The Team House - 1st Recon Marines in Fallujah 2004 | Eddie Wright | Ep. 338

Episode Date: April 12, 2025

Born in Chicago, Eddie grew up in the military in Seattle while his father served in the Air Force. The grandson of an Army WWII veteran, Eddie decided to join the US Marine Corps, calling it the most momentous experience of his life. Eddie enlisted in October of 2000 and three months later graduated Infantry boot camp as a Rifleman. After two deployments to the Middle East in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, Eddie later joined the elite 1st Reconnaissance Battalion as a Recon Marine. Upon completion of the Basic Reconnaissance Course and Expeditionary Warfare Training, Eddie deployed to Fallujah, Iraq in February 2004. On April 7, 2004, Eddie was riding in the lead vehicle of his convoy during a patrol in south Fallujah when insurgents ambushed his unit. During the intense firefight that followed, a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) hit Eddie’s rifle and exploded, instantly removing his right arm below the elbow and his left arm at the wrist. Knocking his helmet and eyewear off, the blast also severely damaged his left leg, leaving his femur protruding from his thigh. Five other Marines were injured, and Eddie’s platoon commander was killed during the ambush. Forty-five minutes passed between the explosion and the arrival of an evacuation helicopter. In those harrowing moments and despite his injuries, Eddie remained alert and calm; instructing his fellow Marines on how to apply the tourniquets to his own body before directing other Marines to safety and where to return fire. Once evacuated, Eddie took 40 pints of blood to stabilize his injuries. After months of recovery, Eddie became first double amputee to return to active duty. He served as a hand-to-hand combat instructor at the Marine Corps’ Martial Arts Center of Excellence at Quantico until his retirement in 2006. Even during rehabilitation, Eddie became known for his up-beat attitude. Eddie stated that he would join the Marines again “in a heartbeat. I wouldn’t trade it, even for my hands back.”Since retiring, Eddie enjoys time with his daughter, Claire. He has worked in the private sector in the defense industry as a consultant for the Institute for Defense Analysis.Semper Fi & America's Fundhttps://thefund.org/Follow Eddie on Instagram here:https://www.instagram.com/e5whiskey/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:Ridge Wallet ⬇️https://ridge.com/HOUSEfor up to 40% off!!The Perfect Jean ⬇️http://theperfectjean.nyc/HOUSE15for 15% off!!GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 50% OFF!!!___________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"Want to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Sergeant, I said, they got two skier and AKs, can I engage? He said, what? And I repeated myself. And then he relays it to company, because I couldn't talk company, just platoon. And while they're, whatever they're figuring out, apparently my big mouth, I don't know, these guys in the truck, they must have known the jig was up. Yeah. They, they, like, they lurched forward, but only like five or ten feet. So they're a little bit behind us.

And then they all spilled out. And when they all spilled out, then all the vehicles behind us and everybody saw all the weapons. And as soon as that happened, it was on. And the vehicle behind us just pink misted everybody with the main gun just firing into them. And then all hell burnt loose. Those other two vehicles got immediately destroyed. And we started pushing forward. And then the whole battalion kept moving forward at a slow pace.

And we, I mean, everything with the heat signature got destroyed. And our air officer called in the gravity for, you know, to get all the available air on the station because we had spotted tanks. They were moving some T-55s or something, and some tanks around trying to come in close enough to fire on us. So then we got all the available air on the station, and it was just incredible show of this vast destruction. They, I mean, that unit got wiped out.

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Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 338 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy. Tonight, we are here with Eddie Wright. Eddie served in Marine Recon. And he's just telling me that this is the 21st anniversary of his alive day since the attack that he was injured in overseas. So we're pumped about that. Pumped to have you here. And thank you for coming on the show tonight, Eddie. Thanks, Jack. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Yeah. So, you know, I start off asking most of our guests about their origin story. Tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what your path was that took you towards the Marine Corps. I was born in Chicago. My mom was immigrant from Ireland. She met my dad, a nurse. Met her dad. He was a resident at the University of Chicago Medical School. My brother and my sister and I were all born in Chicago. We moved to California. for a bit, a year or two, and then up to Washington State. And my parents split, so my dad sold his practice joined the Air Force, so I became a military brat.

So I jumped around a bit with that. But mostly, you know, I grew up with my mom, and I'd say Seattle. Seattle would be what I consider my hometown outside of Chicago or where I'm now in Texas. So you wanted to know about how I got into What drove me to get into the Marine Corps When I was very young I used to get up at 4 a.m. with my dad whenever I'd be hanged with him in summers

And he was an endurance athlete So we would He would run and I would just ride a bike And You know like I said I was so there was a time that he was stationed At the Blackland Air Force base And so we'd be you know up

4 a.m. or so I'd be riding my bike little kid and then you know riding alongside my pops and we used to run by the I guess they had the Marine Corps K-9 training school there

and they'd be running in formation in the mornings. I don't know. I was just a kid I thought they were cool. And then of course at my age being influenced by all those awesome movies that came out in the 80s You know, the cheesy ones like, you know, like the Schwarzenegger ones, Commando or Rambo or, yeah, even Heartbreak Ridge.

I thought it was the coolest movie. I was happening, yeah. So, you know, my past of the Marine Corps was a little different than most people because I was an angry kid living with my mom in Seattle and in the early 90s. It was a little rough back then. And they had a thing that was like a forced integration where they'd send kids from one side of the city to the other side to go to school. And so I hated my school.

It was a 45-minute bus ride each direction. And I just started skipping school. So I got off to a rocky start. And then, of course, who you're going to hang out with if you're skipping school? But other kids that are into no good, I suppose. So long story short, I ended up getting into a lot of fights, which got me in a lot of trouble. I actually, I guess not very many people know this, but I actually was like a white kid and a Samoan gang. You know, in Seattle in the 90s.

And so that, that, you know, kind of escalated the trouble that I got into. I got to ask you, Eddie, how did that work? I mean, the islanders are pretty insular normally, aren't that? Yeah. But I'm an Islander too. I'm Irish. So I don't know. You know, and Irish people like to fight.

I just had a few of them as friends. And then, you know, just started gradually, you know, hanging out with them. They got to know me. And, you know, I really didn't get too much respect from them until they saw me fighting and and then, you know, they knew that I would fight. So they kind of respected that. Like, I wouldn't back down. You know, there was a point where I was getting bullied.

And somewhere along the early part of my sophomore year, I just couldn't take it any. And so I decided I would feel better being beat up than to live with myself and to just let these guys pump me out and treat me like this. So I stood up to the bully and I knocked him out in front of our math teacher in the hallway, West Seattle High School. I was shocked because of, you know, it was a lucky hit, I think, and as he fell, he had his head on the locker. So he was Dunsky. Well, we're travels fast in school. So then I had, you know, I just started getting in a lot of fights because it felt so much better than the opposite of where I was just always getting picked on. And I went a little too far.

And then I ended up getting jumped into the gang and then I had to fight one of them one on one. And I had knocked that dude down too. So I guess all the everyday fighting with my brother, my little brother, who's, you know, really a year and a half apart, but he's bigger than me. You know, apparently I was learning how to fight. Like we used to get knocked down dragouts, like real fights, my brother and I. And I just went a little crazy the other way, the direction and took the whole code of the gang or gangster just quite literally too far. Like if I heard somebody was talking about me, I would, if I saw them, I would call them out. We'd be fighting.

And it just, you know how kids are. They talk trash. but I would find them. Then we'd be fighting. I didn't win every fight. I don't know how guys are like, I've never lost a fight. I'd have my ass with plenty of times.

I've been jump, I've been jumped on. I couldn't even count them a number of times I've been kicked in the head or something, which doesn't help when you get blown up by an RPG. So I had a lot of hard work to do.

I ended up on to Jimmy for 20 months. Oh my God. The best thing that could happen to me. Yeah. I, uh, So I end up in Juvie from all that nonsense. And the camp they sent me to was outside of the city. It was in Western Washington.

And that's where I started to thrive. You know, I've noticed throughout my history of my life, if I was in a structured environment, be it unfortunately, Juvie or maybe when I played rugby before the Marine Corps. and, you know, of course, the Marine Corps, I thrive. I do pretty well. But I was just kind of lost. So being in Juvie gave me an opportunity to finish high school.

And, you know, by finish, I mean, I hurried up and I got my GED while I was there. And then I went out, they had a work through that worked outside of wire, so to speak. and we worked for Department of Natural Resources there in western Washington. So we did a lot of things like pre-commercial thinning of forest land. We planted 10 of us kids in there in one season, planted 240,000 trees. We did trail maintenance, fire breaks. It was hard work, but we were outside. I loved it.

And so I was able to do some college classes while I was in Juby, and that was great. And so I get out, I'm on probation. buy a pistol from a buddy, we go fire it off into a tree stump, walk out of the woods, and, well, the cops are waiting for us. And so because I was on probation for my juvenile, fighting and all that on my assault charges, I got, that was a felony to have a firearm. So here I am again. Uh-oh, I set myself back. And I still wanted to be a Marine, but this really, really put that goal farther out of reach. So that took a couple of years to settle. I ended up having to do a couple months in King County, downtown in Seattle, and the month got community service. And I was able to

get my probation transferred to Oklahoma where my dad was stationed at that time in the reserves with this private practice. And I just went immediately on the straight and arrow. I went to school, I would play rugby every chance I got. I connected with the Marine recruiters. They told me what I had to do to join what I had to do to join the Marine Corps, which is quite a bit. I had to do pay some restitution. I had to do almost 300 hours of community service. I did a bunch of volunteer work and I collected some letters of reference that had an impact on the recruiting Command's decision to give me the waivers to join. Because at this point, I have a GED, a juvenile felony, and a now an adult felony.

And, you know, it was going to be a miracle. But, you know, I think one of the letters, just the hard work I put in and getting to know the recruiters over a couple of years and becoming friends with them, that helped. But I got a great letter of recommendation from a friend of the family that my dad had gotten to know because he was a patient of his. Who was a World War II Marine for three and a half years? He was with fourth Marines on Crigador. And so I think his letter, you know, he got to know me.

I think that letter carried the most weight. And then also my relationship with the recruiters and the fact that I had done everything above and beyond what I had to do. So I couldn't believe that they gave me the waiver. I had downloaded the application for the French Foreign Legion. The Marine Corps didn't take me. I was out. Like, I wasn't going to settle for it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was working two, three jobs at a time. It all worked around my rugby schedule. But I was doing something. And, you know, after knowing some guys that went to the Legion, I'm glad I didn't go. It's cool stories, you can tell. I'd be speaking French, probably.

But, yeah, I hear it's pretty rough. So, and I made it to the Marine Corps. And it was a lifelong dream. And I always wanted to be a reconnaissance money. So that was something I was in. Because of Heartbreak Ridge? No. As I got older, I started to read all the books I could on Vietnam.

