The Team House - 1st Special Forces Group CIF leader Mike Perry, Ep. 91

Episode Date: May 1, 2021

Major (ret.) Mike Perry served in Special Forces as an enlisted soldier before going officer and commanding the 1st Special Forces Group CIF sniper element in the Philippines and then as Executive Officer in Iraq, leading combat ops. He also deployed to Afghanistan, and all over Asia with Special Forces. Sponsored by : https://www.MANSCAPED.com Use promo code "TEAM20" at checkout for 20% off your purchase. Your balls will thank you! Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Podcast version of this show can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/user-796052562/1st-special-forces-group-cif-leader-mike-perry-ep-91 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: 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/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things

to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents, and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. And meet your should if you haven't. Special operations.

Covert ops. Espionage. The team house. There was an issue. We can't hear. Jack Merck. Guys, welcome to Epiott. Episode 91 of the Team House. We're live tonight and Friday enjoying the spring, knocking back a couple of Peronis.

I'm Jack Murphy. This is Dave Park, co-host on the show. Tonight, our guest is Mike Perry. He enlisted in the Army, then went officer, turned to the dark side, was in special forces, retired as a major, deployed all across Asia, Iraq and Afghanistan. And we're very excited to have him on the show tonight. Welcome, Mike. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm really excited to be here. Like I said, this was yours was the first podcast I ever watched. Awesome, man. Thank you. We really appreciate that. You know, and it never ceases to amaze me the people who watch this show. It ranges from people who are interested, thinking about pursuing a military career or some sort of federal service. And then also people who are in federal service currently. And I think maybe they're a little worried about what Dave and I and our guests are going to say on the show. So it's a bit of a mix. But the first thing that we always ask our guests, Mike, is for their origin story. We want to know a little bit about your upbringing, who you are,

and what kind of got you onto that path that led you to the Army. Okay. Yeah, no worries, man. So I was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My folks were very blue-collar. My dad grew up on a dairy farm in Idaho. His dad actually used to go hunting with Elmer Keith for all you all you all you gun people out there So dairy farm and then his family moved to Kansas my mom grew up on a ranch so like I'm the product of a

I'm three generate I guess two generations off the ranch and farm both my parents grew up in places that didn't have indoor plumbing both got college degrees at some point in my family history, I got a dude used to be a mule team handler out in Banach, Montana, back when that was a Gold Rush community and used to haul borax on those 40 mule borax teams or whatever. So, you know, cowboys and cowboys and farmers, man. So I got a little bit of best of both worlds growing up. I got to grow up in Ann Arbor, Berkeley of the Rust, belt, but I got to spend summers in Wyoming, and there were lots of guns and horses and all of that. Yeah, so I grew up in Ann Arbor.

I guess I'll kick off around 15 because 15 was kind of a big year for me. 15, I got my first concussion. That was interesting. You know, I got, I intervened in a mugging. I saw a dude, getting jumped by about 12 shoots outside of a, I think it was like a Creskes or something. but they were beating this guy's ass over some beer, literally. And I ran up there with a bunch of my friends. And as I found out later, me and one other guy, like, ran into that fray.

And everybody else kind of, like, stopped down the periphery and was like, hey, man, why are you guys being so messed up? So that was a good life last year, too, is, you know, most people are definitely not about to wait into the fray, and, you know, unfortunately. But me and the other guy did. I wound up getting a bottle broke over my head. I woke up with a cop literally like shining a mini mag in my eyes, lying in the street in Ann Arbor, Michigan with busted glass around my head.

And he's asking me my name, and I had no fucking idea what it was. So, you know, I used to think about that later in life. You know, like, had that not come back to me. And I just had to, like, go through my wallet, I guess, and, like, figure out who the fuck I was. But luckily, I did retain, you know, I regained my memory. So, yeah, that was my first. my first concussion, that same year, you know, like I used to get a lot of fist fights as a kid.

I look at 15 as kind of like my graduation of big boy violence because I had the mugging thing. And then I threw a piece of cinder block at Frat Boys head that year outside of a fucking circle jerks concert. Because a bunch of Frat Boys heard a girl pretty bad in the Mosh Pit. And we swarmed them and got him outside. And it was good. It was very liberating. It felt good, man. But anyway, so 15, I'm getting a little more aggressive.

I got some fallings out with my old man. You know, he told me basically, did my shit together or hit the road. Oh, I'd been expelled at that point. That was part of the friction point, was I got thrown out of school. I'd been thrown out of school a bunch of times, and they finally expelled me at 15.

So, yeah, he told me, you know, get my shit together, get out. So I got out. That was my solution. A couple of friends of mine hooked me up for a place for the night at a co-op. I don't know people are familiar with that, but it's a college town. So you've got all these co-ops where you know you got like a dozen 14, 16 college kids all living in a house. Yeah, it's like a hit me squat, yeah. Communal kitchen and all that stuff.

So they know a guy who put me up in a co-op for a night. So, you know, I go spend a night at the co-op and the fucking, the dude who's a room they found for, me to sleep on the floor was the guy from the mugging. So, you know, small world, man, right? So anyway, he talks to the people that co-op and they let me rent a storage room for 110 bucks a month. I get the room where they normally keep the crates of toilet paper and the box springs and all that shit. So I'm 15. I'm living in a storage room and a co-op and I'm washing dishes. I'm washing dishes at like a seafood place and I go home and cats are following me and shit I'm covered in fish pits and all that.

But I'm living the life. I'm like 15, I got my own place. I got some spending money. And the co-op, they let me work off my rent at five bucks an hour. You could work at like a co-op grocery store, print flyers or t-shirts or what the fuck ever. So I was doing that.

So basically, you get room and board for 180 and the board was like the food from the co-op groceries. You got like peanut butter, milk, and cornflakes. like all you can fucking eat you know corn flakes peanut butter milk and you know then I'm working in a restaurant so I went from the seafood place to a German restaurant I'm eating prime rib all the time because people would send it back when I was overdone um anyway so I'm living in this co-op I'm kind of living the dream for a 15 year old one night a couple of friends of mine come over these older dudes I hung out with and they used to make movies that you show

behind bands at concerts if you've ever gone to see somebody yeah so we're making this movie called scrambo and we have this terrain model we had this whole thing like you know we had a mural on the wall and then we had like one of those old um gi jo dolls like the big ones you know we were doing like stop motion animation and here comes gi joe and he's he's tromping through this like you know vietnamese looking village and there were special effects and stuff sketched on fire. Anyway, the whole fucking thing caught on fire. It all catches on fire. And, like, for a minute, I thought

I was going to burn this whole fucking co-op down, man. So, we got the fire out, but all the smoke alarms went off, and they were like, look, man, tomorrow you need to get your shit and get out of here. You know, they're totally unacceptable. So, you know, in the morning, I'm, you know, I got, like, this cardboard box. I got, like,

everything I fucking own in the world in this cardboard box, you know, and I'm, like, looking at it. And my friend shows up, my friend Jim, and goes, hey, man, the cops are looking for me like I hang out here for a couple of days and I'm like I just got evicted man you know so um we went and lived out by the Huron river we went and lived in this fucking tee-p that these uh I won't call them hippies I think that's that's probably unfair to them but you know they were like they were like the drum circle people you know they'd get together

they'd get together every month and like make fires with bowsaws and shit like that and you know cool and they were okay with us living in the teepee it's like we got you know we got these these fucking teenage hooligans like living by the river you know and uh one of them bought me a copy of lord of the rings once and told me he thought it was cool that i was like out there living by my wits you know but um we'd go into town every every week we'd go in on like a early break of dawn you know when the french and indians is that we'd go in we'd go in fucking saturday morning or Sunday morning and we hit a frat house and we'd wheel up a grocery cart and we'd go on when everyone was like still fucked up from the night before we'd like load the grocery car

with food out of the freezer and the fridge and like booze and cigarettes and then we could find that we'd like go out you know by the river and you know I can remember sitting around one day like smoke on like some donhills you know like smoke some foreign cigarettes and you know drinking some fucking fancy scotch and just thinking now this is this is pretty good you know Anyway, when it got cold, we went back in the town, and we went and lived in a squat house with like a half a dozen heroin addicts, you know. We lived in the squat house for a while, which was an education in it of itself, man. If you want to glimpse of life, go live in a squat house with a bunch of heroin addicts.

How did you find the squat house with the heroin addicts? How did you, I mean, did you just walk down the street and go, oh, they're heroin addicts, just follow them. No, I think we just found the squat house when we were looking around, you know, again, we're pretty much in tune with things that are going on in town. So it's one of those, like, just like when I was looking for a place this day before, it took me a couple hours to find a place this day. And so, you know, people know where the squat houses are.

You've got, you've got, you know, everybody there's transient, man. Nobody's like staying there long term. But, you know, so it's like, hey, there's a squat house. And it was all, I think it was about a block and a half from where I used to live in the co-op too so it's really easy so he's staying in this squat house for a while and then when we were on the porch and we're all wasted and uh jim my friend jim he gets this like i don't know he gets this like 80 pound fishing line or something and he makes this fucking elaborate spider web all across the porch you know these two wooden columns and he makes this big spider web he spends

hours on this spider web and um one thing led to another and we're out on the porch getting wasted and uh we have fire we had a fire on the porch because you know my youth is apparently filled with fires where I shouldn't have any. So we got a fire and the cops came. First cop runs up on that fucking porch man, full sprat, and he hits that spider web. He hits this fishing line spider web. And you could almost hear the cartoon like, boy, yo-yo-yo-yo-yo-y-y-and it bounces them back into the second cop and they're both on their ass and me and Jim are fucking laughing. We're laughing like fucking maniacs, man. You know, like, been over fucking laughing and then it was like shit we got to get out of here you know so we run out

the back and we run down you know we run down like some alleys and we go back uh to the co-op where i used to live and i fucking run up a fire escape and we go through like the second story window and say hey man like the cops are looking for us can we stay here tonight and they were like yeah that's fine and then uh we went back a couple hours later to the to the co-op and they were like taking all the heroin addicts and put them in a police fan which you know i was like well that's you know my bad. So we went back to the co-op and in the morning they were like, hey man, it's cool. You can come stay here again, you know, like come on back. All is forgiven. Just don't start any more fucking fighters. And so that was cool. So I went back to the co-op and I lived there for a while longer.

And, you know, it's about now I'm like 17 and the Marine recruiter calls me one day. Well, I'm going to back up a little bit. So this is like the first heroin epidemic I can remember. in Michigan. So this is about 1987. And, you know, I hang out with musicians and shit like that. I was going to punk rock shows.

I was going to all-ageous shows at, like, 13. I saw Black Flagg in 1983. I saw Black Flag in 1984. I saw like the butthole surfers in Detroit. I saw all kinds of bands. You could see three bands for three bucks on a fucking Wednesday in Detroit at that point in history. The punk scene was booming and it was awesome.

Ann Arbor was full of all ages shows and that stuff was cool and all, but heroin went through that community. Okay, so, you know, I got this week where like an old girlfriend comes to see me and there's a woman that went by the name Tarantula, you know, and Tarantula comes to see me and she's going to say goodbye because she's going to Ohio. She's going to Kent, Ohio with this like heroin addict boyfriend she had, you know, that was like her boyfriend. after me and so she's going to Kent, Ohio to have this heroin addict's boyfriend, or heroin addict's baby, excuse me. You know, going to Kent with her heroin addict boyfriend to have his baby. A gerangelo baby. That's, you know, sure.

That's a fan, you know. Good start for the kid. And, you know, so I'm like, you know, that's kind of a kick in the dick, but then, you know, like later that week, my friend shows up Jim, and we used to have big mohawks and shit, you know. Jim shows up and he's looking very conservative. conservative. He's very well groomed and I'm like, dude, what the fuck? And he says, well, you know, I got

this new gig. I'm, you know, I'm like driving heroin down to fucking Miami and bringing coat back and I got to look, you know, conservative so I don't get, you know, fucked with. And I'm like, anyway, so that same week the Marine recruiter calls me and is like, would you be interested in joining

the Marines? And I was like, yeah, I'll join the Marines like fucking now, man. I'll join the Marines like right fucking now. I said, I will join the French Foreign Legion right now. just get me the fuck out of here okay and he's like hey I like your attitude you really you know gung-ho young man you know so you know anyway I didn't work out with the Marines because this is 1987 fiscal year 88 all the services went to no non-grads that was like the deal the Air Force and the Marines started a quarter earlier

than the Army and the Navy so they got a jump on it a quarter early So the Marines were relentious shouldn't they, until they figured out that, like, oh, dude, you didn't graduate fucking high school, man, like, you know, and basically told me that was indicative of being an underachiever, which, you know, thanks, thanks Uncle Sam's misguided children. I'm, you know, yes, guilty. Not living up the potential, apparently. So the Marines called me and then said no, and then the Navy called me, and I was like, fuck no. And then the Army called me, and I was like, sure, I'll join the airport. Army. Like I was already in that, you know, I was in that mood by then. I was like, I'm leaving Ann Arbor. I'm going to go do something, something else. I'm getting the fuck out of here.

You know, my friends are getting into the heroin scene, and I don't want to be around for it. It's fucking, it's good. Had you ever thought about the military up until that point? Like, as a younger child had, you know, you watched the A team and decided that's what you wanted to do or anything like that? Or was this kind of the recruiter called you? Like, hey, that's something. good idea. So pre-punk rock days when I was 13 and 14 I was a military explorer scout. Like I was going to the National Guard Army or going to Camp Grayling and we were disassembling M16s and we were donning Mop 4 to standard. Like when I was 13 years old, I could fucking put on mop 4, nine seconds and then you know get the hood on. I could take an M16A1 apart.

I could put it together. I was doing all that. This is this is Reagan era. Red Dawn era shit, man. Yeah. So, you know, so at that point in my life, like all my clothing purchases came from the Army Surplus store. I was wearing all the Army surplus shit. My first day as a dishwasher, I ruined

my nice jump boots. They got so fucking waterlog and grease stained that they never took a shine again. But, you know, so, yeah, I mean, mid-80s, the military looked very cool. But, you know, I kind of lost interest in it, and then all of a sudden, it was like they're ringing my phone. So at that point in my life, I don't think I was really looking at the military as a career,

but, you know, I was familiar with the military in general. My dad had been in the infantry, and, you know, like I said, man, just about, I think every male member of my family did military service. A couple of career people, but most guys did a tour and left. You know, that was pretty normal. So, you know, like I said, man, I figured it was a good way to get out of town. But, you know, that's mostly what it was to me at that point in my life. It was a ticket out.

So I go in the Army, you know, they give me Cav Scout because I'm a fucking non-grass. You know, I got, I did pretty well on my ass fab. And I was like, do I got any other options? And the guy's like, this is what the recruiter told me, no shit. he goes, yeah, I'll give you an option. You can take it or fucking leave it. He's like, you can wait a couple of weeks, and you'll never come in the military in your life

because you'll, you know, like the door's closing, bro. You know, so if you want to come in the Army, you can be a Cavs Scout for four years. There's no bonus. There's no college money. Like, it's up to you. But, you know, you got a couple of weeks to think about it, and then you can go fuck yourself.

So I was like, okay, you know. Did you have a GED at this point in time or you you had nothing? They made me get a GED. Okay. They made me get a GED because I failed something. If I remember correctly, it was called the California maturity test. And I failed it. And they were like, you got to take it if you're 17.

And because I failed it, they made me go get a GED. And I got the highest GED in Michigan that year. I was like a lady, a lady fucking came out to visit me to like give me my little fucking thing saying you did. the best out of all the fucking high school dropouts in the state, you are right far the smartest one. So I got that. I had to give that to go in the Army, and I had to get my dad signed for me for the recruiter, and we made up. Me and my dad made up. That was like the first time I'd seen him in a couple of years, and we totally made up. And he thought that was cool. I was going to

the Army. I was like, going to go do something with myself. So I joined the Army as a Cavs Scout. My first experience with the Army is I went to a holding company at Fort Knox because I had a warrant out for my imprisonment from Canada. From Canada? Did you say from Canada? From Canada. Because apparently if you skip a court date in Canada, they'll just try in you in absentia and convict you. So I had like some disturbing the peace charge or something from Canada.

