The Team House - 6 Deployments in Iraq & Afghanistan w/ the 75th Ranger Regiment | Dan Blakeley | Ep. 233

Episode Date: September 14, 2023

Dan Blakeley is a former U.S. Army Special Operations Ranger, who served with the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. During his years of service, he deployed six times in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Following eight years of service, Dan found himself suppressing his experiences in the military to ‘fit in’ to his new community of friends and coworkers. After earning a double master’s degree at Appalachian State University, Dan began seeking ways to reconnect with the Veteran community. From personal experience and conversations with fellow Veterans, Dan knows all too well how difficult it is to find the “right” Veteran organization, not to mention finding one that provides purpose to those involved. He knew it wasn’t just coincidence when his friend, Beau Simmons, approached him about starting a project that would benefit Veterans. They had to capitalize on their experiences and create a platform to tell the stories of each Veteran: the good, the bad and the ugly. Grab his book "20 Year War" here: https://twentyyearwar.com/ or https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-Year-War-Dan-Blakeley/dp/1733428097 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's sponsors: The AARP Veteran Report⬇️ https://aarp.org/VETREPORT Free, Twice Monthly email newsletter that salutes military service & provides a mixture of inspirational human stories and practical info for vets. https://aarp.org/VETREPORT The Lite Sleeper⬇️ (VETERAN OWNED, US MANUFACTURED) the perfect addition for the light backpacker, ground sleeper, or prepper/survivalist. https://THELITESLEEPER.com/discount/teamhouse click the link to get The Lite Sleeper and get 10% off your first order! https://THELITESLEEPER.com/discount/teamhouse  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Or make a one time donation at: https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod 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/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #armyrangers #75thrangerregiment #specialoperationsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Okay. All right, guys. So take two. Sorry, sorry about the power outage. We're back. So I'll start from the top. All right. So we're here with Dan Blakely. He's the author of the 20-year war. It's a photography book that profiles combat veterans from the Global War on Terror. Dan also served in a second Ranger battalion, six deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. And we're stoked to have you here in studio. Technical issues aside. So as far as your origin story, let's just jump right back through it real quick. If you don't mind, I'm sorry to make you repeat yourself. No, no, all good. This stuff happens all the time. So for people who aren't in the area, too, to know it's probably the storms.

Thunder storms, yeah. They're coming through New York. But, yeah, so, you know, my, I grew up as a military brat. So my dad was in the Air Force for 21 years and traveled all over, you know, lived in all types of different places. I was born in Texas, lived in, traveled abroad a few times, so Iceland, Japan, lived in Northern California, and Nebraska. It was in Nebraska when my dad got out of the Air Force, retired after 21 years, which a lot of people would be like, Nebraska, but it was actually a great place to grow up because I love

ice hockey, and there was actually a really good ice hockey program there. But it was really interesting. Up until we left Nebraska and then moved to Yucca Valley, California, which, anybody who's a marine knows about 29 palms and it's just a desert town it's kind of crappy yeah 29 stumps it's a it's kind of a crappy place to grow up you can get into a lot of trouble as a kid out there very easily and we certainly did and uh so ended up back in yaki valley and that's where my grandparents lived so that's why we ended up there um and uh the high school i was going to was just a really shitty school at the time. Supposedly it's gotten better, but

just really bad things, like a lot of drugs, alcohol. There was like STDs and stuff all throughout the school. And the entire staff, like teachers all the way through up to the administration, they just didn't care, honestly. They didn't care about the kids enough. So people were just doing whatever they wanted. And that's not the structure. You know, I grew up in. That's not what I wanted to do. you know I was a pretty good kid in school up until going there and I started slipping quite a bit and I was like all right I got to change something I can't keep going to school here so I had I didn't

tell my parents my parents knew that I didn't want to join the military but I ended up uh go ahead and going to the recruiters office which was right down the road from the school actually um and uh they had all the recruiters all right next to each other their doors right next to each other so you literally just, you know, pick which one do you want to go to, Marines, Air Force, Army, Navy. And I knew I did not want to go to the Air Force because that's what my dad did. I didn't want to be a Marine because I'd end up probably right back where I'm trying to leave from. And so I didn't want to be back in 29 Palms.

And then I didn't want to be on a ship. I didn't like just being on a boat for extended periods of time. I still to this day don't even want to go on a cruise. Like I just, I don't know why. It's just not attractive to me. So I was like, okay, I'm going to join the Army. So I was 17 at the time. And I finally told my parents, after I talked to the recruiter, hey, is there something I can do to, you know, get in the military and out of here as quick as possible?

And I found a program I could go to a night college, basically, to take high school level classes and graduate as quick as I could. And so that's what I wanted to do. I told my parents, you know, presented them with this idea. and my dad was pretty supportive of it. My mom was obviously very reluctant because this was end of 2005, so height really of both the wars in mostly Iraq, but also still Afghanistan was going on at the same time.

And I think there was a surge right around that period of time as well. And so my mom's like, fine, you can go, you can join the army, but don't do anything that's going to put you directly in combat. So I said, okay, I won't. I went back to the recruiter. I said if my mom doesn't want me to go to combat, what can I do? But I want to do something exciting because I don't want to just do a desk job or something. And he was like, well, you could be a parachute rigor because at least you'll be able to jump out of airplanes, but chances are you won't end up in direct combat.

I was like, great. I got my parents to sign off the paperwork to say, okay, you can join at 17. And then I remember the day that I went to actually enlist and like signed my final enlistment paperwork. I sent it across the table from this major and he was like I don't know what to tell you son but that job that you initially sign up for parachute rigors is no longer available

and I said okay well I'll do the other airborne job and he was like Airborne Ranger I was like yeah that one and I had no idea what I was getting myself into other than the stuff that I've seen in the movies so I've seen Black Hawk down

and saving Private Ryan and stuff so like I knew that. And then one of my childhood best friends, who's also the photographer for the book, he lived a few houses down from my grandparents. So every time I visited them every summer, we hung out. And then when we moved there, we hung out all the time. He was very much a war junkie.

Like he was all about, you know, he knew everything about the military, at least as much as he could know without, you know, being old enough to serve yet. And so I learned everything from him and then those two movies. And I think it's a combination of, I'm too naive and also just I refuse to quit on anything.

So I was just like, okay, well, I sign up for it. I'm going through. So I joined in summer 2006, went through everything, you know, basic training, airborne school, RIP, the Ranger Inductionation Program at the time. It's not RASP. And ended up assigned to Second Ranger Battalion in December of 2006. And I think this is where we got cut off. Yeah.

And you were about to tell us what the best battalion is and why it is second battalion. So you want to know a funny story about this. There's people put it in text all the time, right? The two carrots or the two brackets or whatever. And then a two between it. Right. The diamond from the war or two error rangers. So only first and fifth had the diamond.

And so what I always say was. which is funny, is one is less than two, and two is greater than three. Does that make sense? Exactly. So that's why second. There's too much arithmetic for me to handle on one podcast. That's why Second Ranger's telling his best. I didn't make it up.

They determined it. It's mathematics. It's science. You can't argue with science. I thought it was going to be because you guys all have like platoon names, like the mad slasher's and all this crazy shit. Yeah, I was in, uh, it's funny when I ended up there. So I was in 3 Charlie They didn't really have a name

They had a mascot And they were trying to figure out like Okay what's the origins And it was a pirate And they were like well What do pirate What are you call pirates? And so we're all about the booty

That's right So we were scallywags The scallywags Yeah and But yeah So I ended up at Second Ranger Battalion It was a great time

and I lied to my mom for a long time because as you can imagine, she knew that I ended up signing a contract to go to the Ranger Regiment, but I just lied to her the entire time. I just told her like, don't worry, I'm in a safe place, which in some regards it is true

because second range of retaliation, all the Rangers' Italians, anything in special operations for the most part, you have some of the best gear, you have the best trained people, you have the best assets, you have the best intel, for the most part across the board.

So you do get a lot more support than say like a conventional unit. Right. So I wasn't fully lying to her, but I just didn't tell her about like all of the operations I had been on and stuff like that. Some omissions.

Yeah, a few redactions from reality. So what was that like for you being a young ranger showing up in 2006? 2006 was when I was assigned. I like showed up at the door because he had to go through like the the transfer process or whatever. So I showed up at the door like January 3rd, 2007. Okay. And so, you know, you're walking into an organization that has already been at war for quite a while and pretty successful at it.

I mean, there were a lot of lessons learned and whatnot. Yeah. But the Rangers were, they were laying some hate at the time. Yeah, they were. and so our platoon specifically two, three Charlie they just

I showed up and then I was on rear D so they were deployed at the time when I showed up they got back I think seven days after I was assigned so of course you know they're coming back

and I know nothing and I see these like just just you could see just war torn people you know what I mean coming back from

heavy deployment because it was a Ramadi deployment which if anybody knows Ramadi at that time it was a lot of firefighters and things like that so it was a heavy deployment um and so I come back from that and I'm just like I don't know what I'm doing I'll you tell me what to do I'm going to do it obviously I was a private too so you're you're going to get scuffed up and do all the things that you normally happen to you as a private especially going into a range of battalion and uh but I started hearing the stories as well of everything that the guys had gone through because three Charlie was part of the

recovery for Operation Red Wings as well. And so it was it was crazy to hear some of the stuff that they had gone through. I think it was two deployments prior at that point, two or three deployments prior. And I again, I knew nothing except for what was in the movie. So it was a quick education of everything that had happened, you know, in Afghanistan and what's going on in Iraq and things like that. And I'm still trying to learn my job. So Ranger Regiment's crazy because you're drinking from the fire hose from day one and it never stops until you leave because as a private you're getting all this information you're learning all your skill level zero skill level one type stuff you're getting some advanced training now you're expected to go from somebody coming basically out of basic

training yes you get some more advanced training and rip but you still don't know enough to really apply anything you've learned and you're expected to be you know an operative basically by the next deployment. You're expected to be a part of the team that can make sure that you know you're clearing rooms, you're supporting your buddies, you're supporting breaches, you're having to do first aid if you have to like because we're trained on all of it. So it's it's a very intense environment to to grow up in but it was the best environment to grow up in as well I think. And what was the timeline for your next deployment? So I got there in January. My first deployment was June 2006. So I enlisted, no, 2007. I enlisted June 2006. I deployed

June 2007. So I was 18 for like five or six months when I deployed. So I was young. So where was that first deployment to? My first deployment was to Missoule. And my first two deployments were there. It was, I can't remember the name of what they were calling this, but it was a certain operation that they were basically cracking down on everything. So we had crazy high opt tempo. Our deployments are usually 90 to 110 days long. And in those first two deployments of 180 to 200 days, we did well over 300 missions. So like some days, depending if the weather's fine, you could go out two, three, four times in a day. which is like when I talk to conventional units and other people who like did the typical type of room clearing operation stabilization after you you'll go through and clear like a block or something like that they're usually there for at least a day you know before they actually leave we would get a target be out within 30 minutes out of the gate so you're getting a call that's like hey it's time to go throwing on your kit as fast as you can and you're out the gate so they're time sensitive targets exactly yeah all of them were we're a TST you're

And so we were out. And this is where I knew that I was in the right place because, again, I just, the way I work still, too, is like I want to be the best of the best at whatever I'm doing as much as I can be. And as soon as I saw us go through and clear entire houses in literally less than 30 to 60 seconds, you know, multi-level buildings,

I was like, yeah, I'm in the right place. were you guys still using the strikers for most of these missions? Yep. Yeah, so we were in strikers, all three of my deployments to Iraq. So just to like expand a little bit on what you guys were doing. I mean, the idea was that you're like trying to get ahead of the insurgency by the, not always the quality, but with the quantity of the amount of operations that you were doing. And I don't know if you want to comment on the efficacy of that or not, but. So a very intense deployment though.

