The Team House - 82nd Airborne in Iraq Tasked with TST Missions | Lance Strong | Ep. 325

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

Enlisting in the Army at 17 under the Delayed Entry Program, Lance began his military journey as an Airborne Infantryman, inspired by Band of Brothers. After completing training at Ft. Benning, he was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg and quickly deployed to Iraq in 2007. Integrated into a RSTA Squadron, he participated in high-intensity combat operations, including nightly raids and Hunter-Killer Team missions.On September 10, 2007, during a major operation targeting 19 high-value individuals, his convoy suffered a catastrophic accident, resulting in multiple casualties. Severely wounded, he underwent extensive medical treatment and a grueling 10-month recovery before being medically retired at just 20 years old. Transitioning to civilian life was challenging, but he became an advocate for veterans, working with high-profile figures, including Gov. Schwarzenegger, to push for veteran-friendly programs.https://saddlesinservice.org/https://dothethingmovies.com/Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnPodcast/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 50% OFF!!!Fabric Gerber Life Insurance ⬇️https://hello.meetfabric.com/term-life-insurance-partner-teamhouse?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=premium_podcast_vanityurl&utm_content=teamhouse____________________________________Order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]0:00 start Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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not available in certain states and prices subject to underwriting and health questions. Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage. The Team House. With your hopes, Jack Murphy,

and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 324 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy. I'm here with our guest tonight, Lance Strong, who served in the 82nd Airborne with Arista Squadron. They are, we'll get into it, but recon squadron, but they ended up with a very direct action mission, as we'll get into. He was, you know, seriously injured in Baghdad and a pretty horrific accident. We'll talk about med boarded out of the Army. And, have done all kinds of interesting things, varied things in the interim since he got out of the military. So Lance, thank you for joining us tonight. Hey, you're welcome. Thanks for having me. I definitely feel privileged and honored, you know, not having served in special operations or done anything too special. And I probably hold the record for all of your guests of having the shortest, most condensed military career in your podcast history. This is what I offer to you and those like you, is that at least you're not a dirty, nasty leg. I don't know if I could, I don't know if I could

tolerate that. I don't know if I can tolerate that. But seriously, though, this isn't just a special ops podcast. I don't want people to think that we try to include people all across the military, across the intelligence community, including some law enforcement and things like that. For sure. Awesome. All right. Well, I'll fit right in then. So tell us a little bit about growing up. You came out of a small town, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. San Luis Obispo, which is the central coast of California.

So most people have heard of Santa Barbara, a lot of famous people. You know, it's north of L.A. And then San Luis Obispo is kind of smack dab in the middle between the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Rolling Green Hills, lots of vineyards these days. born and raised. It was mostly cattle ranches. Those are all vineyards pretty much. Small town, it's getting bigger and bigger every time we go back and visit. But yeah, you know, what was interesting, I think, you know, unique, where I grew up, I think out of my class, you know, graduating high school, there was two or three of us, you know, that entered the military.

And it was 2005 when I, when I signed up. What was the size of your graduating class in high school? Probably 400-ish, you know. Oh, okay, so a small town, but that's a pretty big graduating class. Really the only high school in the entire town, right? So that's it. I think there's one other private high school that was much smaller. But yeah, so big class, I suppose.

Maybe it was only 300. I honestly don't remember. But, yeah, only high school in town. So, tigers. Yeah, it was good. And my dad went there too. So it was funny is I, so I go, you know, the same high school my dad went to, who was born and raised, same, you know, same town. And we had one auto shop teacher and maybe like an English or math teacher, right?

That was the same. Like they started with my dad. Oh, right. And then the year after having me, they all retired. They could not handle two of us. So, yeah. That was good. So three people from your graduating.

class end up in the military and one of them joins the army with you right yeah so one of one of my best friends that we uh you know we grew up i probably knew him since the first grade you know um awesome friends and we kind of were on our own path going to join you know and obviously i mean just like any other veteran in our generation 9-11 you know had a huge huge um part of that i think my buddy, he, um, he was always going to go. I mean, like, you know, I, I don't know when it was for him, but I think Black Hawk down the movie, you know, he was going to be a ranger from the day. He was, you know, born kind of thing. Um, and for me, I probably didn't get serious about it until 9-11. Um, I would have been like eighth grade, 14 or so, um, you know, really, really, uh, had an impact like

it did all of us. And really, you know, I always looked up to veterans. You know, I know a lot of young people never really saw it. But I mean, whether it was movies or real stories or, you know, I had all the books, you know, everything growing up. And I just, I always wanted to say thank you, especially to like the Vietnam era. I knew a lot of Vietnam veterans who were kind of my heroes and just the crap that they went through and everything they dealt with.

like I felt so called to somehow say thank you. And the only way I kind of knew how was to be like, okay, I'm going to, you know, walk a mile in their boots, you know. And so that's what I did. I was 17 when I joined. I needed my parents, you know, permission slip, you know, to Uncle Sam. And they weren't super stoked on it just because there was two wars going on in 2005. And, you know, my recruiter even told them like,

oh, I've been in the infantry for 10 years. I've never been deployed, you know, and stuff. And they knew I was going right over there. And that's what I wanted. I think they knew as soon as I turned 18, I was going to go anyway. So they signed that. I was in the delayed entry program for the rest of my senior year with my buddy. So I think we even got promoted once, you know,

or something like that in that delayed entry program. If you, yeah, I don't know. You like take a PT test and, you know, something like that. Yeah, yeah, PT tests and then like learning all the ranks and some, you know, military stuff, whatever. So yeah, and for me, I never looked at any other branch. There was no way I was going to go in the Navy. I don't like water. You don't really like boats.

The last cool ship to me was a pirate ship. And there's none of those in the Navy, you know, so I wasn't going to join the Navy. And the Marines, I mean, the Army for, for. Airborne infantry was given out $20,000 signing bonuses to in 2005. So it was always going to be the Army. I felt like the way they looked at obstacles, you know, and tried to figure out how to get around them instead of just, you know, bashing right through, although some units, you know, do that.

But I don't know, yeah, I think if I could live another life, I'd try to be a pilot, you know, or something like that. But I'm, I probably from the time I watched Band of Brothers, Airborne Infantry was what I wanted to be. I wanted so badly to go to 101st Airborne. I had no idea they weren't jumping. I just thought they were so cool in Band of Brothers. And yeah, so I think I graduated 2006, June in 2006,

and within a few weeks I was headed to Georgia, Fort Benning, the whole Sand Hill experience, Oset. So it was, it says, like a 16-week basic and infantry school all in one. I don't know if it was the same when you were going through or not. Yeah, it's pretty similar. And so, I mean, yeah, you, 16 weeks later, you're a highly trained combat killer. And you're also rich with your $20,000 sign-in bonus. So rich.

Yeah. King of the castle. Yeah, I probably was the only private from our class that didn't blow that on the lemon lot cars. and, you know, strippers and the whole bit. I saved all that up, luckily. Yeah, saved every dime of it. I really didn't have time to buy much of anything either. So as soon as I finished, it was kind of a weird time, too, for all the training

because there was so many people joining at that time. They didn't have, like, enough cadre to keep things, like, super moving. So even when we got there, like, we waited around, basically. just getting smoked and just it sucked like waiting around to even start basic and so you never knew like wait when does it start because it all sucked so bad and it was like man i made a mistake and those like two or three weeks of waiting for basic to start you know we're almost worse because it was just like i'm wasting my life like let's go you know let's do this um and then same thing kind of happened after i graduated for airborne school there was a lot of um had airborne on my contract everything um

there was just like a backlog right so we're like waiting for the school to accept us and just doing stupid stuff, right? Details and running a lot and and all that. I got to go home for Thanksgiving. Yeah, and then finally started. Yeah, but it was, Airborne school was my, was by far my favorite time in the military, I think. You know, nights and weekends off. It was, it was fun.