Oh, which, by the way, so the cops in Canada put me and my friend in a fucking car and drove us in the middle of nowhere. They drove us way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere and dropped us off. And we had to walk. We had to walk all day back to town to find a pay phone. I could like get a ride to get the fuck out of Canada. So I go in the Army, I've got a warrant out for my imprisonment. Because my response at the time was like, well, I guess I'll never visit Canada again, you know? But now it's like, yeah, I got a warrant out of my imprisonment from Canada, and I got to clear it up before I can go to OSIT, you know.

So I'm in this holding company, and it's awful. It's the worst, man. So 90% of the people in this company are there because they're getting thrown out of the Army. They went to their initial training, and, you know, they failed to adapt to the military, however, they phrase it, and they're on their way out. They're on their way out. A lot of these people self-harmed, you know? So you got dude to like deliberately shattered their kneecaps and the shower and shit like that. Like this is who I'm hanging out with all day. We're scraping his bastos off of old barracks. Yeah.

Like planning trees at Fort Knox. And the drill sergeants are guys who got thrown off the trail typically for abusing trainees. Yeah. So it's this like just kind of like cesspool. right you know pit of despair where you got strutory fucking people and you got self-harmers and you got you know abusive drill sirens and it's like Jesus Christ just give me the fuck out of here man like well he's said lawyers guns and money so anyway finally that gets cleared

up like there's no more fucking war canada Canada gave me the fucking you know the Hamas dama and the army let me go to Osset I go to Osset and the guy who picks me up from this holding company is this E4 who used to be like an E7 that got busted with a couple of the other drill sergeants for a shit you not pimping out the supply sergeant

to trainees. So you have this female supply sergeant and you had like three drill sergeants that were all like E4s at this time. But they were still there. They were still working there, you know? And the E4s. Forbes picks me up. He's like the, he's like the battalion star major's driver, you know. So,

you know, I'm like kind of looking around. This is my intro to the army. I went from what we called Alpha Traz, because it was the Alpha Company. We went from Alpha Traz, the holding company to, like, Osset, where I got like the, you know, I got like the big pimpin fucking drill sergeants, man. And I'm, you know, this is my intro to the Army. I'm looking around going, what the fuck have I got myself into, you know. But Oset was... Real quick, just for our viewers and listeners who aren't familiar with it, OSID is one station unit training.

So you're talking about starting basic training, and for this process, for certain jobs like infantry, you basically do your boot camp and then do your follow-in infantry training with the same people, and it's all part of the same thing. So when he's referring to O-SET, that's what he's talking about. Anyway, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah, no, no worries, man.

I should throw acronym explanations out, but the way I perceived O-SID, I think the way all of us did was we all got ripped off on AIT. O-SID is basically like, hey man, you're going to basic training

for four months, motherfucker. Right, right. Yeah, that's all that is. The last kid will let you drink soda in the mess hall. Yeah, right, because for other jobs, you know, you do your boot camp, and then it was an actual change when you would go to your AIT

or your advanced technical training or whatever it is, but your job training. For infantry, you keep the same drill service too, right? I'm trying to remember. It's the same dudes, man. You might get weekends off

or something, but you don't keep... We got Family Day, dude. We got Family Day. We got Family Day, and I'm going to talk about this guy, Riverty... Liberty got a fucking DUI on Family Day. And the drill signs are like,

like nobody's ever done that. We don't even know how to fucking deal with this. So, Liberty got a TUI on Family Day. We wound up in the same unit together. And I'm going to tell you some liberty stories down the road. But, you know, while I'm on the subject, Riberty was the guy. While we were in Oset,

his parents moved and didn't give him a forwarding address. Okay. And he was all busted up about it. But like, the more I got to know the guy, the more I was like, yeah. Yeah. I get it. I get it.

That makes sense. you know, so, you know, like I said, pretty uneventful. You know, I did all right. I did all right in Oset. The one story I think I got from Oset, that's funny, because everyone talks about, like, fighting drill sart. You know, I don't join the Army, but I don't, you know, hit my drill sart or something.

I actually did get to give a drill sarn a bloody nose, and I was quite happy about that. It was probably the high point of Osset, and that was during combatives. and he tried to use me in a demonstration, and he was trying to throw me, he was trying to, like, hip throw me. And, you know, it was one of those, you know,

old Army combatives, which kind of sucked, you know, back in the day where he had these terrible fucking combatives. Anyway, he wasn't doing it right, and I wasn't going to, like, throw myself over the dude's hip, because, you know, what the fuck is the point? Like, it's a choreographed at that point. So he got really mad at me. And he said, oh, you want to resist, huh?

Well, you just, you know, you go ahead and resist. You go ahead and resist. And I was like, okay, you know, I can resist. I wrestled all through fucking junior high dude. And I spent most of my youth, like, fist fighting as a hobby. So, like, I'm down with some violence, man, you know? So he tells me I can resist. So he goes to try to throw me, and I fucking pick that dude up,

and I slammed him down, like, phase first into the fucking sawdust pit. And the other drill starts, like, stopped every stint back down and burned. guy's all bloody he's all bloody man and uh that whole fucking march home marching back to the fucking barracks dude those drills the other drill sarns gave that guy so much fucking shit

they gave him so much shit and I was like so that was that was OSA that was like as good as it got for me um so yeah then I went to my I went to my unit um I went to K troop third squadron

uh third armored cavalry regiment Fort Bliss Texas This was, you know, the late 80s Reagan's army. Just like with the holding company and Osset, like nothing about the Army was what I expected. So I'd get to my unit. You got some serious substance abuse issues. You got IV drug use going on. Like, it's literally the only environment I've ever been in in my life where people were shooting into tattoos.

you know where people had tattoos specifically for the purpose of covering up track marks. Wow. So when your sleeves up yeah, people wouldn't notice on like that. That was a real thing and I mean in my unit we you know you're talking about a true man so you know just over 100 people you probably had a dozen IV drug users easy. Wow. So my well you know when I was a all fucking private You know, my E5 used to come into the barracks on weekends to shoot speedballs, you know, so his wife would make them.

And, you know, speedball for anybody who missed the Belushi era is a 50-50 mix of heroin cocaine. It's what killed John Belushi. So, you know, it's like, hey, man, my son is using my room to shoot drugs on the weekend. And, you know, this place just kind of sucks. And it's Fort Bliss. It's, you know, it's fucking, you know, it's terrible. It's El Paso. You know, I was spending all my time as a private getting drunk in Juarez,

getting in fights down there, getting fights with the Marines, getting fights with the Air Force, getting fights with the college students, getting fights with the locals, just getting fights in Juarez. You know, one night when I was 18, a guy insulted me in a fucking bar and I beat his head against a metal stair rail. You know, like that was Juarez. That's, you know, that was how I fucking started. time not being a particularly good human being but you know it's the kind of thing you do when

yeah yeah i don't know you're in some shit hole and you don't really have much going on right liberty's going to enter the equation again here so uh riberty me and riverty and uh liberty was from jersey um and another guy from jersey joey and uh guy named frank from new york wasn't even as a fucking real name. Frank had done time in Rikers Island and like come in the army under a fake name. I don't even know if you could do that anymore, but you know, it's like the 80s.

It's still like paper records, so I fucking knows. So occasionally for the fuck of it, Frank and Joey and Riberty and I would go out and we ripped off a couple of cocaine dealers a few times, probably, I don't know, half a dozen times. and it usually ended with somebody getting pepper spray in the face and holding their face as we drove away with like an eight ball of cocaine and some money so that was that was you know that was my fucking existence in Fort Bliss, Texas

that was you know that was my time as a private um everybody got thrown out of the army for cocaine and he tried that shit in jersey about two weeks after he got out and he got shot and killed so oh wow you know yeah we had a we had a we had a battle drill worked out. We had a fucking SOP and you know, you can't go do that shit with anybody. Yeah. Yeah.

But like I said, man, my introduction to the Army was a little rocky, you know. And anyway, there was a point in my life where I'm looking around in the K-Tr, third squadron, third ACR, I think, and this is the worst fucking mistake I ever made my life.

I did get my first award in the Army there. I shot Top Gun and Squadron Gunnery. That was like, you know, I'm pretty happy about that. That's like my favorite AAM. I've always been pretty decent around weaponry. I took a lot of pride in being a gunner. When I got there, I was a gunner on one of those old tow tracks

where you got like the modified 113 and not like the fist vehicle or whatever those things are. But this is like you've got like this like mouth that you've got to like pull out and do a squat. And then you're like pushing it up to the fucking ramp of the 1113. and then everyone else buttons up and you're like sitting on top of a one-on-three with a toe missile on your shoulder, you know? It's like a very good Cold War job because you know you're probably not going to live long enough in the folder. You have any anxiety about being there.

So, you know, that was my original job in the Army. It was a tow-gunner on a one-on-three and then we got the Bradley's and I became a gunner on a Bradley and loved it. I like that job. The Bradley's a piece of shit. I hate everything about that vehicle except the weapon system is pretty decent. The M242 Bushmaster Cannon, if you take care of it. I've never seen that thing fail other than from operator era. So, I mean, I like stuff like that.

I like things that go bang every time I pull a trigger. That's really all I asked for in a weapon system. So I like being a Bradley Gunner. When I was 19, they made me a corporal. I got my own Bradley. that was probably someone's, you know, bad idea but like the Army did get me my own

armored vehicle at one point, my own crew and I was happy about that. Anyway, so at this point in time, like the Delta recruiter came by, I remember that, and like, you know, you got to see that who will be a little. You got to see people

doing what kinds of... And... Are I still here? Yeah, we're, you're breaking up just a little bit. Damn choppy. Yeah. While your internet's settling out, we're going to take a quick break for our sponsor. Yeah, go for it.

So anyway, we have a sponsor for the show, and we want to tell you a little bit about it. So we have a lot of people from Mike McVee. You saw first group, seventh group, you know, all these different places where these guys specialize in jungle warfare. They're deep in the bush. You're deep in the bush, right? And they're good at it. Do you know who shouldn't have to specialize in jungle warfare, though? Who, Dave?

Your intimate partner. So this episode of the team house is brought to you by Manscape. So I've got some copy here that I need to read and look we put on my classes. For those of you don't know, Manscape is a great little grooming product. And I say great because I've used it. You've got it right down here, Dave. We do. Not the one I use.

so for any of you guys who have ever tried to clean up your nether regions shave your balls shave your balls you know that it can be a perilous job it can you know that normal razors or normal like clippers will nick you

and I think anybody who's ever tried this has been nicked but Jack and I receive these really nice kits from Manscape, which are the... Can you show that? Show that all? Which are the perfect kits. They come with the really cool little... Is it called the...

I think the clippers? Yeah, the clippers, sir. Which is the lawnmower. Now, let me tell you about these clippers. First off, it's got a shield. It's got a surrounding blade of shield so that when you shave your nethers, it does not nick. And trust me, I've used this. The old beanbag.

Yes. The other thing is... Let's see... Oh, it is on. You see it's got a little LED light, so you can see what you're doing down there. In the darkness. In the darkness. The dank areas. Right. Triple canopy. Yeah.

And then with this kit, you also get a really nice reviver, which is a nice little tonic for the aftershave experience. And a little, I can't pull it out, but a little deodorant. So anyway, Mascay Potter Precision Engineered Tools for Your Family Jewel. They obsess over the technology developments to provide you with the best tools for your grooming experience. Naskake is trusted by over 2 million men worldwide. And I'm telling you, this is honest, it's a good product. I like it. My girlfriend likes it.

That's a good endorsement. That's an endorsement right there. So guys, it's not the 70s, you know. Don't let the wild stuff grow. What do you think about that, Mike? Sir. We've got you. Do you think grooming is important thing?

Yeah, Manscape for all my ball shaving needs, bro. You know, you got? Totally. Yeah, they've got my business. Guys, if you're going to shave your balls, you use Manscape. Yeah. And if you don't shave your balls, you should start. Team 20.

Team 20 promo code. You're saying? Team 20 promo code. Oh, yeah, we've got a promo code. If you've got a promo code Team 20, you'll get a 20% off discount on your order. Thanks, D. That's D.com.

That's D, our producer. Team 20 discount code. So, Mike, you had a hell of an experience in 1980s cab. A lot of insane stuff going on there. When was it that Special Forces enters into the picture for you? And you get into thinking, maybe this is my way into the Not Crazy Army. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like I said, the Delta Force recruiter came through.

And I got to see that cool video. or, you know, people are fucking taken out terrorists on planes and, you know, shit like that, and it's very badass. I'm like, yeah, this is fucking awesome. The guy's like, cool, you got to be E5 and you got to be 21. You know, and I'm like, oh, you know, well, I guess, you know, just I'll talk to when I'm 21, you know, fucking sucks to be me. But anyway, so the S-F recruiter came by six months later, and he's like, hey, man,

we just dropped the requirement from being an E4P to E4 because we need people. So I was in E4. Like I said, I was a 19-year-old corporal, and, you know, I fit all the requirements for SF. So I joined SF. I went to assessment as a 19-year-old, I think I turned 20 in assessment in 1990. And I did all. I loved assessment. And like my very first school in the military after Osset was assessment.

And I fucking love the whole idea of like, hey man, you know, like here's your task. Nobody's going to fuck with you. Nobody's going to yell at you. Like go, you know, go do this. Go move from this one map sheet to the other. Go build this flintstone fucking contraption out of telephone poles. And, you know. go move it from here to there, go carry all these fucking sandbags.

But it was like nobody was yelling at me. I mean, everything was kind of on your own time. And I loved it. I mean, I liked it. And, like, you know, I got to tell you, man, doing stuff like that when you're, like, a 19-year-old dude who's a lot easier than doing it when you're older. Because, you know, you're just trying to, like, make everybody happy, I guess.

You know, somebody tells you fucking, hey, you might want to move out with a sense of purpose. And you're like, yeah, you know, Roger that. I'm right. Move out with a fucking sense of purpose. purpose. And you know, I do love a physical challenge. Like I love the obstacle courses. I loved all that shit. You know, I was, like I said, I wrestled and I was a track athlete. And, you know, man, I can go climb ropes and fucking run around on telephone poles and shit all day. I like that stuff. I would rather do that than sit in a classroom and, you know. I mean sometimes I think SF is just where like all the you know guys with ADHD go or something

you know but I like being outdoors I like doing physical shit I trained up for assessment I took it very seriously I was lucky at that point for being at Bliss because I could train on sand for all of it and I think that's something people miss

so I was told to give some pro tips on assessment a while I was on here so I'm going to do that just to keep the viewers interested Train on sand, train on sand, you know, is good. And a trick I did when I went, I was told to get those knee-high nylons, you know, so like go get like the fucking, you know, I got like size 13 feet, man. So it's like, go find the biggest fucking ladies nylons. You can find the flesh-colored ones.

And I wore those under my socks. And I went to the bowling alley. And I think it's called like new skin or tough skin or something. and I would, every day I would paint the balls of my feet and the heels of my feet with that stuff and I basically kept, I never got a blister to all of assessment until the final March, in which case I didn't fucking care at that point.

So, you know, I basically painted the balls of my feet every day with this stuff the bowlers used to keep their skin from a braiding, and I wore nylons under my socks, and that worked great. I never got a blister. And, yeah, you know, Like I said, assessment was good. I liked it. I liked where I saw of SF. When I was on my last night there, one of the instructors came into the barracks and they'd come in and they'd yell a number, right? They'd yell a number and those guys were gone. You know, and those were typically guys who like shit came up on their psych test or, you know, something else had happened during the course, but they'd allow them to go to the end of assessment, but they didn't select them. Okay, so one night, you know, like the last night one of the instructors comes into the barracks and he reads my number

And I'm like shit, you know, I think I was one ninety two, you know, he's like one ninety two, you know Come out here And I went out and talked to the dude and I was like you know fuck man and he goes I was looking at your paperwork and I noticed you're 19 and I was like yeah, you know and he goes I came in us up when I was 19 too He said, you got a lot of good years ahead of you. I envy you. You got a lot of good years ahead of you. And sure is shit, man.