I was really into Vietnam. And I was into, I would read stories about Green Brays. I read stories about Navy SEALs, Army LERP units. And then something about the recon units, like being a reconnaissance bring, really, really appealed to me. And I thought the story's great. And one book that I read, it's called First Recon, Second to None by Paul Young. That one was one of the most influential books for some reason, which coincidentally, I got to meet him years later after I was wounded at a reunion.

And he gave me his own personal copy of that book, with little missives in it and notes on pages. Oh, wow. From his buddies that he served with and the little ace of death card. there. I, you know, it was out of a union in D.C. I was still an inpatient in the hospital. My team leader came and dressed me up with my Charlie's. I was frail, like skinny body, big head pale. And I don't, I don't think I even had prosthetics. My, my, my Charlie uniform was just baggy. You know, that's the tan khaki shirt, the blue pants with the NCO stripe. So, you know, it's weird how these things happen.

I'm around full circle. This is a real story of my life. That's surreal. So your dream of joining the Marine Corps comes true. You fought to get in harder than most people from everything he told me, literally, and figured out. A lot in my way,

yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I knew that if I didn't try everything that I could, and this was the same attitude I had when I was, you know, becoming a reconnaissance Marine when I was in the Marine Corps, if I didn't, there was no excuse for me not to try as hard as I could. And if,

and if I didn't, then I knew that I would look back and I would regret it. And I would be one of these guys that always said, I was gonna, but, yeah, yeah, there's guys every,

I wanted to do. So you get into the Marine Corps. I take it you came in as, what is it, the Marines called as 0-3-11? Yeah, I got guaranteed 0-3. and I did well in boot camp.

I wasn't on a guide or anything. I think one of my drone structures like me, and he put me in as a squad leader during boot camp, but as soon as another, you know, the senior came in, that was out. Yeah, and I was glad I didn't want to be any of the responsibility like that or pay for somebody else's mistakes at that time.

And then at School of Infantry, you know, I got stuck with the three-week guard duty in winter, standing outside on the ranges and going to be stupid. You know, it wasn't so bad. But I was able to graduate school of infantry with the highest GPA and the highest physical fitness score of my class, my company. And so they meritorylessly promoted me to Lance Corporals.

So I picked up playing school right out of... Amazing. I thought I was badass. I learned that I wasn't anything. You know, like you get to the fleet. One of my NCOs who picked me up, the three Marines came, picked up three of us that went out to 29 palms as an 0-3-11 rifleman, but we went to a unit called Third Light Arm Reconnocence, Third L.R. I had no idea what Third L.A.R. was. And one of my NACOs who picked us up, he's, you know, everybody's in their al-A-L-A-S, and he's a Lance Corporal also. But he's only in the Lairns-Colble because he had been busted down from Sergeant for hazing. But, you know, it was back in the day before 9-11, there's, there was no uh it didn't stop him from continuing this happens you know so i got a good fix old school old school hazing 29 palms that was great yeah hey guys i want to take a moment to

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I mean, you started to describe a little bit of it. But what was that experience like as you went on through your early career? Well, I remember when we got the 29 Palms, it was, you know, pitch black outside. and all I could see were lights in the distance and I had not desolate it was until the next morning when the sun came up, which we didn't get much sleep immediately like the whole, and every,

every boot or so-called boo, but new guy that had showed up that day because we were field day in the barracks and scrubbing the catwalks with two brushes, and just nonsense for hours. And so the sun comes up. And, you know, I realized, well, there's nothing out here. Okay. So we, you know, I got introduced to the fleet and all my NCOs and just started getting with it.

And I was lucky because our company, Bravo Company, third LIA, we were part of the UDP program that came up soon after I got to the fleet. I think I got to the fleet in March, March 2nd of 01. And I went to boot camp in 2000. And I think, yeah, we left. Maybe it was July, I think. We went on the UDP to Okinawa. And so I love it. What's the UDP for those of us, non-marines?

I'm sorry. It's a unit deployment program. So they have like a battalion landing team and Marines will do a rotation every six months through Okinaw. Cool. And so you'll have Marines of different MOSs, but there's always an infantry component and an LAR component and other units. And so I was, that to me was great. I was all about it. You know, now, you know, I'm traveling the world.

That's exactly what I expected. And I was a boot, and that's a new guy, you know. So as a boot, we all had to shave our heads back then. So we're all running around with bald heads so that we're known to Alianzios. And there was a lot of cool training and hazing. It was hot in a way that was hotter than 29 pounds because of all the humidity. You know, by lunch. If you had time at lunchtime, you'd run back to the barracks and swap your skeevy shirt out for a dry one,

because you'd be soaked and sweat, yeah. And I really enjoyed it. And while we were there, I had a great opportunity because my platoon commander was prior enlisted, and he knew about a training opportunity in Australia. And he organized this for three of the LAR scouts, which was the 0-3-11, like myself. and three of the crewmen and himself, we took a C-130 down to Darwin, Australia, from Cadena. And we trained with the North Force, which is their Northern Territory Guard. Kind of like a National Guard.

They don't deploy overseas in combat, but they protect the Northern Territory. They patrol the waters. They patrol the Bush. They watch out for smuggling. of flora and fauna or drugs or illegal immigrants and things like that. And that was really fun. And we got to do a survival course that was taught by the Aborigines with them. And so we had a classroom portion, went to the ranges,

worked with some different units. And we went out to the bush about five and a half hours deep into Kakadu National park by Land Rover over dirt roads and we were starting our practical application part of this survival course and the sun came up we slept in the you know on the ground you know things biting us and whatever and everybody's worried about saltwater crocs and things like that that that you could hear sliding off into the rivers and from the banks and other weird noises and you know, like the bush in Australia for the first time. And when the sun came up, we were ready.

You know, we were all ready to go, thinking that here we go. We're going to probably have to strip down and throw our stuff in a pile. And, you know, run off into the bushes with the shoestring one, boom, and the knife or something. And, you know, we heard them yelling for us, boy, you know, we heard them yelling, I get all the yanks. And so, like, we gather around and they tell us that America has been attacked. Oh, my mind. I'm thinking, okay, this is part of the training.

This must be part of the scenario training or something. But they're like, no little seriously. And so that was 9-11. So I was in the middle of the bush in Australia when 9-11 happened. So we had along, you know, the five and a half hours drive back. to Darwin, just, you know, no intel. We didn't know what was going on. I just knew that America had been attacked.

So I got to think about all these things like, well, we're in Okinawa, who attacked us? And are we, you know, at the forefront of World War III or war, then we're going to go in first. And, you know, my mind, I'm calculating up. What about who's the first guys into world, you know, first guys in to fight, like how long do they last? to be in the beginning and being there at the end of the war.

So not really understanding how Proferra kind of, you know, would be, you know, was different. Never haven't been. And so these days it is. But, you know, as you know, that was 2001 September. Oh, something that I think is cool. We're talking about synchronicity is the, the Mew rolled in right before we went out to the bush to do the practical lab or the survival course.

And I think it was the 15th Mew. And that's the Mew that rolled into Afghanistan first. And so we had the whole town of Darwin to ourselves, which was great. But then the Mew rose in and now there's 3,000 sailors and Marines and all, you know, oh, we're not a novelty anymore. I'm like, get out of here, Mew. and so the only people from the Mew that got to stay on Larakia Barracks which was the Australian military base there in Darwin was

the reconflip came off they were all like great shape got a giant jungle rucks and her fins hanging off the back and you know two of them got into a fist fight with each other and I don't know did I lose you Yeah, we got we got you. It's just some bad internet connection.

Okay. So these guys are fist fighting. It's just like, you know, they stayed in like a hangar. And I thought to myself, damn, I need, that's where I'm supposed to be. I'm supposed to be with recon. Well, ironically, when I got to recon, that was the very platoon that I went to with some of the same guys. Oh, shit. Yeah.

So it's just a trip. So we go back to Kedina three days later. We finally got a C-130. It's an eight-and-a-half-hour trip. The whole entire plane in the back, the floorboards were covered in just cases and cases of beer, Australian beer. Just full of beer. And looking back on it, I think, because I was the new Marine of Boot, I, you know, and we all were, we didn't really have the guts.

But nowadays, I would have been like, drinking him. What are they going to say? So, yeah, we came back to Cadena. We did some security for Cadena for a couple of weeks. That was really cool. A lot of adventures there. And eventually we go back to, we did a month in Fuji at the base of Mount Fuji. That was cool training with those guys on their base.

And then we went home to 2.9 Palms in January of 2002. And then that whole year, leading up until when we deployed to Kuwait before the invasion in 03, was just a workup where we trained exclusively for combat in Iraq. Armor ID, learning out of ID and through the thermals, you know, enemy vehicles. You know, I had picked up corporal. I took my Marines down to EOD. We had EOD.

We had EOD give us classes on landmines and IEDs and things like that just to really put the fear of God in us about where we're going. And then we deployed on over to Kuwait in January or February, early February. of 03. And this was like your whole Mew going over there at once? Our whole battalion. Okay, gotcha. Yeah.

And then there was different regimental combat teams on different locations there and way along the border. So just the Marine Corps was there. I mean, it was, I mean, we knew we were bringing all this stuff over here if we weren't going to go to war. Well, I mean, I'd like to ask you what your impression was, like, was there an upward given to you guys? Like, when you deployed, did you know what your mission was going to be, or did you find that out later? We had no idea what our mission was going to be.

I think the first thing we learned was which breach lane we were going up. Okay. It was only days before. Wow. Like, we were across the border, yeah. And we didn't have, we didn't even know. I think, you know, at least at my level, I didn't know what any of our first objectives were or anything. And we got really deep into Iraq before we got into our first firefight.

We saw a lot of blown up vehicles from airstrikes and artillery. We saw some oil and gas fires and just weird things. Like, you know, I could imagine an old school train just flying by like at 100 miles an hour, just, you know, just things like that or guys in the middle of nowhere just on a camel, just booking it, like a jockey. Like, where's that guy? You know, just things like that.

And then it wasn't until the 23rd of March on the 1-8 northern that we got into like our big, our first firefight, which was the biggest by far of any during the invasion. Did you guys run into like the Fed of Yen or something like that? I think they were Fedelleeen. And regular army and conscripts. And I think they used these conscripts as bait,

because we'd crossed the tigers that morning. And then we were, about time we got into that big firefight, that was, I think we were 10 clicks, 10 kilometers farther north than any other marine unit, because the LAV-25 system, they can go, they drive fat, It was a perfect vehicle for the invasion for that drain at that time and that technology the way the wars were fought. And so we had some cobras doing orbits ahead of us for most of the day when we got real

far north, but they had returned to refueled. And then we started seeing large, you know, we're going up in a big column formation. The whole battalion, I'm the third vehicle from the very front of the battalion movement. So the tip of the spear of the tip of the spear, you know, they said, yeah, they are. Tib of the spear. So we were seeing these big groups of men standing here and there every once in a while on the sides of the roads. They weren't wearing uniforms. We didn't see any guns or anything in the middle of nowhere.