I loved Airborne school. I didn't, I don't know if, did you get to do the. towers? No. Okay, so I lucked out too because I you know the whole time was like I want to do the towers but then you're like there and you're like I don't want to do the towers so that that doesn't look fun at all and like the guy before us like our chalk or whatever he flew into the tower and got stuck and it was just like yes so they call it off right when that happens they call it off takes forever to get them down all that and and it was great because I heard the towers were even worse than the actual jumps I don't know if that's true because I never did the tower but

Yeah, it's a little, it's a little iffy, right? I don't know what it is. Like, heights hit you differently psychologically. Like, jumping out of that, like you for sure did, what was it, a 34-foot tower? Oh, yeah, yeah, 36, right? Something like that. It's like at the scientific height of being afraid of heights. Yeah.

So it's high enough, yeah, to make people not want to jump out. Yeah, for sure. And then when you jump, you know, at, well, 1,500 feet or whatever it is, I mean, That's still low enough. You can see like little pine trees down there and you're like, well, I don't know if I want to go and do this. But then years later when I did the free fall course, it's like you get that high up at like 12,000 feet. The earth just looks like a painting. Like your brain doesn't really register.

No. Yeah, for sure. For sure. All those are different experiences. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I loved everyone in school.

I'll just share one jump story, right? because I have to. I'm on a podcast, right? So my fourth jump, everything had gone pretty well. Actually, I got a concussion on the first jump, hit the back of my head. And I was, like, throwing up all night and, like, passing out and stuff. But if you go to sick call, like, you're done, you know, you wash out or whatever. So I'm like, no way, I'm going to do that.

You know, they always make you run, right? So if you break anything, a foot or leg or something like that, there's no way they can, they'll weed you out because, they'll know you'll be limping, you know, and fall out of the runs. But so the fourth jump, as I'm going out the door, like I'm handing, you know, I'm handing my line to the jump master. He, he like goes like, whoa, whoa, whoa. As I'm like jumping and it made me hesitate, right?

And I think he was talking to the person behind me who was like rushing me or something. But that whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, made me hesitate. So I didn't get a good jump out of the aircraft. and I bounced the down the side of the fuselage like bounce off the fuselage got sucked underneath my um shoot ends up opening and I'm twisted like completely twisted up and the guy from the other side jumping out lands on my shoot

and then he like runs across my shoot and I just hear him go like ah I'm like scream and fall and his shoot opens again and and I'm like trying to get out trying to get out doing the bicycle kick thing you know to get everything straight out and as soon as it does you got the rucksack and your weapon and everything right as soon as it does like i have almost no time to to get this off of me right and i pulled a quick release and i as soon as i got my weapon like off like i just hit the ground so so hard and there was a black hat there and he was like you know screaming now the bullhorn and he's like my god private you're gonna

die you know all this stuff and and then i like look up and i see a dude coming in real hot right to the Black Hat's truck. And I'm like, hey, hey, hey. And he turns around. He's like, what's going on? And the guy just puts that taco-sized dent in the side of his, you know, F-150 or whatever. Boom. And he's like, you know, God, you guys are going to kill me today, you know.

And he's, you know, all mad and everything. So I was actually pretty nervous for the fifth jump because, you know, two of them have already hurt really bad. And I was like, maybe this wasn't a great idea. One of the reasons, too, is like, I loved flying. love taking off, I love flying around, but I hated the landing part. So I thought, well, if I jump out of the plane before the landing part, like, hey, I'll skip my least favorite part.

Well, again, I loved jumping out. I loved floating down. I hated the landing part. That part sucked. But that fifth jump just went perfect. It was like textbook. Like, I didn't even feel it. It was amazing.

So graduated. My grandpa, Papa Strong, came out with my mom. He got to pin my wing. on me. That was a pretty proud moment for me, especially because that was my, you know, my goal. And as I mentioned to you before, some probably towards the end of the school, they, they took a lot of us infantry guys in from Sand Hill. And, you know, if you didn't have a rip on your contract, they asked if you, you know, wanted to go to Rip Ranger Indoctrination Program. I think it's called Rasp now.

and I don't know just being like young and dumb and already have had to wait for the different schools already I just I wanted to get with a unit I wanted to get over there I didn't want to miss the surge you know all that kind of stuff because that's what they were kind of talking about was this huge you know mobilization and yeah like I said I wanted I wanted to go 101st so when I got my orders you know it said 80 second on it and I remember just being like oh man like I I missed I'm going to go 100 and first so when I got my orders you know it said 80 second on it and I remember just being like oh man like I I missed I'm going to the rival you know um and i remember one of the one of the cadre like took me aside and he's like you know you're you're an idiot man you're you're you're super lucky like this is the bet you know this is the most prestigious you know airborne unit there is um you know don't worry about that band of brothers crap they don't even jump anymore you know they're they're um dopes on a rope now you know repelling out of helicopters so you're lucky and i was i was like the only guy that I knew of and any of the chocks around me that was going to Fort Bragg. So I think I went straight from Airborne School home to do Christmas.

So I had a couple days, did Christmas with my family, and then got on a plane and and then got to go to the famous Fort Bragg, which is Fort Liberty now. If you sleep hot at night, you know just how disruptive it can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night or all the above. that's where Ghost Bed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world, Ghostbed is your go-to for cooling mattresses, cooling pillows, and even cooling bedding.

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what unit you know I'd be in. So when I got to brag, it would have been December, like real late December. I don't know, like 26th, 27th of December. It is a ghost town, like a ghost town. All of the, you know, divisions are, or the brigades are already mobilized. One had just gotten back, I think, from Afghanistan. And kind of the word on the street was, you know, you'll, the new guys will probably, go there and train up for like a year and then go back, you know, for another 12 or 15 month deployment, you know, to Afghanistan. So I remember calling my parents and be like, hey, don't worry, I'm not going to deploy for like a year. I'm pretty bummed, you know, whatever. And then within like a couple days, it was like, actually, you're assigned to the first of the 325. So they always said one thing will change three times twice every five minutes in the first of the three to five so i get to i get to them and it's just their rear d um there's you know hardly anybody there um so some guys recovering from some things um and yeah i get to them and we i mean i thought i thought i knew what

running a lot was um when you get to the eight seconds especially when you're a new guy you know they they you find out real fast. Like, if you didn't already have shin splints, like you're going to get shin splints. And that was the first time, probably my first run with that unit, the rear D guys. I'm not talking about the big slow, like, division-wide runs. I'm talking about just the unit runs in the morning,

first thing in the morning. I think that first run was like nine, ten miles. I don't think I had ever run that far. It was the first time I got runners high, like legit runners high. My legs were not stopping after. after I was done, you know, and the pace was just insane. So I spent, um, a few weeks, which again, I'm like in this waiting period, don't have a unit, just kind of waiting around. Um,

and yeah, it was just, it was kind of a weird, weird experience. But then, yeah, I had to tell, call the family and say, hey, I'm, uh, getting on a plane. It's headed for Germany and then Kuwait, uh, like the next day, you know, so yeah, a couple weeks there. I remember watching a few football games at the uh they have a little sports bar there you know on fort brag and um yeah and then headed on out um to Kuwait did did like the most ridiculous um pre-deployment training in Kuwait like you've ever so again you were saying like i'm highly trained you know this this infantry graduate right um i know how to dig a vietnam style hasty fighting position i've never held an M4

yet, I don't think. We had M4s, just not the same ones, you know, that the units had. Maybe we had M16s. I can't even remember. That's crazy. It was like 20 years ago, right? It happens, man.