That was absolutely correct. I had a lot of good years in SF. SFF was awesome. I did probably 20 out of my 25 years in the Army in SF, and it was a blast. I liked everything about it. I liked the people. I like the work.

I like the fact that the job changed every couple of years. never, it never got stale. It was always interesting. It was always a good challenge, man. Like shit, I got to see a lot of the world, mean a lot of people, and do a lot of cool stuff. So that was, that was basically my entry to ass off was, get me the fuck

out of the cab, just like my entry to the cab was get me the fuck out of the... Were you familiar with special forces before you went in the Army through like movies or TV or anything like that? Yeah, I mean, I'd seem, I'd seem, You know, I'd seen the Green Berets. Sure.

You know, I like war movies growing up, so I'd seen some stuff about it. You know, like when I joined the Army, I mean, they give you that recruitment pamphlet, and you got the picture of the guys with the Green Berets and, you know, all that stuff. So that looked cool, but, you know, like I said, mostly, you know, I'd love to say I went in the Army with this, like, sense of unified purpose and how, had a grand purpose. Sure. had a grand plan for the whole time. But like I said,

going SF at 19 was basically just get me the fuck out of Fort Boers. You know, it's almost, I think sometimes for people, it's almost easier when it's like that because when it's like your dream, I think that people sometimes make it harder. Whether it's SF or anything else,

they make it harder than what it is because it's the penultimate of what they can achieve. Like built it up in their minds. Yeah, they build it up in their minds. Whereas when you just kind of stumble into it, you're like, yeah, I'm going to do this. I'm, you know, was there a time when you're in the cab when you were thinking on, like, you had a kind of crappy experience in the Army initially,

and you were exposed to the stuff, the exact reason that you went into the Army in the first place, just to get away from that stuff? Was there a time when you're planning on getting out? And so, like, the Army is just fucked and I don't want to have anything to do with it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, man.

I can remember calling my parents and asking them if they had any money for me to go to college. I might just like, no, motherfucker. You're on your own and I was like, God damn, you know. All I was thinking was this is the worst decision I ever made in my life, man. I'm out in the cab and it sucks and this sucks and everything sucks. And I was like, this is terrible. Why did I do this to myself? So yeah, there was definitely a point where I was like, man, give me the fuck out of here.

I just, I don't want to do this anymore. But like I said, going to ASF was awesome. I like the people. I like what I saw of it. I did like doing all the physical shit, you know. And then, you know, so they picked me to be a medic. That was my thing. That was the job they gave me.

It was like, go be a medic. I didn't want to be a medic, man. I looked at it like I can be an awesome fucking weapon sergeant or I can be a medial for medic and you know at that point my life I don't think I had barely any empathy whatsoever and I was just like I don't want to be a medic because I don't care about people like fuck people you know um which you know I look at this at man I'm 20 that's I think we're all kind of borderline sociopath at that point our lives anyways you know um so I didn't want to be a medic you know I did a year of the medic course and then I intentionally failed.

I failed a couple of exams and I thought I was going to be slick, man. So you still have a bear program there. You had like a bonus enlistment, something. Basically the 18 series MOSs were all bear MOSs. So the way I thought I could work this was I was going to fail the 18 Delta course and then I was going to re-enlist as an 18 Bravo because my assessment was still good, like assessment was good for, I think, a year back then. And so I was going to game this system.

I was going to game this system. I was going to, you know, flame out on the fucking the Delta course, and I was going to go be a Bravo. And, you know, so I went to the board because I'd failed a couple of exams, and they were like, you know, they were all concerned. And my academic average had been great up until then. So all of a sudden it's like, I'm failing these exams. And they're asking if I got personal problems, you know,

is there something going on at home? Is there an emergency? and I was like, no, I just failed a couple of exams on purpose because I don't want to be here. Jesus Christ, they were like, get the fuck out of here, man, barter re-enlistment, like, you know, we're going to send you back, we're going to send you back to the Cav, motherfucker. We don't even want to, like, deal with your ass right now. So they were like, barter re-enlistment, you're out of SF, you know, we're going to send you back to the Cav. And, you know, like the next day, the Ferdist Arons call on the 19th series.

branch and they're like how much time does he left in the army and he's like how much time you get left and I think I had I don't know like fucking six months or something I mean there was a reason I timed this the way I did you know because like for the air thing to work it had to be in a certain window

you know again not that it not that it worked not that it worked at all so he's called he's called the fucking 19th series branch manager going hey man I'm sending this guy back to you and the 19 series people are like he doesn't have enough time left in the army you got to give him a job figure out something to fucking do with them.

So they made me like the medical supply sergeant assistant at the 18 Delta course. So I'm literally washing fucking rectal thermometers and shit. They're giving me this like this literal shit job. You know, it's like this is your punishment for trying to fucking, you know, like game the system and, you know, suffer, suffer. You know, so I do that for a few months and, you know, one thing. the CO, Major MOLF, I remember this guy. He hooked me up, man, Major Moloff. One of my memories of Major Moloff is being on a jump in Fort Sam Houston,

and his wife was an aviation officer. And we were on a fucking jump, and someone goes, hey, man, look, and I look, and Mollap's flying the fucking helicopter. There's his wife. He's up there with his wife, and he's flying the fucking helicopter, and I'm like, yeah, I feel a lot better about all this. So Molov one day he looks at me and he goes, hey man, like, what are you doing these days? You know, what's going on with you anyways?

And one of the instructors at the 18th dollar course was an old seal. I mean, like across the old fucking seal. And he'd done a couple of years in the French Foreign Legion on an exchange program with the seals. And I got the number for the French Foreign Legion recruiter from this year. I was going to go join the French Foreign Legion, you know. So MOLF, MOLF goes, what are you doing these days, Perry? And I was like, well, you know, sir, I'm going to go join the French Foreign Legion and, you know, do that. He's like, what the fuck are you going to go join the French Foreign Legion for?

And I was like, well, you know, they gave me a barterian list of that. And he was like, what? You know, why the fuck did they do that? I don't know. That's your first art, you know? So he's like, look, man, he goes, check it out. He goes, I want you to take 24 hours and, like, don't join the French Foreign Legion in 20. 24 hours and I'll see what I can do for you.

So the next day he's got a slot for me in the 18 Bravo course. So I was like, okay, that's cool. You know, I got another 24-hour fucking story from the 18 Delta course I want to tell. So while I was in the 18th Delta course, one of the things that bothered me was, you know, I locked the cab thinking, man, the cab's never going to do fucking anything.

Like this, you know, unless the World War III breaks out and these guys go die in the fold of the game. like these guys aren't doing anything. I'm in the 18 Delta course. I'm watching my old unit railhead for Desert Shield. Yeah, okay. And I felt bad about it.

Like, I literally felt like I'd abandoned a bunch of dudes. So, you know, I didn't really know I had any, I don't know, affinity or, like, you know, loyalty to that unit. But watching the dudes railhead and realizing, like, guys I fucking worked with for years were going to go after war and I wasn't there. I felt bad about that. So I'd asked,

first art, not the one who gave me the barter re-enlistment, the guy who replaced him, or the guy previous to him, I think it was. I'd ask them about getting out of the Q-course to go back to my job as a 19-Dalta, and the dude said, look, man, he goes, if you want to do that, I'll help you with it. He goes, but the way it's going to be interpreted is a voluntary withdrawal. If you do this, you'll never come back to ASF. You've quit, and nobody cares why you quit, you've quit, and you're, you know, you're done. He goes, but if you want to go through with it, he goes, I'll do my best to get you the best cab scout job you can get. He goes, I'll try to get one 17th cab to give you, like, a doorbunner job, you know, like, I'll call everybody I can think of. And I was like, cool, he goes, but I want you to take 24 hours and think about it. You know, and that was my introduction to, like, you should be able to make all of your important.

like decisions within 24 hours. Well, plus that war was over by the time you had to make a decision, right? Yeah. I said plus that, I said plus that war was over by the time you had to make a decision, right? Well, that's the thing. And the next day I said no, and the war was over in like two days. Yeah. And I was like, man, I really made the right show on that one.

Yeah. Yeah. That would have been, you know, that would have been, well. So you make it too. I was first Sergeant James. I was first Sergeant James and I remember that dude because we wound up, so this was in 1990 and in 1998 we wound up working on the sniper primitive together and that same dude gave me his coin when he retired.

I got this, that's like the only coin I fucking like out of 25 years of army. I got this coin, this old fucking master sartan more like wired up under his Suto watch. He had the thing up under Sinto so it was always there and the where marks indicate that and he gave me this fucking coin when he retired. and I'm a fucking where the name goes on the coin he'd engraved eat me

so the coin says fucking eat me with honor you know like you got the you got the with honor part under it and it's like eat me with honor you know and I was like that's the coolest fucking coin in the world and it's all ancient and worn out and I fucking love it and I still carry that thing with it as a day

but that was jealous tell us about Landon in First Group, what was going on there in 1990, some of the places you got sent, the personalities you met? In First Group in the 90s? Yeah, yeah. Tell us about your first team, some of those early deployments. Okay, so I got out to First Group. First team I was on, I was a junior weapons guy on a recon team. At the time, the companies all had a Halo team, the companies all had a SCOBA team.

So you had like a recon team, a mountain team, a small boat team, a halo team, a scuba team, and then you had NASA T team, which was like a mini SIF for whatever fucking reason that exists. I still, I still do this day, don't even understand why such a thing was there like, hey, here's your 12-man SWAT team, like go do an assault with it or something, you know, with all your dudes. So I was on a recon team, and because of what was going on in the Balkans, they reconfigured one reconcant team per battalion to be a C-Sysar team, combat search and rescue team. So I was on the team that became a combat search and rescue team. I was on there for about a year.

So we were practicing basically like picking up C-130s full of people, stuff like that. And, you know, like I said, the Balkans was driving mission then. Haiti was driving mission and those are the two big things that were driving mission. The other big change that was going on at that point, which was significant, was, you know, Boclinda had just been elected. And when I got the first group, you had quite a bit of, like, core alumni of the Vietnam War. All your senior battalion and group positions were Vietnam vats, like all of them. you know, all your commanders, you had old warrants in the fucking free shop, that were all Vietnam vets.

You know, one of my introductions of a team, I was looking at the team SOPs, and they had the whole thing about, like, keeping your weapon off safe with your finger off the trigger. And, you know, again, man, I grew up around guns. Like, my one grandfather was active with the NRA, ILA, and I've been around guns all my life. I've never seen anything like in my personal life or professional life that was talking about running around with a gun with your safety off and you know the whole like you know this is my fucking safety thing right right um so I was like man that's not right that's not you know that's not right and you know I'm the weapons guy man I'm like fuck this you know this this

SIP doesn't look right to me and the team starts like well go you know go over to the S3 shop and talk to Chief Rod about it you know And I'm like, okay, you know, so I'm like heading over to talk to fucking Chief Rod, man. And I'm out as I'm leaving a fucking team room, he goes, hey, man, make sure you ask Chief Rod about those four near ambushes he survived in Vietnam. You know, so. Right. It was kind of a lesson. And, you know, like, okay, hey man, like, yeah, these guys have been there and done that.

And they fucking, you know, like, you know, listen to these dudes. So I was like, okay, well, you know, that makes sense. And, you know, Chief Rod's whole thing was looking at it from the perspective of being all, point man on a patrol and running into a point man on a patrol and things coming down to quarters of a second. This was the exact same stuff that would come up later like going into Iraq

in 2007. We were doing the exact same thing. Fucking safety's off, fingers off the fucking trigger, trigger bar safety. For the same reason, because again, man, you round a corner and somebody's stand there with a fucking AK looking at you and it has come down to decimals and quarters of a second.

So that was, you know, That was a good kind of lesson learned. But, yeah, so we had all these Vietnam vets, tons of experience with Vietnam vets. Whole crime got elected, and all these dudes were like, fuck this. You know, I'm out of here, man. I saw this movie under Carter. We're going to be doing jumps off a deuce and a halfs again because we won't have any fucking aviation fuel. Like, fuck all this.

And they all left. They were all like, we're out, you know, peace out, deuses. So you had this kind of like mass accident. of the Vietnam vets, you know, the experience guys, and you had your first wave of commanders that didn't have any combat experience. And this would come up later because, you know, the way I described the dynamic is I came in, I came in and when I was a junior guy, when I was a young guy, the people I had running the show had enormous amounts of combat experience, okay?

Fast forward down the road and what you wound up with is you wound up with like junior to mid-level guys that had enormous amounts of combat experience and senior leadership that had fucking none. Yeah. Maybe they were in the Desert Storm. Maybe they'd done some desk jobs with J-Socc. But generally, you know, you wound up with very seasoned guys on the bottom and then the middle and then your guys on the top that were fucking trying to fake it until they could make it. I saw that as kind of Clinton Clinton also had

I think the two other policies you had the upper out which really hurt you know like the enlisted branch and I think some of the officers do you either you get promoted or you're booted and then the zero

the whole zero defect thing where like if you make a mistake we put leaders in a real bind if you make a mistake you know a bad AAR a bad officer reason the corporatization yeah yeah

Yeah, it was a rough time. As much as I'd like to bash Clinton, I can't put that on it because the whole zero defects thing, that was a post-desert storm. That was the, you know, no more task force Smith. We're going to go from 18 divisions to 10. You know, Desert Shield, Desert Storm, it was like, hey, look, this proved that we can employ

National Guard and Reserve units as well as active. So let's get rid of eight divisions. and all the upper out and zero tolerance and zero defect, all that shit came out of the drawdown. Okay. It's all about getting rid of eight divisions with the guys. What I thought Clinton did that was bad for morale was, you know, fucking Haiti. Obviously nobody liked Haiti.

Haiti was a huge blow to morale. So we lost all our Vietnam vet alumni. and then we had Haiti where guys were going down and getting article 15s for having their LBV unbuckled or for having out-of-rig facial hair. We were putting S-F guys under Tenth Mountain. Tenth Mountain was handing out Article 15s and ruining careers left and right. I'll tell you a little bit of history. So prior to Haiti, you weren't going to be able to pull a guy's tab. Once a guy got his tab, that was like his fucking tab forever, man. Like that, that was just kind of one of those things.

They changed that during Haiti because we had so many guys voluntarily withdrawing from SF. You know, I want you to think about that. We had guys just going, hey, man, like, I don't want to fucking be here anymore. I watched the Halo Team Start. I watched a fucking Sky God, you know, old seasoned dude who everyone loved. He said, man, I'd rather be a fucking. fucking battalion motor NCO than this, and that's what they

reclassed them as. Damn. Because so many guys were leaving us off, they were like, fuck it, start pulling these guys tabs to discourage them. Oh, wow. So, yeah, so that's where that started. I remember that starting around, like, 93-ish, where it's like, hey, man, yeah, if you want to

leave us up, that's fine, we're going to pull your tab. Fuck you. Did your ODA... Did your ODA go down to Haiti? No. So I'll tell you how that worked. So, again, I was on a recon slash CSAR team for a year as a junior. I wound up doing the mandatory 18 Bravo,

like you're going to go be an ammo, NCO for fucking six months up at the B team. I wound up doing that while I was doing that. I had the opportunity to learn Indonesian. So I learned Thai in language school. I was good with languages before I lost. my hearing. And my goal was always to learn five languages. It's first group. You, you know, one language doesn't really get you very far. Like, Thai's great if I'm in Thailand and I'm someplace where they're speaking the central dialect. But, you know, it's not like it's going to get me

very far in any other country. So my goal was always to learn five languages. I want to get about a one-one rating in five different languages. So I had a decent, Rating in Thai, they let me go to one of the concurrent language training programs and take Indonesian. So I picked up Indonesian as my second, you know, military language. I've learned German and junior high. And like I went to reforger in 1988 and I was like whipping out my fucking German in Germany. So like West Germany, you know, West Germany. Right, right.

