The Team House - 1st Ranger Battalion Combat Medic Ian Kurashige, Ep. 47

Episode Date: June 20, 2020

Ian Kurashige served as combat medic in 1st Ranger Battalion and then did humanitarian work in Nepal after the 2015 earthquake earthquake that killed 9,000 people. Today he works in public health policy. Support the stream on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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lives. And every time you donate with Gryffles Plasma, you're compensated. You can receive over $500 the first month. Learn more about plasma and how it helps people at Gryphalsplasma.com. In is Kurishigi, right? We are live. Welcome to episode 47 of the team house. We are here tonight with Ian Kourashige. He is a former First Ranger Battalion Combat Medic. serves overseas. He has also done a bunch of humanitarian work abroad over in Nepal, and we'll talk to him about that as well. And today he works in public health policy.

So we're also going to talk to him about that and about, you know, as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic, there's a whole lot of things we're going to get into tonight, I think. And this is also the historic moment where all three Ranger battalions are finally represented on the team house. Dave, you can see him, you know, we got these Brady bunch squares going, you know, co-host over there, Dave Park. Dave was a second Ranger

Battalion guy back in the day when Rangers still had Black Berets. What years were you in Second Ranger Battalion, Dave? 97, 2000. I left in 2000. Okay. I was in 375, 3rd Ranger Battalion, from 2003 to

2006. And then Ian, You were in first range of battalion from what years? 2010 to 2014. So there you go. We were all in, you know, even the time frames don't quite overlap. So we each have a variety of somewhat different experiences, different times, different battalions. So it's going to be an interesting conversation.

But Ian, thank you so much for coming on the show tonight. I'm really happy to have you on. And I think that, you know, you have a really unique experience, a unique perspective that you're be able to share with us. So thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on and it's it's great to be here. You know, I live in I live in Brooklyn. So there's there's not a lot of former battalion guys around here. But it's good to it's good to chat with about the old days. There might be more than you think though. And I might have to introduce you to some people later on.

There is a, if not a platoon-sized element, there is a sizable amount of ex-rangers that are hanging out in New York City. Okay. Jack and I actually met at a Ranger meet up. Yeah, we did. Yeah. So, Ian, tell me a little bit about yourself.

How did you find yourself into Ranger Battalion? Did you grow up in Brooklyn? You know, how did all this come about? did you fall in with the wrong kids in high school and a federal judge told you it's the army or jail? I mean, how did that happen? Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it's very much like complete opposite. So like I say this, I say this not as a point of boasting, but we always say that there's smart rangers and strong rangers.

And I was very much like the smart ranger because I was not a strong ranger. So like I had to be the other kind of guy. And the, so I grew up in San Diego. My dad was in the military, but he was in the military. He was drafted during Vietnam and did like this technician role and was in the army during the, you know, mid-70s when it was a really bad time. Like he was telling, he would tell me stories about gang activity in the barracks and officers needing MPS courts to go and do inspections and just like, just,

Like because there's these bears were basically they were like active like gangs just controlling a large sections of installations. And so when I said I was thinking about the military after, you know, I had see like I woke up like I'm sure all, you know, not all of us are kind of saw 9-11 happen. And I was like, this is a world changing event. this is going to affect the course of our country and the course of our lives. And I wanted to make sure that I was contributing in a way that I felt was positive. And so I was like, I'm going to go join the Army. And my dad was like, fuck you. Because he was like, I mean, he was like, that's absolutely not what you want to do.

At the very least, you want to go in as an officer. and I was like, go to college first. So I was like, okay, I'll go to college first. So I actually graduated high school, went to college, was in ROTC. And got closer and closer to graduating. I was like, I don't think I want to be an Army officer. I do not want to make a career about this. And I had the benefit that only like just starting at my generation had

where we could actually go on these forums and hear. guys who'd served like from earlier generations like like Dave talk about their experiences and talk about what the pros and cons were of like like you know should I do an 18 x-ray contract and can try and go straight off the street into special forces should I should I go to Ranger bat and for me I had always been juggling these two ideas where I wanted to do something in international affairs foreign policy after especially after that moment of experience experiencing 9-11 and then wanting to do something in the medical field. And so thinking about my options, it just seemed like the best pipeline that would get me to

that kind of in a, and see if this was truly what I wanted to do, would be going for that Ranger contract to enlist and with the, as a medic. And so that would give me, you know, the first half of what the 18 deltas do in the Special Forces program, assuming, of course, that I pass RIP and what, and by the time I got there was the RASP program had been initiated. And that just seemed more and more appealing to me. And so I actually disenroll from ROTC, which is a very, very intense process. Like it requires like the one star commander to, like sign off on it. What makes it intense? Do they do they kind of grill you about what you're, why you want? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So at that point I had I had actually signed on. I was getting like I was pretty much committed as committed as you can be in the RTC program towards being an officer as like this is this is not really the path for me. This is not this is not something that's going to going to help that like this is not what I want to do and this is probably not where I'm going to fit in best. And so I'm going to I wanted to step away from that and say, no, I'm going to, I'm going to reorient myself. And I really want to focus on being able to do this special operations mission, which there's no guarantee. You just get no guarantee whatsoever that you can

do if you're an officer. Like even if you're a top performer as in the ROCC program, you might still end up being assigned to the transportation branch or something like that. Sure. Good, because like they need good officer. Everybody, every branch needs good officers, obviously. But the, you just don't have the same amount of control over your career, at least initially. And I knew, especially after hearing this experience from my dad about his experience in the regular army, that I wanted to do the special operations thing. Like, I wanted to be there with the best. And so that's what I ended up doing. And so after I graduated college, I enlisted the perk of enlisting with a four-year degree is you come in immediately as a specialist, not that it really matters in battalion, but

like it meant that like it was like a few years older. The drill sergeants, you know, they, I mean, they let me teach the CQB battle drill during basic training because like they were all arguing because they all came from different units and had different SOPs and they're like, you know what, just make, just make the fucking this guy over here with ROTC cadet do it. Yeah. Okay, I'll do it. So it was definitely like a different experience, but I had already gone to airborne school as a RTC cadet.

Okay. So, yeah, I did exactly. Did a summer swing by through the airborne school. And again, there being on being on Fort Benning. soon to be renamed, inshallah. We, like, seeing the reverence people had towards that brown fence around down at the end of the road, like to stay away from there.

Yeah, because they're violent and they're dangerous. Yeah, they're violent and they're dangerous. We always took that as a point of pride. Yeah, a couple things. First of all, when Ian's talking about being a specialist, it's a rank or a pay grade, it's a rank in the army. It's an enlisted four, which is not nothing.

I mean, it takes some people a couple of years to get there. But when you show up to Ranger Battalion, unless you have, unless you've been to Ranger school, it doesn't matter what rank you are. The Sham Shields. Yeah. And then the Brown Fence, you know, near Airborne School, is what surrounded Ranger, you know, the Ranger Battalion.

So yeah, if you go up the hill from Ranger School on your right-hand side, that you will get to where back in my day, the Ranger indoctrination program was on the right-hand side, and then you go a little bit past that, and there's this brown fence that encircles third Ranger battalion and regimental headquarters. Exactly. And yeah, that's a great clarification, Dave, for, like,

like the listeners that aren't aware, it's like special operations has, it's like being on a base inside the base. Like it's, it's, it really is like there's a subculture. Yeah, it's a subculture. There's big signs everywhere that say, fuck off, lethal force will be authorized. Like, I don't even, I don't know who would do that. Like, it's like, lethal force. Are we all, but.

The MPs did it just like six months ago. They were on that 375 compound, thought they were going to play, fuck-fuck games with the ranger privates and they got balled up this just happened like yeah like not even not even six months ago lost the sensitive item is there yeah no it might have happened in late 70s too where there was um an event a disagreement between rangers and MPs which turned into a a big kerfuffle kerfuffle krefufel uh out in a second battalion like major but because all the all the Rangers were wearing black PTs and their father clobas, like when the MPs were brought forward to to identify the culprits, it was tough.

There's a, yeah, there's some, there's some pretty famous incidents. There's the whole Phoenix City thing where the boys rolled over there and they were going to fuck up some frat boys. What was the, there's that big shootout, 275 had a shootout with the drug dealers. Yeah. Yes. And that, and that got hit, which. was an embarrassment to all Rangers involved.

And then there's the famous 275 bank robbery. Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry, hijacked the conversation. Ian, pick it up there, man. Yeah. Actually, Ian, just out of curiosity, when you said you didn't want to be an officer, was it only because you didn't have,

like, the 100% control to pick your direction? Or doing our OTC, was there, did you find that being in a leadership role and more hands off on just the straight tactical stuff was less appealing to you than being like the operator? That's that's a great question. I'd say it's definitely a little bit of both. There was it was from the career aspect to really get the benefit of being an officer and actually be able to give back benefit to the Army.

like you need to do it for it's not it's not like being enlisted where you can you can learn your job really well in in about you know six months to a year and then be giving back those next you know three years or if you do a six year you know longer it's like in order to like just think about that new second lieutenant that has to be trained up by their platoon sergeant to get get to the level where they're you know truly the platoon leader. and not figurehead that's actually, you know, the platoon sergeant is operating through. It takes a lot of time and a lot of on-the-job training. And it really suits both the individual and the Army better if you do it as a career where you stay in for, like, I would say, minimum, like, eight years active, active duty if you choose the active duty route. And, like, seeing that that, I wanted to, you know, I was like many young 20-somethings.

