The Team House - 5th Special Forces Group 18-Charlie Caleb Phillips: Ep. 63

Episode Date: October 11, 2020

Caleb served in the 82nd Airborne Division, deploying in support of the Global War on Terror and as well as to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He then attended Special Forces Selection and Assessment and the Q-Course with Jack and they were both assigned to 5th Special Forces group. Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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

and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. All right, folks, we're live. This is episode 63 of the Team House. I am Jack Murphy here with co-host Dave Park. I've said earlier a lot of people think that Dave and I are in like separate rooms

because we do this tri-screen thing, but like actually we can like slap each other. other and steal each other's drinks. We are in the same room. Not that we're into that. Yeah, but if we were. And it's, yeah, it'd be okay though. Yeah, yeah, there's nothing wrong with that, you know. It's not, there's nothing at all weird about that.

We are here with our guest today, Caleb Phillips. Caleb was a young paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. And then he and I actually met in the Special Forces Assessment and Selection Program. I think we went through the last class of two. 2005, it was that winner. And then we went through the Q-course together. And we were then roommates at Fort Campbell when we were both assigned to fifth group. So Caleb and I go way back.

He also did time in the SF National Guard, did time working as a trainer, training other special operation soldiers. And today he's a law enforcement officer. So Caleb, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on. I know you got a lot of Back at Bragg stories to share with us tonight. Yeah, a couple. I mean, you're the star, most of them.

You mean, a smaller group of friends we had a lot of fun and some trouble. I want to say thank you to let me on. And I'm excited. Yeah, absolutely, man. I'm glad that you're here and you're willing to put up with us because today is also a special episode in the sense that Dave had promised our viewers that when we hit 10,000 subscribers on the channel, that he would cut my hair,

buzz my hair on a live stream. And as you can see, I have hair like Beethoven right now, except I'm not a musical genius. I haven't gotten a haircut since COVID happened. I actually was walking. My barber here in Brooklyn has gone out of business. They're literally not there anymore.

That is sad. I know. A lot of people got screwed, especially yeah barbers gym owners restaurants bars all those folks really got hit hard um so we have it set up we have a chair over there we have a camera at some point during this stream dave is going to buzz my hair off and caleb will be able to play uh you know it'll be like one of those veterans reacts videos like veteran reacts to full metal jacket or you know something one of those kind of things veteran reacts to call of duty video it'll be like that or calip will basically call us a bunch of fuck moot while you know you shave my hair off well and i believe we're gonna i'm gonna have some help with that right yeah my uh my daughter is over here and she's like raring to go like yeah we're we're cutting dad's hair off yeah she's giggling about it already um so let's uh let's get started um my first question for you

caleb and this is the big one this is the important one why is it that the airborne infantry is so much better than all of the other types of infantry Well, it's due to the extensive training we received in a three-week school that is primarily based on running slowly in formation. That is why we hold ourselves in higher esteem. But in reality, I think a lot of it comes from the fact that most good infantrymen are historians. So we fall in love with the allure and the history of the units that we're in. so that is a young private coming to be 8th. That was all I could think about.

Like when I remember running down Ardennes the very first time, the legitimate one thing that was rattling around in my mind was that I am a parachute for me in second and board this now. Fuck yeah. Did I know what that meant? No clue. Did I understand anything about what was going to happen to me? Not at all.

But I just knew that I was wearing a Marine Ray. I had jump wings. and everybody else did too. So I felt like I was part of, you know, a big historical unit, which, you know, at the face of it, you are. There's no, I think as a young man, you get pumped with that propaganda, you can, it's very easy to discount the other units. But, you know, there's thousands of young men going to those units do,

and they probably feel the same way. So it's a, it's a young man thing, I think. That's a pretty good answer, Caleb. That's not so bad. You went into our long and colorful history. You didn't mention, well, I guess you plays into it, but you did not specifically mention our highest spree decor, which plays into the long and colorful history.

Indeed. No, I just assumed. I assumed everybody had highest free decor. No, it's kind of one of those things where, as with any group of people, you kind of separate yourself, and it is with the extra-class. powerful hat. It's with the jump wings. It's with the jump boots. All that other stuff is that the it sets you apart, right? It sets you, we have a group of soldiers sitting out there and you can see who has jump boots on. You can see who wears berets. It's kind of one of those things where it's like,

all right, well, I mean, I'm going to go hang out with those guys because we have a lot more cooler stuff on. And then you go talk to him and you start asking him like, hey, what's your job? I'm like, oh, I fucking jump out of airplanes and blow stuff up. Like, oh, that's the kind of person I want to be. I want to be with that guy. And honestly, you shouldn't Sakey knew the formula, which is why he gave raised to the whole army so that they would all be that high speed. Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, I think we all, I think anybody who's been in kind of knows, like, once everybody does something, it's no longer special. Yeah.

And I can understand thinking, but. Caleb, there's a second part to this purity test. Dave and I were talking a little bit earlier today about the Marine Corps infantry and how they're an accepted part. of the infantry family. We love them and respect them. But how do you feel about the entire notion of naval infantry? I find it hard to fire maneuver on the ocean as an infantry. And I would, to me, when I hear the word infantry, it makes me think of a guy with a rucksack and a rifle doing his name. And what do you make of the whole notion of sailors who come ashore and fight on the ground and ground environments? How do you feel about that?

that whole idea. Is this pre before I worked for them for four years straight as a contractor? I'm not talking about the Marine Corps that paid their dues and cut their teeth. It is, you know, I'll give them a pass. I'll give a pass because in the end of the day,

infantrymen goes everywhere from the highly strained 75th Ranger Regiment Assulter to that kid with an AK who's fighting in Azerbaijan right now. So those are all infantrymen. They're just different kinds. That's accurate, accurate. I'm sorry if I'm not striking where you're aiding me.

Are we supposed to talk about somebody? Don't do it. No, he's throwing shade right now as we occasionally do on our show. I'm just asking questions. I'm just asking questions. You're setting the stage, and it's up to me to act. All right, Caleb, fair enough. So tell us then about how you found your way into the 80s.

in Airborne. Where did you grow up? How did you find yourself in the Army? So I was raised in Wilmington, North Carolina, which for those of you that don't know, is about an hour and a half away from Fort Bragg. At the age of 15, I was reading a book. I think it was Jorgensen. He was a famous ranger blur in Vietnam. And in this book, he talks about, he's from North Carolina, and he talks about how he was really directionless, and his parents sent him to Oak Ridge Military Academy, which is a military academy around Greensboro, North Carolina. And I was like, oh, that's what I want to do.

So I went to the military school, so I left home at 15. And 17 on the dot, I hopped a cab to the recruiter's office in my Oak Ridge Military Academy uniform, obviously, and walked right up to the sergeant and said, hey, I want to be a Marine recon guy. So after about five minutes getting my ass chewed by the Marine recruiter, because I kept on a sitting there calling him sergeant, though he was a staff sergeant, because it was an Army school that I was at. I didn't realize that we addressed Marines by their specific rank at the time.

He chewed me out for five minutes, and he said, you know, how much you come back and you get your head straight? It's like, all right, yes, staff sergeant. I walked right out and I walk right into the Army Bureau's office. And the Army recruiter said, what do you want to be, man? And I said, sir, I want to jump out of airplanes

and shoot people. And he said, oh, fucking right on. Sign on this line. And I signed up. And it was, I mean, it was so easy. It was just one of those things. He's like, do you want to look at any of the other recruiting videos want to check out this? No, not. He had a picture over his desk of a

platoon in Afghanistan because this was 2000 this was 2002 2001 this is 2002 and he had gotten back recently a couple months prior and he had his

platoon on his on the background of his desk and it was like it wasn't an internship between it was like Arturoat platoon but instead I was like I pointed to those guys that was like that looks fucking cool he's like oh dude we were we didn't really nothing we just shot a bunch of artillery, you want to be an infantry guy

and those guys look at the cool stuff. I was like, oh, fucking right on. So I went back to the academy, finished my last year as a senior, and the whole time there we had a retired seventh group sergeant major there. And I

told him what I did, and he looked at me and he's like, out of every MOS you picked it to be an infantry, I thought, yeah, or, you know, I didn't know how to say a robber back then. He was like, yes, Arvator, I did. He's like, my God. All right.

Well, I'll see you in about five years. Come back and come back and tell me how it goes. I'm like, all right, cool. And then all the other instructors were various MOSs. Some Intel guys and cat guys. And I told them what I did. And every single one of them was like, oh, you picked the worst MLS.

And it was like, I don't know what books and movies you guys see. But like the fucking infantry guys are where it's at. So that was my journey. And then went to Fort Benning. It's like that scene in Starship Troopers, not in the movie in the book, where he signed up for the mobile infantry. And he's walking down the hall afterwards and runs into his buddy who just signed up for like aviation. And the guy's like, oh, what did you enlist for? He's like, mobile infantry.

Like, mobile infantry. Fuck them. What are you thinking to do? And he gets all bent out of shape. He's like, the mobile infantry is the army. I mean, to this day, I still, that old joke of like, there's only one way to serve a. country and 211 ways to support them. Like, I still think that joke's funny.

It's true, man. That's why they should rename the military. Just call it the infantry supported by everyone else. Yes, exactly. And it's kind of one of those things where you try to, I've probably counseled like three or four young men joining the military, family, friends, or just friends, people I need. And I always tell them, it was like, hey, man, you can do whatever you want the military. I'm not going to hate on it.

You want to fix trucks? Fucking fix trucks. You want to drive, you want to, you know, you want to repair it. Repair them, man. Just be the best air conditioning repair

man you can beat. But there will be that day. You're driving down Zabatowski or Victory Drive or wherever, and there's going to put you a truck full of dirty, nasty,

angry, fucking infantry dudes. And you're going to sit there and think, oh, man, I wish I would have done that. And it's never, the other way around. So, you know, make your decision to stick by it.

Yeah, that's a good point, Caleb. I mean, even if you're, you know, you join the infantry, what people don't understand is like, you can sham the fuck out for four years and do nothing. Like, you can just hand out basketballs in the gym. But if you do that, you're not bettering yourself in any way. That doesn't, like, lead you anywhere, really. It's one of those things where it's kind of like anything in life, right? like, you know, we're, none of the three of us, none of us are young men anymore.

And it's kind of one of those things that once you get people a couple years on it, you start realizing like, man, I really do get what I put into it. And all of those unmotivated soldiers, all those guys that piss pot, all those guys that went AWOL, all those guys that, I fucking ate the Army, the Army, blah, blah, blah. Like, does the Army suck in some ways? Oh, yes. It's a terribly run organization. but when you're a private or specialist or corporal or sergeant,

I mean, really, your problems are at the platoon and company level, and that's where your life needs to be. And you, unlike other big companies or other big organizations, you can address those problems. I mean, both of you guys know having a good sergeant is, if you have a good sergeant, that makes your life so much better. well i mean especially having a good squad leader's good good platoon sergeant like if they're good that guy is you know you're probably going to stay in the military if they're bad you're getting the

fuck out immediately like that first team leader squad leader like you they almost have as much impact on a young guy as their parents do which is kind of crazy to think about it's kind of one of those things where it's it's kind of funny because you know it's the same thing with lieutenants right and the way the officer board structure is that if you think about it lieutenants have direct input on you know in the army the 38 man rifle to like they are directly responsible for the lives of those guys and god forbid they're their weapons they have responsibility for the entire company's weapons and they're affecting the whole company perhaps even the italian so they have you're placing so much uh responsibility into a 22 23 year old man

or now young man or young lady and it's kind of one of those things where lie lie lie lie lie, but in the end you know that's their that's their initials on that bomb that's getting dropped that's their initial that's on the machine gun line and sent in rounds down range to support the new realm they're responsible for that and we don't really i don't feel that we put enough emphasis on that the army is more comparing the army and the marine corps from my experience because I spent a couple of years teaching Marine grunts, not just the Marsa guys.

The Army is a lot of Marine Gallatin, I feel. Like in the Army, we call our guys platoon leaders, PLs. In the Marine Corps, they address them as platoon commanders. And that would be the thing that I would often bring up whenever we'd be doing, you know, PCC's pre-combat checks or PCI's pre-combat inspections. I'd always wonder like, hey, where's your, where's your lieutenant? Why is he not out here to do this?

Oh, he's with the captain and the other student commanders planning the mission. And it's like, that doesn't, that doesn't sound the greatest plan because he should probably be out here to make sure you guys are good. He, you know, the NCO should probably know what the plan is too. And it's just a different culture that I noticed between the two. Yeah. And the other thing, too, that I was having a conversation with someone just last night, actually, is that I don't think a lot of like civilians understand, you know, going back to what you're saying about being a young lieutenant or, this is even true of platoon sergeants in a lot of ways,

is you're held responsible for every single thing your men do, not just at work, but if they go out and they get a DUI over a three-day weekend, like you will have a person get relieved of command, which is just so fucking weird. There's like no other job in America that is like that. Like I'm employed by a big corporation right now. If I go out after this and I do something stupid

and get thrown in the back of a paddy wagon, And like my boss at that corporation is not going to be fired from his job for that? It's crazy because if you look at it from one perspective, it's supposed to build leadership and accountability. When in fact it doesn't, it curtails it because now I'm an upcoming E6 platoon sergeant. My platoon sergeant's gone. I'm a hard charger. I'm trying to bust my ass to get promoted and do right by the boys. and then some idiot piss is hot for Coke.

Like, what am I supposed to do about that? Yeah, yeah. Like, you didn't go make them blow lines of Coke on a Friday night after work. No. And that's the interesting thing, having been in the real world now for several years, I mean, it's kind of embarrassing to me now. But I remember my first year as a contractor, I would talk to my contractor boss about my weekend plans.

Like, hey, just let me know, I'm going to stay at home. I want to do this, this, this, and this. And he would look at me like, like, I get it. I appreciate it. I know what you're doing. But I don't give a fuck. I don't care. All right, cool, man.

Just want to know I have a plan. And, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's like, dude, you're a civilian now. That's completely on you. If you get a DUI tomorrow, you're still going to come into work. Like, you may just need a ride. Like, that's the difference. And I think the military keeps soldiers kind of infantile by treating them like that.

that like you're a baby and your PL or your platoon sergeant is like your daddy. It's like, no, you're responsible for that. Like if you go to jail, like you pay the fucking price for that. Like I don't want to hear about that shit. And I mean, maybe that's the wrong approach. I can see like that getting out of hand also if you just say, well, I don't give a shit. Because if you don't give a shit, I mean, okay, you know, half your platoon piss is hot or whatever the case may be, ends up in jail over the weekend.