You know, like I feel, I feel fucking ancient when I say that. But, you know, I could get through about three sentences before people figured out I wasn't from there. But, you know, like, Ty kind of wiped out my German. But, you know, after that I try to keep it in the, you know, similar language groups. So I learned Indonesian. While I was taking Indonesian, one of the team sergeants was in Indonesian with me, and he was a team from the Mountain team. And the guy, you know, seemed like he was impressed by me.

He offered me a senior weapons gig on his team, and I took it. And I became the senior weapons guy on ODA 192 coming over for. ODA8191 and I was there for several years. That was the ODA I spent the longest time on in my career was the Mountain ODA. Now, we never went to Haiti because my team saw, Bouch, who was by far one of the best NICS I've ever worked for, Butch got us into counter-narcotics and I think a lot of that had to do with not wanting to go to Haiti because we didn't have a fucking Haiti. So we did counter-narcotics, we did counter-narcotics for a couple of years.

I kept us out of Haiti. Also, you've got pretty much unlimited budget. I learned how to do Joss requests. I can remember sitting on the fucking Mexican border in 1995 with some handheld Magnavox thermal images that were super high speed at the time. But they made a purring sound like a cat, so you'd be like sitting there looking at this fucking thermal

and it would be like brr-h-r-and-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-it-law. And it would about put you to sleep, man. It's like having a fucking cat purring next to your face. I was like, man, this is not a good, this is not a good engineering feature. They should make this less mellow. So how did that work that you guys were not a National Guard team, you were active duty but deployed down to the Mexican border?

Yeah. Well, the whole GTF6 thing was such a, it was like, hey man, no, you're not working with law enforcement. You know, if you're doing reconnaissance training and see something, say something. So if you happen to see something while you're doing reconnaissance training on the Mexican border, then perhaps you should call your local law enforcement, which is, you know, the border patrol,

whose frequency you happen to have in your radio because, you know, you were deconflicting land use agreements in their area. It was all this very, like, cutout thing, because, I mean, we're doing ride along through the border patrol and shit like that. But it was this, you know, that was your legal boiler plate to get around the posse comitat, Matatus was like, no, man, you're just training in the area. And if you're doing a ride-along, you're doing a ride-along as an interested citizen, not as a soldier. Interesting.

You couldn't hire any of your military ship on the ride-alongs. And it was all, you know, I mean, we went down there because the pace had evaluated in December 1994, and we were on the border in January 1995 because illegal immigration had gone up 1,000%. And with the immigration was drugs. It was a real eye-opener, man. Like, I got to tell you, fucking, what on the border? I spent 90 days on the border. And there was just some fucking misery.

That was, you know, that was my impression. That was a lot of human misery. There was a lot of suffering. I can remember one night I was pulling a radio watch and the Border Patrol station. And so back then, you'd have the cells full by eight. You stopped detaining people after eight, okay? There were two exceptions,

and that was third country national. So if you caught Chinese on the border, which happened occasionally, you kept them because somebody would want to talk to them in the morning and drugs. But for just illegal immigration, you're telling people, just turn the fuck around, man. Turn the fuck around because we can't fit you in the cell anymore, you know? So you'd fill the cells until they were in capacity, which was usually by 8 o'clock at night. And so I'm in there one night. I'm pulling radio watch, and it was raining.

out and I remember, you know, some motion at the corner of my eye and looking up and there was like this cell, just this cell like cram full of women and they were like stripping down trying to get out of their clothes they could dry them. And I remember being embarrassed that like I, you know, like I was looking at them. And then, you know, just the fact that they were at that point where they were trying to like get out of their fucking soaking away. clothes and like huddle together for once, you know, like fucking serious school or something, you know, it made an impression. I mean, it was just, like I said, it was a lot of fucking misery.

That's what I saw. I saw misery. I saw people that were coming to the U.S. Basically they work out, ag workers circuit, you know, they pick fruit up the coast and then go to Canada, and then they go back home around Christmas to bring the money back with them. And, you know, that was what the pace of crash did in, you know, December 94, 95. 95 was all drug interdiction.

Let me back up a little. I want to tell you about fucking going to Ranger School in 1983. Because I'm talking about border stall, so I don't want to skip this. So in 93 Cambodia had his first election, you know, to vote out to Camer Rouge. We had been there for, I think, COVID gold, and they extended us and they extended a lot of the SF team. We were sitting on the Cambodian border, and, you know, basically we were, like, on a contingency stand by to go on if there was trouble.

And we were eating local, and breakfast, the fucking first day was pig's blood that had been boiled down until solidified cut into cubes and put over right. And I was like, man, it's going to be a long a couple of weeks on the fucking Cambodian border.

So I went from like Cobra Gold where I'm not eating that well to begin with. Every time I went to Thailand, it's like a protein deficiency. So I went from like Cobra Gold to like a couple of weeks on the Cambodian border and then I went to Rangers school. I had a 48 hour break between like the border and Ranger school and I went to Ranger school all fucking like ribs sticking out you know all fucking amaciated I didn't even bother like unpack shit I just packed the stuff for the packing list and left everything else and I got the Ranger's school

and we're doing the equipment shit down I got like a fucking mosquito net and a camp stove and shit like that, and the RIs are kicking my shit all around. Why the fuck you bring a stove, Ranger? You're going to cook some chow? I'm all fucking surly, man. I'm like, I can't believe I can't put up with his shit. But I got to tell you, like, you know, my introduction to group, I got to group in fucking 92,

and the first thing they did, they sent me to pre-Scoo in, like, December 92, man. And I crashed and burned. And I went in and I was all like. Like, you know, no problem. I can run six minute miles all day. I'm going to fucking gut my way through this. I'm going to fucking muscle through. And I was like, no, dude.

You know, I'd get in the pool and it'd be like, dude's laughing me. Like, chubby guys are lapping me. Like, I can crush ground PT every day, but I suck the whole rest of the day. So I totally crashed and burned. And December 92, and January 93, they're like, we didn't have a guy's graduate preschools or wherever in another one.

So I got to go to preschool again. I didn't ask for either one of these. This is like a pretty fucking new guy. you know, oh and by the way you're the piss master, you got to go to bus driving school, and you're the fucking fire marshal, bitch, you know, so, you know, fucking January 93, at least made it to the end of the course, and then I think you got like 15 fucking events or something at the end, I passed like seven of them, and I was like, no. So had I not crashed and burned on two free scovers, like immediately had not been my introduction

to fucking group, I probably would have just been like, you know, fuck you, I don't need a ranger to have either man. you know, and left, but I didn't want to be like Mr. 3 strikes, like this with the new guy. So I was like, I got to pass Rangers school, man, I can't go on without this shit. So, yeah, Ranger's School was a fucking trip. But anyway, so, yeah, 95, I'm on the border.

We did the border. I got married that year. We were so busy in 95. My CEO literally told me I can give you 72 hours to get married. Like, that's it. You can't have any more time than that. You got 72 fucking hours. That's how busy that year was.

and you know I think about that shit a lot how even peacetime I said I mean like the 90s was a great error yeah I got to compete in some teams and go to a lot of cool training and do some cool shit but even in the fucking 90s man you can be deployed 10 months out of the year no problem well like like deployment opt tempo has never let up like my entire career was always like you're gone all the time yeah I think that for a lot of people who are familiar with the global war on terror the war on terror, you know, they forget about the war on drugs when that's where all the money went. All the money went to, you know, to Jeff say no and the war on drugs. And SF teams were also deployed all over the world on J-SATs, doing all these training missions, Sri Lanka, Thailand, I mean, Germany, I mean, literally any country you care to name, like there's probably an ODA there at some point. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. And so the thing was, the other thing that was going on in the 90s, there was such a huge game changer was meth. Methamphetamine was blowing up all over the fucking place and all over Asia. So we went into the Golden Triangle that year. We went into the Golden Triangle. The DEA guys told me we went into the Golden Triangle further than any than it ever been in. That was 95. We went in with a 60-man Thai Border Patrol police contingent and went in and get some fucking burns um and that was that was cool that was like no shit you guys were burned it down drug labs and they were like you got any leadership experience i was like i led fucking tied border patrol police into the fucking golden triangle and the you know controlled burns level when you say burns do you mean labs or crops got some leadership experience you know but what's that i'm sorry i sorry but when you say burns you mean like labs or crops or like the whole

I mean, that's... Crops. You want to go in and burn marijuana. You want to burn enough marijuana where you could say you were getting shit done, but nobody's going to kill you for marijuana. If you went in and started burning mass amounts of opium, you're going to get fucking killed, man. So it was one of those like, yeah, you're there to do some fucking eradication, but look, all the Thai Border Patrol police I work with have bullet holes. Like, all them dudes have bullet holes.

or, you know, you're talking cops with them 60s and fucking, you know, it's a golden triangle, man. Like, it's very fluid up there. You got, at the time, Kuntzor was the major player. You had like a 17,000 man private army with artillery and air force. So, you know, it's one of those, like, yeah, you want to go in and kind of like map the area out and you want to do some eradication so everybody's happy, but you don't want to get a bunch of people killed either because, frankly, you got 60 fucking dudes and a backyard of somebody who's got to somebody who's got. 17,000 guys.

Yeah, yeah. Be sensible. And, you know, that trip was fucking pretty amazing, but I'll tell you what, the other thing my team was doing at the time was we were on standby for the Balkans, which was, like I said, driving a lot of missions at the time. So my mountain team was on call,

we were on contingency standby to go call close air support to cover the U-Gun withdrawal. So what we were expecting at the time, This was back when the UN was getting staked to runways by the Serbs. This is when the UN was getting brutalized by the Serbs. What we expected to happen at some point was we expected the Serbs to chase the fucking U.N. to fuck out of the Balkans. And NATO's plan was at that point we're going to go in and we were going to fucking cover the withdrawal so they didn't get massacred in retrograde. So for a couple years on my mountain team, we practiced doing CAS.

That was like the biggest thing we practiced doing was CASS. We went to all kinds of different cast schools and bombing ranges, and we worked with all kinds of caste platforms. It was cool, man. We brought a 60-millimeter mortar with us everywhere, and we used white phosphorus as markers, and, you know, it was neat, man. Yeah. A lot of experience.

But 95, that mission came down, not to go in and call cast, but the contingency mission came that, like, hey, man, we're going into the Balkans now, and we were in the Golden Triangle and we didn't get to go and they sent the team across the hall, which was my old team, you know. And they wound up getting thrown out of country, but I don't think it was their fault. I mean, literally, like, my, again, these are my old teammate,

so they didn't have any reason to lie to me. When I asked them what the fuck happened, you know, my old running buddy, the Maddox said, you know, they got a woman that come to their camp and said, look, man, you know, the Russians just went through town and, like, rounded up all the prostitutes and took them to their camp, like, not willingly, you know? Yeah. Like, can you come get these women out of the camp? So they said they took a truck over there and kind of had a bit of a confrontation with the Russian troops and loaded all the girls on the truck and fucking left, and they said they were pulling up to their camp with a truck full of fucking sex workers.

and like somebody from the state department got called to come see what's going on and showed up and here's a bunch of s-f guys and a truck full of fucking sex workers and it was like dude pack your shit and get the fuck out man you guys are off yeah yeah that I've heard of that kind of stuff happening I want to hear your fucking a bunch of times over the years like ODAs like it's a political decision it's not something to take personally it's just like the ODA ends up grinding against something politically in the country, and the answer is just send them, get these guys out of here, send them home.

And it's not because they were jackasses. It's just like it's politics. It's international politics. Well, and some, I mean, it's either something politically in the country or sometimes political like with the State Department. Sometimes. You know, like sometimes, you know, the State Department's a little, you know, you get dumb about this too. You know, this is like 95, man. we haven't really had any like combat for a while. So, you know, the group commander was like, hey, our guys are coming home from the ballerans. Let's throw him a break.

So we had us all around the streets of the group in Lewis. And like, as these guys come in, we're all clapping. And it's just like, yay, look at our fucking homecoming heroes. And then like the next day he gets the call saying, like, no, these guys got to show out of country for having a truck full of sex. For Christmas. That's awesome. You know, Mike, the other thing about the 90s that, you know, I think soured a lot of military guys was Somalia, right?

Right. It was 93, right? Yeah. Yeah, in 93. I don't know, like, did that affect, I mean, I know that was more like Fifth Group Saturday or whatever, but did that affect you guys at all? Yeah, yeah, it did. I'm going to take a, I'm going to take a pee break. Sure. Some ball shaving stuff. You got it? I'm right back. I'm going to have to hit them in the room. Guys, thank you for joining us tonight.

We really appreciate, you know, there's like 260, 270, 280 people watching tonight live, which is pretty cool. And, of course, everyone who's going to watch this subsequently. Please make sure that you subscribe to the channel if you haven't already,

and hit the bell icon and select all notifications to make sure that you get notified every time we go live in the future. Down the description, you'll find some links for our Patreon page that you'd sign up for if you want to support this channel and what we do. And that will get you access to all the bonus segments we do. I'll try to twist Mike's arm and do a bonus segment with him.

But there's literally days worth of video in there at this point with like not, you know, I don't know, 80 guests. And the bonus segments are great. Like ask anybody in our live chat who's a member of our patron, in one dollar a month or more, we'll get you into that. And, you know, our guests will talk about things that, you know, they don't get a chance to talk to on the show. Behind the scenes, yeah. Or things that they don't want to talk about publicly.

Sometimes the story's get a little racy and body. Purple pros, yeah. But it helps us out. It pays our rent. It buys our scotch. You know, now we have a producer. And that's all thanks to everybody who watches us. Dee, say hello.

Hello. Actually, Don't be a faceless voice. Come over and say hello. Hey, guys. Is this my good side? This is your good side. This is Dee?

Again, because of you guys support the show, we now have a producer, and that's why you see all these cool camera angles, and the show is just much more dynamic. Yeah. And also, there's a link down in description if you want to get your Team House merch.

Where is it? Where's my damn coffee mug? Oh, you're good. Where is our bathroom? Here it is. one, grab that one up. Coffee mugs, t-shirts, all that good stuff. All right, so we're back with Mike Perry. Mike, okay, so around 95, super busy, Somalia happens in 1993. Let's start pushing the timeline a little bit forward here, going into the mid to the late 1990s.

Sure. Well, on Somalia. When I was in Hawaii as a infantry platoon leader, which was 98, 99, and 99, the first group SIF came through. And, you know, I knew half the guys on the fucking SIF at that point. And they were doing a scenario where they were basically replicating a Blackhawk down scenario. So the Sarm major of the SIF at that point was, had been in Somalia with Delta. And he wanted to basically do the Blackhawk down scenario and use them outside in Hulloch. Over and over and over, yeah. One of the best pieces of training I've ever seen.

Got a burning fucking Black Hawk fuselage in the middle. And my platoon got to be out for, aside from a guy getting his eye shot out that night. I mean, not my platoon, I think he was one of the combo guys and outside of a guy got his eye shot out. And all I'm going to say is when you're working with some munition, if you need to clear fog off your goggles, like go to a corner, turn to the corner,

and like clear your shit, don't do it any other way. Somebody will definitely shoot in the face, and that's what happened to this. Simunitions are, just for our viewers, some munitions is like paintball, but it's actually a round that fit, you change out the upper receiver on a 9-millimeter around, paint round,

and it is, it's around, and it moves fast, and it's pain, but it can do harm. We can do serious harm. It fucking hurts. I won't lie. it hurts. They fucking hurt. Put a big welt on your face. Yeah. That was always the funny thing was on deployments, was watching how many guys would have like a big old, big old fucking cherry on their face from this ammunition, man. Simunition will teach you the value of cover and concealment and the difference between the two of them. And they're amazing.

I think it's one of the finest training tools I ever saw in the Army. This simunition around and the blower suit are probably two of my, my, my time. favorite things we're training people out of, you know, put scarring down. Yeah. That's better than a blank firing adapter, right? I said much better than a blind firing adapter. Oh God, Miles gear. Yeah, like, hey, let's train all our people to hide behind leaves. Right, right.

Because it would stop the laser, yeah. Yeah, lots of shit will stop a laser, but, you know, not necessarily a fucking AK round. So, you know, her knows, man. But yeah, so like I said, about 99, we were practicing for Somalia again. Somalia drove a whole lot of changes, actually. And when I got to the, excuse me, when I got to the SIF later in life, I realized just how much Somalia had generated a lot of discussion for how to better fucking shoot people, honestly.

