The Team House - 3rd Ranger Batt & JSOC Joint Medical Augmentation Unit Medic | Mike Chavaree | Ep. 291

Episode Date: August 17, 2024

Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse—————————————————————-Todays sponsors: ⬇️PIA VPN⬇️https://www.piavpn.com/teamhouseCayman Cigars ⬇️https://caymancigars.com/TEAMHOUSEPre-order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#armyrangers #jsocBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house. Special operations. Covert ops. Espionage. The Team House with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 291 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy, here with David Park. And tonight, our guest on the show is Mike Chavory. He served in a third Ranger Battalion as a medic where I knew him back in the day. And then he went on, had a great career as a special operations medic, including service in the Joint Medical Augmentation Unit, and retired as a sergeant major. We're really excited to talk to Mike tonight. I really been looking forward to this episode for quite a while. I've got to give a quick shout out to one of our sponsors before we get into it. I've been smoking a sovereign number three from Cayman Cigars. So is there anything better than sitting down with a nice cigar to unwind from the day? I would say no. I love having

cigars to celebrate after a great show. Actually, I celebrate during the show, not after. So this podcast is sponsored by Cayman Cigar Company. They make premium cigars using the highest quality Caribbean tobacco, and the cigars are hand-rolled by master cigar rollers. What makes Cayman so unique is they are the world's only premium cigar company to donate 100% of net profits to charity. Every dollar that they don't use to roll cigars goes back to local and international charitable organizations from creating entrepreneurial opportunities from marginalized populations

to supporting the self-sufficiency of those in addiction recovery, to providing specialized assistance to U.S. veterans. Just for the Teamhouse listeners, they've created a custom sampler pack so you can enjoy all their top cigars in one pack. Head to caymancigars.com slash team house to check out the sampler. So enjoy a cigar and give back to those in need. Head to Caymancigars.com slash team house

to check out our sampler while supplies last and use the code Teamhouse for 10% off your order. Once again, that's Cayman Cigars with an S.com, backslash Teamhouse for 10% off and make sure you use my promo code, Teamhouse, so they know that we sent you there. And I've been enjoying this one and a few others from their sampler pack. So I hope you guys will go and check them out. We appreciate them sponsoring the show. Mike, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks, guys. And I apologize we couldn't be there in person. I really wanted to be, but we just moved into this house up in Maine. And it's been,

crazy. Yeah, next time. You're welcome here anytime. So, Mike, I'm going to ask you what I ask most of our guests about their upbringing. If you can tell us a little bit about sort of like how you grew up and like what that path was that took you towards eventually Ranger Battalion. Sure. So I didn't come from a military background. I didn't have family in the military for the most part. We grew up here in Maine. Most of my family in a 20, 30-mile radius. But just growing up through elementary school and then beyond, I was that kid at Rose Plain Army in the woods and had camouflage passed down from friends and stuff like that.

So it just kind of seemed like it would be interesting. I didn't have any knowledge from anybody else or anything like that. And this is obviously pretty much a lot. even the military back then is not quite what we know it is today. So I think I didn't really know that I really wanted to do it until about a sophomore junior in high school. And I joined the National Guard and did that whole split-off program where I went to basic training in between my junior senior year.

I signed up to be a diesel mechanic and I thought that's what I wanted to do at the time. But finished high school and went straight to AIT. as a decent mechanic and graduated September 6th of 2001. So a few days later, that's kind of when the story completely changed. But as far as my bringing up, it's very unremarkable, I suppose. We were very tight as a family, but it didn't come from money, didn't come from luxury one bit, but we did have a pretty tight family. That's cool.

Very supportive. And they still are. So they're still here in Maine. That's mostly why we move back to cool. So you are a diesel mechanic when 9-11 hits. What happened for you after that? Yeah, so I got a call pretty much right after it happened. And I had to report up to Bangor for Operation Noble Eagle.

I think this was kind of before they dubbed it, an Operation of Legal. but they did a gate guard for all the National Guard Reserve training sites, and this is the Bangor International Airport that were there securing, if you will. And so I did that for, I don't know, about a year. So it was 179-day orders, and then they put you on orders again, so they don't have to pay the full benefits looking back. It was probably kind of shoddy.

But nonetheless, one of the first news articles I saw back then was, you know, third Ranger Battalion had two casualties, Stone'syper Edmonton, like right away, helicopter incident, and then also, you know, they conducted a combat jump into Afghanistan. So that was pretty much all the news back in the day. So I knew that I wanted to go active. I enjoyed the active lifestyle, even though it was the National Guard. I still enjoyed the uniform stuff and doing all that.

And so I think as soon as I could get my conditional release, I set my goals right on a third Ranger battalion specifically. And it's kind of corning, too, but that's like right around the time Blacklock Down came out. And it was kind of impressionable at the time. So I figured if I was going to do something, might as well do it right. And so I talked to the recruiter about switching over, and I knew I didn't want to be a mechanic. I actually wanted to be infantry. But they said it wasn't available.

Looking back, once again, I think I got deep there. So they signed me up as a medic. At the time, I didn't even want to be a medic. They're like, well, they're with the infantry, so, you know, you could do that. And so we went through the whole process, and they always say that recruiters kind of screw over. I actually did get screwed over, but it worked out. The only way that could get me in a contract for a medic was to say that I was not prior service. So I actually went down to Fort Benning again after I already completed basic training.

I agreed to do basic training again because I wanted to go active. And I thought this whole Afghanistan thing was going to be a one year, two-year thing. And I wanted to get in there. But so I went down to repeat basic training again. And the drill sergeants came out and they were like, hey, you know, is anybody prior service? I raised my hand. And of course, I looked like I was 12 years old. And they're like, when did you go through basic training?

I was like, you know, about a year ago. And so they identified that. I didn't have to do basic training again. They sent me straight to Fort Sandin, Houston. So I kind of dodged that pole. Yeah. But even then, there was really no information about Rangers,

what they do, especially the Ranger Regiment. I think everything at that time was, you know, a Ranger, meant Ranger Tab. Regiment was, you know, they knew they had black berets at the time. But there was no information. I think that probably motivated me even more to join the organization. So I kind of set my sights on that. And every step of the way, I was at AIT, I had to volunteer for Airborne School,

and as Airborne School had to volunteer for RIP. And it pretty much just worked out. So I was pretty lucky there. So keeping in mind the track for combat medics, You had to go to your conventional combat medic AIT after you were blessed off at basic. Yeah, that's 16 weeks long. And like I said, I didn't even want to be a medic. So I didn't know anything about medicine.

Didn't really care for too much. So did that whole 16 week program. And, you know, as we discussed going on further throughout my career, I realized how much of a complete waste of time doing the 60 whiskey program. was, but thankfully now they've kind of straightened it out and it's a pretty good program now. And it was kind of difficult too because I knew I was doing it and I knew it was kind of a waste of time because at that time I'd learned a little bit about what Stockham was, Special Operations Combat Medical course.

And most of the people I had talked to that had been or tried to go and failed out or whatever we're saying it was like the hardest school they've ever done and pretty much forget everything you're learning now. So I already kind of went into the 68 whiskey program thinking, you know, just I might have to bring dump a lot of this stuff. And it was very basic, very, you know, just, I think at the time, turnicits were still taboo. So I think my biggest disconcern with all of it, it wasn't very combat focused.

Yeah. I think there was even like healthcare specialists at the time and it wasn't a very combat focus. And I joined for, you know, I went that route for a reason. So I was a little bit disappointed with that. But I think they've straightened that out nowadays too. So, yeah, that whole 16 weeks was pretty much I was considered prior service at AIT. So my experience was vastly different because I had already AID qualified or whatever.

So I had weekends off and we're allowed to wear civilian clothes. So the experience is really wasn't that bad. I met a lot of great friends that I still talk to today on a weekly basis. So it's pretty good experience that as far as that's concerned. When you say that the course wasn't that good, I'm assuming it's because they were preparing you for any job in a hospital that you could have in the military. So, you know, you like some time in labs, you know, with labs, with radiology, with a lot of stuff that just was not applicable.

Is that correct? Yeah, that is correct. And I think a big problem that it had and, you know, I think that they might still have to deal with today is that. credentialing piece. So you have to be at least an EMC basic. And so I think that's a good thing, but it's also a bad thing because, you know, a combat medicating army is well beyond EMT basic. But I think the reason why they wanted to do that is as folks transition out of the military, you know, they were going on unemployment. And they, you know, they had nothing to really

fall back on. And so having this certification, I think kind of helped them out a little bit. But the problem is that the EMT basic, you can't really do a whole lot. Right. And so we had to train up for several weeks to pass an exam. And as soon as that was done, it was like, okay, well, forget all that. You know, here's combat medicine, which is a little bit better, the ANC basic. So I think that the way it was structured was a little bit ineffective. And, you know, if I was Sergeant Major of the World, as I used to say when I was in uniform,

I would have probably liked to have seen the 68-Liskey combat medic kind of mirror the infantry. So you're going down there, it's O-Sit. Here's a rifle. Because even as a combat medic, my rifle is, you know, it's my lifeline there. So, you know, you've got your rifle. Here's your aid bag. And you're integrated with the infantry. And I think that's a really big problem nowadays because they graduate to 68 weeks.

of course, and they haven't shot a rifle in a month, and they haven't maneuvered at all with the infantrymen that they're now potentially deploying with. And I see that as a huge capability gap. Yeah. So those are all the things I was thinking, you know, while I was there and also looking back, I see that as a massive problem.

Yeah. So you finish that and then it's off to airborne school and RIP, right? Yeah, that's correct. So we were training up. I did have airborne. I had to think back this several years ago. but I'm pretty sure I had Airborne locked into my contract. And at the time, we had A.K.O.

And I pulled up A.K.O. And it said I was destined for Fort Hood. So I was ready to jump out of window at that time. But they had this little group that could volunteer for RIP. So I'm not sure if I volunteered for RIP at, I think I volunteered at Airborne School. but we were like preparing for it at the Cate Whiskey Forest. There was cadre there that were familiar with it, so that definitely helped us out a little bit. So when we were catching up the other day, we kind of realized that we probably went through the same rip course in 2003.

Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure we did. And it was looking back, it was pretty rigorous course. I think we only had 25, 26 people make it. But it was pretty rugged. I think it's relative because at the time I don't think I did anything hard. But, you know, going through that, it was quite a test. That's all. I'm glad they've changed it now.

Now it's more of an assessment selection. So you're learning something because even in RIP, you know, I went through and it was great. You know, I finally got my tambouret and put on my Ranger panties with my little teeny legs. But I really didn't know how to be a Ranger. And so, you know, in today's, you know, RASP, one and two, I think they're vastly more prepared than we were at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of people even use RIF as a way to get to Airborne school. So I know for a fact, some dudes are like, well, now that I'm here, you know, they'd already got the jump wings.

They're like, I quit on day one. Like, what a massive misuse of, you know, a plot or whatever, but there's a lot of folks. And then the first few days, I think, we lost at least 100 probably. But there were some notable folks that were in our class. So I think that's why we probably were in the same class. So get to Ranger Battalion that summer. Tell us about, well, no, I'm sorry. You have to go to Sockham first.

I didn't. You have to go to Sockham before that. Yeah. Sockham was, man, that was something else. So, you know, you're at Rip and everything is very indoctrines. made it, no fun-intended, but it's very, you know, Ranger, you're running around, you're yelling, you're calling it easy, I mean, it's very, very strict. And then you get to Sockham, in like the first day, I'm snapping to parade rest. And, you know, we had some S-F instructors

and stuff, and they're just like, whoa, yeah, we don't, you know, we don't do that here. Yeah. Yeah. It's quite a culture change, but we also had Master Sergeant Black, Perry Black, retired now, a wonderful human being. So he would be looking from the back to see how we're reacting because he was extremely strict on the course. So it was kind of like having a dad that's really disciplined and then a mom that's laid back. So the SF guys, you know, I agree with the way they were. I think that there's a time and a place for the rank and the structure. and but when you're in, you know, this fire hose of a medical course where you're there to learn,

it was a lot easier to learn when it was a little bit more relaxed. Right. Sockham is like very, very academically rigorous, isn't it? Yeah, it's one of the, it's the hardest, I think to this day, mine is probably Staticline Jump Monster. It's one of the hardest, like, mentally course is that ever done. And it's very like math and pharmacology. And I think the big difference between that and the 68 whiskey force too, the 68 whiskey force is more of an algorithm pretty much like I have math

of emmerge. That's what I do for it. But you get to talk them and it's more of they teach you how to think. So you get that prolethe, a touch of the prolonged field care. And, you know, you're putting a tourniquet on because. You're trying to preserve that blood and you're trying to keep them warm and this is while you're doing it. Versa of 68 whiskey forest that was more of, you know, you do your treatment and you move on. So it really forced its folks to think way down the line instead of just what's in front of your faith.

And I think I really appreciated that. And trauma care was going through a lot of changes at that time too, right? Oh, it was. Oh, it's unbelievable. It was. So like I mentioned before, tourniquets were taboo. I did the combat lifesaver course when I was in the National Guard, and it was like elevates your arm and put ice on it, and then it was like, and then maybe a tourniquet. And then if you put a tourniquet on,

prepare to lose the limb. And we've gone so far from that. And I think, you know, the early global war on terrorism plus, you know, Somalia, all the stuff that happened there, you know, and the development of the Committee of TCCC and them really saturating the special operations community with good medicine and medics who can also train organizations and train within themselves, I think, made the biggest difference. But I think that was probably the biggest contributing factor.

Throughout the years of GW, we've seen these organizations giving back to that committee of TCCC and the joint trauma system to just constantly, constantly developed medicine and I think it's remarkable. And that's even just combat medicine. We haven't even touched into like, you know, ortho surgery, damage control or soapsidation. I'm sure we'll just add about that later. But we learned so much more about those things too.

So it was going through a period where literally a lot of the things I learned in a 68 whiskey course was obsolete and it's telling people. Yeah. And so, you know, now we've transitioned to this medicine, which was, I mean, it was so new at that time. But it did, it's good that it got put into that program with enlisted medics and P.A. that already had that experience. And it definitely helped out.

