The Team House - 5th Special Forces Group w/ Caleb Phillips, round 2: Ep. 97

Episode Date: June 5, 2021

Caleb joins us for a second conversation, this time discussing his time in Special Forces. Today’s Sponsor: 👇👇 https://BLUECHEW.com use the code “TEAMHOUSE” at checkout for a free 1st month! YOUR SCHWANZ WILL THANK YOU!! Thanks for supporting the companies that support us! Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Podcast version of this show can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/user-796052562/regimental-recon-company-rrc-w-mike-edwards-part-2-ep-96 Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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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. Special operations. Covert ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy.

and David Park. Hey, everyone, welcome to episode 97. This is the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy, here with co-host Dave Park. Our guest tonight is Caleb Phillips. He's returning for the second time. His first appearance was back on episode 63. Yes, I wrote it down on my hand, so I wouldn't forget.

Episode 63, we spoke to Caleb about his entry into the Army, his time in the 82nd Airborne Division, being deployed to Iraq, being deployed for relief down to New Orleans, for Hurricane Katrina, and then getting into special forces training. So for this episode, we're kind of kind of jump right into the special forces, deployments, and aspects of his military career. So, Caleb, thank you for joining us again. Oh, my pleasure, gentlemen.

It was great last time, and I'm looking forward to it again. Yeah, and this episode won't have the extended intermission in which my COVID-Mullet gets shaved off. So we won't have any interruptions going on this time. So Caleb, where do we want to start here? You hit the ground running and fit special forces group. Get deployed, what is it? 2008, 2009? 2007.

We graduated, you and I graduated July of 2007, and then you and one of our buddies went to Belize. Yeah. When we got out of the field, I already had an email from my team sergeant saying, hey, I know you have plans. but you need to stop those plans and get over. That's right. That's right. So I packed up. I think we graduated, like I said, the 21st or 22nd,

and I was in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the 30th. And I signed in. I got on my team. I was supposed to go to the mountain team, and I ended up walking in, kind of handing my packet into the team start to the Operation Sergeant. And he said,

oh no you're going to go to uh 5334 they're down the hall and i was like all right i don't fucking know what any of these numbers need mean so i'm just going to go to whatever room they point me to and i walk in the room and he's like oh you're the new guy cool go sit over there don't talk i was like all right roger that um and uh that began the journey and so what was this team that you landed on what was the uh what was the mission and what were you guys getting ready to go do. Because I forgot how highly motivated you were that, like, you went straight to where you were ordered to go,

whereas I took a couple weeks off for vacation and went down to Belize and was bullshit and down in Central America. No, I totally forgot about that, yeah, you showed up there before I did. Yeah, so

we were spitting up to go to OIF-5, Operation I Recre Freedom, the 5th. and my company had just come back probably less than a year before so they had been on this is their third rotation to iraq and they were in the initial invasion of afghanistan so almost all the guys in the company had at least two combat deployments and most of the senior dudes had two arrowheads or invasion devices on their weapons so these were um giants like just walking down the hall like oh that's chief so-and-so that's master sergeant so-and-so

and these are all names i recognize from books and books and uh the news so showing up got there july 30th 31st we were in fort bliss texas um a week later i was living i was living living out of my car i didn't have a barracks room because they didn't have barracks rooms by then and I didn't have our apartment yet. So it was kind of one of those things. I lived out of my car. I kind of brought it up to the team sergeant, and he said, well, what do you want me to do about that?

You're still good on the airplane. Got on the airplane and spent a month at Fort Bliss training my ass off, shot a lot, blew a lot of things up, learned how to fly the Raven, which came in really handy on the next couple deployments. And then, yeah, came back around September and pushed out to Iraq. What's the Raven for people who aren't aware of that?

Yeah, sorry. So the Raven B, the MQ11B Raven is a, it's UAV or a drone. It's a fixed wing. It looks like an airplane. And it's about a meter and a half long with a two meter wingspan. And it has, at the time, this was one of the first. generation. So it either had a forward or a left-facing camera or right-facing one of those. And the whole idea was that an ODA would have two of them and they would stop somewhere.

They'd set this thing up. They'd launch it. And then they could do a little recon of the objective or the route wherever they were going. When you say launch it, is that like a hand-launched? You just throw it in the air and it starts flying? Yes. Yes. Theoretically, that's how in reality. In reality, it's It required at least three people to try it, and it would break several times. So that was the specialty that I got for that deployment. I remember we got those in Ranger Battalion, like kind of the tail end of the time I was there, and I believe that you could fit the entire system broken down into two rucksacks,

and the guys would jump it in when we were jumping on airfields, and then they'd have to cobble it together and, yeah, do the whole deal. Yeah, so it comes in the best. box that it came in, it came in like a padded, a padded bag that you could take it out of this giant Pelican case and put in this bag. And then you could theoretically put the bag in a rucksack. Well, since we had trucks, we didn't do that. We just kept it in the giant protective box. And it required a lot of prep because you had to charge the batteries. You had to, you had to preload pretty much where you thought you were going to be into the system.

Because if you were just trying to amel your air heart your way with that thing, it was going to go to Syria. So it was a chore. It was a good additional duty because, you know, like you're important. You're in the thick of things. You're not just on a machine gun pulling security in an open desert. You're making things happen. So it was really interesting and it was a really good volunteer opportunity for a new guy on a team. That's cool, man. So you got to learn about the Raven out at Fort Bliss doing your pre-mission training. What is PMT? Like for people who don't know, I mean, there might be some interest out there

and what that sequence looks like of pre-mission training for an ODA. What do you go through? How do you prepare for your deployment? So when we show up, all the teams started to get together, all the senior non-commissioned officers in the company. And my first PMT was way different than all in other ones. The reason it was very different is because we had so many multiple combat rotation veterans there.

And I remember the first week, it was all just checking our gear, making sure everything worked as the senior guys were kind of somewhere else. And now I know what they were doing. They were setting up a training calendar. So we just laid on pretty much every range of maneuver area you could on Fort Bliss. And our five ODAs, 60 guys-ish, just ruled hundreds of miles of training areas. I mean, I remember we would meet just LMTV's full, for those you that don't know, LMTV is a very large cargo truck.

LMTV is full of machine gun ammo and grenades and rockets. And it just be like, well, what are we going to go do? Oh, we're going to fucking drive this way and shoot anything that looks like a bad guy. And it was like, oh, right on. And we would do that for hours. It was awesome. It was just, I never experienced anything like. that in my life. So it was kind of one of those things where it was like, hey, new guy, come here.

Yes, sir. Or Rogers, aren't, whatever. You show over there. It's like, hey, you ever shoot? And bear in mind, I was an infantry guy. I was a mortarman. But in the 80 second, you didn't really get to play with a lot of other stuff. You played with your M4, a saw, maybe a 240, and then mortars. And it was like, hey, you ever shoot a Carl G? No. I will, now we're going to shoot 20 rounds of Carl G. And it's like now I can forget how to do it. There were no. overpressure warnings or anything like that. So the Carl Gustav, did it basically replace the bazooka? It replaced the 90mm recoiless rifle beforehand.

It's a shoulder-fired recoilless rifle that will knock your socks off when you shoot it. And 20 rounds just sounds like torture. The bop chart, I don't have it in front of me, but it depends on the round and the position that you're in if you're kneeling, standing, etc. But I mean, it's like no more than six HEDP rounds per day, I think. Yeah. I mean, it hurts to be

rounded when it shot. So, yeah. Yes. So, I mean, we just went hog wild on these ranges. We were dropping we were dropping both live and training ordinance from aircraft, fixed wing and roter wing. We did

all this on a rotational base. So say my team at the time it was 594 before we went to four digit numbers, you know, 594 is going to be on the small arms range today and then in the afternoon they're going to be in the shoot house. And then 595 is going to, you know, they're going to be our sister team for the day, so we're going to swap. And we did that for a month straight. Our culmination exercise included a little bit of intelligence gathering, followed by a hit

in New Mexico in a small town which if I could remember the name of it I'd make myself I'd make myself very happy but it was a small it was a target you can't because you fired all those HEDD P rounds in one day what no

it was a small town and it was a legit old mining town that the government had bought and they had people that lived there there were people that were living in this town and we infilled by van we snuck in between occupied houses and then we blew the doors on this target.

We went in there and shot people with some munitions. And then we could hear the QRF or the quick reaction force start to spin up. You know, the local actors were starting to show back up so we had to get out of there pretty quickly. So that was my first exposure to SF. And I was, I thought I was an actor in a movie.

I was like, this is fucking amazing. Sounds pretty gangster for sure, man. So you complete PMT, you're getting shot over to Iraq. Well, before we get into the first Iraq deployment, because I don't want to forget about some of these questions before they came up. And we're doing a little bit of time traveling here. It's not going to be exactly in chronological order. But Jackson asks, Jack and Caleb, what was your experience with A15 like? The serfs are a controversial area for SF guys.

Some guys claim they are well-trained as keg. Others say they're just a larkers. Thoughts. So this is a spicy question coming right out the gates at you. When he says serfs, does he mean like, like land, people who work the land? Serfs, medieval serfs. The people around the SF compound that maintain your life suck. So a little bit of context there before we put Caleb on the spot.

The serf was like the commander's response force, I believe it was, and before that it was the commander's in extremist force. And one company in every special forces group had this sort of direct action mission, like they're dedicated towards a counterterrorism mission. And so they behaved or trained in sort of the same kind of way that you would expect from like Ranger Battalion or Delta or some of those guys, you know, blowing down doors, doing unilateral operations. What was, what's the, um, uh, efficacy of having a direct action company and special forces? That's debatable, which is probably what that guy was referencing. There's arguments about that. And the surf was disbanded like what a year or year and a half ago. Um, so they, they don't exist anymore.

But Caleb, I'll throw this one over to you. Um, what are your thoughts on, on the matter? Um, looking back at it over the years now is a, uh, 37 year old man with no ego when it comes into that. I'd have to say most of the hate that at least I saw firsthand was pure jealousy. I'll be honest, man. They had the best weapons. They had the best kit.

Who didn't want to live in the Baghdad Palace complex going out every night to do no tea, no hanging out, you know, shaking hands and kissing babies. Their whole mission in Iraq was to take their commandos and to go take the fight to the bad guys.

Who didn't want to do that? What SF guy worth his Ray doesn't want to go do that. So I kind of look at it through that lens. Did I meet some personalities when I did some training with A15, you know, guys in my class or if I went to a school and they were there, that they had a elitist attitude? Yeah, I did. But I think looking at it from a more professional aspect, I don't have any hate on those guys. They have their mission.

We had ours. know, it's they, if they had time in, they got to pick where they went to go. And if that's what they wanted to do, then, you know, good on them, man. I hope they're the best that they could possibly have been. Are they the level of a tier one asset? No. I mean, because they're not a tier one asset, simple as that. But if you're looking for spiciness, if you're looking for drama, I don't have any, man.

I don't hate on those guys. I mean, there was a bit of jealousy in me, but now I look back and I realize that I was where I needed to be on a regular ODA. Yeah. Yeah, I think in fifth group, and I mean, I agree with you. I mean, they had their job and I don't want to take, you know, cheap shots at, you know, and I was never on any of their ops or anything like that, so I have no input or anything to say about that. but I thought it was interesting in fifth group, at least in fifth group, there's this huge emphasis in that like it seemed like the entire group and everyone there wanted to be on the SIF.

And it's like, hey, isn't this unit supposed to be about like unconventional warfare and FID and all this other kind of stuff? But it seemed like everyone just wanted to do that DA mission. And that's the thing that I think maybe was a little detrimental to special forces, losing track of her own identity and what mission we're supposed to be focused on. Well, that's the sexy mission. Yeah, yeah, it's at every unit. You know, kicking in a door or breaching a door and going in.

And, you know, that's what you see in movies. You don't see guys working with Indage and spending, you know, eight hours a day and training with them and then rolling out with them at night. They're going off. And it's also, and bear with me when I say this, because we're going to make somebody angry saying this, I'm sure. it's also the easy mission. Yeah, right? It's easy. It's you find the bad guys.

You go through a mission planning sequence. You go out there, blow down the doors, you shoot your guns. And when I say it's easy, I mean that there is a very clear what the mission is. And the metrics are also very clear. So whether it's training, you can see where those bullets go on the paper. you can see if your guys are shooting good or not. You can count your success, judge your mission success, by how many high value targets you capture and kill.

So the metrics are very clear. Whereas with like UW or FID or something like that where it's like, we made this village in Iraq 5% more friendly to American. Like how do you even begin to quantify that? Very difficult to do. Very difficult to know. Yeah, it's really the same.

It's a simpler mission. Because I know guys out there go, well, direct action isn't easier than foreign internal defense or unconventional warfare. But it's simpler. You know, you're the only responsible for yourself than the guy in that you're left and right. You know, you don't have to worry about the indage, you know, and all of their issues. And it's not necessarily to throw a shade either because, I mean, we were both Rangers. There's a reason why America needs all these different capabilities. I mean, it's not throw shade at all.

And I think one of the other things is some guys claim they're as well-trained as Kag. Well, nobody is well-trained as Kag unless they have a six-month pipeline to train. Because, like, if you say as well-trained as Kag or as, you know, felt or whatever. Dave, you're opening up the door. We're going to hear about the Sephardic class. We're going to hear all about Sephardic. I'm not saying that they can't shoot as well or do close quarter battle as well, because I don't know. but that's not just what, you know, a tier one unit does in their OTC.