But I don't think we had M4s. But who knows? Someone's going to tell me I'm an idiot at some point here. But yeah, so we, I get there and, you know, they had those like Connecks, like trucks with the computer screen and you had the little air guns and you'd like you know okay corral western style like shoot you know the little guys off the tops of building i mean legitimate like the dumbest

thing you could think of like you're all on a line and you're like oh yeah the iraqis pop out and you just you know make sure you shoot the right ones um it was it was hilarious and then like maybe a couple like rollover you know humvee things you know where you simulate like grabbing the gunner's legs like that's going to save his life and stuff you know so silly stuff and i remember sleeping a ton like just sleeping and then eating and sleeping and eating and doing some dumb training so i get sent uh you know take the plane ride over to bagdad um land in the green zone get told and it's just me and a few guys like 10 or 12 guys you know from rear d for the first of the 3-25.

They tell us to get on this Chinook and they take us to Camp Taji. So it's a little north of Baghdad. And that was the first time, you know, I'd been on a Chinook, you know, anything. Like, I'm like, you know, had no idea. We're going to get shot down, you know, like, no idea what's going on. Don't, not really assigned to a unit yet, right, or anything yet. And so then we landed Camp Taji and I get off, get into like a big truck, like an LMTV that takes us.

to this little, like, hut thing they built, you know, with, like, plywood. The plywood's still bare and everything. And we go in there and all right, you know, so-and-so and so-and-so, you're in Alpha Company, go with this guy. You guys are in Bravo Company. Go with that guy. And nobody calls my name. I'm sitting there, like, alone.

And I'm like, am I even supposed to be in Iraq right now, you know? Like, am I even qualified to be in Iraq? I'm not even on a list, right? like what's going on and then somebody walks out and he asked me like do you know anybody in the military and i said yeah my you know my best friend from sandless abisbo you know we went to boot camp together all this he's like no you idiot because do you know anybody like high up in the military any family or any other than no no you know my grandpa was in rural war two and he's just like you're an idiot he goes well don't expect a warm welcome but you're going to uh charlie troop first squadron

73rd CAV. Like, I'm not, I'm not Cav. And he's like, no, no, you're going to all the Charlie troops in the squadrons are airborne infantry. It's purely infantry unit, a troop, you know, so this is the only

infantry troop in these cab units. And these units are attached to each brigade. And they're the Rista squadrons. So they're the reconnaissance surveillance, target acquisition. You know, and he was like, you know, most of these guys you know have all the you know they got the ranger tab they they're they're our slick um you know

they've done all the schools and stuff like i don't know why you're going to these guys but um like good luck and don't expect a warm welcome right i don't know how much you know or or can speak to about sort of like the lineage of rista yeah because i mean it's always interesting and frustrating to me, it seems like the army is always disbanding these, you know, dismounted or airborne light reconnaissance elements. You know, we had LERS. There was division LERS at 82nd Airborne. Yeah. The Lerst teams kind of go away. And then it seems like the Rista guys were the kind of replacements that got stood up. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting. You said that. I'm glad that you reminded before this podcast, I kind of wanted to like look,

you know, look up my old unit. And it just got disbanded. like in June of 2024. They killed the unit, yeah. So I think they're now moving to, I don't know if they're, they do more mechanized, you know, Rista stuff now or whatever, drones and stuff too. I think they're going to be replaced with like different,

you know, different stuff, I guess, as the battlefield changes. So I was a little bit bummed out. It's like, no way, my old unit is gone. But yeah, so the lineage goes back, like even, I think even, for Vietnam, but probably got pretty famous in Vietnam for the Lerps, Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol. And I have a cool story of meeting a Lerps guy when I was medically retired and

heading home. So if I forget that story and you remember, let me, let me share it. But he was in my same unit, but in a Lerps in, you know, 82nd Airborne Lerps guy in Vietnam. It was pretty cool. He was the sheriff of Amarillo. So if you don't, if I don't remember, Sheriff of Amarillo story, make sure you, let me tell you that. So yeah, so the Rista units are basically, you know, or were the Brigade's recon teams, right? And so if you were thinking of it in like, you know, conventional terms of, you know, like if we were in World War II or whatever again, the Rista would be out there doing the scouting, the recon, all that target acquisition.

They would do some engagement, you know, when necessary, some direct action, but really their mission was, you know, to get in, get the lay of the land, get all the intel you possibly can, eyes on. Again, target acquisition piece of it there too. And then, you know, that was all before the brigades, the airborne infantry would then come in and take care of that. So the way the Rista squadrons were... were built up. I wish, I wish I had it pulled up here, but like the Alpha, Alpha Troop would,

A troop would be, um, Cav Scouts and they might be like, um, you know, mounted, um, scouts. And then, you know, B troop is going to be, um, Cav Scouts and, and they have a different mission. And then that, that Charlie troop is always, um, more of the heavy hitter, fully infantry guys that are all, you know, reconned up. Um, and again, like, like our slick pathfinder. I think we even had some sapper guys. And I mean, all the schools, you know, a lot of our leadership had done and were incredible. And so, yeah, so going back to that story, so I get on another truck, I get taken to a part of Camp Taji where there's just like these warehouses.

There's like maybe eight or more warehouses like in a row, two rows of them. And it's not fully like a compound inside of Camp Taji, but it is its own, like, area. And there was like kind of cat corner from us was a seal team. And I'm not sure like who our neighbors were or anything, but, you know, just to kind of paint the picture of the people I'm coming to with a high and tight just so we can figure this out. these guys had had just done five months in in Iraq mostly into crit they were one of the first units or the first unit to support CAG during the torch missions they had been flying around Chinooks blackhawks doing you know direct action raids taking out huge caches of um of you know iEDs or whatever doing like super high-speed badass shit for five months. You know, they weren't wearing 82nd patches. They weren't wearing U.S. Army patches.

They had the black patch under the shoulder. It said OCEFI, other coalition forces in Iraq. So they are, and they've all survived this five-month, you know, high-speed deployment. They go home for December and right around Christmas, like the day that I, you know, basically get to brag, they were all told. hey, you're going back for another five-month deployment. We need you back there. So not only are they kind of mad that they're back there, but they're also like, again, like total badasses

that it's almost like when you're doing stuff like above your pay grade, you then have the mentality like we're really special and awesome, right? Like there's no way to not have that. But then a guy like me coming straight from building, you know, hasty fighting positions in the woods of Georgia with, you know, I'm a five jump chump. I have nothing but airborne school. And I'm useless to these guys pretty much, right? I'm just the body.

