some of the things that stick out to you

censorship is the first one is the big one. It is easy to explain for people who censored that the government doesn't censor you. It's just private organization like Facebook when I was heavily censored like LinkedIn. I'm still being heavily censored

but the problem with it is that they are being coerced by the government and this is the very disturbing stuff. You know like I'm running my own social media platform and definitely I censor people posting anti-American posts. I don't want them here and they are faster than lightning gone from my platform.

But I think that censorship is very dangerous. Branding political opponents as a criminal as a terrorist is very dangerous. This is the same thing exactly what I experience in a socialist Poland run by communism, by communists, like my father. So the censorship, all the, also denigrating moral values, denigrating patriotism, denigrating the family values. It is important for a socialist state to take control of people, but it reminds me the same thing that happened in Poland when I was growing up. There is another thing, too, I would like to mention. In America, people do not understand very well concept of the sense.

desensitization, desensitization, desensitization. Desensitization. Desensitization? Desensitization? Yeah. Oh, I could be a president, President Biden. So I'm getting better. But anyway, so they do not understand the concept of desensitization

and normalization of evil. And that's what it is. So first you talk about it, you give the different names, which is benign, and then you enforce the normalization. and normalize the evil and the entire process. I give you an example with walk. What is walk? Yes.

What is walk? If you talk to somebody and tell him that the teacher is walk, little bit of walk, it's not really alarming. It's just like, maybe a little bit strange guy or woman. But if you look behind that word, what it represents, what this word is how, this word, is hiding the depraved and perversion, that whole process takes different meaning for most of the people. It's different when you hear, oh, the teacher is a little bit of work, but the teacher is pervert. That definitely perks your attention and say, maybe I don't want to send my children to this class.

So this type of techniques is not well known and described here in the United States, because people were never exposed to evil of socialism and communism on mass scale. And let's hope it will never happen. So those are the things when I talk, the censorship, branding political opponents as criminals and terrorists, attack on moral values, family values, and most important faith. These things that happened the last four years were very disturbing for me because I knew where it leads. I knew what can happen if it continues. You know, I think the other question that Eric had was, you know, how can the average American push back before it's too late?

There's many ways to do it. One of them, we are the, for socialists, for the evil, we, me, you, we are lost generation. We are all, we don't change. They attack our children. And this is where they are after it. So today, nowadays, after seeing what is happening in our schools, it is no longer enough for parents to ask child, hey, no, how was your school today?

Oh, mom, dad, it was really good. Okay, go play. You need to be inquisitive. You need to find out what the child is being told, what is being done to him. And, you know, they are great schools in America, but also they are perverted schools. You need to intervene.

And this is why there is such a big push from the evil side to get control of our children. So we need to take this control back. And if school doesn't let you change the curriculum or perverted teacher, you need to do it on your own. You need to teach your own children. I'm homeschooling my children after I found out that school was teaching 73 genders and other perversional perverted way of thinking to my kids. So we pulled the kids out of the school. Not everybody has meaning, have meanings.

Not everybody has meanings to homeschool their kids. People have to make a living. They have to work and they work hard. At least you can come back home instead of spending time drinking beer. Maybe you should spend time with your child, asking what is doing and correct what school did wrong to your child. This is important. We cannot, we don't need to concentrate on ourselves.

We know our moral values are pretty much at this age immutable, but our kids are very vulnerable, and we need to be that example for our kids and stand up to the depravity and perversion thrown our kids in some of our schools. Let's talk about something that actually brings a lot of stress this time of year, banking. Most of us are used to the old-school banks that seem built for the 1%

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Results may vary. See chime.com for details and applicable terms. Hey, Ontario. Come on down to BetMGM Casino and see what our newest exclusive the Price is Right Fortune Pick has to offer. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show, only at BetMGM. Check out how we've reimagined three of the show's iconic games, like Plinko, Cliffhanger, and the Big Wheel into fun casino game features. Don't forget to download the BetMGM Casino app for exclusive access and excitement on the Price's Right Fortune Pick. Pull up a seat and experience the Price's Right Fortune Pick, only available at BetMGM Casino. BetMGM and Game Sense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager.

Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1866-5-3-1-2-6-00 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BenMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Interesting. Excellent answer. And, you know, it seems I moved up here from South Florida, where there's a massive American Cuban population. And they're all saying the same things.

It seems like anybody that you talk to that moved here from a communist country or a socialist, maybe not all socialists, but Venezuela, Cuba, Poland. they're all saying the same stuff. And it's just really interesting to hear. And I think it's an important conversation. We'll leave that. We will live through it. Those people live through it. They've seen the dangers.

They've seen the results of such depravity act like communism and socialism. So they do sound warnings. But again, the censorship with today's technology and government coercion takes its toll. So people don't hear about it and don't know about it. So, yes, we need to be more proactive and especially with our children. Thank you for that. So Eric's a huge fan, the guy that asked the question, Eric Ogler. So if it's okay with you, I'm going to have you sign this at the end of the interview.

I'm going to send it to him. I'm sure he would love that. So, all right, let's get into the interview. So born in 1960, growing up in communist or socialist at that time. Well, we held it communist. It's commonly non-communists. There's a technicality here, and people need to understand what we call communist states behind iron curtain. Those are socialist states run by mostly by communists.

We can call it communist state. I call it sometimes. What was it like growing up in Poland? Well, the first thing to realize is that in 1960s, when I was born, it was only 15 years from the story. Second World War. So the entire generation of people who went to the brutality, to Holocaust, to experience war personally live in that societies in Europe, I'm talking with Poland, even more so, because Poland lost around 6 million people.

There's one fifth of population during Second World War, murdered by Germans. and that was very, I would say there were dangerous time. I don't have a bad memory. I have more nostalgia, nostalgic feelings to this time when I grew up. But I remember now from the perspective of being American living here in peaceful society, I remember how, and I realized how sometimes depravity was taking over the brutality, was taking over. People were ready to fight on the moment notice. I mean, here you look somebody in the eyes and say, hey, hello. In Poland, they would say, what the fuck are you looking

at? That was the times that the typical reaction would be. And so, fighting, beating people on the streets was nothing unusual. It was frowned upon. Nobody was like brutal vulgar people, but it was very common to the point that when there was a fight on the street, and usually you can go in town and you can see two, three fights if you go through the town. People learned to just across the street that didn't even bother to call police. So it will later play a role in Maya bringing when I get a little bit older. But 1960s was very brutal time for Portland. There was a big transition from the wartime, brutal.

to experience society to peaceful, more peaceful society, and it was also hindered by the socialist and communist ideology that the transition was not very smooth in Poland. And also talking about it, I experienced the both worlds. They were living as a privileged kid when my father, who was a high-ranking communist and government official, so up to seven years old, where I was. I was growing up with him being at home. Then when he left and the poverty, the lifestyle that I experienced for the next decade,

it's nothing unusual in Poland, but for me was a stark difference. And then I was sent to my father when I was, I believe, 16 years old to... Why did your father leave? Well, my father was communist. He was entrenched into... their ideology and my mom going to church with us was not acceptable to him.

There was two things. One was a fear that he can lose his career. As a communist and as a member of Polish government at the time, it was frowned upon going to church, especially having family and kids going to church. Why was it frowned upon to go to church? Because church is very dangerous. The faith is very dangerous for socialist state. Faith gives you roots, a moral basis that are basically immutable,

that you have that morals that communists can't, most likely can't change. So this is something that the first attacks in a communist state was on faith usually and children. And this is why they try to eliminate this. And faith is dangerous concept for common. feminist and socialist. And you will see that if you read the history of socialist states, the first attack usually happened on people's fate and their families. I think we saw some of that here. Yes, we did. In the last four years, especially, there was something very disturbing for me.

And we need to be aware of it. How did your father leave? Well, he decided that's very dangerous for his career to stay at home with mom, who was devoted Catholic, my entire family. Even his own mother, there were Catholics, and they didn't approve what he was doing. I'll tell you later when we get to it. So he was the side that that's not his way of living.

He wants to make a career as a politician. He wants to make career as a communist. And when I was seven years old, he decided to leave, and he just took off leaving us. Me and my two siblings, so it was three of us and my mom. So he abandoned his three kids? and his wife. Yes, yes, he did.

As a communist, he died as a communist. In 2021, when I went to visit, his views did not change. He would be ready to murder people on the spot if they were opposed socialism and communism. Wow. But I will talk about it, too. We'll get to it. His view was very extreme when you get to know him.

But when you didn't know him, you would think there's a great older man. There's somebody you would like to have for the neighbor very well spoken, very commanding Polish language extremely well, because he was his major and in university. So very nice man until we start probing his views and his internal thinking that became very disturbing. That's somebody you would not want to have as a neighbor.

So growing up, if he grew up as a... peasant. He's a Catholic or a believer. Yes. I mean, what was it that got into him that changed his entire view? You know? It's hard to guess, but this is my

understanding of it. So he grew up in peasant family, very poor. And what he was offered by the communist state is, hey, we make you somebody, we make you somebody big, and you can progress with us. But you need to

the fate into the scar, all the attachments that are superstit, they call it superstition. So you need to be free man, they call it free man, so to accept socialism and communist ideology. And they were like helping him along the way. He was very smart. So he's doing very well, he was doing very well at school. And eventually they grab hold of him and he, like many other Pauls gave in, gave up his faith, his moral views and accepted so-called relative morality. This is another term that is not very well, not very popular here and not very well understood yet. So he subscribed to so-called relative morality.

And that's where things start changing. were people that way he become the person he was later in his life. What was it like for you when he left? So there was dramatic change

right away. In the first place... What did he say to you? He didn't say nothing. He just didn't show up. Wow. So, yeah, we didn't know where he was. Mom tried to hide it from us. And at that time in Poland, there was also stigma for people who were divorced, especially for the kids.

They had a special name for divorcees. So I remember parents saying, hi, these kids are divorced. They want to play with them. The parents got divorced. Stay away from them. So I remember that. And that was very, for me, I learned to cope with it. But at the time, I see the kids didn't want to play with us.

So that was kind of way the way it was. We just, that was the reality. And I didn't know any other. And so, I mean. But also life was different too, because from abundance of everything, from the legal protection. Because, you know, when I was kid, I burned the wheatfield by accident. We were playing with fire, baking something in the fire in the middle of the wheatfield. So we burned the entire wheatfield.

So of course the neighbor comes in because I was living on the outskirts of little town Gio Naga that was established in 1,200, year 1200. So those beautiful town. So I burned the Whitfield. So when a neighbor came to complain about it, my father said, just chase him out and say, look, you cause problems.

You'll have a secret police coming and talking to you. And actually, they did send the goons from the secret police to explain this guy that we are pretty much untouchable. So just leave it and plow the field again. This is how bad it was. But I didn't know anything about it. It was just my father was trying to, I guess, protect his family the way it is happening in socialist totalitarian states. You know, you don't agree with you.

I have more power. If you don't agree with me, I would send the police on you and you get either arrested, killed or disappear. So there was nothing uncommon. Interesting. But then it changed when he left. So I had no protection. We did something wrong, we should get punished for it. And my mom would never agree with it.

My mom was always, and it was the biggest fights, between the, my mom who was devout Catholic and my father who was totally opposed to any type of faith. He only believed in the party and communist ideology. That was his God. So there was always fights. And I remember the time, it was before my sister was born. So I had to be at least three years, maybe around four years old, but I vividly remember that my grandmother from my maternal side came to visit us.

And of course, she was even more devout. She was like, I would say, total fanatic and total zeal. But this is how they survived the Second World War. This would help my grandmother and her children, my mom, survive the second world. and war war. So when she came in, she had chased us all of us to church. We are going to church Sunday. So my father, I still remember standing in front of the door with hand outstretched and say, no, kids not going to church. And you are not going to church because if somebody sees you or kids, I'm going to lose my career. I'm going to lose my job. You are not going

to church. So my grandmother went outside. We were living on the first floor. My mom passed me like a football through the window. So I thought it was fun. I was like, whoa, you know, let's play. And then my mom left. We did went to church. But my father eventually learned to tolerate it, but he was always on the edge,

was always nervous, always wanted us to stop going to church. He called the religion as superstition. And also, he used the technique that I see being deployed here very often. Basically, he was trying to find some articles, some quasi-scientific articles, like, okay, we just find out new things about Jesus. Let's see if Jesus was real. I can pick your curiosity, especially if you start reading

and it's like totally end up faith article or book. So my father was bringing it up and just tried to either show it for us to read or try to read it to us against protests of my mother. But this is the technique they used to. Wow. To actually remove people from people. faith and change their beliefs.

How many, so you had two siblings? Two siblings, my younger brother and younger sister. My sister still lives in Poland. Actually, I visited her not too long time ago when I went to, as I was testifying, I'm going to come back to it in the criminal case in Poland against a judge who actually sentenced me to prison time. Where's your brother? My brother lives here.

He's here in the States. He owns his business. He owns his great business. He's doing well. And he's doing good. I don't really have much contact with him. So you're not close with her brother? No.

No, I'm closer with you guys, with people like you, with fellow teammates. They are my brothers. As a person living in the States. Were you close with your siblings growing up? Yes. What would you guys do? Did you guys have any fun? Yes, I've got a lot of fun.

You know, the nice thing about it at that time, we did not have. We did not have the direct strict supervision of our parents. Kids used to play. Like, I was, what, six years old, and I was going to kindergarten by myself. I was working around the school, going over the major street.

Actually, one of my little friends was killed on that street. by the motorcycle. But yeah, we're doing ourselves. So we had like house shoes in one hand, holding hands with my brother, and just walking to the kindergarten. There was maybe like quarter mile.

And through the woods, not through the woods, but through the different small streets. Mom told us how to cross the street. You look left, you look right. There's nothing happened. You just go fairly fast through the street, but don't run. And then six years old.

Play, yeah, as long as we're back at home before dark, we were fine. So we were roaming the city. We were just sometimes, we found ourselves like two miles away from the home, God knows where, running some streets and just exploring. So that was

cool, playing with fires. We like to bake things in fire, potatoes and stuff. This is how I burned the wheat field by accident. But that time his father was still with us. After he left, I wouldn't get away with it.

So that was the, I have a phone memory. I was poor, but I didn't know that was poor. I thought it was just normal. This is how everybody lived. And I didn't see at that time, they noticed the richer kids or kids of party, coming as party members that I noticed later in the elementary school. That's what it. How did your family make money after your father left?

My mom was a teacher, so she had a little salary. It was not much, and it was not enough to buy food. if she was quag enough in the morning to stay in line to buy bread, if she was late, by the time she made to the end of the line, there was no bread, so we didn't eat. But again, it was really not a big deal. It's just like, well, we don't have a bread today.

Okay, do we have bread from yesterday or something? No, we don't. All right, so maybe some potatoes. So, my mom always try to make something out, but sometimes we went hungry to school, and there was really nothing there. When I was in elementary school, I learned her to help myself

and actually feed myself. But it's like, I'm not very proud of it now, but at the time, I basically was extorting sandwiches from the kids of the Communist Party members. How would you do that? Well, I just beat them up, and I told them, you give me the sandwich.

But I remember, you know, in Poland at the time, like people don't want to be seen as poor, right? So a lot of us, like including me, like my sandwich, if mom got the bread, very often was, little bit water sprinkle on it and sprinkle sugar. If it was good, we had a butter. Of those butter, a little bit sugar, if the sugar was, put together.

And so, like, I don't want people to see it because I see some of the kids eating these big buns, you know, with ham, with tomatoes, mayonnaise, salt. I mean, it was like, today I'm just looking at this. Like, I would eat one too. So this is something that I've seen it. I didn't want them to see that having, like, bread and little bit sugar on it. So, or there's another technique too, like take a tea and put the tea on the brand, put some sugar on it.

I still like that. And so we're eating in the corners. Like, I don't want the body to see that. I have like that nothing, sandwich, nothing. And most of the kids did too. I didn't notice that, but then I was, when I started feeding myself of the Communist Party, twerps, little kids, then, then, you know, Yeah, I noticed other kids doing the same thing that I did.

And there's a story like he still touches my heart, you know, when I talk about it. Because the first one I remember, I seen the kid, like a little fat kid with a big band, you know, with everything on it. If you had the sandwich today, you would say, damn, that was really good. So I said I woke up to him and just took it from his hand, just ripped it half. You can have and just eat it like, wow, this is good. He was about to cry up there, but like, hey, listen, a little shit. Tomorrow you bring two sandwiches like this. How old?

So you grew up? I was seven years old at the time. You grew up fighting for food. I grew up fighting. Well, I didn't have to. If my mom find out what I did, I would be spank. I would be spank so hard that I would be able to sit on my ass. But I had to hide it from her.

She would not tolerate it. But, yeah. But, you know, I was. hungry. So I figure out these people, the party member's kids, they have everything. You can tell them the way they

dress, the way they carry themselves, the way what they eat the most important. So I figured out I will just help myself. He has so much, he has abundance of the bread. So I'm sure he won't money if I eat half of it. So yeah, I'll go up to him

and he says, I told him that if you don't bring tomorrow two sandwiches, you won't have a sandwich, because I will eat entire sandwich. Today I just ate half. Well, he brought us two sandwiches. He found me himself and just gave it to me. So from then on, it came to the point that I had to tell me.

That started at seven years old. Seven years old, yes. Well, and then, so I started noticing other kids doing the same thing. And there was a kid in my class, the first grade, who we call him all kinds of names. This guy was smaller than rest. We tormented this guy. We're talking about bullying.

And so it's brutal. Like you have no empathy. At least I did not have any empathy for bullying to the kids that were bullied. It changed. So one day, so he was like the, the black ship in the class.

Nobody wanted to talk to him. Even those poor kids, other poor kids, they call him all kinds of names. So one day I was just coming back from school and I had to travel across town, had to take a bus and then another bus

and travel to travel home. And I don't know. There was, I think, second grade when I noticed that. And my bus took off. I was too, I was late. So I started walking home and this kid is walking and he's already scared because now I'm walking behind him and we determined him. But I said like, well, you know what? Hey, what's up?

Do you live somewhere here? You don't wait on the bus? I say, no, I'm living like maybe like quarter mile from here. So I said, well, cool. So let's go. I start talking to him and find out that he's just trying to survive with his mom. He doesn't have a father. And my curiosity, I said, hey, can I just, where do you live in this building? Once we made to his place, he said, I'm going to here. So let me see how you leave. I was curious. So, okay.

So walking, like one room, like half a size of this room here. There's a table, there is one chair and one bed. That's it. And the sink. You see in the janitorial closets. There's deep sink when you keep them up and stuff. And on the table, dirty table, there was a full can of cigarette butts. So I say, oh, okay, well, I see one bed.

Where do you sleep? I say, I sleep with my mom because we cannot afford another bed. So, you know, this is something that still touches me because this guy was, we gave him so much hell. And then I said, okay, so where do you eat? I see one chair. I eat on my mom's lab. So then he says, I say, okay, well, where's your toilet? We have a toilet outside.

So will you keep your food? I don't see any food. Well, we eat every day the food. So we don't have any reserves. We don't have any leftovers. So I say, hmm, okay, so this is actually when... So then I think it was the second grade, or something changed. And I say, okay, well, I hook you up.

So then I went to another kid who I knew he has like... type of sandwiches. You can tell these kids that dress better, they have better food. So I have to say, hey, look, tomorrow you bring two sandwiches. One for yourself, one for this kid. So he mouth off to me and I just beat him up and drag him in the toilet up there because in Poland during the breaks, all the kids walk on the hallway, just they have to walk. So I drag him in the toilet and just beat the shit out of him and say tomorrow we bring the two sandwiches. And he did. So I said, wow, that was. So I gave him the sandwich.

I said, look, from now on, he will bring you the sandwich. If he does not, you let me know because I'm going to give you half of his sandwich or just entire sandwich to you. He was very grateful. He said, I don't know what you do it. And then, you know, I didn't let other kids touch him. I didn't let

other kids to bully him anymore. And it changed. So from then on, I think I look at the kids a little bit differently than until this time. That was in second grade. There was a second grade. Yeah, but I was pretty violent, too, from the beginning as well.

I remember in the first grade, when we first class up, our class become, like when you go to your first grade, so they divide you, class A, you'll be with this group, you'll be with this group, class B and C. So one of my friends from kindergarten said, oh, this girl has a crash on you. I think she's your girlfriend. I got so mad, but not that the kid. but at the girl, I went to the girl, just kick her as hard as I could. She fell down, they took her to the nurse room,

and this is another lesson that I learned very quick. So she came back all crying to class. That's first time in the class in our lives. Her name was Bogusha. And she's crying at the bench. And I was like some of cows until my mom walked in. She was a teacher at that school. So she just looked around the class,

say, look at me. and say, who did you hurt? An entire class, like, I said, that's a dead girl right there. So I was pulled from the bench, by the ear, this was that method in Poland at the time, walking the middle of the class, my pants were dropped,

and I was being spanked so hard for so long time until I broke down and started crying. When I started crying, she said, okay, now put your pants up and go out there, I apologize. So I did when I apologized, And then I got spung again when I get home. So with more explanation why I don't do that. I never did it again.

And that worked. But yeah, so there was things that the times that I still remember that still affect me sometimes. And the second grade later we moved when I was leading away from that school. So I had to take the bus to school. This is where my father was already gone. so the kids start picking on me. They said, on the way to school,

usually not because it was a old pneumonia, on the way back from school, I get my ass kicked sometimes, by the older kids. They just thought it's funny to bid up on me. So I feel like, okay, I don't have a father, so I don't have an older brother to go and stand up for me. I just have to handle my own.

So what I did, I went find there like a rebar. Maybe there's that big rebar. And I started carrying it with me. I was carrying in my book, book case, when they, on the way back, I could expect, they would harass me, they would try to kick my ass. So I had this thing with me in my briefcase, and I knew they were walking, this group of kids is walking behind me, so I walked into, in Poland, those buildings, there was like fairly new buildings at the time, you have a stairways, you walk into the stairways,

you go up, and then you walk to your apartments. So I just walk into the stairways, I just wait with this thing in. As soon, that first kid walked in, I hope he's alive today. But anyway, so that was it. And so I knocked him out.

Yeah, the blood was everywhere. I remember that. And then the other kids run away. And the next day, they repeat itself. The guy was okay, I guess,

because he showed up with the head band-aid. So, same thing happens again. So I just walk into the, I see these kids walking and already making those warrior grunts.

So I walk into the stairways, just wait until they walk in. I got two of them this time. So they let me along. After that, they decide, well, we're going to find another victim. But what it told me is that violence works. Violence always works.

And if it didn't work for you, means you didn't apply enough of it. So that was my lessons, I think the first lessons from my childhood that you just have to. to be violent to accomplish things. And that violence works and they just need to apply it in the right place. Wow.

So I was what, eight years old, nine years old. Those are the first lessons in my life. But society was brutal at the time. It's not an excuse. I get a lot of flag now in today's society when I talk about it in Poland. There were podcasts in Poland that I went to and people are very disturbed. that how a kid like this eight years old almost kill somebody that is so violent, well, they don't understand that there were different times.