I mean, every day, every night, multiple times a night. Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, and people who's not in the know may think, like, oh, you're going out that many times, you're in a firefight every time. That's not true. Like we, the amount of times, like, we were all about, you know, speed and surprise, especially to the enemy as quick as we could. So violence of action, you know, you get to the target, you place a charge, you bang in there, clear the rooms as fast as you've, you've been. can. Oftentimes, they just whoever were going after, even if it was somebody who was, in fact, a bad guy who had guns and s-vests or whatever waiting for us, they didn't have enough time to get it.

Right. And so, you know, probably about a quarter of them, we were getting into small ticks and firefights. Really, IEDs and at that time was like the biggest thing for us is in Booby Trapped House. It's not as bad, but they definitely happened every now and then. But IEDs. just on all the roadways. That's when like the, what were they called, the EFPs. Yeah,

EFPs were taken off. And, man, the number of times, so when we went, we were driving basically as fast as a striker would drive, which is, I think the top two was like 75 miles an hour. Yeah, yeah. So we were just gunning it. Literally pedal to the metal as fast as we could get there

because those timing devices or even the triggers aren't fast enough, like they're old shitty wire, right? So as soon as you go over a pressure plate or something like that, there is a few milliseconds where it's going to take a second for it to actually detonate and go off. So I know, like, we survived all the IEDs that we did because we were driving fast. Like the number of times we had gas tanks or like our rear tires blown off or something like that was wild.

So it would go off in the gap between the vehicles or just catch the tail end at you as you were heading through there. It has, what, eight wheels? So if you lose one. Yep. You can drive on up or as little as. four, I think, so you can have four flats and you're fine. Now, the EFPs, I mean, can you tell us about those and why they were a game changer when it came to... Yeah, so similar to an RPG is you have a shape charge on the back end of an RPG, and so it's a conical shape,

and there's an explosive in there on the back end of it, and then you have some sort of metal on the front end, and so when the explosive goes off, basically, it pushes and inverts the metal that's on the other side of the cone and it basically turns it into a insanely fast ball of whatever steel or metal they're using and it can penetrate just about anything. So they figured out, you know, the insurgents found out pretty quickly

that these EFPs can penetrate the armor of our vehicles. And so they would set them up. Most of the time they would set them up at, basically at, you know, a couple feet off the ground, four or five feet off the ground. because they knew that's basically where the engines were or the drivers were or the crew on the inside were so they weren't going for tires,

they were going for kill shots. And we had one time where we did hit an EFP and it tore through our striker and missed everybody. Holy shit. And by absolute complete, like, grace of whoever above and, like, the fact that nobody got injured at all, literally you could see the hole through the striker and passed like right past.

Yeah. bike. Oh my God. We had another time, too, that was a ground-based one, IED, that blew right in between. And a striker, you have a gunner that's sitting tight like this, basically. And then you have a T-C that's just right to the left of them, standing out of the hatch, basically telling the driver where to go and everything navigating or just calling out anything to the gunner. And we had one go off and go right in between the gunner and the T-C.

And, again, nobody heard. in a sense of like no shrapnel things like that right every time one of those went off though we got overpressure you're still getting the overpressure inside this can basically you're getting your bell wrong yeah and we uh we learned really early when all these iads and stuff are happening is like you have to keep the hatches open even if you're you don't have people out of them you had to have them propped open because the hard hatches yeah because the uh the overpressure was so intense that like it would ring your bell and like you would get some uh you know some some some overpressure your sickness and stuff like that from being inside of it.

Yeah. So your mission ineffective, basically. Yeah. If we didn't do that. Were there any, like, particular operations during this time frame that, like, really stand out in your mind? Yeah, my very first one. Yeah.

Yeah, it was crazy because, uh, rangers are interesting. Um, because you see special operations just in general across the board and you see, like these big burly guys. Like, that's the normal thing. You know, you see when you see imagery of like special operations. But really in the Ranger Regiment, yeah, there are the big guys, but there's a lot of little guys, like a ton. And that's because we move fast. Like we run, we're sprinting.

We're going from place to place. And I was one of the little guys on my team. And the very first house we go to hit, I remember we couldn't get ladders up for some reason. And the retaining wall, the main wall that surrounded the compound had like broken glass and stuff because they, that's what they would do to prevent people from going into their compound and stealing stuff and stuff like that. So they would put like broken glass shards on the top. So we had like these rugs that we would carry with us and throw over. And I was the little guy. So they could easily just basically throw me over and then basically get in the courtyard,

pull security and wait for everybody else to come over. But I used to tell people this all the time. And it's still true. Like Rangers in that time were ninjas with nods. Like we were, we were just quiet and super effective of what we had to do so yeah i say i was thrown over but i was going over slow like i i got over very methodically and everything and uh i got over the wall and i'm hiding in the shadows and this lady comes out and they have a light on outside but i'm literally in the shadows of the courtyard and she she dusts off her rug like right in front of me and i'm like how the fuck does she not see me like how is she not seeing me right now and i was terrified because I was the only guy in at that point.

And then finally she goes back inside because they stopped coming over too. Or they just stopped. They weren't going to come over because I was the only one. And they would have saw, she would have saw everybody. So once she goes back inside, then everybody else hops over. And then we just rushed straight into clear the building. And so that was the first building we went to. And that was the first time I got to experience what it was like to actually clear a building.

And again, we did it in, I don't know, 30 to 60 seconds. and this was a three-story building and I was just like this is incredible that we can do this like I can't believe that this is how we do things we had a follow on target

the very same night and that time they knew we figured they knew they'd heard somebody probably would have called or anything like that like they would have just known

that we were there so our other way of clearing buildings at the time was just to go explosive to go kinetic so we get to the building stack up on the gate place a gate charge, blow it, go in, blow the first door to get in because it was locked. By that point, they know for sure that we're there.

Like you can't go from blowing a gate, blowing a door within 30 seconds. You know, I mean, it takes a little bit of time. So we go in and clear the very first room we go into, there's an insurgent in there, and my squad leader and team leader are in front of me, and they go in and basically between the three of us, we stitch this guy up. and that's my very first mission. Like to go from never doing anything, to going into this like ninja mode of jumping this wall and clearing this house

to then my very first mission, I'm like, I don't know if I'm the one that had the kill shot or somebody else did. It doesn't matter. But the fact that, you know, I fired my weapon on my very first mission. So it was intense. Yeah.

When you, when you, when you, I mean, when you get back to base, then and everybody goes to play Halo or whatever they do. Yeah. Call it you do Halo.

Like, what are you a young, freshly minted 18-year-old ranger thinking about your first combat operation? I can't pinpoint where this comes from, but I, like, even a few years ago, several years ago, I got a, I hit a deer on the side of the road. My wife was with me. She freaked out. She's going crazy. Like, I look at my heart rate. It's like normal. And I don't know where that comes from, but like, I was excited about the whole event, but I wasn't like, I don't know, taken by it. You know what I mean? If that makes sense. Like, I wasn't, I wasn't freaked out by it. I wasn't nervous or anxious or anything, I was just like, that was awesome.

You know what I mean? And then from there, it was just like, okay, what else do I need to learn? And what else do I need to do to, like, be the breacher? Because now I want to blow stuff up. I saw that happen. It's like, I want to do that. Right. So then it was just from that point, it's like, I just want to take in all the information that I can and learn as much as I can and get good at this job. Yeah. And so what was the rest of that deployment like for you? Intense. But so, again, We're all young, you know, 18 to, you know, squad leaders even, are 23, 24, 25 years old. So we're still young, you know, between our 20s to late teens.

And so we had plenty of times where it's like we're just having fun too. You know what I mean? Like, again, Ranger Regiment's one of the best places to grow up because you get to have these experiences of these like, uh, incredible mission sets, but at the same time you get all the support and perks like that. So, you know, we're living in these, uh, these nice, uh, these nice, uh, um, these nice, um, choose, you know, whatever they called them something, housing units. Compartmentalized housing units. Yeah, compartmentalized housing units. And we had everything we needed, you know, nice beds, we had TVs, we had Guitar Hero and Call of Duty and whatever

we wanted to play. And so it was, it was very easy. You only had a gym right there. So it was like, you know, you're either preparing and training for the next mission, you're working out, or you're eating, playing video games, or just hang. hanging out, you know, and, uh, and that's, that's basically how every deployment was. It's like, prepare for the mission, make sure everything's good to go, get in the training when you can, definitely hit the gym every day. And then during the downtime, it was like movies, video games, like, whatever you wanted. Yeah. Yeah. We, uh, need to say hey to our sponsors for tonight. Um, so the first one, um, the light sleeper. Yeah. Awesome.

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Some of us are. AARP.org slash vet report. It's free. The newsletter gets in your email box, the second and fourth Thursday of each month. They don't spam you. They don't send you anything else. They send you the newsletter.

They've got, you know, great articles. They said Toby works on it, who's been on the show a couple times. Justin Sapp has written for them. They, you know, it's a great way to keep up with the vet community. There are a couple regular features that are cool. My hero. My hero about a veteran someone really admires.

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AARP.org slash vet report. it's free you should do it do it do it and please subscribe to our patreon if you guys want to support the channel the links down in the description like share subscribe to the podcast subscribe to your dog if he isn't subscribed yet come on guys what yeah all right back to the star of the show so dan so are there any other like really notable events on that first deployment you can recall other than it just being a green world? No, it was just very interesting. Kind of going back to what you were initially saying,

it's like the way that we targeted individuals was very unique. It hadn't happened really much elsewhere throughout the war. I think they probably figured out, like, the TTPs and stuff were probably not satisfying to the local populace. But it was very intense. And I learned so much from those first two deployments that really set me up for, you know, the remainder of my deployments. And it was, you know, it was the most impactful on my life, really, from that point forward.

Yeah. And then the second deployment was right back to the same place, back to Missul. Yeah, it was just doing the same thing all over again. And you got Groundhog Day. Well, I mean, were there any of these operations where things kind of went sideways that, you know, where you're like, fuck, man. Yeah, I mean, the ones where, well, there were plenty of times where, like, a vehicle would get blown up, disabled, and then that just obviously can't submission, like right there. Now we've got to focus on getting the vehicle rehabilitated, making sure everybody's safe and secure,

get back to base. But, you know, I would say a lot of times we just got lucky. Like, honestly, God, like the number of times we got lucky where we were in significant ticks, firefights like s-vests and iEDs and stuff like that that just we got lucky i have no other way to describe what happened but um you know we had the right people in the right place at the right time um who were ready to pull the trigger when it was time and uh luckily those first two deployments i don't think we had really any uh casualties like we got super fortunate i mean what were some of those events like? I mean, was it just the case that you yanked them out of bed before they were able to

reach for their weapon? Yeah, that's exactly it. Like, again, we were super efficient. It wasn't me, but it was another squad. And they were going to clear room. And one of the guys, and this actually came out in a book, I can't remember any of the book, but one of the guys, the main, he was an HVT, so that he was actually a, I think he was a tier two guy, technically. but he was still an HVT for the area. He had an S-Vest and we woke him up from clearing the house. He was on the second level. The team gets up there, you know, comes in the room and the guy has the S-Vest in his hand

is about to pull it and they stitch him up. And then he drops it obviously because he dies right there and his wife goes for the vest. Oh, man. And yeah. And they're yelling at her like, don't fucking do. do it, don't fucking do it. And she, no kidding, did, rolled out of the bed over him, grabbed the vest, like, was starting to turn up to, like, do it. And then they had to stitch her up, too. Yeah. So, uh, most of you probably got it and know it, but Ness Fest is a suicide vest,

which is like one of your worst nightmares, uh, when dealing with, especially rooms there because, uh, you know, you think about like American rooms, you know, um, a bedroom, well, depending on where you live, maybe not here in. New York, but bedrooms in a lot of like Midwest or elsewhere in the country, like they're pretty big. Yeah. But this is like New York's like Afghanistan. Exactly. In Iraq, yeah.