You know, they do, you know, all the airplane stuff. They do all the scaling, you know, building scaling. They do the driving. Like, they, there's so much more to that training than just the shooting. So if they say we shoot as well as them, we can do close quarter battle as well as them. That's one thing. But there's a lot more to that training, I think. Oh, boy, here we go.

spicy one for you and then we'll get back to your own experience. Well, this too, but Alejandro says, Caleb, of your deployments, what was your favorite partner for us to work with? And how was Jack as a roommate? Any funny, embarrassing stories?

I'll answer that second one first. So I don't know if anybody knows this except for probably Jack's daughter and his wife. He does not know how to clean dishes. Oh,

that's accurate. He does not know how to clean dishes. I still have that problem. Let's see here. What else? Besides,

does anybody clean dishes? Great at cooking pre-packaged pasta. You can do that. And what else? Oh,

he falls asleep on the couch. That's what he does. Still do that. He likes to fall asleep on the couch. While watching TV? Yes.

While watching TV or just? While watching TV, yeah. What were his shows of choice back then. I'm going to guess golden girls, but I don't know. He would watch a lot of anime. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's true. He would rock anime.

And where my room was, I could see underneath my door, I could see if there's like TV was on or the lights were on. And it'd be like 3 o'clock in the morning and I just opened the door and like, Jack, what the fuck are you doing? Nothing. And he would wake up and be like, oh, I'm fine. I'm fine.

And it's like, dude, just go to your bed. It's right there. Oh my God. Yeah, no, that's accurate. I have no counter argument. Favorite partner force? As far as like straight guys that I would want to go with me into combat, the,

I'd say the Hesitabit or the Kurdish regional government, the Kurdish commandos. their danger equivalent. Now, when we got them, we kind of finagled them, and we talked to their general, and their generals like, oh, you're green berets. Let me give you my best. Now, when I say his best, it's, you know, it's relative, right? Everything's, everything's subjective.

These guys were all fairly fit, fairly motivated. But it's funny because you talk to him, like man to man one-on-one. And when you actually started talking to him, their reasons for joining the Kurdish, army were as varied and weird as ours are to join the American army. There were ones that were just like, dude, I didn't have a job. I just needed to get some, I just need to fucking money to eat. And then all of a sudden, you had the other end of the spectrum where it's like, well, I'm a Kurd. And this is what we do. You know, one son for the country and one son for the family, you know, like all this stuff. And it was just, it was interesting. I really enjoyed

working with the Kurdish commandos. When I was with them, we, they, they, they, they, They were still, I was with them, 2010-11. So they were still just kind of protecting their country. I'm very interested to see, like, if they had went and gave it to ISIS. I mean, we trained, we had a whole company, so we had like 120 guys. We trained the fuck out of those guys. I mean, I want to say, if we had been there as their advisors, I would say they probably would rival an American infantry company. least favorite were the mixed Kurdish slash Iraqi soldiers we had in twos.

They showed up late. They claimed that they couldn't get their rifles out of the armory. And they had no ammo. They claimed not to have any bullets. And yeah, we only work with them a couple weeks. So, Caleb, it sounds like that last partner force you worked with. I mean, you could say they were rather flaccid, right? Yes.

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Just in time for Pride Month. We're not here to pass judgment, Caleb. Not at all. No, we stand at arms with our brethren out there. Whoever needs it, just make sure you use that discount promo code Team House. Yeah, free month. So Caleb, first time, or I shouldn't say not your first time to Iraq, but your first deployment with special forces to Iraq.

How did that deployment go down? What was your job when you got there? Well, let me start, like most good stories, start from the beginning. So here I am, E6, Green Bray. I just spent a month being a G.I. Joe all over the deserts. And now we fly in an Air Force bird to Kuwait. And I'm familiar with this from the first deployment. we get off the bird and all of a sudden

it's not like a limo it's like a limo SUV shows up and I was like what the fuck is this we get in the limo SUV we drive to a smaller airport we get on a private airplane this is when I realized this is when somebody told me because I was questioning all of this I was like I mean I know

SF is cool but I didn't know it was this fucking cool we were attached to NSW or naval special warfare for my first deployment as an SF guy So this is how NSW rules. So I'd buy all this stuff with cocaine or like how did that work? I have no idea. All I know is that we got on this private airplane, we got snacks.

We flew in Al-Assad, which is a look, for those that don't know, it was a large airbase in Western Iraq secured by the Marines. And we're driving through the middle of the night to this compound and all I can hear is rock music and weights clanging. And I'm like, I don't, again, first trip is an SS. guy, I don't know what I'm getting ready to walk into. And there's like three or four shirtless dudes just working out. There's some beautiful woman also working out covered in tattoos, music's blaring, and then there's gun trucks going by. And I'm like, I don't know what

fucking movie I'm in, but I want to watch it. And we got a, we got a briefing. And we were out the next day. We went and relieved the ODA that was in Al-Kine the next day. And I'm sorry, For our listeners who don't know, naval special warfare is the seals, basically. I mean, that's, so when he says he walks in and there are a bunch of shirtless dudes working out, that's what you expect. I imagine that on the private plane, there's probably also hair care products in addition to the food. More shirtless dudes. Yeah. Well, so we showed up and we got all this, we got a bunch of gear.

Like, I didn't know that they were going to give us a bunch of gear. And it was better gear than we had. So it was like, oh, that's pretty cool. I'll take it. We get out to Al-Qaim and we run it to the ODA that's out there. And for anybody that's been to Floyd, this isn't a special forces exclusive thing. The people that you're replacing are always messed up. Because you're new and you're shiny and you're motivated and you're ready to go, you know, win the war.

And it was like, oh, these guys fucking suck. And they're just like, just pump the brakes, guy, you'll see. They had, I don't know, like three or four. folders full of target packets. And of course, you know, I just brand new SF guys, so I'm like, why don't you guys hit these targets? And they're like, all right, just

let us get out of here before we start doing that. Right. And there was, I mean, we had a mountain of munitions and weapons and all sorts of stuff in the corner, not organized, like a complete fucking safety violation. Just artillery rounds with C4 and PKCs.

Well, okay, Sergeant Major Phillips. Jesus. Well, I mean, I'm not safety man McGee. I'm just saying maybe we should do something with the fucking dozens of rolling grenades around in the living area. That's me. So they left and we started operations. We picked up the partner force. It was the Al-Qaeda SWAT team.

And yeah, so we looked at their program of instruction to the POI. And it was your typical, like, flat-range stuff. And then we had some houses that we used as C-O-W. CQB buildings. And I volunteered to be the fit guy. There are two of us. And it was just like after a couple of the first couple weeks of doing this, I was like, man, this fucking sucks.

Because it was just, we were following their PLI. So I kind of brought up my partner. I was like, hey, man, why don't we just, I mean, CQB is fun. It's cool. But why don't we just turn these guys in like really good infantrymen? And, you know, we took off their PKCs from the trucks. PKC, Philisiano is the Iraqi version of a PKM, a squad automatic machine gun in 7662. And we just, we brought it back to basics.

We taught them individual movement techniques. They were used to shooting at 25 meters and then we pushed that to 300 meters. So they're shooting 300 meters with their AKs. They didn't believe me. They didn't believe me that their gun could reach out that far. And yes, that's what we did. We did patrols with them. deep in the desert. We did hits inside the area, the city limits of Al-Qaim.

We, you know, we were just kind of a Swiss army knife around that area. When you said it was, when you said it's their POI, did they develop it or did some other SF team way before you guys develop? And POA is a program of instruction, right? It's basically how they're ops and how they learn and their, and their, they're, and they're, curriculum basically. Yes. Well, no, it's kind of one of those things that if you look on a, if you look on any 18 Bravo's computer in any group anywhere, it's going to be the same POI. Right. It's been, it's been copied and pasted. That's why I was so lame because as soon as I looked at it, I realized what we were doing. Right. And it's the easy button, right? I mean,

it's kind of one of those things. I just need to get these guys trained just enough that they won't shoot me when we go on patrol. But, I mean, I in my mind, I was like, I'm going to spend eight months with these guys. I want to do stuff that I think is fun. So we went out and shot RPGs. We did all sorts of stuff that they weren't used to doing because it required work. It required

doing something extra. Right. Like, I went to me and the Echo, the communication sergeant on team, went to the trash. yard and they had all these armored plates that had been thrown away.

The chicken plate that goes on a turret. It's a big steel plate. And we loaded them up in the back of a pickup truck and then I went out there, he went out there with me with E-Tools and shovels and we buried them two feet deep so they would still be sticking up over the ground. So they were

reactive targets. And we turned into a live fire maneuver range. And these Iraqis, I mean, to say that they'd never done fire maneuver would be an understatement. Because they're used to shooting on the range, right? They're used to shooting on yard lines. And, you know, the first time you slap the shit out of one of them, tell them to, you know, shoot your machine gun. Do it now.

And then you have to wait for translation because he doesn't speak English. But, no, it was a great time. I really enjoyed that deployment. We spent Christmas of 2007 on the Syrian, Iraq. Mackey Border. Operation Frozen Titty Balls. And then Operation Frozen Titty Balls, too, was approximately 35 miles north after we got back. It was just, there's just so many little vignettes from that trip that, I mean, I could talk about it, but it's kind of one of those.

Pick a couple highlights throw them out at us. Yeah, feel free to talk about it. Like, we love hearing about that kind of shit. All right. So the number one HVI or high value individual in all of sort of, actually all of, yeah, all of sort of West, special operations task force West, the area, the geographical area that we were responsible for was a guy named Badron Turkey. He was a, he was a IED and network head honcho. And he happened to live, he's from and lived in our in our city. So obviously we're just driving. driving around looking for this guy because it's quite a feather in the old cap if you kill or capture badron turkey and one night um the bat phone rings and the team leader calls everybody in the in the uh ops center the operation center and he said hey we got a hit somebody saying that badron turkey is at this grid and that grid just happened to be in iraq in our target city so we started

spinning it up uh me and the other 18 charlie had made this 40 pound satellite charge that was probably, I don't know, eight feet wide. And it was going to be awesome. This target compound had a had an 18 inch, 24 inch thick wall. So we weren't going to try to cram 60 Iraqi SWAT guys over breaching ladders. We're just going to blow a hole in the fucking wall. So we had that set up. We brought the Iraqis in.

We confiscated all her phones. We started making, we had contingency plans. We had all sorts of, we, everything. was going. 160th was flying from Baghdad to come pick us up. And our alternate because, you know, 160th, they had more important customers than us. So our alternate was we were going to con the Marines into giving us a ride. We weren't going to mention who it was for.

And we were going to say, like, oh, we need to go out there and recover this fucking pair of nods we dropped or something. So we had 160th inbound and we had the Marines on the horn. And then everything's ready to go and the bat phone rings again. And it's like, oh, your MH47s, your 160th assets are turning around. They're going to go pick up another client to go hit that target. 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.

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We're like, fuck this. We're going to outrun them. They had to fly all the way back to the back to that. Take those guys have to fly all the way back out here. Fuck that. We're going to go hit it right now. And we loaded the trucks. We got the Iraqis ready to go.

and then we got another call from the bat phone saying like, hey, the indicator says that he's not there anymore. And it was like, well, fuck it, we're already dressed. Let's just go hit it anyway. And it's like, no, no, no, you can't. So that was the almost time that we killed the number one HVT or HVI and SOTA West. However, Ranger Battalion did kill him a year later. Really?

Was you still number one when they did? Because I can't imagine. other players allowing that to happen? I'm not sure what his status was in stack, but it's a famous video if you dig through it. It's the one where you can watch two UH60s land

and like 30 guys clown car out of the UH 60s and just ventilate this fucking vehicle. You see a guy get out and he runs to the back and you see a bunch of guys online trying to kill to capture him. I haven't seen that.

We'll find it and we'll put it on the Patreon for people who are looking for it. Yeah, yeah, we'll pull it up later. Yeah. So you actually, when you said HVT, I mean, HVI, because when you originally said HVI, they used to be HVTs, was that, did that become not politically correct anymore that you can't call a human being a target? You have to call them an individual? I think that's kind of, like, that was kind of the evolution, right? So at first it was HVT.

I'm like that 2003 was HVT. Right. In 2003, we still used the term kill list. So different war. And then it was HVT. And then like sometime in 2007, 2008, 2009, it became HVI. You remember when it started off, we could call them fighting age males. Right.

And then it became military age males. And then it became military age males. And then it became something else even after that. It was like, why are we doing this to ourselves? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there was a time also, I think, when they started like trying to shy away from the whole capture kill operations like well you shouldn't say kill you're going to capture them

their snuggle cuddle operations yeah but yeah but i didn't know it made the transition from a high value target to high value individual over the years well i think it's kind of one of those things where it was like it was pushed it was pushed from the top down everybody knows that like an alive terrorist can give you more information than a dead one i think everybody everybody can assume that. It just became when we were starting to hand stuff over to the government of Iraq justice system

like we had to get warrants. For every for every raid we did, we had to get a fucking, like a legit warrant signed off by an Iraqi judge. I mean, we would cover up most of the pertinent information. Yeah. So that it couldn't get leaked.