So when I get to them, they're just like, oh, God, you know, you're so, you know. And luckily I got, I got put with a really awesome sergeant, my, I guess he was like with a squad leader. So I was going to say team leader, but he was our squad leader at first. And he, Sergeant Meyer, was just an awesome dude. I mean, one of the, well, the first thing he told me is he said, you look like an idiot. Don't cut your hair for two weeks. That was the first thing he said to me. And then he said, look, we play by the big boy rules here.

You know, I'm not going to mess you up unless you mess up. Don't expect to go out on missions with us for a few weeks. Like you don't even have a Humvee license. you don't have. We didn't do any like air assaults, but, you know, I have zero experience. I've worn nods for all of five minutes in basic training, right? I have like the lamest amount of experience with close quarter combat.

All the stuff you need in Iraq, especially with a unit like these guys, I don't have any of it. So they're not going to take me out until they know, like, you know, I'm not going to shoot one of them on accident or, you know, all that kind of stuff. So my chores were like at night when they'd go out on mission, I would run around with nods on, fully geared up, like behind our warehouses. There was all these like just like metal garbage like all over the place. And they would have like me run and jump over these things and like just get super acquainted with nods.

Because we, we always, you know, rolled out in darkness, drove with nods. You know, we had no lights, nothing. And so it was just like you got to show us that you can drive a Humvee with, you know, all that kind of stuff, with nods, you know, whatever. So it probably took a little bit before I went out. It was kind of like that puppy dog left on the front porch, you know, as they rolled out. And then I'd always have tasks or something to do. But it was kind of lame.

And then, yeah, I remember the first mission I did started in the day. I think going back, so I've really tried to piece this together because, again, I wasn't obviously in any leadership role had no privy of exactly what our mission was or anything. I knew what the surge was supposed to be about. I knew what the 82nd was, what their mission was, each of the, you know, units and battalions are taking a piece of bag to have, so we'd have AOs, right? And we were assigned. My Rista unit was assigned in AO. And we were going out and we were checking we were getting to know our AO is the first thing, right? And then we were checking on sites that we could actually build like a cop.

Everyone was going in building up a cop and we were going to occupy, you know, Baghdad. I think our leadership after doing all the cool stuff that, you know, just a month earlier, was kind of like, yeah, F that. We're not doing that. We're going to do cool stuff. And because really quickly kind of, it was like, oh, no, we're. we're going to stay at Camp Taji in these awesome, you know, warehouses with bunk beds and porcelain and showers and stuff.

But we're going to, we're just going to start hitting, like, all the, all the insurgent stuff. I don't know where we got our intel from completely or whatnot, but we would build, you know, target packages and then we would go after, after, you know, high value targets. And again, I don't know what kind of level these high value targets were. I knew some of them were pretty big. deals at the time in 2007.

And that's, I think we just proved that that is what we were really good at. I, again, it'd be awesome to have some of my leadership on at some point to talk about what exactly happened. But we just, we're doing time sensitive target raids. Short, you know, we would do some presence patrols and some knock and talks and stuff in our AOs during the days. But then almost every night, it was just hitting, hitting targets. And at first we would kind of switch it up.

So, you know, first platoon would be the cordon and they'd cordon off the area. Second platoon, we would hit the target houses. There might be like two or three target houses. And then we'd kind of switch that up, right? And we would be the cordon the next night or whatnot. And then as things developed, we kind of got more and more specific kind of in everyone's roles and especially at the beginning i mean we were so successful like there were hardly any dry holes we were we were um just bagging and tagging dudes left and right every single night we were

waking them up in their sleep we were using this new technology tracking cell phones it was like find your friends that we have now you know but it was like the old school version where someone sitting in the humvee with like an arrow you know and like yeah yeah right there right there hit hit that house, you know. Yeah, and then as we, I guess, became successful in that or whatnot or word got out or I don't really know. And there's rumors. There's like the, you know, like the war talk. Like, yeah, war talk where guys are like, well, so-and-so's dad is actually a J-Soc commander.

So that's probably why we're getting these, you know, missions or whatever. And that is true. but I've never been able to confirm that. And then I think it was kind of, you know, from the previous experience they had or whatnot, I don't know. But after we cleaned up our A.O., which was super quick. I mean, we cleaned it up fast. And we got in some gnarly firefights early on.

I don't know, like, what number mission it was or what night or whatnot. I guess before a firefight was an EFP that rocked us real bad. I'll talk about these hunter boxes we used, but we had these big huge LMTV or juice and a half trucks that up armored and everything. Open tops, we'd drape some like sniper netting over the top. And we had some guns mounted on the side and I think on the top. And then we had Humvees, right? So the platoon that was hitting the target buildings would be in the hunter boxes. And then the cord on off would be the Humvees.

And again, we would switch it. up. But we were doing, there was like a huge operation in all of Baghdad where they were like going through and we were going to go like house to house like everybody had their AO and they were going to clear their entire AO and stuff. So I remember doing this really long like all day, maybe all night and then into the next day kind of mission where you're just literally going house to house to house. And on our way back. So they saw us drive out of Camp Taji in these LM TVs with, Like we used to stand up in them. So it was like we packed these things out and they saw all of our heads back there and everything.

Well, on our way back, we got hit right outside Camp Taji, like at where one of the guard towers was. We got hit with a huge EFP angled up because they knew they were going to hit this LMTV with this big box, trying to get like mass casualties. And fortunately and unfortunately, we had a few take shrapnel and one guy. who ended up losing his hand. They couldn't save it. McCart was his name. And that first experience, you know, getting hit with the EFP was like, holy, you can't even describe like the power.

It's like getting hit with an invisible wall, you know, at like 400 miles an hour and like rocks your brain, rocks all the senses, couldn't, can't hear for a second. So everything's filled with smoke, you know, know the smoke cleared because there's no top and everything pretty fast like as your hearing's coming back you're kind of like especially me just being a super green cherry like what that i didn't even know an iED hit us then i just start hearing the screams you know of a couple of people that had gotten hit you know noticing blood at different places and then

my squad leader who i talked about sergeant mire um just basically took charge i mean there were there were like some pretty high-ranking dudes in that truck and there was a news week um like an embedded journalist oh i'll never forget that too on that same same truck and he you know everyone's kind of stunned and my my squad leader was like you know everybody off the truck and got got everybody moving got him off the truck and then we started kind of trying to see if we could go after anybody that might be in the vicinity and there was really no one around um i ended up falling into one of those like shit creeks you know where like the sewage goes so we're running through one of those and i mean i was like one step two step boom face plant right into this crap um and so i'm

covered head to toe and like poop oh my god and i'm trying to run through this like like i don't know like a field to get online with everybody and i was like one of the last people like huffing and puffing and i had swallowed my eyes are burning like you know i'm having a really hard time i remember getting and back to our warehouse and showering and everything. And my squad leader was like, come with me. And he, like, takes me to the gym, which is across the street. And we had this little gym and he tells me to get on a treadmill. And he's like, I don't ever want you to be last again.

You're going to, like, run every single day on this treadmill until, you know, you can prove that you're not going to be like the last guy when stuff happens. And I was like, I couldn't really say like, it's because I literally swallowed poop. and him covered head to toe, you know, wet. Like, no joke. Like, you're lucky to survive that alone. Guys who went into those pits, I mean, got hepatitis A through Z, like, bad stuff happened. I mean, maybe that's why I have Crohn's disease.