And now where's the platoon? Now you'll have half a lieutenant. Yeah, yeah. Especially in the 82nd, I mean, you kick a guy out, like they're not getting replaced, at least not immediately. No. And it's one of those things where you try to, I guess it's much like being a parent, right? Like you try to establish a set of standards and ground rules,

and you try to set the example. And you hope that your kids, your soldiers, follow that example. And that's kind of one thing I do miss about being an NCL. I kind of miss that part of the Army. Of course, in SF, you have your teammates, and it's kind of like more of your peers, right? So you more lead by example by just living a good,

by living as a good example, as opposed to leading as a good example. Whereas in the infantry, you've had your squad of guys, that you have to literally lead them and set the example like, hey, here's how you do your taxes. Here's how you. Right, right.

Yeah, you know what I mean? They're also, I kind of missed it. It's just that as a young person, right, all of their peers are going to college or going into the workforce. And in a sense, they are learning responsibility. Like, if they fuck up, it's on them. And like, there's no one's going to like make that go away. Like, you have to deal with that.

Whereas in the military, it's like, no, it's, on the entire collective group. And like, I don't know, I feel like an 18-year-old doesn't really learn responsibility in the same way. And then that leads into all sorts of problems transitioning out of the military where, like, you never had to really live in the real world before. Oh, completely. And it's kind of one of those things where being in the military is very forgiven on some ways, where like, oh, I forgot to do this.

But you have a squad leader or a team leader there to remind you to do. X, Y, Z. Yeah, yeah. But on the other set of the spectrum, like I had a soldier who, he was a good soldier, he went AWOL. We had a, we were on a 12-hour recall

status, and it was a long weekend, and I'm like, oh, got the phone call, started using the telephone tree. And I was like, hey, where's private so-and-so? Oh, private-so and the other two privates are down in Florida. And it's like, well, that is not fucking within the 300,000.

50 mile limit. Get the fuck back here right now. So they get back here. They start to come back. Of course, they're my guys. So the Tunesar is yelling at me for why aren't I control my guys from the guy out of Florida. Whatever. Roger Sarre goes my bad.

Blah, blah, blah, blah. Really, you can't argue that. And then when they show up, there's two of them. And I was like, where the fuck is what's the space? Which sucks because every three of them, he was like the best private out of all of them. So it was like, well, fuck, if I had to choose one. to not come back, it would be put a YouTube jimos. Not him.

Oh, he said he's not coming back. Oh, man. So I call him. I'm like, dude, what are you doing right now? He's like, you know what, so aren't? I can't. I just can't come back, man. I'm done.

I can't do that at the Army thing. And I had like one minute. I had one minute on the phone to kind of explain to him what he was getting ready to do with his life. And he was like, no, that's fine. It's cool. He's like, all right, man. I'm sure I'll call you again or try to. call you again. If you don't want to talk

you don't pick up the phone. He's like, all right, so I'll take it easy. All right. Never talked to him again. And AWOL. Damn. And is 19. It's interesting what you talk about, though. Because you're talking about like going to jail.

And I don't know how it changed because I was in Ranger Battalion, you know, before 9-11, pre-9-11. And I think it was sort of a legacy of sort of the Clinton zero defect idea. military that, you know, up or out. And, you know, if you had one, especially for officers, if you had one mark against you on your performance evals, which was basically your. That's, that's 100% part of it.

Your subordinates performance valves. But also even back to like being a drafty military, like they used to do shortarm inspections in the barracks. I mean, yeah. It comes out of that also. Yeah. But like there would be periods of time because you know how, how the military, specifically Like commands respond have that knee jerk responds to incidents.

Yeah. Right. If there is a, if there is an incident, then all of a sudden, everything gets locked down. So not even getting put in jail, not even getting, you know, having, like being arrested. But if you have like an alcohol related incident, but, you know, even if if you were not the one who started it, if whatever. but if you had a single drink and were involved in some sort of bar fight or something else like that, which, I mean, thinking now you think, oh, well, it shouldn't be that hard to not get in a bar fight, but people don't understand what military towns are generally like, you know, and, you know,

but, you know, you could get RFS released for standards for Major Battalion, like sent down the road for something that was entirely not your fault. But, you know, so, and part of that is because the officers had, you know, were covering their ass because it would fight poorly on them if they're, you know, the whole culture of hooligans and brigands, the idea of, you know, of that. So, yeah, there's, I think there's a lot of pressure on the officers because nobody just goes, yeah, we get it. Like sometimes Joe is just Joe, right? Sometimes Joe is just going to go do crazy stuff that ain't. 18-year-old kids do, whether they're in the military or in college or, you know, or, you know, or hanging out. So, you know, you're asking, at least back then, I don't know how it is now.

I don't know if the standards are so absolutely strict. Oh, man, nowadays, it's like your team leader comes and like gives private a hug. Like, oh, you're such a great guy. We're so lucky to have you here. Well, I think it's a, of course, I get most of my current military knowledge. from SF guys. So, like, I don't, that's not representative

military and, uh, social media, I. Instagram. And, oh my God, dude,

I would lose my mind if I was a team later. What's going on here? Like, hey, hey, Phil, I should come on here

and fucking, uh, check out what PFC sold so did, uh, his fucking TikTok. And it's like, oh my God, dude,

I'm going to smoke you until you die. I'm just smoking until everybody else dies. Secure a water source. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want you take you your,

you're, want you to make a poncho, that wants you to go full of water. And that is your water source for the rest of the day. I was thinking about this before we talked earlier. And I was sitting there thinking of like all the silly shit that happened. And I'm sure, Dave, you have better stories than us. But like, I just remember so many things like dudes would be late.

And like, oh, I'm not a fucking problem. I want you to go to the day room. I want you to take a piece cardboard. I want you to draw a fucking clock on it. And then I want you to try that fucking clock off to your belt. Yep. And so now you have a private walk around like a fucking one meter wide clock. The guy who misplaced his nods and he had to make nods out of like plastic and cardboard with a little green lens and like have it secured to his belt loop at all times.

Yeah. I will. I mean, you know, like, so when I was in, you know, like. How many privates did you murder when you were in 275? Be honest now. Are they buried out in the back? 40 or whatever they died. No, I know. They died. They died. They didn't

immerer. They expired of natural causes. See, fortunately, once I'd come to TapSpect 4, I went to the sniper section, which was sort of like, there was still rank structure there, but it was, uh, it was a lot more, like, it was a lot more more like an SF team

where, you know, guy, you know, you'd still refer to somebody by the rank, but, but it was, it was very loose, you know, like it was very, uh, it wasn't so regulated. But I mean, I was a team leader for a while on the line. And like one of one of our new privates did a land nav course and was like talking on a cell phone the whole time or using it.

So I may have made him stand outside his room at parade rest talking on a cell phone like all my, you know, to nobody. But, you know, it's solid. But I mean, I was. I was generally pretty understanding, you know, because I had also been in the Navy where I had been a Navy diver, which was virtually no, like, not respect for rank, but it didn't matter really what rank you were in the dive locker. Everybody was just, you know, everybody, you were just part of the team, you know.

But it's funny, like the different cultures, because in the Navy, like before, like, before the whole zero defect thing, Like they used to joke that you couldn't become a chief petty officer in the Navy and E7 unless you had at least one DUI. Right. Like that used to be the joke. And then it cracked down so much where having a DUI or, you know, going to rehab or something like that would ruin your career as an enlisted. And now they're all saying, hey, no, come forward so you can get treatment. It's not going to ruin your career.

It's like, yeah, okay, bro. No one believes that. Yeah, not at all. And I'm not, I'm not, I am definitely not saying DUI's are cool and people should do that. Yeah, yeah, but the culture changed. Yeah, the cultures has changed massively, you know, in the military. Well, I think a lot of it too has to come with, um, the mother's against drug driving, like all that stuff. You're blaming the mothers, Caleb?

Yeah, I'll do it. I'll go there. I'll be, I'll be daring and I'll go there. no I think it's I think back in the day it was easier to go like oh well that was army life but that was Navy life right and I think we all knew guys like that

really good NCOs that you know once work was off they would just go fucking kind of six pack yeah and I think it's one of those things maybe you can go do a deeper dive on this that maybe it's PTSD or whatever but it's kind of one of those things

where it's like oh man serge's zone so yeah that dude's a fucking that dude's Ranger Battalion. He's awesome. He's a great guy. But then as soon as 1600 hit, he'd be three or four meters deep. Right. And that's where, at least, in my experience, that's where the

hazing occurred. It wasn't the, you have to bring, you have to fucking tie off this brick and carry it around all day because you forgot your gun somewhere. That's cool. That's legit. That's training. But it was, you know, 3 o'clock in the morning and your door gets kicked open and there's three fucking

spec for the corporal, pouring beer on you. Yeah. Like, yeah. I mean, you're talking about crossing that threshold where it goes from military discipline to just like unprofessional hazing, yeah. Yes. Yes.

And I think that all kind of comes together in a way. I mean, by no means, I think it's kind of funny that we train and we prepare young men for help, for war and then we get upset when they take the same reflexes and those same in brain

attitudes and bring it back here. Well, also, but the Ranger Regiment and it's probably the same in the 82nd. Like, you have these privates. They're like 18 year old kids and you just wind them up and wind them up

and fuck with them and fuck with them. And like most people just don't get it. Like the way your team leader and squad leader fucks with you plus how the bureaucracy of the army just fucks with you. and you stand out in the rain all day and you're told you're a piece of shit

but also you're the best soldier in the military and you can do anything and then after that's all over three day weekend guys see you on Tuesday and then everyone shocked like how did this platoon go out and get eight DUIs over the long weekend

and it's like well how could they not like why are we surprised by this yeah so when we went to the field we got told it was going to be the super high speed training and then we sat in a fucking patrol base for 12 hours, not doing shit. Oh, by the way, it's summertime. And so 19-year-old, Private So-and-so wants to do what 19-year-olds do. And like you said, you spin them up and you fucking torture them all week.

And you scream at them and you do all the stuff, which I'm not totally against. But yeah, Friday night comes, they clean their weapons, they turn all their shit in. And it's like, what am I going to do now? Oh, I'm going to throw beer bottles at the fucking barracks next door. Why? Because it's funny as fuck. Right. And that's, I think that's one of the, one of the things you talk about, wind them up and they go out and they do this stuff.

And, you know, it used to be that the military took care, like, recognized what those 18-year-olds were about. And you had your enlisted clubs where the 18-year-olds could drink on base, you know, if, you know, if you went over, like in the Navy, if you went overseas, you had shore patrol out there, you know, around the, you know, the bases in foreign countries that were running shuttles. Like if the shore patrol brought you back, just because you were like, you know, really intoxicated or whatever, you weren't getting in trouble.

They were just bringing you back where then when they shut down the e-clubs or, you know, made it so 18-year-olds can't drink. When they did these things, what else do you think they're going to do? You know, because 18-year-olds in a fraternity are going to go drink, 18-year-olds on the block are going to go drink. Sure leave in Thailand. What could go wrong? Right.

Well, and the thing is, is that like, if you accept that and you prepare for it, I feel like the military, you should. And obviously it was, it was too much one way for a while, right? There was too much, you know, it was too lax, like Post Vietnam and stuff. But then if you recognize that, hey, you know, these especially now that, now that, now that we're asking these basically these young men and women who are, I don't

say they're kids because they're not, but what we're asking them to do and to sacrifice. And then they come back and it's like, okay, because you're not 21, if we find out that you've had a drink anywhere, you know, you're done. We're going to start.

Oh, yeah. Well, that goes along with the whole general order number one thing that I I thought it was a joke. I thought when on my first trip to Iraq in 2003, I thought that was a joke when they said, no drinking. I wasn't even a big drinker.

I drank a little bit of high school, but I wasn't, I wasn't deep into it. Caleb, can you please, for the people who don't know, can you tell us what general order number one is? Oh, yeah, sorry. So general order number one is an all-encompassing order that was put out for all-deployed units that fell on or certain commands. the part that was more those most sensitive and most pertinent to this conversation

was the complete ban on consumption and possession of alcohol in theater. The most notorious thing about general order number one was it always kind of like a wink and a nod kind of thing because everybody had alcohol. Everybody had alcohol, everybody was drinking it. If you had the right connections,

you can get it from the global market, God damn. When I was in Ranger Battalion, I never had access to alcohol overseas. Like they had our asses on lockdown, man. But what's funny is I bet that all your officers had a bottle. Oh, I'm sure that you know. And that's the thing with General Order number one, right? I mean, it's, I mean, okay, if you're going to keep everybody dry out of respect for the culture or because you don't want people to, you know, to drink or whatever.

Well, then at least don't be hypocritical about it. Well, Caleb, get into that. Tell us about now that you have joined your airborne brethren in the 82nd Airborne Division, tell us about your first deployment over Iraq in 03. Okay, so I got to the 82nd Replacement Company. So just to bring it in for everybody who hasn't gone through that because you guys were super high speed and went through RAS and did all that, when you're in the big army, you go to a replacement company.

company. So the 80 second is aptly named the 80 second replacement company. And I got there, um, November, December of 2002 and second brigade of 325th was already deployed. So everybody there was like, oh man, I want to go to 325. One to 325. The orders came down. Um, the buildup at our started in Kuwait and I got third battalion 5.5th. They had just gotten back from a pump in Afghanistan. So to my 19 or 18-year-old rain, I was like, fuck. Okay, these guys are all combat veterans. I got to be super, I got to have my shipwired tight.

So I show up there, 325 is gone. January, February, we're training pretty hard. We're learning the job of a wardman. You know, it sucks. I'm a brand new private and getting scuffed up all the time. But it's worth it because in the chow hall, we have these giant TVs. and on the TVs you're seeing the lead up to Iraq.

So PFC Phillips is pretty fucking excited. Like it's worth it. Getting destroyed in the woods is worth it because we're going to go, we're going to go to war. Sick. March happens. The invasion occurs. And we immediately get slipped into DRF1,

Division of Red Force 1. We also assume the DRB. So in the 8th of the time had three brigades. And DRB1 was the go-to brigade. within the DRV within the brigade it was also broken down in the trees

you had DRFs 1 2 and 3 DRF 1 was a 30 minute recall I remember correctly so all your stuff was packed all your vehicles

all your ammo you had it all it was ready to go and we were on DRF 1 3 invasion and I was so fucking excited I did not mind

not leaving the barriers for that couple weeks so rumor started and the sandstorm hit, the famous sandstorm that slowed down third ID and Burmarshmore did, and everything got locked down so that we got the word. 75th Rangers is jumping into Biop, Daggad International Airport, formerly Saddam Hussein International Report. 75th is going to jump in, you know, at night a week from now, and we're jumping in the next day to reinforce him. We're going to be the only ally forces there, and it's going to take it.

between 24 and 48 hours for ground forces to reach us. So pretty much the call of duty, Medal of Honor, fucking World War II, like everything wrapped in one, PFC Phillips was hard as fucking rock.