But the way I look at it today is this is good. The police society is different. They don't tolerate violence. You know, my mom wouldn't tolerate either, but there were things that she did. And that was my upbringing. And when I see today people complaining about this and pointing out how bad and evil it is, I agree with them.

But I'm also kind of happy that they can speak to it, that they can verbalize this. And they don't afraid to speak that there's a government goon, government goon somewhere behind them looking to how to put them to jail or how to persecute them. They can speak their mind.

their minds, they don't have to agree with me, and very often they don't. And I'm kind of happy about it because the police society is slowly changing more like in America where we can speak, we don't have to look over our shoulder. Well, maybe not the last administration, but we don't have to look on our shoulder. I tell you, you know what, even the last administration, I never felt that I'm saying something that can put me to prison to jail. You know, I can say something. I can lose my job.

I'm not, because being the, I never put myself in that situation, but I never worry about being. What would get you thrown in jail in Poland for? Well, it would stay in the line for bread, like my mom. And you complain that, let's say, there's never food, there's never enough food for people here. What this government is doing? Well, if there was a neighbor who next to you or somebody who knew who you, who you were and overhaired it and he was working for secret police or he was a snitch, you could get arrested.

There was nothing unusual that police show up on your doorstep. They took you on the police station and say, hey, tell us about your comments here in the bread line or tell about your comments you made at your work about the disparaging communist party members. So in my book actually, I described the case. when one of my fellow political prisoners was testifying in his defense. His defense was not in defense. It was offense.

It was actually laying straight truth to the judge. And judge, even I remember judge asking, well, but this is offending the party member. Do you think it is right? So you can see the way the socialist state work up there. So you could put you to jail that. You know, that was like people were afraid the most to get on. on the political list in Poland. Because once you find yourself there,

you were always that troublemaker, the anti-socialist, anti-communist. Wow. Take it. You know, you had mentioned people disappearing, being murdered by the, sounds like the state. Did you witness something of that growing up? Even today, even today,

they are still looking for the mass graves of some of Polish heroes who were executed by socialist state, Just I think recently they found the grave of big Polish hero, Rotmisch Pilezki, Captain Pilezki, the man who volunteer to be locked up in Auschwitz, so he can write reports what's going on up there, and then he escaped after a while. But those reports went to the west on Churchill desk, so they knew what is going on. prison camps. So this guy later fought in Warsaw uprising in 1944. He became a hero in Poland.

So after communist took over, he was promptly arrested and executed, sentenced to death and executed like many, many people. And his grave was never found, I believe, until recently. But there are still people that are missing and their graves are being found in the prison yards, dig in somewhere in some unspeakious forests in places. So people are still looking. There's an IPN organization in Poland, the government organization, Institute of Polish Remembrance where they pursue still the searching for Polish heroes who disappeared under communist regime.

So there was nothing uncommon to disappear. And also please remember that every communist system, whether in Poland, a socialist system, whether in Poland, whether in East Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia, they had their, those almost given every four or five years the upheavals. So in Poland was 1956, 1960, 1968, 1970, 1970, 1976, 1970s, 1970s, 1976, 1976, 1976, that people were, when, the streets and there were more the protesters, they were brand insurrectionists, bandits, terrorists and shot it. So every so many years these upheavals happens. And every time that happens, the new crew comes in and say, okay, socialism is great. These people just didn't know how to social, how to work in socialism system.

So we're going to replace, and sometimes that government before was either killed or in prison as well, and the new crew come in to build the better, the real socialism. And it repeats itself every so many years and every time the new crew, the new gang came in, a socialist gang came in, and they were telling people that we will do it, the right, the socialism the right way. We will build socialism the right way. You know, you never hear, and there's another thing, people need to know, they were not

communist states. They didn't even pretend to build communist states. Even in Soviet Union, you can see, if you read their literature from that time, they all were building socialism, not communism. Communism is, the way my father explained to me, is just a stepping stone to further societal development into communism. But you cannot omit a socialist. The socialism is very necessary step. So that's how it happened. And you mentioned about the asked me about the parallels. I've seen a lot of parallels in the last administration that were very dangerous. And I was really I was afraid. Are you familiar? I'm just curious with sidetracker. Are you familiar what's going on in

Romania? Have you been following that at all? Yes. The USAID with European Union, this banded election, they they removed the candidate This is what I'm saying. The European Union reminds me more the Soviet Union right now than with totalitarian control than the European Union

at its inception. I mean, look at it. People are getting arrested in the European Union for Facebook posts. And there's not like, well, maybe somewhere you heard about it. It's documented. You can see on the,

even on the videos, there's video when police coming in arrest people for Facebook posts, let's say in Great Britain. The decay of that society is immense, and I don't know how long it will last, but seems like the days of European Union are number, I think. That's maybe not that good, but you see what happened in Romania, you see what happened in Georgia, you see what the assassination attempt in Slovakia, when the President Fizo, Prime Minister Fizzo barely survived, and the same thing in 2014 in Ukraine. US ID, and there's another organization working hand-to-hand with it, I think E&D, that did a lot of harm to people trying to subdue them and convert them into the compliant masses.

Yeah, yeah, it sounds like it's on the cusp. I went over to Romania to interview, Colleen Georgescu. He had a commanding lead in the election, and they froze the election, and then I guess they unfroze it, and they just pulled him. He's not running anymore. They just completely pulled him. This is what I call, like here people don't hear this term. We call it socialist elections.

Socialist elections are elections where communists and socialists always win. So there's a socialist election, and all the mechanisms behind it was you know, if you would accuse, let's say in Poland was the same mechanism. You cannot vote somebody who you really thought could be good person or politician. You were voting for people

that they told you to vote and the mechanism was set up this way that no matter what that person would win elections. If you notice in Eastern Europe, first thing they did when socialists grabbed the power was start changing the rules and laws to give them

the advantage and give them the opposition. and give them the opportunity to falsify election, even if they have to, to stay at power. Because they know, after four or five years of their socialist communist, communist ideology, people had enough. They did not want any of that and any of these Marxist guns.

In Poland, when I was growing up, I remember people would hang those Marxists from the Latin posts if they could get away with it. This is how much hate it was. But there's always a segment of the society, like my father, that go get along to go along and try to stay afloat and they will do whatever it needs to take to stay in the control and control the society.

Because we need to notice that most of the atrocities committed in Poland were not committed by Russians, were committed by Poles. They were trained in Soviet Union by, and not necessarily Russians. There were different nationalities. Ukrainians, there were Belarusians, who were in Soviet, part of the Soviet Union at the time, who trained and who installed that type of the government in Poland at the time. So in Poland, the most atrocities that happened were committed by Polish communists and Poles.

The Soviet Union the most I think no other nation experienced the atrocities and danger of communism more than Russians. They were the biggest victims of that system. So there was no

Poles murdering Russians. There were no Ukrainians murdering Russians. There were Russians killing Russians because evil ideas theology will do it to you. This is when you subscribe to so-called relative morality. And this is what you become part of the system that will actually twist you into this type of behavior, this type of morality. So that's very dangerous. So when did you get sent back to your father?

I was, I think I was 16 years old at the time. I was still at the eighth grade of elementary school, but my mama just couldn't afford to feed three kids. So he said, you are the oldest one, so we can go send you there. And I didn't really want to go, but I had no choice. The funny thing is that the father came, pick me up, and we travel from my city lots to, after all the court proceedings were done to his apartment in Warsaw. I remember his wife opened the door.

He said, okay, so he's, he'll be living with us from now on. I can remember the screech like, what? What are you talking about? Nobody's going to live here with us. So the tension already started. That was not very pleasant, you know, walking to the house and you see this weird woman screaming and yelling.

But I had no choice, so I stayed there. And she had the son, so she was giving me a hard time. So I was beating up his son and I was kind of like equalizing. The more I get punishment from her, the more I beat up the other kid. And eventually I had enough and they had enough too. So they kicked me back to my mother. There was one year, but also I could see at the time my father's mental state and his vallies system, he values system.

Like I said, mentioned earlier here, when you seen him, you would think, well, this was a nice, clean man, well-spoken and educated man, somebody like, would be great to have as a neighbor. But when I start talking to him, I remember I had a conversation at the time that he says, I asked him, you know, what if people were resisting socialism and communism communism. There are some people who will not buy into it. I don't buy into it. Or he says, well, we have a methods to convince people. We will make them

do that. But if that doesn't work, we have prisons. So what if the president doesn't worry? We still don't change them. Well, the social system is such a great system that is worth the sacrifice. So we just eliminate physically these people. That way, they don't interfere

with us implementing such a great system for everybody. Once people get into the social system, they will love it. We just need to eliminate people who oppose it because they derail our efforts. So he wouldn't mind these people being killed. And also what I didn't know at the time, my father was responsible for censorship in Poland at the time. He was a minister of art culture, art and culture in Poland. He was a director of the department for theaters, movies, and libraries. So if you wrote the book that my father did not like, your book never showed up. Not only that, if that book was skeptical of socialism and communism, none of your books were ever showed up.

And if you argue about it, you could end up in prison. So movies, as somebody pointed out not too long time ago, older person that, do you know that your father was responsible for censoring the very popular comedy that was in Poland at the time, Samis Foi, was named like all ours, by Aguilus translation. He was responsible for removing parts of that movie, and he was arguing with the director that this does not support the socialist point of view. It opposes what we would say.

the nice transition to socialist and communist society. So we need to cut this, this, and just told the people were to cut that movie, and they had to comply. I didn't know about that movie. I knew that he was censoring things, censoring books, censoring artists. So the things that happened in Poland at the time

in post-war era was you either could adopt the art and people to socialism or you eliminated. So there were statues. that socialists, the communists, like my father, decide that they do not support the communist narrative, the ideology. One just destroyed and remove it so people don't know about it. Or change the meaning of it,

knowing that author had, creating, let's say, that painting had this on his mind. Well, kill the author and explain people what really we think that picture means. So there was just normal methods. And if you were not in line with the social, this state, the terror state, you were cancelled. So it's not much different that it could happen today that happened today under

last administration. So I'm talking about last administration. I know we're going to get a lot of flag for it and I think the YouTube may flag this interview, but I don't know. Bottom line is that a lot of that things that happen in Poland, like you asked me earlier, It was like deja vu from, I could extrapolate on what is happening in the United States under last administration. The difference is this, that America was built by three strong people, the culture of freedom,

the understanding of freedom and the yearning for freedom is so strong that it's not as easy to subdue and change and derail it. So people survive that four years. and now you can see what is happening. People are raising up of their, I would say, standing up again against some of their methods used by the previous administration. And they have to because if we fell, we have no place to go. Wow.

How often would your dad and you have these conversations? Quite often because I wasn't a good student. So always to get him, over my back, why didn't do the homework or the homework was bad. I asked these questions and we started arguing about it. I just roll him up and but it also allowed me to understand a bit more the way he thinks. And it was scary thoughts at the end. The guy has no scruples in implementing the ideology that he was subscribing to and he

want everybody to subscribe. If you didn't, he will force you to do it or he will eliminate you so you don't derail other people from it. It's very dangerous, but this is how they operated at the time. You could lose your job. You could, and you will not be able to find your job. You could not open your business. You couldn't attend the college. Matter of fact, the education was a very big thing for communists and control of the students. So to get to college, if you were not a member of youth socialist organization, your chances were smaller to get into university that somebody who was activists and openly, how to say it, virtue signaling that he's a communist and pro-communist.

So these people were sought after and they were given priority to join the universities. There were also people who did get into universities being opposed to communist system, but they were very rare and few in between. So they control everything and they control from the schools. It happened to me, you know, when I was in fifth grade, I remember this was the time, fifth grade is a time when kids in Poland had to start learning Russian language. become part like math, Polish, physics, mathematics, you had to learn also Russian. So me not being the greatest student, I got pissed off.

I hardly have a time and the ability to do homework from these math, physics, the Polish language, and now it's Russian, so I just don't like it. And I piped up at the school, I say, why do they teach us? The Russian language, we don't speak Polish very well yet. And on the top of it is a language of occupiers. My grandmother always called the Russian as occupiers at that time. So I didn't think much of it. There was nothing political at the time about it.

But the repercussions were because the teacher walked right away to my bench and grabbed me by my ear and holding my ear through the hall hallway, took me to principal's office, explained what happened. The principal got on the phone and called police. So the police came, but on the way to school, they stopped by mom. This is fifth grade? Fifth grade, yes.

So, well, there was a fifth grade, it's like 12, I guess. Something like that, yeah. So they detained my mother. They brought her with them. So there was two secret police. There was two police in uniform. There was four of them. My mom was sitting in the middle, I guess, in this small car they were driving.

So they came, they started yelling at us, you know, and they told my mom very straight. If you don't instill more love to socialism in your kids, we're going to take them away. We will educate them the right way. And, you know, don't do it. There won't be any warning. If we run across that similar situation like this, you're as a parent. Your parenting will be done.

My mom cried. I cried because I didn't know why my mom was crying. I was scared. but being kid, I really didn't still conceptualize what was really happening until later my mom explained to me. But this is something that from then on, my mom was always, before I was going to school, say, do not talk politics at school.

Do not, because they want to harm our family. Do not talk politics. And that was before we were leaving the school in the morning, to school in the morning. Every time I had this just a reminder, It tells you the fear people were living in of the totalitarian socialist state. And that was not the exception. I mean, all my friends were giving the same advice.

When I talked to them, they said, well, like, my mom told me not to talk about politics because it's dangerous. So yeah, that's happened. Wow. You know, you see a lot of that going on on the West Coast right now, you know, with that. And I mean, Washington, you know, if you don't subscribe to the... to the gender confusion stuff that's going on right now, then the state will come in, take your kids.

That's your kids, yes. And also the cases where actually kids were being converted in their gender. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, behind parents back. The parents even didn't know about it. So, and I'm aware of the case where a girl, where the boy was transitioned behind parents back, and eventually he committed suicide,

because of all the things. You know, this is something that is very tragic. But I think we need to stand up to it. We need to understand what is going on. We need to understand that normalization of depravity, especially if you have a therapist, that they are not allowed to treat mental illness because it's politically incorrect.

And you can lose your license. It tells you how far some of the groups in our society have fallen. That's pure evil. This is what I'm talking about. This is not the struggle between the Republicans and Democrats. Really, there are good people on both sides. This is struggle evil against good, good against evil. And evil is not an intellectual concept.

It's not something you just think about. Evil is real, and we face real dangerous times right now just seem like sometimes the evil side, the evil has upper hand. But, you know, I'm looking with hope, and I understand that this is not going to take roots in America. American psyche is much stronger than that. You can throw these things on some people. Some wicked people will cave in, but America's and American people will not. that freedom on which America was born,

from which was born, the quest for freedom, quest for the being strong, independent, is much stronger than evil. We will win. America will win. And so when you moved in with your father and his, was his wife? Yeah, I always learned my technique too. How to extort sandwiches.

By this time I was extorting wines, wine and drinks from other kids at school. Well, it didn't start it this way. I just didn't know much better. I was doing boxing at the time. I was training box. And I decided to... I remember one time on the football field, soccer field, there was some little kid making...

Not really little kid, but he was like my age making fun of girls. So I was trying to be a tough guy, our guy, but just knock him out. Well, I didn't know. The guy was part of the gang at school. See, in Warsaw, they had those gangs. So I then, they surrounded me and say, okay, well, we just hit our guy, so we're going to go and we need to talk. Well, I didn't wait.

I just knocked another one. So that just put them on the back foot. But then they say, okay, now to mend our case, we'll cause you any problems, you just bring us a bottle of wine. So I say, a bottle of wine, I just knock on the next one of you. I'm not going to get shit from me. But then I was thinking like, hmm, that kind of work like I used to do with sandwiches, so maybe I should talk to them.

So I did get them wine. I did get them wine. And then we started extorting wine from other kids. So that's, that was the, again, violence works. It didn't work for you, means it didn't apply enough of it. It has no place in American society. I have to be open about it, and I have to state it openly. It wouldn't work here.

America is different. But at that time, it worked for me, so. So it lasted with your dad for about a year. Yeah. And then you got sent back at what age, 17 now? Yeah, no, that was like 17 going, yeah, 17 years old, yes. So, but before I get back to my mom, I finished my regular elementary school, and the high school that I went to was very sought after.

Only kids with the best grades could get to it. My grades was like the worst of the worst. But I had a father, communist father, so just take one visit the school. And as Tim, I was greeting like a hero at school, just come on in, pick your class, you know, what do you like to do? And so I was treated like very well. But again, it did last long because eventually they, his wife got tired of me. His kids got a lot of bumps and black eyes many times. So they just send me home.

And then I started my life back again with my mom. How was it starting your life back again? with their mom? Well, there was, again, I have found the memories of my childhood. So today when I look at it back, yeah, it was poor, it was violent, but when I also, I have the nostalgia for it. So when I came back home, I didn't go back to do boxing. My home at that time was in Zelenagura, small town.

So I didn't go back to the boxing because the first Karate Kukushin, Kukushin, you Kim Kai was born in Jol Nagura, in the town. So I said, I need to get to it. But because you have to be 18 to join, I took my school ID and I scraped the date and I changed my date one year earlier. So I was actually 18. So I didn't tell my mom about it

because my mom was very strict about these things. And I said, I told my mom that I want to go there, but we couldn't afford it. But she said this, If you stop drinking and stop smoking, as I was drinking a smoker, if you stop drinking and smoking and use, I see your, try to pay for your training, I will help you. So then I was selling the, what do you call it, like papers, you get the papers, like recycling. I was doing the recycling and I was just getting money for it.

You could do it in Poland. It took a lot of stuff to carry heavy stuff to make meaningful. money. But I learned I can steal the newspapers, the stag of newspapers, because in the morning, it was like six, five o'clock in the morning, there was no electronics at the time, there was no internet. So they just throw those newspapers by the places where they were being sold. So I just wait until the guy left and just grabbed a couple of these bags, each one, maybe like five, six kilograms, that's a lot of heavyweight. And I just ran away with it. I hid in my basement. And after two, three days, I just ran.

up to the place where they were buying the recycling and just started making money just to supplement my karate training. And it worked. My mom's seen it and she's seen that I tried. I stopped drinking, I stopped smoking, just like this, just one day, I stopped. And I started drinking Karate Kikikishinkai. It was fun and it was something that... I've very found memories of it.

And that's how my life moved. And then you found yourself in prison. I found myself in prison after that was 1978. And that was when John Paul II came to Poland. And at that time when you were watching on official TV, his interaction with people, you would think, the way that was explained by communists

was one of the crazy guy in a funny dress showed up and few people showed up to talk to him. And when the TV shows, yeah, a few people here, a few people there, but even more protesters. Like, yeah, the pub is bad. And that was the communist propaganda. If you look today and some of the pictures on internet, There were masses.

They were, if not millions, there were hundreds of thousands people coming to meet the Pope. But you didn't know it from official press, from fake news media in Poland at the time. The impression was, there's nobody interested in just funny dude in the white skirt.

That's the way how it was explained. But that was very meaningful for Polish nation because by this time, the matter what the fake news, media say, people do not believe that. If they say this is white, people will usually comment that it's got to be black because the communists say is white. But people had the chance to gather together in those meetings where thousands of us show

up to meet the Pope. And they had the chance to see that there's not only a few of them, there's most of them. There's entire society, you know, that opposing that depravity and that socialist And they start talking. They start dreaming again. And the words that I still remember that Pop said was, you know, don't be afraid. Stand up. Get up your knees.

Fight for your rights. Don't be afraid. This is why the Vice President Jay DeVas, when he said the same thing to European Marxist goons in that room during that visit, he was not speaking to those turds and baboons sitting there. He was speaking to people in the European Union. Stand up, fight for your rights. Don't let these goons

and baboons bully you. So that's those words what the J.D. Vice President J.D. Van said resonated with me and still resonate. What was it that got you in prison?

So after John Paul the second visit, in 1978, people start actually organizing. They say, you know what, he's right. We don't need to live on our knees. It's time to get up.

It's time to fight for our rights. We don't need to be afraid. And they start organizing groups in the different places. And eventually, they say, why don't we just legalize our organization as a trade union because mostly there were workplaces,

factories. So let's organize and let's legalize. Let's just. say, fuck the communism, let's make your organization independent from Communist Party. And they did, so they start building slowly. And of course

that, it was a price to pay too, the persecution, the prison times. Sometimes people were beaten to death or suicided. So that's, but there was the price worth to pay. What do you mean suicided? Well, for example, I'll give you a student.

I think it was 1978. His name was Pius. So he was he was active in opposition working, trying to he was a student, so he was found dead and official cause of death, he followed the stairs. So there was many cases like

this. So they were not afraid to go and kill people. Just like my father would do it if he had opportunity or he was required to do it. I have no doubt that he would

if he wouldn't do it himself, he would find somebody to do it. So that was normal. But people started organizing. And in 1980, finally, the people had so much, so enough of the socialist state, they started doing strikes. They went on strikes here, there

in Gdynes, Gdina, and eventually the entire economy started collapsing. So communist government at the time in socialist Poland, say, okay, let's go get some agreement. Let's just do something. Let's try to work it out. So you guys can go to work.

We try to change the socialists on being more humane. We now know how to fix the socialism. We make socialists better now, like every six years. So people say, well, no, not really. We need to be recognized as a trade union's

solidarity. They call themselves solidarity. So that trade union was born. Eventually the government had to give in and approve. It was the first organization in the entire Warsaw Pact that was totally independent from Communist Party. That was the first one.

It was the first break that was kicked out from the communist, the terror war. Poland did it. And eventually the entire war crumbled. So yeah, so this is how it started. But they never gave up. They start making lists of people inconvenient to socialist state. And eventually in December 13, 1980, they imposed martial law. So at midnight, they were mass arrests people from the Middle East.

There were secret police, the army involved in the regular police. They were raiding apartments across entire Poland, arresting people, detaining them. There was at midnight. I remember I was in the Solidarity headquarters at the time, the trade union movement, which turned into the social movement. I was on the phone with friend with Austria, at the midnight just click, everything is gone. I didn't think much of it because communist, socialist equipment didn't work well anyway. So it was like, well, another, I call him maybe later.

And then people start coming into our building headquarters, say, hey, my son was arrested, or my father and my mother were arrested. Sometimes they were asking people living kids in the apartments with no supervision. So that was really bad because all the telephones, radio, everything was cut at midnight. So people died. People have a heart attack or emergency. They had no means to get help. And people were shoved into the back in their apartments.

You could not be on the street past certain time. If you were, you could be arrested and you were most likely arrested. And this is where I got even more involved. This is where I started getting involved in underground structures and building the resistance to communist takeover through martial law of entire Poland. And, yeah, there was a lot of people arrested. A lot of people were shot and killed. but they were able to subdue the society yet for some time.

And this is what I got involved. And I started building the structures eventually where we got caught. We started printing a dueleton. A bulletin, yes. It was behind the censorship of official fake news media. So they was basically challenged them. They were saying one thing. But what we are doing basically collecting the names of people who were arrested, detained, sent to internment camps, and what happened to them, the court cases.