It's like the bedrooms are a lot smaller. So like where you're coming in and when I say like she was right there rolling over to get the best, like she's from me to you, you know, away doing this. And so to like if that thing went off, you know, it would have been at a minimum a severe casualty, if not, you know, fatal. Yeah. So it's it's no joke. So your, both your first two trips were to Iraq and then, let me ask you real quick. So you're, you know, you show up, you're a young private, they're coming off of a deployment when, you know, when you first show up to Ranger Battalion. Now you're the guy coming back in between your two deployments.

What was that like for you? And obviously, as a younger guy, you have to take responsibility a lot of times for the, you. the newbies for the nugs. What's that like for you? It was very interesting because between deployments, this is another thing that, especially people who don't know about the Ranger Regiment, is like you go through Rip or Rasp now,

you know, you get your scroll. So you get your Tambray now and you get your Ranger scroll. But as somebody growing up in Ranger Regiment, you're still always expected to go to Ranger School. So I got back from my first deployment. I think I did a few, like local trainings but then I went to ranger school and immediately following ranger school I ended back in mazoules so it was like a quick boom boom boom uh and when you come back you know you're a

tab spec for so you have a ranger tab and you're uh e4 specialist you matter yeah a little bit more you think you matter yeah you're part of the e4 mafia still like uh yeah you're trying to get away it's called a sham shield and uh you still try and figure out how you don't have to do the things that you had to do when you were private now and you're just trying to figure out your way in the world because you're not you're not a team leader um you're you're kind of like in this in between place where yes the team leaders now and squaliers are trying to put a little bit more responsibility on you to to teach the young privates who are coming in and coming up um so there was that leadership component you know that that that is now

placed on on me uh anybody who's you know coming in at that point and uh and so yeah it was interesting to go through that process and basically tell the guys like, hey, we're about to do exactly what we did last summer. Let me tell you all the things that went right, went wrong, you know, do a debrief and like tell them this is how we should operate. And the surprising thing is we didn't change a whole lot. Like our surprisingly, you know, a year you would think the enemy would change a little bit. TTPs should shift a little bit. But for the most part, we did a lot of the same stuff. They were getting a little bit smarter and they were starting to basically rig up houses, so you're putting IEDs and houses and stuff like that. And so if we knew we were going after

like an IED or S-FEST manufacturer, we might do a call-out, which is where basically you're just telling people to get out of the building. Otherwise, if we come in after you, you're probably going to get killed. And so we would do that every once in a while. But again, it was only if we knew they were an IED manufacturer or SFS manufacturer. But yeah, just teaching people how to do their job. And really, in Ranger Regiment, it's more about like, how do I teach you enough and well enough that I know if we get in a take or a firefight or whatever or I get injured, you know what to do so that you can cover for me.

And that's really what you're trying to do as quick as possible. Yeah. And it's, again, Ranger Regiment is such an interesting place to grow. up because of the high opt tempo, the quick cycles that you go through of training, deploying, training, deploying, especially at that time. Because you were doing six to nine months training cycles and then you were doing three to six month deployments. And you were just doing that back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. So you never had any downtime. Yeah.

And so then deployment three is your first time to, was that back to Iraq or over to Afghanistan? It was Baghdad. Baghdad. Yeah. Yeah. third deployment was to Baghdad, which at that point now was very different. My second deployment was a joint task force. So my first deployment was not a joint task force at all.

My second deployment was a joint task force with a special mission unit. And then my third deployment was actually with one of the SEAL teams. I think it was team 10. And so that was interesting because you learn a lot of TTPs of how they do things too. And again, still relatively young. I think I was a corporal at that time. I think I was a corporal promotable. So I was about to become an E5. And you're just, you're, you know, you're picking their brain. You're trying to figure out exactly what they do. At this time, I was actually part of Weapon Squad too. So I was actually in charge of the trucks. I was in charge of building the

routes and doing everything like that. Because, again, something people may not know is like for our unit, we're in charge of driving our own guys. Like, it's all our rangers. Rangers are in charge of hauling rangers around, unless you're flying, then it's 160th. So I did that for anything that was a mounted mission, and then anything that we did fly out, then obviously I was a, I think I was a, what is it, 48, yeah, 48 gunner, which was basically a shortened down version of a 240 Bravo. But that was, it was very different. It was a lot of fun, actually. I messed with the team guys so much. Rightly so.

Yeah, rightly so. They gave me a nickname. They had it coming. They gave me a nickname. They called me Sergeant Fathom. So yeah, I did become an E5 while I was there. And they called me Sergeant Fathom, which anybody who's in the Navy,

a fathom is a distance in the ocean. So it's like, you know, people say something's unfathomable, right? It's like, because it's so far, like you just can't imagine how to get there. So they called me Sergeant Fathombeck because I would just do things to them all the time that they just wasn't imaginable.

Like I would fuck with them so bad. Like one night we got stuck and it was because we drove out and then there was winds that were coming through a storm or whatever so it blew a bunch of dust up. And they were like, how are we going to, like, what are we going to do? How do we get back on mission and stuff like that?

And I had comms to the jock at the time and only like senior level guys would also have coms to the job. Otherwise, like the normal team guys, they don't know really what's going on. And so one of them, like, poke me and it was like, what's going on? I, like, call across to all the trucks. I was like, oh, yeah, we're just waiting for the jock to turn the dust fans on to clear everything out. And they bought it.

I'm not kidding. They're like, we have dust fans to clear this out. I was like, oh, yeah, we got dust fans, like, all over Baghdad. They just turn them on and it'll clear it all out. We're just waiting for them to kick in. So were you and the SEALs doing joint operations, where you like swapping targets like yeah so we would both it depends um usually we would swap so like they would they would be security for one then we would have an assault force and then

they would be an assault force for one we would be security that's pretty cool so i mean how did how did it work out yeah and how do you you taught them what security was they do security very different uh no just kidding and we love seals no it was honestly uh it was a good relationship honestly we i i know a lot of other people like have had bad relationships have had like you know talk shit and like have horrible experiences with some of the team guys but we we for the most part didn't we had a very cordial very very um very um bonded team you know like yeah like uh you know they had all the cool guns and stuff like that for instance right they brought all their kit with them and uh we only you know had what we were issued which is you know

M4s, you know, M9 pistols, like, yeah, we had the Mark 46 and the Mark 48s and stuff like that, which are kind of cool. They're different. And our M4s also were different than your standard M4, but, you know, they've got everything, you know, anything you can take off the shelf, like they brought it with them. And then whenever they went to the range, they were just like, if we wanted to go, we'd go and shoot with them too from time to time. So it was fun. It was a good deployment. I mean, what was it like, I mean, just to like drill down into it a little bit more like, again, not to talk shit. Jack's looking for dirt. No, no, I'm not. I'm not, I'm really not. I am looking for like, like, like, like the difference between the two units that you had mentioned and like

how you guys were different, but also the same and like ended up working together. And it sounds like a good relationship. Yeah. Um, honestly, I think it was so good because the leadership that we had on both sides wanted to share knowledge. They wanted to learn from each other. So, like, we even had, our opt-tempo was not as high as was little, so another, you know, 110-day deployment, roughly. We maybe only did

40-50 missions that time, whereas, again, my previous two deployments were over... 120, 150. Yeah, exactly, for a 110-day deployment. So it was very different. We had a lot more downtime to be able to go over things. And, like, they wanted to learn from us, too, because

they don't use strikers. So it was like, okay, training them on all everything, strikers, you know, like how to drive them, how to shoot the guns, you know, how to dismount even, like, like teaching them everything. And then the same for, for them teaching us. Like, they have different TTPs.

They have different lingo and, like, learning their lingo. For instance, they don't say, you know, moving to second floor, third floor. It's first deck, second deck, third deck. You know what I mean? Every machine gun is the 60? Yeah. Like, stuff like that.

We had to learn how to talk to each other. So it was interesting. And then also we shared assets for everything. So like we had, for instance, like our EOD guy. Yeah, our EOD guy was a team guy. But then we had a dog who there, which was a ranger, but they shared. So like we were sharing, you know, attachments as well. So it was a good joint task force.

That's cool. Yeah. And so did you think after this deployment like I want to go be a swimmer? No, I was like, I'm still glad with where I'm at. You know, I will say the only thing that made me like slightly second-guess a little bit was like, okay, these guys are getting a little bit cooler equipment than we are. It is like, all right, when are we going to get that? You know, it was that sort of mentality.

It's like we knew they had a lot more kit to choose from. Ours was very issue. Right, right. If you're a rifleman, this is what you get. If you're a sawgunner, this is what you get. If you're a machine gunner, this is what you get. If you're a team leader, this is what you get. what you get. You know, I mean, it was very regimented, which is why we were also very effective of

what we did. Like, point, point raids, like, being the most elite infantry unit in the U.S. military is very true because we were very pinhold. You know, we were like, we're going to be the best of the best that we can be of being an advanced infantry unit. That's what we're going to focus on. Whereas CO teams, you know, they're focused all across the board. You know, they're doing hostage rescue training. They're doing shipboard stuff. Exactly. They're doing...

UDT missions. Exactly. All that. So they've got all this stuff they got to figure out how to get good at. And that was another thing is they wanted to learn from us how we clear houses.

They wanted to learn from us. Like how do you set up your teams and stuff like that? Security even because they they don't have heavy machine gunners to set up security. So they did have the weapon systems. They just didn't know how to set up their kit.

They didn't know like, some of those things. So it was, again, it was very much just knowledge sharing so that we were an effective combined force. And I'm sure that you're the hairstyling tips. We, there was a guy on one of my subsequent appointments, we called him. He actually had this as an assigned name from them, but dapper-dan, because he had long, long hair and he always had it slicked back and always had to be like a pretty boy on everything even like if he took his helmet off on a mission i was like do you have product in your hair right now he's like yeah man all this time all right so um so that was your third trip and that was to bagdad and are there any like major like big stories

or any very memorable events from that um not well I have funny stories. We'll take it. So in Baghdad, they have Baghdad University. And they also have the American University in Baghdad. And we were doing a daytime mission, fewer times we were doing a daytime mission. And my team leader, actually, no, I think it was squadlier at the time,

was sitting out of one of the hatches and a really good-looking gal walks by. and basically it was like dang these girls look good out here like that and she whips around and it was like I speak English asshole clear as could be

and I was like everyone was like ooh because everybody heard it like she yelled it and everybody heard it which is that was a weird thing too about Baghdad was like Baghdad was so much more cosmopolitan

cosmopolitan where Missoule is much more I'll say more rural like much more you know dirt huts and stuff like especially outside of the downtown area it's just not as developed Baghdad was like you're in a you're in a city honestly it was like a developed city

an international city yeah and so it was just it was very weird in that regard like you're actively at war against an insurgency yet everybody else is going about their daily lives like the markets are running the people are doing their day-to-day jobs, everything you would imagine a city functioning would do,

people going to college, all that kind of stuff. At the same time, you're trying to find a high-value target that's somewhere weaved in with them. And you're like, I mean, that actually is something that, like, puts you on super high alert because you just don't know where it's going to come from. And unfortunately, it actually happened to us. And actually, I take back what I said, this happened to us in Missoule. So one of our guys did pass away in Missoule. I think on my side. second appointment. But it was it was like that where it was we were in a market, everything was moving, you know, it was busy time and, you know, people would just pop out of somewhere and start shooting in the middle of everything going on. And the bizarre thing is I think that the people

are so used to it that often they didn't react. So it was even harder to pick out who the people were, the bad people, because you see all these people moving around and you're thinking their targets and I'm so glad. Like that's another thing with Rangers, at least my, you know, platoon, we were very good trigger discipline. I feel very good about saying like we never killed civilians or did anything like that. Like we had very good trigger discipline every time. But we had multiple RPGs shot at us.