I was like, no, I want to get to it. I want to do this. And I knew pretty early on, this is not the final thing that I want to do with my life. I want to do this for a time. I want to make a meaningful contribution to my country and then go on and do something else. So I was immediately thinking,

if I'm going to be in this time-limited space, I want to learn a skill, a set of skills. I want to be with, like an elite team and then I want to go on go on my way and go on to do something else. When I ended up what ended up actually happening was it turned out that I even though I'd done a lot of research and I thought I knew what I was getting into and I felt like I would like it a lot I actually ended up loving it. It was I truly truly loved being a Ranger medic just even if it was doing like the primary sick call stuff and like helping like all these truly elite warriors

figure out what what was what was the matter with them and sometimes a lot of times it's basic musculoskeletal stuff but sometimes we we get like a sniper who had a metabolic issue or some guy who had thyroid condition and those were but these were like conditions that would have otherwise moved them into probably getting medboarded, but that the military and the army was like, these guys have been highly trained and we want to retain them. And so we have faith in the medics of the Ranger battalions to keep these guys safe and help them continue doing their job

and continue performing. And so after as I arrived at this big scary fence, I actually had to go up to the, I just arrived on bending and had to go knock on the airborne liaison because I actually didn't know where I was supposed to go. Because everybody else gets orders to airborne school and I just got orders to report to rip or rasp. And so I was like, I don't know where, like how to get on the compound safely without somebody hurting me. So I go over to the airborne liaison. I knock on their door.

They're like about to head out for lunch. So they're like, just wait here. and they like go out like three hours. They have me, I go to parade rest and then like three hours later they come back and they're like, oh yeah, you're still here. All right, take your stuff. You got a POV, that's weird, okay.

Take it down to the end of the fence. You'll see a bunch of guys smoking, joking, looking like assholes. And those are with shaved heads and those are the guys that are in the rest they'll tell you where you need to go. And so that began my journey. The last rip class was starting,

Starting then, and I went into the hold until the third RASP class. The transition, I don't know, have you guys talked about RIPP before? I feel like me. Not really, no. That might be a good place. We try to keep it on, you know, kind of the focus on the guests, but since we are kind of having this transgenerational moment here of reminiscing, but maybe Dave, you want to pick it up and start talk a little bit about what it was like when you went through.

and then I'll pick it up and then we can go over to Ian and hear about RAS. Well, you guys already know what it was like when I went through. It was hard, unlike anything you guys. So, Rip, when I went through was the Ranger Indoctrination Program. And if you had never, if you were not an NCO, and if you had never been to Ranger Battalion, you would go to Rip. And I believe it was four weeks. I can't really remember now.

But it was essentially a combination of sort of a ball dragger, you know, just hammering you with these, you know, super fast rucks or long rucks. But it was also at the same time trying to teach you just the basics that you would need when you showed up to your, you know, your line platoon, you know, to your fire team, you know, how Rangers, you know, shoot, move and communicate essentially. Because it's different, you know, I mean, like, I mean, I had been in the Marines and done the Marine. I was in an infantry, but, you know, I'd been through the Marine sort of combat training where they turn every Marine into an infantry soldier or into an infantry Marine.

but the whole I'm up he down down you know I'm up he sees me I'm down the whole movement to fire you know or movement to contact I mean was so fast and was such a like a revelation like you don't it's it's a full on sprint half the time that you know but those are the types of things that you know they would they would teach you just so when you showed up you would have the bareness or the bare bones to go on. And then at the end of rip is when you got your orders to which battalion, you know, and they'd have little competitions like whoever could hang from the bar for the longest, got to pick their orders and stuff like that.

But yeah, so that was what it was like when I went through. We weren't, we were fed. You know, it wasn't like Ranger's School where you weren't fed. But, and you had your weekends off, if I remember right. but yeah so I went in it was the summer of 2003 and three week

course right there on Fort Benning on the compound I was describing earlier the first you know week or so two weeks especially so I think the first week there's a lot of physical events as I recall you do the APFT you do your 12 mile ruck march you do all that kind of stuff

and then you go out to coal range and you're out there for like three or four days and we did land navigation and they keep you up all night smoking the hell out of you I mean it was just a torture fest the three week torture fest essentially just smoking the ever living shit out of you

and then the last week you do a little bit more of like instruction so you learn a little bit of combat lifesaver giving each other IVs we did some classroom work on marksmanship but we never went out to the range. You do Ranger history classes. And then, of course, like psych exams, things like that.

You do the fast rope tower. They're just trying to give you a little introduction to all of this stuff. But primarily it's just a smoke fest. It's just a gut check to see, like, do you have the balls to do this? Or you're going to hang in there with everybody else? I mean, I think it was a good course. I think it weeded out the people who probably didn't. to be there.

But, however, from talking to the younger Rangers who, since when I went through the Ranger indoctrination program has become the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program that Ian will talk about, but I think that you guys, the younger guys, are much, much better trained in their selection program than I was. Like, you guys are getting a lot more out of it. So I give credit to the Ranger Regiment for that, that they have upped their own standards. from what I went through. And I think that soldiers are showing up at their battalions,

you know, with an elevated level of training and preparedness for combat. Yeah, that's basically, I'd say when, now I went through RAS in, like, one of the very first RAS classes, it was the third one. What year was this? 2000. Okay. So, you know, the Army does a thing where fiscal year. starts in October. So like the first cue were in 2009 and then I was the first one in 2010.

And then the, so the first four, it was in two phases. The first four weeks were very much like, like the experience that Jack was talking about, kind of a cross between David Jack's experience. First couple weeks are physical assessments, a combination of physical assessments, and then interspersed with Ranger history and all those those other kind of things basically anything that they can quiz you on and then a lot of a lot of just like doing PT in the morning and or thinking that you're doing like they had a program where they were saying oh we're going to do a three six nine 12 mile we're going to work our way up to the 12 mile road march but that meant that the three mile road march they basically just took off on a

sprint for and like the six and the nine as well and then like the 12 mile like oh well this is a formal assessment so I guess you know kind of do it at your own pace whatever like a very begrudgingly but then uh the coal range was around was week three and I think there was four yeah four day yeah four three nights four days out there and then that that last week was the uh the CLS the Ranger life say uh combat lifesavers or RFR Ranger First Responder Program, you know, the medical aspects, and then a few other assessments. And then we moved into the second phase. And the second phase was everything changed. I think part of this was the RASP instructors were still trying to figure out how

they should treat the train, like the candidates at that point because you're still being evaluated, but it wasn't it wasn't supposed to be like the rip style smoke that's very more. Like at this point, you generally, if you made it to that point, like that two thirds that get cut off of every rest of class, like 90% of that was gone at the end of phase one. And so at that point, they were really like, we're here to train you now. We're here to be your temporary team team leader, except honestly kind of nicer than what the actual battalion team leaders, like. And maybe this might have changed, but it was like at the end of the training day, it was like, okay, go whatever, go do whatever. At the weekends, like, go do whatever.

Because we were, the first phase, we were on lockdown, give up, you know, give up your cell phones, everything, shaved heads. And then they were like, start growing your hair, your hair out now. We don't, we don't want you coming to battalion with like big, dumb army short, like haircuts. We want you to start looking like operators. Not quite that, but then there was marksmanship training for a week. It was mobility training for a week. And with marksmanship, they did both rifle and pistol. I'm trying to think what a other elements were involved in it. No, ballistic breaching, right?

Yes, the breaching. I totally forgot about the breacher course. Yeah, that was honestly a lot of funny because, you know, like as a medic, I got breacher, you know, get the basic breacher certification. And then, like, from then on, every platoon sergeant I worked with was like, like, no, you don't touch the explosive guy here. Like, you go wait for somebody to blow their hand off and then you come in. like it was very much like this is like but at that point it was everybody's hands on everybody's

getting trained everybody's uh you know getting familiarized we we got to play with like the dual two nods and uh and like see do a night marksmanship course and start figuring out all those things that are like just living under night vision which becomes kind of the heart and soul of of a rager later on in there when you're actually going out on target you get to start doing that and uh i i never forget we had this marksmanship instructor i wish i could remember his name but he's like men fuck with your shit like go into your rooms turn out the lights and fuck around with your shit to to like learn how how to use it and like make all the mistakes and like you know don't shine in each other's eyes, but like play around with it so that you can figure this stuff out

now because you're going to figure out way much, way better on your own, you know, in this rare opportunity that you have when you're locked down under the compound and you don't have to worry about turning it back into the armory, and you can you can play with this stuff on a long-term basis and you can kind of figure out all this, all this really technical stuff that's like because the Ranger is, at least in the modern era, has been first and foremost a night fighter. and being able to develop those skills and learn how to get around, move around, like, trip over furniture and get around a dark room under nods and with any equipment is it starts that process that you don't even realize it's so important. But at that point, it was great. And so, but by the end of that four weeks, you feel really well trained.

And then as a medic, you know, I graduated and I had a really. really great moment where we did the graduation down at Freedom Hall and my dad got, who had been so nervous about the, his army experience, got to see that this was a little bit different kind of. Right, right. This was, you know, there's not graffiti all over the barracks. Like, there's not like, there's, you know, there's shenanigans, but it's not, it's not, it's not like that, that setting situation.

And he came, he actually was the one who, who put my school. roll on me. It's a lot easier, you know, during my era because we had the Velcro. So, but, you know, I got to, you know, I put on, put on the tambouret and then sitting, then I became, uh, started working in in sick call in this weird limbo period until I got to go to Sockham, the Sock, the special operations combat medic course, which is the first half of what the 18 Delta special forces medic course does it's focused on basic both the basic lifesaver kind of training and the as well as a more advanced combat trauma and starts to get into the the basic like low-level but high-impact surgical interventions that can help to help with trade and on target for for people

who don't understand sort of like for military trauma training and things like that. Would you rate that on the level of an EMT, of a paramedic of an ER nurse and, you know, your doctor, like where would you put that? Yeah, it's really interesting. I've had the experience to talk with, because at the time, I'd only, I'd only known EMTs and paramedics. And now that I've got to, once I got to work with PAs and doctors, and flight paramedics, I would say there's, within the realm of this battlefield trauma

point of care contact, you are, there's really no comparison. You're like kind of a flight paramedic in the little ways of some of their skill sets, but there's also things that, you know, only really a trauma surgeon would typically do that you get, at least that you get trained on and are expected to be able to do, even though there tends to be more rare that those kind of really advanced interventions are performed. But it's still part of the expectation. I mean, this is jumping ahead a little bit. I don't, I want to talk a little bit more about the Sockham course. But as a military, you know, combat medic in, in, Ranger Battalion. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging.