There's a few other things that might have gave to that. Yeah. Who knows? Yeah, I, yeah, fortunate that that, yeah, that happened. That was kind of my first, you know, taste of actual real combat. You know, the missions I'd gone on. we're just kind of like, hey, when are things, like, when do we get in a firefight? Like, when do we, you know, like, what happens, you know?

And we were, like, doing things, too, where there was, like, the guys would have these scavenger hunts, right? You kick a chicken. It was like 500 points. You slap a donkey was, like, thousand points, you know? One night, you know, there was, like, a donkey noise, you know, going off. And it was, like, found one, you know, over the calms. And, yeah, we kind of did some fun stuff like that.

But then, you know, as it progressed, it got more and more serious. One day we had a new platoon leader join us, and he was right out of Ranger School. Super awesome, dude. His first time out with us, he gets hit by a sniper in the side plate, right? Hits him in the side plate. And part of the fragments went in, I don't know if the side plate or whatever, something was like burning in his side. and it was some shrapnel from that bullet or whatever

and he was totally fine but we had all like a lot of guys were some of the guys were wearing plate carriers at least by the end but you know I had the I the cherry IBA and everything but I had noticed everybody's taking their side plates out this is super heavy and so my side plates were out you know

and I was ditching things left and right whenever I could because we were all usually moving pretty quick and as soon as he got hit in the side plate I look around when we get back and everybody is reaching into their foot locker, grabbing the side plates and like making sure no one's looking but putting their side plates back in. And so, yeah. So yeah. And again, like I've seen with the TST missions, like we, you know, at first we weren't really getting into anything heavy. We were just taking, you know, taking guys pretty quick.

And as we started moving into other areas of operation and doing things all over the place. So Gossalia, Gautamia, and then Shia. Shula was the worst place we always got in firefights there. But then, yeah, it's like they started getting smarter. They started having, you know, their guards or whatever out. They started swapping SIM cards. They started one time we hit this place. It was so eerie.

We go in and there's just a cell phone propped up against the wall. The whole building is empty and it's just a cell phone like on. It's like, yeah. And we thought the building was going to blow up. You know, we were. Yeah, yeah. trying to get out of there super fast. And so as they started getting smarter, you know, is when we started really,

especially when we started moving into Shula. The Cav, I can't remember what Cav unit was there, but they had taken crazy casualties in Shula in 2007. And when we started operating in there, ODAs were operating in there, different task force and stuff were working in there with us. we had some AWG Asymmetric Warfare group guys join us. I think the word was getting out. Hey, these guys go out every night.

Like, you got to embed with them or whatever. I would love, again, for some leadership to come on here and tell me exactly how that all went down. But for me being like the Cherry guy, it was like, hey, see those two guys over there that look super cool and have all that awesome gear? Yeah, don't even look at them. Don't talk to them. You know, nothing. So those were like the AWG guys. other dudes that were embedded with us.

But yeah, we were getting in some crazy firefights. I remember my first firefight was, it was funny, it was eerily similar to that Black Hawk down scene at the very beginning. We're like, how do they know, how do you know they're shooting at us, right? I remember asking, telling my squad leader, like, it's so loud, right?

And when you're in, in that urban environment, I mean, a bullet that's, you know, getting sent from over here sounds like it's, you know, over here and all that stuff. And when you're really an experience, like you just, you have no idea what's going on. And, you know, it's, really up to the sergeants and squad leaders to be like, hey, like, this is your sector of fire.

This is where you're, you know, during our court and off. Like, this is the only thing you need to know is like this corner. But the problem is, as you know, is like missions change and things go haywire. Suddenly it's like, you know, I realize like, no, I need to like, even though I'm not in those briefs, those like pre-op briefs and stuff, like I need to make sure I understand the area, understand where we're going. Because if squad leader goes down or my sergeant, you know, whoever goes down, you know, where things change, like I really need to make sure that I'm on it and know where to go,

know where the other guys are. Because a lot of times, I mean, you're just kind of a little bit, it feels like you're a little bit alone, right? With a few guys. I don't mean solo. I just mean, you know, you're kind of, you know. I feel isolated and kind of out there. Yeah. Yeah.

And I remember going, hey, how do it, because it was getting, it was starting to sound really different. And I'm like, hey, are we getting shot at? No, no, I don't think so. hey, were we getting shot at? And it was like, it was like, now we're getting shot at, you know. And I remember I'll never forget that snapping, you know, because you could be on a range, you know, where you're getting shot from over the top and hear that snapping.

But when it's like aimed at you, there's like a throaty noise to that, you know, almost like you could hear the barrel, like spitting at you. And that snapping is different. And when things start moving, yeah, things get crazy really fast. And so I'll never forget that. I'll never forget. There was a few times where we would hit a dry hole, but we were like really positive that it was the dude's house. So there was a couple times where we left and I was with him. It was like me and four other guys just stayed in the house. And our humvies and everybody drove off, you know, to a distance, you know, that was going to be quite a while if we got into some, you know, bad stuff. And we just waited for the guy to come. come home and, you know, bagged them up and called everybody in and, and rolled out again, you know, or whatever. But there's, there was some cool stuff like that. We did a lot of, like, overt denial stuff for, there's a lot of IEDs on this route Vernon that were taking out

tons of people and we'd roll up on them. Some of the worst things I saw were rolling up on people that had gotten hit with, you know, EFPs, trying to, you know, they'd be stuck in like their Humvee on fire trying to help pull them out. And we even would, if we weren't like on a TST mission that night, you know, we were like helping rush them to the nearest talk or fob or whatever and, um, and stuff. So we saw a lot of crazy, crazy things. We, my, Sergeant Meyer, my, my squad leader, he ended up, um, becoming the head of like the sniper section while we were there.

Um, he, he taught me a lot of. of awesome stuff. When I was recovering in the hospital, he actually got second place in the army marksmanship competition, sniper competition that year, which is really cool. So I'm like watching him on TV while I'm recovering in the hospital. The international sniper competition? Yeah, yeah, the military sniper competition. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, it was incredible. So he was, he's an amazing dude. But yeah, yeah, I think too towards the end, so we were supposed to do, another five-month deployment we get done with that five and they're like actually we're going to extend for another five and they now now they've already been there for 10 and this this is high

you know off-tempo stuff and not a lot of not a lot of sleep yeah so exhaustion setting in kind of that like zombie not enough sleep style started kind of playing into it too um so guys were starting to kind of just it was taking a toll on all of us um and anytime i wanted to complain you know I mean, they'd already been doing this for five months, so, you know, I definitely, you know, couldn't. But we started kind of doing some things where we'd leave a guy or two back one night just to kind of clear the head. Right. I'm going to kind of rotate and shift off just because there was just no end in sight. And then when we started, you know, I think, like we hadn't lost any guys yet, but one night, one night I'll never forget.

get. I definitely thought I wasn't going to make it that night. We're going back into Shula. We hit this house and I want to say we had been there before like it was a dry hole, you know, and so we go back like the next night or a couple nights later or whatever. But this night, when we go back, we're like, instead of rushing the Humvees in and cording off the area and letting and then escape, we'll run like super far. So we'll get dropped off way super far away and we'll like run a real far distance. And we'll, and we've done this a few times and been really successful. And then once the shit hit the fan, then the Humveys would come in and kind of support and stuff.