We were like, where the fuck are they coming from? And we even had one shot at us and it blew up an ammo can. And they thought. somebody thought at first it was so hot like that the ammo can just blew up by itself and I was like that doesn't make any sense I was like an ammo can doesn't just blow up you know because we put our ammo cans for the 50 cows on top of the strikers yeah and so the the TC was standing next to it and blew up next to him and how he didn't get hurt or anything I don't know it's crazy but within a few moments later the very next truck gets an RPG and actually hits one of our guys one of the

TCs and he did passing and and like it's just crazy to be in that environment where you just don't know where it's going to come from, especially in daytime. Like we hate, I still to this day hate daytime ops. Like the people who did daytime ops, I'm just like, like we own the night on purpose.

Right. You know? Right. We can work within night vision and have, you know, superiority over the enemy by having night vision. Like that's such a huge asset that people don't realize. until you're putting those types of situations.

Yeah. It's interesting that it's like one of those things that was true, you know, of our generation that, like, we really did own the night. I wonder if that's true anymore. When you see, you know, Ukraine, the proliferation of night vision, thermals, all these sorts of ISR, things that, like, we exclusively had. And nowadays, I mean, I think, especially if we go into a real shooting war and Rangers, other, or U.S. military elements are not necessarily going to have that advanced superiority that we had 15, 20 years ago. Yeah, absolutely. I told you guys earlier that I spent a little bit of time in Ukraine, but mostly on the training side,

but I'm connected with a lot of people still there. And they talk about that, about like how having night vision is still a huge asset, but Russia also has night vision. It's like it's not. the same sort of advantage that we had in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like, it's much, like,

we definitely went on ops in Afghanistan, especially, where we did run into people who, like, we had multiple times where people would get, you know, hemmed up in the mountains, for instance, and, like, their gear would be taken from them. Yeah. And then the night vision ends up

in the Taliban's hands, and then they end up using it against us. There were situations like that, but it was few and far between. Now you've got potentially, yeah, Russians aren't well equipped across the board, but they're equipped enough to where you have these hot spots. You can't have your IR strobe up. Exactly. You know, yeah, a lot of that, even the communications and the direction finding and all that stuff. Exactly. It's, it's so different. And I honestly could not, I could not imagine being like on the front line in Ukraine right now. I know it would just be a completely different war.

It would not, any of the TTPs that I learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, Maybe as like the individual TTPs, yeah, probably work. Yeah, I needed, you know, how we shoot, move, communicate, that sort of thing. But what we use for imaging, for movement techniques, even for all of that, like, kind of goes out the window. Right. Because you just don't know what the capabilities are of Russian troops. So Baghdad and then the next one was Afghanistan? Yeah.

So it's interesting how it happened. So I think they did this on purpose. Personally, I think they tried to put the same unit in the same place just because they knew the area. And our rotations were so short. So they were like, well, instead of having to relearn an area, we'd rather just put you in the same place. So my first two were in Musul, Iraq. And then my fourth and fifth deployment were in Phobshank, so Logar province, or no, Wardak province. we were also operating in Logar

but in Wardak province in Afghanistan and that's completely different like night and day different from Baghdad and Missoule because everything was offset infills for the most part

we would do every once in a while landing on the X and the Y so for anybody who doesn't know like it landing within X is usually 500 meters 500 meters or less landing on the Y could be like one kilometer 500 meters roughly and so it's it's close you're still very close but most of our offsets to where we mostly a terrain future away exactly where they would drop us off you know

five kilometers 10 kilometers 15 kilometers away and then we would walk into the objective and these are mostly helicopter assault force missions yeah yeah we uh we did I don't think we did anything with trucks and shank uh yeah please Do you guys need rocks? Sure, yeah. We didn't do anything vehicle-wise in Schenck, but my sixth deployment, we ended up in Kandahar, and we did, I think, not that many, like three or four ops with the trucks.

Everything was still, for the most part. Afghanistan, again, a very rural place. It's a unique place that you just, thank you so much. It's a unique place. Honestly, the crazy thing is I even told a lot of people who grew up, anybody who served in the Marine Corps again that went to 29 Palms, anybody in the Yucca Valley area, I told Bo who grew up in Yucca Valley, it's very similar to that terrain, like that area.

You've got these long flatlands in some areas where it's desert, open desert, and then you've got these massive mountains just kind of springing up out of nowhere. and you could be at any night either walking flat ground or walking over significant terrain and it was it was interesting just that uh yeah that switch that complete switch in 180 and again our op tempo and shank was just not the same as even bagdad like we told you in in bagdad we probably did 40-50 missions something like that in shank we probably even did a little bit less probably like 30 40 and were they the same type of sort of point target missions or were they I mean did you guys do like presence patrols or anything like that or were they mostly just sort of

CT style DAs yep yep direct action raids for the most part for all of it even in um even in in Iraq we for the most most part, we had one offset mission that I can remember just outside of Missoules. Otherwise, it was all truck-based. We did a few VIs, vehicle interdictions. But then in Afghanistan, it was all, for the most part, offset direct action raids. Like, we might have, like, a cluster of homes, you know, huts or whatever within a village that, you know, we're trying to find our target and we're, like, bouncing between. So we have multiple follow-on targets. Sometimes even we would have two guys that did pop up that are in the same valley we would hit one and then while you're

already there might as well go to the next one right um so we had we had situations like that um but for the most part yeah it was it was just uh direct action direct action raids we had the one time i was telling you guys before where there was a downed helicopter that we had to go and go pull security for so that they could get it extracted um but yeah for the most part it was just solved direct action And what was it like for you guys? You guys had been doing these back-to-back Iraq missions, and then you go out. And even though you said Missoules is a little bit more rural, they're still kind of, I imagine that a lot of it is still very kind of city-based in a way. And then now you're out in Afghanistan, where one terrain feature away can be a hell of a movement.

Like it can be no joke, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember one mission in particular that we were supposed to land on the Y. But something happened while we were airborne that they had to adjust. And we went from thinking we're literally sprinting to the target to they offset us 12K away. And they... Which 12K is like, what, like 10 miles?

5K is 3 miles. So yeah. Yeah, 9 is 1.3 miles. Yeah, 90s miles. So they offset us. And one of the attachments that we have with us, so for the most part, everything's staffed by Rangers, right? Like we have even Ranger J-Tax, Ranger dog handlers, Ranger everything. But in this case, we had a, I remember what he did exactly, but he came from a regular Army unit.

So he wasn't up to, I'll say, the fitness level that we were. Right. And he just didn't plan accordingly. Like, we always plan for contingencies and plan for whatever we need to do, you know. So we planned for the, for the 10K or 12K offset earlier in the evening, but we scrapped it and said, okay, we're going to the Y. And then while we were in the air, they were like, nope, actually we got to go to that offset. So, but this kid, he, he didn't pack any water.

He didn't tell anybody about what we were doing. When we landed, they said, we asked if they were going to shift our time. timeline because now we have to do this massive offset and they're like no you have two hours to get there so we're hauling ass through knee-deep snow in some areas i'm being dead serious like it was wild like we're we're moving quick through uh luckily it wasn't severe mountains but it was hilly terrain all the through uh drifts of snow everything you know we got to get through it and uh this kid didn't pack any water i'd pretty confident he had snivel gear under his under his kit so it's over heated really. So he was a heat cat when we showed up there.

Collapsed heat cat. And so they're dealing with him. We're doing the objective and everything like that, clearing it. Then BSO meets us out there. And he had been sitting there for a little bit. Turns into hypothermic. So it goes from a heat cat to a cold cat. Right. All in the same mission. I'm like, oh my gosh, what is the chances? Like I felt bad for him. Don't get me wrong. And I was sucking even like all of us were. Because again, we were sweating profusely to get out. there and then you're standing there pulling security after you yeah because what people don't like maybe realize too if you if you don't do this is like you're going your your actual mission probably only lasts a couple of minutes the rest of it is doing like sensitive site exploitation dealing with all uh separation of you know military age males and women's children and stuff like that doing uh field interrogations like all that the post op uh process and that takes time right And so for the people who are just not having to engage in any of that, you're just sitting there.

Yeah. And going from sweating to now kneeling in the snow and not doing anything, like that's starting to freeze over. So again, for us, we for the most part, knew. And what we were doing is we were actually even like having guys rotate between security positions. So they're just moving. But this guy, again, I can't remember what his role was. But he was a cold casualty at this point anyways. He was worthless.

Or a heat cat. He was worthless. Yeah. So he was just sitting there. And then he became a cold casualty. And I was just like, man. Yeah. And it's tough, you know, because, like you say, like, you guys aren't wearing, you guys probably aren't wearing snow gear because you got, you know you have to move.

But for somebody who thinks they're going to get dropped off relatively close to the target and then sit around, they're probably wearing thermals. And then they've got to move this distance. So now they're sweating their balls off. And then, like you say, then he stops and then it's just like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. And, yeah.

I actually loved the offsets, or not the offsets, the, like, landing on the X and the Y. Because I had a thing with all of our guys is like, if I'm, if I'm the first one, or even if I'm not the first one, if I'm pulling security or I need to be the assault force, so if I'm either security or assault one, I'm going to be the first one to that building. And I always had a bet, and I was like, I bet you guys I'll be the first one in the building. I'd sprint past everybody, literally, and get to be the first one every time. and that was my like goal I just wanted to beat everybody to the building but yeah just internal things like

it was fun so were you not to get into TTPs but were the nature of your operations even though you're still doing these direct action hits were they different was there a learning curve for you guys from Iraq to Afghanistan I would say

yeah absolutely because in Afghanistan at this point now we had started transitioning we even did this in Iraq so towards the tail end of my deployment in Iraq we started having IA with us so Iraqi army folks attached to us because we started training them on

you know how to clear objectives and like how to go through the post-op and everything and even when we would you know take somebody into custody we had to hand them off to the Iraqis to actually go through their whole judicial system. So they learned, like, well, we're not going through their judicial system.

Depending on who they. The revolving door. Yeah. But they had to have the Iraqis with us so that the process was just a lot quicker. Right. In Afghanistan, it was, we were already transitioning to where we were trying to teach the Afghans how to run ops. So we were more or less just an attachment to them.

You're working with the KKK. Who are we working with? Maybe it was the KKA. Afghan commandos. I can't remember what their unit designation exactly was, but they were attached to us every time. Our first trip to Shank was less so. Our second trip, it was a split force, literally 50-50,

where we had one assault squad, one security squad, and then they had two assault squads. And then my six deployments, when we were in Kandahar, it was the same. And honestly, most of the time we were a platoon heavy. Then at that point, it's like we would say one assault squad,

but it was like a heavy assault squad and the security squad. And then we had the Afghans with us. But that changed things a lot. When my first two deployments in Afghanistan, we still took the lead on clearing buildings and everything. By my last appointment, the Afghans were supposed to be the first people in the building. So we were supposed to be just basically supporting them.

Now when you say supposed to be, how'd that work out? Depends on where we were. Yeah. Depends if we were in a firefight or not. I, uh, my last appointment, I remember we got a really bad firefight in a compound, and we had a fall on target, and, uh, Afghans were terrified. They didn't want to go in and clear the building. They didn't want to go in and clear the initial building,

where we had the firefight and they didn't want to go into the follow-on. And I got it. Like the guy who was the main commander of their unit, he spoke really good English and I remember talking to him and like having this whole conversation was like, look man, you guys are supposed to be the ones that clear this building first. I was like, we have to get it cleared. So yeah, guys, again, I'm sorry. We have some power issues that are a little unforeseen.