So you make it through the course. Now you're going back to the 75th Ranger Regiment. You're leaving the SF world behind for a while. Another culture show. Yeah. So, yeah, tell us. us about that culture shock a bit like landing you know in in ranger battalion and you're a medic so you're you know what were the some of the stupid terms we used to use like low density mOSs or whatever

but i mean obviously a critical part of the machine but you're not infantry um you're assigned to an infantry platoon and doing you know the same job up until someone gets hurt right um if you can just tell us about that from your perspective yeah no i actually had a great experience there. As soon as I came over to the Red, back to third battalion, I had great mentors right away, right away. Ralph Odom, you know, he's still in uniform, great, great person. John D. D.ro was later on, but there were some really good enlisted folks right away that kind of scoop me up because infantry was like, you know, I was a non-tab specialist without a combat girl. So they didn't, you know, they either know you're a medic or they don't, but, you know,

they kind of give you a hard time there. But for the most part, the infantry, uh, depending on your attitude would just scoop you right up and it wouldn't really be too much of a problem. So I didn't, I didn't really see too many issues there, but I was pretty thankful for the mentorship. And, and I think medics too, there's not really a lot of that competition. We really just kind of want to absorb off each other. So as soon as I got there, I got, you know, thousand pound brain people like John Matha, Caleb Swilliger, you know, all like really, really good medics that have gone on to do phenomenal things. And so you, you know, you're working with people like that and it just kind of helps with that, like that anxiety of being in a new

organization and doing a new thing. Like I talked about before, like now I knew how to be a medic, but it's kind of like a basic medic. I haven't deployed, I didn't done anything yet. I don't know it's a soccer medic. And now I kind of had to learn how to be a ranger. because Rift didn't really prepare me for that. And Stockham definitely didn't prepare me for that. So now I kind of got to figure out, what's the ranger? What do we do? And so there was a little bit of crash course there.

And unfortunately, as soon as I got there, they're like, you know, you're deploying to the lob. So I didn't really have a whole lot of time to figure it out. But my reception was actually pretty good. Yeah. So tell us about that deployment and, you know, becoming a real deal Ranger medic, what the job entails. Yeah, so that one was actually pretty lethargic because I was really new. So I went to Belod to be like an outstation, Italian-Aid station, medical, whatever, because at that time I hadn't done Pulsuni Val's spotty about like nothing.

So I went over there, but I was lucky enough to be around people like Colonel Kotwal, another great American. So I continued to learn. But on the flip side, there was the infantry. So there was people that, you know, I had just met. I was kind of figuring out, you know, this guy's an infantry bulletin sergeant, like, what does that mean? And, you know, I was intimidated at the time because, you know,

this guy's got like two combat jumps and a combat scroll. And I'm like, to me, I'm a brand new dude. So, like, I don't, to me, that's like the holy grail. Like, well, you know, nowadays is whatever. But so I didn't really know, like, how do I act around these people? Because I got to gain their trust. Everybody talks about being a medic. You've got to get their trust.

And if you don't have their trust, you're really not the medic. and you'll find out really quick. So there was a little bit of that anxiety there figuring that out. And you had mentioned low density before. I really kind of hung really close to like the fisters and the commo guys. And because we just had a lot in common because an infantry comes back and you're cleaning weapons and, you know, doing a commo stuff or gym, whatever, we have more work to do. So it's just kind of like, you know, hanging out with people like that who are organic to the organization.

but kind of separated from everybody else. So I made a lot of lifelong friends that way. But it was pretty good. And for the most part, even being a specialist, I went to the board while I was deployed on that point. So fingers were just happening, you know, one thing after another. And so passed the board. And now I'm the sergeant.

And they start, well, I wasn't a sergeant yet, but I was, you know, promotable. But they start treating you that way. So I thought that was pretty remarkable, too. It was very professional. And I really like that. So I didn't go through this whole hazing thing. I don't know if it's my personality or, you know, I'm not really sure because I know for sure some people did.

But I had a pretty good experience. Now, while I was in Boulod, oh, go ahead. I was just going to say that I think part of that is that the medics really are sort of like, it's like a different level of professionalism as opposed to breaking in a brand new ranger private. like an E3. Like you guys have kind of demonstrated your capacity to learn a little bit more, and it's a bit of a more adult environment. Like, rightly so.

Yeah, I think that's definitely true. We did have a few outlier medics who somehow made it through the stalking force and then struggled learning how to be a ranger, and they did really well in the third infantry division or the 82nd. And we kind of found ways to get them to move on, but they just weren't a good fit. But I think when people were a good bit, they stuck around did really well. You had mentioned Tony Moore on our pre-fall here.

Another big mentor of mine at the time. He probably doesn't know it. But, you know, us younger medics, we looked up to those guys. And I was very fortunate to have a lot of folks to look up to, luckily. And also, you know, my ADHD is out of control. So you guys are just going to have to look at that. While I was in Belade, took PC tests. And, you know, came back for Ranger School after that.

So I got sent home early for my first appointment. It's kind of slow anyway because, like I said, I was kind of a high-nade station, just kind of like a fill-in medic or whatever. So I came back and went straight into Ranger School. So I'd been in the Army only knowing schools at that time. Right. And he got thrown right into, had knew nothing about Ranger's School. Nobody pulled me aside and they were like, hey, this is what to expect on the, like, nothing.

You go back, PT test, you're going back to pre-ringo. When you were... At that time of my life, it was just one thing after another. When you were working at the age station, I'm curious because you mentioned the EMT basic, the MTB training, which is basically just training people to stabilize scoop and swoop, right? And combat medics can... And medics of all, you know, in all branches, especially more isolated stations, we'll do a lot more than even an EMTP will be allowed to do.

Oh, for sure. So it's this thing of being overtrained and underqualified. Were you surprised by some of the stuff that you were training in and some of the stuff that you were doing? We've got to give a quick shout out to one of our sponsors. We'll get back to that question in just a moment. We'll be back in two minutes, guys. Hey, everybody. This is Dave.

I just want to give a quick shout out to our sponsor, PIA VPN. That's Private Internet Access. VPN. Now, I don't know about you, but have you ever, I don't know, search something on Google, maybe like how to improve your performance in bed? And then suddenly there are ads for Viagra and Cialis all over your social media. Well, that's because your internet service provider knows literally everything you do online. And I'm not saying I did that. It was a friend of mine. But do you guys know that over 30 million people subscribe to PIA VPN? If you want to stop internet service providers from always looking over your shoulder and

profiting off of your data, you need private internet access, the world's most transparent VPN. Now, a VPN or a virtual private network is an app that hides your IP address and safeguards your internet connection through an encrypted tunnel. This way it shields your digital life from the eyes of those that are looking to exploit your private information. And that might not just be your service provider. If you're out in public, if you're in a hotel, if you're in an airport, a lot of people can intercept the traffic going from your phone or from your laptop to a local router. The other thing that I love about PIAVPN, in addition to the privacy issues, is the streaming capabilities. Now, I am a big fan of horror movies and particularly of zombie movies.

But unfortunately, the United States doesn't put out a lot of great horror zombie movies. But you know who does? Korea and Japan. Well, PIAVPN is easy to use on your smartphone, on your smart television, on your laptop. And you can choose between 80 different countries where the server set up. Private Internet access is really easy to use. There are apps available for all operating systems, and once description can be used to protect an limited amount of devices at the same time.

So if you want to enjoy all the benefits of private Internet access, now's the time to subscribe. Head to PIAVPN.com slash Teamhouse and get an 83% discount. Seriously, 83%. That's just $2.3.3. month and you also get four extra months completely for free but you must go to p i a vpn.com slash team house for a truly private digital life one last time p ia vpn.com slash team house guys you need this real quick but um like i like when i was named cormonaut surprised like getting

a shipboard and doing sutures and like um you know taking out people's toenails And in combat, it's even more so, you know, when you're seeing gunshot wounds and things like that. So, like, were you surprised by some of the stuff, one, that you learned at Sockham? And then, two, what they actually had you doing out in the field or teaching you how to do? Yeah, I think that Socking Force, they did a phenomenal job preparing us for that. And through the use of live tissue training, simulations, and stuff like that. And also we did rotations at major trauma stability. So I went down to Jacksonville, Florida, and did everything you can imagine,

delivered babies, did trauma on the roadside, did trauma in the OR, so in the ER. So, you know, seeing a real human being with these injuries really kind of helps subdue your emotions for that. And then as you transition into an organization where you're expected to do this full time, that's kind of like that's what I was expecting to see when really that's kind of like the 1% of what I did see. So a lot of what I saw was my feet are messed up, my back or do you have any, you know, corridor. So it's kind of like a little bit different.

And learning that dynamic of a medic is way more than just trauma. but when we do trauma you have to be phenomenal at it that other stuff really became my hyper focus I believe yeah I think the beauty of even combat

medics depending on where they're assigned and Ranger medics for sure if you're trained to do something you can do it underneath you know a PA or physician you know we had Ray Sterling John Dietro for a call wall we had some

Ethan Miles, all people that are, you know, very well known in the community. And they would teach us and feel comfortable with us doing that. So that, yeah, it was a little overwhelming at first. But as you get more comfortable and you do it through repetition, it becomes a little bit manor-no. So you go to Ranger School because you're a combat medic. You're going to learn this shit too. After sure.

After getting out of there, do you go to a platoon at that point? Yeah. So the day I graduated and came back up to the battalion, I was approached by the rec. I think he was a squad leader at the time, eventually with the team sergeant. And I was directed to try out for the recie platoon. So I went straight from Raiders deployment, Ranger's school, pretty much straight into the recoup platoon. And I think that was around the time it was first being developed. So Ray Snyder was in there for a little bit. So I went in there and kind of just started for nothing. So that was my first

platoon. Reki platoons were, you mentioned it's just going to start, but Rackie platoons were a pretty new thing around that time, right? Yeah, they were. And I think in our case, you know, of course, I'm biased. But sometimes that, you know, I think some of the Rekki and some maybe the other battalions, it was a place where they may have put underperformers, but for ours, between our Rucky and Sniper, I think that was some of our top. I'm not saying that I was not the best medic.

I could tell you nowhere near the best medic, but I could run and I could rock. But some of the folks that we had in Rookie have gone on to do some phenomenal things even today. I was there when they stood up that Reky section, and I was in Sniper section. And same story, man. I was nothing special.

I was not the best sniper by any stretch of the imagination, but around incredibly talented people. And actually, I was talking to somebody in the Recky section today who reached out to me. Do you remember Royce? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's doing good, man. Oh, great.

It was funny catching up with him. A lot of good guys in Recky, man. A lot of really good cats. that, as you point out, went out and they're still doing amazing things. Yeah, no, and, you know, they still are doing amazing things. So it was another eye opener, too. So, you know, I had done this medicine thing, and I thought it was great, and I was just kind of figuring out how to do that.

And then now they're like, well, you know, this is how you do it in this environment. And also, here's camera equipment, here's this, and here's technical stuff. And so it's just a new trade. I enjoyed it. It worked with my nerd side quite a bit. I struggled a little bit with, I think, forming relationships with some of the folks on the teams because I think they had all come from prestigious teams

and squads throughout the battalion, and I'm like this new guy that was really nothing about anything. So I kind of struggled to see where I would kind of fit within the rookie teams, but eventually it all worked out pretty good. And then when you were there, because they are so small, were you basically a wrecky troop and then had the initial duties of being the medic? Yeah, it wasn't so fortunate to just be a medic.

We had to do just pretty much everything everybody else did. We did the calm stuff, the Jungle 2-9 or 2 setting up antennas, sending stuff over HPW, which is all like archaic stuff, man. Right. You can use the ATAC system and then do everything of what we were trying to do back then. But it was very good. I think what I really liked to do is they invested a lot with the platoon sergeant, the team sergeants that were there at the time. They invested a lot in our training. They got us pulled away from doing a lot of the battalion common tasks that we would have

to do. And they really made our training paramount. And we did TSD training with the cameras. We did the tracking course. Like we went all in vehicle interdiction stuff. And if there was a chance we would do it on a deployment, we were doing it here. And once again, I was fortunate enough to have NCOs that we stayed out there until we couldn't mess it up. And so I was very thankful for that. So it was a really good experience. So what was the next deployment? Right.

So Afghanistan. So I deployed Afghanistan with Reki. We were split between Salerno and Bob Chapman. We did that. Yeah, yeah. So that was the next deployment. It was kind of, you know, as reckey back then, I think we were kind of trying to find where we fit. We did CTRs, which I thought was pretty cool.

So we'd go out there and looking back now, I can't believe how crazy that sounds. But, you know, we would get into the car, not even up on the way, just got tinted windows. And, you know, I had a beard. I was darkish anyway. And I'd tell you with a full beard, I shut the full beard. I shut the park. But then we had some folks that did not. But we're out there doing, you know, a wrecky in a car in the middle of traffic.

And I'm sure maybe they knew we were. I don't know. But looking back, you know, we made it work. So we had some great, great folks that just pulled it together. Do you remember, Mike, there was one kid, he was so young he couldn't grow a beard. So he bought like a Hollywood beard that glued into place. Yeah. And when you say, C.T.

When you say CTRs, you're talking about close target reconnaissance, right? So just to give the listeners. Oh, yeah, sorry, forget about that. So we'd either do aerial, recies, or we'd do a CTR or the vehicles and stuff. And it was also good, too, because we were pretty much unsupervised from the battalion. You know, we had our team sergeants or whatever, and we kind of dealt with that. And I thought that was good, too, because that provided us to a lot of that top cover. we could really focus on what we had to do.

But like I said, the missions were somewhat slow and, you know, it is what it is for the time and where we're at. So, but it's still a good experience. I remember you guys working the isolation piece, too, for the direct action missions. Yep, yeah, we would go and do, you know, near-side, far-star security, almost basic ranger school type stuff. A lot of our guys were trained with Breacher. I did breaching stuff as well. And then eventually we had chanine. So we'd go in there and do sniper.

We'd even sometimes go up there with you guys, especially me as a medic sometimes. I'd find myself hanging out with you guys anyway. So we did a lot of that just lock in the perimeter down and doing black side security, stuff like that. So now you're really learning how to be a ranger in combat. Also all of these new skills that are coming into Ranger Battalion for the first time. I mean, cruising around in low visibility vehicles with beards is not something

that Rangers did up until this point, right? It was antithetical to the culture. I think a year and a half before that, I had a high and tight in Steinboot. It was very different. But I think that could probably be attributed to, I think, Starr Major Birch at the time. I think he really instituted a lot of things within the regiment. And like I said before, we had a lot of folks. Even by the time I got there, had a couple deployments in years in battalion. So it worked out really well. How did the line, not necessarily the guys on the line, but for instance, the officer,

the senior enlisted, I think, you know, who had been there since the late 90s, and then all of a sudden, like, you long hairs are out there, running a muck, being hooligans and brigands. Like, did you guys get pushback from, like, particularly, like the senior enlisted on on the lines for headquarters for sure yeah especially when we're state side so we did the it was like 90 days before we would deploy we'd have uh start growing our be so much like and it would be so much like and look in fact it's like dude like i didn't make it up like i'm not i'm just doing what i'm told you know so i don't know why you're

yelling at me but um it was i remember i remember getting kicked out of the the on post to gym on fort benning yeah like you can't be in here like that get the fuck out. Yeah, we'd come back from a range and we'd be in the, you know, the uniform videos with the Velcro up here or whatever. And no name tags or nothing, you have a beard. And, you know, some of the conventional folks would be like, does your commander know you didn't shave?