But I mean, we, it was, even in 2007, it started to look more like law enforcement operations. And it was your, was it actually your partner force, though, who had the authority to make the arrest, according to the warrant? Yes. And you were just accompanying them, basically. Yes. We were just advising them through the actions on. So let's jump over to second deployment.

I mean, you come, or you can walk us through briefly, you know, through that cycle coming back home, training back up for the next mission. if you got sent to any schools in the meantime probably you and I getting into trouble somewhere along the ways but then jocking up for the next deployment jocking up for the next deployment we were selected for this mission

that included a lot of information sharing and building intelligence capability between the government of Iraq and Americans and the Kurdish regional government and it was basically like we would always joke that we were like the cultural affairs team because we would have a meeting with an Iraqi official one day and then the next day we'd meet with the Kurdish official

and we'd be playing telephone between the two of them because culturally and officially they couldn't really talk because officially the Kurdish regional government wasn't a government it wasn't a country it was part of Iraq so we were there to try to smooth that over the team that had come there before us had gotten they'd gotten in trouble because they had a phone that had information from

I don't know the previous nine years of war eight years of war so it had they had very important phone numbers on it that they were not supposed to have so they got in trouble for that and the whole program got I don't want to say it got shut down, but it got put in kind of a holding status. So when we showed up, all of our equipment,

all of our vehicles, everything that we would normally fall in on, we're just shoved in a bunch of connexes in a back lot in Balad. Belad, for those of you that don't know, is a huge base, or was a huge base north of Iraq, or I'm sorry, north of Baghdad that supported northern operations and eastern operations in Iraq. And for an ODA full of SSAA. guys at the group headquarters is fucking terrible. I bet. What was terrible by that? Haircuts and shaves every day, which sounds like, which sounds petty.

Don't get me wrong. That's petty, really. In the grand scheme of things, who cares? Shave and get hair cut. But it's kind of one of those things where it's like, hey, match and so-and-so. I saw two of your guys working out over and sewed over the place with no shirts on. you should probably fucking fix that. And now my team sergeant has to walk over and be like, hey, you guys are over here working

that shirts on. You need to put your shirts on. It's like, oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. And it's like, the group start major couldn't have come and told us that? Yeah. Like, we got picked for, we accidentally volunteered to train all the support guys how to use machine guns.

And I just, I was with my buddy. we were sitting there talking. There was a convoy lined up. And just for shits and giggles, we asked the guy behind the 50. We're like, hey, do you even know how to do immediate action on that thing? And he just looked at us dead in the eye and said, no. And it's like, well, fuck, okay. And then like we, you know, so me and the other SF guy, we jump up on the vehicles.

We kind of show them how immediate action on the 50s. We did headspace timing. Kind of showed him how to do it. And the team leadership kind of brought us down. They're like, hey, I appreciate what you're doing. You guys are good NCOs. but don't do that. And it was like, huh, I wonder why.

And the reason why was if we find ourselves doing that and important people see us doing that, that's what we're going to do. We're not going to go out and find a mission. We're not going to find a team house. We're going to stay at the base and train the support guys how to do their jobs. So, you know, we offered to take a couple people to the range.

We did that a little bit, but our primary focus was to get off Bala and go try to take the fight the enemy. And then, yeah, then there was the great Iraq tour of 2009 where we sent out guys to almost every team house in Iraq. You saw my team sergeant and current Sergeant Major in fifth group come hang out with you guys for a little bit. Didn't, was it your team house they met with that burned up girl? No, no, not me. Are you talking about? Are you talking about the girl that got electrocuted and ended up dying? Yes.

Can you tell that story? I don't remember very much of it. That was another, a red-headed 18 Delta medic who, I haven't talked to him in years. He got a full ride to med school. But there was as I recall

this, and this was not my team, was another team, another location out west somewhere. This girl got electrocuted. somehow. Had to do with a, you know, if anyone's ever been to Iraq and you see it, it's like a, just a cluster fuck of electrical wires all over the place. She gets electrocuted and one of our medics tried to help her and keep her alive. And she was kept alive for a couple days before she died. That's all what I recall from that incident. I wasn't there for it, but I remember it happening.

I remember because I think our Delta was with you guys too or our medic. Now that you're saying this is bringing it back, she did something. There was electrical wire was involved. She was wearing the normal dress of an Iraqi woman and it caught fire. And it burned all over her body. That's and that was the real sad part. They came back from the trip to your team house kind of bumped because of that

because she was horribly burned. And all these 18 deltas were just trying to keep her alive. And they were, they needed, they couldn't, they wouldn't give them an air asset to move her, which, I mean, pragmatically, I understand. She's a local national. She got hurt doing local national things. We didn't have nothing to do with it. But they ended up doing a scapeotomy or something. I can't remember what it's called where they cut.

Yeah. They cut the skin. They have to relieve it. Yeah. Yeah. So they did that. Yeah, they stayed with her for three or four days and she finally ended up dying. Yeah, they came back from that visit kind of, I mean, they weren't like depressed and like, you know, staring at the ceiling or anything.

But it was like, it's kind of a downer. Yeah, no, that wasn't us. I think those were the guys who were further out west. I just remember, you know, your team sergeant at that time, he spoke fluent Arabic. So I remember him having like really in-depth conversations with the Iraqis. I was jealous of them, really. He was very good. And your buddy, who's the sergeant major now, just, I mean, he looked, he looked, he had his poopy face on when he showed up at our base because he's like, yeah, we're looking for a mission.

I don't think this is it. I'm like, damn, bro. Like, I'm sorry. See, so we broke up into two teams. So we did split team ops for like the first two months. And that team, team West hit all you guys out West. So they went to a bunch of players. places. And our hope for that for that split team was to find somewhere that was kinetic. We're like, oh man, where's a fight? Let's go just go see. Let's go see if there's a fight over there. Because my half

of the split team was to hit North and East. And up north there was nothing because the Kurds had it on lockdown. And out east due to the Iranian influence was super sensitive. So we didn't really know what was going on to the east. We ended up spending just due to weather and air. We ended up spending three

weeks at a small combat outpost, like the farthest east you could go in Iraq, like, butted up against the border. And it was, I mean, it was like some legit war stuff, man. Like, there was the HESCO barriers for those guys. I mean, we talked about them last time, but like Hesco barriers are these big bulletproof barriers that are full sand. I mean, they were torn apart. There were trailers and shoes or containerized housing units that were just blown apart that they just knocked off the foundation

so they could put a new one on. And like I said, we were there for three weeks. I think we heard them one mortar once. And we were all just kind of just waiting because the team who was there was like, yeah, man, this area is pretty fucking crazy. You know, we get shot

out every time we go on patrol. There's IEDs everywhere. And here we are, on the couch eating their fucking bread. Just like, all right, man, when's the war going to show up? Like, we're here. Like, I don't know. I don't know what to do with my hands. So that was a very awkward three weeks.

So your team basically became like traveling salesman looking for like trying to sell vacuums everywhere, looking for work. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was like, like, one of my first questions is like, how many, how many 18 Charlie's got on the team? Oh, two? That's cool. That's cool. That's cool.

Do you want like a third or what's what's going on? somebody like you get like a latrine ncio i can do that um so we would do that and then the the warrant officer and the captain uh because i was on that half of the team um they would go in and talk with the captain and the warrant officer the other team for like hours and they'd come out all poopy-faced and it's like all right well i guess we're not living here no we're we're going back man this isn't going to work out um so we did that we probably went to three or four different basis. I was trying to push us to a rather large base in the north central part of Iraq, excuse me, because the ODA there had a very nice compound all by itself out on the far edge

of the airfield. They had a big partner force. There were a bunch of cool dudes. They're willing to share with us. And it was near a rather large Iraqi city that had access to boost. So I am sitting there trying to think of second and third order effects here. And that's actually what I put on So, like, as all the team members, we would submit our lists and our pros and cons. That's actually what I put on my pro was like, hey, morale's going to be pretty high. Like, we're really going to enjoy this deployment. And they're like, oh, Caleb, we can't put that on the official thing. It's like, I know, I know, but I'm just saying.

I'm just saying. So we eventually ended up going to twos. My team actually was the one. We went to twos first. So twos Camerato was a small town. I can't even remember anymore. It's probably 30 or 45 miles away from Balad. And Tuskanatu is a very interesting town because it's a, it's like a mini-Iraq.

And, but why I say that is because it's not all, it's not north of what's known as the green zone. It's not in Kurdistan. But it had quite a sizable portion of Kurds. And it had, it was about 33% across the board. So you had your Kurds, you had your Iraqis, and then you had Turkamon. So it was very interesting. That whole area, that part of the Euphrates River Valley was known as a bed down location and a travel through site for insurgents coming from Iran into the main fighting areas of the Sunni Triangle, Mosul, or it would be a stopover on their ways down to Baghdad.

So there wasn't a lot of, by the time we got there, there wasn't a lot of kinetic activity. And, you know, at first, it's like, oh, that sucks. That means they're not here. It's like, well, no, that definitely means they are here. They just don't want to fight where they're coming to rest and hang out. So it was interesting. We got there. We were the only soft unit on that base.

It was a brigade special troops battalion, so it was a bunch of mechanics, MPs, and just support troops. Now, how did you... Actually, I think this... Before I ask you how you found that base, I think it's a good moment to talk about something we've never talked about on the team house before because you mentioned it. And I think Jack is uniquely qualified to talk about this. Let's discuss the idea of being at the flagpole, being stationed at the flagpole and why it sucks so much. Because that's what you were talking about, right? Like, are viewers you don't have any military experience? Can you guys kind of like talk about the

idea of being at the flagpole and what it is? And for me, and I only passed through this area. Thank God, or I would have shot myself, but Bagram Airfields, and Afghanistan where the jock was and like that place was just like it literally it looked like a concentration camp and it had like these walls around it with like towers and the sky was always gray it looked like a World War II movie and the guy stayed in these Quonset huts and like everywhere you went there's just a Xeroxed papers stuck everywhere with the rules so these are the rules of the coffee maker. This is how you're allowed to use the coffee maker. Here's the

rules for the showers, how you're allowed to use the showers. Here's the rule for the shitters, how you're allowed to, and there's just, it's because there's these officers and senior NCOs, they have nothing better to do than just go around and yell at guys because they're wearing their black feet fleece that

they're issued to the chow hall. And their retaliation is like, they would make the Rangers walk in squad wedge shaped formations from the compound to the chow hall. It's like how much more asinine can we be? Like, we say we're

a professional organization, but we act like a bunch of fucking children whenever we're in garrison. So, yeah, naturally, from my point of view, it's much better to be out on like what looks like a Vietnam era fire base than... Right. Then where the...

Go ahead. Sorry, Kay. Well, I mean, so we can start with the positives, right? Positive that we all, civilian, military, veteran, whatever, can agree with. Food? Food.

Yeah. Food's better. The gym is better. The PX is there. If you like DVDs, you can get the news movies there. There's probably a pool and a movie theater there. If that's your jam, that's your jam. But nobody joins the army as a ranger or SF guy or an infantryman and wants that.

Don't get me wrong. It's nice. Burger King is nice every couple months. but yeah, we joined to go lift fucking anvil canes full of rocks as our weights because we're out there, you know, hooking and jabbing. Right.

Yeah, so for our viewers who don't know, the flagpole is where the command is, whatever, and the reason I said you were uniquely qualified is because you were a third battalion, which is where the regimental headquarters is. So the flagpole is wherever the headquarters is, and it tends to be

very top-heavy, a bunch of people with, a bunch of people with a lot of with nothing better to do with their time than to harass people with regulations with rules the gravel oh the gravel so much drama about the gravel always got to have gravel on these bases

there's dust got to get rid of the dust gravel so deep that you can't even fucking walk in it safely as a grown man we got to pay some warlord 12 million dollars for gravel so that we can eliminate dust

on the fucking base like God bless her America. Just talking about it, I can see the flag fluttering in the breeze on my mind's eye. And safety belts are a big thing at flight pools. Like, I remember in Boggham when it got bigger and all the soldiers had to wear their safety, you know, their running belt, like reflective belts across their shoulder. I remember a sergeant major from the 101st Airborne chewing my ass on Fort Campbell one time in the gym because we're in the gym and I wasn't wearing a reflective belt. And he's like, where's your reflective belt? You got to be wearing that?

That's the standard. He's like, I'm wearing it. You think I like wearing a reflective belt in the gym? I don't like wearing this stupid thing. But I have to enforce the standard. It's like, hey, man, you're an E9. You're like a brigade sergeant major. Just change it.

There's no reason you can need to wear this stupid thing inside a building. Like, what's it doing for you? I don't know. Anyway, that's my rant on that. So how did you guys find the space that you eventually wound up at? I would like to say that it was based on our guile and nerve. But it was in reality, it was the group commander looking at the map and seeing a place that didn't have an ODA. And he went, I'm going to put you guys right here.