But let's pick it up again. We were talking about Afghanistan. some of the differences between your different deployments, as far as the transition from being like unilateral American missions to becoming, you know, mixed with the Afghan commandos and then like eventually kind of like shunting, ideally shunting the entire mission set off onto them. Yeah. And so how do you like you see that progress from like deployment to deployment?

And what years were these again? So first deployment 2007 to Iraq and then Missouille, 2008. Well, I mean Afghanistan, though. Afghanistan was late 2009, 2010, and then my last one was 2011. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, it was interesting because, again, Afghanistan was going through that transition period where they wanted to hand everything over to the Afghans, which makes it super interesting

about, like, honestly, when I got out in 2012, I thought that was going to be the end. Like, I thought we were at the end of the war. Right. Did I think it was going to go 10 more years? absolutely not I did not expect that I would have never foreseen that I think everybody in at that time would have never foreseen it because we were in that transition phase where we were really trying hard to make it to where they had their own coalition with support from the U.S. and also other NATO allies but it was it was really just about giving them assets you know give them intel assets they run ops and I thought that was going to be the case and honestly I thought I was going to run like that for a good amount of time, but, you know, obviously history reshaped itself and ops still kept happening. You know, Rangers were still running ops off and on throughout after 2012. But yeah, it was a different, it was an interesting time because there were certainly aspects of

it where I was happy and I was glad that we were going through this phase of propping up the Afghans, take over the country. You know what I mean? Like, it seems like you were like at least somewhat successful in that endeavor. Yeah, absolutely. Like they, I think the Afghan commanders that we had, like, attached to us, two things. One, they became very proficient. They got really good. And the other crazy thing is that the Afghan commanders that were attached to us at the end of our first deployment in Shank were the same ones that we came back to in Shank too.

And that's something that I think a lot of people don't realize is in Iraq and Afghanistan, like, we, go through cycles of deployments. They were in a continuous deployment. You know what I mean? And who knows after I left Shank how much longer those same Afghan commandos were still operating in the same area. Right. Like it's insane to think about

and then also, I don't know if they ever changed anything, but I don't at the time. There was definitely a conversation about it because a lot of the commandos were semi-local. Right. And so like we're doing ops sometimes in their backyard. Right.

And that's, I know, a bizarre thing for them. Sure. Right. Like, that's the equivalent of, like, say, we have drug cartels, you know, in your, in your neighborhood, like your backyard neighbor or whatever is, like, a drug cartel and the DEA is running ops on them. Right. And you're attached to the DEA unit.

Right. You would be like, what the thing? And in an area where people generally know everybody. Yeah. Right. So they're putting themselves, their families, everybody at risk. 100%. Yeah.

That was the first time that I ever experienced where covering your face was such a big thing. Like I never covered my face on any of my ops, anything like that. But the Afghans were super adamant about doing it. And it was, fast forwarding to my time in Ukraine, they were very adamant about doing it in Ukraine. And I thought that was interesting. But like connecting the dots, it makes sense because the war is happening in that country where the people live. The bullback could be on their family. Exactly.

And I never, I didn't connect that until I went to Ukraine. Like I didn't realize like, yeah, I kind of understand it a little bit. But then when I saw the Ukrainians do it, I was like, oh, because this war is happening here. Like there is that small chance that Ukraine loses a war. And then now if their face is out there, of course there's going to be an effort to find and prosecute, jail, torture, kill, potentially, you know, all those people who were involved. I remember we did ops with our SWAT team from Talafer in Missouil. And like pretty much by the time we got back to Missouille after the op, because of the accent and the language that they use on Target and the people heard it,

they know already that was the SWAT team from Talafer. That's not dudes from Missouil. Yeah. So like, yeah, it's, you know, all politics is local. Yeah. It comes out in the watch very quickly over there in ways that we don't necessarily understand as Americans. Yeah. And it was, that was another thing that, like, I think why the withdrawal from Afghanistan was so hard on so many people with, like, not getting our interpreters out and not getting, like, the Afghan commandos and stuff like that out, the people that we trained and, you know, we're trying to hand the country over to because these guys were literally putting their neck on the line.

Like, legitimately, every night putting their neck on the line. And they were doing it for years, decades, some of them. And there's, like, some of them to the point where I remember we had an. interpreter where we were going through the field interrogation and the interpreter had his face mask up initially but he got so aggressive and like anger at the guy who was like look at me and like look at my face he's like you're going to fucking tell me the truth and like tell me what's going on but you know went to the thing and I was just like when he did that I was like foof yeah that's on a different level yeah like that escalated things you know what I mean like that that showed to the other guy like

he's not fucking around. Like, you better tell me now. And that was his way of basically showing him, like, I don't care. You need to tell me the information we need. Tell me the truth. And, like, just the amount of risk that they put on themselves. And it's, I know we're fast-forwarding a lot, but it's still heartbreaking to see with the withdrawal in Afghanistan and how many people we left behind.

And the endless stories that I keep hearing and still keep hearing. Two years after the withdrawal, these families that are getting found out and murdered by the Taliban is so frustrating. And it's, to me, it's a very, there is a crowd and, and that calls these, like, these wars against Afghans or these wars against Iraqis. And the only people who have the, I think, ignorance to say that is nobody who's ever seen an Iraqi or an Afghan who were legit there trying to fight for a better way of life for their family. I bring up the cartel as a parallel example because I think it's the closest thing that anybody who's not served overseas in America can somewhat relate to. Can at least get somewhat close to? because we're bordered with Mexico and it's always in the news about the Mexican cartel

smuggling drugs, about murdering tourists, about doing all these horrible things. It's like the Taliban are basically the same just on a different level. Right. Where they're supporting and harboring legit terrorists that will plan and execute terror operations globally

wherever they think is the best place to place terror on the West. And even outside of Western interest and the terrorists that they protect, when the Taliban took over Afghanistan initially, you know, after the Soviets and everything,

like when the Taliban took over, life became miserable for Afghans. Life became miserable for them. People fled the country. because of what because of beheadings and executions and soccer stadium you know yeah it wasn't a they're not a good people even if they didn't support you know terrorists and and whatnot yeah they destroy the country yeah and they're destroying it again yep and uh again if if you're

not staying in tune with everything that's happening in Afghanistan I think it was the uh um was it the the world food is it the world food organization or yeah who put out that 40 million four million or 40 million something like that it's in the millions regardless are are in uh critical need of food and support um otherwise they're going to starve and it's because we've cut off like the u.s all nations for the most part have cut off any sort of economic support for the taliban tell me and have done it to themselves too. Yeah. Now you're in charge of the country, guys.

You actually have to run a government, and they're finding out that ain't so easy. Exactly. Well, especially if you're a bunch of hassles. Yeah, that doesn't help. It's, yeah, it's such a hard situation to just watch. And I don't think we're, we're not doing a good enough job covering it. Like, I know I don't even know enough about everything that's going on.

I just know there's people starving. There's people dying. They're getting executed and killed by the Taliban. The Taliban are not the right people to be in charge of the country. I know that al-Qaeda is starting to reestablish themselves in Afghanistan. It's 100% happening. And it's a really difficult, like, foreign policy decision for the United States government as far as, like, after being at war with these people for 20 years, do we totally disengage and be like, hey, fuck you? And a lot of people on the ground, civilians are going to suffer?

Or do, if we do decide to engage and offer humanitarian support, well, the fact is what it is, you're going to have to work with the Taliban. Taliban. Yeah. And can we trust the Taliban? And I would say absolutely not. Right. Absolutely not. Like time and time again, they've proven that they cannot be trusted. Right. That was the whole point, you know, of this administration has fallen through with the Doha agreement. And it's like the number of times that they broke all of the agreed terms month over month until, you know, they were advancing. Remember they even had the battle maps. Remember on like CNN and Fox News where they were showing it. It was like, Taliban are pushing across Afghanistan. Here's another province that the Taliban, you know, is holding and stuff.

As they were moving across, it's like every time that happened, that was a provocation and that was against the Doha agreement. Like, we saw this happening over a period of time, and it's like, I don't know what it was, but it was a, it was an inability to act against it. And so we cannot trust the Taliban. Right. Like, we just can't. And so I agree. Like, what do we do? do we partner up with the enemy to save lives or do we hope and pray that they're going to do

what they need to to actually, you know, save their people or are they going to just? But the thing is there are people. For the Taliban, for organizations like that, when, you know, they're radicals of any strife, if they're not, if the people are not Taliban, if they're not talib, right, they're not really there are people. Yeah. Yeah. And that's how I see it.

Yeah. especially in these, like, central cities, you know, Bagram, Kandahar, everywhere that we've established a good Western way of living. That's all being stripped away entirely. Yeah. So as we get further into your deployments in far as this transition to the Afghan commandos, what are you seeing, what's happening sort of on the ground as we get into like 2011 in 2012.

A lot. It's difficult for two reasons to let go of things, right? Like as Rangers, we're trying to be as proficient, as effective as we can be, but we know we have to hand things over. We know we have to let go of the reins, so to say. And it's, we lost also a lot of trust. I don't know if you guys remember around that time.

There was a lot of a lot of these training facilities that were happening, both the Afghan police and Afghan armies. And there were Taliban who were infiltrating some of those training facilities. And then there was like... The green-on-blue incidents. Exactly. That were all happening.

And so, like, every time that happened, we had a reassessment of, like, can we trust everybody here? are we okay? And it's not that we didn't trust them, but we had to go through that risk mitigation effort. You know, we had to know, are these the right people? Do we have the right people on the ground?

Things like that. And that definitely adds another completely different level of stress and uncertainty that, again, we can't control. Right. And we, Rangers, I don't know if this happened across special operations, but one of the things that happened, and I don't know if it was an effort on purpose to do this, to mitigate some of this risk,

but we started ensuring that at least one person on every one of our squads could speak postune because that was the prevalent language that they were speaking. And so we sent at least one guy from every squad would go get trained for several months to be able to speak at least functional postune. And I think a portion of it was to make sure that we could, communicate effectively because again majority of the time you had the interpreter you had the commander and you might have like two or three other people within the Afghan commander unit that was attached to us that could speak English but for the most part nobody else could so it was like the relationship

building but then also risk mitigation it's also very interesting because this is not an operation or this is an a mission that people commonly associate with rangers people commonly think this is like maybe a special forces mission. Yeah. But here you guys are acting as the mentors for the commando unit and learning the local language trying to integrate with the culture a little bit. Yeah. And I mean, that was sort of, I mean, we did a, I mean, we trained the Afghan police a little bit.

I mean, when we were over there in 2004, but I mean, it's kind of like surface level, right? But you guys went much deeper with it. I mean, what was that like for you as Rangers that like this is a little, is this a little bit outside your comfort zone. But the interesting thing with Rangers, too, is you have very young guys who are very malleable and they adapt to the mission set very quickly. Yeah, there was two, I feel like two kind of groups of people is either it was like heavy discomfort. It was like, are we training these guys to eventually turn and like kill us? Or are we training them to be able to effectively like defeat Taliban and other terrorist organizations that are in Afghanistan?

I mean, like we were always going back and forth of that, or not all of us, but some of us were going back and forth of that. And then there was others. And I would actually say, heavily the people who were learning poshap and were connecting more on that, like, individual level that could have conversations and carry on conversations. It was much more of like a humanistic connection with them. Yeah. And understanding like where they're coming from, where their families were from and all that kind of stuff. And definitely by our third Afghan, Afghanistan trip, we were having those types of. of really good relationships.

Like we, you know, we were cooking and sharing meals together and, which is, you know, the primary way that, like, Afghans, like,

host. Right. Each other, you know what I mean? Like, they, they have a meal, they have tea time and stuff like that.