So this is what we're printing. It was very dangerous for a communist state. Anything beyond what they can't censor as perceived by socialists as very dangerous to their detrimental to their power. So, of course, they track us down and I got arrested. And I call it bulletin, they call it newspaper, but it was just a leaflet. It was a leaflet with two, I think two pages maybe. But it was dangerous enough to give me three years prison sentence. How did they arrest you?

You arrest me when I came on the point, because we didn't know much about how underground works and how to protect ourselves. So we printed out and just went on the street and we're giving to the people. So they track us down and say, okay, these guys are passing those illegal newspapers. So I guess they follow us. And I walked to the point because we're supposed to print the next batch of the newspaper. Then as I as soon as I knock on the door, it was just like people here are running from upstairs, from downstairs. the doors open with the gun in my face.

I was like, whoa, okay. They throw me on the ground and after a few kicks, they handcuff me and they dragged me by my feet to the apartment, they shut the door. And they were waiting, they were hoping that some of the olds will show up. And so

one of those Secret Service guns, he was sitting in the chair like I see right here, but he put me in front of it and put his feet on me and just like, I was working as a foot, stool for his feet for quite a few hours. And then nobody showed up because it was only us.

So they took me back to political, not political, they took me to secret police headquarters in my city. That was my first really stand with the communism and prison. And you were there for three years. No, I was there less than that because there was amnesty. So after around a year and a half, they kind of start releasing us right before the second visit of Pope to Poland. He demanded that before he visits Poland, they need to instill amnesty for political prisoners.

So they slowly start releasing them. What was it like in prison? Well, there was like, I didn't have no problems. I just, if I had to beat somebody up, I did. I didn't have a scruples about it. I remember the first one, even when I was arrested, they put me into this holding tank with other prisoners. And this is normal technique of secret police. They will keep you not freezing, but they keep you cold.

They will not keep you starving, but they will keep you hungry. So they slowly, they will break down your resistance that way. You are easier to fall down. and they they throw me like 2 o'clock in the morning was dark, no windows so I just like didn't know even where to go or somebody said I just go along the wall

find out empty spots, see down, sleep you're gonna figure it out tomorrow I'll say okay so we're up tomorrow in the morning and this big dude comes up and say hey I didn't eat quite enough so I'm going to eat your breakfast today you are well fed I guess you just came back from outside I'm going to eat your breakfast today.

So I didn't have much experience with prison time. So I figured out I just knock him out and just assert myself that nobody's going to eat my breakfast. So I knocked him out. So he was laying there and I was thinking like, I said, well, I'm going to knock his front teeth out and I'm going to make a necklace out of it. So actually I woke up to him.

I very carefully lift his upper lip and just drove his two front teeth in, just pulled them out. And, well, I got caught with them. I think in the next prison time, because when they transferred me to a real prison, they started, like, searching us much better, and they found my teeth.

So I'm sorry, I don't have my necklace. But that was the, that was the... But, you know, like, never bothered. Nobody never bothered me with taking my breakfast. It would be very unlikely in prison that somebody, like, real prison. would just go and try to take your breakfast. There was some punk who think he's somebody.

But he was threatening, yeah, when you go to real prison, I'm going to pass to these guys, and they're going to fuck you up. I was like, all right, you say it again, I'm going to knock your bottom teeth out. You want that? He let me along. So then I was transferred to eventually when they,

when they finish with me, they transformed into this intermediate prison where I was waiting for my sentence. sentencing. And then after that, they took me to political prisoner prison, political prison on Russian border in city, Hrubierschouf. That's where the pictures in my book and my websites are from, because when I visit that prison in 2022, I had a chance actually to go inside and tour a place where I spend my time as a prisoner. Wow. Yeah. What was it like in that prison? Was there like a re-education program or

nine. That was, but it was not an official education program. Yeah. So from intermediate prison, I was transferred to the, after sentencing, to that political prisoner. But then they kept, there was known, I wonder the harshest prisons in Poland. This is where they kept political prisoners. They were kept them all over the Poland, but it was like a most known harsh prison. And then they, so this is where I met people, professors, engineers, people with a statue that accomplished something in their life, and even politicians. So that was very educational for me. It stopped being, I didn't think about it as the punishment.

It was more like education for me. I learned about the real history of Poland that was... And I was, I learned how twisted the official history of Poland was. So that helped me, and this is the way, this is what shaped me in the big part to who I am today. So there was, I meant a lot of brave people. When I was sitting in prison, I didn't have a family, I didn't have a wife or kids. Now we have kids, so we know how it is, I understand how it was difficult for all those engineers,

all those professors who never had contact with prison and law enforcement, suddenly being on the receiving end, sitting in prison, and worrying about their wives, their kids, and still not giving up, still fighting the system even from prison. For me, that was inspiration. So, yeah. I was so inspired that eventually the prison administration sent the letter to my, my mother that basically come and help out because he's, I'm not following the rules and my behavior is highly negative in not up to standard to socialist regulations and stuff.

So I still have it, I need to find it because we just found it maybe like a year ago and I said, okay, I'm going to keep it and I put someone in the safe place, but I don't know where the safe place is now. But I have that letter from prison administration to my mom calling her and asking to influence me, come here and talk to me. So it was funny because they got extra visit from my mom. I didn't expect that. Get a visit once a month.

And suddenly my mom shows us, hey, you need to go and visit mom. So my mom sees her crying and say, well, I'm very proud of you. I said, well, I'm sure you are, but what's up? She said, well, this. And she just pulled this letter up. I'm very proud, twice as proud now. So keep doing what you're doing. Don't give him.

So yeah. And then we were actually started fighting back. I remember we went on the hunger strike. So we're like for, I don't remember three weeks or month where we didn't refuse to eat. We were trying to, it started from beatings that so one of the political, some of the political prisoners got beat up by guards. So we're not hunger strike. But then we say, okay, well, we are ready for like eight, nine days.

So why don't we just attach the request for status of political prisoners? We are political prisoners. So let's fight for that. So we wrote the letter to the administration that the strike will continue until we receive that. Until we receive the status of political prisoner. And they start bringing our strike, starting with older, more sick prisoners. Some professors were taking to the room and say, like, the way, by the Polish regulation at the time, they have to feed you forcefully, feed you after, I think, two weeks.

So they start that. The way they do it is the big pipe. It looks like a vacuum pipe, a little bit smaller, corrugated pipe and the funnel on the end. So they handcuffed you to the chair, they took this pipe, and they showed the thing up to your stomach, And then they have a big, what, you know, call it like big thing where they cook stuff, like a yellow glue, glue, and they just put it into your stomach. So what they did is like with older people, they say, look, there's nobody here. It's just you and us.

So instead of us shoving this thick, big pipe in your stomach, why don't you just take this? little cab so I won't have to put it in, just drink it. People who, well, some of the older people say, well, this is very painful. So, well, I just drink it here. I'm still on strike. So usually they don't even let them finish that drink, because as soon as he grabbed that cap, put in his mouth and make two, three sips of it,

say, okay, now you are no hunger strike. You feed yourself. Your hunger strike is over. And in transport to different prison or different pavilion or whatever, they just start separating these people. So a lot of people went this way. They were like treated this way.

But eventually the letter from the church, from Catholic Church in Poland came in, guys, you will not get status of political prisoner. You can accomplish other things, but does not. You need to stop that because you are wasting yourself. Because there were people taken to hospitales to emergency rooms because of that. And that's how we, eventually the strike is over.

We will stop the hunger strike. What were you guys, how would the hunger strike have worked if they were censoring all the media? How would anybody know you guys run around? Well, we have the priest that was coming to, they were allowed once a week on Sundays the priest to come in. And the friend who was passing him the information was, he's friend of my who I'm still, we are still friends.

And that's how the information was getting out. So they would leak it to a priest and then the priest would disseminate it through the church. To the church and to the people. Passed to underground because Poland at the time already had pretty strong underground structures. They were eventually infiltrated by the secret police but they were working and they were still effective. So there was being spread out through alternate media. So basically the fake news media of course, we know what to expect. There were still

there's bulletins like mine. They were being printed and disseminated to people or being just left thrown the street here. So people could pick it up and read it. That thing spread like wildfire. But also, you know, there's another...

What would the consequences be? If they caught you with it? No, no, no, no. What would the consequences be for the government if people knew that... I mean, they're already arresting. They shut down communications at midnight that day.

Right. And did mass arrests. Right. And so what I guess what I'm asking is what would the consequences have been for the government when the church would leak out that there was a hunger strike? That would be not so much within the country but outside. The Western media, yes, the Radio Free Europe, Radio Voice of America. Your Voice of America is in my life plays a very important.

instrumental role because the things that are starting learning about the communist regime, about the real history of Poland was started with the voice of America where it was transmitted to Poland with real true information, what was happening in Poland, what was the real Polish history, was very interesting, but it was illegal to listen to it. So they did not want this information governor to leak outside, besides the sanction against communist government by President Reagan was paying big role and eventually collapse of the communism and socialism in Poland. But yeah, there were repercussions, they were afraid, and they had enough.

People were fighting them on every steps they could, maybe not physically but intellectually. They call it in Poland it was coined the name internal immigration. So basically people were shutting themselves down away from the government, not cooperating with them and the entire economy was going to shit. So they did not want that. Eventually they realized that they cannot, this minority, you didn't know, listening to the fake news media but that minority cannot rule over the majority that people were realizing there's more and more of them versus the small group of elites, socialists elites in Poland.

So yeah, they were afraid. They didn't want that. And then eventually that thing collapsed. Wow, so you were part of the collapse? I was part of the collapse. Well, by this time I was already in Poland. But it totally collapsed in 19, I believe, 1987.

This is where the transition from communist, from the totalitarian system happened towards democracy. By this time, I was already living my American dream in America. And how did you get out of prison? So was the Pope. The pub was coming in and they started releasing political prisoners. So after coming out, it's actually a funny story because I was arrested in the wintertime. So all the clothes I had was just winter, like a big, old coat, you know, big boots,

the strings were already broken, the hat, the ball, I mean the cap, and I remember they let me out, and they say, okay, this is your clothes. Now, there's a ticket to your city and buy, get out. So when I left, I looked like a bomb, you know. So I remember I was walking, like, show you my shoes because they're falling. They have strings in it. So until I get to the town, I had to walk from prison, maybe like three miles to town to get the train and they change the train. So, yeah, I do look like a bomb.

And people are like, look at this guy. No, it has a bomb. In Poland, it was normal for people, even if they went to take traffic. out. They wanted to look good. They wanted to dress them. They just dressed themselves so they look decent. There was not like sweatpants or something. I do it now, right? But at that time you always put something, some nice clothes, whatever you were outside. Like for me, I remember, I have a special clothes for the Sundays to go to church, like a church clothes that I was not allowed to wear at home or anywhere else except going to church because it was a special occasion.

So people are at that. So seeing me as a bomb, we're not working this shoes in untie. shoes, you know, big jacket in the summertime. It was, I think, outside for a lot of Polish people there. So, yeah. Where did you go? Do you want back? I walked to the train station. Then I took the train to my city.

And there was no cell phones at the time. So, like, my mom didn't even know anything. And, yeah, I just took the... I didn't have money to pay for the bus ticket. So from the train station, I just took, part of it started walking, but it was so unpleasant and eventually I'll jump on that bus and say like two, three stops. I just went and then I walked back home. That was it.

So my mom was very happy, she couldn't believe, you know, my siblings too. But yeah, that was it. And now I thought, okay, so now I'm done with prison. What's next? So try to find the job, try to do something, try to set my life again. And of course, I resume training. The Taekwondo and kickboxing, I switch Kiyokushinkai to Taekwondo

because I like it better. I like the people there. They have a similar mentality to mine. They didn't mind to fight. They like to fight on the streets. So there was just more like a good group of people. You know, less sport, more fights. And so I wouldn't try to resume my life.

but then coming out from the trainings very often I had a police car or sometimes civilian cars pulled in get handcuffed thrown in the car drove around the town for a few hours sometimes drove outside the town and drop or usually they dropped me of outside of town and then I had to walk back home

but it was not so much to terrorize me they knew they cannot terrorize me but they was to terrorize people around me I say yeah you know what don't do that don't hang out with this guy And eventually At daytime was okay I can take a bus or something

and go back home But at night where the bus is not working Sometimes I had to work for five miles To home So eventually I decided One day I may not come back from those excursions It's time to go Time to leave

And I went to US Embassy Asked for help I went to US Embassy Because at that time America was it always is but it's that beacon of freedom this is where people look up to

I remember dreaming like why Poland cannot be like America you know and what happened to when I was going to this very exclusive school in Warsaw and my father set it up for me my I had to travel change the buses

and the change the bus was the stop was by the US embassy so I remember I love just to go up there because at that time they had those glass displays where they have pictures from America. They were information in America. So I remember, even before the marshal, even before I got political,

I just loved to look at it and see, wow, I love to dream. So sometimes it was so nice that I remember missing the bus. I said, fuck this bus. I want to read this. So I did read that, and I was always fascinated. I would like to peek through the fence

and they see the big, powerful, beautiful cars. I was like, my, this is it. This is the country. Those are the free people. Why aren't we that? Today those glass displays are taking down for security reason, I guess. And I still, when I went last time I've seen,

I went up there because for me is very nostalgic. But, yeah, that was gone. Wow. And so you got, you put in. Yeah, I told them what happened and I said I would like to just, I would like to escape Poland. I need help. You know, I didn't even, the wildest dream, I would think they would allow me to come live in America. It was just like, well, but I have to try.

So I went to ask and I find out, like to, you know, they asked for documents and all that stuff I did. and I got like within I think very short time like a document stating that yes the visa will be granted to me when I get Polish passport so I basically that was normal procedure

at the time and a lot of political refugees came to this way to either to America or different countries my choice was always America and so once I got that promise I could apply with that I could apply for passport

Otherwise, you cannot get the passport in Poland. So with this, I applied for passport. The passport was given to me. And I got a visa, got the green card. Actually, I-94. That was the first document, which was a lighter exchange for green card. Eventually, I became U.S. citizen.

But, yeah, so this is where my journey became. There's one thing I would like to mention, two, during Marshall Lowe. You know, when everything was banned, like the solidarity, insignia, solidarity, like lapel pants, they were just forbidden, you could not wear it. So people start wearing American flag. As a resistance, as a show, yeah, we are free, you know, we want to be free. So I remember that.

So we all had the American flags. Communists got tired of it. I remember my city because at the Marshall Roadblocks, they had the roadblocks. So they, once every while, they stop bus or something. Everybody has to disembark. They were checking documents. And so if they found the solidarity trading union pain, you could get beat up and hold your ass to jail.

But with American flag, they just could not really do that much. At least they did not. To the point. Because I remember with the time that I got stopped on the checkpoint, when they pull us out, they rip our flags, American flags off, and they stump them in the ground. So the funny, that's not funny, but, so we went back on the bus, and then the guy, as the bus was moving,

the guy said, yeah, fuck you, we're going to get more, we're going to buy more American flags. And when they stopped the bus, they pull everybody out, and they grabbed that. I think, I don't think even was the guy who mouth off. to them. They just picked the first guy that could easier grab. They grab him, they drag him, and they drag him to the police van while beating him with those rubber sticks all the way on the way to it. So now you can leave. So we're like, okay, well, maybe we don't say anything. We just

buy new American flags. So yeah, that American flag was always for us, for many of us, that become of freedom, that drive. And then I came to live here. Did any of your siblings or your mother come with you? No, no, they stay. That time they stay there. And my sister is still there. She's still, she's living her own life. She has her own business now.

And they have a peaceful, nice life, so they enjoy it. And I'm here. When I was living Poland, I was saying goodbye to Poland forever. I had my passport. I'm going to post on my website. My passport is only one way. So it's a stabbing it. You can cross Polish border one time only.

So I say, well, that's it. Wow. Was it hard to say good goodbye? Well, I was anxious. Not really that much, but it was more difficult for my family, my mom, because the way we understood, we're never going to see each other. So for me, it was like, well, you know, I have to go because if I don't, then I may not last long.

And yeah, I remember. I was just like, I've had a bag of my clothes. And I had the $20, because you had to have a $20. And I walked up to the plane and left. That was it. Wow. So, yeah, that's how my journey started. The funny thing is that I always was dreaming about having a tape recorder,

like a little tiny tape recorder, never had one. So I say, well, you know what? I have $20 in Germany because I flew to Germany. He stayed in Germany for like three weeks. And I said, I go and buy me one. So all $20 I spend on the tape recorder. So when I landed in New York, I had only 10. The change that I got for the tape recorder was 10 Phoenix.

So this is like, I think, five cents. It was German coin. So that's how I landed in New York. bag of clothes. And I didn't speak English. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll get into the USA. Yeah, that's the...

No, you can cut out from it, whatever you want to cut out, but... We're not cut anything. Yeah. Yeah. That's... Wow. Well, you know, like my story, whether in the book or taught here, I don't want people see as a word. The guy just came and bitch about the socialism and communism.

We all know the communists bad. I want them to be this to be a prism, a lens. So they can see America maybe from different vantage point. Because I see very often people, especially the younger generation educated with this entire American universities, they hate us. I would right hate America. You know, and so I want them to see the America. through, I would say, different eyes, you know, different vantage point.

So maybe they can change their mind. Because, you know, I tell you, I've some of the hate towards America have seen from our own citizens. I didn't see that the terrorists we were hunting in the Middle East. So that's what is disturbing for me. Not all, but I did run across people with so much hate towards America, our own citizens. And this is a product of these universities, this anti-American universities, this Marxist, with Marxist communist band and communist professors and teachers.

Jeez. Yeah. We did a damn good job painting that picture. What's that? You did a damn good job painting that picture. All right, Drago, we're back from the break. And so a couple of interesting conversations we got a revisit that happened off camera. One, you said you're a bad student.

now you're a software engineer? Yes. Well, you know, I was a bad student because I think that I didn't like to learn. And that was my I think maybe my personal challenge to stay focused on something

and especially something that I didn't like to do it. I like to play soccer. I like to cakebox. I like to fight. So I didn't have, I was not the best student. But yeah, this is like software engineering is fascinating. It's like having a puzzle and you solve the puzzle and it trains your brain to memorize things, to remember things and using the tools.

It is fascinating and you build things. You know, just like you are designer. And software engineering is more like an art than it. It's a science, but it's also big art involving it because you can solve the problem. It's about solving the problems. And you can solve the problems in so many ways, so many different things you can do. to accomplish your task. It's fantastic. I love it.

I mean, this is something that was very fascinating to me. Matter of fact, the way I started it was in the SEAL teams. So I was the only SEAL who having a cruise box with gas, have another cruise box with books and another one with full computer. There were no laptops at the time. Maybe they were, but I couldn't afford one. So I had a big monitor, big computer, keyboard, mouse, and I traveled with it.

If we deployed to Germany or to Bosnia, I had that all Shabang with me. Matter of fact, when we came back from deployment, we were carrying guns back into the SEAL teams. So we picked the case with the guns with the guy, just carried it in, then pick my case to carry to my cage and say, what the fuck is in this box? Do you have a guns in it or something? I say, no, it's just my laptop and my books. Because there was no internet at that time, so I had to have a book, so I carry books with me. Damn.

But I love it. It's a fascinating world. And then we had a conversation, too. We have to get this about taekwondo. And I was talking about Palmer Lucky's cameras and then somehow that morphed or a helmet. And then somehow that morphed into, oh yeah, morphed into cameras. And then basically you guys critiquing yourself on the street. Right.

We're talking about the cameras. Yes. When I was growing up, there was no cameras. You can have a camera, maybe like the one with this little crank on it. And it was hard to get, like, I never had one. And I didn't know even anybody who had one. So for us to progress in fighting, in kickboxing, in Tequando, we just need to critique each other.

So a matter of fact, this is why I switch from Karate Kyokushinkai to Tequhondo at the time. It's not like this today. I know I don't want to offend anybody. who is practicing Taekwondo today in Poland. Today Taekwondo is very inclusive to all kinds of people and is very, very, I would say, civilized. It's very not only educational but also very healthy. But at that time, you know, we just decide to,

especially when our teacher from Laos claim and was telling us that, you know, fight on the ring is one thing. is fairly safe. But you need to be good, we want to be good fighter. You need to fight on the street. Well, he didn't have to say

twice to us dead. We just like, okay, right on, let's do it. So the way we did it, it was just pick the people on the street who looked more rough or like trying to, somebody who was willing to fight,

and it was not difficult to find people like this in Poland at the time. So we go and the way we did it is like, okay, so I'm going to go first, I'm going to be, up this guy and you guys will watch this is what I'm going to do I'm going to use this

technique this technique this technique and you grade me basically there were there were the cameras of our the eyes of my fellow buddies from Taekwondo there were the cameras of our times so you know you got up there you use your technique you beat the guy up and again I'm not proud of it today but I have to say clearly but that was the way I lived the life at the time. And you critic me. And so after the fight was over, the guy was laying unconscious, the guys come in and say, okay, well, you miss your technique right there. You could emphasize a little bit more. That kick was not very strong or you missed the guy here where you could actually do more damage or do this, this. So that was our techniques. And that's how we, we got really good at it.

We got really good at it to the point that we didn't look for us single people anymore. We just We just wanted like, let's challenge ourselves. They just beat two people at the time. So sometimes it was difficult to find, like a group of people to beat up. So if we found one, usually it was like whoever Cal first was able to beat them up. Sometimes it was so hard to tell, because we were like, yeah, the mind, the mind, we had to draw the straws who would be beating them up. And this is how we practiced.

So we just woke up to the guy who started a fight. And in Poland again, it was not very difficult. to do it because almost everybody was fighting everywhere. And then we practiced our technique or two, three guys. And it was become more actually interesting. Then beating just one of the guy, it was a thorough simple thing. But now we have two or three guys. And now you can show your art, I would say.

You can show your way of how you master your techniques, your reaction time and all that stuff. So that was very interesting. And some of them, you know, we didn't know, we didn't pick people who, because you couldn't know if the guy the guys to beat up were martial artists too or not but we did we just like taking chances and sometimes the guy had actually martial

training was or boxer or wrestler so they were hard to beat up sometimes you know sometimes like you have two three guys and one of them is like you know it's not reacting to your punches you have to actually strain yourself to knock the guy out but that was our training

The cameras were our eyes and the review was by our critique how the fight went. Wow. That was, you know what, again. Whose idea was the safety pin? I don't know where it came from, but yeah, there was came from,

you know, when you were fighting in Poland, when I was fighting in Poland, I learned very quickly that and I'm sure you experienced that when you started to fight, the guy against BW, but I said, okay, I had enough, thank you, you better. Let me walk away, I'm fine.

That's a very dangerous thing to do. What I learned very quickly, because usually the guy recover and attack you again or come back with his friends. So then you have a fight on your hands, or even more people to beat up. So when we fight, when you used to fight there, we used to fight until the guy stopped moving.