It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connection. It's not pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. You actually, I mean, do you have a little bit more leeway than, let's say, even an ER doctor to do some things that may be quote unquote experimental, but maybe wouldn't

take place stateside? Yeah, so I would say it's not so much, it's experimental in one way in that we get to use interventions that are not generally available to paramedics or even physicians in the U.S. because they're not really necessary. Like a physician in the U.S. working at a major trauma center has access to a huge supply of,

of hopefully, I mean, even though right now, shout out, please go donate blood. There's a big shortage right now. They have access to a blood bank. The only blood bank that a Ranger Medic has access to on target is the other Rangers. And so like I'd have a little quarterback thing with my roster and everybody's blood types

and I knew that if somebody got hit, then we would initiate a warm, fresh hole. blood transfer and that that was an intervention that would just, there's no real need to use it in the U.S. because you have access to higher standard of care. That being said, it's not really experimental either because it's been done for a really long time. It's, you know, it's been done on battlefields for since Vietnam at least, I think even earlier. There were some other interventions like freeze-dried plasma that are proved the French use in a military setting. And we got permission from the FDA to use.

And that was one of the cool things, too, is working with the Ranger Medics. We have to, and use the SOC, the United States Army Special Operations Command, has actually a pretty special relationship with the Food and Drug Administration to give us permission, knowing, and to create these research protocols to evaluate experimental products that we think could be, able to help Rangers. So yes, there's some, there's experimentation happening, but I want to, I want to clarify it's not, it's not like, you know, you're not saying like Doc Fisher or any, or, you know, yeah, yeah, I know it's not, I know it's not like Dr. Mengdala crazy stuff going on. Yeah, no,

there's techniques are able to. Yeah, no, there's no mad science, mad scientist stuff going on. But there, there is definitely some, some truly experimental and cutting edge. kind of interventions being happening. Continuing today, I know there's a new low tighter blood program that's being utilized where basically keeping like kind of a universal donor blood bank readily available on target. And that's amazing.

I think even out to Jack's time frame, it was basically normal saline and hex-stend. Like there wasn't a lot of use of other products. And Ranger Medics, you know, both, there's both the positive and the negative that they see more battlefield trauma than a lot of other organizations, even in special operations,

and have a very high casualty count, but also have a very, very high success rate in terms of not allowing preventable death. Yeah. And wars, I mean, if anything, wars are good for the progress of trauma care and prosthetics. You know, I mean, both of those fields advanced wildly afterwards, you know, and during that process. And so you're saying that basically, Ranger Medics, special operations medics, and we've kind of talked about this before, are really, they're overtrained and underqualified for basically any day. job in the U.S., there's no job in the U.S. that really fits their niche. You know, they do way more stuff than a paramedic, but a lot, you know, but they're not doctors by any stretch. So when, it's interesting because we were talking about this early, the three of us,

talking about you know you were talking about going in your room and messing with your gear and Jack was saying that they had the gear but they still had to do their TA 50 and the TA 50 is what you might imagine it to be which is the government issue kind of HRness or whatever else it's your hood carrying equipment your LCE yeah and you guys I mean most you probably remember that seeing it in Vietnam War movies where you have the OD green suspenders and the pistol belt and then all your shit on it.

And yeah, I was telling the guys earlier, I was in Ranger Battalion in 2003 to 2006, and it was a time period where the Ranger Regiment was transitioning from being a white infantry unit, if you will, to a counterterrorism unit. It was transitioning from being a peacetime unit to being a wartime unit. And it was just funny that, you know, we had some newer modern gear that we would use in the field, but we still had this sort of vestigial aspect from the past where when you went down to the central issue facility, you get issued all the same old gear that like had been used back in Dave's day. And like as a private, I had to like do it all up, put all the pouches on the

right way to the, as it says in the SOP handbook and tie them down with 550 cord and burn the ends on my square knots. And then you just have that and it's like in your wall walker just sitting there. And it's like this vestigial thing from the past that was done out of three. tradition more than anything. Yeah. When I was there, that's what we used. There were near, about the time I was leaving, there were guys who are actually going, one of the nice things about being a second battalion and being so far away from the

flagpole is depending on what our chain of command was like, guys can get away with certain things that you wouldn't be able to get away with like. at Benning or maybe a stand. I don't know. I don't know how closely they were monitored. But so that's when guys first started going to like the tactical tailor, right? And they would get their WP bags or waterproof bags, which going into an old army ruck used to be a hassle because you'd have your ruck, you'd put your woolly peep bag, your waterproof bag inside the ruck,

and then you'd stuff all your stuff in it. Then you tie up the woolly peat bag, close your ruck. And so anytime you open up your ruck, you'd have to untie your witty your peat bag and, you know, dig for your stuff. Well, they started having their woolly peat bags sewn into their rucks. And then they started taking like the LCE and having it like cut in the middle with like, like, you know, clips, fast techs and stuff like that. They started experimenting.

And nobody was like, nobody was smacked. them down for it. But when I was there, they were, they were, it was just the initial where we do CQB. Like you might get, we would do it as an element as a fire team or as a squad and as a platoon, but we were also still living with the, we're the best life infantry in the world thing. So our activities were very much split between going out, you know, to, you know, Patrol-based activities. School-based activities, exactly. You know, and 30-mile road, March,

each week-long, you know, suck fest that were all outside. And there were quite a few, I guess, old-timers, their post-Vietnam rangers who didn't think that we should be doing airfield seizures. And didn't think, and airfield seizures was another big one for instance. And I don't know if that was still a big thing for you guys at the time. Oh, that was like a thing we did because we had to do it. That's what felt like the, that felt a little vestigial for by the time we were getting it to it.

Doing the air, the airfield seizure was like what this is so different from what we do. Nine days out of ten. Before we jump in all that, please finish your thoughts on Socom. Oh, yeah. I just, I just want to wrap up. you know your thoughts on going through the course because I think you know we have some of the best trained medics in in the world really um and you know if you could tell us a little bit about that experience and like I just remember some of my friends when I was in the Q course and they'd have like

the anatomy coloring book out and they're like oh yeah that kind of stuff yeah the I mean I still have some of that stuff it's it it's it truly is a very cerebral course I don't I mean I know there's other stuff at the special warfare center in school that's also involves a lot of classroom work but the first big section is very much designed to be to mirror as closely as is relevant like a first year of med school and has a really high failure rate you know it's something even even at that level you're still you're talking about every single person who shows up at this course and it's it's one of the things I loved about it was that I got to sit in the classroom and there was only a few other rangers it was mainly special forces guys

civil affairs guys and gals and um the marine recon uh individuals the seals were there it's basically everybody that goes there except for the PJs um and that have their their own course that they do and getting to interact at that joint environment at again like I've just passed selection I'm still just an untapped private in the town not even at battalion yet and I'm being sent off to this other to this other base to train and interact with these these peers who've also all passed various selections and get to have that interaction and pass and even with all those very high quality, highly motivated, very smart people, still a really high failure rate. It's still, I think, around 50% for the first part of the

SACOM course, or at least it was during when I went. And that's a big part of that's, the academic portion is very difficult and it ends with a gross anatomy pin test. That's the same as what first-year med students have to do with a human cadaver. out and like parts that are labeled and you have to identify each of the part. It's extremely difficult. But it's vital to be able to understand that underlying anatomy because when it's, again, the Ranger operates in the dark and being able to understand what part you're touching and what the underlying injuries might be and what the trauma mechanism might have caused are also vital and being able to think like that quickly and then relay it and begin communicating with

the platoon sergeant and platoon leader so that they can start calling the necessary assets to move that individual to a higher level of care is is all of kind of what we what we get paid to do and being able to think at that level was exactly what i wanted to do and that's when i really started falling kind of in love with the with what my job was as a as a special operations combat medic so getting that that level of training and there were it's it's like a lot of special operations courses that were international students there as well so that was that was another cool thing but I mean we had we had physicians from other militaries that were taking taking this

course as well so there's it was there's a lot of really intense elements there's the, they've made it more with a tactical focus now towards the end to they've added in, like working, doing the trauma lanes and the treatment of patients under night vision is something that they've incorporated now. But that was that when I went there, it was pretty, it was a little bit more vanilla and that other kind of higher level stuff that was what I learned when I actually got to Battalion. I was going to ask you about that if they had prepped you for the environmental factors because most likely it was at night. I mean, it might be cold, it might be raining. You know, there's so much going on and, you know, how to tell if somebody's bleeding if it's night,

you're looking through night vision and they're wet because of the rain, you know. Yeah, there's a lot of those, those are kind of more the true. the kind of tricks of the trade that I learned when I actually got to Battalion, using non-red lights to be able to more easily identify pooling of blood on a patient or how to feel for it on the uniform and under the equipment in order to identify those injuries rapidly and be able to treat them. But yeah, the Sogham course was just, it's,

every one of those individuals that was there from another military was trying to replicate the same kind of thing in their country and hoping they were going to get the resources to do it. But it's just hard to see because the amount of resources that were expended on training each individual student were just unparalleled. I remember years ago I talked to a guy who's in the Australian Special Air Service, and he made this comment to me, which I think was very real, very honest. who's like, you know, we're never going to be as good as you guys. And it's not because Australian SAS guys are not as strong or as tough or as smart or as dedicated.