And, um, so we, we started to make sure that we had these kind of things where we were, we were, um, again, connecting more on a,

on a human level with them, as opposed to just operationally. Um, so yeah, things, things transitioned. It was, it was,

it was, uh, in a short period of time too for me in the grand schemes of things right you go from missoule five years earlier to my last deployment in afghanistan and it's just a complete shift yeah and that's one thing about rangers too that i honestly all special operations and maybe across the army but special operations especially the adaptability yeah the ability to change real quick yeah like oh you thought your mission was this yesterday like we're changing it we're doing some completely different you thought you were landing on

on the Y, we're going to set you 12K outside. Right. You know what I mean? Like the adaptability and be able to just shift and be effective still, I think, is one of the key things that makes. It's interesting the Rangers, you know, it's, like you said, it's interesting the Rangers, uh, maybe not all of them, but, you know, kind of embrace that will share a meal. Let's, you know, um, I mean, honestly, I feel like Special Forces could have come to you guys for some lessons during that very of time. of them. Some of them for sure.

You know, but I guess it's, as that also went from the, we're not fit, we're door kickers. I think there's trying to show that. There's like something interesting there that I haven't really seen like written about like either academically or even casually about, you know, how sometimes they're the like young soldiers, maybe it's an MP unit or maybe it's an arranger unit, but they're able to sort of adapt to that mission set a lot quicker than some of the older guys. Yeah, I absolutely think so. It's like, I think your brain also is built for malleability.

Like you're, you can easily adjust because you're soaking in so much information. Right. You know what I mean? It's like, okay, we're going in this direction now. Exactly. Whereas, you know, team leaders, squad leaders, platoon sergeants, things like that at that level, they're like, they're like, well, we've been doing it this way. Right. You know what I mean?

I was trained to do this. Yeah, it's a little bit harder to adjust. I can definitely see that. It's like, especially when I was a squad leader, like, I'll be 100% honest. I was one of the people that pushed back a little bit about like doing some of those hearts and minds type actions, you know? Yeah. Because I was like, I don't know if I trust these guys yet. And then but going through the process, having the T, having the conversations between an interpreter and them, like you definitely do have that opportunity to connect with them that you wouldn't have otherwise.

Yeah. Was there like any sort of like lessons weren't that you would kind of take away from that experience between like Iraq doing the unilateral American operations? that maybe or maybe not or not affected at counterinsurgency versus what you're doing in our and i'm sorry in afghanistan who are much more like integrated with the afghan soldiers yeah because in iraq again i told you towards the end of my bagdad deployment we were starting to pull in the afghan army right uh but at that point like the in in iraq uh we stood up the judicial system, the democratic system, within Iraq, quick, right? Like, relatively in comparison to Afghanistan. Like, it was relatively quick that we flipped it over. We

were like, okay, this is how you establish your leadership. Like, there was already a drive and a want by the population, for the most part, depending on who you talk to, but for the most part, for there to be a democratically elected government to have an effective judicial system that was ran, and people had their right to do process and everything. And so when we were transitioning to that, like, I could see that. I could feel it, you know what I mean? Like, I was like, okay, this guy's going to court again, whether or not you agree if that person was a revolving door

and they went in one day and we're out the next, or if they were actually, like, prosecuted and ended up, you know, in jail somewhere. But that's neither here or they were there. At least they were going through the process. In Afghanistan, it was, it, it, felt more prolonged to do that. And I think a piece of that is the tribal,

tribalistic nature of Afghanistan. Because a lot of people don't realize that within, not even just the provinces, but within the small townships, I'll call them, of Afghanistan. Like there are tribal elders that are within a small area that is within the bigger province, but then there's another tribal area or a tribal leader or elder or town elder or whatever over here

and how they operated their local government was different from place to place. Right. So to centralize everything and say, hey, everybody's got to go through the judicial system was, I think, a lot harder to establish in Afghanistan. There was not as much trust, I think, in the government. So you didn't see it as quickly. quick, I would say. So, like, I saw it quick in my Baghdad deployment, literally within, you know, those four

months, I saw it go from, okay, we're running ops to now the Iraqi army. We're attaching them. They're doing the processing. They got it. To my last three deployments in Afghanistan, it took all three deployments for it to get to that point. Yeah. So I think that's how it was different.

Yeah, it's very different. I mean, like tribes, there are tribes in Iraq, but it was very, but it was very, very, much more Sunni Shia. Where in Afghanistan not only did you have the Tajik's and the Pashtuns and the Hazara

you know and you know the sort of the major very different very culturally different people but even amongst the posthunes and when you had your different tribes and the tribe of elder like if you ever did a

as a range of maybe you didn't like a PRT or something like that and you delivered rice and cooking oil to an elder well that elder decided which families was going to get what and there there there was no real afghan national identity to glom on to yeah for for like the election electoral process or democratic process yeah and again like it depends on where you were at but like uh i'd be in like the logar wardock province or something like that go to an elder like we would hit a target that was adjacent to the village elder or whatever and then like sometimes it was scary but they would walk over to figure out what's going on and you know

he would flag him and everything and it was like stop stop stop stop and then you know the afghans get out there start talking to him it was like oh this is the elder we need to talk to him and it's like okay we start having that conversation uh and some places they'd be super reluctant to engage at all like they would just not they did not support what we were doing they were like why are you here you shouldn't be here, blah, blah, blah. Right. And then we'd go into a different town. And we would hit a house that the elder was in.

And the elder was like, you're at the wrong place. I know who you're going after. It's my nephew. He's three doors down. Yeah. He aligns with the Taliban. Yeah. I know you're trying to get him.

Go get him. Like, I'm not kidding. We ran into those situations. So it just, it was very dependent on where you were operating at. It was a very unique situation. And every night and again, goes back to the adaptability piece. It's like you had to know that that literally could be the difference night overnight.

Yeah. So talk to us a little bit about, you know, six deployments. You're kind of getting pretty salty at this point. But, I mean, talk to us a little bit about, you know, your exit from the military that you decided, you know, you weren't going to be a lifer after all. Yeah. I think if you would have talked to anybody. prior to spring 2011

everybody was like oh Dan's gonna be a lifer because I I got I was good at my job I was very good at my job I got promoted to E6 I think just under

or like right up four years so pretty quick like I was promoted time and time again relatively quick I had a ton of responsibilities you know master breacher for the company company, master driver, like all these other responsibilities you always get. Anyways, just having to, again, run your own everything as a ranger.

But if you were to talk to anybody, they were like, oh, yeah, Dan's going to stay in. But in spring of 2011, I was at the Advanced Leaders course in Fort Bend, in Georgia. And you can talk to anybody I served with. They used to call me a gazelle because I would run people. into the ground on purpose. Like I would break people off on runs just because I thought it was fun. You were that guy. I was that guy.

Yeah. So I would just do that all the time. But I was at ALC and I was on a run and it was the first time I had ever fallen out of a run. And it was because I was getting this pounding, horrible stabbing pain in my chest. Every time my heartbeat, it was just like somebody was stabbed. grabbing me in the chest. I tried pushing through it. I thought, okay, maybe it's like acid reflux or something like that's going on. Didn't know what it was. But it got to a point where it's like, I might die if I don't stop. So I eventually like just stopped and, you know, sat on the curb.

And they had to call like the CQ van to come pick me up. They immediately took me to the emergency room, started running tests and assessments and everything on me. Luckily, I only missed. like a half day of ALC or something, but I had to get follow-on tests on everything, and they found out that I had a hole in my heart. It's not atypical. It's like a high percentage of people have a hole in their heart, like a, it's called

atrial septal defect. And most of the time, people live their entire life don't know anything about it. But it can be exacerbated by extreme stress and strain, especially on your heart. Being a ranger will do that. Yeah. And so I went through all the tests.

I had to do stress tests, echocardiograms, like all these other things with the cardiologists. They're like, yeah, you have a hole in your heart. And it may and it probably will if you continue on this path, get to a point where you'll probably have to get some mesh, basically, you know, surgically planted on that hole to prevent this from happening. well to me 22 years old at this time freaking terrifying right yeah it's like I don't be 22 years old and have a broken heart

and like I don't know what's going to happen with me like I want to live a long life I don't know if I want to like literally do this to the point where I die because my heart fails like if I died in combat that's one thing but die because my heart fails

because I'm just pushing it too hard that's a different thing so the interesting thing for anybody who knows David Goggin's story he ran into the same thing and but he's the dude that runs like ultra-marathons

like 60-minute's right if we met face-to-face he'd probably tell me I'm a bitch and that I should have just gotten the surgery and dealt with it because he did he's had two surgeries now to fix the hole in his heart but he got kicked out of his unit he was done with the seal teams because of that hole in his heart

when my unit found out about the hole of my heart, they basically put it in my hands. They said, well, yes, you have this problem. Yes, you may have to get heart surgery, but you could decide to keep doing what you're doing until it gets a point where you do need surgery. So I went back and forth. I was married at this time.

Me and my wife were talking about it a bunch. I go on another deployment afterwards, and that deployment, the can of heart deployment, is what sealed it for me. Like there was there was too much bureaucracy too much that got in the way of the way things had been going back to like, you know, you're salty, you've, you're used to running things a certain way and then now they're trying to change it and all this stuff. And I didn't like the way things were going. And I was, I was like, well, I already have this issue with my heart. Plus, I don't like the way things are going.

Do I really want to keep doing this to the point to where I could have a heart surgery? So you're a squad leader at this point in time? You're a squad leader. And is, is this the trip you told us about, like, the issues with the jock? Yeah. Can you, do you mind going into that? Yeah, I'll go into it a little bit. So in Canterhar, there was this area.

There was this high value target we were going for this HVT, who we knew was an IED manufacturer. We knew he was operating in the area. And we were tasked to do an office. set. So we were landing in some cop. I can't remember what small cop it was. But we landed in some cop and then we were going to walk to the objective. And I had pulled up the battle map to see where like all the incidences have been over a period of time. So anytime there's an IED or anything like that usually gets reported and then you can look at that and usually plan your route around where all the incidents have been so that you can hopefully not repeat. You know,

you know and not have any casualties so we were looking at that and uh i noticed the route that we were we were planning was a high iED area and i said no we shouldn't go like we should not do this um escalated it you know to hire to the jock was like i don't think we should go we're like well this guy's too big of a target we can't not go um so i was like okay fine so we go out to this cop we fly in uh we meet with the bSO and the bso reviews our uh Battlespace owner reviews our route and he's looking at it. He's like, you do not want to walk down that way. He was like, we've had, I don't remember how many incidents, but he's like, we've, we've had guys killed, injured all along this route, this entire deployment that they've been on. And they're like, we call it IED Alley for a reason. They're like, don't walk this route. And so I escalate that to hire again, call up to the jock.

He's like, hey, they're telling us, do not take this route. It's not worth it. Jock obviously we have an exchange of words A terse exchange of words A terse exchange of words I think even at one point I offered A slot on our Our jaunt through IED Alley With the officer who was in charge of that mission And it was like you can come with us

And we'll go through the IED Alley together And he decided not to go And luckily that night we were fine walked through it no problem no issues got very lucky we had good EOD like you know scout the route for us the entire way we have dogs

scouting the route the entire way so we were fine I can't remember it was the very next night but it was it was very soon after that that we didn't get the guy so we're going after him again and uh because this time the Intel is accurate yeah So we're going after him again. And the irritating part, this time it's not our platoon going.

So we had two platoons. So it was the other platoon that was in charge of going on this app. The irritating thing is we had been watching ISR all day. And it looked very clearly like the guy went in there and left. But they knew how we run our intelligence. And so we had intelligence signaling to us that they were still in there. So they said, well, we got to go in there to confirm or deny. So our guys go, go through IEDALA again.

Luckily, they're fine for the most part. Then they start going into the compound and the entire thing was booby-dropped. The entire platoon that was out there, I don't think there was a single person who did not get some sort of injury from that op, whether it was just overpressure or shrapnel. Is this the big mission where there were like daisy-chained IEDs all around the compound? It was like a mass cast event. Yeah, and it was, I mean, it was in the news. Yeah, I remember this.