There was a lot of the community that wanted to move back to the 760 round after that. Yeah. But talking to the guys who were involved in the decision making process, they were like, it's not practical. I heard this throughout my career. I heard this consistently, and I heard it from people who I trust to give me the gospel. Shop placement is king. Shot placement is always king.

Central nervous system hits are fucking king. That, like, you know, you can have the best round in the world. It doesn't matter if you can't put it where you need to. In a gunfight. I mean, somebody may die, but, you know, I used to get into the fucking differences between lethality and incapacitation with people all the time. And in a gunfight you want, immediate incapacitation. Lethality ain't doing you any good.

My friend shot up fucking dude's heart out with a 760 run. He blew that fucking dude's heart out, man. He said that guy continued to move at a fucking full clip for, you know, a good 20 meters, man. So, you know, that 20 meters can be the rest of your life and a gunfight. So, you know, like I said, it's all about central nervous system hits and, you know, taking out a person immediately, which, you know, is a Sip sniper that was a big thing, was practicing that fucking 0% hostage target over and over again.

Just going for that, yeah, going for that flaccid paralysis. Yep, yep. the immediate incapacitation zone. The other PLs used to fucking laugh when I expressed it like, the immediate incapacitation zone, otherwise known as the scoop of the mask. So yeah, anyway, I guess I'll move forward to the later 90s. So, you know, go through like JTF6 and all that. I got to spend some time of Korea.

I spent most of the 90s working in Thailand. I got to work with everything from their Royal Marines to their Special Forces, their Rangers, their Border Patrol police. I got to work with all sorts of people in Thailand. I got to go to Korea and working a hollowed-out mountain with the Korean Special Forces and watch their women do Taekwondo fucking everyday in battalion formation, which was probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my fucking life, like watching poetry in motion out there, you know, kicking each other's ass.

A leaf in the wind You know At 97 I had a daughter And I was in E7 at the time And I was not happy with the amount of money I was making And I was living in Tacoma, Washington And the schools had metal detectors

So I wanted to give my kid a little bit Better of an opportunity So I put my OCS packet in And I'll tell you straight up, man I'm one of them dudes You know Fucking hate it off officers my entire listed career. And, you know, I wasn't necessarily

Desiring to be one, but I did know that the money was better and I knew that again, I could probably put my kid in better schools So I put my OCS packet in 98. I went to OCS I asked specifically for an infantry assignment I had the three people who wrote my recommendation letters say that I'd be a good light infantry officers particularly I was trying to get a light infantry assignment I got what I wanted I got 25th ID my philosophy was

look man I've been teaching 7-8 I've been teaching light infantry techniques my entire fucking life that's mostly what I did in SF that's mostly what we were doing an ASF back then so it's like let me go do infantry shit with people who speak English

and have modern equipment and that'll be great that'll be awesome it was not what I expected. Having 40 fucking 19 to 20-year-olds working for you, first time away from home on the first job, that was, you know, you're not, you're not Irwin fucking Romwell, man, you're Jerry Springer sometime.

You're in the platoon sergeant, we're on rotation for, you know, you get calls on Friday night, and the cops would be like, look, we're taking this dude to jail if, like, you know, the platoon's on appeal doesn't show up. So you always wanted to, like,

like be there for your dudes, you want to take care of your guys. But it was just, it was, you know, after growing up an S-Up, it was such a different thing to just kind of be in this like guidance counselor, father figure, like life mentor role for people. And man, it was a pain in the ass, but it was also a period of, I think, intense personal growth from it. Because frankly, you know, you get kids, you get kids who fucking grew up and some shit environment and they're getting fucking letters from their dads and stuff like, you know, I'm gonna

kill myself, I really mean at this time, you should think about it, I don't even do the fucking mind. I mean, what do you do with that, man? Like, you know, like some of these kids got hamstrung right out the fucking date, you know? So, I mean, shit, man, I got

sent to people like that. My best friend, my best friend got used as a fucking hostage, by his uncle in an arm standoff at the police when he was seven years old. Jesus. His arm, fucking uncle. Use them as a fucking hostage, you know, arm standoff. What do you do with that?

You know, like at some point you look at people and go, man, you know, you were fucked from jump. Yeah, right. So, like, the infantry was full of kids like that. So you try to take care of people at the same time. It's like, man, I got 40 motherfuckers I got to worry about. So, you know, it's one of those, like, I'm going to work with you as much as I can until I assess you as a hazard. to the rest of the... After OCS, you had to go and do a tour

in the conventional army, right, before coming back to SF? Yeah, yeah, because, you know, you can't come back into your captain, so I left as an E7, you know, got commission, went to the infantry, and then basically I did a year and a half as a PL, and then I did degree completion. I got a cool degree completion story, kind of, I guess. So I went and got a double,

I got a double degree in economics and business. And I tried to steer my education towards what I was doing in special courses. So I was taking a lot of economics of developing countries. As part of the economics thing, I was taking a lot of industrial psychology for the SF stuff. I always thought industrial psychology. Industrial psychology is about team building and getting the most efficiency out of the team. So I figured that was a good path to follow for us off stuff. So I got a double degree and I got a 4-0 and I fucking graduated valedictorian and I got to write a valedictorian speech.

And, you know, I wrote a valedictorian speech. And then, you know, I had to go talk to like the council of deans and give them my valedictorian speech draft. And it was the first time in my life, I was, like, 31, I think. It was the first time of my life I'd ever heard anybody use the term politically correct. And, you know, unironically, where, you know, I'd use the phrase, like, the men of special forces, and they were like, you know, it was just right, you know, and then it was like, oh, it is, you know, all men. And, you know, I'm sitting in the room and I'm like, man, like, wow, you know, this is kind of surreal to me. But, you know, like I said, they're fucking hard to in the right place,

but at the time I didn't appreciate it. I really didn't. So I'm home, and I'm rewriting my fucking speech. And the news comes on, and fucking, there's my friend Nate Chapman, who I was in Charlie 3-1 with. He was on 193 when I was on 192. I knew the guy for years, and there he is. He's dead.

His face is on my television. I'm eating fucking, I'm eating fucking cereal and writing my valedictorian speech. my dead friends on the fucking news. You know, I rewrote my speech. It was almost like aggressively, I think, fucking obnoxious. And, you know, there's a lot of, like, freedom isn't free shit in there.

Anyway, sometimes I want to go back and fucking smack, you know, fucking, you know, January 2002, upside the head. I, you know. Mike, let's just give us one second. Mike's internet is coming around a little bit.

Yeah. Sorry, Mike is actually out visiting his kid right now, and the internet isn't the best, so. Mike Perry's been with this low. You guys got me now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. So you did the speech.

You got assigned to an infantry unit. You're trying to take care of these young men. and then eventually come back to S.F. Real quick, though, I want to ask about Nate, about Nate Chapman, because you said he was, you were close with him.

And can you tell us a little bit about Nate and, like, who he was, where he was, what he was doing when he passed? Well, that's the thing, man. So, first of all, Nate was one of probably the better people I fucking ever met.

He was a, it was a genuinely decent fucking human being he was a nice guy um i at one point in my life i gave him some really bad advice and i'm glad he didn't fucking take it and i don't want to go into that but like it was a life lesson for me about be careful what you be careful about what you say to other people because you know sometimes sometimes you're a fucking you know sometimes you're a role model to somebody and you don't fucking know it so like be careful what message you send other people and I said

Nate was a fucking nice guy who was a fucking genuinely decent dude when he got killed the fucking like a cover story came out that a 14 year old kid had shot him and

you know I understand the reason a cover story came out I could get it there's still an ongoing operation but that that exacerbation problems down the road in terms of his family being able to cope with the death.

Because when you get a cover story laid on you, it makes you not want to believe, I guess, the official account that follows because, you already got lied you once. I mean, so there are a lot of layers to that, to that death and how it affected people. and how it affected immediate family and how it affected the unit in terms of like the sergeant major trying to do some damage control and talk to Nate's widow and it was bad. I mean like I said there was some complexity

too and that didn't just end with Nate dying. And that's unfortunate because you know fuck man you're grieving you got enough shit to worry about without wondering if somebody just handed you a bunch of shit. Right. And Nate was killed in Afghanistan, and he was, he was S-F, but he was detailed to a government agency.

I think it's public now, right? That he was detailed. Yeah, well, he was, from what I understand, he was detailed at the CIA over there. They, you know, put some guys together. You know, he was a commo guy. So at the time, he was working in the commo walker. And if I remember correctly, that's where he'd gone after C-3-1. He went to the, I think, the battalion Commolocker or maybe the group Comma Walker.

That was kind of the last time I saw him. Yeah, I think they peeled him out of there. But, you know, like I said, the whole thing was fucked up. And, you know, Jesus, man, you know, I was pretty happy with being in college, you know, for a year and a half. I loved college. I love the discourse. I love the academia. Let me back up a little.

When I was on the fucking mountain team, my team saw and told me to go to college while he told me to get some night classes while we were doing language training. So you got your eight weeks every year of concurrent language training. Those are the only eight weeks of the year you could count on being home. That was literally it. Those were the only fucking two months of the year you could count on being stable and being present. And my team saw and told me, man, everybody on the team is going to fucking night school except

you, you need to go to night school. And again, I got expelled from fucking high school. in high school at 15. I dropped out of 16. I wasn't going to fucking college. And I told the dude I hated school. Like I'm not doing that. And he's like, you're not getting and you're going to go a fucking college, man. Anyway, long story short, butch, my favorite team started at all time, literally shook me the fuck out. He choked me to fuck out. And I came to and I was puking and I had a room full of guys laughing at me.

And it was like, you're going to fucking school, motherfucker. You're taking some night courses. So I took some night courses, it peers, it got me in associates. That's what allowed me to get into OCS. It turned out I love college, but college was different from high school and who fucking knew. So Bush is still to this day one of my favorite people in the whole fucking world for that move because he was, you know, I was a bit of a knucklehead, man. So he gave it to me a known certain terms that, like, look, motherfucker, you're going to go to college. I'm just going to choke your ass fucking out every day until you figure it out. So, like, I like college.

I fucking loved degree completion, and I loved the discourse. And, you know, I was, shit, man. I was, you know, reading up on, like, fucking linguistics and stuff in my spare time. And I worked at the English as a Second Language Center. And I was, I had all kinds of students from Thailand and Indonesia. I had Indonesian students that were hiding out from nothing cleansing around 2000, 2001. It was great. But then they got killed and all of a sudden, you know, I felt.

like I just, like, you know, I cheated my brethren, you know, like I'm over, getting over, I'm fucking off in college and, you know, having fucking bento lunch in Chinatown and Whitechee and like, you know, people are dying in Afghanistan. I felt like a piece of shit, frankly. So, you know, I called, I called fucking Branch and tried to terminate my commission and go back and enlisted because I knew, you know, it was going to take me a while to get back into the game. And they were like, you can just basically go. fuck yourself, you know, like, we're not going to let you do that. How is that? Which I didn't think that, I didn't think that was a fucking option, but it was like, you know, we're not going to allow you to do this, like finish college and come back in as an

18 alpha. So, you know, I finished college, I put my application back in. Now, this is fucking funny because when I left SF, it was like, hey, man, when you come back in as an 18 alpha, it's just a formality. You're like, don't worry about it. It's fucking, everything's cool. Come back in.

Okay, so 9-11 happens, there's a picture of a fucking S-Sap dude, like, on a horse with a beard. And every fucking Walter Midi-type motherfucker and officer out there decided he was special forces at that time, right? So, you know, I go back into S-Saf and they got like 200% fucking what they need officers. And they told us, man, don't get hurt while you're here because we're not recycling any of you. Like, you sprained an ankle and you are fucking gone. And I had this vision in my head of getting sent back to the infantry, you know,

like, and then being like a Bradley company commander and curdle or something and having a stack of fucking article 15s on my desk every, every Friday, you know, like having my fucking UCMJ Friday. It's like this life of misery that I've, like, voluntarily left ass out from the door closed and like, go fuck yourself. This is what you're doing for the rest of your life. You know, and I'm like, oh, this is just a nightmare.

You know, and also like, come a little bit here. Oh, and also, like, coming back in, I need to, like, a double waiver because I'm fucking deaf, you know, so they're like, hey, man, you know, like, we got enough guys and you're hearing shitty and, you know, like all this. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this is, this is fucking terrible. Like, you know, I hope I get back in. And you're hearing shitty because you got back in. Oh, sorry. I said you're hearing shitty because you were 18. Bravo. Being a parent can be really challenging.

Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five, with free support service. to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserve someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents

and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Oh yeah, man. Anti-tank systems. The call Gustav, the 90s, the 106, all that shit, man. I got to tell you the AT systems are the worst, man.

Any weapon that comes with a like, don't shoot this more five times a day because it'll fuck your internal organs up. It's probably not good for your ears. And, you know, you can double them off, man. I mean, I wear I were fucking foamy's with some muffs over them, and that only goes so far. So, yeah, I started to lose my hearing by the time I was, I don't know, probably 25. And, you know, when I was a little later in my career, man, they'd give me those, you know, the clicker test, right? You know, you take the clicker test, and then pretty soon, you know, by the third test, I'm sitting in a room with, like, nothing in there.

Like, you don't have to touch anything, and there's a big sign on the fucking wall. talks about the UCMJ penalty for malingering. And the machine's just like automatically measuring your tympanic membrane response to sound and shit. And then, you know, the first time I did that, the guy came in and was like, wow, you really are deaf. And I'm like, yeah, no shit, man. So, like, you get, you get back into special forces.

I'm not trying to fake it for like 10% disability. Like that. Let's start getting into, you know, war on terror. You're in first group. You make it back in as an officer. But now, since you're in first group, you're focused on what the Philippines, right? Yeah.

Okay, so I spent all the 90s focused on Thailand and then the 21st century was all about the Philippines, war on terror. So I get back in the first group. I got the sniper troop. So I'm going through the Q course. I'm going through the Q course and the branch manager calls me and goes, hey man, so you are a, you're a Soda grad, huh?

I was like, yeah, actually I was a soda constructor for a year, you know? He was like, excellent. You know, how would you like to get a sniper team out in Okinawa? And I was like, perfect. Like, again, this is my background, man. This is what I'm for. Like, this couldn't be a better job. And he's like, cool.

We need you get a Sephardic assignment while you're at Bragg. So I had to go finagle a Sephardic assignment. Like, you know, the fucking Holy Grail of schools. I had to go get a Sephardic assignment. as a pipeline student. And, man, I had to go talk to some people. I had to talk to all kinds of people

about, you know, why the fuck do you think you, you know, you deserve a slot out all these people, you know, and I'd go on and then I was like, well, you know, I was a sniper instructor and I shot three gun competitively and fucking, you know, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I was a weapons guy for so many years, and I'm like, oh, yeah,

okay, you know, that's like, yeah, that makes sense. Like, you go to you're Sephardic. So, um, I got a Sephardic slot is a pipeline student. They had to let me go for the last two days of Sephardic, which is just basically brass cleanup. They had

to cut me loose two days early, so I could go to fucking sear, which is great. You know, you go from like beating ass to like getting your ass beat. So I did Sephardic. I went out. I got a sniper troop. That was my first assignment. I was real happy with that because, again, that was

where I needed to be. I was working in the Philippines. War on Terror. That was fucking awesome. You know, most of the time I was up in Luzon initially doing 7-8 training. Again, night patrols, patrolling under NVGs, you know, all that shit with the, we were growing the light reaction company to the light reaction battalion, which would then later become the light reaction regiment. At the time, we were expanding it from the LRC to the LRB. Real quick, just to catch people up.

So SOTIC is Special Operations Target Interdiction course. It's basically... It's now the Special Forces Sniper course, and the reason they changed the name was because after War on Terror, you had all this fucking government funding coming down for sniper training, and SOTIC was missing all of it

because we didn't have sniper in the name. We were the Special Operations Target Interdiction course. So basically to get access to funding, we changed the name to the Special Forces sniper course. And it's funny because originally it didn't have sniper, and it's to sort of conceal a little bit what it actually... The same thing with Sephardic,

like that ridiculous acronym... Yeah, same thing with Sephardic. It's like, here's an alphabet soup, so you don't know what the fuck it is. Yeah. You know? And Sephardic at the time was basically like the CQB training.