And our team leader, God bless him, who works at the Pentagon now, he squared off. And he's like, sir, that makes zero sense. Why would you put us there? and the colonel gave him what gave him the explanation the colonel would get the captain and he said you're going there and we're fucking done talking about it so we packed up we packed all of our stuff and we flew to twos to fob i'll remember here in a minute but uh we flew to twos camaradu and that is when the building began i as 18 charley i was nominally in charge of the construction of the base but in reality, our 18 Fox was like a great, or it was a great amateur carpenter. Our 18 Zulu, our team sergeant spoke fluent Arabic. So he was the one kind of in charge of all the stuff. I was, when I wasn't doing like soldier stuff, I was reduced to being the guy who walked

around the clipboard saying like, do you need more screws? Do you need more lumber? I mean, it was interesting. I learned a lot of stuff about logistics and having to call in line halls. And I stood out on a HL's on a helicopter landing zone for hours, just receiving more and more supplies. And then interspersed with all this building and maintenance that we had to do. We still had patrolling and soldier ship to do. So it was like, I look back out of now.

It is, it's a very SF deployment. Right. I mean, we didn't shoot a lot of people. We didn't, we didn't do a lot of like cool, dynamic things, but it was, okay, I'm going to put my hammer down. I'm going to go get my body armor on. We're going to go do patrol to meet this guy to talk about to gather intelligence for the local area and maybe go kill some other bad guys. And then when I come back, I still have to string concertina wire and fix the plumbing.

And it was, it was a good trip. It was It was definitely, yeah. Reminds me of a, I read a novel that was written by one of the first green berets. He was on one of the first eight teams into Vietnam. And just some of these vivid recollections that he penned into this novel about like just with like a deuce and a half truck full of supplies and they'd like drive out into the jungle somewhere literally just chopped down part of the jungle

and build an SFOB in there. I mean it's just it's just what it reminds me listening to you talk about this. Well it was cool because it was being the only soft or even combat arms unit on the base like there was a lot of bullshit. There's a lot of chicken shit as George Patton would say A lot of chicken shit army stuff that we had to deal with.

But there was also a lot of stuff that because they, the people in charge of the base didn't understand, they're like, oh, cool, that sounds cool. You're an S-F guy. So, like, that led to me using demo to blow a fucking trench inside of our compound to put a communication wire in it. And I was like, hey, boss man, hear me out. I just want to blow a trench instead of having to hack at it with a fucking pick.

Yeah. And he looked at me and he's like, I mean, okay, if that's, you're the demolitions expert. You tell me you can do it. Let's do it. Spoiler alert, it didn't work. But I did, but I did get to fucking try it and blow up a fucking trench in the middle of our compound. There was just a bunch of, just a bunch of silly stuff that we got these giant steel gates. Like 10 meter tall gates, like 10 meter tall castle gates.

And we were welding Costitina wire to him. fucking rad. And we're all sitting there. We had a team meeting. We were like, what are we going to paint on the side of it? And I was like, well, I mean, obviously we should paint our fucking team number on the side of it. And some skulls. Some skulls, obviously.

Obviously. I mean, I was going, I wanted it full fucking force. Like, do not enter, you know, dead men tell no tales, some shit like that. And then we just decided on blood red. Were these gates basing the rest of the base, the conventional military base? Oh, yes. Yeah. Oh, yes.

Yeah. It was blood fucking red. And it was one of those things. Like they got done painting it. We're all kind of standing outside looking at it. And I was like, maybe we can make it less bright. Nah. Nah, we're just going to keep it.

I'm curious because this, like, you guys showed up. You were the first special operations force there. There's a mystique. On a base like that, like there's a mystique about. guys like you, right? Like, how did people interact with you when you guys showed up when you were trying to get things done when you had to go to their, you know, supply guys or interact with them? Oh, it was, um, there's actually a lot of tension. Really? Oh, yeah. I mean, there was, I think it was tension born out of the mystique, but it was like, um, our team sergeant almost fucking

straight up, tops off, threw down with this other master sergeant who was kind of the op sergeant the base because we had to keep using this giant crane and it was the only crane that could move concrete walls could move like we needed to use it all the time and one day I went over there to coordinate to use it and he just fucking chewed me out he's like you guys don't give us shit you're always using us as far as I'm concerned it says

US Army on your bet on your chest just like it says mine you're no different than me where does it say that you're special on your uniform and I looked at my buddy and he's like, don't, don't do it. And I want to be like, I mean, on this, on that head, it says it's right there. But I didn't. And I was like, you know what, sir?

I'm going to have, I'm going to have my boss come to you. And he's like, you fucking have him come here. I was like, all right, cool, man. I don't know. You do not know what you're talking about, but all right. So I go. And my, at this time, my team sergeant is sitting in his ranger panties with no shirt on, typing this long fucking email to like some colonel somewhere telling him why we're going to

take his mortars. And I was like, hey, Jeremy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, story. And he's like, all right, I'll be right fucking back. And he just gets in, all the other vehicles were taken. So he did drive this shitty little bongo truck over there that didn't really work. So he's like messing with this shitty broken bongo truck. It stops. It dies halfway there.

So he's just like, fuck it and walks the rest of the way. Still in his, still in his chonies. And he opens the door. And we just hear, of course, like two scared. little kids, we're following behind, like, ooh, you want to watch. And we hear the door slam, and we just hear screaming and yelling for about two minutes. And then he comes outside, and he's like, all right, we'll have the crane in about half an hour. And we're like, oh, man, we didn't hear that story of what happened inside that building until the deployment was over.

Basically, it was just like, that the other master sergeant said the same thing. He's like, I don't give a fuck who you are. And my boss, man, Jeremy, would just like, You must not know who the fuck you're talking about. I'm old school, man. We'll fucking do this right now. I don't give a fuck. It's just you and me.

I locked the door. And the guy was like, whoa, well, let's fucking hold on. Let's talk about it. So there was that. There was a time I got into it with the male fucking clerks. We had just gotten back from a week out in the desert. And I was expecting the package. You know, I was like, hey, man, I'm a fucking package.

So I walk up to the door and on the door they have hours of operation. And I was like, well, clearly this is a job. because we're in a war zone. So you're fucking retarded if you think I'm going to listen to this. So we opened the door and we walk in and is these two E4 sitting there sitting behind their desks, you tubing it up or whatever they were fucking doing. Right. And I was like, hey, I came to pick up the mail for the ODA.

And he's like, oh, well, we're close. I was like, well, no, you're not. You're right here. My mail's over there in that yellow bag. I know that that's our mail. And it's like, no, we're close. And it was like, all right, because we weren't wearing rank. We had nothing on.

And I was like, okay, I feel really gay for saying this. Specialists, get up and give me that bag of mail. And I pulled my cat card out and laid it on the thing. And I was like, I don't want to do this, but you're forced me to do this. It's like, I don't care who you are, what rank you are. I'm off work. And it was like, all right, not a fucking problem. Where's your boss?

And her boss was a staff sergeant. I was like, hey, fucking staff sergeant. Give me my fucking mail. I'm going to go to your fucking first sergeant. And, you know, in the end, we got our mail. And it was just one of those things. It was like, I didn't want to do that. In the end, did you have to go to the first sergeant?

Or did the staff servant see the light? He saw the light, but it was kind of one of those things that we just ended up going to the first sergeant anyway. Because I didn't want to have to get in this fight every week to get male. Yeah. Then it was just, there were just a lot of rumors, too, right? because there were females on the post. And I mean, hey, man. SF guy is going to SF guy.

Right. But it was like we were there. We were on the ground maybe six days. And already the rumors were going around. I was like, oh my God, are you guys having sex with this person? Or are you guys having sex with this person? Like, dude, we just showed up. Give us a while.

We'll get to it. We got in trouble for, there was a pack of wild dogs that was eating up the trash. And they were kind of attacking people on. away to the chow hall at night. So our junior 18 Bravo decided that he was going to be fucking anti-dog Batman. And he had a silenced UMP and he fucking murked these dogs like right on base. And we kind of like before he was talking about it. We're like, all right, dude, let's do some mission planning.

We're green berets. Let's let's be smart about this. What's the most probable course of action? What's the most dangerous course of action? like what if you fucking snag around and you hit somebody how are we going to and you know he he broke it down and in the end he did his little uh he did his little chart and he realized that the risk was worth the reward and by the way the team chain of command had no idea this was happening because obviously they'd kibosh that immediately yeah so there's no there's no uh supervision on this uh risk safety matrix that he was drawing up in his true our carver matrix was completely uh was completely um unobserved. Yeah. So yeah, he went out there and he spoke these dogs

and like then he picked up the bodies and threw him all in the back of our high locks and we all ate it in this crime by going out and, you know, bearing them because we weren't just leave a bunch of fucking blown apart dogs everywhere. And the next morning you would have thought that it was

fucking Waco. There were people crying outside. There were people like so mad they came up to our red gate. We're banging on the gate. and it was like, hey man, we were just getting rid of vermin on the on the base. Why were there fair, I mean, there were a lot of feral dogs, you know, like off the bases. Why were there feral dogs on that base? Because it was such a large base that they couldn't have.

Yeah, they just walked through the concertina wire. Yeah. And it was not a very big base. There's less than, there was only like maybe three companies of people there. So it was, it was, there weren't. goes around the whole base it was just constantina wire uh on one side it was just constantina wire oh i see okay interesting um so yeah those are the big things that stuck out to me i mean there was there was the time our our bathroom trailer got broken and even the iraqis wouldn't clean it up so i had to

get like mop level four and go digging through human feces to try to fix this trailer i mean i didn't get an award for that uh i got to thank you it's pretty much it, but, you know, it is what it is. It's, it was, it was an experience. That's our carm material if I've ever heard it. So this was, uh, deployment, what, number three? Yes. Okay. So, you ended up on this base building up this fob. I mean, did you ever get, get things up and rolling and operational to the point that you guys were happy with? Yeah. Yeah, we did. Um, we had about actual, like a solid two months of full operations after that point. So we, we got everything in there. We got all of our generators, flew them all the way from Germany.

Generators were up and running. We had guard towers. So it became the local battalion commander. Like we became kind of like his secondary talk. And he was like, hey, straight up. If some shit happens, I'm running to your fucking base because your base is way better defended than ours. So we were doing things.

Eventually me and the other just the spear carriers of the team. We were going out on local patrols with the local coalition forces. the MPs would do route clearance. We'd go out with them. If the local headship is going on a KLE, we would usually hitch a ride. And then as soon as they would get to the KLE, me and another SF guy would just disappear into the crowd.

And we would walk around and try to talk to people in Arabic and try to develop any sources or relationships we could do there. I look back at it and that was extremely dangerous. It was just two of us, just fucking free gunning all over two's camaradu. we tried to establish relationships with the police, the local Iraqi army garrison, the local KRG garrison. That was when, I don't know if you guys remember, but it happened in 2009. An IAA soldier, an Iraqi army soldier, shot like four striker guys.

They were in a perimeter in the Iraqi, I guess he had words with one of the Americans, and it was a combine Iraqi Army Coalition Force Patrol, and he just turned around and started dumping rounds of the Americans. That was really the first blue-on-blue kind of thing that I experienced, and I didn't even experience it. It just happened in an adjacent area to me. So from then on, we had to start really picking up our internal security. Now, did you guys have Indage, like, for your internal security on the basis, on the larger base of self? Yes. Yes. We had a combination of contractors of Kenyan or Ugandan contractors and Iraqis. The Iraqis handled the outer outer security, and then the contractors handled the access into the American part.

But you would see Iraqis driving around in their vehicles all the time, which made it even weirder because we were the only people that carried hot weapons. Yeah. What was, so there were. no other combat arms forces, not just special operations, but no combat arms, no infantry. What were people on the base doing? What was the base's mission? Why were they there? That is a very good question. Okay. I mean,

10 plus years later, I'm still trying to find out what they're working there. Did any of them leave the wire at all? Their MP company, Minus, was kind of their maneuver unit. their big thing is they were a layover spot for convoys that were going from Belmont to Missoule or Missoule to Baghdad or they had repair facilities they

it was a so a BSTB or Brigade Specialty Troops for those who don't know was an invention of the mid-2000s and what it did was it took all the specialty support troops out of their specialty support companies and kind of put them in one special location. So rigor, like in an airborne unit, you have rigors there. This unit, this was actually just a way to get their lieutenant colonel

a actual battle space, you know, block on his OER. Right. On his evaluation report. So he's, you know, I think he's a logistics guy. So they're kind of like a loves truck stop. 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. 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. Yes, very much so. But it was a terrible truck stop because you're still eating A-Rats. You're still eating out of cans. The tents were terrible. They were just literally a tent with some cots. But, you know, you weren't out in the wild. You had someplace safe to sleep.

So that's what it was. So how did you end up leaving things at that fob by the time you guys were ripping out of there? Oh, they had, it started. The only structure we had was an abandoned Iraqi command bunker with no power. By the time we left, they had 24 containerized housing units. They had an ASP or amnese supply point. They had a range. They had four MRAPs, two Humvees.

They had a whole fleet of indigenous vehicles. We were trying to put in a mortar position before we left. And we built a laundry facility. We built a med shed. So it was a nice team house. I was very proud of what we did. Coming along, man. So pulling out of Iraq on this deployment, heading back home,

I was wondering if we could take a little segue here because your team, as I recall, I mean, you guys were also a free fall team, right? Yes, yes, we were. And can you talk to us a little bit? Because you were an MFF Jump Master, I think. Well, yes, yes, I was. Yes.