And I got like three months of beer. Right, right, right. I guess I, you know, I got over on them, I guess. Yeah. It's my four o'clock shadow. Yeah, no, so we had a little bit of that. But not too much, but definitely in the battalion. There's some hating there.

though. Yeah, I imagine, because there were still, like, that's early enough, that there were still Rangers there, especially like senior guys who felt that, like, patrol-based activities was the Ranger mission, and that they were the best light infantry in the world, and all the CQB and all this other stuff was bullshit. Yeah, and I think as a medic, you know, we're very thought-provoking for the most part. So, you know, if you're going to give me, if you're going to tell me what I need to do, or you're going to tell me this is a standard, I immediately exhume it and try to, like, exploit it and

figure out why that's a standard, what I'm doing. And there were some instances where we had a SART major, I think he was the first sergeant then became the Sartre Major. His last name rhymes with DELF. And so I'd be in like the field uniform with the field authorized field boots. And my locker is in the headquarters HHC 375. So I got like, you know, my boots on because we were doing tracking school and they told us you know wear non-standard boots or whatever and he he's like now you got to change the boots and i'm like put my you know like my car is is right there i'm just wearing these boots to my car and i'm in the field had to change into bellville so i get the bellvills on i put my non-standard boots in the car i drive out to the site and i put my other boots on so there's a lot

of things like that that was just like why is it the thing i don't really know um and i feel like people kind of brought more hate for the recical tune because of that kind of stuff. And I don't think most of us cared. Honestly, I don't really care to have a beer going to Floyd. It just gets caught in the shin strap and I'm always playing with it. So I don't really care for it too much. But it is really. Yeah.

Yeah, Nick was our first sergeant at the time. Yes, he was. And that was some of it. You know, it's the time and place for that. And, yeah, I guess that was wrong. I shouldn't have put my field boots on 20 feet from my car. so I lived the rest of my career that way. And then how did you guys not end up hitting each other?

Because this is after my time. So I had heard, and you guys can correct this, that sniper was a little salty because Recky got stood up and then basically took the sniper's only mission in addition to all their others and their gear and whatnot. Like that didn't happen. I don't know. No, I think we had a really good dynamic.

And me as a medic, obviously snipers don't have a medic, so I would cover down on their training. And even while we're deployed, I'd hang out with them. So I don't think you really had it. I don't think you could have told the difference, to be honest, if we're out there in training event, other than, you know, Jack being out there with a long gun, and maybe I didn't, you couldn't really tell the difference. Okay. And over time, I believe it got like more formalized into like a single company or like they

were much closer together, snipers and reckey. Yep. It did. It became, I think it was after my time, but it became like that special people team or specialty company or whatever. I'm not sure where they're at now, but I think that probably helped a little, too. Thinking back on it, I don't remember any, any bad blood about it because the reason why it happened was because RRD was getting sucked up into other missions. And that left the battalions without a reconnaissance element. And so the battalion recie guys that Mike's talking about were stood up to kind of like act as not a technical term, but like scouts for the battalion.

Like to go out, you know, 10 kilometers ahead of them, recon targets and then come back and report intel is like the most basic way I could describe it, I guess. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. Yeah. And we did it a few times. I say a few times, but, you know, we did it a lot. fit. I think at the time it made sense. You know, as we moved on through GWAT, I think it, they had to change kind of their focus a little bit, get a little bit more technical with TFD and, you know, and all that stuff.

But I think it definitely had a place. But it was, to be honest, it was pretty fun. So you get back from that deployment back to Battalion, and what's the next thing? I think that's when I hit a TLDC, Warrior Force, one of those. I came back did some, you know, just knocked out school after school, and it just continued. And then deployment again. So our off-tempo was pretty aggressive back then, as I'm sure you remember. But I think I knocked out a couple of the regular Army schools because I was already behind at this point.

I was field boarded while I was deployed. And I actually pinned Sergeant while I was in Ranger school. And then when I graduated, I went straight to, you know, Reki did all that stuff. And so I think after that deployment, it's when I started doing it. in the PLDC or Warrior League Force, whatever they called it. Oh, interesting. Mike, just before we move on, there's one thing that just came into my head. I can't remember if it was one of you guys or if it was a Charlie Company medic.

Do you remember the guy getting flex cuff to the chain link fence in Salerno on his birthday? I don't, but that's pretty funny. Oh, okay. It might have been, if it wasn't you, I think I know who it was. Yeah. But that was a prank, by the way. Do you remember what company would have been there? It would have been Charlie Company.

Oh, okay. Leo Jenkins, I think. Oh, was it? I think. I think. I'll have to check with him and see if it was him. But I remember one of those guys getting flex cuff to the fence on his birthday and covered in shaving cream and everything. I mean, Leo is a big dude.

So I'm not sure I don't want to do the one of the flex cuff. Right. He's a scrapper. But, yeah, that's pretty funny. Okay. So you're getting schooled up. And then on the next deployment, again with Recky section?

Yes, yep. So went out another deployment to Afghanistan with Recky, but this one was unfortunately cut a little bit short. So I don't remember how long I was there, maybe like a month or so. And we had a mission come down with Alpha Company, one of the platoons or two platoons, I think. And we were going to fast road north of,

I believe it was Salerno. We're going to fast rope 90 foot fat like just like come on utter misery You're going to fast rope with three days worth of stuff in a rucksack plus you know medical gear MREs all that camera stuff 90 feet yeah 90 foot was I think they're playing with 90 foot So they 47 comes in rope master good to go Blowboard didn't say anything and for those who that don't know glowboard is like a clipboard that has like acetate night or glow in the dark tape on it. So when you write with a black marker, you can read, you know, what it says

that's passing around the helicopter because the movies aren't accurate when you can talk like you can't do it. You can't do an awkward brief for the helicopter. Yeah. No, it's not real. So there was nothing really, you know, no surprises. They were like, all right, 90 foot rope onto this hilltop, no big deal. Well, it was a big deal. So the 47 pilot apparently found a spot on a house. So instead of hitting at the hilltop, he put us down maybe 30 feet onto a rooftop, but didn't tell anybody. So long story short, the Mark Foster, the Air Force fellow that was on a recid team, he hits the house, walks right off it is what you're supposed to do in your fast rope. We didn't know where we're on a building. So he walks right off, breaks his back.

I come down, and the rope at this time is not even over the building. So I follow. So I follow. about two stories into a wood pile. I broke my right arm, like my distal radius. A couple other people fall get kind of bumped up, nothing really too bad. So now this three-day, we're supposed to just do security from the elevation for the platoons to do their thing. Now turned into we need to get Mark Foster off this hilltop. So not only had I not trained with the 160th a whole lot. Usually when we're getting country, we link up with the medics.

We do a high five. We chow together and talk about how awesome the 160th is and how bad we get smoked in regiment. And we would kind of do that and kind of get our bearings straight because they would help us out with that. But I hadn't really trained a whole lot physically with them. So here we are under zero loom, I don't know, 10,000 feet. I honestly don't remember way up there, freezing cold. And now they're hoisting a basket down. So, you know, they're in a hover, bringing the basket down, get Mark Foster in there because he broke his back.

I already got a line started, got some valiant push. You know, he's feeling pretty good. A little bit of morphine, you know what I mean? Take care of my guys. And so now he's being hoisted out, and that's the first time I'd ever done it. So it was probably not ideal to figure that out on the side of the mountaintop, but it worked out. And I didn't, at the time, I didn't know that my distal radius was close. So I stay on the objective.

I'm carrying some of his stuff. Thankfully, we actually ex-filled, I don't know, maybe 10 hours later. The sun comes up, we didn't like to be there. We ended up leaving. So I then am taking Mark back to Germany as his medic to make sure he has that continuum of care that he gets the care. We had the, what do they call it? It wasn't the Wounded Warrior Program.

but it was the one for special operations special operations and care coalition there we go so I took him back and kind of did a handover with them to make sure that he was taking care of and then I was going to fly back into country to get back with a reciting and continual. While I was there my wrist was like really hurting it was swollen

had some ath wrap around it didn't think much of it and one of the docs was like hey you know can just take an x-ray of it and I was like sure so it was a bit of x-ray and it fractured my distal radius and we can't send it back into country so they put a cast on me right there and I flew back to the state so it is what it is I was a little irritated about that but that was my second deployment I think that was or it was a third deployment at that time did you I know you left but did you were you in the AAR I mean did you like 165 is

or notoriously like amazing and yeah I actually have the video it seems like an odd choice to put you guys down on the house. There was, and there was some lessons to be learned from that, of course. I talked to the pilot after the fact they came to visit Mark, and that's a good thing about the community, too. They came back, you know, hey, you know, we

didn't, there was obviously an issue with communication there. The Rope master should have known or, you know, somebody, it's true, you should have known. Yeah, yeah. But they were great about it, and it did become part of the AAR, and I think they used it in our M-LATs and stuff like that after.

Yeah. So that's the end of that. And then you're back at the mother station healing up at Benning. Yeah, for the most part. Yeah, it was quite an experience. Because at this time, you know, I'd been somewhat running, gunning schools and all the stuff. And now I'm on rear D. So there's like 15 people on rear D. Right. And so it's just like. Staff degree. I don't know what to do my hand.

Yeah, I don't know what to do my hands. But there was some good NCOs that were on Roer D, and they didn't. They were like, hey, go home. He left. You know, we don't really have too much for you. So they left me. And I was pretty good to go. And I think I came in, like, to get staff duty.

And I still, I became like an L&O for the medic. So I'd go to Martin Army, get supplies, put them on C-17, ship them over if they needed it. Kind of did what they needed me to do. and was uh did you stay with reckey after that um here to think uh no i think that might have been no yes i did i did i had another deployment with reckey after that where were you off sorry i got like no it's okay we're going we're going way we're going way down memory lane yeah i get it yep so that was another deployment to um the learn out yep so i've gone with Palerna, that was the second time with Palermo. Yeah. And that one was, we were dug in pretty

good with Carly Company. I think they had two teams there. And we had, you know, some, you know, Deb grew folks there and some other folks, I think, at the time. So, but that, that's a point there. It was, we didn't, I don't, we kind of did a little bit more of, you know, the target isolation that you were talking about, a little bit less CTR type stuff. But it was a pretty good trip. Was there less CTR because there was less opportunity or because there was more risk avoidance? I think it, oh, you know what? It wasn't Swarno.

I think it was, no, it was Swarna. Sorry. When I was speaking before, and I said it was Swerno and Chapman, sorry, it was Dilavon. We had team in Jabad. and we had some folks out in Chapman. But on this time, it was, I'm pretty sure I was in Splierna. I apologize. My memory is just not that great.

Oh, no, it's okay. When I think of what I did on the deployments and who I was with, that's when I start putting the pieces together. But I know we worked a lot with, I think it was Charlie Company at the time. So the mission, it sounds like it changed a little bit by that trip. It did. It was kind of lethargic. And what year was this?

If you remember, roughly. Yeah, 2006. Okay. Mid 2006. By 2007, I was back into, I was the HHCCCCCC. Okay. Yeah, I think that's about right. So, yeah, unless there's any like memorable ops that you'd like to talk about from that deployment,

let's go into the being the HHC. Yeah, so, well, there was. We had this one trip where we, We went to, we were in, where did we leave from? I think we were in J-Bad and we're going north, following the river. And the mortar platoon, they were going up to, because they were acting kind of like as a platoon at the time. And one of their trucks, the drone had drove off the cliff and we actually lost a couple guys.

So that was, that was a pretty hard deployment. As far as I think as a Ranger medic, course I had nothing to do with, you know, I wasn't able to treat them. We didn't even know that, you know, it had happened. It was worst case scenario of worst case scenarios, but that was like one of the first times of experiencing, like, loss, like that visceral. These are people, you know, we just saw the other day. And so there was a little bit of processing of that.

But it wasn't as, you know, visceral as later on in my career where, you know, it was a little bit right in front of me. So I think that was a pretty memorable. event. It kind of like flow things down a little bit and things got sometimes we're going after it and we're just kicking a psychote going out and that kind of made everybody kind of test the pause for a little bit.

We were going day bad to abad. Oh yeah. I don't remember what the part it was. I don't remember a long ago, but it's kind of crazy that there aren't more stories. about that because those roads, those mountainous roads were treacherous and driving. Oh, unbelievable. Driving under nods in tough conditions a lot of times.

And, you know, like when you're in the passenger side of like your Humveyor, or technical or whatever, like you're looking down over. Oh, yeah. And you're trusting this guy with like one, not, like these PBS 14s. Yeah. Oh, man. And the fact, never been so scared in my life. Yeah.

And the fact that there aren't just like story after story of trucks going all over the side is, is amazing. Yeah, we, you know, we had some folks, you know, a lot of injuries do come from a non-combat, if you will. And it's unfortunate, but it's, you know, it's just, it's part of what you do. I remember going through mountain passes. And it sucks, too, because dudes get hurt in a vehicle and it's not a Purple Heart producing thing, but, you know, still get hurt, they get sent back, they got wounds, you know, like Brian Valentine, you know, he's a command sergeant major. You know, he's got his, you know, robotic arm, I call it. It's not, but he's just, you know, hurt some of the triceps there. But like, these folks go back and it's like,

well, you know, it wasn't combat related, but it was, you know, and so these folks are dealing with this kind of stuff as they transition out and dealing with the VA. And, you know, luckily, you know, it's in a time of war in a foreign country. It's pretty easy to go that's combat related. But, and even, you know, I've talked to, you know, I've talked to, you know, I've about it for Mark Foster. You know, he breaks his back, but it's not due to enemy fire. It's not just that, but he's still wounded just the same. And it's going to affect him for life. It's just kind of stuff.

It's a bummer. But we did have a lot of vehicle accidents roll over, especially as we, you know, transition to strikers in Iraq. It became a lot more prevalent. Yeah. And, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about this later as we get on. But even, like, the Marines in Syria and the number of, like, artillery rounds, they fired having such severe repercussions on them for blast injuries,

you know, hallucinations and psychosis and all these things, that it was in war, but no Purple Hearts and no, like, none of that, that valor, you know, sort of recognition. And we didn't, we didn't know what we were doing back then either when it comes to assessing somebody for a mild traumatic brain injuries, TBIs, and, you know, you got your bell rung and like, well, I'm not going to do that. this one out, you know, they're going out. This could be the Vinlaught and Raid, you know, so like, we're going out tomorrow. I'm going. So I think, you know, that was obviously not the

right way to do it. And now we have more comprehensive traumatic brain injury process. And so thankfully. Yeah, and they're passing some legislation now that they're going to take the soldiers biomarkers early on so that you have something to compare it to before and after. And you can have a better of what kind of damage may have been done to these guys. So there is no, that's progress is slow, but it is happening. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because a lot of it's, you know, unfortunately, it's irreversible. And so trying to figure out, you know, how to manage these types of folks and manage their day-to-day life for the rest of their life.