So it's fishy, but nobody had fired a shot. Nothing had happened. And three vehicles came towards our, you know, our battalion directly from the front down the road. which at this point was just a dark road. And it was three white pickup trucks. There was four guys on each side of the gunwls sitting in the back, facing in the inboard. So eight guys in the back and three guys in the front cab.

And I could hear, I had a calm helmet. I was popped up out of the scout hatch. My son was popped up out over here on the right side. And I had the calm helmet on, you know, in there. And so I could hear the radio chatter. and they were saying, you know, nobody's, as these three trucks approached us and the sun was setting, it's dark. You know, they had their headlights on. We were running all blacked out.

And for some reason, they came right up to us. And two of them stopped before they entered into our column. But the first vehicle drove past the first two vehicles and stopped to the right of my vehicle right next to us. Like I could have spit on them, you know. And I could still hear him saying, hold your fire, we're not showing any aggression. We don't see any weapons. And my MBG mount on my helmet had broken.

So I'm holding my MBGs up like this with my left hand. And I'm looking over my sawgunner. He's got the saw trained on him. And I said, you know, Dane, keep that gun on them, you know, to do anything, let him have it. And he's a young kid from Texas, 18. He was all about it. He's excited.

And so I'm looking. I'm looking through my MVGs, and I see the guy in the middle of the row of guys sitting on the back of the truck that's facing away from us. I see one guy turned his head like this, and he looks up over his shoulder up at us. And as he does, the barrel of his AK peeks out outside of his coat collar. And so I see that.

And then I look across at the guy sitting right. right across from him and he had his jacket closed, but there was a gap. And that's, I saw, uh, AK, like chest rig. And, um, so now I'm all excited. And I hit the palm helmet. I said, hey, staff sergeant, you know, to my vehicle. They've got his opportunity sergeant. And I said, they got two skier and AKs. Can I engage? He said, what? And I repeated myself. And, um, then he relays it company because I couldn't talk company, just platoon.

And while they're, whatever they're figuring out, apparently my big mouth, I don't know, these guys in the truck, they must have known the jig was up. Yeah. They, like they lurched forward, but only like five or ten feet, so they're a little bit behind us. And then they all spilled out. And when they all spilled out, then all the vehicles behind us. and everybody saw all the weapons.

And as soon as that happened, it was on. And the vehicle behind us just pink-misted everybody with the main gun, just firing into them. And then all hell broke loose. Those other two vehicles got immediately destroyed. And we started pushing forward. And then the whole battalion kept moving forward at a slow pace. and we, I mean, everything with the heat signature got destroyed.

And our air officer called in the brevity for, you know, to get all the available air on the station because we had spotted tanks. They were moving some T-55s or something, some tanks around trying to come in close enough to fire on us. So then we got all the available air on station. And it was just incredible show of mass destruction. They, they, I mean, that unit got wiped out. I think three or four hundred of them got killed. And only, we had some very slightly wounded,

but nobody killed on our end. That's so weird, man. Like, do you think those guys were like doing some sort of like reconnaissance? because they weren't surrendering or like trying to defect. They were clearly trying to hide who they really were. It looked like they messed up. And you kind of see it in their faces like, oh, shit, these are Americans. Like maybe they thought they were that these LABs were BMPs or BTRs or something.

I don't know. But they didn't have, I think they didn't have any night vision. And so by the time they rolled up, on us, it was just like they were like, oops. Or they could have been just sent to to probe us out. Like they probably were told, go

do this or else. I mean, maybe they had no choice. But it seems very foolish to do that. And that may have just been to kick it off or to hold us in place or something while they move around those tanks around, but whatever

the plan was was garbage. And if they had a plan, it just seemed ridiculous. And it wasn't like we, they didn't, they, they had to have known we were coming up. The whole battalion was moving north and just kicking up just a cloud and dust, you know, for miles. And, and we didn't engage till the sun had set. So, like, right as the sun was, like, as low as set, like, just going below the horizon and things got pretty dark is when these trucks. is when these trucks show them.

So it was, I don't know what they were doing. And how far north did your battalion push? We, our battalion, we went all the way up to Baghdad. We split into companies. Delta Company is the LAR company that rescued the, is there a name, Jessica Lynch? Jessica Lynch, yeah. and the other P-O-W.

Dang, I forget her name. Meet her a few years ago, a nice girl. But then we went, let's see, we went to DeWanita. We got into another, had a couple of close calls, had a mortar drop like right outside my platoon commander's vehicle.

That was nuts. That was kind of cool. We were, the LAV tow variant was shooting a tow missile, that water tower that there was a couple hundred soldiers mustering under, like getting ready to fight us and we had stopped. And I was watching that. I thought it was going to be in my imagination.

It's going to hit that water tower and it was going to explode and it just rain down on top everybody. It didn't happen like that. You could see the missile going towards it and it went through some high power lines. and I think what happened is that guide wire hit that wire and it just detonated in the air before it hit the tower. And then all of a sudden we started getting rained on with mortars. And, you know, because we were at an intersection and we had just gone through an underpass. So we kind of, you know, that actually was a better plan that they had.

You know, they had us in the pre-positioned targeting. So, you know, the mortars started. raining on us and I'm standing up there like an idiot like trying to watch the show and the mortar landed in the next to the vehicle in front of me, my tune commanders. And I see him drop down. And all of a sudden I think, uh-oh, he got hit. And it flattened all four of the tires on the right side of that LAV, but it didn't disable it in any form with the run flats. And we backed it up rapidly we all backed up and went under the bridge that was there so you know we have protection from the mortars raining down and we jumped out the back and then the scouts in the back of the vehicle in

front of us jumped out and it was like a NASCAR pit-through tire change because they have you know arrows you can run out the driver's hatch with the air guns and every vehicle had two spared tires. So we, we swapped out those tires so fast. And then that was the end of it. We split. We didn't ever go back to fight them. I don't know who went to go fight them. There we go. We went up to Deweania. Oh, no, we went to Nazaria right after the big battle of Nazaria, like 12 hours after or something. There was dead dudes everywhere. We went to the two bridges by the little military base where they had a pretty heavy firefight all night. There were, you know, unexploded, like ordinance, mortars sticking out of the dirt and all kinds of, like, you just didn't want to mess with anything because, you know, you want to actually kick something and blow yourself up.

And that was an experience, but we didn't get into any gunfights there. We ended up going to Diwanilla and then, you know, the war, like most of the combat sort of fizzled out pretty quickly because the regime fell. Then it switched to, let's hunt for Saddam. We did have a day where we drove out to the southwestern border of Iraq and went to a cool, it seemed like an ancient town. It did have some sort of factory there that we did go into, but we went into the town. There was a base there.

And it looked like a medieval fort, like something from Lawrence of Arabia because it had, it was in a square shape. It had a walkway along the top where you could fire from, and it had parapets on each corner, and it had the thick stone walls. They remind me of being in Europe and the castles where they're angled, and you can fire your bows or muskets out of them, but it's harder for them to shoot you. And then they had a radio room in there that was cool because it was a fully operational,

like Soviet radio equipment and old school, like we're back. vacuum tubes, you know, vacuum tubes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, just old. And it worked. It all worked. It was crazy. But the place was deserted.

Like they saw us coming and they split. And so we stayed in that town. We drove around. We checked out another spot. We stayed maybe an hour. I did see the fruit, one of the prettiest girls I've ever seen my life down there, the prettiest eyes.

Like, you know, all you're seeing is the face. It's funny how that stands out. in your mind from the deployment. Well, like, I'm in the top of this, this giant 14-toned vehicle. We drove past her house and there's maybe, you know, an eight-foot wall that she's in the yard. And, you know, she's covered with her face. You know, I can see your eyes in her face. And she's looking up like, what the, what's see?

And, you know, probably, I don't know, same age as us, you know, 18, 19, 20. I was like they called the Gramps because I was 25 but you know but but um yeah like these are little things that you that stick out um so um a little adventures in between but no real they didn't have any um gun fights a lot of guys got sick we used to call it the shit barfs because they had us taking a doxy every day yeah and then we had the two pam and the atropine we we were at our mop gear for the invasion, everything at first, and we chucked the giant rubber boot covers. But I was to say that mock you worse because we were funky

after not bathing for about two months. I mean, but you couldn't really tell unless you had to use the bathroom or something, you just unzipped and, you know. It really locks in the flavor. Yeah, we were marinating for sure in those things. So, yeah, that was, you know, like, we stopped a lot. We had to wait for fuel a lot. That's how fast we moved.

We had to wait for chow food. I lost a lot of weight. I lost about 25 pounds in one month because we were eating one MRE a day. And we had. So you'd split it up, you know. You'd even save like the little creamer packets and stuff. you dump that in your mouth. There's any calories you could get.

The humanitarian rations disappeared right away. I feel cheated because I didn't, I was, you know, like we're not supposed to eat those. I won't eat them, but looking back, I'm like, might as well have somebody ate him. And so I lost 25 pounds. You know, we didn't get much sleep. Maybe, I'm, this is not exaggerating, maybe two, three hours total in a 24-hour period, but like little catnaps, it was kind of crazy. But, you know, you get used to it.

You don't want to fall asleep because you don't want to get snuck up on. So it was quite the experience, yeah. Yeah. And then how did redeployment back to the United States go? Well, we went back down to Kuwait. We drove back down to Kuwait. And when we got there, We had to turn in gear and do all that sort of stuff.

And it went pretty fast. General Mattis came out. He was there. He was a two-star at the time. That's the first time I met him. And he, excuse me, he would say, say good job and, you know, thanks. And, you know, just say hi to all the units that were rotating back. So we didn't take.

long. I think we're back in the U.S. We were one of the early units to come back. I think it was back in by by the end of June or something. You know, it was four, four and a half months. We were there. And then all of a sudden we're back. And we're all wild. And so we get off the plane, which landed at March Air Force Base in Southern California. And they had big, you know, just a, a very nice welcome fire trucks with their hoses going and people cheering us on.

People were, you know, real patriotic those years after 9-11 when America came together. And then we drove in buses back to 29 Palms and I had a girlfriend who I'd met when we were doing security at Kadina. she used to fly air medevac for the air force and she had been transferred to edward's air force base so we'd been dating for that whole workup of 2002 to o3 and then she was there to see me get off the bus and that was a strange feeling uh leaving by Marines like you know their families if they had them were there to see them. And then, you know, we just, we immediately get 30 days leave. And so that first evening home was strange for me.