Can you talk to us a little bit about the military freefall capability on a special forces team and kind of how you saw it evolve during these, you know, as the years went on? Yeah. So when we first got there, the free fall guys, you always knew who they were because when the company was doing good jump, they were the ones that showed up late in Ranger Panties with GenTech's, with like, Gentech's black helmets. Now Gen Tech helmet has absolutely zero tactical

use at all. It's just merely an air item. And that's kind of how it was for my first year two on the team like that, you know, we're the free fall guys. After 2009, things started really changing

because the more, the tier one units were starting to send more of their TTPs or tactics, techniques, procedures down to us. And the old school military free fall guys started retiring. So like people started asking the question is like, why don't we jump with just our regular combat helmet? Why don't we jump with just our uniform on? Like now if I jump in a flight suit, now when I land, I have to wear a fucking flight suit, which sucks.

Right. So guys started questioning and things started happening. And free fall committee was ran by a bunch of really like progressively minded guys. And they're like, oh, man, what happens? You know, why do we need to use the weapons case? Fuck that. Let's just do this. Why do I have to tie my, why do I have the time I M4 to my parachute harness?

Why don't I just have it on clips that hang right here? So when I get down on the ground, I just unclip it. So things really changed. Jumping in night with nods on. Like that was, when I did it for the first time, I was just, I was angry. I was angry that nobody had thought of doing it beforehand. I was like, why the fuck am I not wearing night vision goggles at night while I'm flying this parachute? So that was, that changed everything.

And a lot of that had to do with a, there was a combat jump, a 10th group military free fall combat jump that occurred late 2008. and that kind of showed us the flaws in the way we'd been training previously. Because, you know, Jack, you know this. In Conis, in training operations, the free fall team jumps on this nice big DZ that's well-marked, and everybody lands and everybody joins up, and then everybody hands the parachutes off, and then the mission starts. Well, this 10th group team did an actual military free fall insertion, and out of the nine guys who jumped, like something ridiculous,

like five of them were military free fall instructors. So you would think that this team is stacked and that they're going to be very successful. It went terribly. Like they didn't link up. I think one guy broke his leg. And it took them hours to finally get together. And in the end,

they just ended up doing a normal vehicular assault on the objective. The idea was for the Americans to free fall in, get eyes on the objective, and then call the Iraqis in, which is doctrinally what a military free fall team is supposed to do. So when that debacle happened, thankfully nobody got killed. Guys started asking questions. Why do we train this way?

We never do it this way in real life. Why don't we train like normal? So that kind of changed a little bit. Also, it went from Halo majority operations to Hayho or high altitude, high opening. And, you know, just. like anything else, it's another tool in the tool bag, right? If it doesn't work in that situation, don't try to make it work. But it went from, oh, we're just doing this super cool army skydiving to like, no,

but this is work. This is real training. You're training for an actual mission. And when guys kind of went from that transition of like, I'm Army skydiving to, this is just a way to work and I need to be as tactical and as competent as possible, I think it made things so much better. I think there are a couple things that, like, people would be interested in hearing,

sort of like the flight suit, like the Nomex, like that used, it's Nomex, which is a material, which is fire retard, pilots wear it. And it used to be very high speed,

like everybody thought it was so cool, but it's hot as balls. Yep. It's like hot. Like, it's just, it's miserable. And then your weapons in the weapon case,

I think there's a really interesting point, that for both static line and I guess Halo, when, when we used to, to jump out of airplanes. We didn't have our weapons handy. They were in a weapons case, a padded weapons case, to protect them, which means that if you encountered resistance, you're kind of screwed.

And so that's, so that was the thing, right? Is the whole flight suit thing, my, they were very hot. You couldn't really roll the sleeves up that well. And my biggest thing was like, man, I got, I need pockets. I got so much, I have so many things. I need pockets to put these things in. And a flight suit does not have a lot of pockets. And plus they're not very durable, which, I mean, you take a knee in rocks somewhere,

or you slip and bust your ass because it's nighttime, and now you have a giant rip in your pants for the rest of the mission. Like, that's not cool. I just remember being freezing cold when we're doing the jump, especially jumping in Nevada. And then by the time you get down to the ground, you're just covered in sweat. Like, oh, God, let me die. It's horrible. Yes. And, and, you know, with that stuff is like, there's a little tricks of the trade that unless you have exited at 18 or 20,000 feet and flown for 30 minutes, you don't know. Like, I went to, when I went to, uh, eight acre, advanced tactical infiltration, like, I learned about, uh, surgical gloves underneath your shooting gloves.

And your hands aren't going to be warm by any means, but it keeps them just warm enough that you can use them. Whereas if you just jump out of an airplane at 20,000 feet with your mechanic. clubs, you're going to have a hard time. And then it came, there's just a lot of stuff that I think we, as a, as an organization, we've gotten so comfortable doing that when we had to do it for real, the reality kind of bit us. But thank God it did. You've mentioned Ranger panties a couple times.

What are those? I mean, I assume both of you were currently wearing them right now. So they're small, they're small silky shorts running, exercising, sleeping shorts. I don't know. I think the inseam is like, I don't know, three inches, maybe. If that. If that. I think they're engineered to make your ball sweaty as soon as you put them on, like, as soon as you put them on.

And peeing in them is a chore as well. But I mean, being that we have two United States Army Rangers right here, I'm pretty sure you guys can describe them a lot better than I can. No, the Nutcracker shorts. I mean, that was adequate. And why go to using Hay-Ho instead of Halo? Why was this seen as the preferred method that you're going to come out at 20,000 feet, whatever it is, pop your shoot open, and then steer it, maneuver it under canopy for, you know, 30,000? 40 minutes, however long it takes to get down to the ground. Why was that seen as the preferred method? Well, like anything else, it's anything else in the military, it's met T.C.

Mission, enemy, time, terrain, and civilian considerations. Sorry to throw out the acronym. But like the whole halo thing of jumping out high and pulling your shoe low, came about in Vietnam with MACVSog. And the whole idea behind it was it got you to the ground quickly in a safe manner so that you can continue with your mission. however, they were infiltrating into the jungle where people can't, you know, really see you, just the technology of the time didn't make it in necessity to really care about enemy radar

and enemy assets being able to track you. Now, if bad guys, if you're trying to infiltrate somewhere, bad guys see a C-17 or C-5 tracking along at a certain speed, and then all of a sudden they hook a hard 90-degree turn in a different direction, they're going to look at that track and be like, oh, something, something happened. Something changed right here. And that may be all they need. Now they dispatch a couple helicopters, and now your ODAs asked out because you're still trying to collect your parachute in the middle of stuff.

So the idea of behind Hayho is you can have your carrier aircraft, be to C-17 and C-5 or a civilian bird, like an MD-80 or something like that. You jump out, you pop your parachute within 1,000 feet at exit. Now you guys have that entire time to glide to wherever you want to go. And that bird doesn't have to change their track. So now when the bad guys are watching your C5 or your C17, like, oh, they're just flying to this base. They didn't do anything weird. Also, it lets you kind of assess.

It gives you more decision-making time before you hit the ground. With Halo, I mean, you got what you got, man. You may be able to move laterally, maybe 800 meters. And hey-ho, as you're flying long in formation, now that you have your nods on, you probably have access to a binocular or a monocular, you can look down and see that that drop zone that you thought was a super cool, dry drop zone, now it's flooded. And now you'd have a lot more time to look at it and look past it and start looking at it out, looking for a way to go. So, I mean, it is terrain dependent. they did what they did in Vietnam because of what,

because of the terrain they had to deal with in the technology of the time. Now we have more assets to to kind of plan better. I believe in the course they were talking about how our old shoots the MC4 like at a certain, at a normal cruising speed, at a certain

down angle when it returns back on radar, it comes back as an F-15. So they're like, if we're going against this certain adversary, then you guys don't need, to always fly at full blast. Don't slow down until you start making turns because

at full blast it just looks like bullshit but if you're at half break or a three quarter break, for some reason the angles come back as an American aircraft. I don't know why. So weird. Yeah it is. Very interesting. Okay, so no, that's super interesting, man.

I didn't know that. So now you're back home, you're going through your you know, Halo school, your MFF jumpmaster, all this advanced training, jocke it up for deployment number four. Still on the same ODA? What situation are you looking at getting into this time? Yeah, so I was able to finagle myself to stay on my team this whole time. I'm 87. I'd already dodged the Special Warfare Center list once, and I knew my time was coming. So I knew this was my my probably be my last appointment on this team

So I made a made a promise to the boss like hey man if you keep me on the team I'll be here with this next appointment So we go for the training for this appointment was a lot less machine guns and rockets And it was a lot more Learning all of our languages so we had a couple guys speaking I speak Farsi So I got juic stuff on that. We had a couple of guys trying to learn Kurdish. So they went to school for that. We had a couple of guys learning Iraqi dialect Arabic. And we did that. We did a lot of low-vis

courses or low visibility training. Like I didn't wear a uniform for probably the six months leading up to that deployment, at least in training. We were shooting. We would go train with suits on. We would shoot in casual clothes. You know, we did combatives in suits. um just all this stuff that was like like oh man this is some fucking james boshit and it was it was cool um but it was just i'm an infantryman at heart so it was kind of one of those things where it was like oh man where the machine guns like where's the bombs but it was it was pretty neat getting some of the training that we got um the briefings that we sat in having access to the to the databases and the files that we had on people in places and just you know the the level of

of awareness of the intel operations that were going on in that part of the world was awesome. So it sounds like you know, doing combatives wearing suits. Is this like something from a Jason Statham movie where you're like, you're pulling on the tie

and it turns out it's a clip on and you're like, oh shit? No, I wish it was cool like that, but it was just a bunch of sweaty guys wrestling in suits. Oh, man. We got Glock 26's. Block 26 is a subcompact 9mm pistol. It only has, I don't see, eight or 10 rounds. So, I mean, I have tiny little rat claws, and it was too small even for my hands.

So we had to become proficient with that weapon system, and that was some heartburn. Like, that thing was hard to shoot because it was so small. And then we just had to, you know, we just had to train our new, because by now, people have rotated out. We have a couple new guys on the team. And these guys are fresh from the course. So they thought, you know, I'm a green beret. I'm going to go live with indigin the woods.

I'm going to go do this and do that. And their very first mission is like, no, man, you're actually going to learn how to eat dinner like a human. And, oh, by the way, I know your language is French, but we're going to fucking cram Arabic in your brain. So it was kind of, it was, that was what we spent most of the deployment doing was trying to control the new guys. We also learned a lot of ways to, you know, just talk to people.

Like, that was the big thing is how, like, I'm sitting here at this table and the person I want to talk to is sitting at that table. How do I, as a normal human being, find a way to go talk to this guy in a non, like, hey, I'm hitting on your way. Like, I have to come up with a way to talk to him. I have to go talk to him. And so you would learn different techniques on how to do that. I mean, they weren't always applicable, but it was just another thing that we learned.

I remember one of our training exercises, one of our meetings was in a gay bar. And it was just like, obviously the people that were running it, the observer controllers that were running it, like work with the staff, kind of told them a little bit about what we were doing. So it was like, yeah, man, like as soon as we walked in. It was an experience. Just to put you in a different environment and just see how you react, how you'll adapt. Yes, because, I mean, fifth group is majority, fifth group is like the redneck group of the regiment.

Like, you can't, you lose count the amount of hunter camo hats and the pure ocean of dip spit, awash in the fifth group area would be amazing. So, like, you take this kid from Georgia who may have been a range regiment, may have been in Alaska, may have been 173rd, infantry dude, you know, super tough, ultra masculine. And it's like, no, we have to go meet with this gay guy. He's in a gay bar. He's a very important intelligence asset. We have to go talk to him. And then you just, you know, you watch this big mussely tattooed guy like, oh, man, fuck.

I don't know if I can do it. Like, well, I mean, dude, this is the job. So we have to go do it. I mean, I sound very confident now, but yeah, I was, I was very uncomfortable. It's, I mean, I can see the training value in a sense. I mean, probably like this episode is going to get picked up by Breitbart or something. They made special forces training a gay bar, this woke military. I can't believe it.

But, I mean, I see the point. I mean, you're taking somebody outside of their comfort zone and throwing you into a new environment. And can you still find ways to relate with people? who frankly have a different lifestyle than you. 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, work.org today. Yeah, and it's funny because on this deployment, I mean, it wasn't that exact, it wasn't that, and there were no gay bars in Iraq as far as I know. Allegedly.

No, on this deployment, you know, we went to bars and other social areas to talk to people. And you had, and, you know, we're the only Americans, the only white people in this bar. So like we had to be able to operate in that in that zone. So it was really interesting. It was interesting time. And plus it, I mean, there's nothing worse than trying to write a contact report when you're still hung over from the fucking day before. It's it's an exercise. So what happens?

I mean, I take it. I'm going to assume this is a intelligence driven deployment that you guys are walking into. And it's interesting. a lot of people, they have the view of green berets that we often talk about on this show, which is working by with and through host nation counterparts to go lay some whoopass on some bad actors out there in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever the case may be. But there's this whole other side of special forces. It goes all the way back to like RSTs and so quote unquote long-haired teams back in like the

1980s. What can you tell us about this deployment that after you guys went through this extensive train up and heading back over to Iraq? This deployment was interesting in a number of ways. I mean, it was kind of one of those things where

in an indirect way it was more dangerous than anything I'd done before. Because anything I'd done before, we had armor, we had radios, we had helicopters and airplanes that We're just looking for an excuse to drop bombs on people and shoot things. In this scenario, it was me, my partner, and a cell phone. So like if things went bad, I mean, I have my tiny little Block 26 with my 10 rounds in it and my one reload. And maybe we have a rifle in the trunk.