Yeah, yeah. We're learning so much more. A lot of that is borrowed technology from, you know, even the NFL, yeah. Doing these micro-tares and abrasions and springs and what that does to them. And it's unfortunate that it happened to folks, but, you know, unfortunate to get that information and what it produced. Yeah, those concussion docs from the NFL are really sort of some of the guys on the cutting

edge of a lot of this stuff. Oh, sure. Yeah. And I've had several TBIs. So, you know, folks are out there that have to do that joint knowledge online TBI concussion training, I'm actually in there as like a guest speaker of, you know, don't do what I did and don't just try to go out the next day or like if I say something,

maybe they won't take me out. It's really not the right way to do it. You put yourself out there, even as a medic, you might be one of one. You might be one of two who knows, but you go out there and if you're not at 100%, you shouldn't be out there. Yeah.

Fire 90 Carl Gustav rounds at the rain. Right, right. The spendexes for Carl Gustavs, where it becomes torture. That stuff is. Yeah. Or just like breaching night after night after night and like some, you know, because P for plenty is the universal formula for a breach.

So like, you know, standing next, you know, close to the breach. And then it's like, it rocks you and, you know, you see the white. It's like, okay, go, go, go, go. And the night after night, like, we're just now learning about the effects of all that stuff. Yeah, absolutely. But luckily, you know, they got the Ranger Medicamacan book out there. And, you know, they've got pretty comprehensive field evaluations. And some of it's even, you know, you do it over computers,

but it helped keep that record. Oh, interesting. I'm glad where they're at now. So then you come back and you become the senior medic for HHC. Yep, yep. And that was kind of like a, I don't know, the undefined role. And I also did like headquarters platoon sergeant for HACC. So it kind of was what I made of it.

Like I said, we had a great surgeon, great PAs at the time. And so this was my chance to work with, you know, Reki, sniper, K9, TFC. it had really taken off at this time and kind of made a really big big peck, mortar platoon as an ATAC at the time. So it had that really good responsibility of making sure all those medics were trained and everybody had what they had. And a big part of, you know, being in that senior medic position, too, is what I think the range of regimen is phenomenal at is incorporating

medical training into everything we do. So it doesn't matter if we're going to the range or whatever, you know, how do we assess a casualty role in that range and not tell anybody, So they get there and you've got to make sure that all these, you know, Ranger privates and all the way up to the unit sergeant major, but they know how to do T-Torple-C and how to get this casualty, you know, to a surgical asset or definitive care as rapidly as possible and safe as possible. So being able to get in there and just kind of think of, well, what would a mortar platoon, like, what would their scenario look like if they took the casualty and kind of, you know, figuring out what was, you know, what was common on the battlefield at the time, what was the other battalions, what were they reporting back, and creating training opportunities. I think that was kind of activated my nerd sense of humor at the time. But I made him pretty fun and sadistic. Can you give us an example of what fun and sadistic might look like?

Oh, yeah. So it would be, you know, to come back from a range and FLA, you know, took a hit or whatever and the medic had no clue they'd pull oak married bag and it'd be like candy um and snacks or whatever and it turned into like a 10 hour pull on field care you know stuff like that so it's it i mean it was for a purpose of sure but it was it was unpleasant and uh so what was the next stop for you uh after this position um so pretty much just Oh, I got shot. Yeah. Oh, that's a thing.

Yeah, I almost forgot about that one. So deployed again was with Charlie Company's second platoon, Mike Allball's platoon at the time. And for Sergeant Nichols, I think we had at the time for HHC. We were out on the objective. And we got these strikers just tomled and mud coming off an objective. and so we had to wait for like the third ID to come out in these giant you know record tanks or whatever they called and so the sun started coming up and I guess I was the one that they wanted to hit so I got hit through my foot and my thigh

I was the only one hit as far as I remember and it wasn't like a huge like firefight so I guess I was this wrong place at the right time I suppose but so I got hit obviously came back from that came back to the side yet again and did the whole rear D thing for a while how bad do you mind if I ask like how bad was it

when you got hit your foot and thigh yeah so it actually wasn't that bad at the time I know people are like yeah getting shots not that bad

but at the time I had a Smith and Weston swat pocket knife in my pocket and the round actually hit the knife so the knife and the round

are still in my leg and I got shot through my foot. And growing up as a medic, you know, they always taught us, and I had Mike Melvin, who's a phenomenal medic. So he was taking care of me. And I was also doing, you know, I had the fentanyl lollipop. Right.

I got me, you know, I ain't playing around. Right. But we always do the thing where, like, if it's squished in your boot, so you push up on a boot and they have the little eyelets with, you know, if blood comes out, then you might hit an artery because blood will go down your leg and fill your boot, whatever. So at the time, my boot, I could feel it. squishing and I was like oh man I thought I at that time I thought it is archier bleed I got a turnicid on you know what I'm supposed to do but come to find out I actually got hit and

top of my foot and that's where the the blood of my boot is coming from so it actually wasn't as bad excuse me it wasn't as bad as it could have been if that knife wasn't in my pocket it would have shattered my female you know son of mouth so it's definitely it would have been a bad day and think of how much peanut would have been had you not already been sucking on that fentanylollip oh yeah it did before I even hit the ground. I was like falling. I was like, oh, I'm like, oh. Yeah. Self care.

Funny. Yeah. Yeah. No, I got to cover and all that stuff. Yeah. But by the time I got on the striker, I was, you know, if anybody's been treated by me, they either don't remember it or they got really high and they thanked me for it. So I was pretty, uh, I was pretty generous with my own Yeah.

So, um, high on your own supply. Yeah. Literally. I don't mean that in a way of anything nefarious whatsoever. whatever. This is all in just... Medicine. So when you got hit, the first... The tourniquet, did you apply the turnickeet yourself?

Was it all self-care at that point? To be honest, I don't remember. Yeah, I get it. It was so, like, by the book. I don't remember if I did, or it might have even been first star nickel at the time. I honestly don't remember, but, you know, if anybody wants to know what it feels like to get shot without actually getting shot, it's almost like somebody punches you as hard as they can in, like, your funny bone.

So it's like that really weird, awkward feeling. And then you take like an iron and burn it. So it's very, very hot. And I got over that relatively quickly. The adrenaline kicked in and I was like, oh, it's so bad. But the hours after where your muscle is just trying to swell and your skin wants to pop, that was probably the worst. Yeah.

That hurt really bad. Yeah. It's unpleasant. So back on Rear D doing staff duty. Again. again again yeah how was how was rehab for you like being shot in the foot like there's a lot of bones in there they they can they actually missed them yeah i got so lucky man yeah i'm telling you like if i don't think you could set it up and do it again so on the top of my foot the bullet came right in and like

just went over all my bones it went right out the other side wow um so i was uh pretty lucky chat yeah so my these were collational you know it's supposed to do yeah shit man Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, because that's not common. Usually, you know, they'll mushroom up and just take everything out. Yeah. There's a lot of velocity behind those. But I got lucky.

Did you tell Smith and Wesson that their knife potentially saved your life? You bet your butt I did. And they sent me, they sent me like 20, 39. I bet you. I was wondering if they did, yeah. Yeah, sure did. They sent me a bunch of knives, though. good on them.

I also got a Shrider night, so I'm trying to remember where I got it. It was one of the RRD guys knew the person that made them, but I can't remember who actually gave it to me. But anyways, they gave me a nice, like, handmade knife. It was just, it was really cool. Yeah. So you're getting better. What's that process to recovery and to get?

getting back out on the job? Well, so when it comes to myself, I'm probably on my family and the worst medic possible. So I just went straight into, well, you know, it's not muscle skeletal anymore. You know, I didn't break any bone with it. There's no fracture there. Might as well just, you know, start running. So I get back after it. So probably within a few weeks, I was getting back after it.

And then I went to Sears School probably in July, I don't know, four or five months after getting shot. I went to Sears school. You should be checked into a mental institution. Like, what the hell? Well, I mean, yeah, I had an opportunity to go to Sears School. I'm going to go to Sears School. It just seemed like the right thing to do. Rangering through it.

That's awesome. Yeah, pretty much. And looking back, it was stupid because I pay for it now. Yeah, yeah. Not that it would have made a difference back then. As a medic now, knowing what I know now, for all you people out there listening, physical therapy occupational therapy don't mess around do it do it right and it will make a

lasting difference on your recovery and your life after for sure so how did you get a slot for your school from ranger battalion because was that part of a recie thing because that's not normal for rangers yeah um honestly i don't remember um kyle andres another great friend of mine still still great friends here like a school guy um so it may have been through that um But it was also Rear D. And I don't remember who was on. It might have been Bishop, so a major bishop that he was starting to class at the time. I think he was running three shop.

And they were like, hey, we need folks for Sears School. And it wasn't directed at me at all, but I'll go. Yeah. Yeah, Sears School. Yeah, I'll volunteer. I'll put my hand up for that. Let's do that. Sears like Scooboo.

It's like, okay, who wants to volunteer? Everybody takes a step back. No, I mean, I thought it was a pretty good school. It is what it is. But it was one of those things that, you know, my team sergeant and Reki at the time had been, and so he had talked about it. And it's just like, I hate not knowing. So I just wanted to knock it out.

Yeah. And so what happened after Sears School? Missouille deployment. Yep. So I went to Missouri. I was still an ADHD senior medic. And I was a task force senior medic for this area. So we had Bravo.

companies, Peckup Patoon, that was Ray Barrett's Paltoon at the time. Pete Vangel was the platoon leader. We had them up in Missouille. And I think as a Ranger medic, that was probably one of the most devastating deployments. It was just, man, it's like almost every day for the first couple weeks we were taking casualties. And it was pretty rough. this was uh 2007 2008 time frame yep it was uh christmas yes it was fall uh fall of 07 into o 8 because we were there for

christmas yeah um yes tell us about it yeah it was looking back you know it's pretty crazy uh man dillon uh he was killed on the first off out there um who made my son uh he made my son after, but that was, uh, that was a, imagine, you know, you're deploying a strike force and everybody, you know, you're, you're amped up. You know, it's Missoule. You got a hand, you got a high five from the previous battalion that said, yeah, it's been pretty rugged.

And, you know, you're getting ready for that. And the first off out, they lose a ranger. And it's just like, dang, and you lose momentum before you even had it. Yeah. That's a pretty heavy. That's a heavy loss. Yeah. Kind of takes the wind out of your sales for a second.

Yeah, it does. It really does. And I think as a medic, it was probably one of the most challenging experiences I had at the time. I had Jeremy March with me, which leads an orthopedic surgeon now. I couldn't be any more proud of him. Even when he was a Ranger medic, he was just always a sponge learning. Probably one of the best better Ranger medics I'd work with. He was there for a platoon medic, and he was, you know, I think that hit him pretty hard too.

so him and I, you know, we work together on that off. And unfortunately, the outcome wasn't what we'd all prayed for. Yeah. It was a pretty heavy, heavy law. Now, you've done multiple deployments, and we talked a little bit about, like, sort of the emerging T-T-T-T-T-Rplea-C care, the technology, like, prosthetics were, you know, growing. You had the quick clout, like, you had all these things coming out. how were you guys managing that from trip to trip? Yeah, so we had worked with the J-Mile on CPM.

So we would go to Fort Bragg and the training area out there. So we would be trained up every once in a while, going with them, which is just like at the time was just like, wow, you know, you've got the best docs, nurses, people in the Department of Defense training. us up on kind of the latest and greatest. And that really kind of opened my eye to the organization. I'm sure we'll talk about that later. And they would really work with us on actual medicine.

And so what we didn't already know, we continued to compound and learn. And we had that institution and organizational knowledge there. And we also had the special operations, special operations combat medic skills to stayment force, Stockness, every two years, we would go back to Fort Bragg to do our medical refresher with the 18 deltas, P-J sometimes, the FARC, the Foreman, Cetiletics, whoever, CA 160, all the medics go back there for refreshers. So we were constantly kind of pushing that envelope as much as you can.

And a lot of, I know for me I was pretty much experimental sometimes when it came to that stuff, not on, you know, experimental and not a morbid, morbid way. Like, I would use cutting edge newer stuff that was out instead of kind of reverting back to what everybody always does. So like with, you know, doing interosseous instead of IV, when you're trying to get an IV started to push blood on a combat casualty that's already lost a lot of blood, it's really hard to do, so why not just go into your bone? So I was just really aggressive when it comes to stuff like that.

So I think because of the job we had to advance, we had to be on it. And we had the institutional knowledge from the organization at the Ranger's regiment, because we would come together as a regiment with the training as far as medics are concerned. But then we had the non-organic stuff from softness and from the J-Mow. And so I think that really forced medic to mature a lot faster than they would have if they just went to more and more refreshers and stuff like that. So I hope that answers your question. It does. And I actually just because of sort of the medical geek in me, you know, like, you know, like I started trauma medicine when it's twin IVs, bolus, which is not a thing anymore, right?

No, you kill people now. Yeah, exactly. So if anybody is listening, you're pushing fresh old blood, fresh old blood. fresh old blood. If you don't have fresh old blood, we're pushing fresh old blood. So we're getting away from crystalloids, getting away from all that stuff. Yeah. So like,

it's amazing to me how far, and I think we saw the same thing in Vietnam. You know, and every war, really, we see this surge in medical knowledge. Yeah. But so... Yeah, I mean, we used turnicates in the Civil War.

And then we stopped using turnicits and we used them again. And we're two. And then 58,000 people killed in Vietnam and we stop using it like we do it and then we stop. Right. And I think that's because we didn't have a committee of

future C. We didn't have the joint trauma. We didn't have an institution that said we have to hold this knowledge. We have to continue to develop this training and the capability. Right. And the old... We do have now. And the old wisdom with with tourniquets and please correct me

if I'm wrong. I mean, I know the old like belief with tourniquises, you put it on and doesn't off, which obviously risk the limb, but then wasn't it sort of developed it, actually you can at certain increments, like release it? Yeah, they went through this time period where it was called like milking a tourniquet, which would be medics or above only for the most part. But, you know, there's some dangers with that too because you've got, you know,

compartment syndrome that could be developing. You've got toxins in there. Your blood's going through an aerobic anaerobic metabolism the whole time. So anytime you open up a turnerone. and you release all that into your normal bloodstream, you're going to have an effect. So you have to be prepared for that. Right. I'm treated almost like a crush injury or something like that.