I was, I was ready. And similar experience, Caleb, in the sense that I was going through RIP when the invasion happened. And I, so I'll let you continue, but yeah,

the regiment was planning for the jump into biop. And it was large, largely presumed to be a suicide mission essentially. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They, uh, so that one of our things that they gave us, because we had our, we obviously had our deployment, our D bags and our C bags, prepped and ready to go. And one of the things they told us was, because on the, on the traditional deployment list, it was like four sets of uniforms. And they told us, you're like, I do you take two of those out, put a couple more trash bags in it. And it was like, uh,

why? He's like, well, because we need the trash bags to bag your shit up. because most of you fucking die and it was like all right cool whatever man like hey let's do it like FFC Phillips

in this fucking board section ready to go like it was did it did you pack a body bag in your rucksack and like stashing your name on it

yes but it was a trash bag it wasn't body bag I mean like that was the thing is we were laughing and joking when we took our death photos

because we're like dude this is going to be fucking sick when we get killed in bed and buy off being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise

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Like, that's the thing I don't think people understand about combat arms soldiers. Like, if you just tell an airborne interest in time, like, yeah, dude, you guys are going to jump into the enemy capital and you're going to have like six out of the 10 and you're going to get killed. Oh, yeah, everybody's like, well, it sucks for those guys who are going to die because I know I'm not. And that's the thing is that I think that nobody, you know, nobody ever thinks that's going to be them, you know. Yeah, no. Yeah. And for those of you who don't know, biop is the Baghdad International Airport. So that was, that was going to be the.

Yeah, they were going to jump all three Ranger battalions. And I was not in, I was not in Ranger Battalion yet. So I heard about this after the fact from other guys that it was the, the objective area was, massive. They have like fire teams clearing like barracks by themselves. And then yeah, 82nd was going to jump in to reinforce them. But yeah, I mean, it was

projected, you know, everyone's like, yeah, this is a one-way trip. Yeah, it got to the point. We got so close. We actually got on the buses and we'd got on the green ramps all of our shit. And like our Alice Pats were rigged. We had everything ready to go.

Like it was so new. We still weren't even sure how you were to jump with body armor. So we just had the body armor on pallets. We're going to jump with LCEs. No body armor at all. And it's kind of one of those things. We got down to buy up.

We sat on the buses. And then the buses took us back to the barracks. I mean, the excitement was only, it was only comparable to the disappointment driving away. Because it was like, what the fuck? The war is that way. What are we doing?

And it was like, oh, I don't know, maybe tomorrow. And it's like, all right, maybe tomorrow. It was just like getting band of brothers. You know, no jump tonight. Except I got to go play Xbox in my barit room. So I sit on the field. But, yeah, so that happened. That happened.

And then we got stood down. Then it went from invasion to occupation. And we got the warning order July, June or July, season. And we got turned from an airborne infantry battalion to a motorized infantry battalion. And we got like, fucking, I think, 140 Humphys. So each squad got two Humveys. And then we trained on them. Everybody, like I did the best driver's training I've ever received in the military.

They pulled me to the Humvee. They told me how to turn it on. And they said, hey, you got a fucking driver's license? I'm like, good. This is a Humvee. It's just like a car. Don't be an idiot. And they gave me a fucking license.

I was like, oh, right on. That's how I thought driver's training was in the military until I got to group. Like, that's legit how I thought it was. like, oh yeah, I got a fucking driver's license. We're good. No. So we get to Iraq. We hang out Kuwait for a week and I think it like, oh man, this is war because there it's, you know, all those big ass receiving stations were there. And I was like, oh, this is war. This is kind of fucking boring and let down. And then we get transported to Iraq. And this was August of 2003. I had just turned 19. I turned 19 the day before we went to Iraq and got my ass beat by

about the tune. So I'm still black and blue with kind of raw from the beating the 18. And I remember the C-130 is going in. I'm like, oh, I see-130 been on plenty. You know, salty ass 19-year-old PFC. And all of a sudden, it just hooks like a hard bank and they start

spiraling in. And I'm like, like, well, what the is going on? And they're like, oh, we've got to watch out for AAA. And in my mind, like, I'm like, that doesn't make sense. The war is over. Ah, whatever. Let's fucking, it's war, man. And I just remember like landing and thinking like the first couple guys no shit ran out of the bird like with their guns up like ready to do this and I remember seeing the air crew who had already gotten off like because they've probably seen this hundreds of times and I'm like all right fucking Rambo get off the airplane

and um it was just I it was just a very surreal event because it was you know it was still it was still 2003 man they're still broken and burning and destroyed shit everywhere. It was awesome. It was great. I mean, you would see convoys and trucks come back in, bullet holes everywhere, half the side of one would be burned off, and it's like, you know,

as a new guy, you're like, I don't know what that is, but that looks, I want to go wherever they were. And then you find out wherever they went, it was just, they just drove down the road. It was an exciting time. That was the first time I'd ever seen in Bradley. And you think being an infantryman in the Army, you'd see our

premier armor personnel carrier but as an eight-second guy. We already covered this, Caleb. We are talking about the airborne infantry. The mechanized infantry is a whole other thing. Yes. You should have seen the company of paratroopers standing around this Bradley. If there were stick, we would have poked it with a fucking stick. We have no idea what these things is.

We're all like, that's a big ass 50-carry out there. Oh, it's a 20-millimeter. Oh, 20-millimeter. looking at each other like how fucking big is that? You know, it's like, you know, just a bunch of apes standing around this machine. Yeah. And the guys in the Bradford were like,

so you guys like walk around, like with no armor and stuff? We're like, yeah, how else do you infantry? I don't get it. Like, what do you mean? So, yeah, we went to our first place was Fallujah, a place called Camp Mercury. And we got there and we replaced

one panther or first battalion and five of it. and they left it was like that fucking one would seem of it it's kind of like that part in uh red badge of courage where the guys are like running

from the battle like I don't go that way it's the fucking battles that way and like these one panther cats were like bro it's fucking you know they had is this bravo company yeah

yeah this is nuts oh man there's spoken but apart typically and it's just like of course we're fucking stoked like oh yeah cool so we show up

and the first day we show up two or Bradley's from third ID who was also in the battle space they get fucking lit up with RPGs and like five or six people to be killed and our chain commander's like all right let's pump the brakes

we don't have armored vehicles why the fuck are we going to send these guys in the meat grinder? Right. So we got we got replaced with a mechanized unit. So now we're an infantry battalion at home. We don't know where to go. So the botanic commander just starts sending infantry

companies out to he looks at the map and he sees where's the most, the most shitty places, and he starts sending you to companies there. We ended up in a place called Machmedia, a place that I think is called Fob Panther at one point. I can't remember the name of it now, but it's a small town about 20k south of Baghdad, and it was an old chicken factory,

a old chicken processing plant that we took over from 1-8 Marines, some marine unit. So we took it over, and it was terrible. There was like one strain of sea water. It was like some Vietnam shit. And they had piss tubes and they had a shower a couple weeks. And like we rolled up there and were like,

where's all like your machine guns? And like your walls and your defenses. I'm like, oh, fuck it, man. That's how we do it. And it was like, all right, cool, bro. So we ordered tons of pescos. And I probably filled upward. to 10,000 sandbags in that first two months.

We built so many sandbags. We built mortified. We built our mortar position. We built guard towers. And all this is a bunch of infantry dudes with like a couple of sappers, which I was very, very thankful for. If there's any sappers, combatant, you're listening. I want to say thanks.

Your fucking little bucket truck is the ship. I heard you got rid of them. But it was amazing. Watching the entire industry company use their e-tools to fill one HESCO is hilarious and said. Yeah. Some of our people don't know what a Hesco is. Would you describe it? Yes, I'd love to.

Sorry. No, it's okay. I feel like we're just sitting in a bar. Yeah. So a Hesco is a steel and mesh barrier, right? So it was developed by a British guy back in the late 90s. And it was basically replaced piles of sandbags. piles of sandbags, which most people

who weren't in military are very familiar to seeing in army movies and you just see sandbags everywhere on the battlefield. Well, that still occurs, but the thing with sandbags is you have to constantly maintain or rotate them because they will get destroyed by the weather Joe

or some other ignorant soldier or bored soldier will lean against them and he'll be bored as fucking he'll poke a hole in one. Well, you poke a hole in the wrong one and the whole fucking walls will fall down. So in order to alleviate this, some guy in Britain came up with the HESCO barrier. And what it is is it looks like big ass empty Legos.

It looks like Legos and can turn it upside out. And it is possible to fill them with hand tools. But these HESCO are becoming small, like, I think it's like one meter by one meters is the smallest. Then the biggest ones are like three or four meters tall and three or four meters wide. So this is a lot of dirt. And those are, you know, those are the ones that we got. So you're sitting there like 140 man infantry.

company using hand tools to fill this fucking thing. I think in that documentary, Strepo, you see that too, because they dragged the HESCO through the top of the hill, but they couldn't get any equipment up there, so they just use E-tools to fill the HESCO. We built that. Another thing that was going on was their

battalion commander, the Marine's Battalion commander was big on hearts and minds, because he's like, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to come to this AO and to shoot people. You know, we just invaded their country. I want to build relationships, yada, yada, yada, small wars, manual and all that. Unfortunately, that meant he's making his Marines patrol

in booty caps and LCs, nobody on room homes. And they took a lot of casualties because I remember talking with swatogers, talking to the grunts and you're in a place and you're like, do whatever you do, you can dodge fucking do that. Because, you know, as we realize now, a helmet is not just for bullets or frag,

it's for banging your head off. the 240s, banging her head off the turret name. Like, I always wore a helmet because I just didn't want my dome to get broken by some sharp metal piece in the vehicle. That first point was interesting. It was my first real army thing. And it was cool because that war was still transitory at that point. And by that, I mean, you would go on patrol and it would maybe be a five-dove.

For those you don't know, 5W is who what went wearing why, what we're doing. So my platoon sergeant and my squad leader, we go into the talk, we had an operation center and tell the NCOs in charge there, like, hey, we're going to go check out, let me see. We're going to go check out this village. And the talk, and just like, okay, do you guys have two? The rules were you had to have two belt-fed weapons and at least three vehicles. And you could do whatever you wanted. So, yeah, we would just load up, and we would go investigate shit.

We would go, I mean, there's no bill of rights in war. So if we want to go check out a house, we'd stack up, we'd kick the door and we'd go search the house. Sometimes we found stuff, a lot of times you didn't. There was one night late in early September. Our first platoon was out on patrol. We hit my, the mortar squad had just gotten back. And I'm racked out. And all of a sudden, somebody comes running into this giant chicken factory that we were living in

and started screening the first of the two teams and contacts, we've got three casualties. and like immediately everybody jumps up because A, that's first platoon number of boys And B, everybody won this fucking gets up So the rifle of the tunes are chocking up Running to the trucks I run to the I run to our trucks And I like no there's a little way

I was on I was in the line at that point So I had a 60 there was no way for the 60 To get into the fight 60 is a 60 millimeter Mortar system that we shot So I had to run to the medium mortar pit the 81 work pit. And we just started prepping and shooting rounds

to support this fight. What had happened was upon further investigation, First platoon had a squat and a half out on patrol. Their interpreter talks to some local guys in the corner, and the guy in the corner was like,

hey, that house over there is a bunch of fucking bad guys. So, of course, being the barrel sheds of freedom fighters that they are, they set a cordon, they set containment, and they go to hit the house.

but the door is secured by a couple dead bolts or something bam bam they're kicking on the door they're yelling on American forces American forces up the door bam bam bam the homeowner

I mean doesn't know what's going on grabs his AK starts sending around through the wall through the door shoot the team leader who's in front so immediately this starts a gunfight back and forth there's a gunfight going through this house

the team is still stacked up so they just turned and they're just shooting through the wall, this guy. Somebody, I think, is the other team leader, pulls a frag, calls a frag out, throws a frag in a room, or throws a frag in the building, not realizing that they were trying to enter people kitchen. And in there was the stove, which had like three or four gas tanks with it.

So lull in the fight, frag out, it goes off. When it goes off, it fireball, consumed the fire team. And now, instead of having one casualty with gunshot rooms, it was like four or five guys with severe burns and gunshot ones. But, you know, war is war. The rest of the tune showed up. They coalesced on the target.

And they pushed the squad through and they shot everybody in that house because they couldn't tell what was going on. They just took a whole fire team with casualties. And I remember hearing on the radio in the mortar pick because we had a radio set up to the assault push or I'm sorry to the assault radio channel.

and it was like blah blah blah taking fire from the second floor you know copy or Roger turning fire at the second floor hey I got a squirt

out of the back and then on the radio you actually hear pop pop pop yeah we took care of them and it was like holy shit like in my mind

I'm like fuck man this is war like holy shit like I was I was amazed it was cool but at the same time I was like

I knew all those dudes like I knew all those dudes that got burnt to fuck up and it was just it was I was too young and dumb to be scared. Fully realized, like it wasn't processing yet, that could have easily been new

had we just gone on that patrol with that turk and talked to that one guy. Right. Right. But yeah, so that was the beginning of the deployment, the rest of the deployment, it was kind of same same, couple gun fights, a couple,

you're on patrol, you're walking, you're driving, and you pop shots from a street line. Everybody would open up on the street line. You launched a disdemeanor. mount elements to go check it out sometimes you found something sometimes you didn't we lost we got a lot of loaded a lot of W I I in that deployment one of my buddies they were out on an op or observation post observing a mortar fire position the enemy was using the mortarist and somehow it was in a palm grove and somehow the bad guys

had maneuvered like a fire team size element within grenade range of that squad and they initiated the assault on the op with hand grenades and we got three guys shot that day one of them was a new guy was a replacement who had just gotten there that night he showed up showed up to the squad they gave his nods and his weapons and all right bitch go out of control he went out of control again and giving his helmet shot off him he got his he got the chin strap shot and he looked down and then he got a nods in his helmet shot off him one of my good buddies Scott lives in Arizona he got shot twice in the neck he got shot in the jaw and then travel down to his neck and then the other one got shot

right here's neck but he survived he met it activated out the team leader slash squad leaders he only had one sergeant at the time he got shot like five or six times in the chest in the arm and uh I think he might have got the silver star because he I think they were doing best cycles, so he was asleep at the time. And he, like, woke up in the middle of the gunfight and saw the gunfight, saw the gunman was down. And he just one-handed the saw. He was a big guy. He just picked up the saw one-handed the saw so that the rest of the team could deal with the action.