We went out in town, we got a place in town and stayed. And I felt really uncomfortable and awkward, you know, being around this girl that I knew very well. I just felt almost unsafe. like I just wanted to go back and be with my Marines. You know, it was weird adjustment. It was so fast. Like, you know, like back in the day when the Marines from World War II or Korea or something, would get on a boat and you'd have a month or two.

Right, right. And then, you know, take a train or whatever you did. You'd have some time. So, you know, that month of leave went by real fast. And as soon as I came back, I immediately, they finally my command let me take the recon screening

which I had taken before on a 96 which is like a four-day long weekend that they'll give a unit every once in a while and got yelled at by my platoon commander at the time for not asking permission I was like

sir I was my day off but he was kind of he was annoyed because you know recon was calling trying to get him to cut orders for me to go train. So they finally let me go, you know, I took the screening again and passed again

and immediately got orders to pre-basic reconnaissance course, which was at the time in August of 2003, it was run by the battalion and it was at on Pendleton and at the time recant was at Camp Margarita by the airfield

on Mainside. And that was a gut check because I was always in pretty good shape, and I've been through some tough courses, you know, like the Marine Corps martial arts course, but the Marine Corps, the Marine Combat Instructor of Water Survival Corps, that one. I've got to say that for me, it was harder than the recon, but it was the first time I was with guys that were just the next level fitness, and the instructors they had were just freaks.

I just remember the first run we did at 4 a.m. on the first day was the boots and youths like, you know, cammy pants and boots. And we ran up the backside of the peak at Marlavia. And it's a short run, a house or so, but all uphill to the very, very end. And it's short downhill and you back at the, you know, at our compound or we're in the town. I think that the first time I was falling out of a run. And by fallout, I mean not be able to keep up with the people in the front. I was somewhere in the middle of the pack, but guys were strewn up probably half a mile because the guy they had take us on that run, he was just a, I think, probably slick,

like in PT shorts and running shoes. He could probably run 14 and a half minute, three miles or something. He was a freak, just phenomenal runner. And he took off like a bat out of hill. And I thought he's just going to sprint for a little bit. He's just playing some mind games. And yeah, he's going to slow down over here. Nope.

Nope. It was like a, for me, it felt like a sprint because I'm a big dude. Like at the time I was, well, probably 2.10 or something like that. I'm still getting my meat back on my bones from the invasion. So, but I can still run like three. miles in 18 and a half minutes, which is pretty good for a bigger dude, 6'3-3. But no, that wasn't fast enough to keep up at all. And so that was rough four weeks.

That was like eat, sleep study. That's it. Eat sleep study. And then, you know, when you weren't getting thrashed, you know, all over the base, all day long and all night long. I mean, you just had to learn to just be miserable and focus on whatever the next thing you had to do was rather than with the whole picture. Because there was times I wanted to throw myself down the mountain and break my leg because I knew I could get a rest. But then I knew I'd have to go back through again. So I just did.

But this isn't the in-doc. This isn't the selection. This is actually the basic reconnaissance course. Yeah, but they called it free basic reconnaissance. So this was four. So if you pass this four weeks, then you're ready for. the basic reconnaissance course down on Coronado at the time at Expeditionary Warfare Training Group Pacific. So, you know, I think they've improved on the science of like training people up.

But back then it was just a giant tour. It felt like a haze fest. Smoke fest, yeah. Oh, man, it was rough. And, but it got you, we were ready. I mean, I graduated that. Got orders, went down to Coronado. And, and then, that was, that was, that was, that was tough, but it was also, it also could be a lot of fun at times.

And because they had prepared us physically so well, that, that part was certainly, like, it could crush you, but it was, you just knew you were going to be all right. Yeah. But a lot of guys quit. And a lot of guys who quit were the guys that you thought would never quit. I guess the term for them is gazelles. Things come easy to them. Yeah. And then the first time, things get hard.

They're like, oh, I can't. This isn't for me. Or they don't like not being the best. So the ego gets in the way. So it was a lot of fun. We had a little confrontation with the Bud's class once, our little friendly rivalry that we had going on. And I think some of the guys stole their,

one of the guys stole one of their hard. hats from in front of the chow hall because they didn't have a gear guard and the whole the whole class came up we had maybe 10 minutes before we had to get back into the classroom I was trying and take a power nap you know upstairs and you heard just banging on the hatch and buddy I left mine and we opened that back door and what the hell like I mean just that it was jam-packed like not the butt like these buds kids like they were pissed I didn't know anything I had no idea that somebody had taken their heart at. So we were just defending our territory.

Like, you ain't coming in here. And then, you know, there was a brain in there. He's like, dude, come on. We get fucked if he was going through buds. And he's like, you know, this is kind of those, you know, just have him give it back. And I'm like, well, hold on. Don't come in here.

And I go. And I'm like, which one are you bastards? You know, kind of laughing. And, you know, but like, come on, man, we're going to get in trouble. And they gave it back to them. And that was that. I feel bad because I got a lot of seal buddies. I'm like, fuck, you know.

But, you know, no harm, no foul. And that was, to me, really exciting because I was doing, like, I'm really in recon training, you know. Yeah, like the stuff you read about in the books. Yeah. We're running up and down the strand, you know. in Coronado. We're finning. Like the Bud's classes are running by us with their boats.

We're running by with our F470 Zodiacs. I'm tall. So I was always like, come on my man, you guys aren't. Like you got short guys in my team. I'm like, reach higher.

And it was fun. It was hard. But it was just, you know, when you're doing something that you love, it takes that chore out of it. And that's, I loved it.

It was just, So rewarding. I made it. Graduated. So which recon platoon did you get assigned to? I got assigned to second platoon in Bravo Company, first recombatalion. Is that back at 29 Palms?

No. First recontalions at Camp Pendleton on the West Coast. So all of our companies are out there too. And we, So back at Margarita, and it's the platoon that was on the Mew. And it's also the platoon that during the invasion was featured in Evan Wright's book Generation Kill and in that HBO docu series. And I haven't seen it. I can't watch it.

I get it, yeah. Like, I'm like, oh, come on. We don't look the best. but it was kind of cool Rudy Ray has played himself I didn't like him for a while when I was first at the unit

but like now we're just you know he grows on you with brothers and we did well we all involved you know myself included and you know

that that unit at the time was real tight. And I'm and you know first recons still is but we were a collection of guys that had time and peace to go to schools and to get in shape and to train and work together and jail as a unit for the most part. I mean there's people like me just gets I just get to a report. Let's see I graduated BRC late November and I reported to the unit and they put me in Second Battoon Bravo Company.

And they were the guys that, you know, like all these guys, the Com Marines, they were in the invasion too. So myself and a lot of the guys had combat experience. But there were some guys that, you know, knew to the unit who didn't have any combat experience, even guys senior to me. So that gave me a little bit of street credits. I didn't get messed with. And I had some buddies I went to boot camp with in School of Infantry.

who were at the unit. I guess they vouched for me. So nobody really messed with me. And then I never screwed up. So I never had a reason to have anybody yell at me or anything. I was pretty good at staying out of trouble at that point. So we had just a short workup of two months before we were back in Kuwait. And in that two months, maybe, yeah, we were back in February.

So at two and a half months or something like that. I was supposed to go to serious school after. Recon School, but I got into a little, I was trying to get these dunes off my, we were at the gas lamp in downtown San Diego having a good time. We stayed till the bars closed because my buddy's wife worked at one of them and she was driving us all home. Well, we were, you know, mass exodus out of the bars. Everybody's in the streets and some guys were like grab assing on her and I, this is a bad, never break up a fight unless you want to get into a fight. So like I'm, Like, come on, guys.

And there's four of them, and they all, like, assembled in front of me, like, they were going to whip my ass. And I was, like, in a good mood, you know, like, I'm not trying to fight anybody. We don't have anything to prove. We just have me a good time. And so I put my back up against the wall, and I'm, like, looking at them and, like, they're just, you know, making a bunch of noise and jumping around, like, talking trash, but I'm kind of ignoring them. and man, one of them was a straggler. So he ran up from behind and broke my jaw. And my head bounced off the wall.

I went down like a sack of potatoes, but I popped right back up, you know, just down and back up. But I was a little like, whoa. And damn. And I go, what the fuck was that? And those guys were like running away all together at that point. Like they got one lick in. and ran off.

And as they're running off talking trash, they're like, Dan, dude, you just got sucker punched. I'm like, well, no shit, that motherfucker got me good. So I had to go get staples in my head at Balboa.

And so, don't harm no foul, back of the unit, back training, but I was supposed to report into Sears school with the rest of the guys two weeks after that. My jaw kept hurting.

And I thought I had, I got pulled muscle or something. I didn't know what it was torn living in. I thought, so I finally went to the battalion aid station and told them, and then they sent me down to the hospital. I got x-rays. And then I went back to the field and I was back at work. And then all of a sudden somebody's, you know,

they're asking for me to hurry up and get back to the battalion aid station. So I go down there and they tell me, your jaw is broken. You're right condos fractured. You can't be moving your jaw. Stop talking. And I'm like, well, it's two, I mean, it's been two weeks. you know, I've been trying to eat soft food like you did tell my age. And I was like, damn it, you know, because we were doing the workup.

We knew we were going to deploy again. And they said, well, they told me that at the aid station. So I went back and I found my platoon sergeant. We were still in the field. I go up to him and like, hey, Gunny, they told me my jaw is broken. And he looks at me and he says to me, he goes, well, can you still deploy? And I go, yeah.

He said, all right. And we just went back to work. That was it. And I thought, yeah, this is a man's club. I fucking love it here. This is great. But it healed up. I just had to be careful.

So I didn't go to Sears School because they were able to slap the bejesies out of me. Yeah, that wouldn't have been good with your jaw. Yeah, they've ruptured one of my buddies I was in BRC with. They've ruptured his eardrum. But I could see him being a mouthy, guy, you know, probably I mean, I was like, oh, I can see why they might slap the bejes out of that guy especially.

So, yeah, they would have messed me up, probably. So they sent me to an Arabic linguist course with some of the guys. So every day for a month straight, I just sat and learned Arabic. I actually enjoyed that because I realized how much you could help me. Because in the invasion, it gave us these little cards, yeah. cards with like English and Arabic.

And you would show it to them and either they pretended they couldn't read or they probably didn't know how to read a lot of these guys like in the middle of nowhere. But like our pronunciation was horrible. I realized after doing that course, I'm like, no wonder they didn't understand what the hell I was trying to say.