Maybe. Because the thing is also on this deployment, we lived on a house in town. We had neighbors. who knew we were Americans, who knew we were American soldiers. I mean, a lot of people when they think of like intelligence operations or spies or whatever, they're like, oh, you must have this deep cover and nobody knows what you're doing. No, man,

there's no way I can pretend that I am somebody different with my 6-4 blonde friend here who has fucking Norse tattoos from his neck to his wrist. I can't, he's not here as a fucking farming attache. You know, so like we, that was, we didn't have a cover. we didn't need one. We were just, we were SF guys in Kurdistan.

That's what we were. Right. Nobody needed to know exactly what we were doing or who we were talking to. But I mean, we got, we got the version of a Kurdish FBI ID from the Assayish, the Kurdish FBI. Because, I mean, we were honest with them. Like, hey, who are you guys? Why are there 13 Americans here with all these weapons and radio? shows. We're American SF guys and we're here to help coordination and cooperation between the KRG and the government of Iraq.

All right, whatever, man. Sounds good to me. Here's your ID. And I mean, you just had to realize that everybody that you talked to, every Kurd or every Iraqi that you talked to was reporting on you. I remember one guy, I ran into him and started trying to develop him, you know, as a source. and kind of submitted his stuff. And then it came back. It was like, hey, this guy, you need to fucking watch out for this guy. He's a counterintel agent. He's a known counterintel agent. So that told us a couple things, right?

That told us that bad guys knew that we were there. They knew who we were. I mean, this dude knew who almost all of us were, what we all looked like with the vehicles that we drove to his thing. And the next meeting, I couldn't just play, oh, you're a bad guy. I can't talk to you anymore. So it was like, you know, you had to play. you have to play the game. Right.

And that leads me into the gay bar analog that we went to. We went to this restaurant and we go in there and everything, you know, we're cool, man, we're cool, everything's cool. I'm here with my partner and we go in there, we're talking about some things and just like, you know, sitting there smoking hookah, enjoying our fish. And it kind of just looks over, this was in 2010 or 11 when tensions were very, high between Iraq and America. And we're just kind of having, shooting the shit, talking, and he speaks fluent English.

And he looks over, and he gets very close and he goes, hey, man, seriously, between, between us, when are the Americans going to attack Iran? And I'm just sitting there smoking his hookah, like, probably tonight, definitely tonight. And he's like, no shit, you got all excited. I was like, dude, I don't fucking know. I'm just a soldier here having a hookah. why the fuck would I know? So, of course, I excuse myself, go to the bathroom and hit the emergency button. Like, we need to get the fuck out of here right now.

Unconnected to anything, there's a giant explosion out front. Giant explosion out front. The windows crack. I pull my gun out and I kind of hide it underneath my coat. So I'm like, well, it's fucking on now. Like, this is it. Like, this is, I'm kind of happy. I'm kind of excited.

I'm really scared. I'm like, oh, man, this is it. The movie begins. And I go out there, I see my buddy. Andy, I'm like, hey dude, we got a, hey, hey, let's go. So we've already sent the signal. Our teammates are coming in in their armored land cruisers. They're jacked.

I can tell just by the phone call. Like, this is 13 hours before the movie and came out. And like we were hustling downstairs and the guy that we're meeting with is like, no, no, no, where are you going? Come back. Hang out. It's fine. It's fine.

Everything's good. We're all friends. And it's like, no, no, no, no, I got to go. Bye, Mahamas. See you later. And what had happened was nothing cool the fucking transformer

blew up outside just a random like all my team saw it because they were put their position down the street and they thought of like an RPG or something like something crazy and it was just a transformer blew up the front of the restaurant so I'm typing this report and I send it in and I don't get a response back from the normal person

I get a response back. I get a response back from that person's boss's boss and it was like you have no idea how dangerous that was that dude you know it's just like chewing me out about how dangerous and reckless we were and blah blah blah blah you know the normal like chief of police speech to the to the to the rowdy detective give me your badge yeah you're out of control Caleb you're a loose cannon and then I get an email from the guy I normally send my reports to and he's like hey just between you and me that was pretty cool man That was badass. I was getting sweaty reading your report.

But like what were they but hurt about? Like you guys had some reason to believe maybe this thing was going sideways and you needed to get extracted very quickly. Well, what we didn't know is that restaurant we had chosen to accompany this man to was a, like right there is a red flag. Like when they, when they, you always want to control the situation you're in. Right. And it's kind of one of those things where it was like, we let our balls be bigger than our brains at that point. I was like, yeah, fuck, we'll go to your restaurant.

And then the fact that we knew he was a counterintel agent, the fact that we went to the restaurant that he wanted us to go to, and the fact that we were, the whole reason that we were in contact with each other was going to disappear anyway. But all of these things stacked up, they're like, why did you even put yourself in that situation? Yeah, yeah, I get it.

You're like, because I was bored. Yeah, because I have this gun that you gave me, and I'm allowed to go do whatever I was. want. Looking back at it now, we could have planned it a little better. But, I mean, nobody got hurt. We're fine. We live.

We survived. It was a great story. Maybe the journey was the destination in the end. Live, laugh, love. You're just living your most authentic life. We have a couple questions. Actually, a few. Yeah. Any other interesting moments from that deployment there, Caleb?

So we were picked to talk to like the Kurdish Secretary of Defense and he asked us. He's like, what do you guys want? Because we offered to train him, train his commandos. And I was sitting next to a State Department liaison. And we were there in our uniforms, you know, playing the soldier role. And I had my leg crossed over my other leg. Like, you know, just like you would normally sit. in a chair. And we're waiting there. We're waiting there like 90 minutes in this fucking room because everybody was holding court around the Secretary of Defense. And I just kind of turned and looked at my team and I was like, I have to pee so bad. I'm going to die if I don't go pee. And he's like, just hold on. We'll leave here in a minute. If you have to go pee,

just relax. So as I do this, the State Department guy leans over. He's like, hey, I don't know how much you know about the Arabic culture, but you're showing the bottom of your foot. And that is very disrespectful. and I just looked at it and I was like who am I showing my foot to you? I don't care if I disrespect you and he was just like and the general

kind of saw that we were getting restless and he's like who are you guys again? I'm like oh you got through the translator and we're like oh sir we're the special forces team that offered to train your commandos and he kicked everybody out of the room even the State Department guys and he's like I've been talking

essentially he's like I've been talking to these fucking assholes all day, I'd like to talk to some soldiers. And we hung out in that room for like 45 minutes just bullshit about soldier stuff. And he told us about fighting Saddam back in the 80s. And he told us about fighting after he, you know, before we fought Saddam, he fought the Iranians for Saddam. Like it was like, it was super cool. And at the very end, he's like, well, what do you guys here for again? The commandos, right?

And like, yes, sir, the commandos. And I went to go hand him like a list of things that we wanted vehicles and, weapons and ammo. And he just looked at it. And he handed it to like some other fucking general. He was like, hey, anything they want, give it to him. And that's how we got like four million rounds of PKM ammo and 10 million

rounds of AK and a bunch of trucks and ammo and fuel. And it was awesome because we sat down and we built that relationship with them. You know, we didn't cow tow and we didn't, you know, prostrate ourselves before him. It was just like, hey, I'm a man, you're a man. Let's talk soldier stuff. So that was, that was, that, that, that they made me feel good. That was a good point of the trip. And so how do you think it went overall as far as, you know, your intelligence gathering mission

and all this sort of Jason Bourne hijinks that you guys were up to as well as working, you know, trying to get things for the commandos? I mean, do you think it was overall successful? I think it was, um, when you look at everything in moderate, like when you, when you have realistic aspirations, right? So if we went over there and it's like, oh man, wouldn't we try. create this super awesome spy network that's going to allow us to spy on everybody. Like, no, you're not.

It takes a long time. It takes a long time, and it takes authorities, and it takes permissions, and it takes money. And that's the biggest thing that I think a lot of people, I mean, it's the same in, I assume it's the same in almost every field of endeavor. Once you realize that you don't know everything and that more minds come up with better solutions, like, we kind of went out the way, you know, SF guys do, and we work, we work, We work with the peons of the world. We work with the truck drivers and the janitor.

Right, right. Yeah. And other people work with presidents and CEOs and, you know, area and regional managers. So when you have the guys who are used to talking to the truck driver talking to the guys who are used to talking to the CEO, there's some things lost to translation. But as soon as both sides kind of loosen up and realize what the other one does, it got a lot easier. Yeah. Like they other people would toss us sources like hey man I can't do shit with this guy. He he he's he doesn't have the ability to do what I wanted to do.

So here you take him thinking that they're giving me a piece of trash. And I look at it and like, oh, well that's perfect. That's exactly what I need to talk to this guy for. And it's just I think when the lower level and the mid level guys work together outside of the uprochelons, a lot of things get done. was there any like um i don't know did you did you encounter that state department guy again was there any like lingering effect from him feeling slighted or anything like that uh you'd run into him you'd run into him time time maybe not him specifically but you would run into the state department people who the true believers the ones that like man we are here to it is the white man's burden

and we are here to fucking make everybody democracy. And it's like, that's super cool, bro. If somebody comes to that door, I will defend you. But like, whatever this other stuff that you're selling, that's not my mission. I am just here to, you know, X, Y, or Z. Yeah, and also 2010, 2011, we're fucking leaving, bro. What are you talking about? That's true.

That's true. That's true. That was, see, that was the biggest thing that we were having a hard time with the Kurds, especially, it was like, I can't remember how many conversations we had where they're like, we love you guys. Yeah, yeah. We love America. We love American soldiers.

You guys are the fucking shit. If you could, I would let you marry my daughter. Are you guys going to stay here much longer? And, you know, you'd feel terrible. You're like, yeah, yeah. You need to do this. You need to do that. Here's how you zero your pack four laser.

Here's how you do this. Here's how you do that. And, you know, in moments of clarity or moments of like man-to-man talking. like, are you guys going to stay here? Like, real talk? I don't know, man. Yeah. I know I'm going home in fucking April. Yeah. I mean, if anybody,

if the Kurds should be used to that by now, honestly. I mean, I remember hearing that after the first goal for, I think the first goal for that the most common name or one of the most common new names for babies was George Bush, like, as a first name. and you know and America's like

oh yeah it's a shame it happened again this last time man you talk to other fifth group guys you talk to Marsok dudes who work with the Kurds you talk to any soft guys or fucking even any conventional guys that were over there

and it's like it does it is a shitty shitty feeling yeah yeah yeah I Caleb we're gonna take some user question

or viewer questions in a moment. I just want to remind everyone to subscribe to the channel if they haven't already. For some damn reason, only like half of our viewers are actually subscribed to the channel. That's wrong. You know what you're doing out there. You need to be hitting the subscribe button

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Definitely check that out. Check that out. Lots of great pictures and stuff and notifications on there. And with that, Caleb, do you want to get the viewer questions real quick? Yeah, go ahead. Let's do a couple of these. Alejandro, thank you. Working with Naval Special Warfare, the Seals, out west, did you ever get to work?

witness them balance a ball on their nose or any other tricks. Thanks for coming back, dude. That's a low-hanging fruit, Alejandro. You can get a sicker burn than that if you really tried. Come on, man. And also not once. I didn't watch one act of balancing or croaking or clapping or anything. Did you do any join ops with the seals, Caleb?

Yes. We got to do a couple raids with them. we went on possibly the worst truck drive I've ever been on in my entire life with them. We drove from their base seemingly to Turkey and back. We went down to this giant wadi. I'm in a turret. I'm like in the third or fourth vehicle in the convoy.

And I'm kind of just looking around. I kind of look. And all I can see under nods are the taillights. And we're just driving from the middle of the desert. I'm like, whatever, man. I'm going to go do this thing. and I kind of look and I just see the tail lights in the front of the convoy starts to disappear

and it's like the first set disappear the second set disappear and I know that our vehicle our first vehicle is the third vehicle in the convoy's I'm like okay I'm gonna hear what's going on and I all of a sudden I hear like holy fucking shit I'm like oh here we go I just pull the I pull the the round the safe round for that of 50 Cal

I'm like up here we go it's fucking game on I'm so excited and it was this giant wadi that they knew about but they didn't tell us about and this thing was fucking giant like I don't know maybe five meters deep and it had a

you know they'd used it before so it had a ramp but unless you knew it was there you didn't know it was there and it was kind of one of those things like as soon as we got out of the ramp everybody's cussing and mad because

you know we had our stuff set up but we didn't know we were going to take a five meter dump so I had rounds everywhere and water bottles and shit um yeah So we went and hit this town and, you know, they use different tactics than us. They use different radio procedure.

So I'm expecting we're going to do a halt. We're going to like set up support positions. We're going to do how we do it. Fuck, no, man. We just roll into that town. And it's like, yeah, Roger, copy, target 30 seconds. What the fuck? Okay, all right.