It was, it was a crazy time. We had one KIA. He was killed in an ID. He was part of our mounted section, and I just remember that night. We were just in that little town doing something and all of a sudden on the radio we heard the 9-line go out

and it was a I don't want to say it was a baited ambush but it was somebody took some pop shots out of them they pursued him in the humvease they came around the corner of an overpass boom it went off he caught shrapnel to the face and neck and he ended up dying

on the other thing which again this was 2003 So like, yeah, it was expected. Like, we do. If you went on a patrol, you didn't make contact, it was like, oh, man. So the first encounter that you described it, you know, you were just here on the radio. Did they ever find out if the guy inside the house was a bad guy or if the source,

the person who talked to the interpreter was just somebody with a grudge? Did that influence also your tactics and how you approach the unit? it did because when they obviously did the search of the house after the battle after the gunfight it revealed

yeah he was just a homeowner who didn't understand who and what we were doing because obviously we don't have a bunch of erics we didn't back then and you know this was he just heard somebody kicking in his door

and he heard a bunch of voices outside and he didn't understand. Right. There was a couple. There weren't any little kids in the house. There was a couple teenagers. So it was just like, what am I going to? But I try to say, like, what would I do if somebody was kicking in my door and smashing

the windows out? Right. It's, you know, it's one of those things that happens in war. It sucks. One positive that came out of it was that our intel guys are attached to us in the battalion level realized that the local population knew not to fuck with the guys with the weird patch Because it was one of those things that that led to According to a sweep and clear of that whole area that was in a apartment complex and that was a large apartment complex

We we cleared that building that apartment building but there was like maybe 30 or 40 more So the town commander was like fuck if you brought the whole battalion in and And they cleared. It was a message. It was a message that was sent. So, and you start, you get rotated back home. And what happened next to it? You went through the whole training process again and went back out the door?

Or how did it work? Because I wanted to get to Hurricane Katrina also. Yeah. So we got back. Promotions and movements happened. I got to be an NCO. I got to move with design wars. Being a parent can be really challenging.

Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Things are going on. The Army reorganized from three infantry defines per brigade to two infantry defines. for brigade and a cab unit known as a wrist of squadron, reconnaissance surveillance and target acquisition.

So we went from a light infantry battalion to a cavalry unit, except lucky me, I got to see in the light infantry company of that cavalry unit. So everybody else got rides except for our company. We were still foot mounted. We're in the middle of doing that, and then Katrina hits, and by now I'm a sergeant and I have my own section. We it hits, there's a bunch of devastation everywhere

and we were on the docket to go to Iraq. We were next up, but we were like, we're in the hole. We weren't on deck, we're in the hole to go to Iraq. And everybody's stoked about it. Everybody's pretty happy because I had a bunch of privates who never been deployed before, right? And my last trip, my first trip was a good one. So I'm expecting this is 2005,

yeah, 2005. So I'm expecting it's going to be, Iraq was heating up. It was going to be a good trip. Everybody was pretty stoked about it. So we were at DRF one again. And Katrina hits. And we're watching, we're watching all this shit go down to Chow Hall. And they're like, oh, I'm talking about deploying the United States on me.

And we're like, ah, I feel sorry for whatever we're going to go do that shit, huh, huh? And it's like, yep, you guys are ready to go. you know, the call came out and we're all sitting there looking at each other like, we're paratroopers designed to go smash things. Why are we going here? Whatever, man. You know, it does what it's told. So we started getting ready.

We had about three or four days workup. And then that's when the rules started to come down. The rules and the directive started to come down. It was like, hey, take all the patches off your stuff. We're not taking any belt-fed weapons. We're not taking any nods. Leave your body armor here. No Banness.

Like all this stuff started to come down. And, you know, it's kind of one of those things where it's like the news of sensation was anyway. But when he started talking about the chaos and all the stuff that was going on down there, it was, I mean, it was kind of hard to take seriously. It's like, you want me to leave my body armor? You want me to leave my knots? Want them to leave my helmet? Why?

Like, they're shooting people down there. how is it any different if the fit an American citizen shooting vice and Iraqi shoot? So as a as a shadow government the medium and junior enlisted guys we all started packing

body armor and gnaz and saws in two 40s found their way in bags and tough boxes the spec for mafia came through yeah the spec for mafia came through we can't leave we can't have an officer with playing things like that's too important to look that plan

so yeah and you can see the you can see like there was my first time actually going to see the dividing line between enlisted an officer and guys who joined to go fight and guys who joined for this this belief in what they thought the right thing was so you have a lieutenant I remember I remember it very vividly a lieutenant getting to an rank even with the platoon sergeant and his squad leaders. And because this was kind of was very adamant. He's like, no, they probably shouldn't even give us an animal because I'll never give you the order to fire on anybody when we go down in New Orleans.

And the platoon sergeant squalangers looked at him like, you're fucking a target. If somebody shoots us, we're going to kill him. And I know this for some watching, it's going to be shocking. But I'm, hey man, I don't care where you're from or anything. If you shoot at me and you shoot at my friends, you have made your choice. I wrote an article recently a few months back about exactly this scenario playing out again,

but in Washington, D.C., with 82nd Airborne, I think they're called what a GR, the Global Response Force, Spunum, deployed, they made it down to Fort Belvoir. Thank God they never were deployed to the streets of Washington, D.C. But like, we came this close, like this close to some really bad stuff happening. And it's not the fault of those paratroopers. They were doing what they were told to do. They went where they were told to go. But they, from my conversations with sources, they felt that

each soldier was being asked to individually decide where they stand on constitutional issues. Like, is it appropriate for me to be deployed onto the streets of Washington, D.C., and potentially have to quell a riot with live ammunition on a American soil. Is that the right thing for me to be doing? Well, because this, I don't know, because there are two different scenarios, yeah, we didn't really have that much, for us it wasn't that much. It was humanitarian relief primarily what you were down there for, right? Yeah, it was. But then when you started to think about it, like, I had this.

Yeah. Yeah, what if we get shot? It was, it's kind of one of those things. I remember in first, from 8th, got relieved because they had their road zone control and

there were gunshots that night so he was he went with a platoon to go investigate they investigated the school

and they found shell cases on the ground and August signed firearms so we had his boys lock and load and they cleared the school

like because this was the critical infrastructure area this is what since 2003 they've been talking about, you know, coin counter-surgency. Like, this is critical infrastructure. We need to make sure the school is safe.

So they cleared the school. And he just so happened to do it in front of a camera, a news camera. Oh, really? Yeah. So he got fired for that. Wow. And was there an good. So the guys were clearly issued ammunition.

Yes. But were they given an ROE? I mean, did he do? My question is, did he do anything, though? violation of the rules of engagement. You were issued, I want to say 60 rounds apiece, and they were accounted for by round. And you were to keep your weapon

magazine free and slung on your back unless there is a threat to you or other army personnel. And there was talk of like you had to add you to radio for permission to load your weapon, but that was kind of like beaten down by everybody. It was like, no, if you feel and load your fucking gun. Then there was talk of

putting a piece of tape over your magazine so that they could check to, I don't know. It was so haphazard when we got down there. And that's the problem. Like you can't be given paratroopers haphazard, half-assed directions

that they don't understand and sending them into that situation. Like that's the part that's inappropriate. Well, because you're going to revert back to what they know, right? Yeah. Yeah. And especially, especially the ones who are returning from Iraq and have like, you know,

dealt with, you know, people with IEDs, you know, like it's difficult to pull back that sort of mentality of you try to get me, I'm going to get you. Exactly. And it was a, I mean, there's so many little vignettes of things that happen. Yeah. You got anything like fallout three stories, Caleb, that you find like an animal companion named dog meat and like you had to buy rations using bottle caps. Like what was going on down there? What was it like?

No, but we almost got to the gunfight with a band of Raiders. So there was some New Orleans cops doing cops up and they were they confronted this band of youths probably like six to ten youths and they had rolled up on this two-man car. And the two-man car, we were all operating off of a common net at that time. and the two-man car was like no what the flood is kind of getting kind of shady so they're calling for help they're calling for more cops to show up

and we just so happen to have a squad like right around the corner and the squad was like fuck it let's roll so so these youths these six to ten youths were fucking with these two cops

and then 12 paratroopers go around a corner maroon berets locked and loaded M4s and they just get out of the car and put the spot there's like what the fuck are you going to do about it? And he looked at the cops and the cops were like,

thank God you guys showed up. And it's like, at that point of time, it's like we're not cops, man. Right. Like if you give us the reason, we're going to take this far past where you plan on going. Right. And I've always felt safe.

In New Orleans, I always felt safe because I had my, at the very least I had my fire team with me. and or my my thumb crew and it was like dude there's nothing in the city that's tougher than the five of us I mean is that completely

over exaggerating or skills capabilities yes but that was just how the highest free to go back to the very beginning the highest free to core and the the crucible training kind of gives you you know and I can see looking at it from a normal person's point of view that's

not desirable yeah that it's it's not the right force to send on those types of operations domestically? No. I mean, there were several times where we would get shoot out by like we had a full bird.

He showed up on seeing weird. And at one point they had broken the company down into four-man groups and we would ride around with ambulances. We were there to provide security for the ambulances but we were also there to just kind of be jack-of-all-trade kind of things.

the ambulance we were on the driver got a call about a possible rescue that needed to be done in this house. This elderly lady who neighbors had said that she has, it was a wellness check. In cop terms it's a wellness check. So we pull up to this house

and we walk around and all the doors walked, all the windows are sealed up and turns and he looks at us and he's like hey, just throws out here, I don't have the authority to come to get into this house. And as a sergeant on the scene, he looks at me and I was like, do you have reasonable belief that there's somebody that has to be helped?

And he said, based on the phone call and based on my training in the knowledge of the area, yeah, I'm more than women in a bet. There's an old lady that has to be held. So we just, all right, cool. We kicked the door down and went inside. And sure enough, there was a super old lady laying on the couch surrounded by empty water bottles covered in urine. She was too weak to go to the door.

She's like, I heard you guys knock and thank God you came and knock the door down. thought I was going to die. And that story, that story replayed itself out dozens of times. Dozens of times. People were too, they would get dehydrated because it was hot balls down there. And they would not be strong enough to open their door.

And they would need somebody to come bash the window and keep the window or kick the door down. So, um, that happened. Uh, we would, like, I'll never look at a Penske truck the same because those were the,

uh, dead body vehicles they would use. and you just see Penske trucks driving around and you wade it down there'd be a little pet you put a tag on the body and you'd hand the other copy to the driver and just

go drive off let's go collect more dead bodies it's fucking crazy man I don't think like the rest of the country understands what the fuck happened down there it was I don't think

George W. Bush's a few of black people had anything to do with it. No matter what Connie says, I think it was just a confluence of bad things all coming together. I think it was a like a lot of people down there,

a lot of people that we ran into of all colors and nationalities, they wouldn't want to evacuate. The floodwaters, the waters would be, you know, in the next yard, coming to their yard,

this black, terrible, foul-smelling water and he's like, no, I can't leave. Like, sir, I can't force you to leave, but why don't you want to leave? Well, because my social security check doesn't know where to go, and I'll be broke. And it's like, what do you do at that point, you know?

Right. I mean, you remember reading that article about the cannibal? Like, if we were Joe Rogan, like, I'd be like, hey, pull that up right now, but since we have to produce our own show, I don't have that ability. You can go find it. There was this guy, and he was, I believe he was, like, already kind of mentally ill before the hurt.

hurricane hit, but he turned into a cannibal afterwards and was eating people. Really? Yeah, yeah. I believe that. Was he killing people to eat them, or was he just eating dead people that he would find? Oh, shit, I can't remember now. I'd have to go back and I'd have to pull it up. But so you saw some pretty crazy stuff down there, huh, man?

It was the craziest thing was, it was like out of some cop procedural shows. So we could call in, this is while we're still doing the, uh, the ambulance stuff. So we get called in for a report of a dead body. And that's the only thing that we get told. Hey, there's a dead body. I think there may be a dead body in this building.

Which if you start to like reel back the pull back the fucking string on that where it's like, oh, I assume you made this dead body because you knew about it. So we go to this big structure and it's coordinated walls. We roll up there and we had to use a sledge to get in because it was locked. and it was a storage facility for Marty Guffelts. So all of the giant spiders and clowns and fucking dogs and all the shits like hanging over you as you're walking through. Like I remember one of my problems is like, sorry, I'm not scared. And it's like, yeah, dude, I'm fucking scared too.

This is fucking scared because there's no power. And it's just these crazy floats all dangling from the ceiling. And we're pushing deeper and deeper in this room or in this building deeper, deeper, deeper. And finally we start to smell something. Because normally you smell like mud and dead fish, whatever. We start to smell something. It's like, you know, I bet that's a dead fucking body. And sure enough, like we come right around the corner and you see a chair, a radio,

and a half full beer bottle sitting next to the chair, completely normal. And then you kind of shift your field of view a little bit over. and there's a dead guy face down around with an entry room in the back of his head. And it's like, I mean, we're not cops. We can't investigate. We just kind of looked around the room. And I think we took pictures on our camera

that gave us to do so. And you probably said something like, better cancel that guy's dinner plans. And then it cut to the Law & Order logo. Wow. Wow. Yeah. No, it was, I was more along the last, I was trying to simultaneously reassure my

privates at the same time try to make me grow up. I was like, hey, if I can go touch it, go touch it, good touch it, good touch it, good body, touch it, touch it, good touch it, good touch it, good touch it. So it was. But somebody did this guy up execution style. Yeah, it was nuts. It was nuts because it was like, I wanted to, I was like, fucking flashed out, like trying to take notes on the scene and the ambulance guy's like, I mean, or we could just pick them up and put

him in the body bag. And I was like, I mean, we could, but this is obviously a crime. You know, I'm 21 year old Caleb Phillips and I want to solve this crime. Right. And he's like, or we just throw this dead by and fucking body bag. Right. And just get on their head. So it's like, I don't know.

It's fine. Dude, I mean, it's the perfect place to commit a murder in the middle of a natural disaster like that. Oh, yeah. Totally. I mean, there's, there was someone of weird shit. we go into buildings there was a time there was like a space of there was like a three-day span where it was like the fourth amendment didn't exist anymore and it was like kick in and clear

every house and it was like god fucking roger that all right and then we would just go down the room we would just go down the road kicking in houses kicking in doors and searching houses for people not not for nefarious means but just for dead bodies or people needed help people trapped and yeah people trapped inside and it was just one of those things where it was like Like the iconic diamond shape, you can see spray painted on the building where it would be like, it would be a diamond and it would be like a zero and one and two and a fucking unit. Like that just became much like in every other military operation that just became a metric. And it was like, all right, bravo company or child of truth, you need to clear 150 houses today. All right.

And then you just go out and fucking kick in doors and search houses. So how long did, how long were you guys down? there? We're there for a month. All right. So Caleb, after seeing that whole disaster unfold as a young paratrooper and seeing our government's inability to deal with what was going on in New Orleans and Louisiana. Did that introduce any tinge of skepticism in the back of your mind about our capacity to pacify the insurgency in Iraq? I believe that like any other operation, it goes in with the best of intentions, but reality very quickly comes in and changes everything.