You know, like just must have sounded like gibberish. So that was cool. And then we immediately went back. I mean, it felt just like I was, I'm like, I'm already back. less than a year. Wow. Yeah, quick turnaround. And so where did you get deployed the second time and what was the mission? Well, the second time we went up to the Anbar province and we went up to Fallujah. And as we drove up from Kuwait, I started to get more and more of a different vibe in the environment. Because during the invasion,

we'd run into a lot of people that were cheering for us and thumbs up and they'd say things like Bush. number one and and it seemed more welcoming and less shady but when we got to Palusia they were not high in the fact that they did not like us I think at the time the 82nd Airborne had been there for about a year so they were ready to split we relieved the 82nd then they were they were they were all pretty cool they were real friendly so our mission they told us was to conduct counter-rocket and IED ambush of opportunity and reconnaissance and surveillance missions, which would mean like they put us in hide sites and not so much patrolling, but just like trying to insert,

get eyes on and sneak around and, you know. So my team leader and I, we asked command if we could get map data on where they were firing from. Of course, they didn't have anything, and they gave us maps, but they were. air maps one on one hundred thousandths and we were supposed to make our patrol routes from these and it's just like what and uh i just think they didn't have them at the time and just like during the invasion they passed out sappy plates like the body armor and we each only got one so we you know we all put it in the front of our black jacket you know like and um but so

we took a walk and we went to the gun line like the counter battery artillery you know the counter battery radars and the already gun line there on Camp Felizia and went to the counter the radar trailer you know the counter battery radar guys and just introduced ourselves said what's up said

we're Marines with first recon and you know we were wondering if you guys had any information or you can share on where these guys are firing from and they're like sure come on in and we clunged into the back of the trailer you know they have the screen that like in real time uh will pinpoint um where the rocket or the mortar is launched from and then they can get on the horn and tell the gunline to put in the right data and they they'd be firing rounds back within 30 seconds or less and uh they had maps they gave us some one of 50,000's maps. and we were like, sweet, thank you, sir.

And they were out of there. They were like, yep, there you go. We're going home. They were stoked. And they were real cool. They were nice to us. And then when we were in the trailer, some rockets came into the base. So we got to see the thing in, like, live real time.

You know, the little map that they have, you know, it's backlit. And they have a little thing and it lights up exactly so they can drop a 10-digit ordinate to the gunline and the fireback. And so then we returned back to the unit. We had these maps, and we knew where all the mortars and the rockets had been fired from, like all the different intersections or sides of the roads and all this.

We go give it to our intel guys. And, of course, they want to take all of it and all of our maps from us. And so we gave them the maps and the data, but we kept a map and we kept the data for ourselves too, you know, because we needed it. Sometimes it's funny, you can bring some information to someone in the military and then ask for it.

And they'll tell you it's classified. You're like, I'm the one that gave it to you. You know what that doesn't make any sense. That's just how it is. So anyway, we use those to do some planning. And they split our teams up into different areas. So you had certain area of responsibility like X number of grid squares or, you know, square kilometers along the Euphrates at first when I was there on the southwestern side of the south,

from Camp Fallujah, all the way over to the Rock ASP is where we were operating. our teams while I was there. That was pretty exciting. What was I going to say? Eh, you'll come back to me. So then I was really doing what I, you know, what recon Marines do. We would get inserted. We, well, we get a frago of mission like this is where your team's going to go.

This is your area. This is your area for you to be responsible for. And so make your, make your plans, find your hide site, you know, mark out your patrol routes and get your pre-planned fire positions and these different things like that. And, you know, rig yourselves out, get all ready, and then we'd get inserted. And that was an adventure. That was, like, I'm like, this is what I'm doing with recount. It was doing it.

It was pretty cool. But it was dangerous. We got every day pretty much, every night there was rockets or mortars hitting the base. And then every time you'd be driving through Fallujah, people would take pop shots at you at least. Or in the early days of the IEDs, they were just dialing them in. They were trying to hit us with IEDs. But fortunately, they blow between vehicles or are they burying too deep or something? and they wouldn't.

So we lucked out a bunch of times. The people in Fallujah were shocked the first time we drove through as a company through the city of Fallujah, like right through the main part of downtown. I remember the 82nd had told us on the turnover, like, don't go here, don't go there, especially this or that time of the day or whatever we completely disregarded all that we just it's the first thing we did is went to where they told us not to go to just be like hey we're here what's up

and so that really uh i think it caught the caught the people in philuzia like the fighters in philuzia off guard because they didn't expect it so we didn't you know we didn't get ambushed or anything because they didn't think we were going to come through so we made, you know, and so we made our presence known and then started doing these Amble show of opportunity missions, which were pretty successful. Were these going after like the mortar teams that were hitting the base?

Yeah, that's what we were trying to get. Or people putting in IEDs. And so. there were, there were times we got compromised. It's funny because we had to cross like a lot of flat ground and linear danger areas. And there was just, you know, we would only move when they turned the generators off at night. And then we try to be back at our hindsight by the time they turned them on at 3 or 4 a.m. So you had a little window of opportunity to be out there.

And we were also doing surveillance, reconnaissance and surveillance. So, I mean, sometimes that's tedious work. I mean, you're writing down, if you see somebody, you're going to write it down, describe what were they doing? What were they wearing? What kind of vehicle did you see? Color, like, where, when, why, just anything, because you don't know what's going to be valued Intel later, but just. And then, of course, baking in the sun. during the day, just roasting.

Yeah, we got compromised by a house full of women one night trying to cross through the little part of town and get up to the banks of the Euphrates. And, you know, I'm walking, I'm patrolling, and we had some guys still in the hide site. So there's six of us. So we split our team. And so we were going through this danger area,

and I'm passing this house and slept 50 yards away. And it's dark because they don't have street lights and stuff. But they had a little light at the front porch of that house. And all of a sudden, a woman comes out. And I'm just like, just there was nowhere to hide. There was nothing to do. So I'm trying to like melt down slowly to a knee and just make myself into a little ball. And she must have saw me.

She must have seen me or one of the other guys or something because I heard her saying something. And then another girl comes out. And all of a sudden there's like 10 women looking and peering. Like they got the hebe-jeebies and they went back inside. And then so it was like skirted out. Yeah, they didn't have windows on our side. So I figured that was my opportunity. We almost smoked a guy on a little motorcycle.

bought about it but didn't smoke them one day because there's a curfew technically if you're out about your fair game but you know we

we weren't that like cavalier we didn't just shoot everybody because they were outside after curfew I didn't have heard about some foreign units that they would do that though and we

We had a mission. We got inserted once and we were going to our hide site and spotted a couple of guys digging an IED to the side of a road there in Fallujah. And so we put four of our guys hungered down and my team leader and I went and did like an L shape on him. And my team leader opened up, killed one guy, put three rounds in his chest and he dropped immediately.

And I opened up on the other guy, but I screwed up, my safety was on. So in the time it took me to take my little parasaw, the belt fed 5,556, by the time I hit, took that safety off, that dude that I was going for was already like flat, lowered in a blade of grass. and so I just mowed, I mean, like, disappeared. So I, you know, I laid down some fire and mowed down like where he was. And we both got up and we both start moving. And we come up on him and I come up over this barn and there's the one guy.

So I stitched him up. But he was the guy that my team leader already had, hit and then we're like where the fuck did that other guy go and we're looking and we got an eye vision and we see him and he's just flat like terrified so we grab him we roll him up and we call back to the rear

we're like we need to get extracted we've got one enemy K one VOWU so the react comes and we ended up you know loading those guys up, oh, then we had to extract a team

that couldn't find a hide site. So they jump in. And it's like we're in a convertible Humvee. And so we're all sitting around on the outside. We picked this team up and they split between different Humvees and my good buddy comes in.

And he's sitting down on top of the tarp of his back to the cab of the Humvee. And we're driving back to the base. He's like, I heard you guys, I heard you shwack somebody. like, yep, he's like, what did you guys do with the bodies? I'm like, you're sitting on right now.

Like, we didn't bother to tell them, just the weird, the twisted humor of the guys that hunt men, you know what I mean? And so we immediately had a reputation and flusion. Of course, our vehicles were distinct, so they hated us. After that, you could really see it in their eyes. And so that's why I think they targeted us specifically for the ambush on April 7, 2004. They waited for us because they let a lot of people go through.

That was the first time we cordoned off of the city of Volusia, first battle of Blugia. So, you know, they tried to get us on April 7. So walk us through that, how that transpired. And so you're saying they were targeting specifically the recon detachment out there? That's my opinion. I didn't get any like intel and said that. But we had killed one of them and taken another prisoner.

And we were right in their backyard. Like that pissed them off. And so, and they, I mean, they were trying to get a lot of people, but we were just so active in the area that maybe we were the most pregnant unit that, you know, So we retired. We've been just back-to-back missions. Like we barely have any time to reset if we were back on the Fobb, if we were back on Camp Volusia.

A lot of times you can get back before the child hall closed or it'd be about to close. You'd be all dirty. People would yell at you wouldn't care. I was pot food. I've been in the dirt for days and days, you know, eating MREs. And so we came back from another mission. And then we got this order.

You know, the Fulia's cordoned off. We knew that. And they were going to move us from Cam Fuluzia, our company, to a place called the Rock ASP, which is in the old Iraqi Amos supply point outside of Fulia a mile or two south, west, more west and south but we were on that movement once again just a couple hours of sleep

because you have to down you know just to clean out the vehicle refit the vehicle get new fields for the radios get you know water food

just everything you've got to do ammo and planning short planning and so then we we stepped off later in the morning than we originally planned and headed west out of the base, crossed over the Uyphrates at this, on the bridge. They called the dam bridge because it's a dam.

It's literally a dam, so it's the dam bridge was what it's called. We took some fire and some motors crossing that. I think the mortars like splashed into the water like you know pretty harmless but we took a little bit of machine gun fire so we pulled off into this one field that was like a you know a road between the ditches and the trees and all of a sudden the field opened up but it was like a little peninsula

because had these big 15 foot ditch that went around it and, you know, we, you know, just turned around like four of our vehicles or Humvees. We didn't have armored Humvees at the time. And where my own v stopped across the ditch from me about 50 yards was a group of about 15 men in a couple of cars. And they were pissed and looking dirty at us. But they didn't have weapons or anything. I just had my saw on them. And I'm like, if anybody does it.

anything. I'm just mowing everybody down. And because we were in the open, we were like, it wasn't a good spot for us. So I didn't like where we were. And we ended up getting out of there pretty quickly and back on the road. And we were on Route Boston

heading there south of Fallujah, heading west. And I'm in the first vehicle. I got the radio of assistant team leader. And, you know, know we see just people acting kind of strange so i call it back to the to our tune commander

and uh we stopped the convoy of 10 20 seconds um and they say get going again and then um so we get going and uh whereas usually you'd see a lot of people standing around milling about maybe the gas station or cars coming and going we didn't we didn't see any cars and any people. So it was kind of an eerie feeling. You knew something was up. And a car was coming down the road at a high rate of speed towards us. And when they saw us, they just literally U-turned and floored it away. So I called that in. We stopped the convoy again. Just 10 seconds. They said, you know, get going again and pick up your speed to whatever it was, 25 kilometers per hour or something. So then I really knew it was on. So I took my ammo box off

the swing arm out and I put it on my gun and I spit my dip out because I didn't want to swallow my dip and we a couple hundred yards later all hell broke loose and they opened up on us with heavy machine guns, motors

RPGs. They had IEDs in place but they didn't blow and during the course of the whole firefight one of my buddies from my platoon found some and actually disarmed them

and like disconnected them from their power source so that they wouldn't blow. And, you know, when I, when the, when the shooting started, I called in the contact in the direction and I just threw down that headset and I went to town with my saw and they were firing at us from my perspective. but, you know, the first vehicle, like, basically our 12 o'clock all the way to, you know, our 3 or 4 o'clock.