So it's not really, I had enough, enough, enough. No, no, no, you don't tell me to end when I end the fight. I will tell you when I end the fight. Most likely, you won't just be moving again. So you just beat the guy until he doesn't move, right? No, he falls down, doesn't move. But then we find out, and it happened to me, actually, that one of the guys, I think, had a thong, fall in,

and he was already getting turning blue. And I panic, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what happened. And thanks God there was a nurse. And she said, give me a safety pen. Give me a safety. Somebody's safety pen. So somebody puts her safety pen and she kind of like, hook his tongue and pull it out,

roll him to the side. It was good. And she said, if something like this happened, you know, you need to make sure that his tongue doesn't, that person's tongue doesn't fall in. So I say, well, that's pretty cool. But, you know, if you need to run and what do you do? Well, I guess you take the safety pen and paint. his tongue to his lower lip, and that he will leave too.

So this is how we start doing it. And sometimes, police in Poland at that time seldom intervene. People were so used to violence there that if there was a fight on the street and you could see two, three fights when you walk through town, usually. People just across the street, go around you and keep walking down. It's not my business. Two people, three people are fighting. Let them fight it out, let them duck it out and just move on.

But sometimes when police was coming, then you have to leave unconscious guy on the street. So we learn very quickly that the best way is just to use the safety pen, pull his tongue out, pin it to the lower lip, rolling him to the side and just leave him there. He will leave. He is not going to die. So that was kind of like a technique that we learned very quickly. And it's effective, it's life-saving technique. I think the last one I applied in Horton Plaza in San Diego, already being a seal. I have to say

it never occurred to beat a pin up guy's tongue to his lip after I beat him up so it doesn't choke to that I didn't think either until this guy almost die on my eyes so that's I learned there's a safer way

I treat the safety pen as a safety device you know you just ensure the guy doesn't die that he's fairly safe that his tongue pen to them to his lower lip It's not going to hurt him. You know, he wake up and I never had anybody complain about, well, maybe they never saw the after.

But it was effective, 100% I guess. So that worked, yeah. So let's get to, so you came to America, you had $20. In Germany. In Germany. In Germany. On the tape recorder. You bought the tape recorder.

Yes. I think you said five cents. Five Phoenix. So Phoenix is like German mark, has 100 Phoenix. So I had the five phoenix in my pocket bag of clothes from like old clothes from 1970. So whatever my mom could, you know, prepare for me. So I had a sweater. I think I still have it till today somewhere in the closet because I didn't want to throw it away.

With my mom made by his hand, by her hands. So that's, yeah, that's how I came to America. knowing nothing, knowing no English, only knowing that America is a free country, the people are living free here, and I can live as a free man here on this land, and hopefully one day become American citizen if I'm good enough.

Where do you go? No family, no money, no English, no where to live. People were waiting for me, actually. So when I came in, because I came legally, they organized like an apartment for me. They organized the first, help me find the first job. You know, I didn't complain

or how could I complain? I got the job as a janitor and I was happy as I can be. Sean, I could pay for my own apartment, my own money. I didn't have to borrow the money. I could buy my food, you know. And I was living in an apartment with air conditioning, with a, you know, telephone, there was something unusual in Poland.

And air conditioning, I only, I didn't even know how it works. I never seen air conditioning. I heard about this climatization in apartments, but having apartment with air conditioning. Good God, I felt like a king. You know, there was a project. There was an apartment was like $180 a month. And there was a bunch of, a lot of crimes, drugs and prostitution. But who cares?

You know, I had my own apartment. And I could afford it, I could live in it. And then, you know, so my goal became now to learn English and to get different job, get better job. And to start English because I was working as a janitor, so it was really, you know, physical work. So I had the cartoons in my back pocket. So I had a map in one hand and it's like, Jane loves Joe. Joe loves Jane. You know, I was just mapping the floors and that's like, okay.

So I need to memorize that. So this is how I learned, basically how I learned English at the time. And this is why my grammar sometimes is still like the fans of Rachel, my wife, she's like, hey, you don't say it this way. You have to say it a certain way. But yeah, this is how I started. This is how I learned English. Eventually, you know, I improve.

and I went to school but that were my first beginning and I tell you the patience of American friends who helped me who sent me in my life here I mean it's so incredible Sean I offended so many people

unintentionally not even knowing about it I remember I was invited by the church after the mass on Sunday in the room so I can, the parishioners can meet this new Polish immigrant and stuff in I can mingle with those great

people, great American friends so I walk into that room and the pastor came with a big plate of cookies and just like so happy, you know everybody is like smiling and happy so I took this cookie and Polish language is not such

sound like TH so somebody advised me to use F like thank you. That came out like, fuck you. And so when I took this cookie, and I knew that I say something wrong because right there, I had hear the gasps,

like everybody. So I'm holding this cookie and it's like, what the hell did I say wrong? I say, thank you, but now there was a fuck you. So but there's like older gentleman came out and said, look, what he's trying to say is, if he looks at me, say, thank you.

So I like, yes, that's what, So, you know, things like this, the Borad moments, I was invited to party, like swimming pool family party from the parishioners. And they have a grill set up and everything. So, of course, I want to represent myself the best I could and, you know, be that good American I want to be. I just want to look good. there. So I went and I found

the skimpis, the shortest shorts I could find I would call it banana hammock, I guess, today. And I thought, this is really cool. I will look really good. I think these people admire me. You know, that's like I really represent myself well.

So as soon as I walk into that pool, I can see a whistle and people being usher out of the swimming pooling behind the building somewhere. And somebody calls me, say, hey, come on here. We have a shorts for you. So they took me to their They gave me big shorts. I didn't argue.

I just like, yes, sir, yes, sir. You know, in Poland at the time, in 1980s, the shorts like we were today, only fat people and old people were. So there was no... If somebody seen you in those shorts, they would think that you are just like, weird guy.

So everybody was the skimpiest, the shortest, the smallest, the swimming trunks, the better. So I just didn't know. Another thing, too, like, I remember first few days. I was staying with all their family, parishioners in the church. So they sometimes give me a ride around Memphis.

And I was trying, and they give me a dictionary, a first dictionary. I have it today with their corrections on it. I have it in my home. Actually, I'm going to post on my website. So I was trying to tell them, impress them, that I'm learning English, I'm using this dictionary. So as we drive, I'm looking to say, this is house. It's like, yeah, yeah, it's good, you know.

This is men. This is woman. You know, and just like reading and trying to find out what it means. And they were pretty happy until we came, and I see the black guy walking on the street and just find out what is the black guy. Okay, this is an ugly word. It was not the ugly word.

It was the ugly word. You know, there's something very offensive to, to I guess anybody, to me too, but at the time I didn't know. And they almost wrecked the car. This woman jumped out and said, where did you, well, she's yelling me. I don't understand what.

She takes this dictionary from me and slowly, this is bad. No, no, no. Wow. And she scratched that word and wrote black men. I say, black men. This is black men. And, you know, it was the last thing on my mind in my heart

to offend an American or anybody, especially American, especially friends. So I just didn't know any better. So as you can see, my progressing through my learning how to live in American society, I took it stall on me too because I was trying to be so good. and sometimes they just backfired at me but there was never intentional

mistake maybe one when eventually I got the job as a sub-mechanic that's the story just in itself how I got the job and then so that mechanic the shop for a man invited me to say hey let's have a stage

today there'll be a couple other mechanics come in so let's go have a party say party yes so show up and we'll show up and we he gave me a steak Sean there was the first

first time in my life I seen that one big piece of meat in one piece so I'm looking at it there's like I think five or six of them but I'm so like Jim by this time I'll spoke

a little bit of English so it's like an entire town is coming here to the party or what she said no no it's just so are you telling me I can eat the whole steak in Poland when you had a meat you slice it like a

razor blade and you use the meat at least in my home not to fill yourself use the meat for the taste but you feel yourself with potatoes or bread so I'm just like how being an entire it was the first time I had entire

big chewing like a brick of meat in my life so I was so grateful to him so they knew I was doing kickboxing earlier and I said oh show us something you know something show us something you know we have a few beers I say okay I show you I show you the basic punch

what I like to punch people with and can I punch this wall? He said yeah sure I thought it's a concrete wall in Poland the walls are concrete or those cancary plates sound loud on this wall boom but there was a freaking

dry sheet wall so my fist went through one wall and went out in his bedroom on the other side that was embanked And I think, I would say, dude, I am so, Jim, I am so, so sorry. I didn't mean to destroy your house. I just wanted to show you now that the punch. I didn't think that, I thought there was a concrete wall.

And they thought it was funny. So, but I said, I'm going to get and fix it. But I say, no, no, no, that was fine. I will keep it for a while. So I have a story to tell. So, yeah, things like that were a little bit different. How old were you when you came to the U.S.? 24?

24 years old. No, 23, going 24. How long did it take you to learn English? I'm still learning English. Enough to be able to communicate. Yeah, but to make it come in it. I think it took me maybe to be fairly efficient to convey my thoughts. I think maybe six months, seven months.

But please remember, I had to do it on my own. So the bad is easier to learn the right way, then learn the bad way and then correct this. So I still make a lot of mistakes when I speak, and which is obvious to people around, maybe not for me so much, but my wife always says like, well, you know, you're just funny,

so I'm not going to correct you because sounds good, sounds funny, so keep going. So yeah, she's, she domesticated me. So I'm like fully, well, I consider myself now fully domesticated. She always, when you ask her, she will tell you that I'm still project under construction. So I'm still have edges to Polish, but I'm working on it.

So where did you go from New York? From New York, I went to Memphis. So Memphis Tennessee, this is where I started my American dream. And again, this is something that I always say it. I would never succeed. Maybe not the way I succeeded if not American people, if not American culture, if not the help I got from people who didn't know me from Adam. There were people coming to my apartment.

I had no furniture. So I was thinking, wow, my apartment is great. I can sleep on the floor. No, they brought me a bed. They brought me a shelf. Everything that I had is apartment I got from my American friends. They were coming to me bringing me clothes because the clothes that I had from like from 70s and really wasn't, didn't fit, I wouldn't fit between people.

So they were bringing me clothes. They were bringing me food. I think I had like $20 a week left after I pay my bills to buy food. So they were just checking my friegers coming and say, hey, you know what, I think you need this. Let me bring you some hamburger meat. Let me bring you a cereal. Well, with cereal itself, this is something that I never seen it before in my life.

And then when I was taken first time to shopping, to grocery shopping, for me, it was like a... going from the normal world into science fiction into science fiction movie right inside it. I've seen so many things. I never seen my life. It happened I was on the aisle with the cereal box. I didn't know what it was but it looks, these boxes look so nice, so good that I just loaded my whole card with the boxes. My American friends who helped me

with the shopping, they were just laughing inside. Dude, you're like okay, if you want it, yeah, you got it. I just, I just load my whole shopping car with the cereal. I was eating the cereal for a year later, but I learned to like it. So my favorite was the crispies. There's rice crisps. Yeah, yeah, I love that.

And then that one and the chocolate one. So there was like milk with it. I love that. How did you wind up at Memphis? Well, when I came to my journey started in Warsaw to Germany. In Germany, the political refugees, they had a center there, they're just only for political refugees, where we spend

time waiting for sponsor or somebody to help us assimilate in American society. So we had the people from a state department coming in through these three weeks telling about America, you know, what to expect in America, how to leave, what's the best way to go about things, what do we need to do when we arrive to America? So there was a great help. I was like sponge, trying to soak all the information. And then I remember I was calling the office and say, do I have any preferences where I would like to settle down in America?

I'll say, my preferences is to settle down in America. I don't care when we're putting. But if you ask, because I was speaking in Polish, if you ask, I would like to go somewhere where is hot, like hot, hat, I'm tired of being cold In Poland we didn't have a good clothes I was always freezing so sick and tired of being cold

put me somewhere where it's hot so it's like well what do you think about Memphis Tennessee so they took me to the map showed me the map do you know anything about Memphis Tennessee well I know I knew that Elvis Presley was from Memphis Tennessee so I told me

I know Elvis Presley is from Tennessee yeah great you know it but it's a hard up there I said yeah it's very hot I said, sign me up I'm in and they ship me to New York

back to Memphis this is where I started my life got my first job as a janitor then as a parts man then as a mechanic you know this funny things like I didn't have

I never had a car I didn't even know in Poland anybody any friend I did not have a friend in Poland who owned the car so but those are European cars

would you like to can you work on European cars absolutely Yes. So they got me on the interview. There was a shilling company of the shilling the Porsche, sub and Audi.

So the Porsche guy came in and said like, well, it's kind of expensive car. The guy doesn't speak English, know nothing about cars. So maybe we just set it, maybe not today. So then the Audi mechanic came in, the same thing. And then

we're waiting for the sub-mechanic to come in And I hear this big sound roar of the Halli Davidson where it's just running in the garage up there. The guy looking like a Sasquatch, maybe looks like seven feet tall walks in. I say, hey, so that guy? I like, yeah. A sub?

I said, yeah. He looked at the team Presley was a service manager at the time I still remember this name. He looks at a team and the manager said, I need a slave, sign him up. And here we are. So we become the really good friends, if not the best friends.

He told me everything about cars. I need to know. I was clueless. I had no idea. So he told me everything about sub. I became really good mechanic to the point that even Mercedes came later and asked me if I want to work for them. So this guy, there's the guy who, who invite me for the steak party when I broke his house with my fist.

So he, I remember trying to learn English. My English was still very difficult. I say, Jim, I have idea. You're going to read me the manuals, and I will record you and can listen to it. I thought he will kill me. It's like, what did you just say? I'm going to read you like a mama story to children.

I read you the mind. And on the top of the sub-cum, sub-manual? I say, yeah? He said, okay, but if you tell somebody, I'll fucking kill you. So I still have a James recording

somewhere there. Because what helped me, I was explaining to him that if I read the words and I'm listening at the same time, it's easier for me to understand what it is and also I'm learning English at the same time. So this is the guy

half-gangster and the guy who just wouldn't mind to go and just kill you if he had to and become like my bigger brother, you know, helping me out. So there's many things that happen later in my life

that would not happen if not this guy. I owe this guy so much. We lost contact after I left for the Navy. But if he is there, if he's listening up there, you know, Jimbo, I remember.

Wow. That's cool, man. It wouldn't surprise me if he's listening. What's that? It would not surprise me if he's listening. Hopefully, I know he had a son too, so they're just great people. I owe them so much. I owe Jimbo.

I think the way my career moved on in America is because this guy. So, yeah. Where did you go from? mechanics. From Memphis, straight to the Navy. How do the Navy pop on your radar? Well, you see, by this time, I already became

U.S. citizen. And I was living my American dream. I had everything I wanted. I was skydiving even. I was teaching skydiving. I was teaching AFF. I was AFF jump master. So, I was living my life out.

And then the war broke out, the first Persian war. So I say, I am American. And I have such a great life. So what can I do for my American friends and for America? I think I can serve in the war. I remember this funny thing because I decided to join the military. I didn't know Navy from Army.

For me, it was military, it was military. Army was everything. So I was just one day in the post office, and I see this draft cards where everybody needs to fill up for high school kids. So I say, oh, wow, I mean, they are recruiting people even from post offices. I fill it up. I sign up for the army. The war is on.

They're going to get me soon. So I fill it up, mailed it off, came back to my apartment. I was living with some other skydivers. And I start packing myself. I said, like, what are you doing? You cannot just move out. You know, we have a contract here that we had to pay the rent and stuff. No, no, no.

I say, I'm not moving out yet, but I'm packing myself because I'm going to war. I'm going to war to fight for America. And I was like, wait a minute. We didn't know anything. How did you sign it up? I said, I went to the post office. I filled it up. I sent it off.

And I'm just waiting for them to just come and get me. Well, I said, like that. It doesn't work like that. You need to go actually to recruiting office. And the actually letter came in that, well, thank you. But no, thank you. You are not required to fill this card. You are ready to all for that.

So I was like 32 at the time. So I say, okay, well, the war is going on and I want to pay my freedom back. So I want to help and support my country, my America. So I went to the Army Recruiting Office and I said, hey, this is who I am. This is what happened to me. This is why I'm here. And I want to join military. I want to go to war.

So it's like, where would you, okay, well, there's any unique preference. preferences, where would you like to serve? As you are, whoever goes first in combat, sign me up. I had no idea. But it's like, sign me up, whatever, go, I want to go to war, fight on behalf of America and American people. So they're like, okay, infantry. I say, right on, I don't know what infantry is, but if you say so, sign me up.

So they could proceed with the paperwork and everything. And that was pretty close to everything being completed. And then Navy SEALs showed up in Memphis, leapfrogs. They were doing some demo jumps. So they came to our Drop Zone to do some jumps. I stopped talking to them. And I still remember the guy who I know him as Tim O'Hara. He was a firefighter in San Diego.

So he is the guy I talked to. And he was just, I was fascinated. He was a really good skydiver. So we did many jumps together also with his guys. and he just talked me and say like, look, you want to go on seals because you want to skydive, right? In army you won't be skydiving, but you look skydiving to combat parachute jumps and stuff.

Why don't you go join Navy SEALs? Like, I didn't know what the SEALs were. For me, it was not important to be a SEAL, it was important to serve America. So I said, okay, so about I had to go to Army guys and tell them, like, all this war you did for me. I'm sorry, but I'm going next door.

So it was awkward because I made friends with them. But they said, well, okay, I'll do it. I want to join the Navy. So I went and I grabbed the paper, went up there, and they finished it up. And they were fair with me because they say, okay, you are 32, going 33. So you are not eligible for SEAL program

because you are too old. The cat of age is 28. But if you sign this paper, you got to boot. They make a seal out of you. You look strong guys, so they're going to make a seal out of you. I said, okay, again, my goal was not to join Navy SEALs. My goal was to go join America in the war and support.

So I say, yeah, that's fine. If not, I will serve whatever America needs me. Because that was my idea. I didn't know where to go. So I signed it up and they told me, okay, we'll be fair. with you. If you go as an undisignated, the Navy will put your scraping decks or we do something that

you might not like. Why don't you go pick the job in the Navy? So after boot camp, you go to your A school and then you go in their seal training if you fall out, I couldn't go in seal training at the time, but they didn't tell me that. So you go to seal training, you fall out, you will fall back on your

job so you don't go scraping decks, you'll be doing whatever the Navy train you to do. So I say, okay, so what's the best job? I say, well, you like skydiving, right? And I say, yes. Parachute rigor.

Say, okay, sign me up. Parachute rigor. And so, but they say, okay, if you want to go parachute rigor, you will have to leave. So we will proceed doing the paperwork maybe like three weeks later. They call me a month later. I say, okay, to be a parachute rigor, there's two options now. You can go to boot camp like next week. and right after the boot camp, your A school starts, the parachute rigging school.

Or you have to wait like four, five months, and then wherever the next parachute rigging school is, to coordinate it with you going to bootcum and to school. So I was thinking like, shit, the war may end by this time. So sign me up for the closest one. I call my girlfriend and say, hey, look, I'm leaving next week. I'm joining the Navy. I'm leaving next week. She's like, what?

I said, yeah, let's get married. So we just got married. That was a Monday, I think. Tuesday we ran like in the afternoon, after her work, to the office in Memphis. We found the judge who was already leaving, but I think we look so desperate. Okay, let me go sign you up.

So he married us. And then I went on, I think on Friday, I went to Depp into Depp. Then I was sworn in, and I think Saturday, Sunday, they flew me. A few other guys from Memphis to Great Lakes to Illinois. That's how my adventure started. So that's my beginning of my Navy time. And again, I just wanted to serve.

It didn't matter where I served. I would say my idea was to serve where America needs me. That's whatever they, I can be useful. But I passed the test, the seal test. They did let you try out. They did, let me try, yes. Yes. So what they say, that I will have to ask for the waiver for my age.

And this is what I met in boot camp. But then I had a kidney stone. So they say, okay, now, and I still have this document today that does not disqualify me. from SEAL training, from the program, but I have to wait for at least a year or two before I can reapply again because the kidney is not my recure.

I have the document at home. And then, so I say, okay, what is that? It's not a big deal. I just want to serve. And so I graduated from boot camp as a number one recruit. I'm very proud of it because, you know,

like my English was still not perfect. But I always, I excel in the academics, I excel in the PTE, I excel in everything that I did. So I was selected to be there, number one graduating recruit from the entire batch. So I got the military excellence award from bootcum. I'm very proud of it. And then I had a good instructors too. So then I went to A school. And this is where I met, Jason Cabell, my friend of mine, a really good friend of mine.

We later met in Iraq in Baghdad doing combat together. So I couldn't swim very well because I never seen the ocean. I've never seen the sea. He says, but he was so sure he is going to make. And he couldn't swim. He swim even worse than I do. So he was like very, for me it was inspirational because I look at this guy struggling to just stay on the surface and he's going to be a seal.

So I'm going to make it too. So we were having it. We tried to swim and all that stuff. We got better, of course. He went to bats. I had to wait for my orders first. But even before I wait for my orders, I went in Millington in the A school.

I found the CL motivator. It was less barriers, rest in peace, brother. And I went to him. I said, look, I have a document. I would like to be a CL if possible. But my document in my medical records say I had a kidney stone

so I cannot apply for the program for like a year or two years. And he like me and said, okay, well, can you pass the test? I said, yeah, I pass the test. Bring me your documents. At that time, there was no electronic documents. So he wrote me the chat. I ran with it to medical, got my medical record, came to him and said, okay, here it is.

I said, okay, step outside. I step outside and just listen. they're like, come on in. So, look, he's sitting at his desk. It's like, look, I'll look through your medical record. I really can't find anything about a kidney stone. Can you help me find it? I say, yeah, it's right here.

So we look and say, no, it's not here. He looks at me and I say, are you sure you had the kidney stone? By this time, I'm like, I'm sure I didn't. Okay, that's good enough. So, yeah, they put me on hold after the graduate. I also graduate acting. one on the top on the class. So then I was waiting for the waivers

and I think the waiver was granted to me because I excel in everything I did. I did so well and I think they seen that maybe maybe this guy because of his age maybe his age will not inhibit him a lot

but we give him a chance so eventually after like maybe two months being on hold in the in the A school I got my orders to Bats. I called Jason Caban. I say, brother, I'm coming after you. He gave me a tape.

I still remember the tape. I still have it at home of the tape that he gave me. It was the little cassette we used to play. So I was just playing it on the road because I was driving to California to San Diego. That's how my Navy career started, how my seal career started. Did you have any idea what a seal was at that time?

No. Other than skydivers? No, except them. Well, they show me the video in the recruiting station. I say, wow, this is really cool, but what's the difference between the army? It looked like an army to me. But it was the union that this guy recommended to me, and if I could get up there, it's fine. But again, that was not driving, that's not motivate me to join the Navy.