Because on paper it makes a lot of sense, right? Much like Iraq, you know, we're just going to show all this military power down there. Right. And they're just going to do what they want to do. And it's the guys on the ground who are like, well, it really isn't going to fucking work the way you want me to do it. As far as the war,

I don't know if I ever really thought that we were going to I think at the beginning I was like yeah we're going to fucking win we're Americans this is what we fucking do and then it's just like near the end like especially after becoming an SF guy I don't want to say that I didn't care about the outcome but it was like oh it's war it's what humans do I'm just going to go do what humans do if we win this one we win it like I'm not personally invested in it because I can always just go back to the land of the big PX

and live the rest of my life. Fine, man. Yeah, like, on the operational and tactical level, I think guys were trying their hardest. But much like in Iraq and the Middle East, the strategic level, it was just not. Yeah. The site picture was too small and you were shooting too close.

They didn't realize that they were targets farther out. And I don't know how we fix that. I don't know if we can. Right. And I mean, one of the things, too, I think that, and you can answer this, once you got to SF, not only was it, I don't care,

but was it a question of, I don't even know what it means to win. Like, we don't even know what the goalposts are. What does it mean to win here? And that was kind of a, it was a, it was not a lack of purpose, but it was kind of one of those things

in New Orleans too, where it was like, all right, cool, man, like we're here, what are we here's war? You know, I'm here. I have my rifle. I have my bray. do you want me to sit on this corner

okay I'll sit on this corner what is it for? Well it's for looters all right cool well what if looters show up and I shoot them well no you're like what like okay well then why am I here on this corner

well for looters and it's just like it was just like feedback loop like what you want me to do so we got in there for a month came back from that then went to selection That was in September, October, and then that was when I went to selection in November.

We went to... How long had you been thinking about? So, like, at what point to being SF enter your mind while you're in the 82nd? It all goes back to one day in Iraq, one stormy, rainy night in Iraq, when PFC Phillips stood on a blocking position for like fucking eight hours. And four Humvees covered in guns. and tattoos and beards drove up

and they're like Hey bro, what's up? I had nothing much sir? And he's like, oh yeah, dude, it's cool. Just don't go down this road,

all right? Okay. And then it just go around right around me and I heard a bunch of gunfire and explosions and saw tracers and then 45 minutes to an hour

later they drove past and I was like, who the fuck was that? Like, oh, those are ESF guys and he's like, oh, bro, that's what I want to do. I mean, I don't know, you guys have done a lot of interviews.

How many people was that the normal answer? Yeah, that we've been interviewing a lot of Vietnam veterans lately. And the story you hear over and over again is I didn't want to just go out. I wanted to be where I had the greatest chance of surviving. So I wanted to be with guys who knew what the fuck they were doing. Like even if they were drafted, like I want to be with competent dudes. So they'd end up in Marine Recon, scout snipers. special forces, warps, you know, those kind of units.

Yeah, I didn't, I guess because just the generational thing and the difference in conflicts, like I didn't, I knew dying was a possibility, but it wasn't like really a worry so much. It was more, here I am covered in mud, just sitting on this fucking blocking position and those guys went and did it and left. Well, let's, uh, let's buzz my hair off and then we'll get into some SF stories. We'll talk about SFAS and the Q-course. I mean, we might actually have to do another episode about your time in special forces, but I'm afraid we're going to run over with all the...

With us, Caleb. You want to get in at SFAS? Let's do it. First off, I just want to say it looked like one of those transformation specials where they give like a homeless guy, a haircut. Good luck on your future job search. That's all I can say. I believe you do.

And are you going to donate that to locks of love or anything like that or what? I don't know, bro. Just a big, embarrassing pile of hair on our studio floor. How does that work? I don't know. Maybe you just show up to the charity with your bag of hair. Like a crazy person. Like a Ziplot sandwich baggie?

Yeah. Here, do something with this. We probably should have thought about that beforehand. Or you just go throw at like a person who looks sick walking down the subway. Hey, what's up? Are you sick? There's some hair. I don't know if Dave's ready for the subway jokes yet.

I know, I'm good. The MTV jokes. So, what's up? Yeah, no, go for it, man. So 2000, it was late 2005, and you and I were both in SFAS. two me and 300 other cold, wet individuals in Camp McCall, North Carolina, yes. We were there.

It was, I'm sure you've had other SF guys on your talking about SFAS. When we talk about specifically. I mean, we talk about it for, you know, 15 minutes or so. I don't think we've really talked about SFAS in any kind of depth before. Well, I think our class was special besides obviously being. the last hard class. Yeah. Obviously.

Do you remember the extraordinarily large number of hours we just sat outside in the rain and stood there in formation? Those, I look back at that, that was probably one of the best selection criteria I've ever encountered in my life.

Dave, I don't know if he's talked about it or not, but we would stand outside in the rain, in the cold rain for like four fucking hours. And the catarid would step outside and they would step outside with a coat on and then say hey you guys don't get to leave till four people quit and then they were just closed the door and so you have guys like oh man

I don't know if this is for me and then like his buddy on his left and his right was like bro it's not for you to fuck out yeah so hey dude if you quit I will if you quit I yeah yeah go quit yeah yeah go quit bro yeah then there was time jack did it happen in your hut at all where would pack other people shit for them and go put them by the category hut. No, I didn't do that. I helped, too, where there's these fucking turds, and they're just like,

David Leeds to take a shower or something, you just pack all their shit up. And don't, go put it by the quitter's, you. Where's my stuff? They're like, it's fucking where you need to be, buddy. Beat it. Did it ever work? Oh, yeah.

That's awesome. Like, yeah, beat it fucking roster. You didn't even wait for the peer reviews. You just, fucking executed on your own. Well, I mean, it was kind of one of those things. It was very similar to being in jail or prison. You have to make a fucking gang, dude.

You have to get a gang quick and you have to protect yourself. You've got to get affiliated. It was the original survivor. Yeah, it is, it was Survivor Island in that place. Why is that, you know, like, why do you say that for the people? Like, I've never been to SFAS. So why do you have to form those tribes? Because when it comes down to, so it comes with everything, right?

So like almost, as they tell you numerous times, selection of the individual event, you were being assessed and evaluated on your individual ability as a soldier to accomplish the mission with minimal guidance. That being said, you cannot pass or survive SFAS, just like you cannot survive combat on ODA by yourself. And with that, it's kind of, It's encouraged and soon that you are going to form bonds with your fellow warriors.

And it's kind of one of those things where it's like, yeah, man, like that totally sucks if you're in the out group and that you can't fucking make friends and that you're like super weirdo. Totally sucks. Probably not the job for you because no matter how good you are, how big of a stud you are, how good of a shot you are, you're still living in a tent or a hole with 12 other dudes. and when you really get down in real operations, it's you like I was the senior charlie, so it's like

the senior charlie, the junior Delta, and the junior bravo are out in this shit hole for three weeks by ourselves getting the mission done. Like, dude, I really don't care how good of an 18 bravo you are, but if I want to bash your head in with the rock because you're annoying, like that takes precedence.

Right. And it's that, that is kind of endemic of selection, right? Because you don't know, Nobody wears any insignia. Nobody wears any rank. You don't know people's backgrounds, which the Army provides us with all that stuff on our uniforms.

You can kind of look at somebody like, oh, we're going to be friends. Why? Because, oh, he's got a ranger tab. He's got a set tab. But in selection, it's a clean slate. So you have to form those bonds in other ways. And if those ways are sucking motivation from the week,

then by God, that's what you do. You become a vampire. And it's like, oh, bro, I don't. I can make it. Oh, you don't think you can make it. No, bro. My think it really hurts. Oh, man, that sucks.

Can I get your socks in your MREs? And if you're not the kind of guy is like, wait, fuck you, dude. No, you're not getting my MREs. It's like, if you're the kind of guys like, okay, here's my MRIs. Like, oh, I don't want to be on the fucking gunline with you anyway, dude. Yeah, yeah. You're weak. Yeah.

You know, when we went through SFAS and I think for most classes, it's probably similar, I thought the, well, first off, we did like what i think it was like two events a day on a normal day right so it's like at any given time during the day day or night they'd call you up and uh and you'd have two events and it was like a run or a ruck march or an obstacle course or some some shit maybe you remember better than i do caleb um and that went on for a while and then i remember they so they got a condition to like two events a day and then at a certain point they woke us up and at like three in the morning for a third event. So everyone's grumpy grumbling about this. Oh, what the fuck? What are we doing out here? And just like every other event, the guy would be like, okay, it's Ruck March,

undetermined time, undetermined distance, follow the cones begin. So we go out, we follow the cones. All they did was walk us around that little Camp McCall area back behind the movie theater. They stopped. and they said take one item out of your out of your rucksack from your packing list in this case it was your running shoes your tennis shoes take them out hold them up it so we can inspect them

make sure you pack them in your packing list they come and inspect and then you're like okay you got them put them in your bag and you can go back to the barracks and like five people quit right there they just couldn't handle the uncertainty that is one of my favorite things I like to tell people about SFAS is because it's and that's one of my favorite kind of like mindset levels that you fall to which I can only assume it's the same thing in Ranger School because it's the same thing in

SCT, same thing that's SQAS. It's one of those things where it's like what I would tell myself is like I don't care if they tell me to run to the fucking moon. I will run to the fucking I don't care. I don't like you get to that point where you're just like I don't care. I don't care. What do you want me to do? I will run.

I will rock. Oh, you want me to pick that heavy thing up? I'll pick it up. Oh, I can't pick it up. Well, then I'll keep picking it up until you tell me to stop. And that is a kind of freedom. I'll use the word freedom. That's a kind of freedom that if you could bottle it and sell it,

I think you'd be a millionaire. Right. And it's the idea of, well, this is what I'm doing now. Whatever. And it was interesting because, you know, like during different, like selection events, there are the people who just have that attitude and they're usually the people who make it through. And then there are the people who, like during an event

hate it, hate it, hate it. And then they'll quit during the event. Then you have other people who will get through an event and either think about, oh, I can't do another thing like that or I don't know what the next thing is. And they will quit when there was absolutely nothing going on. I saw that. I've almost never seen anyone quit during an event.

always afterwards, they get to the barracks and they start thinking about it. They quit. And I'll tell you in SFAS, this is interesting, Caleb. When I got there, the first day or the second day, early on, it was like our first ruck march or something. This guy comes up alongside me. And he's like, hey, I know you, don't I? There's a guy I went through RIP with.

And this guy quit RIP. Right before we started RIP, we were sitting in the barracks. And this guy I had gone through basic training with. he's sitting there and he's like, man, I'm just going to embarrass myself and rip. I need to go to the infantry. I need to get my air assault badge, maybe get my Ranger tab and then come back. It's like, dude, no one in Ranger Battalion gives a shit about your air assault badge. What the fuck are you talking about?

But, no, really. I mean, they don't. So this guy is sitting there talking himself out of going to rip. You know, I can't make it. I'm going to embarrass myself, talks himself out of it, and quits. A couple years go by, and I run. to him again in SFAS. We talked for a couple minutes as we were along this road march.

And another day later, he was gone. He quit again. Yeah, it's nuts. It's crazy. Because I remember the trek that our very last, so for those you don't know, the very last road march is the trek. And it's an unknown. It's like they say between 25 to 35 miles.

All I know is that we started walking at midnight and we didn't stop for like nine or 10 anymore. Yeah. And I frost and ice all over my... I felt like the tin man. Yeah, it was ridiculous. I mean, but it was awesome because it was the last event. But I remember walking along.

It was one of the sides of the caller on near field. And there was a dude that had me. And I'm ruck in and I'm like, you know, fuck it. I'll catch this guy. So I run up there, try to pass him. And I kind of sit next to him and I'm walking. I'm like, hey man, what's up? How are you going?

And he looks and he goes, no, dude, I already have a tab. Fuck this. And he just stops. Pops his fuck. fucking rucksack straps and sits down. And I mean, of course, I'm not going to stop looking. He's like, what do you do it? He's like, dude, fuck this. I'm out.

And it's like, really? Like, we're done. Like, all you have to do is walk the rest of the way. Yeah. And he fucking, I don't know what he looked like. Don't care. Like, that was years ago. Yeah, I remember that truck vividly.

because one of my knees was like blown up like a softball at that point my back was all I was fucked up from SFAS I won't lie about it you know like I came right off a deployment to Iraq went right into SFAS without any train up my feet were a mess my back was a mess my knees were fucked up by the end of it

and yeah the the trek like yeah the frost came in in the morning everything was frozen my joints felt like the tin man like yeah it just felt like shit, but at that point it was like, fuck it, man. Just like get to the finish line and I'll, I guess I'll die afterwards. Exactly. I remember, I had a big blood blister on my foot. And before the thing, I went up to the 18 Delta and I was like, hey, I got this thing on my foot.

And he opens it. It's a blood blister. Maybe this big. Maybe that big. It was big. It was like two inches long on the side of my foot. And I was like, hey, this is like black and purple. That's good and he looks at me and he goes well you want to quit like fuck no I don't want to quit and he goes okay so it popped it squeezes the pus and the blood out puts a band-aid on it and says come see me after road march said all right I'll eat that so do the road march come back take a shower lay down go to sleep for a couple hours wake up and my whole leg hurts I'm like man this is weird

I remember you know yeah yeah you remember that so you were at the end right say what Das boot yes I was doth food at the end and my my bunkey was a 91 whiskey a medic and I was like hey man you're a doctor

right he said yeah I was like come check this shit out and he like pokes his head over the over the thing he's like you need to go to a hospital right fucking now he like he like picks me up out of my bed and carries me to the fucking aid station

and the AT belt and the PA in there like oh my god they pick up the phone and I had it wasn't septic yet but I had a major infection and the work gets way all the way up to my crotch. And the PA was like, if you had not said anything to like another day, we'd be dead. And the whole time I'm sitting in the hospital, I saw, like, I was still nasty from everything. And the doctor's like, you're an idiot.

Sergeant Films, you're fucking retarded. Like, what you could have died. And all I could think of was like, I need to pass selection. Like, I don't get it. Like, if I die, I die. Like, I just need to know if I pass selection. And I know, I remember. being a pain in the ass to try to get back to McCall to find that about that.

Yeah, because at that point it was just like cleaning up and waiting to find out if we were going to be non-selects or what. And, you know, you got me thinking, too, Caleb about like some of the weird people you run to in SFAS. Like, there's a black clock, MH-60 crew chief from 160th in the barracks with me. and SFAS is four weeks, right? It's a whole month, pretty much. Yeah, there was a, this crew chief, he sucked it up the first two weeks and then he quit at the end of the second week.

And he just, and he was, he told all of us, he's like, my goal is to make it through the first two weeks of SFAS. And I accomplished my goal. So I'm leaving. It's like, what? Like, why didn't you come here and put yourself through that for no reason? And it's weird that you meet these people. Like, I met a lot of people in SFAS, I felt like, who they were just there so that they could say they went to SFAS. Like, they weren't there so that they could say, because they were like, I want to be a green beret come hell or high water.