We're doing it. You know, it's like, assault, assault, assault. Like, I'm, you know, I get kind of excited because I was like, we're fucking assaulting. You're saying it over the radio. Let's do it. And these guys just like, casually jump off the truck and walk up to the door and slam it with a sledge and they go in. It's like, yeah, it's empty again.

Yeah. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? Oh, yeah, we hit this target about once a month. He's never here. And I was like, you motherfuckers. RTB. RTB. Yeah, there's no security support by fire or assault.

They're like, hey, diddle, diddle right up the middle. Let's see what happens when we draw fire. Yeah, it was nuts. I mean, it was cool. I got to say I got to do a raid with Navy Seals, but it was fuck, man. We led the way back. So it was just, yeah. Guru Go, thank you very much.

What's the funniest thing that happened, Ocones, outside the continental United States? Oh, the funniest? The funniest. Oh, fuck, man. There's so many funny ones. There's, I'm trying to think of one that wasn't like a you had to be there kind of thing. I mean, there was one where one of our buddies, where one of my teammates was taking a shit through a 50-Cal box and the box broke. That was hilarious.

Then there was the night we got rained on. We were out in the desert. And the whole time we'd be talking about, hey, make sure you bring a poncho because it might rain. Bring a poncho. So, you know, being the good little soldier I was, I had a poncho. And one of our teammates like, fuck that, it's the desert. It never rains in the fucking desert. And we're in this patrol base and all the turrets have ponchos over them,

except for my one buddy who didn't bring his poncho. And he's just sitting in the turret so miserable. It's cold and it's rainy. And like every couple minutes you hear the radio crackle like, hey, bro, you good or what's going on here? And you're like, fuck off. And it's just like all night long. I remember walking through a blown up bunker where the whole,

whole team was asleep. So tired because we've been patrolling all day and I just got off my guard shift. And all I could think of was my buddy, the current sergeant major in fifth group. His rack was right next to my or his sleeping bag was right next to mine. And he was the one that was fire guard before me. So he wakes me up. He's like, hey, man, it's your fire guard shift. By the way, don't you fucking step on me.

And I was like, yeah, dude, cool, cool, cool, whatever, man. Yeah, I'm half asleep stumbling up to the machine gun. and as I'm coming back, it strikes me as I'm like standing on top of him and I can hear him yelling at me. The only thing he wanted to do was me not to step on him, but I fucking stepped on him. Sorry, man, I'm drunk right now. I can't control myself. I don't know.

There's just so many, there's so many funny things that imagine going to war with 10 of your best friends. It's going to be funny as fuck. Jackson, thank you. And I don't know if you accidentally sent this again. Yeah, we already asked that one. You're the first. That was the spicy SIF question.

Yeah. So this question was answered at the beginning of show. Well, we're done. Go back and watch the beginning if you didn't hear it. But thank you. We do appreciate your generosity. Brad, thank you very much. Do you think the CIA's paramilitarian unit is as effective as Army SF?

I mean, I've never really interacted with them. I wish I had like a cool story. Like, yeah, me and this dude were fucking bare-knuckle brawling, but no, I don't, I don't, I think it's, I think it's a different, it's a different tool for different use, right? So, like, from what I know, most of those guys are from all over the military. So you have a range of experiences. A lot of them are tier one guys. The few that I've interacted with were older, older dudes, like retired dudes, former sergeants major, majors and above. and it's just a different it's a different animal

I hate it when people on podcast kind of like give like a roundabout answer they don't answer it really but that's that's what it is it's an SFODA is um it's like a Tacoma right like it's it'll fucking work man but like it's not the best thing out there um uh ground branch are they're they're a Lamborghini they do what they do and it's if you have if you can afford it then you should use it but if you just need a if you just need somebody to move your couch then a fucking odae will do it is it kind of like asking if the fire department is as effective as the police similar similar they do different

things as in work out and look cool as fuck but they they do different jobs um and i mean you also got to think about it like an s f guy even if he's like a super good infantry man. I don't know. He's 24, 25. Right. First marriage. Right. First marriage. Yeah. The ground branch guy, he's like 45, 46, third marriage.

Second, third. Yeah. Yeah. He already has the gold ring and the Harley back in the garage at home. Yeah. He doesn't care if he's gone 180 days every year. Right. Um, uh, uh, just down, hold on. Um, oh. Yeah. But no. Sorry, guys. Almost the same question. Oh, no, very different question, actually. From Walker. Thank you, Walker.

I'm sure you all have worked with PMOs before, paramilitary operations officers before, but did you or does special forces ever work with regular ops officers? We did in the essence of we would do coordination meetings to make sure, because in certain areas, there's only so many places to meet, right? So we would do a little sync meeting of like, hey, where are you guys going to go today?

Like, oh, I'm going to go to the fucking McDonald's on 10-meter road. Oh, okay, I was going to do that on Sunday, but if you're using it Sunday, then I'll just go somewhere else. All right, cool. That was where I was also kind of exposed to the security element of that place,

you know, from 13 hours fame. once you know what you're looking for, once you've kind of seen them in their environment, you can, you can kind of see how they operate. I have buddies who work around that organization now, and it's just when people talk about like spies, like CIA agents,

it's different, man. Like they're a different breed. They're a different animal than what everybody thinks. There's very, you Daniel Craig's as as American spies. Say that right now.

I mean, everybody, the whole hullabaloo about the diversity commercial they just put out like last month or whatever. I mean, that shit's real,

dude. Like, they would much rather you have a master's degree in astronomy than have your tower of power and two CIBs.

Yeah. Because in reality, like, yeah, this guy could be a retired Sergeant Major from Cag. Like, super cool guy, super

really good at doing bad things to bad dudes. But, I mean, when he's gone, I have 10 more lined up. Right. They really want the person who can think abstractly. Right. So Tower of Power is the Ranger and Special Forces, tabs

and then the two CIBs are combat infantry matches. Just for the people who are following us and aren't aware. Let's see here. Sam C, thank you. Are most Rangers that go to SF RFS Rangers? RFS is released for standards.

You're getting kicked out of Ranger Battalion, down the road. We have two Rangers right here that can probably answer those questions. I honestly don't know what the percentage is. I think there's a lot of active duty guys in Ranger Regiment who go to SFAS, especially now that the dynamics of the war are changing. Like, Ranger Battalion is like fixing, I guess they're fixing to go back to, like, deployments to Korea and stuff. Like, my understanding is that Ranger Regiment just ripped out of Afghanistan for the last time.

Like, they're done. Wow. Yeah. Like, that just happened. Yeah, for real. And they've been, regiments been continuously deployed to Afghanistan, continuously deployed the war on terror since the very beginning, since day one. So that's over, man. So I think the last decade, you've seen a lot more actual guys in regiment go to SFAFAS, and I think you're going to see that increase even more. I think it's also important to mention for people who aren't familiar with like Rachel Ranger Benjamin, the being released for standards. You're booted out, yeah.

Yeah, when you get kicked out. It doesn't necessarily mean that you are a bad ranger. Like, just like in any other organization, there are politics that are. from the top down, sometimes big army, sometimes higher, and sometimes just whatever. But guys can get kicked out of regiment for... Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I knew guys who were good Rangers who got RFS.

Yeah. You know, and I hope they're out there picking ass doing good things in life. Yeah. Thank you, Andrew. Has anyone actually ran into a curd named George Bush in the wild? I haven't. Sorry. I heard that they changed all their names after the parents changed their names after we bailed.

No, I mean, obviously I met a lot of Mohammeds. That was pretty much the big thing. No, no George Bush's. We found a couple of Andy's. Oh, really? Interesting. I knew a guy, no shit, his name. Full name.

Muhammad, Muhammad. A lot of Mohammeds. That is a lot of Mohammeds. That's, I mean, is there really such a thing as excess Mohammeds? No, no, there isn't. You never had too many Mohammed. But, I mean, maybe they could have thrown a mic in there as a middle name. Or a Mahmoud.

I'm just saying. Muhammad Mahmahmahmahmahmah. Mohammed, Ahmed. Yes, but no. Thank you, Jackson. How bad does Fort Campbell Clarksville suck? I mean, it's like any military. So here's what I noticed working with the Marines.

is that the Marines had the bases on lock. I mean, you have a 50-50 chance if you're an infantry going to Camp Lejeune or Camp Pendleton. Camp Pendleton is awesome. If you want to compare Fort Campbell to anywhere on the coast, it's obviously not going to be as good. But the good part about Fort Campbell

is that Nashville is an hour south. As far as training and all the other stuff, I think Fort Campbell's great training area. it's it's kind of crazy that the sf compound is in the middle of post yeah yeah i mean honestly i thought the three places i was stationed in the army was benning brag and campbell and i thought campbell was the best of the three you know clarksville was the best best you know life off post of the three which i'm setting the bar pretty low here but nonetheless yeah for benning and for brag i i'd always hated for brag i'm from north carolina

I hated Fort Bragg. Yeah. Fort Campbell's, the good thing about Fort Campbell is that if you gave like even an ounce of effort, you could find somewhere to go and do something. Yeah. Alejandro, I don't know why this. Alejandro, thank you. Okay, Jack, fine.

Ken working with Naval Central Warfare. Is it true how poorly adept they are at mission planning or writing a basic five paragraph upward. Do they write five paragraph upwards? So in reference to that, we didn't really use five paragraph operas if you used con ops

or concept of the operation. It's usually a one to three slide on PowerPoint presentation. I mean, I wouldn't only just join full in on seal bashing, but one of my best buddies is a seal and he kind of really showed me

how professional they can be. The thing that kind of struck me is they just have different roles and responsibility. So on an ODA if it's my mission, if I'm running the mission, like hey Caleb, you're in charge of patrol today, where are we going to go? You know, I would talk to somebody else, maybe a Bravo,

to be like, hey man, could you plan the route for me? And the Bravo's going to go plan the route and then obviously I'll double check being the patrol leader, you know, check, check and recheck. But like that's kind of his thing. Knowing full well, I could be the guy making the route the next patrol, right? So we all share responsibility. We all share the burden.

Doing the couple operations that I did with NSW, it was like, oh, we'll take that to Steve. He's the routes guy. And like, that's his mission. That is his job. He is the fucking routes guy. And like, and that's cool, man. Like Steve made me really good at routes.

but like what if Steve has to fucking be gone? Like, so it's just a different mentality. Like, yeah. In our, in our little cubbies, our little wall cubbies, I had to take all my shit out. And the next guy came in and put his stuff there. And he's like, oh, well, what do you do on the team? It's like, oh, I'm the 18 Charlie. I'm demolitions and blah, blah, blah.

And what do you do? He's like, oh, I'm a machine gunner. And I was like, so what, what's so special? Like, you're just a machine gunner that swims? What the fuck do you do? And he's like, I'm a machine gunner. And he's like, all right, cool, man, watch that. Carry on.

You know, like, it's just different responsibilities. Like, I know that when the operations order comes out, I grab it, I immediately pull my part out of it. And then I start looking through my responsibilities. It's just different organizations when it comes to that stuff. So obviously, I'm going to care a lot more about supply and things like that than just a guy who's assigned to it. And what were the steps? What happened? How did you become so close to them?

the seal. How did that happen? What the fuck happened here? No, so we were after the Army, I became a contractor, and we were part of the training cell or the T-cell for first Marine Raider

Battalion. And it was two SF guys, a force recon guy, obviously some Marine Raiders, and we had two seals, and then one of them quit when we changed contracts, so then we just had the loan seal. And he, I mean, may I still go to SF Guy Heaven for saying this about a Navy SEAL?

He was a fucking professional soldier, man. Like he knew the principals patrolling. His dad was a green beret in Vietnam. He, like talking to his dad about, you know, he wanted to join the military. And he asked his dad, he's like, should I be a green beret? And his dad looked at him right in the eyes like, fuck, no, you better go be a Navy SEAL. Their life is a lot better. So he, when he became a seal.

He, he, yeah, I mean, we would, we'd spend hours together in this truck watching the fucking range. And I'd be like, hey, man, is it serious? Is it for real that you guys, you know, do this? You suck at this. And he'd be like, yes, we do suck at that. And here's why. And he would explain why they, because they're not infantrymen. Right.

Yeah. Right. So it, to him, he doesn't really give a fuck about classes of supply. Right. They're always going to have it. right and I'll just say for my small part like I did do some joint ops with the seals in Iraq and they were really good guys and they did a good job

I like I have nothing bad to say about those dudes as much as I joke about them but no those those guys were good to go oh they're just fun punch you man I mean one team one fight I know but I know we all know that but there are people out there watching like it's seriously butt hurt like mega butt hurt they'll show up in the comment section and it's just like the poutiness and the weeping it's just horrible It's horrible.

You can't deal with it. I'm getting old. Thank you, Andrew. Major, major, major, major. Alejandro, thank you. Peeps in comment section, don't remember if it was asked last time. Ken, how much would you guess a giraffe goes for on the black market? Like fully grown or a baby giraffe?

No, an adult, a giraffe. An adult giraffe? An adult giraffe? Alive? Yes. Yep. Very much so. $7,000 USD

Yeah, it's in the ballpark I think that's yeah I'm trying to remember what a way So Caleb Tell us a little bit about You know what made you Leave Fifth Legion

The glorious fifth special forces Group at Fort Campbell, Kentucky Why do you depart from Group from the Army Eventually and where are you at today Well I For those of you that don't know, like in the Army when it comes time to reenlist, you hit your final point.