And this had been super successful. But as we're like running, we come to this like line of people that are waiting for like the gasoline like supply or whatever like they're literally like lined up and they're supposed to be you know like um um um uh curfews and stuff and nobody in schula really really uh ever listened to that and then we'd roll in and they'd things would get serious and there'd be some pop shots and everyone to disappear and then you would know like oh we're about to like you know get it and and um and we get in our fire fights and everything but yeah as we're like running through this line of people they're like you know on their cell phone like hey by the way there's like

This group of dudes running through here probably coming to you, you know, so it was a, it's kind of a blown thing. And, you know, maybe we should have not kept going, but how do you stop once you're kind of running in getting closer? So we hit it and we just were probably a small element. I don't think we had everybody. And we just got kind of surrounded and pinned down a little bit. I remember being with a buddy of mine kind of like face down in a kitchen and just like rounds just were like pinned face down rounds are just like just ruining everything in this house. And I remember looking at him being like, hey, like, how are we going to get out of here?

You know, and he like looked at me, grabbed me and he's like, you know, like we're going to make it. Don't you worry, you know, and everything. It was just one of those like crazy moments, you know. and unfortunately right around this time one of our guys who was outside got hit in the head with with a round an AK round and and collapsed and this Eddie Sandmeyer interesting story his sister is Bridget from Hugh Hefner's like third girlfriend that's sister so I never got to experience this but all the all that you it would get to go to the mansion and hang out with his sister and stuff.

I'm not sure they would have invited me anyway, but yeah, they would get to do that. So, and yeah, and one of the other platoon leaders, his babysitter was Fergie. Yeah, I can't confirm that one, but definitely can confirm Sergeant Sandmeyer. But anyway, Sandmeier ran out from his, you know, covered position to the, you know, middle of the road where Murphy had gotten hit and he grabbed him and like pulls him, you know, back into a house, into safety, starts doing first aid, called the medic, you know, all that kind of stuff. And kind of we're starting to piece together like, oh, somebody, somebody got hit, you know,

and I'm not, I don't have comms like like the squad leader and stuff have. But so it's starting to get serious. The trucks finally make it there. We always had, we always had Apache. and drones and all kinds of stuff, you know, for us. So anytime we got like really in it, we would call in the Apaches. And we could always, you know, make it out of there, luckily, you know,

because we could just start messing stuff up big time. And so, yeah, so we got them out and it started getting light and we got to a clearing where they could get, you know, bring in a medevac and they put them on the medevac. and I remember going back to our warehouse and like seeing guys cleaning out his helmet and there's like you know bone fragments and his helmet and like you know everybody's just like really really not doing well and he ended up making it so we got word that he that he had kind of pulled through and he was going to make it the bullet went through his frontal lobe ricocheted in his skull came and then came out the other. backside yeah like wrapped around yeah and um i ended up getting to see him um after i was wounded um i got to see him at a dinner at our platoon sergeant's house in in the um fort brag area um a while later obviously um but yeah um that was that was that was kind of our biggest you know closest um

brush with with losing someone at that point um and and kind of from then on And I don't even remember what, like, how far into the deployment that was, but it was pretty far. And, you know, guys were just starting to talk about death and, like, having bad feelings and thinking, you know, it was kind of the end. And it just was getting, it was getting dark and weird. Everyone's getting strung out. Yeah. Yeah. And I think all of us had really seen, seen kind of enough in a way, you know. We had a commander, or, yeah, our unit commander was, they called him T-1,000, super ripped dude, good-looking guy, blonde hair. So T-1,000 from Terminator.

And he was just always like, when's the next, you know, TST target? Why aren't they sending us target? Like, he just always wanted us out there. And as awesome as he was, you know, so. of the guys were kind of being like dude we need to like scale back a little bit like it's just getting too much you know and stuff um but yeah um i remember i remember um getting my first guys uh we got ambushed on the way back from a mission and um i was up in the turret that night and i remember i remember one of the it was like third squad their squad leader um sergeant um

Sergeant Gray, at one point he was like, you know, don't talk to me, Cherry, until, you know, you've killed someone or whatever, you know, and I remember after that mission going back to his bunk and just being like, hey, Sergeant, so we can, we can talk now, huh? And he's just like, get out of here, mother effer, you know, you're on at me. And I'm like, what the heck? So, you know, for a while there people were putting up like ace cards, you know, on their bed and stuff. And then, and then it just got so much that nobody cared at all. It was just like, we're just trying to survive. I even remember like one mission. I was up in a turret, started getting shot at, and I'm like shooting back. And it was like so constant and so often that like I had no adrenaline.

There was there was there was there was like no I'm getting shot at and there's no bump like no drug hit or anything. And I remember thinking like oh that's that's probably not good. Like that's like a broken something's broken. Yeah. It's like after a while you transcend the the danger reaction right. And you're kind of like just letting it hang out there not necessarily giving a fuck yeah and there were some guys that like really didn't care if they died i mean they were doing dumb stuff like getting out of the humvies and chasing dudes down like an alley and taking them out you know when we'd get in contact and stuff and um they didn't care you know at a certain point we just we just kind of stopped caring and i i never got quite there where i was like yeah i'm gonna you know i'm just

going to be fine dying but you definitely thought it was going to probably have you know it's either going to be um yeah something so yeah I should probably go into kind of the final mission yeah for me um so the final the final mission um was September 10th 2007 um just like all the other TST missions you know it was like are we going to sleep tonight or we're going to go out of mission, you know, all the lights would go off and we'd start getting our bunks and maybe we're going to get some sleep. And then like, you know, middle of the night, you know, boom, the lights would come on and, you know, TST, let's go, let's go and grab all your stuff. And like, I always had like a task like getting the trucks ready or something while they're getting like the op briefing, like all

the leaderships like going through everything. Here are the targets. Here's where we're going to hit, you know, all that stuff. And my job was like making sure everything was ready to go outside. You know, everything's lined up and we're ready to go. at least it was, you know, a lot of the time. So, um, so it kind of, you know, we start kind of hearing like, oh, this is like a huge one. Like everybody's going. Um, we had some like our sister unit, which was, which was cav guys. They were going.

I want to say we had like nine Humveys and three of those hunter boxes. And each hunter box had 18 Americans in them. Um, and so this is huge. Usually it was like one or 200 boxes, you know, a few. Humvees, maybe, you know, the most guys we'd probably ever gone after was probably like four, probably before that. So 19 dudes having a meeting was massive. We knew that if that many dudes are all together, they were going to have a lot of people

kind of looking out for them too. So we were pretty preparing for some heavy stuff. So we get to the area, which again was in Shula. and that night I'm with Sergeant Meyer again. We're in the, no, I wasn't. He was in the, oh, no, I was, okay, so I was in, I was in the hunter box, like I said, but that night, instead of hitting the target buildings, I was going to go with the sniper section, link up with them, hit the building and go on top, you know, one of the

highest, tallest buildings or whatever in the area. and we were overlooking kind of this field or like kind of like a I don't know playground type area you know but you know Iraq style and there was probably three or four buildings going to get hit and before we were totally set up up there it was already like coming down like we got them all like we got them like we got them all and so they're strapping them up and everything and so it was super quick and kind of disorienting we get back down. You say strapping them up.