They were just like there so that they could like tell a war story back at their unit and be like, yeah, I went to SFAS, which I thought was very, very weird. It was so weird just interacting with people. and you would run into guys like I didn't take the whole like the whole thing how they said some people had a hard time just adjusted to the board and by that I mean

so for a lot of people in the army you get institutionalized and you're just used to be you know here is your what to do schedule from yeah from zero six to 2100 for you do

and like for me I thought it was great I thought it was so freeing to like all I have to worry about is the board that's it and they tell me everything that I can do well the forest not telling me to do anything right now so i guess i'm going to go shower and read my book

because that's what i'm going to do and then you have the guys who did like being there who was one of those things was like guys would freak the fuck out like what are we supposed to be doing right now what are we supposed to do i'm going to do some pushups i'm going to work out it's like it doesn't say to do that yeah yeah that that guy that crew chief i remember him wearing his rucks and doing squats in the barracks it's like why are you training up in S like this doesn't make sense like what are you doing why are you here right if you're not ready now you're probably you're not going to get ready yeah yeah it's yeah yeah yeah s fAS is something i would never want to do again but it was a it was a formative experience and i think it's i i do i like the way i like the way that it picked people i think it was an effective

Yeah, no, I think so too. I mean, I guess we're biased because we got picked, and maybe people who did it are like, fuck that course. They're so full of shit over there. I don't know what land have to do with you talk about. I think SFAAS is a good course. And I mean, we started off with like almost 400 people, I think. And by the end, how many do you think got selected, like 200? In that, maybe a little less.

Yeah, like half, a little less than half. Well, the thing that was telling was of those guys got selected, not all of them. Like, there was quite a percentage who chose not to go to the Q-course. I went through another Ranger Battalion, third Ranger Battalion guy who was there with me, who I knew already. He's a medic. Doc, I won't say his name. He's a good guy, though, very competent guy.

He got selected, and he wanted to go to Germany with 10th group, and instead they gave him another assignment, some other group. And he's like, nah, fuck that, got out of the Army. Now's that.

Well, man, it's a technique. I guess so, yeah. So you want to keep talking about a selection? Because I got, I got sorts of days,

my man. Really? Tell us your best story and we'll move on to the next thing. And then if Jack's not in that story, then tell us your best story that includes Jack or is about Jack.

Oh, boy. Because I know our audience would love to that? The only story I remember Jack, because I knew who it was, like I recognized his face all around. Like, we never met each other before that, but he and I just happened to be in proximity a lot. I don't know what, maybe it was our last name or something, but we were in proximity a lot. I remember, um, there was one time it was a perfect sham experience. And for those of you that aren't familiar with that term sham, sham is when you're, is when you try to display a lot of effort and energy, but you were not actually exhibiting said effort and energy.

The false volunteer. Yes, false volunteer. Where they asked for a volunteer and like everyone takes one step forward and pauses? You and I were detailed to go. I think it was moved like the pipes in the fucking tires and like all the heavy shit for the apparatuses, the apparatus for team week. And I remember you and I like kind of found her like we kind of scumbagued up. We kind of made our way to the back of the line.

And it was like, I think, look, we looked at each other, and it was kind of like a nonverbal, like, I'm going to pick up these empty, uh, fuck of water can't over here. We'll grab the ropes, guys. We'll grab the lashes. And you want people are like, I'm motivated. They're like picking up these giant heavy concrete fucking filled steel beams. And Jack and I were like, oh, man, are you good?

Are you good? Do you need help? Just let me know if you need help. Like, all the time. Opera? Yeah. Relief? Anybody?

Okay, that's good. It's good. So that was the only story I have, specifically with Jack, and we both gave our pink cards to a specifically loud-mouthed candidate who became Green Beret, Fifth Group. Oh, I know who you're talking about.

Yeah, I can't remember. It was a good. So pink cards, the peer selection. So there's two selection times in SFAS, where you get a, there's a blue card and a pink card? There's a green card. I think it was blue and pink.

I think so. Yeah. So you get a blue card, and on this blue card, you just write the roster number down and you write a positive, like why you'd want them to be under team. The pink card is,

you'd write the roster number down, you write a negative thing. That's why you don't want them to be under team. And, I mean, like, the first one is like, I've done a weekend, so you have no loyalty towards anybody. So those are really the most honest ones.

And plus you really haven't done shit as a team. So you haven't found a way to judge people on their teamwork. But the second card is done right before selection is made. So... The pink card? The pink card is one of those things

where you're like, who do I not? Like, oh, fuck that guy. And then you just, you grab a collection of people and it's like, everybody's in the pink card this motherfucker right here. And the first one I remember, this is going to sound kind of a dickish of me, but just

hear me out for a moment. There's a guy a couple bunks near me in the barracks and he was very young. He was an 18 x-ray. This guy was like 18 and he was like hardcore like Christian evangelical which is

fine and I don't have any problem with Christians whatsoever. I mean, I've served with many but this person in particular was just incredibly naive and talking about you know I'm gonna you know Jesus wants me to be a green beret and then I'm going to go be a contractor and I'm going to make a lot of money and this

and that and I I pured him out I was like look I'm going to do you a favor right and I have no idea how if the instructors gave any weight to it but I was like I'm going to do this kid a favor and get him the fuck out of here because this dude's going to be dead in like five minutes overseas um and he he went through SFS and he was a non-select at the end of the course really I remember I gave my first pink card to somebody and the reason I gave was because he's a punk bitch. Because they're just like, dude, this guy's a non-hack man. What is this guy even doing here?

And I was like, yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because it's a punk fish. I was like, whatever. You know, if they yell me for that, they can yell me for that. And then the second one was that guy that we all kind of pooled our pink cards together. He ended up getting like 125 pink cards. Wow. So that's like it.

he was a blue falcon or like what was the deal he's just a loud mouth you remember you remember yeah yeah i remember that i can't remember his name but he would say things like when there would be an obvious thing where the cadman would expect a response he would be the one who would stand up and say something and everybody would kind of roll their eyes and who the fuck elected you king with the fucking candidates you know what i mean yeah um but yeah so that was near the end and and then we turned in all of our equipment, or we got selected. I remember the speech.

Gentlemen, there's two lists on the side of this building. There's a long list and a short list. If you're on the long list, you're going to be really fucking happy. And that's the only thing they said. And it was like, ah, fuck, man. And I remember I hobbled over the short list just to make sure. It was like, if I'm not on the short list, I'm going to be a fuck. And I just remember seeing guys like just lose it because they didn't get selected.

It was a tough day for some. It was a great day brothers. So after SFAS, you go back to your unit. And how long was it before you elected to start the acute course? Because they gave you a date. And I actually delayed mine. I went right away. We got done in late December.

I reported to the student company, February. Okay, right on. I'm trying to think because I was, thankfully, I stayed a team leader in Ranger Battalion in my platoon, and I stayed to go through the training cycle until those guys left for Afghanistan.

And the day they went to Afghanistan, I drove to Bragg the next day and started and reported the student company. And maybe it was, it must, it had, if you went right away, I was the next class after that I started. Yes. Showed up, went to a student company,

met a certain category member there from seventh group, and what he said to me, or what he said to our class is we're all, you know, cool as fuck Swiss students. We haven't done anything yet. So we're all kind of hanging out back with our hands in our pockets, being a bunch of turrets. And I remember he kicked the door open

and he walked outside. He has a green bray on and a jaunty angle. And he's like, who are his range in time? a couple guys raise your hands. Who hears me and say I get it. Who hears from fucking this or that. And people raise their hands left and right.

And he's like, I don't give a fuck. I don't care how cool you are. I don't care how many people you can't. I don't care what cool missions you did. You're here to become a green beret. Always fucking remember that. I'm not here at your selection. I'm not at your training course.

You're here at mine. And it was like, all right, very well. That's how we're going to play it. That's how we'll play it. And it was just one of those things where it was like, I always be humble. And that kind of, that story is kind of like to start with me. So I want to hear your recollections, your highlights from the queue.

I mean, because I can easily launch right into the biggest mistake that John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center ever made, which was having us go to night classes at language school. So we worked from like 2 to like what, 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. Yeah, something ridiculously awesome. We'd immediately go out to the bar on like a Wednesday and just get smashed. But what's your, what's your Caleb's perspective before I editorialize? My perspective, so we have a friend, a red-headed friend,

who may or may not look like the toy Mr. Potato Head. Oh, yeah, yeah. Who is my roommate. First, we lived together in a house. major in multi-aliana and he was in the our city cycle so i guess it was like whiskey and yankee we were whiskey he was yankee so he left for sUT two weeks before us so he was experiencing everything two weeks ahead of us and time so um i remember we were i'm sorry again the editorial lives i should mention this was his second attempt at the cue course yes because the first time he had a little bit of an

incident that resulted in him getting kicked out. Neither here nor there. Either here nor there. True love is blind. True love is blind. Yeah. True love is blind. It's true.

So, yeah, we all went to SUT together. You and me and third member of our Aquitia Hunter Force. And I just remember it was so, like it was terrible because, it was, you know, it's a small-eat-attackage. We're out there doing soldier stuff, living in the mud

and fighting big wars. But it was so fun, just fucking with each other all the time. Like, the number of guys who tried to sneak into another guy's sleeping bag, dozens, dozens of times.

Especially the more, the more homophobic and the more it made you uncomfortable, it was like, oh, dude, game on. Like, how many guys do you think we can get in there before we bites us all off. I don't know. We got two last time.

Let's fucking do three. So like now we have four guys trying to fitness once looking back. You know guys, like one of my favorite things would be to take the guard list that we had. Because we were doing fire guard. You know, the Army's alarm flag fire guard. And I would just right obscene things and change it up so that one guy would have fire guard like four times and one night. And he'd be like, what the fuck? And you would just be so mad that he got woke up at 20,

300 he woke up at 03 and like dude why didn't such a bad move bro because then I would I'll keep the original one on my on my bunk so in the morning I would just switch it and he'd be like I pulled fire guard fucking twice last night I don't know why that's crazy why that's nuts and then you had you know you had a whole bunch of different jobs from throughout the armist you didn't have just infantry in there and you'd have like mechanics and admin dudes and um just all these guys who weren't used to being in the woods. So, of course, it was always funny to tell them the incorrect way to wear their mucksack so that it would be extremely uncomfortable and heavy. And then like half-way through the mission, you're like, my fucking shoulders are real bad, man. And they're like, well, why aren't you using the waist trap? We can use that? You know, dude, you're right.

You're right. You're right. Just about fucking, you don't need it because we have to contact. You don't want to do that. Do you remember when one of the instructors took us out for, a run in the morning, like the entire class went out for a run. This guy could run like the wind and he sang like a cold cadence like a choir boy. And he took us out to one of the other instructors lived just right off of Camp McCall, took us, ran out, ran our asses out there like four miles

and then put us in a forward march and had us pull our pants down off of our asses and walk around the little cul-de-sac at the end of his driveway. And this dude, this instructor lived there is such a grumpy guy to begin with. He was probably like 40. but, you know, it was acted like he's 70, and he just steps out onto his front deck or at his bathrobe, a cup of coffee in his hand on. And we're all there with our asses showing out,

and he has to march around his flagpole at the end of his driveway, say, good morning, serge, and such and such. And then walked back and ran back to McGaul. I remember that. I remember one night we were all in patrol bases, and they blew us out. So for those of you don't know, that means we're in control base, we're camping, we're in sleep mode, which is in sleep mode, because you're still at 50% security anyway. And I remember we got blown out, there's gunfire and yelling and all sorts of shit.

And then all of a sudden I hear like from, like through the night, reassemble up the fucking tents. Reassemble up the tents. It was like, all right, cool. So we reassemble up the tents. And the head instructor stands up and he was like, all right, guys, first off, I just want to make sure, is everybody up? Team Sergeant did everybody have? Of course we have all of our equipment. And he's like, all right, cool, cool, cool.

Everybody hold up your rifles. And like I hear behind me, oh, shit. Was this one it was an 18 X-ray, a young man of Asian descent? No, this one was Root, Matt Root. Oh, okay. First-roof-year-man. Okay. because he was i remember he was he's a tall guy

got a really deep voice and he was right behind me and i could just i can still replay that sound of my mouth oh shit and it was like oh because there was this cat he he good guy i mean uh asian uh i just i keep saying that because i don't want to say his name uh on air but he uh lost control of his rifle his rubber duck it's just a plastic you know replica rifle uh and that guy that same grumpy instructor out on the front deck That was his instructor for SUT.

And his instructor would not let him have that rifle back and instead made him go through the stages of reenacting the evolution of man while we were out in the field of the woods. So the first day he got like a rock. It was just a rock. The second day he had like a club. And then he'd work up to like a sharpened stick for a spear. And it worked up, he'd have a bow and arrow.

And so like we would have to do like this force on force training like squad attack. So like, you know, my squad would be attacking his squad and there's like arrows flying over your head. You're like, what the fuck? Yeah, it made him go through like the evolution of man over the course of like a week. And I mean, you know, I think that some people listening this might be like, oh, why are they messing with somebody like to that degree? And some of it is because instructors get bored. But it's also that guy never forgot his. rifle again.

Yeah. You know, or something like that. They never forget the, you know, like it looks like hazing and I guess in some ways, you could call it that, but it's also like a very abject lesson of you will remember this lesson. Pain instills memory. Yes. Yeah.

And it's one of those things. It was, if that guy was a turd or if that guy was a bad soldier or bad student or whatever, then they would refer to paperwork. You know what I mean? Then they would kick him out. So it's like, once you get a couple of years on, you realize how that. system works. It's like, oh, yeah, I'd rather get destroyed out back for 20 minutes. Right.

Did sign a counseling statement. Right. See, here, what else happened? What else happened? We did that. SUT was pretty fun. And then we went to Sears school after that. That was a great time. That was a great one. I was telling some of my close family and friends about the goat and on day one, how they just murderized that goat in front of us. So, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so he sat on top of it, cut its throat. Yeah, so quick run down, one of the instructors you stand in front of the course, he had this goat, and he prefaces it with like, this is your class goat, this is your mascot. He's been, he's been around here for a long time, you know, so he's like, like, oh, this is a goat, right? So he holds the goat between his legs and he was petting the goat

and he goes up the pails wagon. And he's like, oh, yeah, so you have to be really cool and calm around animals and blah, blah, blah, blah. he's kind of just talking about food procurement in a serious situation. And then like at some pregnant pause in the fucking situation, or in the conversation, he whips out of Bowie Knife and just goes to town on this goat in front of the whole class. He hits the goat a couple times in the lungs and slits its throat

and just fucking pushes it on the floor and the goes like, you know, it's kind of doing its thing. And I remember looking around the classroom and there's guys like turning green and turning white. like this dude just fucking murdered just go in front of all of us man and blood's going everywhere and i just remember thinking like that shit really just happened from me it was it was nuts it was serious school was fun um were you there the day you weren't in my you weren't in my team were you and seir uh yeah no we were in different teams now yeah yeah we're on different teams

So our third partner was on my team and he was getting interrogated he was doing the heart cell so they were beating the shit out and I remember he's like they have him on the floor on his knees and they're just slapping them

and they're like tell us what we want to know you know tell us the nuclear codes or whatever the fucker interrogating for and he's like you let her watch out my friend starting a cat of filth and come down here and fuck you up

The instructor, like, is, like, just beating him. He stops him on the ground and he, like, opens the door. Because this is all happening in the enclosure in the classroom in the fishbowl. And he, like, opens the doors. Who the fuck is starting Caleb Phillips? And he's like, dude, come in here. And then he just brings me in there sort of beating the shit out of me. And, oh, man, he and I laughed about that.