My good friend, Christopher Dobé, so he was the J-TAC at the time. He was one of the KIA during that time. And that was, that was incredibly difficult. Because not only do we know that there was this risk, they decided to go against, you know, basically what we were observing, what we were being told from the ground anyways.

They sent guys in there. They all get blown up. There are three KIA. Again, I don't think anybody left there without some sort of casualty. And I just lost it from that. I was like, I can't, I can't support senior leadership that are going to make decisions that put people in imminent risk. It's like a mission that's designed to kill soldiers. Yeah.

Yeah. And so from there, I was like, okay, this pretty much sealed my decision for me. like I'm not going to stay in any longer. The fucked up thing and the thing that I'm proud of, but I'm also really mad about, is when I say that Rangers have incredible trigger discipline, two days later, we go out on the op for the same guy. This time, they said we have absolute intelligence

that the guy is there. We go hit this compound, find the guy. I interrogate him. The guy who just killed my first. friend, like the amount of restraint to not just fucking kill this guy. Right. Like, was so difficult. Because at this time, we had all the forensics against him.

We had biological information against him to know, like, this 100% is the guy. Right. And every bit of restraint in my body to not just go to town this guy. Sure. he's a bad guy who has killed American soldier he is an enemy combatant but he didn't have a weapon at the time that you rolled them up exactly yeah he's a coward yeah complete coward like but a lot of those bond makers and those people liked that they were like that they were basically untouchable they could do anything they wanted uh and they would get there was a catch and release program with yeah so that's uh yeah that whole sequence and then my heart condition I was like I've got to be done I've got to get out I mean that's also like a very adult decision as difficult as it is to like come to the conclusion like hey I I've hit that point like it's time for me to leave yeah and what was that transition like for you when you when you left the military I did not transition well when I say I don't I didn't transition well I didn't like I didn't get an out call. I didn't like go down and spiral down those like deep, deep dark holes and stuff like that. The way that I avoided those holes is I just sealed everything off.

I've closed up that book, put it on the shelf, and said, I'm just not touching it. I just left it up there. And so when I got out, I went to school. I went to Appalachian State University. One of the guys I had served with, he was going to App State. He got out a few years earlier than me. Same time that I had my heart condition at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was going to school at App State and Boone. And so I went and visited him during one of the weekends and fell in love with the area. So I was like, okay, I want to go here if I ever get out. But I decided to go to App State. And when I went, I didn't tell anybody that's part of the military and I didn't wear anything that would, I didn't even have anything that had an American flag on it, like,

nothing. I was like, nobody's going to know that I was part of the military ever. I even, like, let my hair start growing out, all that kind of stuff, you know. I was like, I just, I don't want anybody to think that I was part of the military. And it was, it was literally people having to, like, prod and pry or, like, it coming out somehow, like, my wife make a mention or something when we're having drinks or food or whatever that, like, somehow found out that I was part of the military. But, like, I still did not tell them anything that I did. I was very reluctant to say anything. Like I even had, you know, everybody has like their,

I love me wall or whatever. You know, you have a few coins or a plaque or something on the wall. It's like, I would have people come over and like they'd walk in my office and they'd see that. And they were like, you're in the military? I was like, yeah, it was. But like I was very reluctant to share any of that with anybody. And it took until deciding to write this, write this book that, like I was pushing everything off.

How did that come about that you decided to write a photography book? Yeah. So I, in 2020, as everybody in the pandemic, was at home, sitting on their laurels and thinking about their past and everything they had done with their lives, I was doing the same thing. I was like sitting, working from home, not really engaging with very many people, you know, because I had been working at that point years after I graduated. So I went to school at App State 2012, graduated 2018, worked for a couple years. And then when a pandemic happened, started thinking back to my service, started connecting with the few buddies I had served with, I was talking about a bunch of stuff, started realizing

that there was this common theme amongst all of us, that there were. wasn't, there wasn't a clear or good transition for pretty much anybody. Yeah. Like very, very few people had a good transition out of the military. And I was like, that's got to be something that can be solved. We've got to figure something out. So I started connecting with people figuring out, is there anything like we can do? Is there a website we can build?

Is there like a platform we can develop, whatever it is? Started finding, okay, well, there is some of those things out there. there actually are plenty of NGOs. Again, at this point, I hadn't connected with any of them because I didn't care up until at this point. So then I start connecting to them, through Ranger Foundation, Mike Hall, like I reach out to him.

I start just connecting the dots a little bit. At the same time, my buddy, Beau Simmons, who is my childhood best friend, who lived next to me, who told me all about the Rangers and, like, that's the all I knew about the military when I first joined. he had lived in California his whole life.

He had come visit me every once in a while, and finally he got to the point. He said, I need to leave California. I want to move somewhere different. So I convinced him to come move with me while he was transitioning to figure out where he wants to live on the East Coast. When he was moving, he did a road trip,

and he stopped and did a photo series because he's a fine art, and he was a fashion photographer, but now he's focusing more on fine art. So he's a fine art photographer, and he did a photo series for Heroes and Horses, which is a veteran nonprofit. Incredible organization.

I don't know if you heard of them, but they don't do like normal equine therapy where it's like you pet horses and stuff. They like break horses. So they put you out in the wilderness and like you have to go miles and miles miles miles on horseback. And they treat trauma and stuff like that, have nightly conversations like around the campfire and stuff.

So that's the way that they like help veterans with trauma to fight through it. So incredible organization. So he did this photo series. It did well. He finally got to my house. We're talking about different projects and things we're working on literally at my kitchen table.

I told him how he was telling me about the photo series, telling me how he wants to do more things with veterans. I was telling him how I wanted to figure out how we can help veterans as well, especially with the transition piece. Long story short, we stumble upon like, let's combine what we know. and I said, well, you're great at taking photos.

I know a lot of veterans who are having these horrible stories, transitions, things like that. I was like, let's tell these stories. And then also I knew what was coming. It was fall 2020 when we were having these discussions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, next year is going to be the 20th anniversary of 9-11. So I said, let's get on it now and do something so that when it comes time, we're not like all the other books that have come afterwards that are,

telling the stories when, you know, men are old and decrepit and, like, trying to remember things and things like that. It's like, let's write the book now so that we can pay honor and tribute to the people who have served as we're getting to this point of 20 years at war. And so that's also why I decided on the title of the 20-year war. And so this is an amazing book because, and it's a great book to go through and read personal stories and it's a great i don't know it's a great coffee table book you know the type of i don't know but it is basically and c40 was in this book um but it's basically i mean amazing photos with a one or two page story of it's a really beautiful book it's beautiful it's yeah it's fantastic that you jump right

into doing like this hard back glossy photography book i mean it's gorgeous yeah yeah and the stories are great because you know even if like you're not a veteran it'll explain that experience a bit you'll connect to people because it's the human side of it's not that there I was knee deep and hand grenades

it's who I am two things about this book I'm glad you you stumbled across that one is when we decided on these stories how we were going to write them is we didn't want it to be about the combat stories. Yes, there's a little bit about that combat piece.

It has to be. The one qualifier we had for this book is that you had to be a combat veteran from the GWAT. And so every story starts out with why did you join, you know, a little bit about their background, their story. Why do they join a little piece about their time and service? But then a majority of the stories is like, what was your transition like? What did you learn from the military? And what do you want to carry forward?

and what would you want to teach other people or like tell people about your service? And that was a critical component that we wanted to nail. And General O'Tell wrote it brilliantly in the forward. He said, I'm probably going to butcher the exact words, but he said along the lines of, as you're going through these stories and you're reading these stories, I hope that you connect, or I know that you'll connect with at least one because they're so broad. Right.

And it's so widespread across the GII. Again, it doesn't matter if you're a veteran or a civilian. You're going to connect with one of these stories. And that's what we wanted to break down is like, yes, these are veterans, but they're humans. Like, they're people. Like, and that's breaking down a bunch of different barriers that we could dive into. It's like the stigmas around veterans and things like that. It's like, you look at these portraits.

They're not portraits of people in uniform. It's portraits of people as they are. today and where they want to be and the things that they care about and presenting that in their photo. And I think that was a critical piece to just show that human aspect of the veteran. No, it's brilliant. We recommend everybody get it. Like, it's phenomenal.

Yeah. And in addition to this, like, you spent some of the time in Ukraine. I did, yeah. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. So I'll go through the quick version, but it was crazy. When we wrote this book, as you guys know, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was happening simultaneously. Every headline on the news was the 20-year war.

So it was an unfortunate and fortunate thing that happened is every news station wanted to have us on. veteran voice. Yeah. Not necessarily, this is why I say the unfortunate piece, not necessarily to talk about the book, but to have a veteran voice from an author who wrote a book titled The 20-year War, which is the headlines that are across all the news stations. So we literally, Tom Memento, who's the other co-author,

him and I were on every national news station you could possibly think of for the three or four months, you know, around the withdrawal from Afghanistan. stand. And it was a blessing and a curse because the blessing piece is that I know that we helped people get information out that they wouldn't have got out otherwise because we were being filtered as kind of like the media, the voices of like what's happening on the ground. So if there were issues, you know, about like just telling the stories of like why we got to get these people out about what the hurdles are, why we can't get some people out and why other people should be prioritizing all these other things.

Like we were explaining that in the media. So we ended up becoming these talking heads, voices, you know, in the media. Then when Ukraine comes around, they kind of circle back to us because I'm sure you've done some media rounds. Like when they like to have a voice, they just come back to the same people because they're like, oh, we like this person who was on previously. So they came back to us about Ukraine. So we started talking about it.

very early on Tom and I were talking about how Ukraine's probably going to need some people to help with training and being prepared for when Russia does invade. We didn't foresee them invading as quick as they did, but it happened. So come end of February when they invaded, Tom and I were like, maybe we should get over there and see what we can do and help at least train and prepare and get people going. We didn't want to be part of the fight. we've put in enough fights ourselves but we wanted to help prolong life get people prepared whatever it was I ended up going and supporting a what they call the self-defense training center in LeViv which was a civilian cohort of individuals who were all volunteers who wanted to receive some training so that when and if they got activated to go in the military,

that they would be prepared, that they can get more than just the, like, one week they may get of training, that they would actually be effective once they did get called up. Because what a lot of people don't maybe remember is anybody under the age of, is it 55, I think it was 55 male,

you're not allowed to leave the country because you could be activated into the war. So all those people are like, like I'm about to get activated, need to be prepared. So there's this high demand for it. Also, your previous guest was talking about it, how there was this very real thought that there was a risk of whether it was the Belarusian army or Russia coming from the Belarus border and cutting off the supply lines attacking Leviv. All the troops were at the front line around Kiev and everything like that. So basically,

LeVille was kind of stranded. So the same self-defense training force was like, we've got to be prepared because if they come to attack here, there's nobody to defend us. So we did that. I was there for just a couple weeks helping, but that established a pipeline of U.S. veterans who were helping to do this training. And actually, we went back up a little bit, it was already established, the Self-Defense Training Center, was established by a previous veteran cohort.