Yeah. But for the most part, you know, what we know now is if you do put a tourniquet on, as far as saving a life, I'm not talking about, you know, maybe they might lose a little bit of sensory or reflex or whatever. But if you put a turner kit on, even for a few hours today and you get them to a little bit of a little bit of, you know, higher standard of care, they're up and they're up to be pretty good. Even regularly as we do surgery, we put turnicates. They're a little bit different. They're not your one or two inch windlass style tourniquet. They're usually a pneumatic wide tourniquet, which is, it's less pressure to get occlusion.

They'll do that when we're just operating on somebody's arm or leg or something like that. And they've been known to do that for hours. But there is, you know, there was the thought process back in the day. You know, we put a tourniquet on high and tight. and we kind of move on. And thankfully, we've moved away from that a little bit. I think it's a good mind set to put a tourniquet on when you need one, but it needs to be addressed. Because some folks were getting a tourniquet that might not need one or got a turner kit in the right, in the wrong situation. And it either costs, you know, death or disfigurement.

So I think we could just do better than that now. And then with medical technology at the time, it's obviously advancing too, because you mentioned, like, going from, you know, giving an IV to idrosity. So you're putting an IV, like, how do you know, I mean, obviously very smart people figure this out that you can replenish bodily fluids by sticking a needle into the bone. But now are there new needles coming out? Are there like new vendors and things like that that are. Yeah, yeah, of course.

And I deal with that now. So I work for Cape Guard Medical now, which is a pre-hospital trauma device manufacturer. And I say that because that didn't exist. became a medic back in the day. Right. We would take Turlex, which was for a hospital. We would take Ath Rapids for a hospital. We would take these needles, which were for a hospital.

And we would use those in an austere environment. But now we have companies who are listening to, you know, what these folks out there, osteoer medic, they're saying. And now they're making fit and equipment for that application. So we had to use a lot of non-standard stuff. So even with I.O. Interostias, we were using interosseus in the field or in an environment where it would never really been used before. So it's been, you know, I have been around for a very long time, but it wasn't really used in a pre-hostile environment. It was used in a hospital for somebody who, you know, got, doing chemo or they've lost a lot of weight because of cancers and stuff like that.

So it's kind of off-label use for a lot of the stuff we were doing. It's fascinating. I mean, it's just really fascinating. And I'm sorry for everybody out there who's bored by this, but it's just incredible. Yeah. Yeah. It's like an, I mean, I think what's so interesting about it is that it's this very like practical, pragmatic application of medical science in the field that maybe you don't find anywhere else. Yeah, it really is. And I think that's a testament of our surgeons and our PAs and all those folks who just continue to push.

even on a deployment you know, you're just took a capacity you drag him to cover and you got a PA standing right over your shoulder that's like, yep, you're doing it right, man,

you got it, you got, like they would mentor you while you're doing it. And it's just, you know, I don't think you see that anywhere else. Yeah, man.

Ranger medics are, are on point. And that's why I say that like, overtrained and underqualified, like there's no job in the civilian world that compares to a combat medic. You know,

like, not even close. Not a paramedic, not, you know, like you're somewhere between paramedic and trauma surgeon. But while being shot at. Yeah, but even like the things that you are capable and allowed to do in the military, there's no space in the civilian world to accommodate that.

Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. And not to take away from any other folks' jobs out there, but it's not like, you know, when I go out there, I'm trying to do the job of the PA. I'm not trying to do the job of the surgeon. I'm just trying to do the job of the Ranger medic. And, you know, for whatever reason, you know, I can shoot, move, communicate with my Ranger platoon. Maybe this PA or this doc can't.

So I need to be able to take what they're learning. I got to take, you know, their skill set and apply that in an environment that they either can't get to or don't have access to. So, and we've been lucky in the regiment to where it never, it never came down to, you know, a PA or doc, like looking at us, like, you know, if I can't be the, there you're not doing that. Like I've literally been, you know, on the comm talking with Colonel Kotwal, who I'm sure I'm about to push this medication. Yeah, Roger that. Go ahead. So we had that access, you know, to giant brain in a firefight literally. So I think that's,

that's definitely a killer for success for the evidence. So I just want to ask one more question. If you don't mind talking about this and feel free to skip it. But what was the most challenging scenario you had in in a combat situation. Oh, yeah. So that one is, it is kind of tough, you know, kind of tough to talk about, but when there's a loss. So it's not like there's a loss in the office over. Sometimes there's a loss, you've got to keep going. Right. So you've got in, in, you know, when I was a brand new Ranger medic, one in five people had a radio. Like, not everybody even had a radio. So you'd have to like whisper or yell. But later on in years, everybody had a radio. So

everybody down to the private who's about to kick down that door and do justice here. So when you have to, you get the call or you're, you know, I'm treating a casualty or whatever and somebody's like, hey, what's the status? You really have to be methodical about how you translate that over the comms because it can really destroy the momentum in that, that, that, that battlefield aggression very quickly. So I think that was probably my biggest challenge was being able to keep everybody moving. And I think standing up to some of the platoon sergeants,

sometimes you have to be like, hey, I've got this. You keep going. Your focus is over there. And some of them were phenomenal at it. But some of them wanted to be, you know, they wanted needed that intel. And it's like you don't. Like I'll tell you what his status is

when you need to know what his status is. because I know that that's going to affect that. So I kind of had to pull that apart and kind of be a prick about it. But we had to maintain that focus. And so I think that was probably one of the harder things to do the risk. So, yeah, you did this deployment to Missouille during the height of the surge. What was the next step after that? Yeah, it was pretty tough deployment.

after that was another Afghanistan deployment and this one was yeah it was Afghanistan deployment and that was fall of 08 I think

okay and nothing really too remarkable from this deployment I think there was at this time the mortarful tune not that it's like exciting I think it's kind of cool but the mortar pool tune at the time

they used to have mortars attached to the pussons, inspections, whatever. But they actually went out as an organic Poutouins. Really? Yeah, they did a hell of a job, man. They did a great job. They had a great medic at the time. At two medics. They had really two great medics. Were they going out to do indirect fire or going out to act like?

No, they were going out as a pool team. As just a normal. Really? As like a line team, a line squad. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Wow. So, you know, I know.

I know they would do a lot of blocking position type stuff for the other platoon, but yeah, they'd go out there. Yeah, I was so proud of them. I say that because a lot of them were really good friends in mine. So it was really cool to see where they went and how they got there. That's pretty cool, man. I didn't know that. Yeah, and it was also my first deployment kind of working with Stuyop and CA. I had worked with them a little bit, and then working with A.

metric forfear, kind of working with them a little bit. So it was pretty interesting the point where I learned a lot more about the bigger picture. Yeah. You know, things are bigger than just third range of design. Yeah. So I thought that was pretty cool. CA going out there and trying to like patch up what, what Ranger Battalion steel teams had just been in and they did a great job too.

Yeah. You know, we had Ranger Rick Merritt. You know, I love the man. And he had told us one time. I think it actually was in Missoule at the time. we would have young range of privates, you know, we'd come in, we'd clear a room, they're just knocking everything over, just, you know, doing TFC, finding everything. And I'm pretty sure it was Rick Marith.

It was like, hey, man, you know, what you're doing right now could be generating the next batch of terrorists. And we're like, that kind of makes sense. You know, we came in here and just zip this dude up, you know, his kid probably just watched it. So, like, you kind of have to be a little bit more, I don't know, tactful. focused. Yeah, a little bit more technical. And I think that's where CA came in behind the scenes and really kind of patched that up. And I think they did a good job. Yeah. So for people we might not know, when we say CA, we're talking about civil affairs, which is really, you know, we always say SF is the hearts and minds, but civil affairs is really hearts and minds. Check out our past

interviews with Joshua Lee's. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure. He's a CIA guy. You know, that they I thought they were phenomenal NCOs in my experience with them. And I think there was also different when I started working or being around CA anyway they were former Ranger former former like they had been in the community and then kind of shifted to CA where now CA has its own pipeline and I haven't really worked with them since that's happened so when I worked with their medics they had all been somewhere and so they were just phenomenal medic so I learned quite a bit that's cool and one of the things that like the CA medic, like they are out there, like, taking in villagers a lot of times and treating, you know,

illnesses and injuries that these people have had for a long time sometimes. Yeah. And they were doing stuff, you know, I just never really been exposed to. I've been, you know, at that time I was exposed to like, you know, crotch rod, you know, just your basic, hey, I just returned from the QDI doc. Can you hook me up? Right. I need a shot.

Into like, yeah, yeah. Family vaccination. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. We're kidding. Yeah, right, right. But, you know, we're working with animals and children and babies. And, you know, I took every opportunity to go out there with the CIA medics because, you know, it was a good opportunity to learn.

This different piece of being a medic. Yeah, like at that time, and I don't know if it's true or not, but the Ranger medics did the con. combat the assault portion of Sockham, where's the SF medics got like, oh, there's a typhoid outbreak in the village, you know, and so it's a different. And this is how you treat the water in your well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they go on to SFMS, which some Ranger medics are able to do as long as they go to one of the FMUs and there's a way to do that. But anyway, yeah, so they go on and there's like a surgical block and there's a lot of things that you don't generally see in the regimen.

So I think ranger medics could benefit from it for sure. But if you had the opportunity to go to Jumpmaster or something else that would benefit the government, that probably would make sense. And that pissed me off at the time because I didn't understand why. I was like, I'll reenlist to go to the second part. At the time, I liked medicine and I was into it. So I was like, hey, I want to do this. I'm going to do it right.

But there's literally like, I guess, no way to do it. It can't compute. Yeah. Ranger Regiment wasn't that concerned about your veterinary regiment. skills. Yeah. No, no, despite, you know, me wanting to learn. Right, right. So, so what was the next step in your career path after, after that one? So I ended up going to the J-MAL, but I was at the 528 for a little while under Steve Cody. He was like the first sergeant. He was retired now, which was kind of the dumping ground, not dumping ground, is like a bad

in, but it's kind of where a lot of the soft medics went to kind of take a knee or whatever. So I was in the 5-28 for a little while, but didn't really, you know, nothing really notable there. But then I assessed and went to the J-M-R-M-A. Tell us about that because I think this is, like, as far as public perception is, it's a kind of obscure element that not too many people know about. Can you tell us what that element is and how you assessed for it? Sure. Yeah. So my previous experience with the organization, all I really knew was their PA, surgeon, surgical team. And every time we would do some kind of misinplanting brief, you know, I had to include these guys. But I didn't really know what they did. And I still didn't, even when I assessed for the organization, I still didn't really know. I knew they did damage control surgery and damage control of the cessation. But I didn't really understand, like, who they were, where they picked them from, how they got.

out there, how they, I didn't know any of that. So, but I knew people that were there. And I knew the unit, Sarm Major at the time. Love the guy. I've known him for so many years. But anyway, so I ended up assessing, and it was more of like just a psychological type thing. And, you know, you know, your medicine. It's not something that you would, you know, it's not going to be like, you know,

a 40-mile rock with, you know, seven days of land. It's just, that's not what you do in that, organization, so that's not really expected of you. So it's more of medicine and can you handle extremely high-stress situations and be in physicians where you might be by yourself, orchestrating national mission force type assets. So that was a huge eye-opening. So going into there, you know, just within the first couple weeks, was just one of the most overwhelming, anxious experiences following my whole career because of this secrecy

and nobody really knows anything at that time. So you couldn't just Google it at the time. I don't know if you still can, but it was pretty good. And I think I went in there with the mindset of, you know, I never joined the military to be like, hey, the military is going to make me better. And I joined the military. Hopefully that I have something to give to this organization that's like my American thing to do. and so, you know, my brother, my older brother, he was a wrestler.

You know, he always taught me when I was wrestling, like, you know, find the strongest guy, find the fastest guy, and he's heavier than you, and wrestle him. He's going to make you a better wrestler, which comes to find out with those my brother. He's phenomenal and I suck. But I went in there with that mindset. Let me find these surgeons and these RNAs and these docs, and, you know, let me just absorb everything that they've got to say.

and just, you know, trying to make myself a little bit more capable and what can I learn from them. And, you know, it was just so overwhelming because everything I, you know, I had talked about when I was at the 68 whiskey force, they said, you know, brain dump all that and I got to stock them. And then when I got there, I really had to brain dump a lot of stuff that I learned in regiment because it just wasn't applicable. And the medicine was good, but the medicine was a band-aid. So that's why I really learned that any casualties you treat on the battlefield for the most part, you're preparing them for surgery. So instead of just putting that tourniquet on and forgetting about it, now I, oh, that's why we're pushing fresh whole blood. That's why we're trying to get them high and that's why we're trying to keep them warm because by the time they get to a surgeon, they're expected to be warm, high, already have an airway so they can get the work. So it was a very, drinking through a fire hose, like, and it's very different.

You know, when we studied for Jumpmaster, it was more of, like, just reading this piece of paper and, you know, just remembering the nomenclature. But for this, I'm reading white papers. And I have to make a decision, like, why would I put TXA versus this or why would, you know, you have to actually learn. And that's what these doctors and that's what they do. They don't just see, you know, the Ranger Medic Handbook and it says, well, push TXA because of this. Like, they learn why you're doing that. You know, I was able to do that in an organization. Can you?

It profoundly changed my mind as a medic on how I do pretty much everything. So J-MAL is Joint Medical Augmentation Unit. And can you tell us just for people who don't know? Because we imagine that they go from the field medic, get medevact, and go to a mass unit. but that or whatever but can you tell us the role what the J-Mouth filled oh yeah sure well it's actually the joint medical unit now or J-M-U okay so their goal is there's unclassified you know special operations resuscitation teams special operation surgical teams in the Air Force and even for resuscitation surgical teams in the army like there's those already exist and what

they're trying to do is get the surgery as close to the casualty as possible. Because really we want to get the casualty out, you know, to that higher echelon of care, but sometimes that's not possible, especially with fear one, special missions unit. They're going in the middle of nowhere, and they can't just show up at a theater hospital at, you know, zero-two zulu with, you know, combat casualties. So we would get the J-MAL medics, or I'm sorry, the J-MAL team, their SRP would get as close to the action as possible. And whatever aircraft they're on or whatever would now become that OR. So casualties would be treated by the Ranger medics or the SMU medic, whoever it is, they would be handed off to them.

And that's pretty much where they would do surgery right there. and then they would deliver to an accession. So the Ranger Combat Medic, if I'm understanding this rightly, the Ranger Combat Medic, the Special Forces 18 Delta, the J-Soc assault medic, it's sort of the front line that is then delivering the casualty to this unit. Yep. Yep, pretty much.