We still laughed about that. That's still funny as fuck. It was another guy we were pals with, weren't they like rubbing Oscar Meyer weiner hot dogs like on his ass crack or something like that? Yes. Yeah. And they took a pencil and they,

they, so in certain phases of Sears School, for those you who don't know, they do a lot of, they just mess with you. They fuck with you. Like they put you down. They put you under duress.

They put you under duress. Yes, thank you. And if this was a young man, he was an x-rayer right I thought no no he's a national guard guy oh well this is a different guy

not thinking of so they um you're in this you're in this room and you're in he was getting interrogated and of course you're like oh why did you bring this weapon

into potland and oh shit and then you're like pull your pants down and he pulls his pants down like bend over the desk so he's like oh man

all right so he bends over the desk and then interrogator has this pencil pulls his pencil out and he's like normally I only go to here and he points to like the tip and he's like for you I'm going to go to here and like points to the very bottom of the pencil he's like we're going all the way in on you and he's like ah he just it was one of those things you're like oh here's the fucking codes on the combo guy you know he just like he gave up the fucking good well when we first got there there's this uh the woman who in process me to the camp uh she was like this five foot tall Filipino woman. And she gave me the whole deal

and had me like stripped naked and she like inspects me for whatever reason. And she says, okay, now lift sack. Like, will I? I mean, that was funny. But the rest of it was nothing is cool here.

Man, nothing is cool. I remember standing outside of the end processing room and hearing like, you're now war. We're a criminal number 57. war criminal blah blah blah what is your name like my name's jimmy blah blah blah and they would just slap the shit out of him like what is your name sergeant jimmy blah blah blah and again slapped the shit out of them so like when it was my turn

he's like you're now world criminal one two six what's your name i was like fucking war criminal one two six man like i just don't want you to fucking hit him it's like oh so you want to know how fucking out of it I was like we went through the, so there's like a three day evasion before you get captured where you're like on the run for the most part trying not to get captured and then you do. So you're already tired when you get to the camp. After they improcessed us and they gave us the first propaganda speech and beat the hell out of us, they put me in solitary like right away. Just put me in solitary.

And I fell asleep. And you don't have like when you're super exhausted and you sleep for like 20 minutes. it feels like it was three days. So like, when they pulled me out of solitary, I was like, holy fuck, this whole, this exercise must be just about over. Like, I didn't have, well, they took my watch, but I'm like, God damn, looking at the sundial.

This thing must be almost over. We're going home. No. There's like three days of this shit. Yeah, I remember, we were all talking about that because you went to isolation first, and then our buddy went. And then I was like,

fuck, man, when do I get shoved? box. This is cool. And like they shoved you in the box and yeah, I took me nap. I just, it's great. It pulled me out and like all I think I was like, could you, could you get me back in there? I'm like, that was actually pretty nice. And because they won't let you out. So I had to take a knee and I pissed on the door so that it didn't come down back at me. I pissed at the door. It went across the hole and it went into the cell of your roommate, the redheaded guy, went into his cell. And so like when we started talking about that and compared notes, he's like, oh, that was your piss. that was coming under the wall. I was like, oh, yeah, sorry, bro.

But then who was the guy who took a shit in his water bowl? That was our third party. That was him. Yeah, dude, we never heard the end of that. Jesus. So there, in your cell, when you get thrown into the cell, there's a little silver bowl. A dog bowl.

And you don't know, yeah, it's a dog bowl. And you don't know what it's for. And so it's like, hey, obviously. this is for something, then you find if you're in there, you're lucky enough to get some rice, you get some rice. But yeah, our buddy was like, well, I have to poop and I don't want to poop on the floor

and they provided me this bowl that's perfectly shaped in size for poop, so I'm going to do that. And then he also happened to be in there when it was time to serve rice. So here he has this bowl full of poop and he's like, oh man, what do I do with this?

I just remember I was like, when you told me that you took a knee and you dropped her pants to piss but all I could think of was like I just pissed my pants I don't like it didn't even occur to me I was like hey I have to go pee you know like we'll piss yourself and I was like all right well I just pissed my pants you get loopy after a

while man in the POW camp and you remember the who's the roly polly woman uh the little white one yeah roly polly polly and she'd come out she'd make us all get naked and do jumping Jackson from her.

Yeah. And then we had to roll over each other. Yeah, yeah. Do you remember the one gentleman who had squinty eyes and they made him a 16 candles Chinese caricature? This guy was not Asian, by the way. Dave, he was not Asian at all. Just had some weirdo eyes. And they made, they got him like a VC comical hat.

And they made him perch on this. on this fucking log because he had Mercer on his neck so they couldn't let him join in the Was he the senior responsible one? No, no, no, no, no, no. This was another guy.

The senior responsible one was a black dude. No, this dude was a 18 X-ray in 4th Battalion and he, they made him sit, they made him perch on this log and he was like, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah.

Ra bra, rah, bra, bra, bra, bra, bra, wearing a comical hat. And he had to walk around like a little Chinese woman the whole time. They wouldn't make him, they wouldn't let him take big steps. I don't remember that at all. I mean, I remember the self-criticism sessions and the pure criticism sessions. That was some good Marxist propaganda right there. Yeah, the, yeah. And then there was an X-ray also that they used for propaganda.

So a young, like, and he was perfect for the role, too. I don't know how much he even knew about what was going on. But you remember the one they made like they were going to let him go? What did he have to do? Nothing, nothing. It was just like, oh, he gave us everything we wanted. He's a great prisoner. We're going to let him go.

And so they made a big show of it, opened up the gates, and they sent him. And he's like, bye, guys, bye, bye. And then the 240 gunner up in the tower zaps him. And he goes down. And all the cadre, all the prison guards are like, propaganda. dude i just remember the the self-criticism sessions it was one of those things where it was like hey uh fucking what did you do wrong today

it's like oh i stole i stole some bread and um i ate it and i didn't share it with my friends oh okay that's fine that's fine that's fine and then they would just get yanked up and fucking took him away because i was like you fucking stole bread i just told them i was a malingerer which was basically true yes

uh do you remember the senior he's the senior enceo who's old as hell former rangerback guy dude maybe we were

different sphere classes because it was we were in the same one the it was a Hispanic guy who was the senior responsible NCO and he was not

former ranger battalion he was a leg oh I'm thinking a guy who got because they had that little pool and they like drowned him in that pool for like a fucking

hour straight. Oh yeah, I do remember that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I never got put in the pool, though. Yeah, me neither. But somebody took this guy to the pool. It's his little pool is about up to your to your thigh and it was cold. So they, like, they would dump ice and shit into it. And he was out there's shivering and they're out there just yelling at him. And finally, I guess he said the right, or the wrong wrong answer. And just the terrier jumps in the pool, just starts to fucking pushing him in the water. And I remember I was, I just got that getting interrogated. So I'm like walking back to the thing.

And I kind of like watching out of the corner of my eye. And I'm like, damn, that really sucks. I hope they don't do that to me, man. Because that's terrible. The culmination for me, and I'm not going to say what they made this poor bastard do. But you'll know what I'm talking about. The actual senior responsible officer was the, he used to be the commander of sniper school at Fort Benning.

So, and I went to sniper school, actually, while he was in SFAS, but long story short, we knew a lot of people, had a lot of people in common. So I got to know that that officer fairly well. They made him do, nothing is sacred at Sear. Like, nothing is sacred. They made him do some fucked up shit by the end of it. And I remember just watching in horror like, oh my God, you can't do that, Captain So-and-So. But, yeah, man, you better be prepared for that.

that. Yeah. And for the people who haven't like don't know anything about Sear, give us a like give us some background. What what is it for? Yeah. Because it sounds absolutely horrible what you're describing. But there's an intent behind all this. Can you can you kind of tell us a bit about the school? Um, so it was developed by Nick Roe. Nick Roe was a green parade in Vietnam. Um, and he was captured. You got he was a seven years, seven years of freedom. Yeah. Yeah. and he came back to America and he realized like, hey, we need to train these guys who are going to be in the situation.

We need to train them with real no shit, practical skills. And up until that time, it had been, you know, a sergeant mentality of like name rank and serial number and I'm not telling you shit. You can have to kill me. And when all these POWs are coming back from Vietnam,

it was like, that's not realistic. That's not realistic to expect a guy to watch his fingers get chopped off. And it's like, like fuck, man, tell him the codes. Like, they're going to kill you. What are you doing?

So the curriculum of the sear came from that. So the first part of it is survival where they teach you a bunch of survival stuff. You're hungry for most of that. The second part is your invasion part, or I'm sorry, your resistant part where they teach you various techniques to withstand interrogation.

And then the final part is your, evasion, which is putting all these survival skills to use, and then you get captured, as Jack talked about. And then you get subjected. You basically get a lab to exercise all of these skills you learn.

So when you get back to your cell, you might find a box with a lock on it and with like a bobby pin and something else. So now, this is like, hey, we taught you how to pick locks. pick this lock. You know, and it's all in scenario.

So if you pick the lock, there might be a handful of rice or something. And it's a, it was a, I think near the end, I think everybody kind of came away with the same thing. Like, it was a great experience. It really was. You weren't a lot. I mean, there's no doubt about that. I don't know if I go through it again. But then again, it wasn't like a physically arduous school.

Like, like, I hear people say they walk that about it. I was hammered by. the end of that class. Well, the evasion part was terrible because you have like one canteen of water between three of you. Yeah, and I had a fistful of rice to eat for five days. Yeah, but I'm saying like you can't work out for Sear. You can't train for Sear.

Right, right. So it was physically demanding like, you know, stress positions, the food, that all that kind of stuff, you know, being subjected to different physical type, like the cold water. and the dunking and stuff. But it wasn't like road marches and running and, you know, it wasn't like a physical fitness type of thing. It was more like a mental endurance, mental stamina type of thing. I mean, your physical fitness directly affected all those things.

Like if you were sweaty fat fuck, you were not having a good time. We went through in August, as I recall. And we were hurting out there in, in the woods trying to evade. and I mean I was the other other young guys who were like great shape and like we were all hurting pretty bad from like you know bordering heat exhaustion and well I could go ahead I'm sorry no please go ahead I just remember like during the day when you were hiding that was what you would do for hours he would just lay there you would lay there under your tarp or under your poncho because you didn't want because every time you moved was like an ounce or two of water that you would not going to be able to get back. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, people hear that, okay, the instructors were slapping you, that they were doing these things. But really, the physical stuff was more there to break you down. And so much of the school is psychological, right? Like, removing, like, the slaps are more to, you know, and the things with the hot dogs, like these things, it's psychological. So when you talk

about the self-criticism, and, you know, Jack, you mentioned a good Marxist technique, it's, it's like a struggle session. Yeah. It's, you know, it's, you. know, it's admitting that I'm not a good person. And then reporting on each other or criticizing another person type of thing. Yes. So the reporting on each other thing was big too, because it would be like, you'd be out there doing your war production, which would be one of a number of silly, repetitive things like moving rocks from one side of the yard to the other, or carving a star and some

mud and like I'd be over there doing it and they would just snatch jack up and they'd take them behind the fucking building they'd be like all right tell us what you know war prisoner fucking one two six tell us tell us one bad thing he's done today

and if he didn't tell him then it would be really bad for him so you're like uh one two six um he he snuck off and used the bathroom without asking permission or whatever it was like oh okay and then they would go grab me and punish me and then tell me that my buddy fucking

dime me out right yeah and it's just it was it was one of those things where because we went through as a cohort you knew you were going to be with these guys for another year right so it kind of made everybody so close and you know then after that was language school which as I talked about was like one long drinking session, I feel like. You want to get into Robin Sage? That was actually like, for me, that was the funnest part of the Q-Course. Yeah. So Robin Sage, for those who don't know, is a month or month and a half long phase.

The final phase is the Q-course. When we were going through, we were the new pipeline as opposed to traditional pipeline, meaning that we were language qualified by the time we got there. In the past, that wasn't always the case. So we showed up Camacral, we got put in our teams, and we got introduced to planning green gray style, which means having the worst study session you've ever had for 96 hours straight.

We did that. I think we did three or four plan axes in a row, different missions, doing different things. And then we did it was known as an MRE or mission-regness exercise, which is like a mini field problem. We were in the woods for 48 hours. That was terrible. That was only terrible because we packed as if

we were going to pack for a rival stage. So we packed for two weeks, and we were only going to be in field for two days. And then we all had to jump. I think we all had to jump on that one. Yeah, we jumped, yeah. Because I think somebody broke their leg or something. There was something ridiculous.

Like somebody got seriously hurt. It was one of our buddies. He had a bad landing and was like, and broke his binoculars when he came down. So then you start your real planning for a real fish for your insertion and invasion. You're insertion to Pineland in order to facilitate or conduct full spectrum special operations to help the Pinelanders against the People's Republic of Pileland.

And it, uh, the United Provinces of Atlantica. I'm sorry, the United Provinces of Atlantica. Yes. How could I forget those bastards? So you plan, you plan, you plan. and then you finally do an insertion. Jack and I were on separate teams. He was in an adjacent AO for area of operations to make.

We started off with a planned helicopter insertion to a link-up point. There's always supposed to be like a 400-meter walk. So we're on two Blackhawks. Blackhawks come in. They flare to land and an ambush happens. We take machine vent fire from the tree line, so now we have to go to our alternate LZ, which is like 15 miles away. So now I do to our alternate linkup point.

We, and I'm not exaggerate when I say this, we walk for a day and a half. We just walk. I don't know how far we went. I couldn't tell you, but I just know that we walked for a fucking day and a half. We slept on the trail and we just walked. Then we made our link up. And I think everybody had pretty similar experiences from there. Initial rejection from the G2, you have to prove.

Well, I was on the pilot team. I finagled my way onto the pilot team so that I didn't have to sit in the barracks, which I hated. And we flew in four of us on Casa, flew into an airfield in the middle of the night, got off, met with the auxiliary, the underground. And they took us to a safe house. And then we spent the night like drinking red wine with the auxiliary with the partisans. These were like the elites that were dissatisfied with the government, like drinking red wine, hanging out. their house with your legs crossed. You had a fancy party.