So for me, it was not really that important. But the way I imagine CIR training was there would be a prison. So I couldn't think of any other way. Those are special forces. So they would like you up there in some camp and you will be just going through all these evolutions. You'll be going through all the training,

totally isolated from people. That was my imagination. And I was thinking like, well, you know, I'm married now. It would be kind of sad for my wife. But, well, I survive communist prison. At least here, they don't try to kill you. They just try to make you better unlike in communist prison

so I say I'll be fine well those as you know is not dead there is no prison actually you have enough freedom they give you enough rope so you can hang yourself

if you are not careful with what you do in bats you just have to manage not only the training but you need to manage yourself as well so I remember a lot of guys going out and partying and drinking

and I would love to do it too and I did sometimes too but for me it was more often it was Ben Gay robbing on my muscles and like oh God I need to survive tomorrow will be maybe better tomorrow I feel better

let's hope so so like as they were drinking I was robbing Ben Gay in myself and trying to be myself better in the bed and trying to go to bed early but it helped you know I did well I did farewell you know

it's like never I was rolled back only at the beginning of the first phase because I get an infection in my leg I got Mersa

on the bag of my tie so swollen so bad that I couldn't put my pants on so actually I had to cut my pants to go to medical but I figure out this so okay I'm not going to tell them anything

I just go through the rest of this week it was like two more days with the leg like this on Friday right after the They shut down the evolutions. I would run up to Balboa, to hospital, let them fix it. So I would have three days basically to heal, and I should be okay.

Well, it didn't work that way. I went up there, they did cut this big piece, the big white piece out of it. And it was thick like my pinky. And my leg was coming down a little bit. I could put my pants on. So, but then in the morning, Monday morning, when I was driving to bus a swole again, So I had no choice, but I had to go to our medical in baths and tell them what happened. So what I find out is Balboa, just they cut this out and just let me go.

Instead of irrigating it for maybe like an hour, and that's what they did. They actually gave me antibiotics. They put me on the gurney, and they put the IV in that big hole in my leg. And they keep irrigating from like two, three hours. and like my legs the swelling came out and everything was good so they bandied my legs and I came back

and said we have to roll you I say you can't roll me I say no we have to have the mud flats where we are going to you cannot go with a leg like this and the Halloween next you cannot go to Halloween with a leg like this so I was really like

broken and I was like holy shit and I don't want to be rolled I say please let me stay in the class so I think there was instructor grapes no it's instructor Fitzhand Henry, he says like, okay, if you can run here, sprint around five times around this thing, I might keep you in the class.

So I say, right on, you know, so my head still get a cut on my pants because, you know, I had to, I couldn't put them on. And I ran, I run, I run all these fives and stuff. I said, can I stay? It's like, nope, one-eight-five. So there was from my 184, right at the beginning before the mud floods, I got rolled to 185. I had to start again. But it would allow me to heal my leg. I don't think I would be able to,

I would make through Halloween with this big open wound on my leg, with infection in my leg, and like swore in like the elephant leg. Wow. So yeah, so there was my first phase. What did you think about? Did you find it difficult being from your... I found it physically very difficult,

but I didn't find it mentally difficult because maybe when I came to Bards, I was thinking that this is going to be hell, that is in the hell, that this is going to be extremely, and it was physically, but mentally, like, for some reason, the instructors yelling, calling names, and all that stuff didn't face me. I kind of expected it. I thought that this is, actually, I thought it was funny,

because, like, I didn't do anything, got yelled it for nothing, So I didn't show it to instructors that I think it's fun. I took everything seriously. When they say drop down, I didn't question. I dropped down and push it out, whatever I was told to do. And I did, I think, very well, actually, one of the instructors, instructor turned. I just looked at me and I said, drop down, 50. So I just looked 50.

I think it was the first phase, so the first phase, you don't do 50. But so I did it. I stand down, who are I stood the crown? You just look and say, well, you know what? I think I like you. Get the fuck out of here. Go back in the crowd. in the class.

And then in the Hell Week, you remember that there's a time after maybe two, three days, when they get you together, and they ask you, okay, tell me why you come here to Bats. And I just have to tell them what's there. So I hear, guys, while I came here to try to be the best, I'm here to, and I will try to finish this training, give my best and say so. And so when they asked me, I say, fuck, I didn't come here to try. I came here to become a seal. and either my body will break down or you kick me out

but I will come out of this as a I will graduate from this program I didn't come here to try I mean I didn't come here to try they got mad but I know they liked it because I can see them like right on and then you know there's a lot of things like this with the knives you know we had these knife inspections

so they always called me because my knife you know it was like cheesy knife were fairly cheap and they had to maintain them very well. I could put my knife just the edge like on my hand, on my arm, and just let it slide. It would shave your hand. They were that sharp. So they were calling me sometimes to demonstrate other classes how to maintain the equipment.

Also on the swim, remember, I couldn't swim very well, neither was Jason Cabell. And not only that I couldn't swim very well, I could swim only on one side, the side. So then on the top of it they put the mask on me. I have never swim with mask in my life. This is the really thing I thought I would drown. Because I remember I was swimming. I couldn't breathe with my mask, close my nose.

And I was breathing as much water, I think, as much air. And when I came out of that pool after the first few swims, my belly was so big that just I could feel. water sloshing in it. And there were times that I remember I was swimming. I was like, I'm about to pass out. I have so much water in my lungs and I have black spots in my eyes. But that's like if I stop, they will kick me out. So I know they are watching. They are instructors there. If I pass out, I'm not going to die. So I was just like, you have to trust them. And slowly become easier and easier. By the end of my

those in the fourth phase, there was a preface. When we finished, I was asked actually to demonstrate the new guys coming into that training how to do the side stroke. I was very proud of it. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

And Jason Kamala too, he became a really good swimmer. We are still friends, so we talk to each other. And a great guy was very inspirational for me. So, yeah. So you graduated Buds at age 33. Yes.

Is that correct? Going 33, yes. And I checked into team in March 2000, March 1993, C-L-Team 2. Well, not very many people get through Buds in the 30s. No, I think there's very few people that made it. I think I'm one of that few that not only made through bards and made through the CEL teams into the CEL teams because as you know, very often people who make true bans

they still don't cut and they are either removed from SQT or today before it was SET or they were being removed while in the platoon either pre-war cup or during the event after the deployment's like well no you are not the guy so you need to leave and I have friends that came with me or after me who made to bots to that selection check into the teams and they were sent to the fleet so that was not easy not easy for me being old

because especially with my English too I need to say that but at that time I was still at the stage that when you talk to me I had to translate myself in Polish before I speak to you, I had to translate on English. But I guess I did it so fast, I was able to do it so fast that people seldom notice that. The issues show up in the CQB where you have to be on your feet. You have to be very fast. And that's where I really start occurring to me

that I need to improve my English. I need to get better with my English. Matter of fact, I came back from the first deployment. You know, when you come back from deployment, you pick the schools, I want to be a sniper, I want to go to diving schools, jumping school, I want to be instructor here, there. Well, for me, I didn't have a choice.

I was sent to English 101 school right away. It's like the guys who are leaving, hey, we are going to the sniper school, we're going to drag us. I was walking to the center up there. It's like, English 101. But it helped me. did make the big difference and it allowed me actually to be successful in my career. How were you greeted at SIL Team 2 when you showed up?

I think like most of the guys, I was beat up pretty much. Not the bid up, but I remember I didn't even make out of the building. So check the quartered egg. I checked in the with Master Chief, I think with XO. And I was told to later go to the supply, get my gear. So as soon as I woke out in the building, the big courtyard in the SEAL Team 2, those are the guys waiting up there. I say, okay, yeah, new FNG.

How about the bars? How are they new? You know, that's like, you don't argue with these old seals. You just do what they say. So I jump on the bars, the pull-ups, seat-ups. Basically, I did the whole PT, the PT test that we do every year. And then they didn't want to, because my uniform, That was the nicest uniform I could have.

Chainsfield team two. I just, I just pick every little things, make sure that it's so perfect. So after this force PT on the concrete, that looked like shit. It was really bad. You know, that's torn up, sweaty, dirty, dust everywhere. And, you know, my nice shoes scuffed.

And so after, they didn't want to walk me to quarter day because they was frown upon. So they took me to the back gate. They woke me up when we started three miles run. And so, okay, now you run, we'll see your time what you have. So now you've seen the dude with the torn-up uniform, holding his hat to his head, running like crazy on base because it was on the, it was not in the team, it was in the base outside the steel teams. So I'm sure people were thinking, what is this crazy guy?

What happened to this guy here? So I did that three miles running back. They said, okay, go continue with your stuff now. I went to supply, get my gun, and the guns got all my weapons, all the gear that I needed. I was assigned the cage in CL Team 2, and I moved my staff there, and as my career, my adventure with CL Team started. So that was my welcome to SEAL teams. And, you know, very often there was other new guys too, a lot of our new guys. And one day they say, okay, guys, you are invited for Friday Kager.

At that time in CL Team 2, all the CL teams, I think, Friday ended at noon. So after PT, you just clean your gear, clean yourself, and you can go home, except in CLT 2 you are required to attend the Kegger. So Kegov beer was waiting in the highway. So they say, like, you guys invited for the kegher today, Friday. So me and other new guys, like, dude, so I think they like us, you know, they invite us. to have a part to party with them to mingle with these old guys,

this old experienced sales. So I was so excited, I think we all were. But as soon as we walked in, we got just jumped, tape, a little bit kicked and beat up, hang on the chains, and just like butts upside down, pull up to the roof on the highway.

While these guys were drinking, now of that so, they were drinking, laughing, we just were hanging like a butts, all taped up. Once every while, they roll us down on the chains, They had the dragger bag, you know, the bag from the diving rig with the pipe. So here, a new guy, stick in your mouth and see him out.

They put the beer in it and just squeeze and so it goes everywhere. All right, drink enough. Let's go back to rest. So that was our first days in the teams. Today it doesn't happen, or at least we're not to that extent because of this frowned upon. But at the time, there was like regular welcome to seal teams. And I didn't mind it. I mean, it was okay.

I've seen worse So where was your where was your first deployment? First deployment we deployed to There wasn't when the Bosnia happened We deployed to Italy And there was the same time when our pilot got shut down So my platoon was one of the platoons

We were flying over the Adriatic Close to the If we could locate him we could pick him up So we were searching for him The other unit actually was tasked with recovering him, but we were on standby ready to recover him. That was my first deployment. So we were, normally we deployed to Mike Hainish in England, in Great Britain, but this deployment was to, they put us in Italy. So this is where we stayed there, stay throughout the first deployment.

Again, we didn't find the guy that some of those pull our pilot out, but I'm proud. of participating in these efforts. Were you upset that you missed the war? Well, at this time my concern was that I'm serving America. I'm doing good things for America. And the war, yeah, I wish I could get on it. It was kind of too late. So, you know, what I learned later too, too,

if you chase the war, the war will never find. The war will find you, just like happened to me later. But I was happy where I was. You know, my idea was to join the military for the time of war. I had such a great life

that after the war, I will come back and I will resume my life. But then the life that I started in the Navy was even so fascinating that I never left. I left 20 years later. So I was not upset, but I wish I met the dead war. I wish I went to that war, but I missed it.

And how was your wife? Did she follow you through all this? What's that? Your wife? My wife, yes. Yeah, so that marriage didn't last long. See, the way, as you know, our schedule is constantly on the road, you constantly somewhere.

The thing is, what I learned to understand is, as we do not have that, the routine, because our life change every month, every two months, you go do something else. Our spouses usually stay in the same place, they have the same routine, they go to the same places, and eventually they meet

somebody they are interested in, and very often that marriage ends this way. So, I didn't understand at that time, I was really upset, but that's what eventually happened. So we did get eventually divorce. And that's actually what it was later in the

CIL teams when I came back from my deployment and the thing fell apart. Well, we'll get there. Where were you when September 11th happened? When September 11th happened, I was in the gym and CLE team two. We're working out. I still vividly remember that somebody came in and said, hey guys,

I just came back from Quater Deck. The airplane hit one of the Twin Towers. So, like most of us, well, some pilot of small airplane got lost and killed himself, so it's sad, but

let's go to work out. And then the other guy, I'm saying, I know the guys, there's those big jetliner that hid the towers. And something is going on. So we left the gym, went to quarterdeck and SEAL Team 2. I was actually watching when these fucking bastards

ran the second airplane, flew the second airplane to another second tower, I was watching it. I knew we were going to be hunting these scumbugs. I knew that their time is up and we'll be killing them hopefully soon. I was watching that and is still very vivid. in my memory. Yeah. What were the pre-limb conversations

that were happening after that at the SEAL team? It's time to start killing these bastards. You know, the SEAL teams, I think, the attitude is a bit different. You know, when I went to Iraq,

especially after what I've witnessed, what I've seen on September 11th, I did not go there to win. hearts and minds. Fuck their hearts and their minds. I want them to kill them. To kill the terrorists. I didn't...

That's all I was thinking. That's kill as many as many you can. The only regret I have from Iraq, we didn't kill enough of them. Because, and I'm taking it very seriously. Because even today, decades after the war, what happened there,

I still question myself, what if we get that If we kill this bastards, if we didn't get him, let him get away, if we killed this son of the bitch, maybe one of my brothers, our brothers would come back home, whether it was army, Marines, or the Navy. You know, that's for us, they're all brothers, and we all in that fight together. So sometimes I dwell on it. Maybe if we could kill the bastards, get rid of them, then there would be, some of our brothers would come back. Because I believe that the best way to win war on terror is to terrorize the terrorists.

I am terrorist terrorizer. I have no qualms dealing with these scumbags. You cannot reason with terrorists. You just have to kill them and get rid of them. And that was my attitude when I went to Iraq to fight on Borek. behalf of America and American people. And so how long was it after September 11th that you... Well, so the West Coast was already in the war, right?

They were fighting that there was a... I think, I don't know when the invasion happened in March or something, in Iraq. Something at the beginning of the year. We deploy, my platoon, a seal platoon deployed to center. South America at the time. So we're working there. In the middle of deployment, I get a call say, hey, Drago, there is

a Polish unit, a self-unit operating with seals in Baghdad. And I think we need you there. I want you to go and help us out, coordinate that stuff with them. So you pack your staff. You are three months into deployment, I think.

So you're going to spend it for three months to keep up the six-month cycle. And then you can come back and start your regular workup with your new platoon and stuff. So in the middle of the platoon, in middle of deployment, you know, you can imagine the guys being pissed off because we are aggressive guys. We like type A personalities. So everybody wants to get into the war. Everybody wants to fight the war.

So when they find out that I'm just only I'm leaving to Baghdad, they were, I want to go there too. What the hell you are? How did you pull this off, you know? Well, I didn't. I was ordered to go there, but they all wanted to go. I don't know a CEO who would not want to go to war. Me neither.

So I know they were kind of like pissed off, but a good way. You know, they were very supportive. And then, so I left after the, like three months in deployment for the three months. And that was, we were very busy. We were busy every single night pretty much. And then when the three months came in, I don't hear anything from my command. And I was calling sometimes Rob O'Neill.

We're really good friends. And we did entire platoon with Jaco together. That was the second platoon. And then the platoon I'm talking right now is my third platoon. So I call him and say, hey, Rob, just tell the command, I'm here, I'm doing fine. I don't need anything. I said, yeah, I got you, Drago.

But there are three months past I don't hear from my command anything. They asked me if I would extend my stay in Baghdad, the West Coast guys. I say, absolutely, yes, sign me up. I'm not going to, I want to go back. So then I call Roboenil. I say, hey, Roe, I'm still here.

Just don't tell them anything. Just keep it quiet. I'm still here in Baghdad. So he's, yeah, right on, Drag. So once every while, I call Robonil and write him now, say, I'm still here. I'm doing good. Don't tell them anything.

Don't tell them out here. And so from this three months, 10 to 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 months. And I think I would stay there longer, but my NVGs broke, so I had to call the command for new NVGs and they got me, they say, hey, where are you at? I said, and buy it, how long?

Or like, almost a year on deployment. Well, hold on. So you went to, you deployed to Iraq? In 2003, yeah. With who? I deploy by myself they send me there to work

with the CLT-5 to help coordinate the L-L-T-Five the missions between C-L-T-5 and Grom but we skipped the one platoon because there was a platoon with Jacko that I did

right before that so there was the platoon to Middle East two there was a first CILT into strike platoon and we this is the time when we hijacked the Russian tanker the Volgeneft

in the year 2000 so there was a very good platoon so it was Jako and one second so that was my first that was my fourth platoon

I think it's getting mixed up so first was to Italy when O'Grady got shut down the second one was to Bosnia the third one was with Jaco okay so the third one was with Jaco so

after the first place I deployed to Yugoslavia, to Bosnia. This is where I met the strongest guy I think I ever met in CIL teams. That was a guy who, when we went to French, to Lorien to train with the Frenches. What are the ugly guys. So Chris, he put so many plates on their bar to do the bench press. he bent that bar

the plates started falling off so the French's got all pissed off that we intentionally are destroying their equipment another Rob just was doing the military presses like 225 pounds or something I mean who were strong, who were big and these little French guys

they look like the ballerinas they have those spandex little pens yeah I mean and you know the nasty part of it is that when the on the pebbule We had a French officer with us and CL Team 2, and we just tried to help him and cater to him the best we could

get him the best trips, Berspardim and all that stuff. So when we, he left to France. And then maybe like six months later when we deploy to Bosnia, we actually decided to have some exercise with the French guys, where this guy was stationed. So we called these guys, hey, we're coming, you know, are you excited, you know, we're going to see your old friends? It was like, okay, yeah, just come on in and click.

We show up on Lorien, the gate of their things. It was a wintertime. It's sleeping, raining. We sit on our bags and on our gear for like three hours before the bastard showed up. And he showed up not to welcome us. He showed up and said, all right, I know you guys. I know you sales. If you fuck up any of our equipment, you're not going to leave this base until you pay.

for all the broken equipment that you break. That's a nice welcome. And then they didn't want to work with us. You know, they, like, but, you know, work with us. I mean, look at these guys. They were like 110 pounds ballerinas. And they did actually wear the spandex, like all these tight pants. So I say, just give them the tutu and you have a perfect baller.

So, yeah, and then we walk into their gym, and they have those like jumping jugs, you know, their weights like what they were using was like five pounders and six pounds and whoever one of the strongest guy in the cell teams

Chris and he walks in he breaks their freaking equipment they get even more pissed off they didn't want to jump with us we didn't do anything

with these guys and so they didn't really like I guess they didn't like us and we stopped liking them too because I said I remember one of the guys asked Chris Chris Strupp

I can say his name because I ask him for permission for it. So again, that was one of the strongest team guy I met, I have met. And also he could create the programs for us, how to get big and strong. By the time we finished that deployment, where entire platoon was over 200 pounds each. So that was a Chris's big contribution to make us stronger and better. So they just, We just couldn't get along, I guess, very well.

One of these guys asked Chris, well, you are so big, can you run? I'm like, you know, unlike you, we don't run away from the battlefield. So we, no, I don't have to run that fast, but I can beat you up. It's like, okay, okay, okay. And then, you know, we had an international incident, two of them, actually. So first one we're going to St. Moritz to do some exercises there in Switzerland. So we decided we'll fly one C-130 and we jump on the lake in St. Moritz.

There's a big frozen lake. And it was pretty beautiful because the C-130 was flying below the top of the two mountains on both sides. And right in the middle of it. So when we jump out of it, we could have maybe five, six-second delay. We could see the mountains just going on both sides. sides in free fall and then we open parachutes. Well, we didn't know and we decided to get a shortcut instead of

fanning our ammunition through the convoy through the roads from Germany to Switzerland and say, well, how did we just loaded up our guns, we put the ammo in the in the brock-sacks and we jump in. So we did.

And there was a bunch of civilians on this lake walking, you know, doing that. There were like trails made up on this lake, on the ice. So we basically jump right into the civilian population, and they look at a soldiers, unload the gun, you pull the,

you know, unload the guns, make safe, and they've seen it. Well, it turned out to be that you are not allowed to bring in Switzerland

guns and ammo in the same place, especially loaded guns. So, I think we're the first troops in Second World War, that landed in Switzerland with loaded guns.

This was like, all right, I know my platoon actually, it will do a lot of explanation to do. But then we are invited to, it was the time when the Switzerland was accused of stealing a gold from Holocaust victims. And there was even a lawsuit filed because of that, try to recover the gold that supposedly Swiss stole from Jewish people and Holocaust victim.

But we were invited to dinner up there. We already got over jumping into San Moritz into San Moritz with loaded guns. So we barely got over with that. We are invited to dinner now. So they went like at top of the mountains. So we go on this little train, like a chit you thing,

and go straight up. So we go up there. We are the best restaurant, supposedly, in San Moritz. And the guy who was guiding us say, hey, so this is chef, so he's such a great chef known in the entire world and he has like five golden spoons here.

Chef, can you go run up, bring the spoon? Like, I never hold the gold thing, maybe ring, but entire spoon of gold and never hold my life. So I was like, holy shit, this is heavy, solid, wow, you know, I can brag about it that I was holding the gold spoon in my hand. So the spoon went around everybody until he went to Chris.

The strongest guy, he looked at this, say, like, World Chef, so how many you think that God of yours, how many Jewish teeth went into that spoon? That was like, I got quiet. The guy woke up, took the spoon, he left. We never seen the guy again. We were just usher out very quickly out of the restaurant, go down, and we never were allowed to go to the restaurant again.

Holy shit. you know what, there was legitimate, I guess, legitimate questions. I believe, in my opinion, the gold, the Swiss were stealing that Holocaust victims gold and they were benefiting over the Second World War. So the guy had the balls to ask about it. But you can cut it out if you think is controversial. But that really happened. So there was like, well, we were all stunned.

But like, well, you know, he's right. There's a legitimate question. Yeah. Because that basically, that gold dead, in my opinion, was stolen by Switzerland from Holocaust vacancy. That's interesting. I didn't know much about it. Well, actually, there was a lawsuit file by people trying to recover the gold. I don't know.

I think it came to some agreement. But you can Google it up. I read about it just not too long time ago as well. There was a time, but I remember it was very common to hear these accusations. in 1979, 1978, I'm sorry, 1998 time frame.

So yeah, that's... Wow, I had no idea. I don't know anything about that. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's just asking a question. Yeah, he was just asking the question because these people, they suffer so much. The Holocaust, we, we, It's hard to imagine for people, but there's millions people.

They were murder just for being who they were. This is something that could only happen in socialist state. Please remember that Germany was socialist state. Adolf Hitler was socialist. So we're talking about national socialism. But, you know, whatever flavor of socialism it is, they all have many things in common, as we talked earlier, the censorship, persecution of people.

political opponents, jailing political opponents. And those are the hallmarks of socialists' state. So was your Iraq deployment the first time you saw actual combat? Yeah, that was the first time I seen the combat. And so let's talk about that. So you've done four deployments, and then you finally go to Iraq to see actual combats. Yes. We've seen a little bit in Bosnia, not so much combat, but we've seen the war scene. We've seen some of the atrocities committed there in Bosnia. We know we hijacked the Russian tanker.

And at that time there was like a holy shit. The super mission, you know, like today is really not a big deal. But at the time, you know, to go and do VBSS on the Russian tanker was really something. Let's talk about that, that. Oh, that's the Russian tanker? Yeah. That was actually funny. So there was the Jaco's platoon. Jock and Mr. Queen F.

This was Field Team 2? Field Team 2? I didn't realize Jock was ever on the East Coast. Oh, yeah, he was my AOC. I've never met him. This platoon, yeah. I tell you, it is a great guy. It's a great leader.