Is this back in the day when we were like ratchet strapping the HVTs down to the bed of the truck? Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't the super nice flex cuffs. I don't remember the super nice flex cuffs. I remember like probably your, you know, your harbor freight zip ties, you know, the thick ones. Those were different times. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah, I mean, like our Humveys were up armored to a sense, but, you know, like the turret's pretty.

exposed. Like you've got some glass on three sides, but, you know, sniper netting on top, you know, just, just, yeah, different times. So they're trying to figure out how do we get 19 guys, like, out of here, you know, like they're going to be, people are going to be sitting on them in the Humvees and people, you know, we can only fit a couple in each hunter box. So I think we had three of the 19 in our hunter box. We're starting to get loaded back on that, but we're also starting to get engaged. So there's a couple RPGs and some, and a firefighter starting to break out. So they're trying to like figure out, hey, how do we, do we stay and kind of finish the fight

like we usually do? We kind of leave on our own terms or like we kind of, we're kind of in this like weird transition and we kind of needed to just get out of there. So they're like everybody like load up and we're just going to shoot our way out of here. So we're all loading up. And I remember, so my squad leader, Sergeant Meyer had taken over the sniper section. Sergeant Rivera had taken. had taken over our squad.

And he was getting, he was one of the last in the truck. And we had this big ladder. We had this rope down one side so you can actually kind of like aerosol, you know, off of this LMTV on one side. You can climb and jump off the front or kind of slide down the ladder in the back. And I was like the last guy. So as soon as you'd get in,

I was kind of the last guy in the very back right by the rope that we'd slide down. And he's getting on the hum, he's getting on the LMTV. and slips and like I think he broke his jaw like slips and hits his face and his blood and he's like pretty messed up and he's kind of a little bit you know out of it and we're kind of getting him on that truck and we're like oh god damn and trying to figure out what to do we get him on and then once you're in the hunter box and you're like leaving there's a little bit of like security you can do like if you see anybody with an RPG or something obviously. you got to take them out or, I mean, you're really exposed, especially when the buildings are high. Like there's 18 Americans. It's a big target. So it's always like just like the worst time trying to drive out.

You're either going to be hit with an IED or you're going to get shot or blown up from the, you know, up top. So you just wanted to like get out of the town, you know, or the urban area and get out and head back to Taji. and so we're getting out of there and we get up onto Route Vernon which the north of Baghdad there's like this massive overpass and it literally goes from like 30 to 80 hundred feet like massive goes in different directions and on this overpass

and we're still like we're not taking probably like direct fire but people are still able to always be pop shot us, you know, the entire way out of there, especially like we got their guys, like, they're just, you know, trying to get whatever they can. And the driver of the truck, like, hits some debris from, like, a previous ID or something or, like, a half-hesco barrier type thing, because we're kind of going through at this weird checkpoint up there as well. And we're hauling butt. We always drove, you know, no lights with nods. The driver's an 88 mic. Like, I, like, attached to us because none of us could drive the big trucks.

And it's right in that horrible period of the day where it's a little bit too bright at dawn to be wearing the nods, but too dark to just be line of sight. And for some reason or whatever, yeah, he loses control of the LMTV. We end up going through the guardrail. I remember the whole thing kind of lifting up and going this way, And you're kind of having this in and out of body experience.

Like you know you're on this huge high overpass. You know the truck is losing control. He's trying to make sense of everything. And then as we're going, there was almost this moment where it was like, maybe we aren't going to go off. And then it was just like that splash mountain, you know, where it's like, no, we're going for sure. And then I fully like black out.

Like I just, I remember, I remember as we're falling and like seeing the truck and like all the guys like are now not. decided they're like down right and as we're going down um i just remember everything just closed off and so when i wake up um when i wake up i kind of like you know like when they talk about hell it being like dark and gnashing teeth and all that stuff like it literally was pitch dark i'm crushed under this truck and all these bodies and um there's screaming and like metallic noises and stuff and um i remember like just thinking like holy shit like i died and this is hell like that's so messed up you know and then i was like well it's not hot and the bible said it was

supposed to be hot right so it's not maybe this isn't hell and then the next thing was like oh my god i can't breathe like i couldn't even i was so crushed i couldn't even breathe out um let alone take like a breath in and then i started to panic and then i started hearing just all the screams and yells and and you go into like a very weird I don't know pre-death space or something like where just like it was just unlike anything I'd ever experienced and right when like I'm like I'm this is it like this is the last moment I feel this tugging on my foot on my I think it was my left left like foot boot and it's like tugging and I start I start just wiggle in my foot as much as possible to kind of be like I'm alive like like get me out of here

and so then I remember some of the weight kind of being rolled off me and someone who I haven't talked about yet as was my best friend the only dude who is even close to looking my age I looked I literally looked 12 um and like you know in basic training when they check check your facial hair you know and stuff like I remember not shaving and being put into the like you shaved good job line, you know, and everyone else getting in trouble. I'm like, yeah, I haven't shaved for a couple days, but if they find out, you know. But anyway, so my best buddy, Richard Brendel, he would, well, I didn't know that time, but he had actually grabbed me and the pole that the, that the rope was attached to and rode us, like, into the ground that way.

And then when I lost consciousness and crushed, one of the detainees was like on me. And he was like a huge dude and a couple other dead. bodies and he was able to now mind you this dude has like five ribs snapped off from the spine like back there he has like a ruptured spleen i think he lost some organs i know that a collapsed lung broken nose broken arm broken wrist and he's able to somehow save my life like he pulls me out he pulls me out from the back of the iBA where that handle is he pulls me out from the record and now I have four shattered vertebrae like shattered vertebrae some spinal cord damage some of the bone fragments were kind of pressed up to the spine I think a collapsed lung at least big time lung contusions sternum was crushed I had like fluid around my heart so there was like trauma to like the whole chest cavity and then I broke a bunch of bones in my face um this ear was taken off

like completely like scooped out and hanging on by like a flap of skin like scooped out deep and then there was 70s staple so my entire skull was kind of like filleted open and falling off and so when he's like dragging me out and like sitting me up with all these shattered vertebrae and everything I mean like

I was in like the most pain I've ever can ever describe but also this weird like shouldn't this hurt even more out of body experience yeah it's super out of body experience And I also am like blind And I don't know if it was from the blood or from the impact like the head trauma or whatever

But I'm blind like I see like light a little bit on the outer Rims but like super dark in the center And and I can barely breathe just like just like just trying to like stay alive And then I think Richard passes out behind me And now now our entire elements up on this over pass and it is a long way to get down and around we're in a trash field like this trash field and Lance about how now you know in retrospect about how far did you guys fall so if you read the official report which is total bullshit they say I think they say 30 to 50 feet my buddy who pulled me out of

the wreckage he ended up reclassing and went back to the same area like several years years later, he says it was like 75 to 80 feet. I'll settle on 50 feet. It doesn't really matter to me how tall it was. It was really freaking high. I remember on some missions, like being up there and like peeing off of this overpass and thinking to myself, like, this would really suck to fall off. Like, this is gnarly, you know?

I even have some pictures I sent deep of that overpass. I'd like clicked a picture of it randomly and it turned out to be the exact overpass, you know, that we go off of. So this is super high. Unfortunately, seven of my guys die. I think three like pretty instantly. And then the rest either died on the bird's back to the hospital, to the Baghdad like Green Zone, big hospital there.

And then the rest of us, yeah, we're pretty messed up. And yeah, I remember. I remember finally our element getting down to us. So after he pulled me out, I pass out again. And when I wake up the next time, it's my lieutenant who is in the, actually, the passenger seat. And he's trying to wrap my head. He's like pulling my ear up at my head. And he's trying to wrap my head.