It's just the United States puts more money and more emphasis behind this than any other country. I mean, Australia, for instance, the last time I checked, they don't have a special operations aviation unit. That's a huge, huge deal. I mean, that's how the guys get to where they're going. That's how they get to the objective. So if you don't have an aviation unit that can facilitate special operations, then you're kind of in a tight spot there. So it is a question of funding and money. And as Ian points out, you know, what other country is going to spend as much money on every single special operations medic?

And they put them through such an intensive course as what you went through. Yeah. Yeah. And there's the economy of scale too because, again, they're pulling all those, like it's pulling the seals, the special forces, the Marine Recon, Army Rangers, and you get so many that it actually becomes, you know, it becomes a little bit more efficient to train all those guys. And we're also a much bigger country than say Austria, Slovenia, the UK. I mean, yeah.

Fedagon has more money than God. So, I mean, they sneeze at the F-35. So I don't think, you know, training some combat medics is the end-all be-all for them. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. What, for, at least for the Rangers, what would happen to them if they didn't graduate that course? Would they still go back as line medics or would they have to, would they get booted from Battalion?

There were rare where somebody had done a branch transfer as like a re-enlistment thing. So like a guy had done his time in battalion and was. like re-enlisted and was like, I want to switch over to the medic side. And if they didn't pass, they might send them back to battalion and they could keep doing their thing. The rest of us, if we didn't make it, we wouldn't even, we didn't even leave for Bragg. It was, we were, we were going to 80 seconds. 80 second.

Yeah. So there was motivation to study. A lot of motivation. Like, that was, you know, I, I. I felt like I was really well prepared going into Rasp, and I felt like I had a good chance. But at the end of the day, there's still, there's still injuries and things that can happen. And, you know, nothing guaranteed. And so I, by that point, I was like, wow, I actually made it to RASP.

I do not want to fuck this up. And I was, I work my ass off to be able to get through that. I can honestly say, that's probably, you know, I've gone to graduate school. I have an undergrad degree. I've been to Ranger School, I went through RASP. I can say that that Sockham course was the hardest thing that I, the most challenging for me personally, because of that combination of the intense academic,

the military environment, the physicality as well required to be able to do all these things quickly and under a lot of pressure. Yeah, I can honestly say, say that that's, I've never been in an educational or academic setting that was that difficult. That's amazing. So, Ian, you reach your goal, you patch, you pass through a so calm, you get assigned a first Ranger Battalion, go be one of those cool guys out at Hunter Army Airfield. What's it like when you show up?

One of the best in the Army. I, so I show up and the battalion is overseas. So which, which as you might know is kind of a blessing because it means that your immediate team leader isn't there to right to start smoking the ever loving shit out of you the day that you arrived. That being said, like we were, you know, I actually went there with a class that the, there were two other Ranger medics who showed up with me and we were all just rearing to go and wanted to get out to our battalion and And they were like, well, we might send you on a minrotator? And then they're like, no, we're not going to do it. So ended up staying around, but Ranger Rendezvous was happening.

So Ranger rendezvous is happening. If you don't know what Ranger Rendezvous is, it is part, like, it is the burning man for Rangers. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's, but with there is, now there is a mission, like there is a training element to it where it's the only times where the senior leadership actually gets to move the chess pieces around like if they were actually deploying the entire regiment at once, which is, which would be an extraordinary circumstance. I mean, we're talking like aliens have,

have landed that they need all. Or Panama in 1989. Well, it's true. There have been, there have been, there have been, I would say, you know, there are times where all three battalions are needed and there are times where all three batons really just want their jump weights. Right. So there's, but that being said, this is the one time the senior, it's a rare event. It's going to be exceptional. It's the one time the senior leadership gets to do, usually in their entire tenure in command, because of the, they might do two, get these two opportunities to practice, you know,

moving all the, all the battalions at once. And so, but the rest of the time, other than bringing them all to, it's almost always at Fort Benning, having them do a big, big regimental wide jump in a coordinated matter to get all those, all those rangers on target at around the same time. Other than that, there's a lot of, there's group PT, there's, you know, I actually. Competitions. I mean, there's all kinds of competitions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I ran. in the 10K. Oh, did you?

Sure did. That was my thing. Really? I didn't, I didn't even, I don't remember them having a 10K when I was there, but they may have, and I just didn't know it. I was in the sniper competition. Actually, got done shooting my lane, stood up, backed up, off into some civilian.

It's like, what the fuck's this guy doing here? Kind of do a double take, and it's Robert De Niro. What? Yeah. Yeah. He was his nephew, was somebody he was related to or something was involved in the State Department or was advising on Ronan and was aware of the Ranger rendezvous. So invited him out and he came out like when they were doing the jump and assemble exercise, you know, competition. He was like kind of standing with the commanders.

Really? Yeah, somebody runs by and go, hey, look, it's Al Pacino. And he's like, fuck you. Our whole sniper team got a picture with him. Oh, that's great. Wow. Yeah, people can go, right? I mean, if you're in that, if you're in, is it only in the job?

Yeah, I mean, if you're in the area when they have a ranger rendezvous, if you can, if you can check it out, it's worth checking out. Because it's, like you said, it's Burning Man for Rangers. Ian, do you have any crazy stories from either rendezvous or like what when they did like company field games? Oh, I've got I've got the craziest story of all. So this is this is my, so we do we do jumps at Sockham, which is great because we're maintaining proficiency. We're getting that that jump pay, you know, $150 a month. That's that's where my beer budget's coming from. and the they were

getting to jump out the little the little Casas at at Bragg and you know it says it says crazy jumps where like hey if you land on the runway make sure you get off

because the aircraft's coming back down to land right away and it's so like casual because it's it's you know SF guys yeah it's it's run by the SF Cadre and they're like,

static line. Please, static line. They just can't be bothered. And, you know, it's jovial, the gut trucks out there.

Who cares? It's fun. This is my first jump at, like, actually at Ranger Battalion, other than the one we did at Rask. And this, I managed to be first in the

somehow. So like in the second pass. So everybody goes out and then I line up. It's my first time jumping the door. I'm so stoked on it. I've always wanted to jump the door. I've heard you get these great exits. And it's a ramp blast on the on a casa. No, no, no. This is a, sorry, this is a C-130. Okay, okay. This is at rendezvous. This is at rendezvous. So this is, that's then at Sockham. That's the great, the great chill jumps. Now I'm at, now I'm in Ranger World. at bending, we go out to a C-130, it's 120 degrees on the tarmac, guys are throwing up, like we're all sitting on the floor of the aircraft, waiting for 30 minutes to be able to take off, guys are throwing up, heat stroking out in the aircraft, and we all just can't wait to get

out, but I'm going to get my first door jump, and I'm just so stoked on it. I jump, and I have the best exit ever and I look down and I see at the friar drop zone they built a little mound for the DZO to to park their car on to look out and see if there's any injured jumpers out there and it's pretty high winds that day if honestly if there weren't you know congressman in the stands and stuff like that it probably would have been yeah and so I have really high movement and I pull my slip right as I'm coming in and I slide into that hill and break my hip. Oh my God. And require a emergency surgery later that day to repair it and with plates and screws.

And the first person to run up and check me out is my boss's boss's boss, you know, Master's started Montgomery, the Ranger Medic, the one who literally wrote the book, he's like, you're one of mine, aren't you? Well, get up. It was like, oh, I can't bear weight on my leg. This is not good. And I'm like so, I'm like in a panic because I'm thinking, oh, my, I can't run off the drop zone. Like people are going to kill me. Like some, some Ranger NCO is going to come and like just eat me. I'm embarrassing. Yeah, I'm like, I'm embarrassing. I'm ashamed to my country and my unit and like uh but anyways i get i get pulled in the to in the put in the vehicle i get a fentanyl lollipop so that's pretty sweet um which which is good because then i i knew is it's good

that i think it's good as a medic to like have a taste of your own medicine like just uh just so you know what to what the other uh what to what to expect when you give it to other people but uh i get on to get out of surgery and have this recovery period. And thankfully, you know, because Rangers get such a high level quality of care, and we had like three staff physical therapists and a strength coach, by the time it came around to do our qualifications for the next deployment and the at the end of the next training cycle, and the training cycle is brutally short, only six months.

And normally the recovery would be like a year. but I was I was ready to go and pass a PT test within like four months. Holy shit. So they shot you right out the door after breaking your head. That's amazing. God, I love Ranger Battalion. Yeah, I'll give a fuck. So that's the ranger.

That's the most rangers, ranger's story to have a ranger. Yeah, no, it is. I mean, that's another way that Ranger Battalion really changed over the years, you know, really became more professionalized because the idea of having like, you know, a physical therapist or, you know, you know, basically having resources the professional sports teams have. You know, and I know that Delta really, you know, really sort of set that standard back in the day. But, you know, I mean, it used to be like, hey, here's some vitamin M deal with it or, or, you know, you're out. And there were no real, real resources available.

It also shows in the build, the actual physical build of Rangers pre-9-11 and Rangers post-9-11. We were skinny. I mean, we were like all just super skinny because it was all about runs and road marches. And, you know, you didn't, I mean, few people went to the gym just because, you know, you went on these long runs or long road marches every morning and, you know, and trying to build mass just was tough. I mean, there were guys who did it, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't common.

But now Rangers are generally pretty jacked. You know, I mean, built for the job, you know, everybody is built for the job. What was PT like for you, Jack, and for you, Ian, like, were you guys still doing a lot of the runs and a lot of the road marches or how to move to a more kind of dynamically focused you know. I mean, in my time,

it was probably very similar to yours, Dave. You know, we did ruck marches every Thursday, pretty much every day we were going on runs. And I think that you also have to understand that it's the Army. So like, yes, we had a gym and we had great equipment in there. but it's still kind of a fairly small gym.