That's what I hear. Yes, yes. I was honored to serve under his command. Very aggressive guy. We love that. So, when we got the permission to take down the tanker, you know, there's always competition between the team guys, right? And there's one squad, another squad, it was like, oh yeah, we are better, no, we are better.

So my squad was taking it down because we had like three Russian speakers. I speak Russian. I speak Russian, Polish, and Japanese. But so I speak Japanese? Yes. What actually was Nihongo, Hanasuktuoka de Kimas. Where did you learn Japanese? When I was doing kickboxing and I figured out the karate Queshikkimkay, some of those commands, I said, well, I can understand the commands, but why don't just learn the Japanese?

And it happened that my mom, she was a teacher. She had a PhD professor from Hokkaido University working with her doing some study on Polish educational system. So I connected with him and he was teaching me Japanese. I was very proficient with Japanese. Actually, I was guiding Japanese students around my city in lots, especially those new who came. I did not speak Polish, so I was able to help. I forgot now, it's like 40 years now, but I forgot a lot, not everything.

So I was a Russian speaker. We had Rob, who was Russian speaker, and our OIC, Mr. Queen F, great officer. He was the Russian speaker. So we had three Russian speakers on the initial assault. And the problem is that they were the new We are looking at them What was the, well hold on, what was the tanker? A vulgoneft?

I think Volgonev 142. You can Google it up, it's online. A matter of fact, we are in balaclavas, but there's a picture of me standing on the bridge in the Volga Neft. What were you taking the tanker down for? They were smuggling oil from Iraq illegally. There was a Russian tanker who smuggled oil.

So we're tasked to take it down, but they knew it already. We're on the Monterey, I think, forget, forget, forget. Frigot. And I like the captain. He's like, okay, I was told by command that we cannot come closer to that ship than like a maybe mile. But if you want to get closer to it, I come close. because they told me a mile, but I can measure that mile with my own stick.

So he just pulled almost next to them. So we look at them and say, yeah, there's a bunch of younger guys. And there were some women. But the concern was because this is Russian tanker and the Russian flag and young people who might try to resist. So, you know, Navy has their own boarding teams.

They could do really easy. But because the concern that maybe a firefighter, can ensue, we're going to take it down. And another thing, too, is they already knew that we were looking at them, so they were skirting the territorial waters of other countries. Basically, they could just turn left or right, whatever. Get into territorial waters, we couldn't get them. We would have to jump over the ship not to cause the international incidents, no foreign

fighters, foreign forces invading or getting into another country. So we had to be quick. And I remember two o'clock in the night, Robo Neil came, and he woke me up, say, dude, let's go, we need to go, get rest. So it's like, I think it was nine of us. It was Jacko, was one of them, Mr. Fionda, we just got like an 80.

And it's not like the other guys who were not team. Everybody was 18, but they just picked us up on the, like what we can do and stuff. So we flew over it, we fast robo on the tanker, We got this tanker down under, I think, two minutes, if not the minute. And they were already turning into the territorial water. So we just had to go and learn how to turn it over. I have a cool picture with me actually at the helm steering that tanker.

And we turned it over. And then we searched the shape, of course. Make sure there's no weapons left or anything. And these were the competition between the team guys and the squads come in. So we took down the target, the target, we, now we need to change

because after we were changing like every six hours or every eight hours, whatever the shift was. So we said, okay, let's go bring that other squad. The other guys came in, we packed, we left. The other guys came in, and we are going to change them, so we are going there and it's like, dude, you just leave all the guns,

all the weapons there, you didn't search the ship very well, and you can hear this, they have a big bug, it's clunky, shit in it. So like, well, what did we mean? That's not really good. Doesn't look good. And so we look into the bag and it's like freaking spoons, forks and butter knives. I was like, dude, that's not the weapon. Well, it can be used as a weapon. Your squad didn't do that well because that could be used as a weapon, even the butter knife. It's like, come on. All right, so just whatever. But the Jacko, standing on the bridge, the guy is still clunking

that weapon. He takes the binoculars. Oh, cool, guys. He stole the button knives, but what about those axes hanging on the doors up there? Did you mind to take that? It's like, it was out. So we go and change and the first thing,

Russians are pissed. You know, they were very, they were good people, I think. They were just, well, good people. They were thieves. They were smuggling oil. But they were so they are pissed. They were compliant.

But when we come back, they are pissed. So, like, what's going on? We want our forks and knives and spoons back. I was like, why do you need? We need to eat. Well, eat with your hands. Can you eat with your hands? We speak in Russia, as they didn't speak English.

And they say, well, we would, but we don't have teeth. And just, like, pull out. It's like they had no teeth. There was like, if you put all the teeth together from the crew, I don't think you would have one full set. So I talked to Jacko. I explained to you what happened. He said, let's get him the knives back and their forks and their spruce.

So we called back and the boat came in. We called the big bag with their spous. And they were happy like they can be. Like, no issues with them whatsoever. How many of them were there? I think maybe like 15 or 16, something like that. That was not that money. And then I had the argument with the...

How did you board the ship? hill we fast rope on it. And I thought it was planned already because I was the aerobes guys, I was told to rehearse guys on the very tall fast roping. So we're using the 120 foot rope in Bahrain. I think we were in Bahrain at the time. We're using 120 foot rope just to practice the fast roping right on the mark. And the hilos were practicing it too.

So that was already planned, I think. ahead. They knew this ship would come out of Iraq with the Iraqi oil and we're going to we'll try to intercept it. So we practiced that and then it was easy. We just at 2 o'clock in the morning, rolled in over the ship, throw the ropes and just slide down it. It was pretty cool at the time. Right on. That was pretty cool up. Yeah, you know, I never did any VBSS in the SEAL teams. Just one training out that's it. Yeah, yeah, so that's for us it was, at that time it was a big deal because we did such small one, we did, got a couple of dows with there, they were smuggling maybe something, we didn't bother with that, but take down the big tanker and the Russian flag there was something. So we did that.

We didn't torment the crew and the crew was not really, you know, they did what they had to do, but they were not. not cowering or anything. They were just like normal people, you know. Mm-hmm. So, let's take another quick break when we come back. We'll pick back up in Iraq. I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon.

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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, Drago, we're back from the break. Let's pick up to your first deployment to Iraq, where you saw a lot of combat, it sounds like. So you went from South America to Iraq to be a liaison with SIL Team 5 for the Polish Grom. Yes.

Correct. And so a lot of questions, but I just, let's start with, what was it like for you to go to combat and to be a liaison with the Polish grom being Polish? Yeah, well, for me, first thing I didn't know what the grum was. I was told there was police special forces. And when I checked in Baghdad, I had a brief. from my commanders. And they were kind of a little bit standoffish. We say, we don't know who these guys are. And they briefed me on what's expected, what we need to do. But I was thinking, like, the best way to find out is just to go on the up with them

and do it work with them. But I was like, well, we don't know these guys that well. You know, we cannot risk your life. Because, you know how it is. It gets dicey, you know, in those missions sometimes, especially the, the assaults and the reduction mission. And I understand that, because if something was to happen to me

while I'm working with Grom, that could be some repercussions to my commanders, too, that they allow these things to happen. But I was able to convince them. I said, like, now, if we want to be effective, I mean, we need to cooperate closely, but I need to be with them too as well. So they allow me to, for maybe like, first three missions,

and then it was like, oh, I would say, these guys are great. Go ahead, yeah, do it. That's fine. Let's coordinate. Let's do. We start doing assaults together. So very often we needed more people.

We bring the Grom guys. If Grom needed more people, he used us on the assault. And then one night we did set up the perimeter and the Grom was doing assault. I was doing it. And then next day was the vice versa. The Grom was doing perimeter and we were doing assaults. So for me it was pretty great.

I was like double dipping on the missions and I was, I love this. it. How were they? Did they operate the same as we did? They operate pretty much the same way. We find out that their tactics are good. Their weapons are pretty much the same. Their manufacturer of their M4 was different

at the time and they had some issues in the desert environment with it, but there was just, I think, something minor. It was not disabled to them, but we didn't really register it. And they were quick, too. Their assault techniques were very fast and

I would say, I don't say brutal, but these guys are consumed professionals. They don't tolerate any deviation from their SOPs unless there's some flexibility is needed to save lives or to accomplish the mission. But otherwise, they are well trained and again, like I say, they are fast. The funny thing is sometimes when we snudge the bandits' terrorists, we had to get them with us. So if we got the call, it happened that, hey, we have

bad guys moving on the location. You need to bail out, need to stop what you're doing, get out. So to evacuate, sometimes once they handcuff the guy, we handcuff the guys. So when we walk them down the stairs, Grom them just tossed them to the window,

the other guys who were waiting that caught them, throw them on the Humvee, and here we go. So the other guys were asking sometimes, why they're so fast? I say, because they don't fuck around. They're just like, when they have a terrorist in their hands, the guy is just flying out of the window to Grom's carrying hands

and they put him on the Humvee and they are ready to go. So that was kind of surprise for me too because I didn't expect them to be so well trained and so well coordinated. Their assaults were working just like ours. You know, it's very similar if not the same tactics because they learned from the same people.

So they had the exposure also more exposure to SES and German Special Forces. but this was not that was good because we can actually benefit from their experience as they were benefiting from our experience it was a mutual

I think cooperation and work on accomplishing the mission so our missions were together interesting yeah I never got to work with them but I remember when I was contracting for CIA I saw them they were co-located

to an adjacent forward operating base and those guys were busy they were going out several times a night they had these dune buggy looking things and they were just tearing it up and made me extremely jealous to watch but I was like

oh man yeah so what about their like team dynamic do they have a good camaraderie and I seem like I was That's like not much different. Yeah. They are very close with each other. I would say because they are way smaller than us, they are very close.

These guys know each other better than they know their family members, just like us too, you know. So yeah, that's – that – there was very – not only educational for me, I think for all of us, to work with them. It was also very pleasant, very nice to work with them. them doing the assaults, take down the targets. We really enjoy working together. And it was getting to the point even that some of our guys were coming in and say, hey, Drago, can you help me? Can you talk to Grom guys so I can do assault with them? And just so I can put my record that I did work with Grom, I did the direct action missions with them. So yeah, I think they didn't have a problem with them because they trusted us.

So we have quite few guys going on targets with them if they wanted to. And I have quite few pictures of it too as well from our guys working together with Groome. Did they speak English? At that time they did not. Today there's a requirement. You cannot be in the Grom without speaking English. So they are very proficient. I would say some of them speak better English than I do.

Because there's a requirement as they go to regular schools. And besides the training day, everybody had to learn English. Besides in Poland, now English is very popular. Like before, everybody had to know Russian, like in my case, we had to learn Russian. Today nobody forced people to learn English, but people want to learn English because it's so productive because it's so empowering. What were the, I mean, I'm just curious, what were your conversations with them? I mean, did you have conversations about your childhood?

There was very technical ones because, you know, doing the assault mission. with the direct action mission within the foreign unit could be very dangerous so we did rehearse things I had to learn their way of communication their tactics

because I speak Polish then there was no issue to learn that stuff but the first conversation was just incorporate me into their structures and that was a little bit intense

but they were great guys so they were very healthy A lot of fun too, a lot of laugh, you know, because my Polish was very rusty at the time. Things that I still do say things, that means totally different things that I intend to say. But at that time, yeah. So they were very helpful. But then we started drinking together, we started having a party together too, whenever there was a chance. It was a little if we could.

And that was like this is how we created bonds that persist even today between those team guys who work with Grom or even those who didn't but helped about our missions with Grom, that big friendship continue too. They still come here sometimes to states. When we go up there, they are always helpful, try to help you and accommodate our guys. So the friendship that we create on the battlefield continues and still we are very close. I mean, you had not been back to Poland since you left, correct? Yes.

So did you have a lot of questions about... I did. Yes, I did. I was asking them about stuff. Well, I did when. I went to with my seal platoon in 1995 for brief a couple days, three days visit in Dynesk. We didn't work with Grom. We worked with their commandos from Formosa unit. And so I kind of like a little bit seen, for me it was surreal because I left as a felon, a criminal, and then I was greeted as a hero in Poland when I came back, not maybe as a hero, but I was greeted as a valuable, respectable person. That was very kind of different for me, that first visit. And then, but yeah, there was a very short visit.

So the first longer visit was later on when I retired from the Navy. So, I mean, did they have questions for you about what your childhood was like in prison? You know, for them, the more significant. thing was that I was part of the Solidarity Trade Union movement in Poland in 1980s. For them, big deal was that I participate in underground structures and I resist communism. For them was very fascinating that I spent time in prison fighting for Polish freedom. So they were very respectful of that. But otherwise, there was a lot of questions about America, you know, like how is the life,

How are the people, how is the, how did it happen that I succeed, they became who I am, and where some people were not that successful. And so there was a lot of questions that I had to answer about America, about my life in America and about my America. Did they have, I mean, I don't know that there was a lot of chatter back and forth about it. Did you, were you very curious about what Poland was like now? At that time, I was curious because, again, remember, they were part of the Warsaw Pact. They were opposing us, NATO. So they were trained to fight us.

And suddenly here we are working very close. I think we work so close with them. I don't remember in combat working any other forces from different countries, working that close with us with seals as Polish-gross. Rome did. So that's, they earn a lot of respect in our community, but also I believe we are a lot of respect for them. For them was curious, you know, how the foreigner like me can come, somebody like me can come to America and join the more secret forces the tip of the spear that America has. So they were, yeah, they were a little bit fascinated by this. How is it possible. We know in our unions, the foreigners cannot serve. You have to be a citizen. You have

to have access to secret clearance. You have to have a secret clearance to serve in CIR teams. So that's something that for them was very fascinating. How did I pull it off? I said, dude, this is America. You can be whatever you are able to be. There's nothing holding you back. And if you can't do this or that, there's no politicians that are saying that you can't. In America, there is no body there is holding you back and say, you can't do that. As long as it is legal, as long this is something that's beneficial, hopefully it's beneficial for the country, for America and for other people. You are encouraged to succeed and people will help you to succeed.

This is a big difference between other countries. This is what I want to, they want people to use this book as that vantage point, to see it how different we are, that the America that was built on goodness, on personal freedom, on being strong and independent, and on the faith that make America so great. And this also rolls into the way people in America treat other people with compassion, with help. And I experience every day. single one of this. So, yeah.

Do you think... They were fascinated by this. Did any of them want to come over? Yeah. Some of them did. No kidding. Asking you about, hey, can I be a seal? I say, why would you want to be a seal?

You are the one of the top tier of the special forces. And, but you know, somebody was asking, is it possible? Because this is something... What did they say when you ask why? Was that? What did you... What did they tell you?

They say because sales have the reputation they have because we are the best. I didn't inquire too much into it, but some of them were like, hey, if I could do it again, I would just do what you just did. I said, well, no, I didn't do it because I did it because I left Poland because I had to leave Poland. But you don't have to leave Poland. There's no reason for you to do it. I would join the military because I had to my debt of freedom that I had to pay back. But you don't have to do it.

You're living in the free country. Wow. Wow. So that's what I told myself when I came to America, and that's what I follow with today. That's my pledge. To America and American people. So let's talk to, let's talk about, so you got to Iraq,

you start seeing real combat. What was your first engagement in Iraq? I think first we did snatch a couple of the guys in the high riser. So we did breach. We get the guys out of the... We were so quick that they had no chance to do anything. So we got them. And this is where I learned that not everything that we learned in the bridging school.

Actually, it works like that. Some of the breaching charters, for example, I don't want to go into details here, were not very effective, or were outright dangerous to, not so much to us, but to people on target. We found out that most of these targets were hitting. They were terrorists hiding behind women and children, and they tend to put them next to front door or somewhere close, so they have a route of escape while we stumble over their family members. and breaching the way we used to do was very, could be

potentially life-threatening to people there and we had to change. In matter of fact, we had army guys in charge of the theater, I think, they call us to scale down with the breaching because they don't want civilians to get hurt. So we had to actually change some of the methods we were doing, make it safer

for them, but also for us, but also the breaching charges that actually I was instrumental in developing it and make that charge available to all of us. And there was widely used later by civil teams in Baghdad and in Iraq. So that was pretty good stuff. I remember I was breaching the steel door with the woman, we didn't know at that time yet, but she was maybe like three feet, two feet away from the steel door. And we bridge the, I bridged the steel door. When inside she was uninjured, well, we trample over her because she got scared and fall down on the floor.

As we rushed into the apartment to that house, we trampled her a little bit. But otherwise, she was untouched. If I use any of the other charges that we used to train with, I would kill that woman. So for me, it means a lot to the... I contribute not only to killing these people, but the bad guys, but also to saving those lives they were innocent on target. What was the daily life routine there? Were you guys going out all the time?

We became vampires. But also, the way I look at it is like a customer service, like a government customer service. But my customers, our customers, were always wrong and we got to kill them. So that's kind of good things. But the life was, we wake up in the maybe three o'clock,

sometimes four o'clock in the afternoon, get ready, rehearse what we need to rehearse, plan for the mission. At two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, we staggered the time, we didn't use the same time. We got in the Humveys, we rode to the target or close to the target, we move on it,

and we either snudge or kill the bad guys, and then move out before they could catch us. The thing is that at that time we didn't have armored vehicles. So we were exposed to the IEDs very much, and also to the enemies. So we actually had to remove the doors from our Humveys. So we had a couple of few guys on the back, on the back. And our seats were facing outwards. We put the install the skids on the side of the car outside. So we were sitting facing outside with the guns.

We actually looked like a porcupine. Each hand was looking like a porcupine. I have like 17 hours video from my helmet camera from those DAs. So this is something that when I'm looking now, It's just incredible how we could get away with stuff that today as the battlefield requirements and the tactics change may not be able to do so. But at that time we are, sometimes we're just lucky to do it.

What was the first stop where you killed an enemy combatant? That was we breached the... We breached those two apartments next to each other. And we breached one. The other guy, the two doors were breached. The one guy was

kind of jumped away to the other, there were the holes pre-made in the opposite wall, the long hallway. And when we went in, it just happened.

The guy was just standing next to me. Another one was in the Humvee. We were driving, I think we were riding back to And there was a vehicle came in and just like trying to pull next to us, pull next to us.

And he just didn't want to stop, do you want to back out. And there was kind of suspicious at the time. It was I think like 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock in the morning on the way back. No, I'm sorry, we're just driving on another mission. Because we were hitting multiple targets at the time. So I just had to stop him and I stopped the guy. Did that affect you at all? No.

No, killing never affected you. Not really because I did what was right for America, and that was just, we were all prepared. I never seen in Iraq anything that I was not prepared to see. I never did in Iraq anything that I was not prepared to do by U.S. Navy. So I really, not really. I don't bother me at all. I wish I could kill more of them. Because, like I said earlier,

if we, if that one that got away, maybe we were able to kill him, some of our brothers would come back to come back home. Maybe that was that guy who got one of us. So that weighs in me. Sometimes at night, I think, about those who get away and I would like to kill. You guys were doing multiple targets a night.

Yes. Sometimes at night, sometimes daytime. I'm hitting daytime targets too. It depends, you know, like, our missions were dictated by the circumstances. So if we need to get somebody, it was the only chance to get him at daytime, we did that daytime hit and got the guy.

We prefer nights, of course. of our missions were at night, but there was nothing unusual to do something at the daytime if we had to do it. We were prepared for either way. You guys did over a hundred direct actions? Mm-hmm. And what amount of time? What about a time? Well, the time frame? Yeah. Well, there was within the first year in Iraq. Wow. Most of it. What was your bronze star? for? On target, there was a hand-to-hand combat with the insurgent. And we needed this guy, we need this guy alive. So I was able to go and basically kick his ass back and tie him and take him

out. Could you be a little more descriptive? Yeah, I don't want to go to too much details because you know the today's environment but basically he tried to first try to move away we need to stop him and i was on the way so when he rushed through me he didn't he didn't make it and he ended up actually tried to do it again and uh he was pretty aggressive so the easiest way was to kill the guy but we needed this guy so i was able to go take him down and eventually um yeah pummel him a little bit and handcuff him and bring him down so yeah that was the guy what who was it that was that was i don't remember who he who he was but we have the list of the guys that was that was so many of them i just don't remember

this particular guy who he was i remember i see his face i see his you know uh you know uh I still vividly remember that. But, yeah. How did you get him down? With my fists, with my legs and my gun. So I didn't have to, I didn't want to shoot him because, again, there was not the guy who wanted to shoot. But it came to the hand-to-hand combat.

So this is what my bronze star actually says, that what happened describes that. Drago, welcome back. Nice to be back. But, man, I was hoping you would come back. I mean, one of the hardest parts about interviewing special ops guys that have done just phenomenal stuff is trying to break through the humility. Nobody wants to talk about the veracity of what they've done in combat. And we very lightly breezed over your bronze stung.

and then I was hoping I would get a call from you saying, hey, we should probably go into a little bit more detail on that. And I know it's hard to break through the humility, but at the same time, I mean, it's important. It's important that people understand what the sacrifices that were made over there are and what it's like. And so I just want to say I really appreciate you coming back to give us the full scoop on what happened that day.

with your bronze star of the dollar. Yeah, thank you. You know, this is something that is, the way I see it is the stories are being said, some of the stories are being said quite often, and that makes almost desensitized people to what we go through. We are just human beings,

just like anybody else. But people listening to these stories, listening and watching these movies, they don't see it. us as human beings often, not everybody. They often see us as just a little part of the machine. If you fall out,

you fall. Just expect it. Let's get another guy. That's what I think is important that our society doesn't see us that way. We are all individual people. We are all human beings.

And everybody that falls those heroes that shouldn't be seen as just little pieces of the machine that can be easily replaced. So I was never I try not to talk a lot about these stuff and nobody ever asked me

about it. It's important, you know, it's documenting history, you know, and I don't think anybody sees any of the guys that I bring in here is just part of the machine or or invincible because we do, you know,

we start a childhood and go all the way through the career and then the pitfalls afterwards and we did that with you and I do it with everybody too and the reason I do that is to humanize, you know,

to humanize who I'm speaking to and to humanize them in front of the audience and so, but let's go in. So let's just start at the very beginning. Yeah, that was a fact that I remember that I did so many these DAs that they got, 20 years later

they all get blurred up. This one kind of sticks out because as we, so we move out, like we always work, we try to work. We did some data in missions too, but we tried to avoid. So at night, the Cal came in, we had to get the guy.

He was like one of the leaders in financiers, I believe, who, we don't want to kill him, just need this guy. So we came to the set point. was this a capture kill? It was captured kill, yes, yes, yes, preferably captured. But, you know, we never had this type of priorities that you cannot kill the guy.

You have to capture him. That's a very dangerous concept. So for us, it was like, if we can, we try to capture the guy, but we really tried. So we came to the side point with this embargo. and patrol towards the target. And as we patrol, we might be like 20, 30 yards from that, where we're supposed to cross over the fence, then the whole hell broke loose.

And that was just like the bullets were flying everywhere. And you know how it is that you don't, in urban environment, it's kind of sometimes difficult pinpoint where the, when the shots are coming from, especially here is from behind you, in front of the sides, And then you don't see mausuflash. If you see mausuflash, yeah, you know where this is coming from. But so we just hang it for a second on the side of the fence.