Yeah, it still is. Yeah, the close quarter battle. So I just wanted to catch up the people who may not be familiar with these terms, but the SOTIC and then Sephardic, and then you went to the Philippines expanding the LRR.

to the LRC to the LRD. Yep, yep, yep. So, like I said, initially, it was a lot of time up in Luzon. I was up in Cabana-Tijuana, we were doing, it was mostly night patrolling. You know, that was great. Again, one of my funny moments was one of the guys I got into the Bravo course and out of working for me because he was working at the embassy. We had two captains in the Philippines and one of them was working at the embassy and he's

wearing a tie and then the other one's me and I'm not with. wearing a tie because like, you know, I'm not the fucking, I'm not that guy. I would far rather be out there getting, you know, night patrols in and bit by fire ants and shit than sitting in an embassy of Manila wearing a tie every day. But one of my old guys came to work for me because he got a fight. He got in a fight in the Arab Quarter. He was going on to see his sex worker girlfriend and he got hit upside the head with a pool stick. And he had this big fucking avulsion on his head.

He had this big flap of his skin and a triangle of scar. so they're like, you can't work at the embassy like that. You look like shit, so they sent them out to me. So I like my reunion week up in Cabana Tuan where one of the guys I've been in the 18B course were, and that was awesome. You know, we're doing like, we're doing fucking light infantry shit.

And then as we kind of grew the LRC and they decentralized, I went down to say boo. We were starting to do decentralized operations for the first time. I went down to say boo. I think that's probably the only good fucking capture. out of that like whole time we got the chief

financial officer I think it was obviously after it was one of the one of the bigger fucking insurgencies down there we grabbed the main money man he was eating at a fucking sidewalk cafe and we rolled this ass up

and it was like the most hasty fucking planning ever because it's like hey man we got we gotta call this dude's like fucking eating at a sidewalk cafe it was like getting a fucking van man like you know just just grab some basic shit and get in the fucking van we're rolling on this dude and we got that guy um and that was cool and then i went down to mendanao and i was out and i was out in bavow uh back when

duterte was still the mayor out there and we were doing operations out in bavow and that was fucking nice um shit um being a parent can be really challenging child and family resource network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy

and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. You know, I think some of the best things I ever did in Nassaf were on that trip. You know, I fucking paid for kids' heart operation.

That was cool. That was because, you know, the bodyguard I had from the LRC, some dude who'd come in on an amnesty program. So this guy was a former insurgent, and his whole thing was, basically like working with a woman and they'd like peel some fucking soldier cop off and kill them in a hotel room and you know this guy's my bodyguard so um you know i was trying to figure out ways to kind of cement alliances and stuff and his brother who was a really nice fucking dude his brother had a baby with a heart valve defect he had a blue baby and the way it works in the Philippines is if you don't have the hospital money there i'm going to see you so um you know i paid like 5k to get that kid's heart fix and after that i was his godfather and I didn't have any worries about anything, you know, like in that fucking part of town ever again. So that was good. And, you know, like I said, all was good to work in Duturjay's backyard and the dude becomes present.

And that's the other thing I wanted to throw in about outside. That was one of the things they emphasized with me coming up was, you know, that Thai lieutenant you're working with maybe the fucking King of Thailand one of these days. so like maintain personal relationships with these people you work with, like especially the who's who type people. And I thought that was kind of interesting, you know, like later down the road. I'm just like, yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm fucking out of, you know, going to the cockfight to fucking meet Duterte and shit, you know, stuff like that.

So, you know, it did the Philippines for a couple of years. This stuff was supposed to go into Iraq in 2005 and the picture. Com commander was like, no, I'm keeping the SIF, which was the problem with the SIFs is they're the only unit that's like directly fucking taskable by the COCOMs. So, you know, the COCOM doesn't want to give you all. That was the for this. That's why, like,

when, you know, at the time you'd see these things about how we're going to bring those SIFs back to the, back to KONIS, which you know, if you understand like the way of SIFs opposed to work, that makes no sense whatsoever. But, you know, that whole thing was basically a, right, to get the COCOM commanders to kind of work.

just to interject briefly here, like, some folks probably don't understand the SIF. It's the commanders in extremist force. Every special forces group has a SIF or did up until very recently. And the idea was that we had, you know, seventh group had a SIF down in Panama. First group had a SIF in Okinawa. Tenth group had a SIF in Germany. And these were counterterrorism or direct action elements that could be tasked out by the theater commands. European Command, Southern Command, Paycom, whoever it is, to immediately go in action a threat.

So if a hostage crisis breaks out in Thailand or Guatemala or wherever, they can shoot that element, they can shoot the SIF out very quickly, and if need be, they can resolve that situation, or they can lock down the area until J-Soc arrives. now the concept that was the concept but of course it was fraught with problems as you know Mike yeah absolutely I mean we used to say it was the you know the shiny

object fucking syndrome you make this bright shiny object and it's so fucking awesome and cool that nobody wants to use it and get it dirty and you put it on a shelf you know and that was that was the big that was the thing with the SIFs you know it's like hey man you got this unit out

and paycom that you know as far as I'm concerned, you know, I got to the, I got to the SIF, you know, shit, man, I had like 17 fucking years and, you know, your average SIF guy had 18 years military service, you know, so I got out there and I'm like, yeah, here's this incredible unit and, you know, nobody wants to fucking let it go do anything because, you know, then I won't have one. Yeah.

So, you know, like I said, we were supposed to rotate into Iraq and 05, and, you know, I was following everything pretty closely. I'm looking at all the AR notes that are coming out of snipers because I'm a sniper troop commander and I want to know what I'm going to be fucking doing. And then no, you're not going. And then 06, same thing. Hey, you're on the rotation and then no,

last minute, no. And then 07, we built a we replicated a SIF. We built a second SIF. And that was solely for the purpose of allowing ourselves they fucking go into theater. So 05 and 06, that was a sniper troop commander. And then

2007 when we did our rotation, I was the XO, and I got to be the XO for the first rotation of the PICOM SIF into Simcom. That was a lot of heavy lifting. And, you know, like, again, I've sat up before, and I'll say quite plainly, I thought Iraq was bullshit, but at the same time, you know, like, just in terms of heavy lifting and logistical efforts, you know, getting the PICOM SIF and a fucking Iraq was no joke, man, and I was kind of happy to be part of that. and like, you know, I wanted to go to Iraq. I mean, I want to see shit for myself. I can think something's bullshit.

It doesn't mean it affects my performance. It doesn't mean I don't want to fucking go get eyes on personally because I don't like to take anybody's work on anything. I want to, you know, I want to see it, man. I want to fucking see it for myself. So what was that mission? How did it play out when you got there with the SIF? So when I did the Leaders Recon, I did the Leaders Recon in February,

it was still, I think, task force 16 and 17 at the time. So that was February 07. And you still had that task force structure, and they were breaking it out, like one was doing counter-alkyeda and one was doing counter-Iranian influence. When I came out, they had just restructured, and basically the way it wound up working out for us

was we took the SIF with the command element, with a C2 element and that became an AOB and it became its own task force and then we broke an assault troop and part of the sniper troop out and they went and became basically a body pool for B squadron Delta so and then that was something again that kind of surprised me was that Delta was using our guys for what they consider high-risk raids. Delta, was using our guys for things where they thought they'd sustain a lot of casualties because you can create

a siff-assaulter a lot quicker than you can create a fucking Delta guy. So, you know, it's one of those like, hey man, after C-Squater and took X amount of casualties, they decided that we're going to use the SIF guys to do stuff and we're going to change things and do more call-outs.

You know, you know, call-offs like the old fucking gangster movies that cops out of there. Clancy, you know, come on how Clancy or, you know, through the megaphone and if Clancy doesn't come out and just fucking kill his ass. I think it was like 2004 C Squadron Delta took like shitloads of casualties. I can't remember if it was like 60 or 70% casualties. 60% of 60 was what I heard.

That was C Squadron, I believe, and that was a game changer. That changed the way everybody did business. You know, and I get it. But it was just one of those things like I you know look I tried out for Delta once when I was enlisted and I tried out for Delta twice when I was an officer and I'm like getting on the ground and realizing that While you're using our guys to do shit that you don't want to do that was kind of That was kind of an eye-opener you know It's like you know and the fucking funny thing was before I left for that trip you know I knew the recruiter. I knew the recruiter I knew him way back from first group and he was like dude. I didn't see your name on the list this year and I was like well you know I'm going Iraq and I'm

work with some of your guys. I figure after that I'll, you know, make my, make my next attempt. And he's like, oh, yeah, you know, that's good. That's a, you know, good strategy. But I got to tell you, man, after going over there, I'm, like, running up against B Squadron. And, you know, like I said, B Squadron, B Squadron is fucking Ranger a lot of my B squadron, some straight up, like, if you don't have the jab hit the fucking slab, except with OTC, after you run up against B Squadroner, I'm like, man, if I want to go work with a bunch of, like, fucking roided up assaulters, I can just go downstairs, you know, like an or canal like to you know like I don't I don't have to move man I got like I got that shit I

like I have that available to me you know that's that's that's one of those things the the snipers were upstairs and the fucking assuctors were downstairs and over now that's why you know I say that but you know like I said going over there and just getting the whole like hey um you know if you're in our gym and like three of us fucking coming to the gym you need to leave and you can't maneuver on our range if you're on OTC grad and it's like I did go to this school called Sephardic and I was like, yeah, we don't, you know, that doesn't matter, who cares, you know, like it's OTC or fucking nothing around here,

Jack, you know, so that was different. But yeah, so they took the fucking, they took having lost without the headquarters and assigned them to B Squadron, and then we got the ICTF, the whole ISOP brigade. And I'm going to tell you about my first night in Iraq. And I don't remember if it was my first night on my leaders recon or if it was my first night over there I don't fucking remember but it was it was the first night I remember and you know the guy I replaced was of so we replaced fifth group and the guy replaced I've gone to Iobc with and he'd gone on and done his infantry time and then gone out to Ranger bat and then he'd gone to fifth group

you need like five combat tours by the time I ran into him and I remember the guy from Iobc and he was a nice young guy you know everybody in I will Bc was younger than me you know you know know, like a, you know, I'm an OCS guy, so everybody's at least like seven years younger than me. And I remember from I.OBC, nice guy, nice fucking smart guy. And his dad was like some Arthur C. Clark type, you know, he was out in fucking isolation, like working on his unified string theory or something. Bright, bright people, you know. So I see this guy and he's like, yeah, we're going to go out.

We're going to do a fucking raid on the police station because they, like, rolled up two of our guys. And they're not giving them back. So we're going to go do a raid on a police station, you know. So I'm like, cool. So we go out to probably like the nearest safe house to this fucking police station. And we get out of all the military vehicles and we get into, you know, like some Toyota Tacomas and shit. And this place is like, you know, those eye shot from where they hanged at Saddam, which was like maybe, I think, eight weeks prior to that or something. And, you know, there's a team out there running on a fucking safe house.

You know, they're talking about, like, yeah, we're going to go, you know, we're going to go out there to the prison this week and bribe the warden and get some pictures of us, like, looking through the fucking news, you know, and if you guys want to come out for that, and it's like, nah, that's cool, man, like, you know, I'm good. So we get into the, we get into the decommas, man, and we go through these routes, and later I found out, though these routes were all black, like nobody would travel these fucking routes, but can we drive these decommas and we go to this police station? And, you know, I used the term raid, and I guess I was, but, you know, it's not like a normal raid.

I mean, we basically just went in, like, yo, motherfucker, like, where's our dudes, you know? And we got our guys, and, you know, one of the guys is like, hey, you know, yeah, they were, like, four women in the back, and they were looking pretty bad. They were all good. They've been, you know, getting fucking gang rape for, you know, the last week, so we just let them go. And, you know, the Iraqis said there was some kind of, like, black fucking widows. thing and like nobody fucking, you know, it was just, you know, the whole, the whole police station thing was just shitty, man. I mean, it was like it was tempting to just kill every fucking buddy. And, you know, the worst thing about it was in the front room.

There was like an American lieutenant, you know, there was like an American lieutenant who looked like he was just a blovious of everything, some MP lieutenant. And I was like, Jesus, man, the future of Iraq is like me calling some fucking dude being like, hey, man, my unit's going to do a raid on your unit to my unit to my unit's. like, you know, go to the bathroom at 10 o'clock or something, you know. That is not more off at all. Yeah. When you said that when you said the police had your dudes, do you mean like your Iraqi counterpart, or like your Iraqis that LICTF guys are? Yeah, so like two of the ICTF guys got way late at a checkpoint and the cops decided to keep on.

I mean, you know, at this time, we're not on good relations with the cops. You know, the intel is like, hey, 90% of these police units are politically unreliable. They're fucking controlled by the insurgents are so heavily infiltrated that they're worthless. So, you know, the guy or place was like, look, man, sometimes you'll pass a police checkpoint and you'll see the cell phone lights come out. And you'll see them. And you'll get down the road. And you'll hit a hasty ambush. And he's like, if that happens, just go back and fucking knock the cop's teeth out.

Just fucking knock them all out. You know, that's the S.P. So, anyway, we go to this police station and, you know, like I said, there was like some fucking just sorted shit going on. And we got our guys, but here's the fucking weird part. Here's the weird part. My friend, my nice intellectual friend from Iobc, he was very adamant about, hey man, like, when you get around these guys, don't talk, don't talk at all.

And I was like, okay, you know, I'm fucking, I don't know what this is about, but like, you know, all right, cool, man. Like, I'm listening to the guy with the five combat tours in fucking Iraq, you know, I'm listening to the fifth group guy because, you know, this guy knows what he's talking about. So he's like, don't talk around these dudes, man. So we get our two guys. We get our two guys, and they got, you know, fucking hoods on them. And we put them in the back of a truck, and we transport them back to the safe house with the hoods on them. And we take these guys off the truck, and my friend puts them on their fucking knees, man. And he's got them both on their knees, like, fucking zip tied in and hoods.

And then he, like, whips the fucking hoods off. Like, you know, like he's doing a tablecloth. trick, man. And he rips the fucking hoods off. And these guys think they're going to get executed. Yeah. Okay. These guys think they're going to get a bullet in the fucking great, man.

And he whips the fucking hoods off. And these guys are like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, shit, man. Like, fuck, fuck. What the fuck, man. You know, and he's like, ah. You know, and I'm like, what the fuck happened to you? Like, like, these five comments, you were like, did not fucking help. you man like this is this is fucking nuts you know and and I mean I couldn't

fucking believe it I thought it was like one of the most fucked up things I've ever seen and I mean yeah it's funny but it's like also super fucked up like holy shit you know so that was my first night in fucking Iraq man um you know the the rate on the police station and the tablecloth trick you know it was it um but like the fifth group guys knew their shit you know they gave us some good pointers. You know, they left things in our hand. We assume control on April Fool's Day, which I think is pretty fucking hilarious. And then, you know, the FOB commander told us he wanted 200 combat ops out of us. He wants 200. And I was like, why 200, you know? And it's like,

well, the last guys, you know, like got 10% less than that. It was basically like, hey, if I get 200 out of you and 200 out of the guys who replace you, which was third group. He was like, you know, 400, and that's 10% more than the last guy, and, you know, that's what I want. And it was like... Yeah, I can put it up my off-year reval. Yeah, dude, it's all

about, it's all about the OER that point. I'm like, okay, like, yeah, fuck asking yourself whether any of this is working or not. Just do more of it. Just do 10% more of it. That's... Typical army logic. Like, if something's not working, deploy more troops. Yeah. Do more on it.

Yeah, man. You know, like, get on it, you know? So we were trying to do two, two a night. You know, generally you try to go out early enough, where you had enough time to exploit the electronics. You seized on the objective and time to do a second ray that night. So, you know, you were trying to do stuff. You know, after darkness, like, we wound up doing 198 combat ops.