And where they deliver that to the unit is, you know, as close as possible. So whether that, you know, aircraft that are just, you know, lagering around or whatever. So it's pretty phenomenal to see, you know, it's pretty, surgery in itself is pretty stressful, you know, even in a bright white light in an OR. But seeing these dudes, they're just some of the most phenomenal practitioners, I would say, in the world to just be able to do this with a big old dip in under night vision, on their knees with a lanyard hooked in.

So that way they can kind of lean back. and get a little bit of stability. And it was just on, I didn't know stuff like that existed. And before, like, and not doing the great job that Ranger SF medics or QAWN medics do, combat medics, but actually doing full surgeries. Yeah, brain. Oh, yeah. Actual surgery.

On the move. Yes. Yep. It's damage control cessation and damage control surgery for the most part, which is box and belly. So they're not going to go in there and do, like, vascular surgery on somebody's leg. I mean, that's not really. They're going to go in there and clamp off vessels to preserve the life. So tell us. What was your first deployment with that unit? So most, for the most part, us, NCOs, we were going through kind of like identity, identity crisis. So we would do like

operations because we knew a lot of people in the communities and we would understand how the different platforms work. So I was able to do that, go over as like operations to really learn that battlefield architecture. So there's no benefit in that. So it wasn't as, you know, sexy as what I would have thought, but he'd going over there and just handling like the inner theater assets. I was able to do that. And then I was farmed out to like an Omega deployment, which was right back to like the tactical medicine stuff again. and so it's and then

tell us about that one oh go ahead oh yeah so that one was you know I was familiar with the program already it was I think 2014

when I was able to do that but I went out with the Navy at the time and we had a small I know you guys had Mike Edwards on the show before

so but yeah we had a small team going out there just enabling the assets. So that one there was, that deployment was probably my most, probably uneasy or unnerving deployment because you're literally like four or five people,

middle of nowhere, like no, like just, I really had to know my medicine and I needed to know my theater assets at the time. And so it was very, very sketched. Yeah, this ain't Ranger Battalion. No. No, no, no, no. It's very big boy.

Nobody's, you know, even in range of the time for the most part, it'd come back and do PCI, PCC, you know, all that stuff. And, you know, you're kind of just used to that. It's automatic. But here, it's like nobody's checking my dad. Nobody's checking on my standard load is. Nobody's, you know, you just have to use common sense at that time. But, I mean, I was like a, maybe a 7th promotable or master's always a time.

Yeah, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't really that. difficult to transition, but it's pretty good. I was with a good team, and it was, we saw, it was a lot more eventful than I, than I probably would have thought. How would you go about, in this sort of this remote position, how would you go about getting your load out, you know, determining what you needed? Obviously, you know how to determine what you need, but what I mean is, like if you needed extra stuff that you didn't have like how did you go about doing that could you walk down to like the the not mass type but like the field hospital and get it or how did that work yeah i could yeah i could do that um i think that was one of the magic things of being in the

organization is everybody knows everybody so um i could go through the local place and this was in jolal all about it fine um i could go in there and just nobody was really unaware of soft folks so i go in there and they're just like, oh, one of you guys, you know, and they were great about it. It was a conventional Army unit. I don't remember who it was, but I think the 101st was in theater at time. I got anything I possibly needed. But for my personal loadout, I took Mike Hetzler and Balls. They had like a, I can't remember the title of it, but there's a white paper, or not a white paper,

They wrote a article about how to pack an aid bag and how to pack a truck bag and a ruck. And I apologize. I probably should have prepared and wrote it down. But that mindset and having my cats learn that organization, of course, trained in preface. But having that mindset, I was able to crossload a lot of my medical stuff amongst the folks I was with. So everybody had narcotics. Everybody, because everybody needs narcotics, right? So everybody had a way to start an interactive.

Osceus and I taught them how to do it. Everybody had all the turner kits and pressure dressings, all the things they needed. And we trained and I trained and I trained and I trained them and they were pretty receptive to it. They were very good about it. And then I had my truck stuff that I was having the truck and then whenever we enter a house if they had to do that, I would

if we didn't do a whole lot of usually we kind of stayed off spent a little bit. But I would have a bag that a drop for that. So, and then a speedball that, you know, we dropped in a helicopter if we needed it. So I was pretty, pretty well equipped for being only a small element. Yeah. But my aid bag, when I was with regiment, which is also compounding off either another platoon medic or, you know, somebody else who's one of the infantrymen that's also trained medically somewhat would kind of be the person who carries some of the other stuff. And everybody trained at T-T triple C. You could crossload really well. And you've got a striker. You could drop a couple bags in there. You've got, you know,

There's a lot of room there, but I had to do more one-off stuff. So if I, for me, on a small team, a mask cow is one person. So I kind of had to gear for that. So I wouldn't need 20 tourniquets because that's more than what I could do anyway. So I would prep more for, you know, if I had to do boxer belly or something like that on just one person. Any memorable operations from that deployment? Yeah. So there's a couple times where we got.

pretty big ticks or troops in contact and one we actually walked an American advisor on that one there and it was a mask cow so the Afghans that we're working with I think I had six or seven casualties at the time so I was kind of working with them and they were what you would think just grazed and they were like limping and I remember the first time I got shot you know so I was kind of irritated with them because they didn't really, they would get hit and just lay down. I'm like,

dude, at least get covered or something. We're like, Rangers are trained from the get go. Like, you get shot. You keep going even in training until they assess you as a casualty,

right? They would come see me in the aid station later on. They're like, yeah, I think I got hit. And you look and they're like, uniform's torn up. And I'm like,

you're an idiot. Yes, you got hit. You know, it does happen. But no, we lost an American on that one. And that was a, that was a,

It was a pretty brutal hit at the phone. But we work through it and, you know, a continued mission. That's got to be rough, man, going a mass Cal situation. And, like, I think it's a very interesting, like, psychological dynamic that you mentioned earlier, that all of this happens, but you've got to keep going. Like, the mission doesn't just stop. The firefight doesn't just stop. Yeah, so that's kind of working through that and making sure that, you know,

else is maintaining that focus while also getting irritated with some of the partner nation that I didn't really, you know, at the time there's so much, you know, green on blue, whatever, you know, I don't, I didn't, I wasn't comfortable working with some of the partner nation, to be honest. So it was just another added thing that I had to worry about. Right. So it's just stressful. One of the things. And I didn't, I didn't trust to just hand a has the off the people I didn't know. So I ended up carrying the litter and handing off to the helicopter that came in. It just made it a different experience.

So where, you know, back in the Ranger resume, you're treating somebody, you get a couple Ranger privates, they're carrying the stuff, you hand off to the 160th guy, you know who it is. I've worked with him for years. You handoff. I know he's good to go. But now you're working with people you've never seen before. Putting on an aircraft where you vaguely know who's on it.

it's just not comfortable. Yeah. And one of the things you mentioned earlier was how sometimes a platoon sergeant would stop and overlook and want to know the status. But sometimes with Indage, an entire, like an entire group of guys would stop. Just stop. Just stop just to see if their buddy was fine. We had, you know, I had a couple folks on the ground that helped out with the crowd control.

so they were able to divert really well. So I didn't, that was just one less thing that I had to worry about. Yeah. So, I mean, Mike, I remember, and I'd love to ask you this. I mean, I remember you may have mentioned to me that you got spun up for a counterterrorism deployment during your time at the unit? Yeah, so I did. It was the whole Benghazi thing there. So part of our mission was also, you know, kind of be prepared to get our surgical teams.

and I, you know, being in the unit, not only about surgery, it's also about the inner theater operations, getting folks where they need to go back to Germany or wherever. But, yeah, the Benghazi, you know, that went off, and I reported to work and, you know, because it was a page or phone call or whatever. And usually, you know, we would train and, you know, I wasn't sure if there was like a real thing or not,

but, oh, yeah, I was on a C-17 heading to Figuillo, Italy pretty quick. So that was my first time doing kind of that kind of blowout for real. So it was also kind of a nervous thing because, you know, we didn't really know a whole lot of what was going on. I'm sure you've seen the movie 13 hours. This is far removed from like the movie. Yeah. So I don't want to say it was, you know, it is what it is. The movie's pretty accurate, by the way.

But at the time, we didn't know any of that was really going on. The intel we got, you know, we've already starting to develop, you know, target and stuff like that. So that was just a different experience when you take off an aircraft and you have no cooler you're landing. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. And you've got enough, you know, you've got a pallet load of equipment that could literally go anywhere in the world. Yeah.

You kind of prepared for it. But it's kind of. But it's great that capability exists, right? Oh, absolutely. And at the time, did you, because you're senior in list right now, you're in this, like, legit? tier one unit, did you not know where you were going because the pilots didn't brief? Because the pilots didn't know,

like everything was so in flux, no, like decisions were being made while you guys were in the air. Yeah, decisions were definitely made while we were in the air. As we got closer, we knew where we were going. Yeah. And we could start developing a plan.

But at the time, there wasn't, you know, we didn't know much. I think that the news and the media at the time was saying, you know, there was uprising because of a political cartoon or something. Because of the video. It was on the anniversary, yeah, it was on anniversary right after September 11th.

So that was bad intelligence. Yeah. Yeah. And so when you got to Cigonella, because, you know, everybody in the military has been subject to the hurry up and wait, you know, syndrome, what was it like when you guys got to Cigonella? Yeah. So, you know, we're going a thousand miles an hour.

We do what we do. We've perfected the art of setting up, tear down, set up, tear down. So we got there, we set up, ready to go, no matter what we need to do. I started making local connections with hospitals if we needed to bring somebody back or we needed to move an OR over there. We started making, you know, starting to meet the other assets that we had in country to kind of figure out where we could push people around if we had to. So the first couple days was like two hours of sleep, Ranger's school, fall in sleep,

just trying to figure out who's doing what, what are we doing if, you know, this organization watches and does this, how would we support that? So it was a bunch of ants making an ant hill for the first couple of days. Yeah. Now, when, you know, one of the things we see sometimes with special operations units is, you know, like, there are conventional theater, you know, owners or owners of a certain area and they may not always like what the special operations units are doing there and there can be a bit of a rub when you guys fly into a place like Cinella and obviously you have not saying anything bad about doctors or surgeons at any given military base but 50% of doctors were at the bottom of their class right like 50% of them so so you never know

so you never know what you are getting in any one location. And when you guys fly in, do you have the authority to sort of commandeer a surgical room and say anybody coming from this is ours? Yeah, so I don't know about the authority to do it, but we go in there and lack of, like, I want to, you know, tell you guys that we go in there and check down doors and hold a clock to somebody's head, but, like, you know, man, we're like, we walk in there. It's like a naval unit, and they're like, we know why you're here.

You know, so I'm in plain clothes, and I just walked in there. They're like, you know, we know why you're here. What do you guys need? And so I don't know if that was just that specific naval unit that was helping us out. But I really didn't have any issues with that whatsoever. They said whatever you guys need, it's yours. That's pretty good. That's fantastic.

Yeah, because I didn't know if maybe like, you know, some chief of medicine to be like, ah, this is our hospital and you guys, blah, blah, blah. Oh, I'm sure it's happened. Yeah. But I've been fortunate to where I was able to sweet talk just about anybody to get whatever I needed. Yeah.

So, and what came, I mean, I just following the chronology, I mean, what came after that whole Benghazi situation? Oh, a whole lot of nothing. We sat there, did nothing. So, yeah, they're trying out to get too, political, but we had, I personally think that we had targets. We had a show of force that we were willing, ready and able to do, and we did not. So it sucks. Yeah. And I say it sucks. Like, of course, no more American lives with jeopardy or put in jeopardy or harmed or anything. So that's a good

thing. But I think we could have done more. Yeah. And, you know, it's not just just any special operations in that theater, but special operations in other areas. And I can't remember the unit in Cigonella, the airborne unit, which is supposed to be there for a lot of the in extremist stuff. You're talking about the West Side. Well, we had Charlie, we had Charlie 110 from FF.

They were in, what, Stucard, I believe? So they were actually, they met us in Italy pretty quick. Yeah. So they had assets there. We had some folks from the 528, which luckily I did a little time there. so I integrated them really quickly. But as far as like conventional infantry,

I don't think they had a whole lot. They had like a Marine rifle platoon that might have been in somewhere in Northern Africa. But I don't, we didn't have a whole lot where we were at. They have the 173rd, but I don't think they were, they were not there. Oh, they weren't, they weren't in Italy? No, they were not at our location. They weren't at your, okay.

All right. So what came after that? What was the next thing for you? More ops deployments, more. Most of my time in the unit was training and training other people. So I did a lot of training the newer teams that would have tested and get selected, and we eventually developed a pretty good selection process that helped. make it so

we can test them physically, mentally, emotionally in some cases, to ensure that they were the right fit for the organizations that were going out. Just because they're a good surgeon doesn't mean that they're fit to be in that remote environment.

So I worked a lot with that and just running the day-to-day operations, the jumps and that stuff. So that's why I was saying we went through kind of like a a change of where we did a lot of ops and then we did tactical medicine stuff where we worked with the surgical recess patient teams a lot and then we moved into like doing other

administrative stuff so i also did like counterpool reparation so a lot of NBC doing like live agent training oh wow you know all that kind of stuff to you so a very broad kind of stuff but i i think as a medic and organization wise it was just like every single day you're learning something. Yeah, that's like also. It's like a whole other field of medicine when you get into the NBC stuff, but like assessing like someone who's exposed to sarin or like somebody who's exposed to like a radiological device.

Sure. Yeah, no, it is very different. And we were able to go up to Canada, seduced in live agent training and stuff because we don't ever do that in the U.S. But it was a definitely a big eye opener at, you know, just learning, you know, the LV-50 or the lethal dose of a chemical

that will kill the population in a given amount of time, like, you know, a grain of rice size of this chemical will kill somebody. It's just, it's kind of crazy. But it also opens your eyes to a spot movie fake, which me and my son do all the time. You know, that's not true. so when you watch like the rock and he's like you're going to stab this in your heart

that's not how that's not how that works so yeah but it's so good though yeah it's like this is vx gas and it melts your face right not that's not what it does so right uh it's kind of cool to learn all that kind of stuff and also work with the different tiers and you know what would they do because you know korea was kind of a thing and we didn't really know NBC was kind of ramping up a little bit so it was an eye-opener because it's not sexy you know as a medic where like you know trauma you're doing this you know you know doing chest tubes and I'm criking and you're doing stuff and now it's like you know you're doing atropine and physoidid and you know value it's just like not you know it's not cool but it's it's stuff you

just got it did you ever did you ever find it uh because like some of the things that i learned about like the NBC stuff and then sometimes how easy it is or like were you ever just terrified like Wow, like how have we not been hit by this stuff? Well, no, actually, the smarter you get on it, the more you realize that it's not as easy to do as you'd think. Really? Yeah, so, you know, it's not as easy to just, you know, VX gas. We're going to throw it in a missile.