And like we're not going to be waiting here forever. It's time to go. So we just move along that fence. There's a few yards back. We put the ladders while we, why all the shit is going on. We cross that thing. We approached the doors. I breached the door.

We blew the door. What did you breach it with? What was that? What did you breach it with? Explosives. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We bridge with explosives. At the time, most of our breaches were with explosives.

You know, it gives us that extra couple seconds where the enemy is disoriented, where the terrorists are disoriented, so we can take the advantage of it. So it was preferable entry method for us. And then I, so as we bridge, we enter the house. It was pretty big house. And we kind of knew how it is set up, because we had from the Intel, you know, what to expect, inside, even inside. And that was like, as we entered, it was like short hallway, then it was like maybe two feet to the right, and there was a wall up. So you can see the wall. The guy was standing behind the door when I blew the door.

So he just backed out, basically to throw him off a little bit, but he was still on his feet. So I was coming into the house as a second guy. So the guy went left, I went right, and up this guy. So he's doing nothing just standing there. He's blind from the flush. And so I throw him on the ground. I back him and tie him. And then I move on to the...

What do you mean bag him and tag him? Well, just basically make him ready to move out. And what does that entail for the audience? I know what that means, but what does that mean? Oh, okay. So basically subdue the guy, handcuff the guy. You know, you can say bag and tag, basically kill the guy, put in the body bag and move him away.

but that's not what I mean, I guess. Just throw him on the ground, handcuff him, get the guy ready to move out. So we did that. I joined the guys and clearing the house. And the shed is still going on outside. So when I, we walked to the second floor. I don't remember it was two or three floors.

I think it was two floors, but it was a big house. So as we clear the rooms, on one of the room as we enter it, That was a crazy, I think the craziest thing, one of the craziest, the crazier thing that I remember. The guy just charges the full speed. And I don't know if he's tried to charge me or he's just tried to run away from that room. Anyway, he just bumps into me, so throws him on the ground, he drops the gun. So now I look at this guy, he has no, he has no gun, the room is pretty much clear.

So as I'm getting this guy now, he jumps back again, kicking, screaming and punching. So as the fight is going on, I'm getting the call. I could shoot the guy, but he was not armed. So really, there was no need to shoot the guy. And as I'm working with the guy, the car comes in, hey, Drago in to stop the Grom element that's moving on the backyard. And there are three guys in ambush laying. So tell them, stop them, tell them to wait.

The hill is coming to lace them. put the laser beam on them so the guys know where they are. So I'm here trying to get this guy compliant and the same time speaking on the radio. So I put my gun at the time kind of to the side. I had another guy in the room too, but he was busy still doing his stuff. And at the same time I'm talking to on the radio

to Polish guys in Polish. Don't move on that bagyard. Just hold on. The hill is coming and I will get you there to... They will let you know where the guys are. So they stop and at the same time... And the bullets are flying into the room through the windows too. So I remember I had like a two of them came.

And you don't hear the... There's not a whistling like you can see on the movies. It's just a crack and there's just the impact on the wall. So, and then the Grom guys is calling me too, telling me that, hey, we are moving on this, we see these guys now, we know where they are, there's element maneuvering to the side, so taking the crossfires from the side. And then, so then I relay this to our guys while I'm bugging the guy. So eventually, yeah, I back him, tag him, there was the guy.

But I don't know which guy it was the one that we're after, but I think we're after all of them. So I think we hold, like, from this target, maybe like four guys or five guys. We left, I think, some guys there. They were like, for non-important. But anyway, the call came in high. We need to move out because I think there's a group of guys coming on us. You know, we have a limited number of people, so we are not set up to run and gun for like

an hour. It's very surgical. Yeah, very surgical. So we just grabbed the guys that whoever we had and bailed out and left. The whole neighborhood. The whole neighborhood. The whole neighborhood. Yeah, because the guy was very important.

So they had the, he had a setup, he had a security setup inside the house and outside the house in the perimeter. The perimeter was the one that opened up on us. And our external security actually was dicking it out with them, took care of them at the same time. were clearing the house and bagging the bad guys in the house. So, yeah, we got them. And, like I say, nobody got hurt. Those Iraqis in the Abbas, they pretty quickly realized that that's not a good idea. So we got them too.

And that was, you know, that was memorable. But it was like one of those missions that they, you do it for so long time that it became like almost like a normal thing. But it's not the most memorable. mention the most impactful on me mentioned that I did. When did you find out, what was it like leaving before we get there?

What was it like leaving with the whole neighborhood shooting at you guys? Well, that was pretty dice because at that time, when we were leaving the house, there was still shit going on. But as we were leaving by the time, everything was suppressed. So there was not so much. There was patch shots here and there.

You can hear the bullets cracks. You can hear bullets cracking here and there, but there was no intensity that was at the beginning. It was at the beginning, especially when our 50s open on the envis. Whole shit, that was like whole hell broke loose. This was where we were breaching the door at the same time. So, yeah, that was, that was, yeah, I remember that. I just never pay attention to, like, each particular,

mission for me. You ask me... It all blends into one. All blends into one. Especially if you do it for so long. And another thing, like I say, the thing more impactful for me was the one time we're in the house, clearing the house. And I was on the left side of the hallway. There was a guy on my right on the other side of the hallway.

And you can see commotion in the end of the hallway, it's like maybe 30 feet maybe. It's pretty long hallway in the dark. And you can see the commotion. You can see like feet coming out. And then coming out, you can see like a half dresses. And then you see the gun. And then the people come out. And you can hear the guys just like, hey, drop the gun.

drop the gun. Those Iraqis, I don't think they understood what he was, what we were saying. Besides, he was so stressed out. When I look at this, this is like old men, an old woman. He's holding her hand. He's walking with this gun and pissing himself at the same time. He looked like, to me, 80 years old, guy. and I can hear that so I had a guy on the top and had a guy low on the opposite corner and the guy who came

low later I could almost hear the click I just didn't want the guy to get killed so I just say I got it I got it and I'll step in front of these guys barrels because I could walk on my side

I just didn't want them to shoot this old man so I woke up there I walked this guy I used to very short and forced. So as I was walking up to this guy, you know, I am in his heart. I mean, I would just pull, like,

if he would just try to do something. Because he was holding the gas. He didn't aim at me. He was just, like, a little bit down. So I woke up to him. I took this gun away from him. And then, so when we took the guy with us, it was one of the guys we needed.

we went after. So when we were leaving, his old wife came up to me and said, like, thank you very much for not killing us, because I told him to put the gun away, but he thought that this may be some insurgents or some people got to kill him. So thank you for not killing him. Wow. And I got a lot of flag from our guys, too, because, you know, think about it for a second, And there was kind of selfish on me, but I just did not want this guy to get killed. Because there was very quickly point out to me on the debrief. What if this guy were just there and there was other guys just waiting in the dark hallway when you can't see it?

We had the flashlight too, so we hear the commotion put the plage, we see the gown. Right? So, and that you arrived in front of our guns. We wouldn't be able to do anything. You can't do it. I understand. I agree with them. It was not tactically

there was wrong thing to do. I don't know. You felt it. I just felt it. I just felt it. I don't want this guy to get shot. His old wife, you know, they hold in hands each other.

This guy is just barely working. They have steel those house shoes, those flip-flops on. And then, yeah, and he's holding this gun. It's shaking like this. And I remember, you can see the dark,

spot on his pajamas. And I think he still had this funny hat with his like this little funny ball, you know, just like you see in the cartoons. So, yeah, that sticks out to me for two reasons. One, that maybe what I did was wrong because he could endanger me and maybe other guys in the house. I just did not want this guy to get shot. And I think, I was afraid he was about to be shot.

And, you know, this woman standing by him. Wow. So, yeah, that was very impactful on me. I don't know. It was brave. My person was stupid. But it was just, I just felt it was the right thing to do. You know, if I could get shot, because you know that these guys are not worrying about

this stuff. If there was somebody there, there was many times they just shoot their own people just get to you. So there wouldn't be any hesitation. And, yeah, I agreed with the guys that, yeah, I was on. wrong but it was I mean I think it was brave I mean you know maybe you weren't thinking about it at the time but I mean not only getting shot by your own guys because everybody's hyped up I know I wouldn't maybe when the fire fights

start that they maybe they would have to fire above me but I trusted these guys there's also the possibility that the that the man would have had a suicide vest on true you know and but you know I didn't think about it I just see this lost old Grandma and grandpa walking with the gun, scared shitless. And he didn't drop the gun. The cows being made. I don't know if he understood English.

No, he didn't actually because we talked to him later before we took him. And he could barely speak English, but his wife spoke English. By the wife, they were so scared. They wouldn't be able to utter a word up there. And they were working on our guns. So when you got back from the mission, when did you find, out who it was that you had pucked? We already knew who this guy was.

I just don't remember. It was the guy who, he was one of the big financiers of those IEDs and those terror groups in Baghdad. So he knew a lot. So in the house, like, we didn't know who is who at the time. So we tried to bag everybody and bring whoever we had there. He was identified later.

So, but, you know, like with the names, I knew their names, because we had to learn for the mission, so you can call. It was just like normal for me, but now, 20 years later, there was so many of these Mohammeds that I don't remember. What did the, I'm just curious, do you remember what the write-up says? Not really, I know what it says, but it's like I don't dwell on it. So it says nice, I'm sure nice.

I read it. It's just like, yeah, it's, you know, I'm sure somebody else could say it with much better eloquent, in much better eloquent way. I'm still better with bullets than words. So for me, come and speak about anything is pretty scary. I think one of the bravest things. I have done, being just be able to go and face the camera and microphones

and speak, but I'm better with bullets, so maybe somebody else can tell the story better, but it is what it is. We are human beings. We are not robots. We are just the people. And how long, how many times did you go to Iraq?

I went there three times back to back, so I spent the year first and first deployment. came back, there was another SEAL team coming out and they were slated to work with Grom as well. So I asked them if they can

just take me for I just wanted to go back and if they can take me with them to say yeah sure absolutely so they're supposed to be like two weeks just the fam let them help them settle down with Grom but then like four

months later it's like my team is calling and say hey Drago you need to come back because we are about to deploy after these guys. There was the time when entire SIL team was deploying. So they say, you need to come back, second bag and then one back with my platoon again. The missions changed, the tactics changed at the time. So we're tasked with protecting Iraqi politicians.

So my platoon had one of those big weeks, Iraqi, that were protecting those PSD mission mostly. although wherever I could I would just try to get away from babysitting the old grown man old grown fat man and tried to get on the DA mission so I was still able to do that and some people

accuse me that even now that I was just doing my own DA missions on my own but it was not really that much on my own but yeah I was trying to get as much into those missions as possible but you know I paid the price for it too with

being a breacher you know the injuries that we sustained, that we didn't know at the time of how dangerous it can be. So that was when, on the first deployment, I think I started feeling first symptoms, first things. But like I say, I was afraid to say anything because I didn't want to be pulled out of the missions. What were the symptoms? What were you feeling?

First was I was not able to read. So what I find out that I was trying to read, but I couldn't concentrate on the text. Seems like that thing was jumping. And so I figured it out that maybe this is because the lightning. Because we were living in the tents. Outside was very hard and bright, very hard and bright. So most of our activities during the where we sleep

or like it was in the tents or inside. So I said, well, maybe I just, my vision is bad because of the dark environment. But then I noticed that I cannot read even if I can follow the letters because I forget, if I read the paragraph, I forget what it was paragraph about by the time I finished it.

So that was kind of weird. And sometimes it took me an hour to get to the page. So that was odd. But I didn't make much of it. I kind of brushed it off. I still was strong. I was thinking for clear. I just couldn't read, so there's no big deal.

It's not like I have to read some manuals to terrorists, right? So I was fine. And then the balance issues start showing up that much later and the sleep disturbance. So that was an irritability too as well. So that's when I start thinking that something is not quite right. Yeah. But, you know, we were like sometimes five feet, six feet from the breaching charge.

And besides me as a breacher, I learned very quick in Iraq to calculate the charge and stand of distance for my team, for my guys, by the manual, by the book. But I also did another calculation just for me if I can't get in the cover. was the minimum there is that I can still bridge the door without injuring myself. It happened to me not once, but there's one very dramatic time where we actually were assaulting the target. We saw us, you know, we get the intel photo, intel pictures. So we look at it, from our best ability that's what we make. We're going to go assault these doors.

This is how it's going to go. And this is where we stagged our guys. As a breacher, I had to brief it before the mission. to our guys. And we did, you know, we had a secondary entry point, we had all that stuff, pretty much ready to go. And the picture shows this empty space, maybe like that wide between the concrete wall and the building itself. And then there's a corner here where there's just walk straight to the door. So I say, well, I'm going to stack the guys right there. The way I breathed, and go to the door and blast the door, go inside. It's just a standard mission. We did

tens of hundreds of them. And dead one time. We didn't know that from the pictures, but that space was filled with the robles. There was just enough space to stack the guys, and there was no space for me. So we go out there, I kind of see something, it's not right here. So I go with the security to the door, you know, place the church were going back. The guys go in, but there's no place to me. So it's like, climb the wall. It's maybe like six, seven feet tall.

We found a way later to do this. something similar, I can talk about it, but that point was like infeasible. We can, if we linger, the longer will linger, the bigger chance that they would be alert and, you know, somebody gets killed. So,

yeah, so I just, it's no big deal. I mean, I knew the distance was still safe for me. So I got on my knees up with the gun in front of my face. I cooled up and blast the charge. And so, yeah, it's turned me a little bit, but like, I described it in the book,

But it's not maybe as dramatic as it is in the book. I did have my nose a bit bleed, my ear did, but it was not like I was gushing blood or anything. It was just I was a little bit stunned. But not enough not to participate in the assault. So I still catch up on the train, on the back of the train, and we did assault, we took the target down, we got the guy. So yeah, that was.

But these things are repeating over and over and over. When you stay in close proximity to the bridge, it will affect you eventually. And at that time, there was very little known about this. Matter of fact, when eventually I became a seal instructor in BATs, but I still have this issue with reading, with sleeping. So I talked to, what do you do? You just got to your family.

My family at that time was seals. I didn't have another family. So say, hey, what happened? I have days. I wake up every 2 o'clock in the morning and stuff. So we're like, well, maybe we're drinking. too much. No, I was not drinking. And this happens every day. Two o'clock in the morning, I'm wide away. Or maybe this. So finally we agreed there was a ghost. The apartment was hunted. And there's a

ghost up there and the ghost is waking me up. So that was a conclusion. So then I realized that, shit, I'm scared of ghosts. I need to find different apartment because I don't want to be scared sleeping at night that some ghost comes here to scared hell out of me. So I didn't find an apartment. So finally I resigned myself to living with the ghost, which eventually turned nothing to be a TBI, the traumatic brain injury that caused me react that way. That tells you how little we knew at the time. It's not the case today. We know we are acutely aware the danger and the damage that can those explosions cause.

But at the time, it was not that. The funny thing is that I think the NSW came out to conclusion the biggest damage occurs during the breaching course because people are exposed to those breaking charges constantly day in, day out. Well, that is just baby walk next to what we did in Iraq when you just have these things going multiple times every night and it's not just for like two weeks, three weeks or for the month. You spend the year doing it eventually you start feeling it.

So that's what happened to me. I don't complain, I would do it again if I had to do it, but at least now we know what it is and we can actually do something about it. it. And not the only one who suffer from this. You talk to any breacher. I think they can even come with a term breach of brain right now. That's something like this. That's what they

call it. But again, I don't complain. This is not complain. It's just the fact. Maybe somebody who suffers can recognize the symptoms and things and get himself a hope. That's what I'm saying.

So after all you're a wrap tours you went to Buds to be an instructor. Yes. Well, I had those slighted. My orders were to bridging school to be instructor, but I already knew that something was wrong with me. And even shooting guns next to my head because, like, the headache for a day.

So I asked if I could change my orders, go somewhere where I'm not exposed and the break from the noise, from explosions, from the shockwaves. and they said, well, won't you try but this Bicill instructor? I said, sure. But then the problem was I already had my orders cut. So I had to actually call.

I went behind the bag a little bit and the chief, one of the chiefs, he passed away today. He was in Millington. He became a detailer in Millington. So I call him and say, this is what happened to me, this is what I want to do, this one will change, and I need your help. So within like a month,

I got the change of orders and he called me, say, dude, I got you. You're going to buds. So that's how I end up in CIL training. How did you like your buds tour? It was relaxing. It was fun, too. I kind of, I miss the combat.

I miss the engagements in Iraq, that you don't have it here. But what helped me get through this assignment was understanding that I might be saving lives, I might be making these people as good as possible. So when they go to combat, they will be extremely effective, they would be mentally prepared, and those who could not achieve that type of readiness,

they would be removed from the CIL training. So I was pretty harsh, but I was very fair instructors from what I was told by fellow students, who today is very soon. successful SEALs, some of them already retired from SEAL teams. But I have a fond memory of the young guys going through BATS. Matter of fact, it's very, I tell you, this is very humbling experience. Because the way when we go through BADS, it's most of, at least for me, it was a blur.

You just go do every day, you do something, you just try to survive a day, just to the next day, from meal to meal, from hour to hour. And it just goes quick. You just, it's like almost you walk in the room, you get a kick in the balls a few times, then kicking the ass out of the door, and you don't. Well, now you are the one who is actually doing this to these kids, who is demanding from these kids that sacrifice, that pain. And it is very, again, very humbly because you see these young kids

and they don't quit, they just keep going. no matter what you throw at them. Some of them falter, some of them quit, some of them get injured and being removed. Most of the people I notice in bars, they don't resign, they don't quit, they get injured, they get removed from the training. But seeing these guys,

and you could not make them quit, no matter what, some of them, it makes you think that, yeah, America is safe. When did you... What year did you retire? I retired 2011. So by this time I met my wife.

How did you meet her? Well, that was a story to itself. So I was in Bats. I didn't have a family at the time. And finally I came to realizations. Like in a year and a half, I'm retiring. I have no family. So I have to find me a wife.

So it was not that easy because with my English, the way I was, I guess, I was not very attractive guy. So I asked for my friends and my teammates and they said okay Drago the best way to do it is go online you find yourself a cheek and if you like her you're going to marry her. I said sounds good. So let's do it. So I had incidents.

I mean I had those misfires, what I would say. So there was a girl I was courting for a long time and eventually we agreed to meet. And then we scheduled and tried to meet first time in the coffee shop, like safe for her place. And it was a lunchtime. Good God, it was a place where those bunch of executive chicks were coming in, like a very super nice place, bunch of offices around. I didn't think much of it, but these girls who I look at the picture was so beautiful. I said, I'm going to go and pretend I'm smarter than I am.

So I took the book. I couldn't still read it. But I just pretend I was reading. so I look smart. And then she's coming. And so every girl, those girls are coming. I said, this is an answer. I just try to get myself bigger and look better.

And then there's none of these girls. So I find like, well, it's almost like 10 minutes late. Maybe she won't show up. And then I see the girl walking, but she had to like walk sideways through the door. So I said, that's not, cannot be her. So I just like sitting up there and just look at the book that I brought to make myself look smarter

and all these nice good-looking chicks and line up next to my table and she's coming and coming I see the big shadow comes up it's like are you Thomas Drago I was like

yeah how do you know me it's like who are you I'm Wendy whatever the name was we talk about it I was like Dan And all these chicks, I can see already the smirk on their face.

It's like, dude, what did you get yourself into it? And then, so I say, well, Wendy, just have a seat, sit down. And I'm thinking like, fuck, I mean, how do I make it look like a business meeting? So these chicks are not laughing at me. And so I say, so Wendy, tell me, so talking about your company, how many employees do you have? You know, how many people do you manage? Just look at me like an idiot. and it's like, we're supposed to have a date,

not talk about my job. So this guy is just laughing out loud. It's like, dude, do you just... So I'm like, okay, all right, a date. Okay, let's make it a date. And so we talked for a while, and I just wanted to end this thing. It was so humiliating. And then she was so loud, you know,

and she was like, oh, you're so beautiful. I was like, damn, just go. And so we go back and say, could you give me a right? I have a car on the other side of the mall. And that was in San Diego. I was like, yeah, okay, I'll give you a ride. So we go to my Jeep. My Jeep is not even the lift.

It's just like we had a bit bigger tires at the time. And she cannot get into the Jeep. She's like trying to push herself back, but the doors are too narrow for her. She tries to pull the leg with her hands putting the Jeep. And hopefully I can push her in it, but that didn't work. She almost fell down. And I was like, I'm getting like already. Like, what the hell I got myself into it?

And then she said, well, I just walk. I say, yeah, thank you. You just go. And she left. She called me and, hey, it was a great date. You know, you want to meet again? Let's have a date again. It's like, listen, Wendy, first of all, you misrepresent yourself.

We could be friends if we didn't lie. You know, I don't mind be friends with you if you were honest. But you send me all these pages. of some other chicks pretending that this is you. And then you show up and look like a jabba they had. And that's not you who there. And I don't want to be rude to her, but I had to tell her I'm not interested in any dates with her.

So I told her that. And then, you know, as an instructor in Pullcom, you remember, you spend almost all day in the water testing students. So we have students who are broke dicks, the guys who have some injuries. were some injuries, so they cater to us. So they have a phone call, they say, Instructo-Rago, you have a phone call here, give me the phone,

so you're still in the pool, you eat in the pool, it's like all day for these two days of Pool Comp. And one of the guys say, Instrundrago, you have a call, a message here, I say, okay, bring me the phone. So he brings the phone, he looks, and I can see his face like, by this time I was dating Rachel already. So I will come back to it, how we met.

And that's, so I'm looking at, I see the tits. So I was like, what the hell is this? I call Rachel. So Rachel, don't send your naked breast here. The students are looking every time they pick the phone. They see this. It's like, whose tits are you having, receiving the messages from?

Then I look and say, oh shit, that's not the Rachel. That's, there was that fat chick calling me about the, it's trying to send me the message. I just say, call her, delete her, they tell her not to call you again. So I call her, say,

don't call me anymore. And don't send those naked pictures of you. I say, oh yeah, I'm so sorry. My boyfriend is right above your name and I just by accident send you my naked picture. I was like, yeah, right on.

You know, just stop lying. Just don't call me anymore. So, you know, I had a problem like this. So then when I met Rachel online, so I see this check, I was like, Holy shit.

I'm in love with that one. So, you know, I try to wing to her. Nothing. Wing to her again, nothing. So I talked to the guys. Who do I talk to? I talk to my family, team guys, sales. What do I do?

How can I get her interested in me? So one of the guys look at the profiles. First of the first thing, get yourself some few years off. So make yourself like maybe eight years younger. Okay, eight years younger. then write her some nice letter where I really can't can you help me

so this is how it started so then the team guys writing the love letters for me so I can send it to her she was writing back to me and actually she liked actually the letters so we continue this way with my English I am proficient with it I'm proficient in combat

but I'm not really proficient in those lovi-dovy things that you know like romance Yeah, you are romancing, especially romancing online. So that's something that I turned to my fellow teammates. And so she wrote me a letter, whoever I could find, say, hey, write me the response, write me some nice love letter. So just type very quick something in and send it back.