It is not big enough for a battalion. So Army PT is designed around the idea that you're going to PT, a platoon, a company, a battalion. And that's why so much of it is focused on like running and push-ups and pull-ups. It's like things you can do en masse. Right, right. It's not that sort of like focused on the individual, like we're going to Gold's gym, and you're going to do these curls and you're going to do these squats in the rack and stuff like that. Because you don't have that equipment for every single private.

in the unit. Now, I'll let Ian answer, but it sounds like to a large extent, there's been some positive change there as far as strength training and things like that. So I did PT in a platoon level once when I was at Ranger Battalion.

The rest of the time, it was, like, the med section was doing their own thing, or it was like my team. Yeah, we usually did squad level PT, but if you went to the gym, it was all like senior NCOs in there. Oh, no, no, it was like, by the time I got there,

it was like the CrossFit bug had hit hard. It was all, CrossFit was old by then. It was like, that was outdated. There was onto, I think, mountain fitness or something like that. It's basically like people would wait. and generally more leg focused, all about building, like, it's all about being on the squat rack, clean and jerk, just deadlifts, all about building that posterior chain and getting those muscles that would, like, get you up and down, talker, gar, and ready to, ready to, you know,

rip the head off a, you know, a guy on target or something like that. that was a that was the the the mindset had very much shifted and I don't other other than periodically like a team leader making like having you do the ranger school fitness test to make sure that you were you were ready to go if you if a slot opened up or the timing worked out it was it was basically always like we're going to be weightlifting we're going to be doing something and then for for medics it's slightly different too because sick call hours are during pretty close to normal PT hours. So it's like, you know, you've got like 20, 30 minutes to go work out.

Then you need to be in your, you know, duty uniform over in the clinic to take care of Rangers. And then you're going to go work out like usually on your lunch break or something like that. So it's a little bit, a little bit different schedule. Did you guys do a lot of combat-focused PT when you were in? Yeah, I would say it was a lot, a lot of kit kind of gear doing the, we'd started to implement that Ranger fitness assessment doing like, you know, you have a, you have a portion where you're doing like sled drags and doing a rope climb. The R-pat. Yeah, yeah, the R-Path. And that was that was kind of a newer, newer thing.

But really, really, I would say it was like, it was like that CrossFit Plus was like the core of it. There was this one point where everybody had those five finger shoes. Oh, geez. Like they had to ban it. But, oh, going to what you were saying, Jack, about not having equipment, we had two gyms in the battalion area. Wow. in the first battalion area, like in our compound on higher. And it was between the, like as long as not everybody was trying to save school,

it was like, hey, we're all doing leg days the same day. You could just about everybody could be doing some kind of weightlifting thing and then shifting, shifting around, you know, doing a little bit of mobility, training, agility. But there was a formal program as well that they were, supposed to follow. Started to get away from just team leaders, just seeing how much they could like their whole lot of privates to really like, hey, there's a program you should be following

to get your guys as strong as possible. That was a thing I benefited from as well. No, that's really cool to hear. I was definitely one of those old school team leaders who I would run the privates five miles every day and they hated me for it. Oh, man, I was a great runner. So I was all about the all about the right. We also did not have the, like you said, we did not have all that, like, access to gym equipment for every private in the regiment at that time.

So it wasn't necessarily an option either. But, okay, Ian, we heard all you're boasting about how you're this badass combat medic and like you can lift 500 pounds and all this awesome stuff. Okay, cool, man. Talk to us about your initial deployment. Walk us through how you got called up for that, where you were going, train up for it. and then shooting overseas. We've got a couple of questions I want to get to before we start this next segment. Excuse me. Alex, thank you very much.

In your own words, what is the job of an Army Ranger for the uninitiated? What was it like being an Asian American Army Ranger in one of the few in Soft? That's a, wow, that's a great question. So the Army Ranger, I would say the role of an Army Ranger outside of the doctrinal, there's a doctrinal term, like kind of terminology about being the Special Operations Red Force, but it's to, there's this point where you have guys, there's a cost-effectiveness curve where you get these super expensive special mission unit guys that you've poured a ton of resources into and you give missions to them, but like really high priority national level missions

to them, but you want to think about like if there's a lot of risk associated with that mission, is it worth losing these, like potentially losing a few of these very expensive, highly trained guys? And then there's, you know, it kind of comes down from that to like the special forces guys. And then Rangers are like the first, the lowest barrier, like the most cost-effective. in the special operations world to use and utilize for missions. And so there's two sets of missions that they get. They get either missions that just require a lot of brute force or missions that are very high risk.

And so because of that, it is a really great place to learn how to be a medic because there's going to be a lot of exposure to injuries, blast gunshot wounds, and just the standard orthopedic injuries like what I had. And Delta Force is also like, they don't like the Gucci J-Soc unit, you know, does all that specialized shit you were talking about. Like, Rangers and Special Forces are like the long haul sustainable unit that could be out there kicking ass every day in different ways, different missions.

But I mean, Ranger Battalion is like the sledgehammer. Like they can do some stuff that, you know, J-Soc guys just, they're just not, they're not trained and equipped, and it's not their mission to do that stuff. Yeah. Like you wouldn't, I mean, going out on and doing these random house raid targets where one out of every 10 might have, might just be an entire house rig to blow.

Like, that's not an effective use of a tier one operator. That's, that's what. They would probably pass on that target quite. Oh, yeah, they're almost certainly. They almost certainly would, but that's also that volume of raids and missions goes to Rangers, and the Rangers get those missions. So for, and that's what the Rangers specialize. They do it, and they do it a little bit cheaper, and they do it by being focused really on those

key fundamentals around marksmanship, medical care, mobility, and just like generally mastering these basics of military fundamentals. So they do it. And like Dave was saying earlier, they do it just a little bit faster than every, a little bit faster, a little bit harder than what you might see in a normal, like a high speed platoon from from 82nd or 173rd. They also, I mean, I know when I was in, I think there were more seals and more SF than there were Rangers. But Rangers are trained to work in larger units, you know, so you have your own supporting fires. You have your own external security. You have your own, you know, your own assault force.

Yeah, Rangers can scale. Yeah, that's a great point. Where special forces and seals, you know, they don't have, they need external actors, you know, somebody else to come in and provide that for them. Yeah. God forbid seals ever see a belt-fed weapon. or indirect motor system. Oh, this is spinning.

This is some hot takes. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm like four beers in, so it's coming out. It's coming out to me. There's some white mask. There's some white posperous takes. They have a belt-fed weapons. They just don't understand that a belt is not a single round.

Yeah. All right. Sorry. Sorry, yeah. Anyway. Okay. And then the second question, What was it like being an Asian American Ranger in one of the few months off?

So really an interesting phenomenon is that when, at least in the First Battalion, when I was there, very few, there were definitely a few Asians out in the line companies. But almost all the Asians were in the med section. So we had like, it was like two senior medics. There was like six, so it was like, it was, you get to the point where like you'd be kind of walking across the compound and some random first sergeant or platoon sergeant that didn't actually know you would like just kind of look at you and be like, hey, hey, Ranger, you a medic. It's a fairly safe guess. it's it is kind of strange being Asian is is is kind of a this weird place to be in the special operations community

because some people will be like oh like some people who have like really problematic viewpoints will be like oh you're you're one of the good ones and bring you in and then be like you're not like all those those guys in the support company you know which ones I'm talking about and like, you know, really just like share, feel like comfortable sharing all that stuff with you, thinking that they can use you to validate their, they're really kind of disgusting viewpoints about, about people of other races. So definitely, it was, it was an eye-opening experience,

being, being an Asian American in a, in the Ranger Battalion. I'm glad I had it, though. A lot of ways it was surprised. I was surprised a lot of, you know, I grew up in California. I was a college grad. I was like the epitome of like a coastal liberal going into the army. And, you know, I had a lot of preconceived notions about what people from the South and Midwest would think about me or others. And a lot of those did not bear out as well. That's always those individuals who will not.

Was that was that common? where people would would pick you as an ally in their racism like that? I mean, was that? Yeah, I think they would, it wasn't common, but like when it happened, it's one of those things where it's so weird where if it happens more than once,

it's like, is this a thing that happens? And it definitely happened, Like more than more than once more than there's like three or four times where like somebody pretty pretty senior like platoon sergeant or higher would would like kind of bring me as like hey dog and like they'd feel like they had some grievance that they needed to err and like that I was an appropriate individual you would get it yeah that I would get it this is one of those things that you learn in in college really is that there are like different types of racism. Like there's that, yeah, like the Ku Klux Klan type of racism, we all understand. But then

there's the other type of like, you know, it's okay. You know, we're okay with you as a black person or an Asian person as long as you're propping up the existing system as it is and don't want any kind of change, you know, and that's part of the conversation we're having as a country right now. Yeah. Yeah. Now, would you say what was sort of the, the, uh, what were sort of the racial atmospherics at the Talian in general when you were there? Would you say that? Dave, you're going in with a knife right now.

You're going in there. I'm very curious because, and obviously it's, you know, because I wasn't exposed to it. But like the, what I saw at least like at my platoon level was there was there was definitely some guys that were, It were racist, not like KKK racist, but like casual racist. But they would openly, they would openly act that out with like Black Rangers in a way that, I don't know. It wasn't like hostile, but was like almost making fun of themselves and the situation at the same time. But I don't know.