And so from where I was, I was suppressing, like, a 3, 4 o'clock, like just basically everything out to our right side. And that, you know, because they were along a berm behind, well, there was a berm and then a big ditch with waste deep water, and then it came up for another berm. and then small field, then all the houses. So they were in the berm on the second berm on the backside. So they were firing from pretty close. It was a close ambush. We had nowhere to go.

We stopped, like, set up a base of fire. You know, our Bravo element, the vehicles in the bag of between flanked them. And then the Iraqis had blocked off the road, too, with a dump truck. So we were. Oh, shit. We couldn't. Yeah, we were. And we didn't, I didn't know it yet, but this was our SOP to stop instead of base of fire.

I was waiting for a lull in the fire so I could get out and get behind that burn. And, but it was like nuts. I mean, they were dumping on us. It was like that movie Pulp Fiction when a guy bused out of the bathroom and tries to shoot what's his name and he's looking like, what? Yeah, yeah. You know, like how to get shots. But so like bullets are hitting the door. are hitting the Humvee everywhere.

They're snapping by my ear. Like you can tell when they come real close. In my head, I'm like, shit, you know, they, I hope, you know, Maison's all right, my A-R-T-O. The guy sitting to my left, like, I'm like, if it missed me, it came that close. It had to have hit him. And they were firing RPGs at us.

I kept hearing these explosions. I moved, I suppressed these dudes to our right. They were behind the barn, and I moved over to, like, because these RPGs were exploding. I thought they were shooting him at the vehicles behind us. You know, I'm thinking, damn, I hope those dudes are all right. And this house where these RPGs were coming from, I was about to suppress in that direction.

But my barrel of my saw was like right over an inch over my teen meters barrel. He was shooting at some guys. And I just thought, I'll come back to them. I didn't want to shoot it out of his hand. And I was thinking I was going to get shot in the face because of the amount of bullets that were just like. like coming behind my head and hitting the door. And I didn't have a real door.

It was like cut in half of duct tape on the tap. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'll find it because somebody just took a torch and cut it rough. You know, sandbags and old flack jackets glued to the floorboards and sandbags on top. Just like ghetto. But when I moved my gun back to start firing back to like around the 3 o'clock, you know, that's when an RPG hit hit my saw

and so when I got hit it was just a just a boom that I can't really explain with words just I think I wrote it down once up like a thunder clap originating from inside your head and I thought you know

I got shot in the face and I screamed out as soon as it happened it was just like boom and I yelled out like I'm hit. And as I'm yelling it, I felt stupid for yelling it out.

So I shut up. Like, I don't know why I would feel stupid ego or something. Like, it was cliche. I didn't want to that guy. That's what's running through your head in that moment. Yeah, I just, well, I just felt stupid for yelling that out. Like, I lost my cool, you know? Like, so I shut up.

And I thought to myself, okay, well, now I'll see what it's like to die. I wonder if I'll have brain damage not be, you know, because I got shot in the face or I got shot in the brain. And I thought briefly about, oh, no, I'll miss people that I love or they'll miss me. And, you know, they'll have to wait a lifetime until we see each other again. And then I thought, like, well, then,

it was like I got this clarity and all this is happening like I don't know how time slows like a second or two seconds or something like that it seemed like it was probably a few but maybe but not long

and I've realized somehow I'm like everything's going to be all right you know it's all good almost as if I knew there was no such thing as time and I didn't need to worry about like not even a blink of an eye,

even a blink of an eye is too big of a box to put around a section of time. It's kind of hard to explain, but just like an understanding and the piece came on me that I've never had before or since as strongly. And when I thought that, then I thought, Hold on, man. You had all these thoughts.

Maybe you didn't get shut. Maybe you, you know, like, wait a minute. You're not going to. You just need to chill out and, you know, calm down, dude. You don't want to go into shock. And so I thought all these thoughts in just a couple seconds, you know, time had slowed. When I thought that last thought, the lights came on. They just switched back on.

and my left arm was killing me and I picked it up like this and everything's a little bit hazy still kind of I picked up my left arm and I looked at it and I'm like fuck and my right hand hurt so I've like kind of like uh oh kind of like I don't know if I want to see that

I lift it up and I'm like mother maybe you guys can bleak this out I don't know, like, motherfucker, both of them. So both my hands are gone. This is like shredded and bone fragments. Like, almost cauterized it. So it was just not like shooting blood out or anything.

And then this was like my hand was off at the base of my palm. And it looked like my hand, all the bones had been blown out of it or something. It was just an empty glove. It was shredded, like, you know, that went through garbage disposal or something. And I was like, mother effort. But I looked down on the leg, and that was the worst because my leg, the top of my leg, like all my quadrants had been blown off, like it was a red pulpy mess. And my femur was sticking out to the side.

And it was splintered and jagged and gleaming white, like in a sea of red. But with every heartbeat, I could just see the incredible amount of blood pouring out of my leg. And I knew that I had to, that that was what was going to kill me if I didn't get shot again. And so everybody's coming back around, like I'm coming back around. This is not very, there's maybe a minute into the gunfight, if that. And because we're all deaf, so it seemed like there was a lull in the fire coming from the enemy, but it wasn't. We just couldn't hear it. But the hearing came back right away.

And all of a sudden, we just realized we were, like, fucked, still stuck in the kill zone. So, you know, a team leader told the driver to hit it. So he steps on it. The Humvee is damaged, tires are flat, gas, tanks leaking. Like, it's like put putting down the road, but we start to pick up speed. And our gunner is laid out on the roof. And, oh, before we, before we started moving, you know, the gunner. was laid out on the roof and he was curled up in a ball like uh and our driver was you know telling us

you know hey uh you know he's not responding blah blah blah in my head uh i'm not a jerk but you have to prioritize you know needs and if he's dead he's dead we can't do anything about it we're still in the kill zone we got to get the f out of this kill zone also i need some turniquets so my um assistant radio operator he he was uh he didn't get shot in the face you know but everybody got peppered with shrapnel and jacked up a team leader was putting a tourniquet on his right arm his gun had been blown out like his a arm had been blown out of his hands and he had a big like silver dollar hole above his triceps with his bones were shattered and he was putting a tourniquet on with his left and um uh managed to get the ARTO calm down so

you know, he's looking for our blowout kit where we keep our turnicates inside the vehicle when we're in the vehicle. He couldn't find it. Everything was just scattered all over the place in the vehicle. And he, I'm like, don't worry about it. Just get my, you know, get the tourniquet out of my sleeve pocket. I'll be all right. Like, I'm trying to calm this dude down because I can't do anything myself.

But if he's, if he can't do it, then I'm done and ski. And so I got him to put a turnkey on my left leg up high first. and then he was getting he got one on my arm a team leader got done doing his so he turns around like this and he reaches over and he grabs a turnicid that's up on my hip above my

blast injury on my left leg and he pulls on it to see if it's tight enough and it pops off and I'm like oh damn it you know so and it's a good thing that he did because it wasn't tight enough no it wasn't tight enough

I probably would have bled out I barely made it like each step the way was kind of like a little miracle. So, you know, Aaron puts it back on. This time really tight. Like it's supposed to be where it's hurting, but you're like, okay, yeah, that's going to be good.

So I got three tourniquets on and we get to limping out of that kill zone. Like the vehicle, we start to pick up speed and that's when we see like, oh, crap. Like, in my head, I guess I thought maybe we could split off from the unit and floor it to the rock ASP and get help there

because we certainly would have been faster than going back to Camp Felizia. I didn't say any of that out loud, but we made it maybe 100 yards and that's where we saw the dump truck blocking the road off and we were like, oops, we've got to stop.

So we stopped, but it was a good spot because it got us out of the kill zone and it got us kind of around the corner to where the enemy had to dislodge from wherever they were firing from and come up and try to get into another position to finish us off. You can see them, like, trying to come. And, you know, so you hurried up.

You got with our, like, you know, I'm like, get the radio. The radio was like the one-19 fox drop in the back of the seat. That thing was shot, but we had the little end biters, a little handheld one. So we were trying to get calms with that. We tried, but we hit off our visual signal, you know, like a flare. and then we you know my team leader switched seats

with the driver because he could drive and then the driver was shooting so we had one rifle here on the left and one in the front seat on the right and we the way we had to turn around because it was a one lane road and we were elevated and exposed still

is like like a you know not like a three point turn it was like a felt like a 20 point turn like that Austin Powers movie when he's in a golf cart in the hallway Yeah, so we got turned around and then we went, you know, it's like, make sure you're just pressing over there and suppress over here. We were able to get behind another Humvee and get some cover. And then my company first sergeant runs up, Santiago.

He says to, you know, my team leader, he's like, hey, gucour, a jubo-que. He's for Puerto Rico, you know, so I got that thick. accent. He's like, no, first son, we're all fucked up. It's like, don't worry. I'll take care with you. So our Carmen get to go to like the Army's 18 Delta, like the Special Forces Medical School. And they're squared away. They call Sark Special Infibious Reconnaissance Corman. So my buddy Blair comes up and they slap a stretcher on the deck next to the vehicle. there's like diesel leaking and all around. I remember somebody saying, you know,

oh, there's fuel underground. And I'm like, it's diesel. Don't worry about it. It's not going to catch on fire. Like, think. And they pulled me out of the backseat and my leg bent in half, like where the bone was fractured and out. And it hurt.

I was like, ow. And Blair's like, I'm sorry, brother. I go, no, no, it's cool. It's cool. And for me to, stay alive and not go into shock, I was just a backseat driving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I'm like, sure my markets are good.

And I'd probably need some fluids and whatever. But I was still, like, full of adrenaline. So the pain of my injuries had fully, I mean, it hurt, like, crazy, but it was, I could dissociate from it because of the gravity of the situation. So it got me on the stretcher. he ran me over to an open back Humvee that had cover and they

hoisted me up and put me in the back of that thing but from there I could still see our vehicle and I could still see my buddy who had gotten up on the gun you know they got to have been running off the roof he turned up to be okay he just got jacked up a little and you know I had a corpsman they got an IV in me

and then I had And so then my Sark went off to go help some other wounded. We had seven wounded total at the time. And one of them ended up, you know, dying my platoon commander. But we, you know, I had this new corpsman who was an attachment in the headquarters or something. He's a young kid, you know, like just wide-eyed. Like, holy shit. You know, you can tell us, look on his face.