You know, most of the, a lot of these chemicals, they boil at room temperature. Right. So it doesn't become, you know, it's not as easily used as weaponized, if you will. So it's, you know, it's one day, I guess the more you learn, the more you realize things just aren't. It's very hard to actually pull off. It could still hurt you.

It could still hurt you, of course. But I was more concerned in biological agents. That still freaks me out. You know, we see what happened with COVID. Right. COVID could very easily be a biological agent. Right. But when we're talking about nerve agents and stuff like that, it's...

We're talking about, like, dirty bombs and even, like, EMPs. Like, they're not quite as effective as, like, the movies would have us believe. No, they're really not. So, you know, I think that in modern warfare, we just don't see it that often. I think the only time that I know of in the soft community that we had to deal with that was folks that treated children who had walked through some of the poppy fields in Afghanistan where they were exposed to some of the chemicals that they had used that were very similar to the nerve agent poisoning, or genoposphate poisoning.

and so kind of identifying that and treating it almost the same way. So that happened and then there was chlorine. That had, you know, I think happened in Iraq a few times where they tried to do like chlorine bombs and stuff like that. Yeah, ISIS did that too. Yeah. That's pretty dirty. Yeah. And the invasion of Iraq with the whole Islam al-Sharia group, if I recall correctly, northern Iraq,

suspected to have a chemical weapons factory. They dealt with it there too. yeah it's um you know it's just not something that i remember on my first deployment we had like the he had your pro mask on your side and you deployed with that i used it for a pillow and then it eventually became like i don't even know where the pro mask is yeah yeah oh and also i did learn a lot um so with relaxed grooming standards yeah you can get a seal on a pro mask and um they have a Papper or positive air pressure pump that helps push positive air into your mask. So all these people that are saying you can't have a beard of the mask is,

that's just, that's not sure. I think that's just an excuse to make it so you can't, can't have a beer. And it excluded our Sikh brothers for military service for so long. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, because I remember, like, obviously in the Army, it's like pro-mess, but in the Navy, because everybody has to be a fire. fighter or beyond damage control on a ship. Like, it's like, that's why we don't have beards.

You can't have beers. You can't have three-day growth because you won't get a seal on your, you know, mask. And it's like, I don't think that's right. So, Mike, you get, you get promoted to Sergeant Major. You're up at the top, man. Yeah. Do we miss something?

Well, yeah, you did, kind of. So I ended up taking a knee. So it was time to leave all the, you know, that stuff. And I talked to Dennis Smith, who was a former First Sergeant, uh, 375, back in the day. And he was the ARCB, Airborne Ready Train Brigade, Sergeant Major. And so, uh, I was able to get back to Fort Benning and I was going to be one of the Airborne School, First Sergeant, or whatever. Um, she just took a knee, kind of stop the swing for a little bit, um, focused on my mental health. Um, but I ended up going back and, um, being like the senior.

medic for the airborne ranger syndrome disease. And then ended up, they put me in the position to be the H-H-SP first target. So I did that for a little while, working at Ranger School, which, believe or not, was one of my best assignments, more so for, you know, my mental health for sure. But the predictability and being part of something that's not medical is, you know, it's something I talk about a little bit. But like, you know, throughout my career, with all the loss and all the things I saw, It was kind of nice to step away from medicine for a little while.

Yeah. They just kind of take that break and just kind of hit the reset button. And some people, they're die hard into medicine. I don't feel like I am. I was die hard into being a Ranger medic. I was die hard into being a medic, but I wasn't really die hard into medicine in itself. So stepping aside, but still being with the infantry and still being with maneuver,

I actually enjoyed it. Was that, like, motivating to work with young soldiers? going through this arduous training? Yeah, it was very different. And, you know, I took it, I took it head on, being a very different assignment. And, man, I don't know, just seeing these young kids come through.

And, you know, obviously, you know, my uniform at the time was, you know, pretty, you know, had a lot of stuff on there or whatever. But so they would see that. And they instantly would, you know, asking questions or this or that. And, well, you're a medic. you know, why are you in this position or that or whatever?

And just being able to mentor those folks I thought was really good to see, you know, how stupid a Ranger student can be, but how remarkable they can be and how funny they could be. It was a great, great opportunity in working with a lot of the RIs, a lot of the senior tax folks. And it was a phenomenal part of my career. I'm curious, had Ranger School changed much between the time you've been. went through in the time you became cadre? Kind of. So one of my biggest discontent,

and of course I went in there with, you know, I had the full soft mindset. You know, Ranger School is still archaic in Vietnam, and it pissed me off, for you honestly, because it wasn't different. So look at all these lessons learned, and I think being a medic,

kind of like, it kind of set me up for failure in that because we always take the things we learn from combat, and and make sure that we incorporate that into our training and make sure that we report our casualties back to the joint trauma, and it gets back to the Committee of Tidc, which then feeds back into Sockham and feeds back into the medical refresher, and medics are better tomorrow because of what we went through yesterday. And at Rangers School, we had this amazing opportunity of what do we learn in Iraq, what have we learned in Afghanistan,

to at least apply it to the training. And then some folks are like, wow, it's just a leadership school. And I kind of disagree with that. Ranger School, when it began, was supposed to prepare people for this guerrilla warfare type environment that they were going to be in. And so it's not necessarily leadership school. I know it uses leadership as a means to evaluate. But what if somebody went to the Ranger School and didn't even, maybe you didn't pass?

Did you go back to your unit with something that's going to save somebody's life, whether that's survivability or lethality? Like, are you going to go back and it's going to do something? Probably not. So I think that was probably one of my biggest discontents was they didn't take the lessons learned from actual combat and find a way to incorporate that into Ranger's school. I don't know where they are now. Maybe they have now, but unfortunately, I think they And do you mean when you say that, do you mean in terms of the way we actually tactically do

combat on the ground or treat wounds on the ground or in the leadership aspect of the way we report these things back and the way like the whole command and communication structure works. Yeah, pretty much all of it. So, you know, even if something as small is making a dang, you know, a PowerPoint on, you know, this is your truck annexed,

but it's not in the back of a Ranger handbook. It's on a PowerPoint, you know, or everybody thinks Rangers are, you must be able to shoot good. We don't shoot a single live round at Ranger's school. You know, there might be a good opportunity to be able to incorporate that in there. Folks that you can't do it while they're doing at RASP, because you can. So I think

showing that small, you tactics and teaching people the small unit tactics stuff that comes directly from the regiment maybe some of the SMU stuff doesn't apply maybe it does but you can't tell me a rifle platoon in the 80 second can't benefit from sniper theory where do I even put a sniper where do I put you know where should I put these folks where should I do this right or I have to report up higher I have to do this I you know there's so much more that they have to do that I wish somebody that graduated from ranger school to go straight to you know that position and enable that element so much better than they do now.

And the reason why I know it's kind of outdated is, and this used to piss me out too, because, and a lot of things this moment. But why isn't it like Marsdaq thing, Ranger School? You know, before you can get a Marsok position, you need to go to this school. Why isn't, you know, SF saying before you can be an 18 Bravo and my team, you're going to this school?

You know, they have this opportunity to where it can be a great school to teach. people things they can't learn anywhere else. But unfortunately, everything you learn at Ranger School, you can get from the Ranger Handler. It's not teaching you something you couldn't do yesterday. Right.

Versus like Airborne School, I couldn't jump out of the plane through a week ago, now I can. So I just think they probably could have done a little bit better at that. Maybe even adopt like the Arslich model where it's more of like your team and you're still using some of the capabilities from the team you came from and kind of using that

is a way to enhance the course. And I think there's still measures in ways that they could, you know, we're not creating a course just to make it hard, just to make people fail. That's stupid. Yeah. As my son says, like,

when they built the, you know, the dark fader, when they built the thing, of course it created a lot of jobs, but like, it's the best star. So, like, we don't want to create something that's really hard just for people to fail. I would rather they kind of take a look at Ranger's School

and create something that, I said, even if you fail on the last day, you go back to your platoon, you're still value added. Do you think they missed them up? Do you think that part of that is because, and again, I am not, well, first off, I'm not putting down conventional forces because conventional forces were out there hooking and jabbing at these little shit fobs and cops out in the middle of nowhere.

Like, they saw plenty of action, but, you know, when you talk about sort of, bringing these lessons into Ranger Battalion, not, not, or from Ranger Battalion, not all these instructors. In fact, not a lot of the instructors, at least when I went, were from Battalion, right? They were tabbed Rangers from, you know, different units. So they might not have that regimented experience coming in to bring in. Do you think because it's a part of Trey Dock and open to anybody? Yeah, I think it is, I think it is for sure. And something that I tried to brain child while I was there is I went to the SF committee and because we were talking about females

coming through Rangers sports. So, you know, we wanted to cover, you know, SF, they had already had females in SIOP and CA. So how did they run their selections? What did they do? You know, how did they infrastructure-wide, whatever? So while we're there, though, talking some of their sergeant's major was like, you know, what if you treat a ranger school as kind of your swift time where one of their instructors would come here, do their time, they still wear their green hat, They go through RITAP. They're still a certified Ranger instructor. But, you know, and then when you have S-DF folks come through,

you can maybe kind of come up with something that's a little bit more applicable to, you know, the Ranger mission set. So I think there's opportunities where they could have done that. And I think the Ranger Regiment, they could almost do the same thing where, hey, you know, you did your squad leader time. You're not really ready to be a platoon sergeant yet. And it's right here at Fort Benning or Fort Moore, you know, have them come over on loan because a lot of folks,

you don't want to leave the community because once you lose, the community, who knows what's going to happen to you. So I think a lot of people are afraid of that. But people do deserve to take a meet. So if they could come over and be like a guest instructor, still do RITAP, still do all that stuff, but you're like on loan or with duty at Ranger School. Right. You know, I think Ranger Regiment produces the most Ranger qualified NCOs or send the most

and receive the most. I think that they should be a little bit more involved with it. Yeah. I think there's a difference between, I think, what you and I would like Ranger's School to be and what it actually is. Like, we have this idea in our mind that it should be a Commando school. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that's what most people like civilians think it is. But really, as you point out, it's a Tradoc School and that most of the students are Cherie lieutenant. Right. I.OBC guys. Or E6 is. And privates out of Ranger Battalion. Right, and E6 is from the... That's the minority.

Yeah, yeah. A minority of NCOs from the conventional force. Right. And so, Ranger's School, like, I was definitely, if you talked to me back in the day, I'd be bitter about it. But nowadays, like, I can look back on it and see they did a very good job at training us on the basics. Right. It's a basic leadership school. And to this day, I could not, even if I wanted to,

I could not forget how to set it in an ambush. Right. Because they made me do it so many damn times. So it has value. But I don't think you're wrong either, Mike, in pointing out that it could have even more value with some modifications. Yeah. I think so.

It's just, you know, I'd be dumb to think in, you know, the year 2050. Like, is it still going to be the same? I hope not. Like, there has to be a point where, you know, we're kind of gravitate towards. Yeah. something a little bit more applicable. I mean, we're seeing drones in Russia. Yeah.

We're seeing in Ukraine, like, start moving towards a little bit more, you know, modern theory when it comes to things. And it doesn't have to be, you know, it doesn't have to be a six-month long tactical course. That's not what you're trying to do. But I just think that they could. Well, it may have been a six-month tactical course for some of us. For some people.

Right, right. Well, and that begs the question. Did you go through the last hard course or the first easy? course because everybody is the last hard one for sure. Did you have the bayonet assault course? Yes. We had to break the ice away to do it. His soul is pure.

His soul is pure. But I think that you pointed out, Jack, that that really Ranger School, like unless people can go to Ranger School because there aren't enough officers to fill it out, but it really is an I-O-B-C. It's an infantry officer basic course

school, you know, to teach these college kids you know, sort of small unit and larger unit tactics. You get them kind of up to speed. And it's funny to me, though, because like you mentioned, coming from battalion, and it's like when one of these officers getting ready to fail when they have their first no-go and they're looking at their second, like who do they make their platoonal sergeant and their squad leaders?

It's like the ranger privates. It's like, hey, where are my regiment guys? All right, you guys get him to get him a pass. Yeah, for sure. Mike, Mike, tell us about then picking up Sergeant Major and kind of finishing out your military career. Yeah, so I was picked up pretty early on.

I think when I was elected, I'd been in the Army 14, 15 years or whatever. So I actually didn't think I'd get picked up. I had been in soft majority of my career and I had the classified NCRs or whatever. So I didn't think that they'd even really read a lot of them. you know, no degree. I didn't have a lot of diversity when it comes to assignments,

which is all the things that they want you to have. And they say, you're not going to get picked up if you don't, but I got picked up right away. So it's kind of a shocker. And then I ended up doing like the online academy, which is what it is. It was, you know, two years of nightmares. Yeah.

Yeah. But it sucks, too, because you're doing the academy, but you're also doing the job of Stone Major. because as soon as, you know, I got selected, they were like, oh, you're coming here, you're going to do that. So I end up going to Fort Bragg, you know, the chief clinical sergeant major of Womax. So, you know, you're jumping right into, hey, you've been a soft medic all this time. And then you were at Ranger's School, and then now you're in charge of clinical medicine at one of the largest Army hospitals. It's like I couldn't be any more far removed, but I actually enjoyed it.

quite a bit because it allowed me to plus I have your IFOs which hopefully you can get them on the show so he was the sergeant major of Wormac at the time so we just immediately just hit it off but there's a good opportunity to see with the conventional medics and the conventional medical teams and organizations how they function and how they did things and it was actually kind of an eye-opener so I was pretty blessed to be able to do that but it came with many headaches. Because my thing was as a medic,

treating my guys, that was my number one job, they'd care of my guys. And so when I got put in this position, my soldiers were no longer really my job. Right. My delivery of health care to these beneficiaries, you know,

these wives, these husbands, the children, like that became my priority. And so I kind of found myself getting a little bit more aggressive and eventful towards the service and the service member because the delivery of healthcare was vastly substandard, in my opinion.

Yeah. I just want to ask you a question because you, in the Army in particular, you wear your DD-214 on your chest, right? Or, you know, like we love badges. We love, you know. And you will go into. a conventional Army hospital does

does does you're like you know what does your like chest help you like navigate or whatever yeah the flare thanks that's the word I was looking for

fucking TBI yeah not really I think most of the people in Medcom which is you know Army Medical Command or whatever I don't think many of them even knew what half of that stuff was yeah I had mastered jump wins, free fall, CNB, all that, like, they didn't know.