Okay, we wound up doing 198 combat ops, and I want to say three of those were fucking, daytime. Everything else was night. That was a big, like, look, man. These guys don't got MDGs, you know, fucking do everything at night. Because it just comes up. Everyone's going to be shooting at you.

I said total fail. You guys didn't get 200? Yeah, we didn't get to 200, man. We suck. We fucking suck, man. But that was, you know, that was 120 days on the board. So, you know, that was pretty good. The goal, the goal was to do two a night, every night. That was what we tried

for. We wanted to do a hundred 98. and you know it's funny because you get these you get these units that do three and four months rotations and people bad mouth and what I got to tell you man for fucking four months and a hundred ninety eight fucking combat ops dudes were fucking wren out man um so we got we got

198 um what was what was that cycle like i mean jock it up for multiple operations every period of darkness I mean it must have been for C11 guys These guys had never really been in the shit before because you're over Test with Asia, like now, it's on. Day by day

10, you know, like everybody got their Cherry Pop fucking good and proper. You know, that's all I can say is it's summer 2007 the surge and the counter surge, and it was just like, hey, yeah, let's roll out to some shit like over and fucking over and over again.

Well, and the thing you guys weren't only 20 years at night, but you were also responsible for training the ICTF during the date. No, not at that point. So when we got there, man, your average IT's ICTF guy had 5,600 combat ops. That's no shit, like 5 or 600 combat ops.

These guys, these were not dudes. We were training. These were guys we were basically keeping up with, you know. And the commandos were different. Like, the ICTF guys were awesome. The ICTF guys were fucking incredible. The commandos were most of guys who, didn't make fucking the ICTF training but their relatives had paid to get them out of the unit so they were over there and

We had a lot of problems with them in terms of not being politically reliable You know those are the guys who always have to take their fucking cell phones away from them before stalled But we worked some of that out But the ICTF guys were fucking great we weren't you know I've said this before we weren't showing them shit man we were trying to keep up with them those guys fucking knew what they were doing They were all about it man. They were fucking awesome You know, I compare notes with my friends who did like Iraq assignments and then, you know, they make all the jokes about, oh, you know, Thursday we have a class and like not shitting on the parade field and stuff. And, you know, I hear that or I remember that lieutenant sitting at the police station, you know. I didn't have that Iraq tour. I had awesome fucking dudes that were respectable. And, you know, I was paying attention. I was trying to learn from them, to be quite honest. And that was interesting too.

And, you know, like I said, like Fottle was the unit commander at the time. He's that now. But, you know, he was fucking awesome. And he ran fucking guns to the Kurds like once a month. And they had all kinds of shady shit going on. But at least, you know, like his heart was in the right place, man. He was, you know, he was trying to hook his people up. And, you know, the Kurds were using the period of time to rearm and kind of like get their shit together.

So he was going up to Urbiel every month and trying to try to make sure like next time hostilities broke out and people were taking care of. A lot of the officers there were Kurdish. We deliberately try to get guys who wouldn't get drawing under the sectarian schism. That included having a lot of Kurdish officers. All these dudes were like, you know, Iran-Iraq war bats. They were fucking desert storm vats.

Although, like I said, none of them would admit to. I'd go, you know, fucking smoke hookah and drink fucking tiger energy drinks with these guys at night and talk to them and they bring their shoebox full of Iran-Iraq war photos out. He did look like any fucking soldiers away from the flagpole anywhere ever. You know, they'd have du-rags, they'd have bullet belts, you know. You know, this is like their fucking Polaroid from the Iran-Iraq war. It was interesting.

Yeah, so, you know, like I said, first nine Iraq, we had a few big missions. We had Havana. That was probably the biggest thing we did in terms of prisoners taken. We took 27 prisoners that day. I think eight of them were high-value targets. They were al-Qaeda. Havana was a village that we basically did a deliberate attack on a daylight assault. The word was like everything in the fucking village

was hostile. So this was the first time that we brought the ICTF out in its entirety. Not with the commandos. I'm not talking about the Isov brigade. Now I'm talking about the ICTF. So as far as I understand, this was the first time the ICTF had fought as like an entire task force all at once. And this is about June 12, 2007. And we hit this fucking town and just spent the whole day going through this town during the daylight and took 27 prisoners.

and man I have a support by fire and you know this is my fucking this is my daylight you know assault and Iraq you know I got the support by fire and I remember hitting a fucking ground on a helicopter and going into a full sprint and I had all my assault kit

and I had a fucking rucksack with like three thermobarglas and like you know I don't know maybe four 600 rounds of 762 ammunition for the machine guns and Socia was moving. He's the fucking 2-10 Sarat Major. He decided to come out. This is the CSM. He decided to come out with us. And solid, solid, fucking dude, man. Solid.

He was amazing that day. So I'm hitting the ground. It's like fucking Don. You know, this is like my one daytime op. I'm sprinting to the support by fire position because, you know, I got the assault coming in and I want to get things set up. And I'm fucking sprinting and it's daytime. And I got all this shit and it's fucking hot as like a fucking hundred and something

fucking degrees and everything's getting sparkly and I remember thinking I should have done more cardio you know I remember I remember thinking that you know because when I went over to Iraq it was like hey man you're going to get in way more like physical fights than like gun fights

you're going to be in people's apartments they're not going to want to come with you you're going to be like fucking throwing down with motherfuckers you know like go over there and be intimidating and I went over like 220 all I was doing was like power lifting and boxing, you know, so I'm all bolted up and

I just remember running under all that shit and thinking, God damn, man, I should have done more cardio. And then I look back and there's like everybody like all straggled back, like way back and I'm like, okay, it's not just me. And then the fucking, the fucking I could hear the mortars start firing. I could hear the insurgents start dropping fucking around.

I was down the tubes. And I was like, God, it's just, it's all getting better. It's just all starting. getting battery. And we got a support by fire to sign all up and you know most of the rest of the morning was on eventful

and then that turned into like a turned into the collection point for like women and children and so as the day goes on pretty soon I got literally like 40 women with kids out you know sitting by the support

by fire and they're all crying all these kids are crying man There was always like serious school, you know, where they lock in a fucking box and you got to listen to like kids crying. We're fucking, dude, listening to kids crying. And I'm just like, fuck, man. You know, I wish I could do anything to these fucking kids. Because I got to tell you, you know, I ain't got no fucking hate for anybody's family. You know, like I'll go into a dude's house and fucking put him in a hood and some fucking zip ties and drag his ass out.

I ain't got no fucking grievance against his wife and kids, man. You know, same in the situation. Like, I felt bad for the fucking kids. And I told that story to my 10th group buddy once. you fucking rookie, he goes, you got to bring a bag of tootsie pops. You give a tootsie pop for the fucking kids. He goes, that's why they keep them in like doctor's office. You give a to titzy pop for the kids, you know, and it gives them something to put in their mouth,

and they quiet down. And then, you know, the moms tend to be a little funnier to you, and sometimes they'll tell you shit. Like, you know, we don't like that guy either. He fucking beats us. You know, look over there. There's a fucking arms cachet or something. But, yeah, that they sucked.

And then, Jesus, just even getting out of there. turned into a fucking nightmare. You know, it was, I forgot what kind of helicopters they were, you know, but like, when you get the big rotor wash, you know, you get like the massive rotor wash that will almost

like take you up and fucking lift you. And they sat down and it's like any other place that's flat and fucking Iraq. It's muddy. So these helicopters came to Expelos and it's like mudflats. And everybody's crawling and I mean literally crawling through this mud.

and reminded me like this, the Marines had an obstacle course in Hawaii that was like that. It was like crawling through peanut butter, you know, and so everyone's crawling through this peanut bar, like on their bellies trying to get to the fucking birds, you know, because they can't stand up. And this is at the end of the day. This is after like literally, like, we've done a fucking donned to dust assault on this fucking town and everybody's worn the fuck out. Yeah. And, you know, drony and weird and you're trying, you know, like crawling through the fucking mud and like, oh, like, like here's a law rocket. Somebody fucking left a law rocket in a fucking mud, man.

And here was a belt of machine gun ammunition, you know, where it got left in the fucking mud. And it was like finding treasure in the fucking mud on the way. And I'm the ex-o, dude. I'm like, this is a fucking nightmare. I got to get back in Missouri every thing. This is terrible. And, you know, we finally got on the birds and, like, literally on the birds,

watching guys just all laying on their backs, like doing the dying cockroach, you know. Yeah, you know, everybody's fucking, everybody's fucked up, you know, nobody's eaten, everybody's worn out, and probably like borderline fucking heat injury. And there was Sosha, man. Socha was like the only dude still on his feet. And he was, you know, he's a credible dude, man. And, like, I liked him and, you know, cancer fucking killed him a couple of years later.

And that sucks. Because, you know, goddamn, man, if you want to fucking, I guess, find out what somebody's about. go, you know, be under fire with them and, yeah, have a shitty day with them, you know. Any other than that was, you know, particular operations from that time period that, like, stand out in your mind? Well, yeah, I mean, like I said, that was one, that was Savannah, and that was just because of the fucking prisoner account we took. There was one that I thought was hilariously funny because we had a guy coming in from

my ran and you know he was it was like I said you know these were all HVTs man most these guys were you know they were low teens or single digits so you know we're talking about like hey I'm gonna go like the number eight guy or the fucking number 13 guy or whatever this guy was one of the one of the bigger dudes and he was coming in from Iran and he was coming into the civilian side of biop and the idea was we were going to have guys go out there dressed as his PSD, like roll his PSD and dress as his PSD and get him when he came off the plane. And this thing,

he got delayed and like this mission got scrubbed and got scrubbed and got scrubbed and I remember like day four coming down because, you know, I got like the swing shift fucking sleep schedule, you know? And I remember coming down the breakfast one day.

And I was like, hey man, that fucking mission ever, or one of the guys offered me, he offered me like some fucking big goods. It was, you know, not a cookie, but like some like Baklava type shit, right? And I remember eating like this Baklava on our little defect. And I was like, you know, that fucking mission ever go last night, he goes, yes, sir, you're eating his, you're eating his fucking big goods.

Like he was bringing back my reign. That was like the gift for his life. So that was good. That was probably like the feel good mission of the whole thing, you know. And then like my big one, I got to take the brigade out. I was like, I guess that's supposed to be the big feather of my military tab.

Let's talk about that next, Mike. I want to hear about that. I'm going to hit up a couple of user questions first before we roll into it. Richard, thank you. SFN. Says Mike Rules, thank you. Brent Post-Hawk, ergo proctor hock says, good vibes

only, choose, gents. scrolling down here, scrolling down, scrolling down. His daughter was in the chat. His daughter is in the chat? Your daughter is in the chat, Mike. Yeah, I'm trying to keep a PG, man. I know. Trying to keep a little PG-13 today.

Alejandro says, Ranger School, 1993, was this one that was still four phases. Desert Phase was still around, right? Yeah. So you went through the last hard class? The last hard. Oh, yeah, totally, totally the last heart class.

And Desert Phase rocks, and if you didn't get it, like, you know, you're hurting man sorry you know i was gonna say when you were talking about showing up the ranger school emaciated that's basically how you train for ranger school is to starve yourself everybody told me you gotta go to steak and ale or fucking you know steak and shake or whatever like every day before you got to go in with the extra 20 so you can lose the turn yourself up yeah i agree with that approach uh a a alexa says uh being in the siff did you ever help bros out by accepting dirty TA 50 or with missing items. Kid and kidding. Great episodes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I did

everything in my power to make sure nothing got rejected because it had like, you know, red clay on it. So this is an inside military army joke because SIF also stands for a central issue facility, which is where you get all of your gear from. And when you, when you transfer units or when you leave them the army you have to take all your they have to sign off that you return to all your gear before you can actually get out and like some of the people are if there's a speck of dust on it like it it has to be cleaner than when you got it basically yeah or they send you back to go clean again um so guys if you have uh questions for mike uh get them in otherwise mike go ahead please continue this story about the brigade size operation that you ran yeah Mike so

Oh, go ahead. Like I said, man, that was a July 4th raid. That was supposed to be the 4th of July rate. That's cool. And, you know, like, being given a 4th of July rate, I felt like I'd won some, I don't know, like All-American Boy Prize or something. You know, like, I'm going to go do a fucking rate on the 4th of July. And I think technically it became the 5th of July just because of the timelines. But so this was, this was like the big, the big fucking shakeout for the ICE op brigade.

As I understand, as I was told, this was the first time that brigade had operated as a brigade. We took the whole fucking show on the road. Commandos, everybody. And the idea was what we figured out was that to take out, you know, most of our missions were aimed at IED manufacturer. Most of our missions were actually aimed at VBID manufacture car bombs. we did a whole car bomb factories where there were like you know 26 fucking cars in line you know stuff like that so um we figured out that look man if you hit an iED cell you have to take the whole sell out because if you leave part of the cell that cell can replicate these guys can train replates for the guys you took so you

have to take the whole cell at once and um you know it's extending that to networks and like hey take a whole network out, do an entire network at once. That was kind of, like I said, that's what we were trying to do on July 4th, 2007. So we went and hit an ID network. I was given 24 hours to plan all fucking, you know, goddamn internet's going out. It's all right. It'll catch back up. You'll still hear me?

Yeah. So, once I had a whole IED network, and we went in, it was like a video, it was a vehicle drop-off, which was good, because when we did Havana and we just had the ICTF, the lift part of it was insane. Because, you know, you've got night aviation assets assigned to you, but you'll, you need extra assets. So you got daylight aviation, and now you're taking guys off their normal sleep cycle. So you've got intermingled aviation assets and it was literally tight to the point of look. If you go to fucking hover for five minutes, you're going to have to start refueling people and it was fucking not. So like, you know, doing the fucking air sync matrix for, you know, task force size stuff is fucking nuts, man. So this was like a VDO, which is good because this was literally an entire brigade.

And we did a brigade raid. It was three simultaneous strikes and three different neighborhoods in Baghdad. It was, I want to say, eight high-value targets and 10 persons of interest, and I think it was maybe 10 structures total. But going out and doing like a brigade hit where, you know, you got calm issues because, you know, fucking some of the technology and our operability issues we had at the time. It was fucking nuts, man. So we went out and hit, you know, hit these three fucking different targets. And that was a good night for me in some ways.

Like, you know, for me it was mostly going up a fucking stairwell. You know, again, it's one of those things where like all the work went into the planning. and all that. And then like once shit starts to unfold, my job is pretty simple. It's just to maintain comms up and down and, you know, be the manager of violence as I think one of the others called being an SF officer. You know, I'm the manager of violence. But for me, it was going up like a stairwell with a couple of 18 echoes and then, um, to pull a security while they get comms up and then, you know, like I said, just directing traffic after that. And that was a good night for me and that I put a dot on a dude's chest and you know that this time um you know if you're like reaching under a fucking

mattress or reaching into a dresser drawer like you have discretion to shoot a person you know so i'm up on a rooftop and i'm like watching some dude and and everyone's sleeping on the roots because it's fucking summer and he went under his he went under his fucking mat and i remember like you know watching that dude and thinking you know if he comes out with a weapon in his hands i'm gonna drop him but not like until that and he didn't he didn't he fucking i don't know what he was doing i don't fucking give a fuck what he was doing but he didn't come out with a weapon and i was really glad i didn't shoot him and you know like he went back to bad and i sometimes would think about that dude when i was depressed that i'd be like i hope he's doing something good with himself you know like

cancer or something fucking that was but um you know so i was up on the roof and then you know things went down and I went back down and man so the bomb maker the main guy we were we were going to get he was bald he was bald and I went back down I remember my guys

were like I had two guys put in fucking tasers they was to his head and they were saying happy 4th of July motherfucker you know and that was you know that was my that was my fucking my mistake because I said some dumb shit about the 4th of July and

you know, killing people being a special on our nation's birthday. And I got to tell you, man, like, as a leader, like, be careful what you say to your fucking guys, because you know, things tend to... You're setting the tone, man. Right, right. You're setting the tone for your fucking unit, so

don't fucking chest, don't posture. There's really no good reason to do that. And, you know, like I said, man, I don't know my bullshit. I want my fucking mistakes. And all I can say, I was probably a little bit fucking nervous about leading a brigade, because I'll fucking, I've never a brigading combat that was like new for me. So, um, you know, I may have, I may have, I may have done a little chess thal thing in my, you know, like warm up pregame speech.