I don't know. Maybe that was just my perception of it. You know, one of the things about the Rangers is that it's a much younger special operations unit. And so there's always new, like the culture changed. The culture more accurately, I think, reflects, like, young America than maybe other special operations units, right? Because you have, you have 18, 19-year-olds. I have platoon sergeants that were in their early 20s, like 22, like, I had a 23-year-old platoon sergeant at one point. Like, these are, like, very, very young, young guys.

And so a lot of times, and now girls. And the attitudes that they brought with them, for the most part, were not as kind of old school as I was maybe expecting. So usually when there was in, like that kind of, there'd be the jokes that like any 18, 19 year old, 20 year old might would make because, they're testing, that's what 18, 19, year olds do.

They test boundaries and try and push things until, especially when they're in military and masculine environment, they get pushed things until they, like, somebody, like, swats them down. Yeah. But there was, for the, for the most part, I found that if when there was a, when I had a concern that maybe, like, somebody's NCO, like evaluation report or something might might reflect somebody's internal feelings about like about their their race it was usually somebody who'd been there from from who's from a little bit

older generation and really because they were more senior as well I and so I think I think the culture changes a little bit faster in in Ranger of Italian because of that yeah and I found I found my my experience was again uniformly positive uh but that for some reason, I don't know, I attracted the attention of like problematic individuals and found myself, or individuals with problematic viewpoints and found myself interacting with them a little bit more than I would have preferred. It's also like, you know, I go to, if I go to Benning for training and I, you know, Benning's under Sharia law and you can't buy alcohol on Sundays, so I had to drive over to Alabama. I, there was,

like if I went to the wrong gas station, I definitely would would encounter, you know, really like just blatant outright like everything short of a hood over their head, racism. Like you should not be here after after dark. Like get at it, like fill up your tank and get out of here. That kind of stuff. Wow. And, you know, and in many places in certain parts of Georgia and parts of the deep south, that is something that I experienced. And I'm sure that was, it was kind of strange to me because I think a lot of times people just didn't know what to do with me. A lot of times I was in communities where they just hadn't seen an Asian person before. And I can't imagine.

I'd be curious what the, what the perspective from like a black ranger would be, as I'm sure their experience might be. pretty significantly different from my own. Yeah. Yeah, and I actually, I'd be curious to know what their perspective was from, you know, later, earlier generations and then the later generations, you know. And what you said about, you know, sort of the millennials or the age of Rangers is sometimes it's easy to bag on millennials, but we also have to remember that millennials have to fighting the bulk of the war, you know. So while it's easy to focus on a certain fragment of the millennial generation, you know, as, you know, social justice warriors or leftist or whatever,

we also have to remember that they've been bearing, bearing this burden. That same generation has been, you know, to the last 20 years. There are also a lot more, I think, overall. As far as like, you know, the, the LGBT issues, the racial issues, like, that generation, they don't really give a fuck, but like, whatever, you know. Yeah. I was just going to say, yeah, we, I think we were, first battalion actually had one of the first just openly was, I am gay. That must have gone over like a lead balloony.

I mean, like, like, all the, it was funny, it's like, like, you, I, because you're a medic, you know you get I'm sitting in close to like that the head shops a lot of the times and so I'm overhearing like what what platoon leaders and and and and these you know even out up in the like S3 and they're like how are we managed this and like all the line guys they don't care they don't give a shit yeah they're like because there's been guys that there's been guys that they knew like in the cough that was like yeah that guy obviously is his gay yeah he did just didn't say anything but we had to I just thought it was funny because it was a mortarman and like mortars in Ranger Bad is like,

like that's like like one of the scariest places to be just as a human. Yeah, those guys. I just, I remember I was assigned during that first training cycle when I was kind of recovering. And I couldn't like move around that well. They're like, hey, go go watch the mortars during the airfield seizure. and in my practice and just like making sure like just watching like how they would just get this shit smoked out of them in between on target for fire yeah like on target like just like and I think they said it was like that overseas like they'd be like in in country getting like just

like getting smoked while while on mission like that's crazy and fast roping or moving to target with those base plates. Oh, yeah. Unreal. Unreal. We've a couple more questions. Brendan, thank you very much. Hi, from Australia.

As a medic and range of Italian or late or in your career, what is the best medical first aid save you had? Don't want to know about the bad stories. What about the good ones? Good story. You know, I have two really good stories. One is, one of our dogs, our military working dogs actually was recovering from surgery and had a really bad

reaction to some medication. And that was probably one of the most complicated patient issue, like emergency, like medical situations that I've dealt with, just because we get basic information about how to treat canine patients. But I always think about that one because I was like, there are so many complex factors. I have to take everything I know and I have to take it to another type of creature. And then, you know, I take my job seriously. And all the, like, in our rangers, like our military working dogs are our rangers with us. Like we take care of them. We evacuate them on target if they're injured. Like we take it pretty serious. And so that was a situation where there was like finding the right dosage of the medication to manage the reaction and then keeping them hydrated, getting the IV stick. And all that was was probably the like one of the more complicated things that I had to do.

There was another incident with a, so one of the things, and I'm not sure Jack or Dave, we have started working in much more of a FID, a foreign internal defense kind of role in certain, in certain countries and aspects where we were working with local partner units and And one of the members of a local partner unit had a combination of a injury that affected the respiratory tract and a high probability that they also had tuberculosis. Oh, wow. And so having to treat the respiratory injury, in this case was a broken, multiple broken ribs, which is known as a flail segment. And it's a really bad situation. It looks like the whole rib cage is kind of,

a section of the rib cage is kind of popping in and out of their chest. And so stabilizing that while putting on all this, like protective equipment, using like everything that I could find to keep myself and the other medic that I was working with safe. I would say that was another really kind of complicated moment, but where it turned out well.

And this is like the individual fully recovered and ended up being out on target later in the next year with another battalion I ended up hearing about this individual's recovery. So how long does something like that take to heal when with a couple of broken rooms like that where they've got that going on? I mean, so every broken bone, if it can be splinter, it's going to be like six weeks.

Something like that is going to be longer as could be like a few months. And then there's, you don't get you, you have to do cardio recovery after that too because you're not fitting the full inhalation. Your diaphragm's not moving up and down like you normally would. You have to take light breaths for extended period of time and then your diaphragm gets used to only taking light breaths. So there's a lot of, there was a lot of physical therapy involved there. unfortunately this individual was in a country where there was a lot of

NATO medical resources available to them to help recover. This is also an individual that worked for a very high tier local unit. So the equivalent of like a special mission unit in that country. Andrew, thank you very much. What is the dumbest thing you saw someone do in the military? I'm asking for a funny story. The dumbest thing I saw someone do in the military is not when an individual lost their sidearm on target. It was when the strike force re-infilled into a hot LZ in order to search for and retrieve the said lost side of them.

So that was, I mean, I'm just thinking about potential loss of the aircraft, the tools, like the math just, that, that was like just an extraordinarily dull decision. That fortunately turned out fine. Again, there's, there, the Ranger, the Ranger works at night and there are, Nike can cover up some mistakes and make you pay for a lot of others. So this was a, this was a situation. That's probably the dumbest thing I've seen in the military. I'm sure, Dave, you probably have some some stories too. I've seen some dumb things. In terms of, were there ever any, like, funny things like that happened that, like, either in an operation, it almost stops the flow of an

operation or, like, distracts people because it's so funny or, or even things, but just back in a Ryan. Oh, so right before, so the way Ranger deployments works, you get back, you spend a little bit of time getting kind of just briefly reacclimated and then you go on a two-week block leave. The day before you get released from that two-week block leave is just chaos in the company operating facilities. Our little kind of this combination warehouse locker room office that we we work out of, we call it the cop, for short. Things get real dumb there right before we go on block leave. So probably the dumbest thing I saw was individuals had pulled a taser out of the

arms room and were shooting it at each other. And one person got tased and fell back and split their head open and they needed. And so I had to evaluate this individual for head injury, staple their head shot because they had a big, like, gash laceration on the back of their head. And like continue to monitor and make sure that they were, they were safe, had to schedule regular check-ins over the next few hours to make sure that they didn't have signs of a head injury as they go out and leave. And we were all kind of trying to keep this hush, hush from the chain of command so that everybody didn't get their, like, leave pulled. And so this was like, guys, there's one day where you don't, where we just need to be, just not be dumb. Sometimes being a medic for the Rangers, it feels like you're taking care of lemmings. It's nice to know that with all the changes we've talked about Ranger Battalion going through, it really hasn't changed.

some things never changed I'm sure you Dave and Jack I'm sure you guys have similar stories of some some shenanigans I mean yeah I mean

as a hard ad diver and a ranger and guy I mean guys do dumb shit I mean I don't I mean it's like yeah it's like how much

How much time have you got? How much time if we got through the stream? Exactly. You know, I, we had some, like, mischief nights where we went into where the legs live and fired off the fire extinguishers and got chased around by CQ. And we stole the regimental commander's distinguished insignia flag off of his front porch, made off with that. We had, like, a handle of vodka.

We were all taking turns swinging off of it. I mean, the stories just go on and on and on. I remember I got drunk at a friend's house at Fort Benning and went for a very long walk, ended up jumping over a fence, and I passed out at a gas station outside the front gate at Fort Benning. And CQ came and pick me up. I mean, I mean, yeah, the ridiculous stories just go on and on. Yeah. Yeah.