Adrian Bonneberger was part of that cohort, and helping establish this. And so I came in after that. And so that's how Adrian and I got connected. And then also Ethan Wilson, and why I'm mentioning these names will be important in a second, but was also part of this cohort in training when I was there. We realized that there was a very real need,

not just in Ukraine, but also globally with authoritarian governments and regimes putting pressure on democratic nations and that these democratic nations may not be prepared should something like Russia happen again. And so we saw the need to start something up. Also simultaneously, as you've had multiple guests on, a lot of U.S. veterans have found themselves in having a drive to help support these causes. And so we're like, well, let's create something that creates a pipeline for this. And it's been very like ad hoc conflict to conflict from Syria,

Iraq, Ukraine in 2014 to today. It makes sense to try to or attempt to formalize some of it. Yeah, exactly. And these ad hoc things that have been created to have either gotten themselves in trouble, have been disbanded quickly, are very like one-dimensional, one conflict or one thing that they're focused on, whereas what we're doing is we're trying to broaden this, to have kind of like a movement of kind of the same way that you see these

veteran-driven humanitarian efforts like Team Red, White and Blue who do disaster relief and things like that. It's like, we want to be an organization that can help these nations that are feeling pressure, again, from authoritarian regimes. So like Taiwan, a lot of of the eastern block like Lithuania, Poland, Germany even, some of the Nordic states, like they don't have the same level of military that we do here in the U.S. They don't have, a majority of them do not have like a National Guard or reserve force. And so you have, if they went full on board, they would have this pipeline of probably military age males that would need to serve, yet they have zero preparation and training.

Right. And what you're talking about and what you guys have set up is a nonprofit that it's not going in and arming civilians. It's not going in and, you know, creating militias. You're going in at the behest of these governments to basically just train people. The government, like, like I said, you're not arming them. You're not, you know, fueling small private armies. You are training in these governments, these small governments that don't have large standing militaries. You're going and you're training a civilian populace if you get the call and when your government issues you weapons, these are basic infantry tactics.

This is basically how you do things. Yeah, we're skirting a very fine line. Two things that we did that I think was critically important is we went the nonprofit route. That forces us to achieve certain things to make sure that we maintain nonprofit status. So we can't receive, like, direct gifts or payments from any sort of, like, foreign governments and stuff like that. It's all got to be funded through a traditional nonprofit pipeline. So we can receive grants, individual donations, state side. We could set up a international nonprofit, yeah, to get funds maybe outside of that.

But really, it's to make sure that we have controls in place so that we're, maintaining the proper compliance so that we're not getting ourselves in trouble. And then the second piece is making sure that we are compliant with the U.S. government. So, you know, registering and being licensed through the DDTC, making sure that we are ITAR compliant, that we are utilizing materials that are open source. We're just creating a pipeline of individuals who have the experience and ability to train on this open source material and getting others to a point where, should

they be called up, they'll at least have a baseline knowledge to where hopefully it'll prolong their life and the life of others around them if they should have to go fight. And do you want to plug it? Do you want to plug it? Yeah. So it's Citizens to Soldiers International. We just launched our website. It's citizens dash soldiers.org. And we're we purposely are slow rolling this. So we really started with a blog piece to kind of tell people. why training is important, why we're creating this organization, and why we're going about it in the way that we're going. And then, you know, as the fundraising comes up and everything, we've already got multiple civilian forces and agencies that are asking for this. They want it. They said, we need people who can come train these basic skill level zero, skill level one, small unit tactics, leadership, things like that so that we can be prepared if we do get called up.

And so that's what we're trying to do is like educate first and then we'll create, you know, a fund and a pipeline, hopefully of U.S. veterans who we vet and ensure are the right people to go in and actually train these populations. And it's sillians-souledgers.org, right? Citizens-Sys, sorry. Citizens-Sys-Solders.org. And then there was something else that you mentioned that I want to talk about. Can you talk about Phil Sussman real quick? Yeah. And anything else you want to plug after this, but...

Yeah, yeah. He's going to hate that I'm plugging him. But Phil Sussman is a very good friend of mine. He's in this book. He is an incredible, incredible person. I'm sure some of your listeners will know who he is by the name of Live American Yogi. That's his Instagram handle. But he's honestly one of the best loving people that I...

I know, Air Force veteran. He does yoga, wellness, a bunch of other stuff to help veterans with PTSD and everything. But he was just involved in the hurricane. His house was decimated by the hurricane in Florida recently. And he has a GoFundMe out there to help him basically rebuild his life because everything was destroyed. And again, like he didn't even create this GoFundMe. Somebody else did it for him. he's not the type of person who's going to go out there and ask for anything.

But he's just the type of person that, like, he needs the help. He's got to rebuild because, honestly, if he gets his life back and he's able to rebuild, then he can continue to help and support other people that need it. He's done incredible things, like I said, for veterans and even civilians. And I just couldn't think of another person to try to plug. And that's why I'm wearing the shirt, actually. This is an American Yogi shirt. So we'll put the link down the description.

But if you guys are listening to this and not on YouTube, it's Phil Sussman, S-U-S-S-M-A-N, American Yogi, Hurricane Relief on GoFundMe, please drop a couple of bucks. You know, help somebody out who's helping other people out. What else? Where can people find you? What else do you have going on? About the book really quick.

quick, people can go purchase a book, 20year war.com, it doesn't matter how you spell it. I have all the URLs, so 20 year war.com, you can purchase it there. People can purchase it through Amazon as well, but Amazon, you know, has, there are other ways of taking a percentage of... Amazon does Amazon. Go 20-year war any way you want to type that. And it's a phenomenal book. Please pick it up. Like, you love it. And the other thing we didn't even get into at all, but that book actually, turned into a museum exhibition. Oh, really?

Yeah. So we partner with the National Veterans Memorial Museum in Columbus, Ohio. So it is the National Museum. It's the only one. There are other veteran museums, but they are the only national veteran museum. There's like the National Marine Museum, the National Infantry Museum, but they're the only National Veterans Museum in Columbus, Ohio. We partnered with them.

we turned this book into an exhibition. It was in the museum for, I believe, six months, but it's a traveling museum. So now it's actually in San Antonio, Texas, at the Grunt Style headquarters. So anybody in that area can go check it out. Oh, fantastic. And then it's going to keep traveling.

It'll be hopping from place to place. We're hoping to get it actually here sometime in the next couple years at the 9-11 Memorial Museum. So it's a, it's a, It's a really cool experience. Like, it's kind of weird, if I'm going to be 100% honest, to like walk into any sort of museum that's just portraits. But when you know the reason behind the portraits and you read the stories that go along with them in the exhibition, like the feedback I've received from folks who walk through, especially civilians, and then even people from other wars from, you know, wars past, like World War II vets have walked through.

and we actually had a guest book in the National Veterans Memorial Museum and a World War II vet wrote in there and he basically said why I wrote this book now he was like thank you for not waiting and that was huge I was like it still gives me chills

like the fact that he said that I was like yeah and and do you on your websites of the 20 year war do you have like the location how can people keep track of where it's going to be and if it's in their town so if you go to national vmmmmimimimmycmic.org there is an exhibitions tab and you'll see the 20 year war on there and it's got all the information about it and where it's going to be and dates and stuff like fantastic

yeah so it'll well i don't want to say where it's going to be because we're still trying to trying to get it in the next place. But we're hoping it'll stay in the San Antonio area next. So it's in Grunt Style Headquarters until Veterans Day. So it's there until November 11th. Then from there, it'll pick up and go to the next place. And then it'll just keep rotating to new museums, new locations. So hopefully it's awesome.

Yeah, hopefully it'll get into, you know, within a couple hour driving range of anybody, you know, across the U.S. Fantastic. Real quick. A couple questions. Jackson, thank you very much. Did you ever work with CAG, dev group, or HRT, which you didn't impress you the most and why? Oh, I worked with all of them. I think Cag was the most impressive, primarily because they were like, you know, they didn't need anything. They were so self-sufficient. and efficient of what they were doing. Like, we would do ops with a full platoon. So, you know, a full platoon would be four squads, plus all your attachments end up being, like, anywhere from 35 to 40 people.

Cag could go on an op with 20 or less people and be just as effective. So it was really impressive to watch them and to be able to work with them and just see how effective they can be. What's cool is Cag is primarily made up of Rangers and SF folks. So, like, you get this instant connection with them as well because our pipeline, you know,

it was already there. It's like, they were like, oh, you know, what platoon are you in? Oh, yeah, I was there back in 06 or whatever, 05 or 02 or whatever. You know, so it was like that instant camaraderie there. Whereas, like you, like, dev your HRT, stuff like that, like they don't have that same instant connection there. So, yeah, that's what I'd say was probably the best. And Joe's got you.

Did you ever cross-trainer operate with UK SFSG? I did not. The closest we got was we worked with, I can't remember what they were called, but the Australian version of special operations. The commandos or the SAS? I believe it's their SAS. Yeah. And it was only training.

Sasser. Yeah, it was only training that we did with them. It was in country, though. So it was kind of cool to do some training in country with them. That's pretty cool. Yeah. And that's not it. Thank you so much, Dan.

We really appreciate it. And we really apologize for the technical difficulties tonight. It happens. Yeah. We're going to blame D. It's going to be fuming for days about this. We won't hear the end of it. D is like the Navy SEALs of podcasting.

I'm saying, no, D, we love you. Yeah, we love you. And we love Navy Seals. I'm just kidding. So on Friday, we'll be back. We're going to have David McCloskey on the show. He was a CIA analyst. He's the author of Damascus Station and the upcoming Moscow X. This will be out in October. I just finished reading this book a few weeks ago. Super good. Really cool book. So we'll talk to him all about that stuff on Friday. Do we? Well, what is it, Dee? Hold on one second.

please you got it Dave yeah um let's see here thanks Dave Isaac I'm 30 I'm 30 in my third year of uni going for my bachelor's degree in cybersecurity I wasn't able to join the arm because of medical stuff but I still want to do stuff like you in spec ops covert world like you did what can I do and to increase my chances of getting in or at least being getting or being help probably at this point is getting into the contracting world, especially within special operations, there's a few companies that work directly with special operations like CACI. I know is a big one that works directly in Socom. They even have like an office working out of there.

Cacky. Yeah, a lot of IT work, especially if that's what he's getting into, cybersecurity and stuff, they contract a ton of that. So have an exposure there that's like probably the quickest way that I can think of is looking at who holds some of those contracts, especially in an area that he's working in. But I will also say it's worth calling up like the regimental recruiting office because we were talking about it offline is they do have their own intelligence company now. I know a portion of that is cybersecurity, so certainly a possibility to kind of get the foothold in special operations there.

Eric, can you throw us military nerds a bone and mention the number designation for your task force in Iraq or the Rangers task force right at that time? And you can or can't,

you know, that's your choice whether you want to answer that. I'm pretty sure it's pretty publicly out there now. But you could probably find it. Yeah. Yeah, you can find it pretty easily. There's a few books that are written, too,

that clearly say which task force were operating at what time and who those people were. And also, you mentioned some intelligence discrepancies in Afghanistan. Do you think it was harder to get good signals in human intelligence because the battle space was so different than Iraq? Oh, 100%. A few things. Technology-wise, not as many cell towers in Afghanistan.

just not as much SIGAN intelligence that you can get out there. So that's a huge piece of it. And then also just they learned really quick how to transmit messages without any communication. So again, very tribal area.

It's literally like not messenger pigeon, but people on, people on, what were those little dirt bike? Yeah. Look of things. Yeah. Soup canes with a string.

Yeah. A lot of those. that people were riding around with messages like just word of mouth. Careers, yeah. Yeah, careers. And so that's, that was, that was different because you're now not tracking messages that you can do in a digital land space, but now you have to have line of sight to be able to know how messages are being transmitted. And then you also don't know what they're saying.

Yeah. All right. Dan, thank you, man. Yeah. Really appreciate it. We really appreciate it. Hope guys will go out and check out the 20-year war. percent or 0.03% of our viewers.

Of our girl. The two women that watch this show, according to our statistical demographics. The 20-year war, really cool photography book. I hope you guys and girls will go and check it out. Thank you for joining us on the show, despite our technical difficulties. Dan, appreciate you coming out, man. Yeah, of course. And we hope to have Jan again sometime.

Of course. Next project that comes around and whatever else you're working on. and everyone else out there we'll see you on Friday with David McCloskey. So take care.