But I think, you know, where it did make a difference was I would actually do shifts in the ER, and I'd go up to the OR and actually scrub in for surgeries once in a while. So when I go in there and I got the SESCO, and I'm, you know, a FROC start major at the time, and you got this 80-second, you know, PV2 in there with his wife, and he's just like, whoa, like, who's this guy? you know, it's just, I think that was kind of the highlight. I think they were like, yeah, you know, my family's good to go. They were taking care of them. Yeah.

And I think that's kind of what it was all about. Do we have questions for Mike? Yeah, we have a couple. I have one here for you. M. Corbin asks, over the last 20-some years, the Rangers have seen it all. Correct me if I'm wrong. But during that time, the Ranger Special Operations Combat Medics have led the way in innovating and pioneering advanced field medic techniques such as establishing walking blood banks,

which have saved countless lives. What were some of the more counterintuitive things that were learned along the way during these 20 years? That's great. Now, that is a good question. Of course, I'm biased, but I do think the radio medics have light years beyond a lot of the other medics out there. And I've worked close with pretty much every type of medic and all the organizations. But I think the hungry Ranger medic, and it's not just, has nothing to do with the flexion or nothing like that. I just think because they're just, they're saturated with that knowledge of the Ranger Medic handbook and the institutional knowledge. And they have the PA and the surgeons that are there. I've even seen 18 deltas at our refresher course saying, you know,

our surgeon won't even let up do this or do that. You know, this blows my mind during 18 delta. That's crazy. But ours always pushed us harder and push the envelope. Even when the FDA won't allow it. So when it comes to walking blood bank, we're talking about taking blood from that ranger over there, who's an Olo Tider, and putting it in this ranger who needs it.

And it's not me, the medic is doing it because I have to, you know, If I'm doing damage control or so station on this guy, I need an infantryman to draw the blood from that guy, put it in the bag, and then we can administer it to this guy. So, you know, I think that Ranger Medics because of the organization,

I think they've been able to push that envelope harder than any other. I think PDAs are great. They're good at medicine. They do really well. I think, you know, CA medics are good. 160th is phenomenal. they are, but I've never seen another organization where a sergeant major or first sergeant or a captain sergeant would come over and help you do medicine.

Yeah. And they're good at it because they've been doing T-T-T-T-R-Gruple-T for 10 years at that time. I think that's what really helps in the surgeons in the PA. I think that's what really helps the organization. That's fantastic. But you did say counterintuitive. Yeah. Can I hear that right?

Yeah. do you mean something that wasn't was not beneficial? No, something that seemed like it wouldn't work but did or like kind of blew your mind that this is actually something that works? Yeah, I think the fresh old blood was good. That's changed military medicine for the better going forward. I'd say that's probably the biggest one there. And I think one thing that we had to get people out of the mindset was, you know, I had platoon sergeants that were like, hey, we need to do IV training.

And I'm like, no, you don't because you shouldn't be pushing blood or you shouldn't be pushing normal saline or crystalloids or whatever. So let's get away from IV training and let's start doing something a little bit more applicable, something I need you to actually do. That took a lot of breaking the culture. So sort of like, why do we need lactated ringers when we have Private Smith right here? Yep. That's fascinating.

For a long time, because, you know, starting IV is like a technical thing. so infantry folks were like oh it's fun so they wanted to do it but i'm like i don't really need you to start the idea i need you to do this instead so kind of kind of breaking that culture was a little hard to do yeah um well they just wanted it for those saturday mornings when they were feeling like shit from hey that's what i was there for man i would take anybody anytime day or night family i come your house students bless their soul yeah um abdi thank you so much for the very generous donation. We deeply appreciate it. Abdi says, hey, I'm 24 just in working as a TCU nurse, wanting to be a 68 whiskey since high school, just stuck in the immigration limbo until then.

Thanks, Jack and Dave, you guys help me. Hey, thank you. Abdi, man, we, we're rooting for you. I mean, we had Adam Gamal on, you know, talking about his, like, you know, immigration sort of journey and getting into the military and all his stuff. And like bringing in immigrants is a phenomenal, like it's a phenomenal asset to the military. Oh, for sure. In my experience, I've worked with several that have done phenomenal, whether they've met a few from Russia,

few from even Ukraine, and then some of the, what they call it, the Mavni program. Is that what they call that back in the day? I don't know. You guys probably know better than I do. where the SIOP folks, they would bring some folks in straight from some of the other countries. Oh shit.

I didn't know. Yeah, they did really well. I thought it was called Mad Me or something like that. But I'd work with some of those folks. They did a really, really good job. Yeah, well, I do. We wish you all the best on your journey, brother. Bjorn, thank you very much.

How often do KagMedics, 24th STS medics and J-Mow work alongside each other, and how would you characterize their differences tactically? and medically. I'm going to answer part of that for you so that you don't have to say anything. And we'll just say that tactically, like, they're all medics and they work according to the tactics of the people they're with. So we'll just solve that right there. And then you can answer the rest of them.

No, that's correct. But the two four, their medics, they're phenomenal. But you'll find two four medics are typically farmed out, more so when deployed to the other units. Yeah. So they work all the time. But when it comes to medicine, once again, it's a small world. So we would share a lot of our stuff, whether it's going through our medical refresher or whatever,

we're all side by side and we're sharing that stuff. So nobody likes to hoard that experience. And even at our medical refresher, it would be a time for AAR or become classified, take it from non-classified to classified, close the doors, whatever, and if we had to discuss, you know, combat lessons learned. what do you think in your opinion from the time that you were in 2003 or for up until um and i mean active not your guard time or guard time obviously but until you retired what do you think was the biggest shift in like medical knowledge what we thought we reversed what we know yeah yeah i'd say

it's probably like the 2005 2006 seven time frame where um you know um you know You know, T-T-T-T-T-C became prevalent. It was at regiment for a while, but it became prevalent everywhere else. And then the conventional force, they dragged their feet for a hot minute when it came to that kind of stuff. So everybody was issued to turn a kid around that time frame. And people started to take ownership of their casualties. So I think around that time frame because, you know, there's been studies showing preventable death on the battlefield. And it's remarkably high.

So it's 24 to 26% of combat casualties will potentially survive it. That means if the organization or the service member was trained on putting their own tourniquet on or putting a tourniquet on for the other person, if they could identify and treat attentive physiology or secure an airway, you know, 24% of people potentially could have survived. And that's massive. So I think around that time 2005-2006, the Ranger medicam book was really getting momentum. committee of T-T-T-T-TCCC was staffed with some of the greatest minds,

and I think that's probably when it really started developing. Going back to our medical refresher was really aggressive in that time frame. You had dudes coming back, like 18-Delta, Sarks, people come back with real-world experience, and so we really capitalized on that. Yeah, and for people, because I don't know if we cover it, T-T-T-T-T-T-T-C is tactical, combat casualty care, right? Yep, correct. Yep.

Yeah. And there's an app, the deployed medicine app. It's free. It's developed and launched by the Department of Defense. So if anybody has like an Apple, Superior Apple product or Samsung, whatever, you should be able to find it, deployed medicine. It has the latest and greatest, most updated information on there.

And of course, it's free. So check that out. Got it. Can't be free. And last one. Oh, M. Corbyn, thank you very much. be sure to hit the like and subscribe. Yes, please be sure to hit the like and subscribe. Check out our Patreon page. The links down in the description. You can get access to all these episodes ad free.

So Mike, where are you at today and what are you working on? Yeah, so I'm in Maine. We are going to stay in Maine. So this is kind of my final resting thought. I've been working for Safeguard Medical for a couple years now. I do new business development. And they're out of North Carolina, a global company. So I'm still able to apply a lot of my medical nerd stuff there. I've also been working with some folks at Ventus. I get you guys more information if you need it. But I've been working with a lot of folks who have recently separated or going through the separation and helping them out with getting access to care issues to go

the way, whether it's the VA or working with local treatment facilities and stuff like that. And it's been overwhelming to see how many folks are coming back with lung issues. And so I partnered up with the Ventus folks. And it's like a, it's a respirator that helps filter out a lot of the toxic exposure that we have just from firing a gun. You know, the lead and arsenic, all the different chemicals there. So we're working on that, becoming hopefully a standard issue item for special operations. and the conventional forces, if they're going to the range and they're shooting a rifle or doing whatever, they should have you spent this money from.

For people who, you know, for people who, you know, think that they might be having a shoot, like, what is it, but don't know it, maybe they think I'm just out of shape these days. Like, what should they look for? What should they ask, you know, the VA to check them for? Yeah, so, that's a good question. So typically with the VA, you should be able to get in there and get your base. six blood work done. So if somebody goes in there and they're like, well, I'm a narcic or whatever,

the VA has to look at it as completely new patient, like what could possibly, and doing a whole workup is, it's going to be a lot of work. And most guys are probably going to have issues with their testosterone when they're getting out, separating. And because of the lifestyle for many years, folks deal with that, or anxiety with dealing with the new environment they're in depression because they're not doing. That's something I've had to battle with. I used to be top of my game, doing phenomenal things with phenomenal people, and then it just hits the brakes, and you're doing something different.

So dealing with those kinds of things. So narrowing it down to, like, one thing is extremely hard to do. But I would always suggest get your vitals because vitals are vital for reason. So trend your vitals. If my blood pressure was this last week and it's this, this week, I can trend that I have high blood pressure. That's pretty easy to do. And get your blood lab. The blood labs don't lie.

So if your levels are, you know, above normal range or above appropriate or acceptable levels or they're below, it's easy to see that kind of trigger. But working through some of the other things are going to be a lot less of those. So I would suggest if I've worked with the VA team and they've been great for me, but I said, I want to see what values are. I think my testosterone is low. I want to get it checked. So they've been very great about doing that thing.

And would the VA do? testosterone replace or do they do TRT or HRT? That's hit or missed in my experience. I've had to go through civilian channels to get my own personal testosterone. With the VA, your acceptable level, depending on that practitioner, it varies. And it's unfortunate because we're seeing a lot of folks that have really low testosterone. And it's kind of affecting their day-to-day life, their quality outlook on life. in the VA in my opinion is not doing enough about it.

And correcting if I'm wrong, but levels are very different because if a guy used to have like an 800 or 900, now he has a 500. It's relative. If he has a 500, that's going to be low to him as opposed to somebody who has 300 and used to have 500. And I'm not an endocrinologist. Sure.

Somebody's watching and they're like actually, but you're absolutely right. It's relative to the person. But generally, if you used to feel this and you used to, you know, be able to do this and now you're not, that could be a pretty good reason. And then when I personally got on testosterone, it changed my life. Yeah. And the last question, I'm sorry, but, you know, you're such a wealth of knowledge. And we're learning more all the time. You know, we talked about TBIs and now we're, you know, now we're finally starting to realize the effects of blast injuries, breaching and IEDs and, you know,

mortars, stuff like that. how is medicine able to to split apart TBI post-traumatic stress you know operation like these things or is it just a big suit where they're like well this person's been in combat and it could be any of these things yeah so in my experience when I separated from the military

I know for a fact I had TBI like I even that trip in Missoule I hit my head while I was treating a ranger who was shot in the face. I hit my head on the Kevlar thing and like eventually threw up from it. I know I had TBIs. And when I did the TBI screening for the VA, it was a civilian. And he just was like, you know, what are these chaps? What are these animals and asked me to memorize some things?

And he said, I don't have a TBI. I'm like, you're insane. Right. I went to Bellwore and had brain scans and they could see that I had lasting issues. So I think the VA has a long way to go. And to your point also, I've talked to a lot of practitioners that will suggest that they do exacerbate. If somebody has depression, they have anxiety, but they also have PTSD and they also have traumatic brain injuries, if they all exacerbate and they make everything worse.

Right. So you've got to treat all of them in different ways, different modalities, to be able to get that best. And there's a lot of things up there. There's the stilite gangling block that, you know, Dr. Mulvaney that those folks do is, you know, phenomenal. I could not suggest any more, you know, higher than the ketamine. I think low-dose ketamine has been introduced out there. There's mushroom therapy. Once again, I'm not.

Yeah. I can't speak to it scientifically or I haven't personally tried it. But there's other modalities that folks are taking a look at and I'm happy for it. And I think some VA systems are even looking. into THD as well. So hopefully we get there, but I could tell you we're not there yet. Yeah, especially with the VA,

like the Stellite Gangling Block, I think, like you have to jump through hoops at the VA, and they don't give it for post-traumatic stress. They only give it for a certain type of pain. Sure. You know, like, yeah, so the VA is still,

like they're way behind when it comes to the level of care that a lot of people need. I think my biggest advice to separating folks or folks that are already out, you have to take charges. You have to. take charge of your health care. Because if you don't, nobody else will.

If you think that, you know, I go to the VA and I see, you know, this provider today, I might go back and see somebody else. Yeah. It's not like my time in regiment where I saw the same person every time. You have to take charge of your health care and don't be afraid to be open about it. Be transparent with your friends, with the people you've served with. I had people calling me up, you know, okay, man, this is bothering me. I'm like, no shit is bothering you.

You watch somebody get shot in the face. I'm not surprised that that's bothering you. Right. So, like, being open about it and talking to folks and not seeing that as a sign of weakness or anything like that, which I think we've gotten so much better about. Because while we were in, you know, I said and saw and did things that if I said it bothered me, you know, would they take me off the line? Right. I lose my clearance. You know, what are these issues? And so we kind of hit a lot of that stuff. And we just, it's nonsense. We don't actually do that anymore.

Yeah. Well, Mike, thank you for joining us tonight and doing this show and sharing your life experiences like this has been like super cool and actually very unique to dive this deep into combat medicine. I apologize. I've never done like a podcast before and I don't really like talk about, you know, my history that much. So it's, you know, I've got to piece it all together based off, you know, memories and things that happened. You were horrible. You only made it two hours and 40 minutes. I'm just kidding. I have one final shout out of shameless self-promotion. There you go.

My book, We Defy, is coming out December 9th, The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History, about the SF teams that jumped in with backpack nuclear weapons, about the first counterterrorism unit in special operations, the guys who worked undercover in Berlin. It's available for pre-order now on Amazon, and it will be out on December 9th. How many interviews did you do for the book, check? Probably close to 100 altogether.

It's like 10 years of research. I mean, it's quite a while. So it covers Detachment A, Detachment K, blue light, green light, and the commanders in extremist force. That's the five chapters of the book. So I appreciate if you guys. go and check it out. Order it, order it or the commies win. Yeah, exactly. I mean,

do you hate the troops? I mean, what, what? So next, this coming Monday, we're going to have Ed Bogan on the show, CIA senior dude. And then on Friday, we're going to have Mike West, who is in the Rhodesian and South African Special Forces. So that's what's coming up next. Thank you, everybody. We appreciate it. Thank you, Mike. We really appreciate it. It was fantastic. Thank you. I'll stay safe.