J.K., thank you. Ian, guest medic. What year were you discharged? 2014. 2014. Hammer Nails, great show as always. Thank you very much. Brad, biggest difference in guys who went into special mission units. And I don't know if he is including the Rangers into that or not. But maybe from your experience in the soft community, is there a difference between like regular soldiers, radio civilians and guys who go into soft

and then guys who go into higher tier units after that, after like some of my Rangers? And I could say the guys that, so first off, I think just about everybody I knew that went on and did that was at least a squad later. and had done their squad leader time. So back up really quick. When you're a ranger, there's like,

there's like this, you do your private, and you do your private time, then you get to go to school. Then after you come to school, when you just try to up to fuck up, and then you get a team leader slot. You do your team leader time. And then you get other options. You can go to, you can go to the sniper section,

You can go to canines. You can get technical training in some of these other kind of cool whizbang specialties that we have now. And then eventually you get to you go on and you get a squad. And you get you have that time. So I, the guys I knew they were, they were really, they were, they showed a lot of maturity often for their age. The guys that did them were and were successful. The caveat, they were, they were guys that, like, it never, it never surprised me that somebody had gone on to a special mission unit. I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, like, this guy is like, they were somebody who had focused on the fundamentals, like, all good Rangers do, and had just totally mastered that, and then continued to master it. And then they were like, you know, I want to do, like, I want to, I want a little bit more to master. and then they went on. They were usually more thoughtful, more mature. They weren't the ones that you ever thought were going to have, like, necessarily, like, a crazy night out downtown or something like that. Again, that was my experience. I'm sure there are people like that that are live a little bit more wildlife style that are

successful. But the guys that I saw were doing that. I would say if I had stayed in in Ranger Battalion coming you know coming back from school and getting a senior getting that senior medical role the next thing to look at after that is for in a Ranger medic world is like do you want to start looking at going and supporting the recie unit for a bit or going to the Rangers have their own recital unit at the regimental level, which is a pretty special unit. And they get some pretty interesting missions.

And so that was something that I thought was really appealing to me if I had been able to stay in. Because I love being a ranger. it was I think if I could have found a way to continue doing that and continue finding that new challenge, that that's probably what I would have looked to do as well. Now, when you say going to school, you mean going to range your school. And about while you were there, about how long would somebody spend either on the line or in their, whatever their base element was before they would go to ranger school.

You know, I think for the line infantry guys, it was usually they needed one, they needed like two training cycles and one deployment around or so. For the medics, it was kind of a weird thing. It was like, by the time we finished Sockham and got into the Italian, our contracts that we were only four years were pretty short. So it was like you, like you go, you do a training cycle, a deployment, and then it's either re-enlist and go to Ranger's school or don't bother, just go through the next training cycle, deploy, and then you're, you know, have a good life. And so I actually took the, took, decided to take the route where I re-enlisted and went to Ranger's school. And unfortunately, I didn't know it, but I had my female.

had refractured and so I got back and just was needed needed multiple surgeries at that point and was just completely destroyed after Ranger School. So that was not uh it ended up unfortunately being pretty much the end of my military career, but it also triggered getting to come to New York, my humanitarian career, and now the current work I do in public health. So. So I want to get into all of that. But I do, before we finish out the Ranger Battalion portion, I wanted to get into, you know, you're jocking up to deploy and getting overseas and all of that.

If you could tell us a little bit about, you know, rolling out on that deployment. Sure. So the, as a medic, you kind of do this matchmaking with the platoons. And they, you know, sometimes they'll pair a medic with a platoon. And the platoon will be like, who's this guy? This guy's weird. We don't like this guy. And we'll take him and try and put him in another platoon

and put a different guy there. So I got match made with this platoon in Charlie Company. And it ended up being a really good match. Worked with a great platoon sergeant who was actually formerly worked at 275. And then we were out in southern Afghanistan. in an area where there was just, there were just a lot of, kind of at that time, a lot of pressure plate IEDs, a lot of, like, everywhere you were walking was just, there, there were just no shortage of explosives or devices. And so there was always this desire to have two or even three medics on target. So I got to work with with great couple of medics out of the strike force.

And there was actually two strike forces working together. So we got kind of double the training, double the missions and double the opportunities to go out on target. So that was it was like kind of a dream first deployment. And if, because that was 2012, so things were not at their, not, it was like, like a, not definitely not a peak deployment, but it was, we were right on the beginning of the fighting season that happens in Afghanistan. And so we ended up being actually so successful that there was actually not a really good fighting season in that area because we, we successfully kind of interrupted the supply in that, in that. that region. So that was that was kind of cool. Also, um, the base was full of British and they have been doing more so much longer than we have and they're just so much better at it. They built a steakhouse on their base. It was just like, it's great. Like as a like as a medic, I had,

I had my own land rover. So I'd pile up a bunch of the privates in and we'd go, we'd go touring around after we got back in the mornings. And it was pretty fun. Like we did some sun tanning out in the satellite towers and things like that and go out on missions at night and back in time for breakfast burritos. There's worse ways to be. Yeah. But yeah, lots of mainly, you know, all-night missions,

all working with with, special operations aviation or just frankly some really, really competent regular Army and even National Guard aviation. In National Guard aviation, actually in the Army oftentimes gets just as much, if not more training than regular Army because they, in certain parts of the country, they end up doing a lot of those rescue missions for like stranded hikers and things like that. So sometimes they're really, really good at like hoists and these things that. that maybe regular army units might not practice quite as often. So it was really great to be able to work with these different organizations and different tiers and just be able to be out there with the various units that make up the strike forces out there. So like this was the shit for you at this point.

I mean, after all this training you've been through, like this is it. This is the heat. Yeah. And plus it was like it was even more emotional for me because I had. this major life altering injury and then I managed to recover and then go out and I mean I remember I went on the my first mission was on it was on one of the MH 47s and you know it's like the ramp is down while they're flying and then when they come into land they put it up because they want to they want to be able to pitch back

and do as they're coming in and so the ramp comes up and then and when they're finally touched down then they'll lower it and I'm just like I was so amped up I just I had no idea what a ranger mission was like in real life I just figured as soon as that ramp dropped it's going to be like the opening scene of saving private Ryan and like rounds will go rip through and like everybody there's just like I think like I think somebody shot off a flare and like some farmer shot a shotgun but it was like actually at like like at his like neighbor or something like that and not at us it was just there was like nobody nobody fired a shot it was just just, it was a completely successful mission.

We got our target, but it was, in your mind it was D-Day. But, like, I was thinking, like, it could be. You know, I'm just thinking, like, what if it's a mass casualty event and, like, you know, thinking through all these scenarios and this, the pinnacle of my training. And that was, like, my first,

but, you know, we got jackpot on our first mission, and that was pretty cool, too. So, and, uh, what's it like being an arranging? dramatic on target if you could describe. I mean, maybe there's like some offset considerations, but I mean, if you could walk us through like as opposed to like an assault or blowing down the door and going into the room, what's it like for you, you know, or you're trailing along with a platoon sergeant and like you're on call, you know, if something happens. Yeah, so definitely not. So that, so especially

when assaulting a compound, there'll be a breach point where where the assault force is going to enter. Sometimes there's multiple. Definitely not going to be at the breach, but need to be nearby because if there's going to be injuries, that's where they're most likely to occur. And so, but at the same time, once you kind of made it through that breach point, you get to transition to, I'd be right on the platoon sergeant's shoulder, so I'd be, you know, I'd be doing room clearing with the with the platoon sergeant sometimes and like kind of like peeking in it in around and we'd be the first people into a couple of the rooms outside of like the main the the main target compound and so that that would be a really uh it was a really interesting and

cool experience to be like right there um with you know with this like ranger platoon sergeant who's been doing this for a minimum of like eight, nine years out on missions. Yeah, I think it's more like five, five or six, but still like, and like seeing them, seeing them more of seeing how they move and kind of, because there really is an art to close quarters that's, that's difficult to teach. I think probably the, I mean, the special forces probably has the closest to a, to a school that really can can teach that. level of knowledge. But the, it's not really, there's no real replacement for experience

and seeing, seeing somebody who's just done it in Iraq and Afghanistan and done it for year after year after year multiple times a year. Being able to be right on their shoulder and be the second guy in the stack was, was very cool. At this point, a lot of Rangers, I don't know what their retention was like, but a lot of Rangers had a lot of combat experience or, you know, at least a trip or two or whatever. How would they integrate the people who didn't have any, I mean, would they treat you any differently? And maybe you saw us for the line guys too, but I mean, did they trust you right there with them? Did they, how did they react? How did they handhold you or what did They do.

There wasn't a lot of, and I don't know if this was maybe, maybe that I was fortunate to have a great team leader that squared me away so that I was when I was working with these, either the platoon sergeant. So medics either, there are two real positions that medic will be with either with the platoon sergeant or with the weapon squad leader. And the weapon squad leader will be a little bit off so they can use those big, you know, belt fed weapons systems to get them set up to utilize them if needed to either keep people from getting exiting the target or from to keep reinforce enemy reinforcements from coming to

the target so we would those two kind of positions and i had a senior medic who's like no you should you should be up here you should get you should get your time in with uh with the platoon sergeant and I'll sit back on this role because you need to learn this and they had worked with me to to make it kind of make it apparent that I was competent and I was smart and then I could I could learn and not be a hindrance and so I had a great experience with watching Washington work to do the initial clearance and then to do the searching and do the the tactical site exploitation where we would look for intelligence on target, and even the tactical questioning that would happen on target.

I'd be usually, again, behind the shoulder, like, listening and same what they're listening, what kinds of questions they're asking in order to try and figure out, is this the individual that we're looking for, what other individuals might be in this compound, and so on. That's interesting. So, Ian, maybe we'll get into some more like deployment stories when we do the bonus segment, but I mean we've already kept you quite a while and I want to catch up on some of the other other subjects I definitely want to touch upon. You talked about how you had to be medically discharged because of your injury after Ranger's school.

How did you get involved in doing humanitarian work then after your military service? I mean, maybe tell us about that, you know, your medical discharge as you see fit and how you felt about that. but then going into Nepal after that horrible earthquake killed like, what, 9,000 people. Yeah, there was, yeah, there was actually two. And I'll just say, say really quickly, I should probably be wrapping up in the next 10 minutes or so. But I'll try and, I'll try and briefly get to it. But the, the, really, I was, I went to came to New York. I wanted to go to grad school.