And he says, he's just asking me questions. hey you got a girl back home and I you know I knew he was just trying to keep me from going into shock right just thoroughly irritated with him like that has nothing to do with what's going on here I didn't even answer I go do you have somebody looking over there with security or what you know and uh but then I humored him I'm like yeah you know I got a girl but my mind was still on the battle which was still going on and at this point it was like a 300 160 degree ambush. So it was pretty hectic and chaotic.

I looked my head up at one point and I saw my buddy on the 50. And I was like, get some. And that exertion almost made me pass out. And I had to tell myself, oh, dude, you can't be doing that. You need to slow down breathing. Like breathe. Just be cool, relax. Like, you got to hang on until the.

but Kazvak Chopper comes. So it took, like from the time I got hit, the time that helicopter came, it took about 45 minutes. We got one, we got one 46 and we got one, one cobra.

Later I found out it was just because shit was popping off all over the city. It was just, the air was just overwhelmed and busy. And so they got me on the bird, everybody else, you know, the walking wounded got on.

Then I see him bringing in my platoon commander, Captain Brent Morrell, and he's just white, like just white, white as ghost. And he's already white as a ghost because it's redhead, you know? A great guy.

I'm like, oh, fuck. You know, Captain Morrell. And they put him on the bird. And so we had a short maybe five-minute flight back to the to Alta Cotam.

I didn't know where we were going. I thought maybe we were going back to Camp Belizeia, but we landed in Alta Cotam. I find out, you know, after everything. And while we're in the air, I'm thinking, ooh, I hope they don't classify me as expectant, you know, where you have a bunch of wounded, but they're like, this dude's going to die anyway,

so skip past him and pick the next guy up. So when the ramp dropped and the medics of the corpsmen that were on the ground working for the field hospital now to caught him, ran up to ramp, come and grab us. I've sat up real quick, and I startled to have the hormonant, but he grabbed me, you know, like, I just wanted to let him know I wasn't dead. I'm good to go again. Get me off this thing.

Yeah, so he grabs me. Another guy grabs me, you know, one of each side, and they book it in, like, they run into the triage tan. So they get me in there, and immediately they start, working on me. Like, they roll me over. The doc comes over. He's like checking for internal bleeding.

The way they do that is they got to stick fingers up your arse. So I'm like, happy that I'm in this field hospital because now I'm feeling like, okay, I made, like, all I had to do is wait, I needed tourniquets at one point. I got those. Then I was like, okay, I need

the corpsman to get hold of me, get some fluids in it or whatever. I got that. Then I'm like, I need to get medivac out of here, once I get to the field hospital of, I should be good. Like, then I know I'm going to make it. You know, as long as I don't get shot

in the face, you know, or any more injuries, I think I can be good. So I was in a pretty good mood when I got in there. I felt really glad, like, more relaxed, but it had such a serious environment. It was like that TV show,

MASH or something. Yeah, yeah. just there's like wounded dudes everywhere. Some were like kind of just sitting up on the gurneys, like looking dazed with minor wounds. And then some had like a bunch of docs and nurses trying to save their lives and stuff. And they brushed it over to me. And then now checking for internal bleeding and early.

I'm on my side and I looked over. I go, hey, Doc, I better reach around. You know, like I'm cracking jokes like a idiot. and so they get me stabilized and I'm laying there and a nurse comes by and I got her attention and I said to her, she leaned in really close like to my face and I go, hey, how many Irishmen

does it take to change a light bulb? She got a real like a what? Like a confused look on her face and I was like, hey, feck it. We drank in the dark. And then she laughed and then they just everything went, then she ran off. She kept going. And that's when I was fully relaxed.

I finally, I think I was fully relaxed because the pain at that point all of a sudden I was just like, oh my God. I mean, it hurts so bad that I think I passed out because of the pain or could have been, you know, any number of things. So I passed out and I woke up in Washington, D.C. Wow. Nine days later, I have a vague memory of my team leader talking to me on one of the Medevac flights, either from there to Balad or Balad to launch stool. But they eventually got me back to D.C. Later, I found out like they had to resuscitate me three times.

Holy shit. From that, from Tacutum to D.C. but I made it and I woke up in ICU but they woke me up one day and I was dying a thirst and they were asking me questions

do you know where you are in my head I wasn't really like responding but I was thinking about what they were asking me and I was like clearly I'm in a hospital I don't know where it is and they kept telling me I was at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland.

Like, how did I get there? And, yeah, I must have looked, I must have looked like I was, uh, maybe had a traumatic brain injury or something, uh, because rather than responding to what they were saying, I was trying to picture in my head where Bethesda Maryland was. You know, I was like, I don't really know exactly where that is. And, um, uh, they, they ended up just putting me under again for a couple days.

There was another time I remember waking up a little bit and I forgot that I didn't have hands. And I was like trying to get the tube out, you know, I was intubated. Oh. Yeah. And so they put me back under there. But they finally got me and they had me sitting up like kind of lit, you know, kind of back into bed. and they were all around me. And there was a female doctor.

I don't know if she was a speech, pathologist or something. I don't know. She was asking me questions, and I was like, water. I ate some water. I was dying of thirst because I was inundated for nine days, you know. I was just so thirsty. I've never been thirsty in my life. And they're like, you can't give you any water.

And I went off. I was like, I'll kill you. I was nuts. I was like, you know where I just came here? Like, I was cussing. I was out of it. I was on a lot of, I mean, I was doped up and everything. So, I feel kind of bad.

But anyway, that was a long, I was in ICU for about three weeks. I was on flat in my back. They were still debating on if they were going to keep my left leg. I had, like, saran wrap around all these open wounds. like my tibial, like my whole left leg, basically, and then my right leg on my shin, and then both arms. And I had tubes coming out of both arms,

tubes coming out of both legs, like these little JP bulbs, like, you know, I was so puffed up and swollen. It was huge. Like, just my body had been through a lot. And then, you know, they were draining fluids out into, you know, like it was just, I mean, I had feeding tube in my nose and just, I was just,

plugged up everywhere. And they, so I had to have a couple more surgeries. I had some skin graft surgeries, and they were able to, you know, get them on my leg and save them. The donor sites from the skin graft hurt more than than the actual wounds themselves at that point.

And the nurses and the doctors and the staff were just incredible, amazing people. I remember while I was in there, Corporal Jason Dunham was in ICU too, and he was on the other side of the ICU, and I could see his room, you know, because we had glass walls. And when they, you know, he was awarded the Medal of Honor,

but when the doctors declared him, like, clinically dead, you know, he was on life support or brain dead. I watched as his parents, the commandant. Everybody, like, whoever could be in ICU was there to pay respects. And, you know, I'm in my bed. Like, I knew what they were doing. They told me that they had to unplug. I'm, like, flat out in bed in the ICU, trying to lay at the position of attention, you know.

And it's pretty... Yeah. emotional. It's sad. But I have so many wonderful memories of Bethesda and Walter Reed and the staff

to people that I've met. I mean, that's got to be really tough. Not just... When I talk to people, I mean, sometimes it's interesting that they kind of minimize what they went through themselves, but they see their buddies that went

through it and it's almost worse, you know, to kind of like see that and to not be able to to help them, you know, I mean, they were receiving help in that hospital, of course, but Yeah. I have some friends who, who even in, you know, even though I'm good to go, like, they, they still feel bad, like, for me. And I'm like, I'm good, dude. You're all, yeah, yeah, yeah. How does it feel, you know, 21 years to the day to kind of like recount that experience?

Like, I'm just, does the emotional and physical pain, does it fade? Does it heal over time? Or does it take you right back to that place all over again? Um, I think emotional and physical pain, of course, fades or heals or morphs into something different. And it does take me right back to that day. but, you know, I've talked about it a lot. I've thought about it every day. I've lived with it.

So as far as the emotional impact, to be able to speak about it, I can speak freely. I've always been able to speak freely. Sometimes, you know, I might get choked up. But, but I, but I, have just a pride

and I'm honored to have been part of that unit. I'm relieved that I didn't screw up you know what I mean and cause anybody to get hurt or killed by my inability by an inability to do my job correctly. I didn't let any of my boys down in that

literal sense and you know my brothers. So that's good you know what I mean but yeah I mean life hasn't been the easiest since then sure

it's been wonderful it's been terrible you know but but you know I got my dream job ripped out from under my feet

when I was barely into it for a year and not even a year and but I got to do it I got to live my dream and that's the comfort to me

I did it I wanted to do it my whole life I did it in spite of all these obstacles I put in front of myself and you know I have the respect of my teammates and my fellow recomb Marines

and that means a lot. That can, you know, and I have a brotherhood and I get times, many times where I've had to call on my buddies just let it out, you know, and vice versa. And so, and a lot of times, if I'm feeling bad for myself, if I'm having a hard day, you know, it happens every once in a while where you, you know, you run that risk of starting to feel like you're a victim or feeling sorry to yourself or something. You know, I might get a call from somebody who needs advice from me. And just that act of caring about somebody else and thinking, you know,

helping them get through whatever hard day they're going through, will immediately make me or anybody forget about their own personal problems. And so I've learned that that is a great way to not get caught up into self-pity but also gratitude to find something to be grateful for when when you just think life

blows, it sucks. And sometimes I find something to be grateful for but you can and sometimes I have to call somebody and talk to somebody. And I've had all kinds of different treatment modalities for PTSD

or trauma or things like that. And I've I've come to find that the things that bother me in life now aren't, excuse me, they're not my combat experiences. They're not necessarily losing my hands. That sucks, you know, it is what it is. But I've had a great life in spite of it, I think, and still here. But what bothers me are the traumas that everybody has.

They don't have to be in the military. They don't have to be in combat. I have two failed marriages that comes, you know, with a lot of overthinking where I overanalyze where did I go wrong? Did I screw it up? You know, is it all my fault? Like I'm too critical on myself. You know, childhood traumas.

those things, you know, it's like whatever your trauma is, combat sometimes can exacerbate it, but surprisingly, it's not necessarily the combat that it stresses me because you can compartmentalize, you can rationalize, you've got a job, but you know what you're getting into. You're fighting an enemy combatant. Fair is fair, you know, he signed up, you signed up. I don't even have bitterness towards the guy that shot my hands off. I'm kind of like, I kind of have a little bit of respect. It takes some balls to, like, you know, get surrounded by the Marine Corps and be like,

oaky dokey, guys, we're going to fight to the death. You know, I don't respect, like, whatever their reasons might be, but individually, you know, like I got to at least give them the respect, too. Like, you had the guts to stand there. Like, they had the guts to stand toe to toe. though I'll mention that 26 of them our guys,

we smoked 26 of them that we counted that day. Unfortunately, they killed my platoon commander. One of the nicest guys you could ever meet,

Captain Brent Burrell. I went through recon school with him. You know, as a captain, he didn't have to, but he knew that he, you know,

he would respect himself and us recon Marines would respect him more if he did. And so we were good, we were good friends, you know, to the extent,

extent that we could be, you know, him being an officer and me being, um, a corporal at the time. He was a really nice guy. He loved his wife so much. You brag about her. I thought to myself, one time he was talking to me before we deployed. And I was like, I don't know anybody who is this in love. He's like, he's just like a good man, Tennessee, you know. So that's a bummer. Like good people get killed. And I haven't always been the best person in my life. And I am still going. So I guess I'm not, you know, the Lord ain't done with me yet. Whatever the hell is done.