And continue, it worked. So then eventually the guys got tired, so drag, we don't choose so many of these love letters. now you can make any letter out of it just copy and paste. So I say, okay, I'll try. I was nervous. So I did that. And her profile disappeared from those American singles website. I remember still.

So her profile disappeared. It's like, oh, damn, I was sorry. I was writing the emails. Well, team guys were writing the emails. I was reading her emails. So it was kind of like I was falling in love. and then her profile disappeared so I was like

a car on of the guys and say hey no help me out with this this is the email I sent to her and I think maybe she doesn't want to communicate with me anymore. He just looks at this like yeah dude that's fucked up I think this is why

so I was mopping for a few days and I was still checking online and she showed up again And I was like, shit, I just need to, I need to talk to her. I need to tell her, maybe that letter that I wrote because of my English. So she needs to just, I need to talk to her. So eventually I coerce her to call me. And she called me on the private lines.

She answered. So we talked for a while and say, hey, wait a minute. So let me get it straight. You are not on drugs. You're not drunk when you write to me. You just don't speak English. like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it, you know, that's it. So we start talking on the phone.

And that's eventually I asked her to come and visit me in San Diego. She did come. And this is where I find out. Where was she? Was that? Where was she? She was living in Ohio, in Dayton where I was living. So I flew her to San Diego. And it was a funny story, actually, because after the bad experience with these chicks

that they were not who they tell me they are, I asked one, a team guy, say, hey, can you go with me? If this is another job at the hat, if this is another person that I'm not, I really like to me, I need you to bail me out. I will run and you tell her that I was called for just some combat mission in Iraq.

Whatever, just tell her something. So we both are waiting and he or she is going down the escalator. He recognizes actually her first. He said, dude, it's that chick. So yeah, did you just rob the cradle? dude, she's decades younger than you are.

How did you pull it off? I say, well, you wrote the love letters and now you lie about my age at the works. Here we go. I say, okay, I go, you got it. You're on your own. She's hot. And he just left. And I was, I remember, so nervous.

Because, you know, I had all this with my emails. When I just wrote the email, it was really not up to speed, up to her standards. Now I was supposed to go and talk to her in person. I was very nervous. So when she came out, I was like to be like super gentleman. I was just like very stiff and saying, hi, Rachel, I am Drago. And she just looked at me and say, yeah, cool. But, you know, I didn't fly 2,000 miles to shake your hand.

Give me a hug. I was like, holy shit. So I give her the big Drago hug. And then I remember. So we started talking, you know, but she like stepped back, say, wait a minute. I think I know you. It's like, you know, for team guys to meet the girl who you don't recognize and she says you,

she knows you, the first thing through my mind was, what did I do to her? When? But they say, yeah, you know what? When you were in the haps training, you are the new guy in your platoon with your group of guys, you and the haps training and this is where I met you first time. I remember you for your accident and belligerence. I say belligerence. Yeah, because you.

you know, like in the HAPS training, we, HAPS training is the high, you know what it is, right? There's the chamber ride when they ride you to like 20,000 feet, the air pressure. And then, so you can recognize if you have a problem. Let's say if your equipment malfunctions in the real life, in an airplane, you can recognize because you learn the chamber what your symptoms are, how you will react.

Then you have a few seconds actually to remedy the situation will step away from the ramp in the airplane. And so we're sitting there, and they took us up. Rachel was in the chamber, actually. And when they asked who wants to be volunteered to demonstrate the hypoxia, I mean the lack of oxygen.

So like every old... I was a new guy, so like that guy right there. It's like, okay. So they told me, they drove us to 25,000 feet, I took my mask. And then I had to do those toys, you know, like throw the square, peg into square in the ball square,

rugged things, they sign my name and stuff. And these guys start egging me. I say, yeah, Drago, you can, blah, blah, blah. And I got mad. And I was like, I was threatening to kill everybody of them in the chamber. I'm going to kill you. I'm going to do this and this and this. And then, you know, I passed out.

So they just put the oxygen mask on me very quick. Other guys were on the masks. So I didn't know who was saying this. But they're just saying, you know, Drago, you know, you're going to pass out. you're going to do this, you know, I was getting mad. And so when I came to, the crew in that center,

they were excited. They were like, dude, this is awesome. Well, we have example of almost every symptom of that hypoxia, right? Hypoxia. Hypoxia. Yeah. But we never had the belligerents. Now we just recorded your belligerence.

So this is a great educational video. So I'm floating somewhere there. being as a educational aid to show people what the belligerents look like so she remember me from there she reminded me this and then we walked to the car

I was very nervous I couldn't talk to hardly could talk to her from being scared but I had a flower I had a flower in my Jeep because I say if the Jabba the hat shows up I will run and I'll just give the flower throw it away but in this case I was so nervous

I grabbed this flower and say, hey, and this is for you. It was like a great paper wrapped up. And I was so nervous. I didn't wrap it. I still have it upside down, just give it together. Here. She just looked at me, what's this? I was like, flower.

So she took this. Like, okay, hold on one second. Hold on a second. She told me to wait. She unwrapped it through the paper thing. Flip it upside down. She grabbed my hand. She said, okay, try it again.

Now it's like, okay. here. So that was my first thing. I tell you, I was more scared at the time that I was before the assault, before the entering on target, because that was so unusual for me.

It was so foreign and scary. So yeah, that was like a pretty scary experience. But this is how I met my wife. And then we started dating each other. She was coming to visit me. I was coming to visit

to visit her and eventually we got married and we have I consider myself fully domesticated now

that is what she but if you ask her she say well yeah but I'm still the project under construction I'm still being domesticated

so she's making me better person every time so yeah that's how it works but I still have my pitfalls with

with English it seems like so 40 years but things that I sometimes say or the way I pronounce things that still get me in trouble sometimes so I remember I asked her sometimes

one time to fix me a dessert I say well what would you like for dessert? I said well no I want to eat Kimberly I see her like terror in her eyes who is Kimberly I see who is Kimberly? I see who is Kimberly

You know, the desert we had in the restaurant two days ago or so, like, you mean Cremberley? It's like, yeah, that's what I say. No, you say Kimberly. You don't eat Kimberly. So, you know, I still get that shit. I'm better now, but she's still working on me. She's still on the project under construction. So now we have two kids together, 15 years, 16 years old, beautiful girl, very smart.

and I cannot be I could not beat her in chess game since she was I think eight years old I still can't I think she's the only person who Czech made me in or maybe five or six moves

so I'm not bad player but I cannot beat this girl and I have a son he's doing gymnastics he's 15 years old so and we have also from our previous marriages the oldest son Adam my oldest son he lives in Tennessee he's running his own

detailing business. My other son, Blake, is actually a student. He was marine. He spent one year in Afghanistan. He's working now. He's studying electrical engineering in Ohio University. And I have younger son, too, who is still active duty, Coast Guard. So I'm very proud of my kids. How long have you been married? Oh, that's a dangerous question. Now we can't mean to tell you because now... She's down there listening. Yeah, she's down and listening. And then she was If she listened to the podcast, then I get myself in trouble. That's the most kind of dangerous questions for me.

But I think Science 2007. So we got married in August 18. A kind of funny story because August 18 is the presumed date when Battle of Thermopyla started, when 300 Spartans with 5,000 other Greeks defend the Greece against 250,000 Persians. So that's the presumed date when the barrel started. And there's my date of when we got married. And then the place we got married is Laonia does, like the name of the Spartan king. Oh, wow.

Wow. Yeah. Also, when we got engaged was another story, too, because I'm kind of troubledite. I'm kind of like a – I'm not very big into this nice, nice things because I don't know how to do these things. So I asked the guys, what would you do? How can I – how – were the base engagement. Dude, you need to go to Cancun, you need to go there, get the restaurant, make it big. I said, dude, I don't have the money for that.

I just have a barely money to buy the ring. So I was thinking, I said, what I'm going to do is I'm going to invite her on the range to an island. And let her shoot every gun that we have. And the last gun, M48, will be, when she opened the tray, there's going to be a ring hanging down. and there's going to be a piece of paper like marry me. So I jinged that myself. So I see her away to get,

and ask girl to marry. So I brought her to Ireland. She had no idea. Then we had to prepare the range. So with the guys, I put her in the room, I'm still amazed that she didn't complain or anything. There was one old shooting magazine. It was nothing there, you know, like an island out there.

there's really no place to leave. And she's sitting in this room while we are setting up the guns, like M4 and this and this, almost every gun that we had, every type of gun we had an inverter, we sign up, line up online. Then I brought her in, you know, just, I have actually video

of it. I'm going to post it on my website one day. So she goes from two gun to gun and shoots, and actually she should, the M4, she should pretty good, you know. That was like all on on target. My heart skipped the bit. skip the beat. So we go from gun to gun, and the last

gun, when she opened the tray, I'm like next to her, and she sees the ring. And then this piece of paper said, you marry me. And I was right there. I said, would you marry me? She said, yes. Beautiful. Yep. So there was a zero way to

get married. I got away, you know, like, I didn't have the money, so it turned out to be not a very expensive way, but it was a very memorable way. It was a very memorable for her. So, yeah. So you remember 2007, so that's what? 2007, 2017,

18 years. Yeah, 18 years. Yeah. Congratulations. It went so fast. It went so, so fast. It's just the time goes by. Here I'm running and gunning, kicking doors in, and suddenly here I'm being married, taking care of the kids and enjoying my American dream. So what's your secret to a successful marriage?

To successful marriage, I think understanding and being reasonable and being loving and being accept that she's another human being that needs respect as well. And we just enjoy our lives together. You know, this is something that the longer it takes, the better it is, seems like we are, we fought tooth to the nail at the beginning. And now we really don't. But we match so well together that I think that's a love.

So yeah, that's my story. Again, I'm telling it, I'm telling this because I want people to see the beautiful America, the America greatness, how unique country it is, how powerful it is. And sometimes it is hard to see if you sit in the trenches, if you are part of it.

But when you have a chance to step aside, take a different vantage point, you can see how beautiful country we have. Yeah, that's some positivity. We don't hear very often here. Yes. You know, there's another fact is that I live as a free man. I can live as a free man only because the founding fathers, because the ideals, the founding fathers, were fighting for and the ideas that were have been carried to this day by American people by Americans like you like other Americans. Thank you. I saw that did you do an Ibegain treatment?

Yes, I did. I've done it, but, you know, like some people say how great experience they had. For me, it was not really, it was really nightmare. I didn't meet, like some people, I didn't meet. Jesus, I met demons and it really scared the hell out of me. But yeah, but it also changed me. I remember after this treatment, I called my wife and I say, well, because she always said like, she doesn't like when I'm being called Drago.

So Drago is gone, you know, that's, you are Thomas. And she did say, like, we're going to like Drago in the cage and you are Thomas from that I said, sure, my wife, she's the boss, whatever, you say. But then I called her from there after the abogaine treatment, I was coming back. I said, look, I buried Raggo in the desert, you know, in the abogaine there. Thomas is coming back. Did you get any benefits out of that with the TBI? I stopped drinking immediately.

And there's another thing, too. It's difficult sometimes to admit. I think even more difficult is to notice that you can be alcoholic. And for me, it was like I had to drink, but I didn't feel. like I had to. I was such a cool thing. I have a few shots here, you know, a few shots there.

And I can stop anytime. I just don't stop it today. I stop it tomorrow. But tomorrow, so, well, you know what, I'll take a couple more shots and I'll be fine. I'll just stop it tomorrow. I can't stop it. It's very easy.

I just told myself I'm not drinking. And that continues. And I couldn't stop. So I came back without drinking. I don't drink. I don't have to drink. Now I can have a glass of wine with my wife. if I need to, but there's nothing that compels me to drink.

I start sleeping better. And also the peace that came in with, I would say, the acceptance of who you are where you are. And also, but that's not just the abogaine. I think the faith and God plays a big role in my life right now. And this is only thanks to Rachel to my wife. so yeah did your faith strengthen after the Ibegain

yes definitely yes and you know this may be I don't know I don't think she gets mad if I tell but we we read books like on faith

every night before we go to sleep so sometimes most of the time she's reading and sometimes I said in because of my English let me try to read this but mostly she's reading and you know it's so peaceful

that She's like, well, you're not listening. You're falling asleep. Because when I snuggle up, she started reading. It's like, hey, you know what? I'm just like fading away. But yeah, so yes, definitely yes. And the faith plays big role in our life.

And I think this is also another reason why my marriage is so successful. There's two things, actually. The faith that we both share and her emotional intelligence, that's something that, how to say, right way she knows like if I am angry or there's some some emotions online she can disarm me so this is something that you know this is great I mean I love the life but I think we together work as a team greatly and that's there's I credit the Abogaine treatment with in big part for what happened there and I think it's important that we pursue it because as a veteran, I know that different people

react to different things. The different things will help me, may not help you or may not help somebody else. This is why we cannot restrict people to only want cookie cutter treatment. If you have, let's say, TBI or PTSD or whatever, that this is what we're going to do to you. It might not witness that things didn't work for some guys, but they found relief and help doing different things. So the abrogate, I think, is important that we continue with it and try to allow or bring it, allow people to get this treatment in the United States

so they don't have to travel to Mexico like I did or to other places. Yeah. Yeah, I hope that happened. We have the secretary of the VA coming on soon, and that's a big discussion I'm going to have with him. Nice. We need that, I think, because it is very powerful. And I was very skeptical initially from a friend of mine,

another team guy calling me, say, Drago, I need to tell you something. And the guy is just as a knuckle-dragger as somebody can be. You don't want to fight this guy. I don't want to... This guy is just a badass dude. He calls me and say, Drago, I need to tell you, I met Jesus.

It's like, what? I talk to Jesus, man. I was like, Rachel, get Navy Seals fund ready. I think we have another going out of rails. I think that we have a guy and he will need help. And then I talked to him, and that changed my life too.

So he... We talked for cry at some time, and he explained me what it was. I didn't know anything about Abogaine at the time or ayahuasca. And eventually, another friend of my rest in a piece, Dan Cirollo, Taco, he called me and said, like, how did he say it? He said, like, Drago, you need to go. I mean, if you don't go, I'm going to kidnap. You need to go to this treatment.

And you are coming with me. So he took his time from his work, from his family, just to help me get to Mexico and get this treatment. So, yeah, I owe him a lot too. Man, he was a good friend of mine. He was a good friend of mine. Yes. He was, for a while there, he was my only friend here.

And then he died of a heart attack on the range. Very young. With his son. But on a hunting trip. on a hunting trip. He was doing things for other people. Yeah. When he died.

He was an awesome human. Yes. And I just, I never served with him, but. I did. That was a warrior. A true warrior. Yeah. Yeah.

I miss him. Yeah, me too. I miss him too. There's many guys, you know. There's something that, I think we'll last, It's almost like a survival guilt. You know, like why I survive?

Why mean, not him? Why he got, why he was killed, not me? We ask those questions and I think we always ask until we die, you know, but there's the faith, you know, and that's how the life goes. He was a big part of me finding my faith. Yes. he was he helped many guys

yeah he's a great guy man and but this is about the teams you know what people don't understand and I watch some of the programs some podcasts too with fellow team guys

and this always ends up pretty heavy you know but people so people tend to forget that we're normal people you know we just do our jobs

Sometimes, you know, the way I look at ourselves is like we are not sheepdogs. There's other people capable of doing it. We are wolves and we hunt wolves. Sometimes nations need monsters to fight other monsters because this is the only way we can fight those monsters. So I think sometimes we have to become those monsters to protect our society, right? So that's the way I look at it. And, yeah, that's sometimes, that's life. And we all knew what we are getting into getting in SEAL teams.

And we all were ready to do what needs to be done to protect our citizens, to protect America. And I'm proud of it. I'm proud to know you, man. I think that's the perfect way to end this. And I just want to say, Thomas, it was an honor to interview you and just get to know you. And like I said, I've just heard so much about you and your reputation speaks for itself. And so I just, it's, I'm really thankful we met. Thank you so much, but I'm just a product of SEAL teams.

I always wanted to be like you guys. I wanted us to keep up with you guys. so I'm nothing special. I'm not different than you. I'm not different than anybody else. So I'm just one of the community members. I'm one of the sales, former retired seals now. But we are all the same. We are from the same clothes and we did the same job. So it was honored to be here. I thank you for the invitation. But it gave me also the opportunity to maybe make people pause and look at America from different vantage point. Look at how great America is and is worth protecting. All right, Drago, you got an update on the judge that prosecuted you in Poland.

Yeah, I was sentenced to three years of present time. And what happened at that time, there was nothing unusual because those so-called activists, judges, they work for the party. They did openly work for the party, but they were, they did what the political party told them to do. They were just doing their bidding in the society. And so I was not the only one. There was like thousands of people sentenced by these activists, judges to prison time. Some of them were sentenced to death,

especially people coming back from the Second World War who experienced the Western freedom, who experienced the Western way of life, The communists in Poland, like my father, they did not want these people there. So from the very beginning, they were finding cases to murder them, to kill them, to put them in prison. For example, the top-scoring ace of Polish Air Force fighting in Battle of Britain, he was arrested very quickly after he returned to Poland and sentenced to death. his death sentence was committed to life in prison then I think he was let go after 10 years in prison time

of prison time or 15 years in prison no I don't remember how many years but he spent a few years in prison and on the death row too he was lucky because many of those people were executed very often just outside the prison cell with the shot in the bag of his neck so that's what happened And those are so, these activist judges, you would never think, you would never think that something will ever happen to them.

They were the masters of life and death for so many polls. But in the night, 2024, I got a call to, if I could come to Warsaw and testify in the case of one of such judges. It happened to be the same judge who sentenced also me to present time. So, yes, I did absolutely. Yeah, so me and Rachel flew to Warsaw. And the guy, the judge was charged with communist crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes against Polish nation, and judicial terrorism.

That's what they did, those activist judges. So it was surreal, but also like better sweet. because when I walk in with my wife in this courtroom, I had my American flag, and it was like, you can't do anything to me anymore. But it's not. Poland is different now. Poland is very, how to say,

they're law-abiding citizens. They go by the law, but they want to protect themselves from totalitarian systems like communism, socialism, Nazism. They don't, don't want it that they experienced it already. So there is actually a constitution, a Polish constitution, I believe, I forgot which point

it is, that prohibits promotion of totalitarian ideologies in Poland. You can't do it. So yeah, so I went to Warsaw and I testify against this judge. Although, you know, this guy, I don't know how old age he is now, maybe like 80 years old. And it was 40 years ago. So I would never cross, it would never cross my mind. The judge who was sentencing me to prison time, he will be prosecuted for judicial terror. And he will be, I will be testifying in his case.

Also, I learned that I was torture, you know, the beatings in prison, beatings from the police. I never considered a torture. I thought it just normal. This is how things works. You know, you get caught. That would be beating you up. but now when testifying it, that was classified actually as a torture.

So that's something else that down on me when I went like a year ago to Warsaw. So I asked also, I testified in the court. My wife was there too, Rachel, and she was very proud of me. We both had the American flags, you know, sitting in this courtroom. But I ask for not putting this guy in prison.

I ask the judge to, you know, no matter what they're going to do, there's no need to put 80 years men in prison. He asked me if I have some against this guy still, if I have some feelings and some anger against this guy. And I say, no, you know, 40 years in America changed me. I am a different person than I used to be when I was when I came to America.

So, you know, forgiving, I think I learned too in America. You know, if you can't forgive somebody, you leave that hate or you leave that part. It become part of your life, destroying your life. We just, you know, like following the God Jesus' teachings, you know, you need to forget. You may disagree, you may not, with the sinner, but you don't condemn the sinner, you, but you don't condemn the sinner. And that's what I ask, you know, condemned his, what he did, but as a human being, you know, in his age, really, there is no, I think there will be, there is no, I forget. gave him. So there's no need to put him in prison.

So I don't know what happened and I didn't follow up on it. I'm just like for me, it's just like I learned how to forgive and that's America changed me. A lot of people need to learn how to forgive. We know if you don't

that that things goes with you, whatever you go. You don't leave as a free good man good man being free, you have this thing on your shoulder. So if we can learn how to forget, how to forgive people. Not I forget about how to forgive.

I think we are better people. America may be a better person. When you forgive, you free yourself. Yeah. You know, you also, you asked me about what I feel when I killed the guy. Oh, by the way, I was thinking about it too. I get so mixed up. But the first guy that I killed was the guy in the car who following us, he was just pulled

from behind the corner. I was in the last car. It was so fast. Then as he was coming at the, you know, like Carl 50, I think I was on 50. So I was on the last car. He pulled out next to the he was coming to our right. And I see with the, under the with the flashlight, I mean with the lights that we have, but also the street lights, there's a guy on the right, sitting with the AK, sitting with the AK.

So it was like surreal. I was like, what is he thinking? I mean, we just, we can just obliterate these guys. But anyway, so he started pulling in. My concern was that if he has, if this ID,

VBID, we can all get hurt. So I didn't think much. She was almost so close. I just pulled the pistol. I killed the guy on the right seat with the gun and I shot the driver. So they went to,

They hit the light pole. The kind of funny things is like, so we're driving, I think much of it. I said, okay, guys gone. And I got a call from the front, from the OIC. Say, hey, do I hear some shots being fired? What's going on, guys? Everything is okay. I said, yeah, I just stopped the guy.

He was just coming on us. So I stopped the car. He said, okay, no problem. No question. Because we are actually driving, I think, from, no, we were driving to the mission. So yeah, we didn't want any interruption. Say, oh, yeah, let's see what happened to this guy. There's no time for it.

You just take care of the business and move on. So, yeah, but the thing is what you asked me earlier, too. I was thinking about it, about the feelings of it. I was never like a feeling touchy guy. For me, there was no. But I say, like, I didn't feel anything. I didn't because I was thinking about it. I see myself more as a technical person.

So for me, the dwelling on it was more like, what could I do better? How could I kill him better, more efficient way? Not like, oh my God, he's dead now. My priority was always life of American citizens, the well-being of America. Any foreign entity has no value to me, has no value. it comes second. You know, like I'm not so eloquent, but yeah, the American life will come before any foreign life.

Number one priority. It's number one priority. America and American citizens. Well, Drago, thank you again for coming back and setting that record straight and being open and vulnerable and, you know, it'll lack for better words or better, it'll lack for better words,

you know, setting humility aside for the, for the full story. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it was kind of difficult. Again, like I say, we're talking about these often and people watch all these movies. They stop seeing us as a human beings. They see us more like just part of that machine

that if you just broke and something happens. They'll just bring another one. Some people almost expect you to be hurt and replaced with somebody else. So that's something that maybe I don't like people to see. This is why I don't wear the Trident. I was like I mentioned about it earlier. I wear American flag because American flag encompasses the Trident

and everything that is good. And I want when people see me to think about me as American, and not the Navy SEALs. I'm no longer Navy SEAL now, of course. You know, I lived that life for 20 years. I loved it. But now I am just American. There's no hyphen in front of this.

American. Thank you. Thank you.