I figured that was the next step. I wanted to be doing something in healthcare. So I started looking at health policy and humanitarian assistance. I figured that was a natural transition for somebody who had been a ranger medic. And I got this great opportunity in between my first and second year of grad school to work with a humanitarian organization called NYC Medics that deployed to Nepal to one of the nearby, not the most effective districts, but one of the ones right next to it. And there I was essentially working very, doing very similar stuff.

I was, we set up a clinical site. I was doing primary care, emergency care. And then because of the site we were at was in the Himalayan foothills and vehicle-based evacuations were not really an option. A lot of what I did was also coordinating rotary wing, evacs, kind of assessing patients, making sure that they were good in prep for transport, sometimes riding with them as necessary. in order to make sure that they got to the next higher level of care as needed. So it was really great being able to use that skill set that the US Army and Special Operations

can ever invested in me to help the people who have been affected by this natural disaster. And then after I finished grad school and got my degree in public health, I went on and did some similar work in Haiti as well after the hurricane in 2016. There was more of a food crisis issue where there'd been a lot of crop destruction. So what we were trying to think about was identify. A lot of it was identifying air fields that could accept large shipments, doing airfield assessments, doing some helicopter movements, but that's a really inefficient way. So a lot of it was just kind of assessing roads and then working with a logistics cluster to

to identify just how can we keep those lines, those logistical chains open to these communities that have been so devastated and lost all their crops and had been sometimes weeks without real food. And so that it was very similar to the kind of thinking you have to have in the military about how, how do you keep a forward deployed unit sustained? What are the challenges there?

and how to overcome each individual challenge between getting the supply from here to there. So that was, again, a great way to utilize that skill set. It's almost like they needed somebody who had that type of training in the military to do this stuff. Because, I mean, how does a civilian develop those skills, except with years and years of experience? Yeah, and it's, you know, I sat in on these UN logistics cluster meetings to coordinate with them. And it was amazing how just about everybody in there was former French military, former UK military, former Belgian military. Like every, you know, the, like, they made the, they would always make the joke for just the truck drivers,

but there really are the light blood in a humanitarian setting of getting things to people when there is no, like, functioning market that they can buy it from. So then talk to us a little bit about how after that, you know, you got involved in your current position working like public health policy and how that came about, I suppose, out of graduate school? Yeah, so it turns out humanitarian lifestyle is not very sustainable. It does not pay well. It's really hard to make rent.

And I was like, I want to do something in healthcare. I would like to do something where I can utilize data analysis and some of these, leadership skills and analytical skills I've developed over time. And so I ended up in this healthcare consulting field where most of the work I do is around analysis of non-infectious diseases like cancer and diabetes. But increasingly now there's some interest in infectious diseases and of course in the current environment, vaccine preventable and infectious diseases are pretty much top of mind. So thinking about how a new medication or device or medical procedure might be effective in different

health systems, whether that's a national system like the UK or a system like what you see in China where it's kind of a less developed nationalized system with a lot of kind of regional difference in the different provinces or, you know, a system like the U.S., which is this really complicated mix match of both depending on if you're a veteran or a Native American or older or poor, there's a different health system that you're in. And so thinking about is it effective and is it cost effective? So that's a lot of what I do now. and thinking about the numbers and being a numbers guy in the bean counters is and analyzing what risk there is and what the benefits are of a given medical intervention.

And being at ground zero, which I mean, New York City is, you know, for the coronavirus in so many ways in Brooklyn. And I haven't even kept track. I think I lost track around like over, you know, old. a while ago as far as how many deaths just Brooklyn had had. What are your observations about how New York City has grappled with this issue? And what are some of the lessons learned? Yeah, that complexity of different systems is a major vulnerability of the U.S. health system.

It leaves a lot of places where people can fall through the cracks. If they're old but not old enough to qualify for Medicare, if they're poor, but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, if they're a veteran, but they're not totally into the VA system because they were at that lower tier of care, and they have to prove that they have an economic need. There's so many ways that people can not get the health care that they might require,

and especially in a scenario like this where days matter in terms of getting a test and getting diagnosed and getting treated into and whether and getting into isolation so that you don't infect anybody else. It's become, it's a really complicated thing and it would have been difficult and probably would have not been good no matter, it would have not been a great response no matter what. But I definitely think that from the city leadership to the state leadership to at the federal level, but there's been, there were some missed opportunities to coordinate better to find solutions to, you know, leadership has to stop it, start at the top.

If there's anything I learned in Ranger Battalion in the regiment, it's like the culture and the attitudes that come from the top. And if it's an attitude of kind of everybody's on their own, then that coordination that's necessary to get people to care for people in a pandemic-type situation it's just not going to happen at the level that it needs to. And the response to a pandemic has to be coordinated at so many levels because of that complexity of the U.S. health system. Given I'm not asking this from a political perspective.

I'm asking this from like a numbers and, you know, a health care perspective and the fact that you've had this opportunity to see how other systems work and things like that. do you feel as though some sort of socialized medicine or I don't even want to use the word socialized because it's so politicized. But I, the universal health care is, is a beneficial policy, is a manageable policy, is an economical policy. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think some version of that is what we need, whether or not we can get there politically is a different question. I think there would be a lot of benefit from moving towards something along those lines. There are so many different versions.

There's employer-based systems like in Japan and Germany where there's still most people get their health insurance from their employer. But if you lose your job or if it's a small employer, there's another national. system that you're automatically enrolled in. There's no transition period. There's no, oh, you have to call somebody, you have to sign up. You have to get your card. You have to pay money. No, it's like the day that you lose this care, like you can still go and get health care.

You don't have to worry about potentially getting a financially catastrophic bill. There's fully nationalized systems like in the UK where the country, the doctors are government employees, the clinic. our government facilities that's more like kind of like with the VA system works like in the Indian Health Service works like in the United States. And there's also single kind of single insurer options like in France and Canada where there's a single basically the government acts just as the insurance provider and sets a lot of regulations and then all the the hospitals are still able to fulfill that provision of care however suit however they've

thing is most economic and suitable for their population. But there's still stringent standards around that. And in many ways we have each of these systems in the U.S. the difference is we have all of them. We have all of them and we have lots of ways where you can get lost in the cracks. Because like I said, there's those age-based cracks, there's those income-based cracks, and there's those demographic-based cracks.

Like, are you a veteran? Are you Native American? Are you, you know, are you disabled? Are you a low-income child? Those are all covered groups. But to be covered is also a question, too, in the U.S., because it doesn't necessarily mean, just because something's covered doesn't necessarily mean you're still not going to get a financial catastrophe bill. Right. And we also sort of have those bureaucracy-based cracks where we're like, if you look at the VA, even veterans who are eligible for care aren't getting it because of because they're fighting this vast bureaucracy a lot of times. And some ways, the way other countries get around that problem is they just say everybody's eligible. And because they don't have to determine who's eligible, it saves them a lot of bureaucracy.

In a lot of programs in the U.S. actually, when you try and the efforts that are taken to root out people who might not be eligible or who might be overclaim the system actually cost more than just paying for those people outright. Right, right. Yeah, some of the other programs also that they have for like pregnant women and so on it. It's just like a cost-benefit analysis. Like it costs us less to take care of them now than it would to clean it up later, you know, after you know, all of that has gone down. But Ian, I think we have to, you know, start letting you. Start letting you go here. I'm going to twist your arm if I can grab you for like another like 10 minutes just to do the bonus segment. But thank you so much. This conversation has to continue and be continuous,

like many of the different things we've talked about, not so much like, you know, the worst stories that we've maybe been sharing, but some of these other big topics. We're going to have to get into another time. And I hope that we can have you in the studio at some point once we get that up and running and continue this conversation. And before we go, I just want to remind everybody, please like this video. Please subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. And if you're interested in supporting the stream, there's a link to our Patreon down in the description. And Ian, do you have anything?

You'd like the plug before we go for the night? You know, I'll just do one brief plug, and that's, I know there's some, there's starting to be a little bit of controversy around mask wearing and all that. The thing about mask is it's not like it's not to I don't wear a mask to protect myself like the only way to protect myself is for a full respirator and a face shield. That's that's not what it's about. It's about putting something over my face so that when I breathe or cough or sneeze or talk or sing loudly as I'm prone to do when I've been drinking,

that I don't expel respiratory droplets all the way across. across the room and potentially infect people. So really, like, you know, it's the importance of a mask is to protect other people. And it's not like, it's not like a bravery thing or anything like that. I mean, even if it was like, if somebody goes out on target

and takes the plates out of their play carrier, I'm like, that's not a brave move. It's dumb. Yeah. You're just becoming a liability for the other guys of their team. So I'd say that's my one plug. I'll do a public health plug. Yeah.

up, thank you. Well, and it's, it's just become so politicized now that some people are just, they're taking a stand because they feel in a corner when really it's, it's not about that. And it's unfortunate that it's become about that. Yeah. And guys, we will join you again next Friday. Our guest, it was going to be my friend John Stryker, mayor, who served in Nekvi Saug in Vietnam. He had a family emergency. So we, we, rescheduled him for September. You know, John's welcome on the show anytime. Awesome dude.

Instead, we're going to have John Mullins, who, ironically, also Mac V. Saug officer at one point. He was the inspiration for the Soldier of Fortune video games, which some of us, at least one of the three of us played as a teenager. And he served as a security consultant all over the world after his SF career. So we'll have an interesting conversation with him next week. So thank you, Ian. Thanks, Dave.

And we really appreciate it. Thanks, guys. Thank you, everybody, for your support. Please like and share the video and comment down in the comment section. Thanks, Ian.