You hit your final enlistment or reenlistment. And mine was coming up. And my wife sat me down and she was like, hey, I'm not a big fan of this Army wife lifestyle when you're gone eight months out of the year. And I'm not saying I'm going to leave you, but it's not going to be like super great and fun for me and your kids. So I was like, all right, you know, noted. because, you know, every good team sergeant has one marriage underspelt. But then we sat down and we actually wrote it out. We're like, hey, so at the time I had eight years left.

And she's like, well, what do you like the most about your job? I was like, well, I like being with the boys. I like shooting machine guns. I like jumping out of airplanes. She's like, all right, cool. How many more years? I was doing a staff job at the time. She's like, how many more years do you think you have left to do that?

what happens next year? I was like, I finished my staff time, and then I could go back to a team. And she's like, or I could go to SWIP, Special Warfare Center for three to four years. And she's like,

all right, so now out of your eight years, you spent three years at Fort Bragg doing something you don't want to do. So that leaves you five years left. How many years you get? So we just did the math, and it kind of came out to like,

I had maybe roughly 36 months left on a team. If that, if you're lucky. if I'm lucky. And, you know, 36 months left on a team, maybe 12 of that would be as a team sergeant. Maybe I could squeeze 24 months as a team sergeant. So out of eight years, I really only had two to four years left of being an actual SF guy. No offense to those sitting in offices in Fort Bragg.

So she's like, they want to be on a team too, Caleb. Yeah, they do. So she's like, all right, well, are you willing? to possibly fuck up your family life for 48 months of maybe teen time. And I was like, oh, man, I got to make the adult decision here. So I got a job as a contractor, working in the training self, the first Marine Raider Battalion, and then I signed up to transfer to 19th Special Forces Group and left the Army in January 2015.

It was tough. It really was tough. because I joined at 17. So like that's my only job I've ever had. And then I was in 19th group for a year and a half, two years. And I realized that probably wasn't for me. I showed up in March and we got the deployment order to go to Afghanistan in June. So I'd only been officially out of the Army for like three weeks.

And I was like, hey, we're going to Afghanistan. stand, we have the commandos, it's be fucking sweet. And my wife was like, hey, I'm pregnant with your third child. And she's going to be coming out soon. So no. So I just realized, like, if you want a stable family life, at least in my situation, I had to get out of the Army. Yeah.

It's really interesting, too, how, like, with the guard groups, like, people either love it or hate it. Like, everyone I've talked to, they're either have a love affair with the SF National Guard, or they just vehemently hate it and get out of there as quickly as possible? Well, I tell this to everybody. I tell this to every single person who asks me questions about becoming a Green Beret. If I could go back in time, I would tell young me to go join the National Guard SF because it's fucking awesome. If you're a single guy, you could go to any school you want.

You could go on as many deployments as you want and you are gone. And if you're a good SF guy, all these really cool operatives. opportunities just show up. I was like, hey, man, we need somebody to go liaison with the fucking Mexican SF regiment. Nobody else can go. Do you want to go? Fuck yeah, I want to go.

And because you're there, you get to go do it. Now, if you're, and, you know, I'm speaking directly to active SF guys who are getting out, you think you're going to carry on in National Guard SF, it is not the same thing. It absolutely isn't. As bad as it was on an active duty team where you're trying to make plans with the family. It is 10 times worse because things fall through.

Things fall through an active duty. We're still probably going to Iraq this year. Like we don't know when, but we're still probably going to Iraq this year. Things fall through a National Guard. It's like, oh, by the way, you're going to Afghanistan next week. Sell your house and quit your job. Oh, that just got canceled. Yeah, it's, I can see why guys love it and hated.

And like you said, for maybe a young, single guy or whatever, it's the life because you get to go do all the cool stuff and then you come back and you get to go do your own thing. You don't have to play all the army, the garrison games. You know, I'm a soldier now and spit shine in my boots and looking

good in front of the command. You just go do whatever you want to do. Exactly. Back in the day, those guys were like doing contracts with Blackwater and stuff like that in between deployments on it on with a guard and they were making tons of money.

doing real well. Well, my exposure to the other SF guys and the guard kind of led me in my metamorphosis from being a contractor. So the contractor game

when you're not a Blackwater guy or you're not a triple canopy and you're not Oconis doing security work. Our gig was training. And like any other business, they always try to operate

you know, with the largest margins. So whenever I got out, I was making good money. I was making very good money. And then the contract came up for renewal the next year. And it was like, hey, I'm here. My name's so-and-so, and I'm going to offer you this job for 15K less. And it was like, well, I mean, do I have a choice? And it's like, no, you don't because for every one of you guys wearing a shirt,

there's three other dudes here who are willing to take your job. So it's all right, fine, fuck it, I'll take the job. And then that happened again in the next year. I lost another $10,000. And the thing about it is, what we don't realize, especially guys who get out mid-career, is that that dude who did 20, he can live off a $40,000 paycheck or $30,000 paycheck

because he has his retirement and all those other things. if you're a 30-something-year-old man with a family, you can't, you can't live off that. Right. So I did that job for four years. Worked for a rate of Italian for three of them. My last year I worked for training conventional dudes. Those were all great jobs.

I mean, I love going to work because we would sit there and be like, hey, what do we want to do next month? And we would just kind of look at the board and be like, well, we have a lot of Mark 19 that we'd, have a shot this year. And then we'd go do an instructor train up where we'd shoot 10,000 rounds of Mark 19. Because we had to be proficient at it to train the guys, right? So that's what we would do.

Sounds legit to me. Yeah. And it was cool to be able to interact with other branches. So like dealing with NSW, dealing with Fortune Recon and Marsac, you know, you get to see the differences and get to, see the you know like all these fucking YouTube videos like who's better who would win in a fight a Navy seal or a greenie like all this shit

like I got to see it in real life I got to see you know the differences in the organizations and it was super cool I really enjoyed it well actually that I'd love to hear that as kind of some final thoughts maybe here for this one like what are some of those differences

between the different special operations units in you know contemporary current day modern day. What were some of those big differences that you pulled apart, whether it's like doctrinally or culturally or whatever it is between Marsok and the Seals and the Rangers and SF? Well, as far as Rangers, I can't speak to that at all because the only interactions I ever had with them were as teammates or as coworkers. Almost all the ones exclusively that I met were

very fit, very aggressive, and very intelligent. They were good soldiers. I mean, that's the product of the Ranger Regiment. It was good soldiers. And when a guy would come to the team and you could look on his arm and see that he had a fucking combat scroller, like, all right, I'm going to get this dude the benefit of the doubt because he's fucking pretty squared away. Did that come up false sometimes?

Yeah. But hey, everybody's got shit bags. As far as like Marsok vise NSW vice USAC, USAC, when I showed up to Raider Battalion, I thought I had a scam of a job because we don't have a training cell in group. All the teams do their own work. So I showed up and I was like, I mean, what you want me to like drive ammo to the range or fucking reserve or whatever? And they're like, no, you're teaching all the classes. You're setting up the scenarios.

And I was like, well, don't they have guys on the team to do that? And that's not how they're set up. Marsock, their operational element is an M-Soc or a Marine Special Operations Company. So for MSOTs, Marine Special Operations teams are commanded by a major and a master of gunner sergeant, or a master sergeant, sorry. And they are aligned for special reconnaissance and direct action. They can do all the other ones, but their primary goal is to be a giant fucking hammer from the sea.

So along those lines, they're aligned like a seal troop. The positives of Marsok, of a Marsok operator are, they're extremely fit and their basic soldier skills are pretty much on point when it comes to fire maneuver

and all that stuff, because they get it slammed into them in their training. The issues come in, any issues that they have come from their command. Because at the end of the day, they're still Marines.

and there is nothing more dangerous to an infantry marine or special operations marine than some fucking marine major because they will have them do the stupidest shit but as far as the guys go they like how we have jobs in SF because if you're a squared away Marsup guy you could be the sniper you could be the medic you could be the free fall jump master guy you could end up being the weapons guy you could end up being the combo guy. They'll send you the commo school. And now you're doing all these jobs mediocre to poorly.

Whereas on an ODA, here's a guy who went to school for six months to become the radio guy. So that's the difference when it comes into there. Excuse me. Marsok is kind of the in between of NSW and an ODA. NSW, they have medics and they have corpsmen. They have radio guys. they have demo guys, they have ordinance guys. But when it comes down to do stuff like program radios,

they have a support guy right there to program everybody's radio. It seems like a small thing. But on an ODA, as an SF guy, I'm supposed to, it's my, it's my radio. I need to program it. If I don't know how to program, it's up to me to go to the radio guy, the 18 Echo to program it for me or to show me how to do it. If the Humvee breaks, like, an ODA, you're probably

ain't going to have no mechanic there to fix your shit. Somebody has to figure out to fix it. In a NSW platoon or NSW troop, you're going to have a mechanic. You're probably going to have two. When I went and visited Seal Team 1's or 5's little living area,

their gear lockers, their individual gear lockers were like the size of my office here for one guy. They had they had washers and dryers for every couple seals to wash and dry their clothes because they're always in the water

and they wash and dry their candies and just leave them there and they're all folded and neat and shit in an SF team you would never find a washer and dryer in an SF compound because that shit would be broken in a hot minute. Most Navy SEALs

when you talk to them you get very honest with them they admit it, they're commandos, man. They show up on a helicopter or a boat or out of a parachute. they go kill or destroy whatever they're going to do and they come back on to the next mission

SF guys we're used to living there and that's our AO we control it we know everything about it I mean if you have any specific questions you want me to get into I can't no no I was just curious in the snapshot of the YouTube video like fucking Marine versus

Navy SEALs who's going to win in a knife fight you know or is a Spetsnaz guy going to bust out the ballistic knife and shoot him both in the neck was that? Like, I don't know. I don't know. I'm just curious, and I appreciate your insights on this topic here, Caleb. It's interesting.

Yeah, I mean, having worked with both of them, I mean, you do have a pretty unique experience. Yeah. No, and I was thankful for it. I really was. Because I went there with my

own biases and my own um you know the way i colored things like i'd talk to the seal or i'd talk to my buddy when i first met i'm like what fuck is he know i fucking gave a seal and well he like we got to a discussion about small unit tactics and battle drills and stuff and he showed me some things that they do and it was like oh my god why that's so much simpler and easier than the way we do it why why do we do it the way we do it and it's like oh well we do it because we have an infantry background and we this, this and that.

And it's like, well, hold on a minute. Let me take off my expert hat and be like, oh, well, that's simpler and it works every time. Why don't I just do that? Right, right. So it's, I don't know, then there's the high, the high gun thing, the low gun thing, like all this shit. The high ready and the low ready, yeah. All the rumors that we knew is Army guys, I got to dispel. It was pretty good.

Maybe, hey, can I steal you for the bonus segment for that for, uh, rumor dispelled? All right, man. We have one more question. Brad, did 19th group get to go to Siff, probably Sephardic shooting school? Yes. Yes. As a matter of fact, as a SF guy in 19th or 20th group, you're probably more likely to get Sephardic if you want. Because the way schools work, at least in my experience, was it was a text and it said,

hey, do you want to go to J-TAC school or joint terminal area controller school? do you want to go learn to drop bombs from airplanes in July? You're the only guy available. Yes, sir. Yes. And then you're on it. Well, Caleb, any final thoughts wrapping things up here? What's going on today?

You got anything you want to plug? I mean, do you have any dick pills to sell? I mean, what are you got for us? No, no dick pills. I mean, I could just rattle off like a bunch of conspiracy theory things, but I won't do that to you. F. Dean didn't kill himself. How with that? Wait, he did or he didn't? What's the truth? He did not? He did not? Yeah.

Just Lane is not going to kill herself. Should we throw that? He's not going to kill herself either. Adrenachrome, Google it. All right, guys, we will see you next episode. We're going to have Mark Polymeropolis, almost what would he serve almost 30 years in the CIA, I think? He's going to be on the episode again for Round two next time. As you notice, we're kind of having some guests back for a second time for unfinished business. Caleb. Because you're just so good the first time. We had a lot to talk, a lot more to talk about with Caleb. We got Mark coming on. Then we got Danny Colson. And so things are rolling along here. Yes, the much-promised Danny Colson.

I know. People keep asking me about it like every day. With about Ruby Ridge and Waco. And also, mentioned Zero Dark 30 and the security guys. We have Tonto coming on on July 2nd. Oh, cool. Yeah. So, yeah. All right. And of course, somebody jumps in at the very last moment.

This is it. And then we're moving on. Are Navy SEALs redundant with existence of Marsok and SF SIFs? Well, the SIFs are disbanded, so that's not even an issue anymore. I would say no, because much like a lot of stuff we do in the military, specifically special operations, there's a lot of lip service paid to some capabilities. Marsok is finding, they have found, I mean, anybody who's honest is going to tell you, like, when you advertise that you can do everything, that's a terrible lie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the title's in the name Navy SEALs.

If it comes to the ocean, those guys are probably going to be your go-to dudes for it. all right guys so we will see you next Friday with Mark Polymeropolis thank you so much Caleb this has been awesome and we'll do the bonus segment for our Patreon subscribers

in just a moment indeed