And again, that's like life lessons. Uh, don't do that. Um, so yeah, I got the, I got, I walked into the happy Fourth of July motherfucker and dudes were putting tasers on the guy's head and then I remember just being like, you know, all right, clock with orange. Let's, you know, fucking wrap it up and get out of here. And leaving. And like you said, things went pretty well. And,

you know, I got, you know, a few high-value targets off the objective that night. And like I said, things, things went smoothly other than, you know,

the fucking tasers to the head thing. Which, those things came into play a lot during technical questioning. And, you know, think I love that a lot when I'm online and I'm discussing morality and, you know, it's like, hey, man, yes, we were definitely like putting tasers on people's ball sacks and shit like that on occasion. But, you know, like, you know, while that is probably not ethically sound, I guess my standard was always don't ever do anything to another human being they can't walk away from. Yeah.

You know, and, you know, like I said, man, and the environment of the time, I mean, my average fucking day in Iraq, was going into the detention facility and seeing people in stress positions because we had our own detention facility and we could keep guys for 48 hours and another 24 hours if we wrote a fucking paragraph explaining why we needed to keep them. So my average day was going into a fucking detention facility and seeing people in hoods and stress positions and then policing up the weapons that were seized and then filing a gray arms report with the Defense Intelligence Agency and then if I had anything that was that I thought would contribute to one of the CIA programs because they had a fucking defeat program going at the time. I'd set stuff aside for them. And, you know, but goddamn, man. I mean, like, the environment at the time was just brutal. You know, it's fucking summer of 2007, and it was just fucking brutal.

And, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, you're trying not to let it get out of hand. But at the same time, I mean, shit, man. every night, every fucking morning I'm talking to JAG because we'd bring the Iraqi prisoners in and the old ICTF guys would just beat the shit out of them the whole way back so every morning I'm like showing up and these guys

are beat the fuck up in their photos and I got the Jagass at 8 o'clock to resubmit shooter statements because they all look cut in pace and everybody looks beat to shit and it's like yeah they're beat to shit man like you know sorry nobody wants to get on the home view with us and then once they do like

you know the Iraqi's got them and like like they tell me in the Q-course, their host nation forces, man. They don't, I don't give them orders. They fucking don't work for me. I can tell them, hey, like, maybe you don't do that. And, you know, purported to hire, and that's about it.

But, like, that's the nature of the beast, man. I'm not apologizing for it. And I'm not advocating for it. I'm just saying that's how things were in the summer 2007. And the challenge is, is that when special forces or other elements are working with these host nation units, and you don't have real authority over them

and they do something egregious and it gets out, then it comes back on you that you're training these death squads and these torture teams and things like that. Often you have very little control of what they do. And that's all supposed to be, like, hashed out through the Leahy Amendment that they're supposed to vet these units

and if they're doing shit that they're not supposed to be doing, then maybe our government is supposed to pull back. back from it, but they don't, but again, political reasons. Jake, Jack, I got a pee. Yeah, go for it. Go for it, Mike. Guys, thank you for us again tonight. Mike's got to take

a quick piss break, which is awesome. Please remember to subscribe to the channel if you haven't, and let me hit you guys up with next week. Next week's episode will be 192. We're going to have Nick Brockhausen and Jeff Miller back

on the show. They are both Special Forces veterans, Nick Brockhaus and served in MacV. Saga. And he wrote a couple of the books here that are behind us. What do we got? Whispers in the Tallgrass? That's one of his. And we few is the other. But Jeff and Nick have a new book coming out called Vagabonds. And it's about their post-Vietnam post-military service as mercenaries, if you will. Paramilitary contractors, right? Aaron and Terry kind doing interesting things all around the world

and getting into a fair amount of trouble. So those guys are very colorful, to say the least. A good time. A very good time. Yeah. And we'll have those gentlemen on the show next week. I'm looking forward to that. If you have any questions for,

I know a few of you have gotten them in, if you have any questions for Mike that you'd like me to ask them, jump in there. otherwise Dave, do you want to know how much he has to donate to hear you sing the ballad of the Green Beret?

$100. That's the minimum, $100. Do you know the whole thing? Hell no, of course I don't. I'll have to read it. And if you donate $1,000, I will sing the entire score of the HMS Pinafore. In a Speedo.

You're volunteering too much here, Dave. I'm not caring too much. Also, just a reminder. We have a lot of guests lined up for the next three months out. But for episode of 100, we're going to try to throw a rager right here in the studio for all of our local guests,

our previous guests who live locally. It'll probably just be a big drunk bullshit session, drunken bullshit session. All right, Mike, here's a question from a viewer. He says, did you ever serve with my cousin, Colonel Mike Kavanaugh? He commanded a battalion in first group and detachment K. No, I don't think so. I only remember one Kavanaugh.

He was a list of dude with me back in like 92. All right. Any concluding thoughts about the Iraq deployment or anything else you want to bring up? I mean, shit, man. all kinds of stuff I can tell you about the electric plan. I bet. I'm trying to keep it on a somewhat lighter note tonight just because, like I said, I've got a mixed audience. So, you know, I'm keeping a PG-13 for some things. I will tell you a funny story, though. I brought a suit to Iraq. You know, I brought a suit to Iraq.

Because, you know, like when I was enlisted, it was like, hey, man, never go anywhere without a set of civilian clothes. and as an officer was like, hey, they were going anywhere without a suit. And when I was deploying, you know, because we deployed under 10th group, they jaded us. They jaded us, those fucking pricks jaded us. So I actually had to take my guys from fucking Okinawa, Japan, and fly them out to Fort Carson, Colorado, so I could fly from Carson, Colorado to Iraq because, you know, at some point some Air Force dude called some ass three at fucking 210. And the guy was like, oh, yeah, I got X in Lov.

people and didn't bother to look at the fact that some of us weren't fucking Japan. So you know the rule about Jad is don't be late and don't be light, right? So now I got to deploy to Colorado to go to Iraq. So when we got to, we got the Colorado, you know, like I said, I brought a fucking suit with me, man. And the 10th group guys, the entire fucking way, when we were unloading the plane, I was up in the fucking belly of the plane unloading because of some dick put me on baggage handling detail and I can hear every motherfucker you know on this like fire brigade ant trail being like who the fuck brought a suit what kind of a dumb fucking new guy rookie motherfucker brings a suit to Iraq you know like what the fuck man you know so I'm over in

Iraq for a couple of months and they're like hey any you officers bring a suit we got So we got an escort officer detail to bring the Iraqi officers over to UAE for a terror symposium. It's the first time they've been invited since they invaded Kuwait. So I was like, I have a seat. And it's like, hey, do you want us to clean out the mini bar in your room before you show up since you're on general order number one? And it's like, no, no, no. leave the fucking minibar

I'll be on the honor system so I got to go to UAE I got to go to Abu Dhabi with four Iraqi officers and you know we fucking talk falconry with NBC and shit and it was cool

it was a pretty fucking awesome little side quest from my Iraq deployment and as it turned out the event coordinator for NBC was Charlie Wilson's daughter, one of his stepdaters, actually. And that's my Charlie Wilson connection. That's, you know, so later down the road,

Charlie Wilson actually invited me into Vegas to the opening night of Charlie Wilson's war, which I turned down, much to my regret, and I will regret that to the end of my fucking days. But, you know, there you go. Bring a suit. Bring a set of civilian clothes. For the bonus segment, I'd like to talk to you, you know, after we finish here, I'd like to talk to you for the bonus segment if I can keep you a little bit longer about Afghanistan and your deployment there. But to kind of start wrapping up this episode a little bit, Jim G. asks, what is Mike doing now?

What is, does he miss the adventure? And so I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about, you know, your kind of post-service career and where you're at today. Oh, sure, man. First of all, do I miss the adventure? Yeah. Also, as every one of my friends told me, when it's time for you to go, you'll know it. And my last, shit, man, the last part of my career was being by name requested through branch, by name requested, by name request. I got by name requested three times. And then I got asked to come back from Afghanistan, and I asked to extend, and General Miller asked me to extend. And When I got back to Bragg and was like, what the fuck was the hurry? They gave me a statue dedication ceremony to manage for Carolyn Kennedy. And that same week, I think I wound up at Usasak, General Mulholland because he was shutting down some courses to fund some other courses. I had some differences of opinion with them about it.

But long story short, I knew it was time for me to fucking go. and I went and I have no regrets about that. These days, you know, Jesus, man, I try to be, you know, I try to be a pillar of my community as corny as that sounds. You know, pre-pandemic, I was spending a day a week volunteering at a food bank and, you know, I try to fucking shirk up the local homeless shelter and the women's shelter. And, you know, in the winter I pack fucking survival backpacks for the homeless population around the Detroit area.

stuff like that. It's, you know, frankly, you know, I think I do better personally when I'm trying to look after other people. So I try to incorporate some of that into my life in terms of, you know, service to community where I used to find purpose and service to my nation. Now I find purpose and service to my community. Right. Do you have a nonprofit or a charity, or anything you'd like to plug right now? No, I usually tell people, you know, look after your community, man. Like, you know, again, there's homeless shelters, there's women's shelters, there's food banks, and frankly, you know, I think as a nation, we have too many people in prison, so there's

prison reform to look at. You know, for the land of the free, we seem to be somewhat of a carceral state, and I think we can do better about that. do better about that. I think there's better ways to handle that. I think we should look at some of the best practices of other nations and think about adopting them and maybe not be so

intent on punishment and maybe be a little more focused on rehabilitation. But no. Knowles is always good. Noles is good. National outdoor leadership schools, they do a lot of first aid in search and rescue stuff. If you want to sugar somebody up, give to Knowles. I put my kids through their wilderness first aid courses. I put my kids

friends through their wilderness first aid courses. I put my friends' kids through wilderness first aid courses. These courses teach kids to fucking work through a crisis and look out for other people and they give practical skills and I think frankly that's a pretty good foundation to weighing a kid, you know? Mike, I actually wanted to, when we were talking about it, I wanted to ask you this, but, you know, you had a rebellious childhood, and, you know, and then you, when you became, like, the platoon leader of a light infantry platoon, what, 25th ID out in the lion,

was that it, and you had these kids with, you know, different challenges, do you think that that really, because I think you probably gave them more attention and more support than what people typically associate a PL with giving his soldiers. Do you feel as though your childhood and your sort of rebellious upbringing and knowing that you sort of course corrected, gave you the insight to help these kids out and to be patient with them? Oh, yeah, man. Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, some people didn't have much of a chance to start with, and I think you should absolutely.

you know, try to develop those people as much as possible. Like I said, my, my challenge is an infantry platoon leader is at a certain point. If you pose a hazard to the other 40 people, if there's somebody I can't trust with live ammunition or grenades, I need to get rid of you. I'm sorry, that's that's my role. I'm still in the force protection fucking line of work. You know, I still have to look after the collective. But, you know, goddamn, man, you know, some people need some work and there's quite a few people. Like, my fucking team sergeant choking my ass out to go to college, it's a pretty extreme example.

But goddamn, man, if that guy hadn't given me a little bit of fucking extra attention and told me to go further myself from an education perspective, things probably would have turned out way different for me. And I know, frankly, like I said, college, college was great. Man, I never expected that. I didn't think I'd get anything good out of that. Do you think that one of the challenges in military leadership sometimes is that, you know, leaders, whether their insurers or officers, treat their soldiers like resources instead of humans? Right, right.

I always told my guys, look at your soldiers as a 20-year investment. Think of your soldiers as a 20-investment always. If I could go back and revise that at this point in my life, I'd say think of your soldiers as a lifetime investment. because it's not just the 20 years, it's the values they're going to leave the military with, it's the values they're going to reassimilarate into society with, you know, you should absolutely look at your people's long-term investment. One of the biggest problems I saw in the military was you get leaders come in and they got 12 to 24 months.

They want to maximize their, you know, their performance for 12 to 24 months. They will ride their fucking people hard and put them away wet. And one of the challenges of leadership is saying, look, man, I need to groom my performers. I can't spend all my time, you know, like working on my non-performers. I need to find my strong people, and I need to make sure they go to the right schools, and I need to get them into the right career positions of the right time. I need to identify my future leaders, and I need to groom them. And that means doing without them sometimes.

I mean, like I said, you send a person away to a military school, and you don't have them. So, you know, sorry as a military leader, if you've got, you know, 10 to 20% of your force, like, doing professional development and not helping you out in, like, some NTC or something. And the Army, like, pushes these guys to perform at 100%, keeps them super stressed out at this high level, and then cuts them loose for, like, a four-day weekend, and is, like, beside themselves when, like, eight of them get DUIs. It's like, how could this happen? Or into a bar fight with, like, how could this possibly have you? Yeah, the Ranger model. The Ranger model. I don't understand.

You know, let me keep you, like, fucking on a chain and abused and then, like, act surprise when, you know, the first time you're given some freedom, you go out and, like, show your ass. Oh, I remember when that really kind of came into, like, I, for one, have no idea what he eats by that. But I remember when that came into the environment, you know, where it was no alcohol-related. incidents. If you're drinking,

it doesn't matter if you started the fight. It doesn't matter if you got jumped. It doesn't matter anything. If you're out of Italian, you're released for standards. Like it became, and again, like you say, you go out, you train hard, you do this. And each, and it's probably like this in the conventional army too, but in Ranger Battalion, the platoon leader shows up.

It's his, it's sort of his make or break moment, right, for his whole career. Sure. you know, a young officer, and like you say, they're going to drive their platoon, they're there for 18 months, whatever, they're going to drive their platoon relentlessly, you know, to check those boxes, and they're going to check out and go move on, and the next officer is going to come in and do the exact same thing. Yeah, that's what I saw my whole career. You know, like I took note of it.

I mean, that was part of learning leadership, was paying attention to what I, guess I thought was negative, you know, when I was working for people and what I thought was kind of corrosive to performance and cohesion was just everybody kind of wants to come in and like ride your guys as hard as they can and put them away wet for 12 to 24 months and then move on. But the next guy's going to do the same thing and it's going to go over and over again and then pretty soon like you got a bunch of broken dudes man and you know or broken people. It's like that's not helping anybody. So, like, as a leader, as a good leader, you kind of got to be aware that, look, man, it's not just all about making my OER bullets.

It's about, you know, I need to, I need to put value back into the force. Again, I need to think of these people. It's best in the human being, yeah. Yeah. Alejandro here says, $100 to sing the ballad. Will a cup full of grog be involved after you finish? Maybe. What are you guys drinking? No scotch. I'm drinking Peroni. Dave is drinking LaFroy. What are you drinking there, Mike? I'm drinking Guinness. Right on. Someone told me it was a power move to drink it out of the can, so I figured I'd flex it. Right on, right on. A little collar move.

Adam says, I hope people appreciate how real this is. Such golden here. Phenomenal interview, Mike. Keep up the great stuff, fellas. Thank you. Thank you. we get David's about Colonel Mike Cabinal? Yes, we ask that. Sorry about that. So, guys, I think we're going to kind of wrap up here. I'd like to, you know, Mike, if I can keep you for the bonus segment to talk about Afghanistan a little bit, your time there. This has been awesome, man. And like, super, like, you should probably write like some sort of memoir or this should be a Netflix movie or something, Mike. This is a really interesting story you had to tell tonight.

I started putting some vignettes on paper several years ago just because I fucking forget shit all the time. I forget entire chains of events and then someone will bring something up and I'll be like, oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, like all this shit happened. It's like I probably ought to write that stuff down, you know? So, yeah. Yeah, you know, I put it down, man. I got, you know, I got multiple hand injuries and I drank a lot, so I tend to forget shit.

All right, guys. So I hope you join us for the bonus set. everyone will see you next Friday with Jeff Miller and Nick Brockhausen take care thank you Mike really please