And, well, before we move on, Dee, do we have any questions for Eddie? We have a couple of viewer questions for you. Oh, cool. From Shane, did you ever get to play rugby in Australia? No, I didn't get to play when I was there. but I did get to play. My first introduction was as a kid in Ireland. My mom used to bring us back.

But I did get to play in Japan when I was on the six-month UDP. And that was cool. Like when I was around and we weren't training, I played for the All Services team. And that was super fun because we played Japanese teams. And they were very technical, very fast, very skilled. But I was pretty good too at that point because I've been playing fall. spring

seasons and summer sevens in the Ozark Union and I was big and fast so I could it was kind of I mean it was much bigger than those guys which was strange so it was really hell's fun it was exciting

yeah it was a good time K Jam says another 29 Palm Survivor a shout out awesome I agree to love it saying I want to live there again but, you know, good training.

One more from Aaron. Ever try getting in touch with Audrey McDade, Navy Cross recipient with a hell of a story, not to mention the actions that earned him that award. That might be a question for us rather than any. It might be that, but they put it. Okay. No, I've not met Audrey McDade. No, maybe I won't know, though.

When I do, I've heard of you. Eddie, tell us a little bit about life today. What is life like for you nowadays? What are you up to? I have a part-time gig with the Sephora and America's Fund, an organization I really love. I've known them for 20 years since they started. I mean, very part-time.

I do some public speaking, on their behalf or sometimes other organizations. And I rent a house here in Texas on a golf course, so I just got to do a set of clubs. I'm trying to mess around and figure out how to golf. I have a daughter. She's wonderful. She's very intelligent, tall, pretty smart, kind.

I'm super proud of her. Just a good girl. Athletic, very talented artists, dancer, tennis player. So my life is mostly just being a dad to her. And I've had some jobs, some cool jobs. Sometimes I wish I was still doing it, but I'm glad I'm not really working full time right now. I love to travel.

I travel. I've done the whole, let's go to the other side of the planet, space available travel. That was fun. So my life now, I try to focus on becoming the best person that I can be. That means that the things that I may not like about myself, the habits, or the thoughts, or maybe sometimes the down days that I will have every once in a while.

I really focus on, okay, what's going on, what's behind the scenes and why am I feeling like this, and what can I do to mitigate or ameliorate or to heal and move through? And so that's a big part of my journey. I've been able to try all kinds of different modalities. And I've learned a lot. What I've basically learned is that any one true. treatment that, you know, and this is to include things like ayahuasca or psilocybin or stella ganglion block or hyperbarics or counseling or anything is, is in the immediate goal

you want to get to a place that you can think about things and process things without having, you know, your bite or flight, your amygdala attached to that thought process, which which gives you like a fog of war where you can't really do it right. And these things will get you to a place where you can put it into your prefrontal cortex without the emotion that is distracting you and making it very, very hard. And then you have to do the work. And then you can't go back to the same habits. You can't go back to the same environment because I have done that before. And then all the progress you make just gets reset.

It takes time. So, for example, there's that book that I read. It's called The Obstacle Becomes the Way. It's true. You have to just don't want to do hard decisions and lifestyle habit changes. You have to do the work, and it's not going to happen overnight. But with persistence and consistency, you can change, you can rewire your brain. physically, you know, they know neuroplasticity is a real thing now, and you can, you can heal

from trauma. You can, you know, instead of getting triggered and going to a bad place, you can get triggered and recognize it and just have no associated negative feeling with it anymore. But it takes time and work. So I'd say what I do now mostly is because I want to evolve so I can be present in my life and my daughter's life is like I've been focusing on that, you know, and try to do positive things for myself, for my family, and I guess for the environment around me,

because whether I like it or not, I'm visible. When I walk around, people know, I have no, you know, I'm missing hands, you know, and I'll wear, you know, like the, especially if I go out with the old reconjack on my shirt or something, you know, people will thank me. for my service. So I'm also putting a position where I'm skyline. So if I'm going to be skylined, if I'm going to have to carry these hooks or whatever, walk this path, then I might as well, you know, show the back, pick my head up and hold it high and, you know, just just show,

that, show that these injuries don't define me, you know, that I can be confident. I can be a man and I can have a great life in spite of it. Because whether I like it or not, I have a position that I can inspire people or I can have them feeling pity for me. And I don't want that. You know, I like when, you know, I like when people care and they say, how are you doing, you know. But a lot of the times when somebody's asking me, how am I doing? I'm thinking in my head, like, how are you doing?

Because I understand, like, everybody goes through shit. You don't have to have a physical wound. The physical wounds are easier to deal with than the emotional or the mental trauma that you've gone through in life. Where can people go to find you, Eddie? And you mentioned, I think it was the Semper Five Fund. Where can people go to find them? The Fund.org.

And the Semper Five Fund's wonderful organization, started by two, by a few volunteers, their spouses of military officers and it was grassroots. They recognized them a need that wasn't being filled by any government agency immediately. Like families needed assistance because when I, you know, in the beginning of the war, all these guys getting wounded and sent to Walter Reed and other places there were, there weren't resources for moms and dads who had to quit their jobs to come and take care of their children or wives or husbands quitting to take care of their spouses or not getting paid. So they knew that there was a need.

People needed help with like money for hotels or food. Like my mother was, she flew her from Ireland. She, she lived, she was at the Fisher House for a good five or six months helping to take care of me and helped me, you know, once I wasn't an inpatient, get to and for appointments and so I ran into them in the beginning and and they've been family since and now the organization has grown into an organization that is granted over 500 million to over 34,000 veterans and one of their family members and never with an overhead that exceeded 7%. It's like top rated and all the charity watchdog sites.

And they don't have to advertise. It just always has been word of mouth. And now it, for years, has been expanded to not just help Marines and corpsmen, but all service branches, Air Force, Army, Navy, Navy, Coast Guard, God forbid, Space Force, like we get into another thing, you know. Like, I think it would be cool to be, and it sounds cool being a Space Force, but maybe I'm not a numbers cruncher. Maybe it wouldn't be good for me.

So yeah. Yeah, so they'll help anybody. And their programs are wonderful because they have things for Vietnam. They have things for spouses. They have things for children. They have mental health resources. They have team semperfy, you know, sporting events. They have entrepreneurship programs.

They have, you know, you. You know, and if you need emergency grants for, you know, your house flooded or, you know, you have a family member who's ill and you can't afford the flights to be with them, all kinds of stuff. And they're just, they're like angels. It's a great organization. You know, there's a lot of great organizations out there, but that one right there is top notch. Yeah. That's awesome. Eddie, any final thoughts, any like questions that you wish I had asked that I didn't before we get going tonight?

I'd like to say, I'd like to mention, um, um, um, uptoon commander, Captain Brian Morrell. Uh, I already mentioned he was such a good guy. Um, he, uh, I still keep in touch with his mom and dad. Um, and his wife at the time. And sometimes I feel they were able to move on or process it faster than me. You know, like when I call them, I don't call and, you know, but break into tears, you know, feeling terrible. You know, we've gone through all that together, you know. But, you know, Kevin Merle was post-humously awarded the Navy Cross for his actions on the battlefield that day. And a friend of mine, Mike Mendoza as well.

And there was another Navy Cross that day in our platoon and some silver stars, bronze stars. Like, we acquitted ourselves very well on the battlefield, very proud to be part of First Recon Battalion. And now our platoon, one of the most highly decorated reconvatoons in our history from any single engagement. I let's see any questions uh oh i'd like to say like in spite of my injuries i've been able to do some really cool things so you know if there's people out there listening and watching and and you might have an injury you're dealing with or something in them and life isn't over i climbed mount kilimanjaro with my team leader with the raging hangover made it um that's another story and then, you know, I've, my last year in the Marine Corps, I actually went back to work. I healed up and I worked at the basic school in Quantico, Virginia, teaching the Marine Corps martial arts program at their instructor trainer school house,

the martial arts center of excellence. So that was a cool way to go out. So, you know, I try to let injuries define me. And I think, you know, it's probably good advice for a lot of people. I can get into my head and that can be like everybody looks at me and I'm a dude with no hands. But a lot of times

that's just me thinking because a lot of people don't even notice. And then a lot of times I forget. And so life's good. And when it's not, don't worry. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. We all got to stick together. We still keep losing a lot of veterans

to suicide. And a lot of times it's the one you would never expect. Yeah. I know these guys and I'm like, what the hell where did that come from? You know, and families are left behind and it's terrible. So, like, if you're going through a rough time, call somebody, man. Don't isolate. Don't bury yourself in the bottle.

Like, of course, getting hammered that has helped me on occasion, but it also has not helped me on the occasion. And I think just don't isolate, stay in touch, but more than anything. thing, just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Because no matter, you know, like, you know, these guys who I know, it's way too many, it's crazy, who have killed themselves, I know that maybe if they would have waited one more day, they, they'd been feeling better. Yeah, yeah.

You know, so just keep putting one foot in front of the other, like, or call somebody. There's resources, too. It's awesome advice, Eddie. Thank you for sharing your story. tonight. Thank you. Thanks for being patient with me. I guess, you know, you've got a version of my story that I haven't been, I haven't

that detailed and telling my story in a long time. Honestly, I used to tell it like that, but last few years, people have been getting a shortened version, so. Understandably. I get it. Excuse me. So, anyway, yeah, I really appreciate. Yeah, you too, Eddie.

I mean, I know it's not always an easy thing to recount, even though you seem to have processed, you know, the event pretty well at this point, but it still sucks. But for folks out there, we'll have some links down in the description for Semperfi, and appreciate you guys joining us tonight. And we'll see all of you out there next time. And thank you again, Eddie.

Thanks. Thank you very much. Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the team house. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the team house ad free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, Mick Mulroy. that one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free. And you support the channel and the show, and we really appreciate it. The Patreon members are literally what has helped this company, this small business, survive, especially during our early years. And you are what continues to help this thing going, even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page and there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get

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