Oh, yeah. And then after that, we linked up with our ODA and what met the G chief. Anyway, what was your experience like? Well, we showed up, we showed up to this terrible patrol base that looked like a super shitty campsite. And we made initial contact. And he's like, oh, man, my boys are going to be able to ambush. You guys should go with them.

And we're like, oh, okay, cool. We get to see what's going on here. So we don't make it like 15 meters outside of the patrol base. and we immediately get hit by bad guys. And they take a bunch of categories. We lose half of our shit. Like they just, it was a fiasco. And we're running through the woods with our rucks on,

you know, trying to get into town for somebody. Because we had a pilot team out too, but we had to make contact with them. Yeah, yeah. And we're fighting, we're fighting to breaking contact. We're fighting to breaking contact. And this is where Sergeant Phillips used all of his morale was in this initial gunfight.

because it was fucking terrible. We're getting hit left and right. We're shooting. We're fighting. We're already, we're exhausted. And I just remember thinking it was like, God damn, man, we just started this war. And we finally break contacts.

And it was like, the cadre like huddle us up. He's like, all right, guys, listen, that was a tough fight for the home team. But you got to keep your mind in the fight, all right? He's like, okay, Sarge, whatever you say, let's do this.

So we go meet the G chief and, you know, the captains go do their thing and, you know, I'm a almost fucking special forces engineer. So I roll up to the guy who wants to talk about engineer stuff. And he's like, what are you good at? I was like, oh, I'm an expert in construction and demolitions. He's like, oh, an expert, huh? And he starts asking me all these construction questions. Bear in mind the construction portion of the 18th charter course.

I barely, barely passed. So he was like talking to be about different types of nails and wattage and all sorts of shit like that. And I was like, no, it's certainly very, it's a very good question. Let me go talk to my other engineers and we'll come up with an answer for you. And it's like, oh, fuck, man, this is going to be a tough two weeks. But we all ended up getting our canteen cups out and we drank to the freedom of pine land with this disgusting, like, Tabasco and whiskey and like salt. and like a whole bunch of shit with your thing.

It's the pipeline. All right. I got a story for you here, Caleb. Our is was ceremonial wine of some sort, some ceremonial grog out of a communal cup with a straw,

which is really just some sort of vinegar concoction. And all of my teammates pretended to drink this thing. It gets to me at the end and they say, you got to finish it, buddy.

Like you got to, like, You're insulting our hospitality by not drinking this. And it's like a full fucking keg of ceremonial grog that your pal Jack now has to finish. My buddy's fucked me. So I'm like sucking on the straw drinking all of it, taking the hit. And, you know, the female role players and the guerrilla force are like, oh, Jack is a big man. I'm like, oh, my God.

And I'm like drinking this thing. I finished it and like, oh, Jack, you bring us great satisfaction and this and that. I'm like, and I stumbled off into the woods and projectile vomited like five or six feet.

Like poltergeist type shit. It was horrible. Yeah, no. Thankfully we didn't have that. We did have the most inconveniently placed gene or guerrilla base in the entire campaign. I'm very certain. So it was a old Boy Scout camp located on top of this hill. A pretty good spot because there was a lot of cover.

Like tactically it was pretty good because we had we could put machine gun on every avenue approach. Super cool. What's not cool is that to get up to it was like a super steep, shitty trail that you were almost, it wasn't 90 degrees, but it was close to it. And I just remember I would plan what patrols that I would volunteer for. I would volunteer for like four patrols a day. just not back to walk up that fucking hill. I'm like, you know what, dude?

I'll walk down the hill. I'll do the ambush. I'll do the resupply. I'll do the reclety. And then I'll do the escort. And then I'll walk back up the hill. You're so fucking lazy. He's like, dude, that is a big, big fucking hill.

And I remember we achieved a couple of resupply drops. And we didn't have vehicles. So now we're carrying water cans and ammo crates up this hill. And like I said, I love. I felt all my morale in first gunfight. So it was a slog. We eventually made a sled that we would drag up the hill so we'd have to carry anything. And then, like, the last couple days, our G-Chief let us know that the guerrilla combat engineers cleared the road so we could start using the road.

And, like, as one, we all turned and looked at each other and they're like, what fucking road? There's like a very nice fucking dirt road, like, 50 meters. for our bucket site that you just had to know it was there and it was like are you kidding me there's a road right here the whole time and he's like oh it had mines in it it was like you piece of shit like uh because we didn't have water on top either so we had to go down in the hill to fill water buckets and watercans every day twice a day man i'll tell you i uh i really clashed with the captain on my team um he's a he's a good guy but a west pointer very like everything's by the book and I was not.

So we kind of did not get along so well. So I was the same. I volunteered for every mission that there was to just keep myself out of the G-base. So I mean, I got to run all over the place and do some really cool stuff. That was fun. Yeah. And it's like anything else, right? It's like we talked about earlier.

It's like you get out, we should put into it. And there were times where it was like, who wants to go do this mission? It's not going to be very cool. and nobody wants to do it and then you volunteer to go do it and then you get to the link up point and the gorilla or the auxiliary is like here put these civilian clothes on we have to go in town

yep yeah oh shit okay what are we get to go to town oh we're going to go eat some food all right like me and my buddy get to go eat eggs and pancakes while the rest of the team is eating MREs because you volunteered to do this mission It's great.

Yeah. And you also make sure probably that when you get back, you tell everybody how shitty the oppo is so that nobody, so that nobody volunteers for that stuff. You're like, oh, no, it was horrible. Dude, I got to take role players out, two role players out. We did a recon on a dam. We went out and did a resupply mission where they, theyirdropped a, a pallet to us. Got to go do that. I got to go to, yeah, put on civilian clothes and go to church.

and meet local partisans and they handed off the note to me when we shook hands what else did I get to do it was fun though it was a good time it was fun it was the culminating event

was one of the coolest I ever did it was we somehow went from like our normal eight gorillas to like three gorillas overnight that's pretty cool for the final assault on the local military airfield it was our OD

There's RODA and 200 ODAs. And we in pickup trucks and fucking 50 cows, like, assaulted this airfield. That's awesome. Desert rat style. It was fucking sick. It was pretty cool. Mine was just my team. It was a hostage rescue actually had a train yard.

Really? Yeah. But my job was to take a boat in, and I had to sabotage the rail lines so that reinforcement's going to get there. And then I had to run to the rail yard to, you know, extract. act. It's, and that is a great way to end the Q course because after a year of just getting your getting your dick kicked in.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, oh man, green gray stuff. Like, this is what I, this is exactly what I joined to do. On the other hand, you show up to group expecting every deployment and every mission to be like that. It's like, no. And what was the difference? What was the reality?

Like what were some of the things you did in group that you never expected that you would do? Yeah. Well, yeah, give us like a quick overview, Caleb, because I think we're going to have to have you on again someday to actually talk about. Yeah, yes. So I think three trips as a re-break gift group. My first one was 07-08. I was out in Sotomay, out in the Alambar province.

we were actually the only ODA underneath the Navy SEAL command that was my first experience with Navy SEALs in reality and actually I'd been treated Chris Kyle before he became famous it was it was a fun trip we trained a lot of our active commandos

we did a lot of patrolling we did a lot of just soldiers stuff we didn't get that many gun fights per seignate but it was a lot of good green beret stuff. My second deployment was 0-9, 08-09, was in a place called Tews Cameratu,

which is in Central Iraq. That one was on a more intelligence gathering mission. That one, we built a base from the ground up, and we operated around northern Iraq. We could talk about that one, more in depth later or something to stand out on that one. And then my last one was in northern Iraq, working with the Kurds. We had a Kurdish commander company.

And we had to go to the head of the Kurdish commandos and ask permission to train these guys. And it was me, the captain, and the team sergeant. And we were in the room with the ambassador and with like the equivalent of like a three star state department guy. And the general shoot them out of the room and we showed up. We got to meet the vice president of Kyrgyzstan. We got to meet his son. It was my last appointment was really cool. It was really interesting.

Again, it was more of an intelligence kind of thing. So we were submitting close most of the time. We met and talked to people. I drove all around Iraq. It was definitely different. But it was, I don't know how much I really want to do. into it right now. Sure.

But it's, it was a very interesting look at how diplomacy is done. And this was also, we were in Iraq when that specific time in 2011, when Iraq was threatened me to shoot missiles at American bases. So we were actually under threat of being assaulted by Iranian coach sports guys. Came back from that.

That was the end of my team time. I went to headquarters and headquarters company fifth group, and I was the co-opportunity advisor for the special portion group. Job well done, and Jay-Wup. A job well done. Racism has gone. I did that for two years, and then I left the active army. I did four years, or did three years as a contractor teaching Marsaac guys,

serving as instructor in the training cell. I first Marine Marine Army Army of the time. I was a great job. It was a bunch of good dudes, both the Marines and contractors. Then I was a contractor for about a year working for the first expeditionary operation training group,

which so when the Marine, when the Muse, the Marine Expeditionary units, train up to deploy, they deploy a battalion-sized elements. We would train them one company at a time for all of their evaluations in their natural deployment. So we would take them through the shooting package and the tactics package and then we would

evaluate them as they handle the various company level problems that would come on. Did that until February of 2019 when I went to the police academy and I've been a law enforcement officer in the Southern California police department since. In your three trips to Iraq. Did you ever get an opportunity to drive by a PFC matting a blocking position? Numerous times. Loved it. Loved it.

So as far as short-entry guess, and I always realized that this was, every SF guy's a recruiter. If he's a good SF guy, he's a recruiter. And you would walk by and you would like see you in your long hair, your sideburns, you mustache or whatever. And if you could be that sergeant first class or staff sergeant who just talk to them like a normal person, you know, you just, you just planted the seat. And maybe they're not going to go to some action. That's fine.

But they're going to tell their brother or their friend or somebody else. Like, man, that fucking green rib is pretty cool. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's like anything. is you get so much you get so much better reactions from people if you're if you treat them like a human being and especially when you come from such a difference of i don't want to say power or status but like as a special operations guy right people look up to you right and if you bring and if you treat if you take this finance specialist to the range and you show them how to shoot

a machine gun that they've never done before and you don't treat them condescendingly and you show them how fun it can be to be a soldier. Like, you just created something. Now they're going to pass that on. It was great. But yeah, many young PFC Philipses were shown the right way. That's awesome. That's awesome.

And even if they don't go to SF or whatever, it's a story they'll tell for the rest of their lives, right? Yeah, and it's a responsibility that I think some SF guys, some rangers, some people who are put on a higher level in the military, I think they don't realize the power they wields. Right. I mean, you're absolutely right, Caleb. And I just add that, you know, when I look back on my experiences and the impact, if you will, that I had, I think really what it was was working with the Iraqis and that I was able to represent America in special forces in a positive way.

and that when they think about Americans, their view is not like, fuck those people, like, let's set off a bomb in their market. Their view is like, you know, it's Jack and my teammates who are on the ODA with me. Like, those are great guys. Like, that was awesome. I wish I was still working with them. You know, and I think that's really the positive influence that, you know, a lot of Green Beret is able to have. Well, that was interesting. I was talking one of my old team

sergeants when ISIS was The fight was still on in ISIS Like 2015, 2016 When it was getting hot and heavy over there My old team started Was still in contact with a lot of our SWAT guys And You know, he was

It was an emotional thing, man It was like, well, what about this guy? Oh, he's dead What about this guy? Oh, he's dead What about this guy? Oh, he's a captain now. Oh, fucking sweet

I went through the same thing and it's it is uh it is something that helping a lot of people think about um like when we when we were up there training the Kurds he was one of those things was like these guys are true allies man they are really are like these this fucking guy would take a bullet for me i don't understand what he's saying but he would take a bullet for me and we spent a lot of time repairing bad bad interactions that previous Americans have done. It's a sticky

situation over there and I understand that the calculus that our politicians have to do is different than a soldier on the ground but they were and I'm willing to bet a lot of them still would be great allies to us.

Caleb, we had a question I think I can answer this though. Has anyone successfully evaded during the evasion phase? How do they prevent people from doing so. And in Sears School, I mean, it's designed for you to get captured. So, I mean, good for you, you evaded. But there's a point in it where it's like, okay, good work, guys.

Now you're captured. Oh, somebody asks, any advice for perspective 18 x-rays? What do you think? I would, there's a bunch of good prep programs out there. I see a bunch of them on various social media. It's Facebook or Instagram, and they're run by legit guys who train people to do it. I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I know there's a couple that specifically training for what you want to do.

The biggest thing you would think is physical, which does take a lot. It's a majority of what you should be preparing, but you really need to mentally, you really need to mentally burn the votes, man. Like, this is my, I will get this. I will become a Greenwood. I will become a Navy SEAL. I will do this. But you also have to be pragmatic about it.

And if what if something happens? What if I break my fucking foot on the rug? What's my fallback? And that's what I tell guys. When they talk about joining the Army in the 18 X-ray program, I tell them, like, hey, man, you just need to be prepared. They could be over strength for 18x-rays. and they cut the last 10 names on the list, and you're the last 10.

So you have to be mentally prepared to go be an infantry somewhere. If you really want to be a green-brae, that's nothing but an obstacle. So long story short, if you want to be an 18-X-ray, if you want to go to selection and become a green beret, you've got to burn the votes, man. It has to be the only goal. B. Paisi also asked the question. And thanks for the donation. And thank you, everybody, for the donations and tuning.

in everything. Oh, he actually just said, I helped out a guy that I thought was an E4 and SIFAS. He said he was actually in 03. I was like, Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot. Did it happen? Go ahead. No, it happens. If, you know, good on that captain for asking for help.

Like, what if he's, what if he was a finance captain? And he didn't know how to set up a rup sack, you know? like hey guy who knows what he's doing come help me fucking do this thing yeah and you know you guys had talked about how some people are like you're going to pink card or some people you're going to isolate or whatever but was that wasn't really the fact that they didn't have any knowledge about that kind of stuff it was more personality based is that what you were saying Caleb uh this this has been awesome man and i've kept you for like three hours here we usually only do about two um but i mean sorry i talk about that no i mean this has been great

And we've only gotten up to get into group. Like, we're going to have to have you on for a second episode at some point to do, talk about your time in SF and afterwards. And I want to keep you for like 10 minutes if we can for the bonus segment, if that's okay. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to end the episode here. I'll just say, thank you, everyone, for joining us. We had, like, 150 people watching live.

And we really appreciate it. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe to the channel. there's also a link to our Patreon down in the description if you want to support the channel directly and get access to said bonus segments that we do with our guests. Yeah, even a dollar a month will keep us in beer, pay for our rent, pay for all the programs that we use. We really appreciate everybody's support. Yeah, and thanks for getting us to 10,000 subscribers.

It's a little small milestone, pretty cool. And we will see you next week. Who is our guest next week? Oh, it's these guys. Andrews and Wilson, the authors of the Tier 1 series. They've been on before. Phenomenal guests. And yeah, we're really looking forward to it.

Yeah. All right. Thank you, everyone. And we are out. Okay. That's it.