And as soon as he lets go, he had like shattered like everything like his arm. So he's only trying to do it, like one arm. And as soon as he goes, I got to go help the other guy. and he takes off and when he lets go like I just feel my head and ear just kind of fall back down again and and so then I pass out again and when I wake up again it's the other platoon's platoon leader and I remember thinking like what the heck's up with all these lieutenants like coming and waking me up you know and so he starts saying hey we're going to move everybody out from under this overpass and get you guys staged up for the bird we've got birds coming in by twos like as many as we possibly could find

So the medevacs come in and I was probably on one of the last birds, I think, if not the last bird. And to my left was hard agree and he was not doing well. Like he was he was not doing well at all. So I kind of knew he probably wasn't going to make it. I didn't know if I was going to make it either. but I didn't know who I didn't know for maybe several days because of the surgeries and stuff and all that I remember getting flown to Balad after all my surgeries in Baghdad and I was told you earlier there was a plastic surgeon visiting the Baghdad hospital who went to work and he reattached my right

ear put 70 staples on my head and I have like a perfect full head of hair like you wouldn't even know my ear. There's like little scars I could point out. But I mean, he had to like reattach the little lobe. He had to reattach that other little part and the canal. There was like 50 sutures inside the canal like putting everything back together. And had he not been there, I definitely would not have an ear. I definitely my top of my head would not look the same. Even my face, you know, making sure everything wasn't going to like collapse. Yeah, because I mean, looking at you like, I can't tell that you received these injuries. So I, I mean, they clearly did a good job putting you back together.

Yeah, unfortunately. You know, I used to look like a really young Brad Pitt. And then I remember waking up there. This is the best we can do. I'm really sorry. So, yeah, I got, I got fortunate for sure, for sure. Yeah. So as quick as it all started for me, it kind of all ended, you know, my military career.

Like I said, I spent a little bit probably a short amount of time there at the green zone. And then they flew me to Blot and probably one night there before they could get me on like an ICU bird to longstool. Spint a while in long stool, probably a few weeks. And I was in and out of like probably like a morphine induced coma type thing, you know, just like I don't remember a ton. I do remember some guy from like the Wounded Warrior Project, I think had like just started with the backpacks, right? Like out of a garage. I remember getting one of those backpacks. and that was like the only clothes I had was like a pair of jeans, a t-shirt,

and then like some crap in this backpack. I'd lost, you know, just lost everything, basically. So, yeah, but I remember in Belod, I remember seeing Simpson, and he came over to my bed, and he was pretty messed up, like, he had some crazy scars and staples and stuff too, and him coming up to me. And I remember asking, like, Or he, maybe he asked me, he's like, hey, do you want to know who made it?

And I was like, I can't take it yet. Like, I can't, I can't handle knowing who didn't make it and who did. I knew my best buddy made it, Richard Brendel. I knew he was alive, but I didn't know. And then I remember telling him, you know, I don't know how much long later, right? I remember saying, like, okay, I'm ready. And like, each one was just a dagger, you know, he's going through it.

Sergeant Patterson and Rivera and Artigree and Weeks was another really good buddy of mine, Ari Weeks. And just going through, Mora, you know, and he's just going through all seven of the guys. And it took everything in me just to kind of, I don't know, that was the worst crap you could go through, honestly. Yeah, and then like I said, flew to Longstool. And what was so hard, too, about all this was, like, I get placed in this unit, I have this crazy nine-month experience, ends with this, you know, crazy traumatic thing. And when I fly to Germany, when I leave Germany after like a week or so or whatever it was, and I take an ICU bird to Walter Reed for one night, and then they decided to take me to Eisenhower Army Medical Center at Fort Gordon. when they um it that was the last time i really got to see my guys right so it was like i got put in there

and then it was like i got taken out and even the wounded ones like all the wounded ones went to different places you don't really get closure on that experience no closure and i missed all the funerals because it was a 10 month recovery it was supposed to be like a year and a half i did the the whole you know walking with the the like the gymnastic looking thing and and the back brace and and all that stuff. And, yeah, I never got to go to the funerals. I never got to, yeah, have any kind of closure, anything like that. And, yeah, that started my 10-month recovery in the hospital part.

And that was really crappy 10 months for sure. Like, I was thankful to be alive, obviously. the physical stuff was was crazy getting through all that and I remember being like hey like I'm broken now I can't do that job anymore like just let me go home you know just remember thinking like just let me let me go home don't let me and I was actually really fortunate because after they kind of got me to a place instead of just like sending me they couldn't I was convalescing like I was still really bad right so I got to go to the very first active duty rehab unit, which was at the Uptown VA in Augusta, Georgia, right by the

masters. And I was one of like 20 guys in this unit. And every single day for, I don't know how many months, like I'm doing vision therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, recreational therapy, pool therapy, seeing a shrink, right? Seeing a, seeing a guy. I remember sharing stories with the shrink dude. And his, like, dad was in the military, but he,

wasn't and I remember like thinking like this this isn't for me because the dude was just like the whole time listening to my stories everything I was saying like couldn't believe it like oh my gosh I'm like this is this is such a weird thing to like I thought I was coming you're going to have answers for me and you know I'm all in all these medications and I'm so I'm kind of numb to a lot of things as far as like I'm not having like PTSD yet you know like and I'm almost thinking like PTSD at this point, like, is fake. Because it has to hit you yet. Yeah, hadn't hit me yet.

Nothing had really hit me yet. The, and then once I started getting off all the pain meds and getting a little bit better, maybe getting out of the back brace, because then the back brace for like six months or something, maybe even longer. I remember kind of the nightmare starting. And a lot of the, like, like, to be honest, I was. more afraid of Iraq in the hospital thinking about everything that had happened than I was when I was there.

Right, right. Like, scary as all of it was. Like, I mean, I really honestly was like horrified by everything I'd done through. Yeah, now you have time to process all of it. Yeah. Yeah. So that really sucked. And then I'll tell one funny story from recovery.

So, you know, after six months, you're literally in the hospital. Monday through Friday they'd have this formation where they where you'd be like wheel if you're in a wheelchair you wheel into this like little cafeteria area and they literally like it was a wounded warrior battalion right and they would like roll call and they'd be like okay Lance has got vision therapy make sure you don't miss any or whatever you know and they would like you know and then you'd go off and everybody would do their therapies and everything um and and so on the weekends you know we didn't have those roll calls. And so one of the guys recovering in there had like had some gnarly break to like his leg so he kept limping around. He was like out of all of his stuff and not using anything about a cane,

I think. But he couldn't like move his leg very well. And I was in a back brace and everything. So I couldn't drive or anything. But he's like, hey, if I ran a car, like, do you want to go to North Charleston with me? And like we'll go to this Taylor Swift and Brad Paisley concert. and like yeah like we'll like we'll like piece out of here for like a weekend and so we totally went like a wall and we had this whole thing set up where we would like tell the nurses like we were going somewhere close or something I don't remember and then we I got I got in this car and I'm literally in a back brace we're going to spend a night in a hotel like I hadn't been out of the hospital at all you know up into this point I actually I did get to go home for a little while while I was in a back brace um I got to go

home for like Thanksgiving or Christmas. I can't remember. And my parents like rented a hospital bed that like because I had to stay like my spine had to like heal like straight, you know, so I couldn't like just sleep in a normal bed and stuff. So they got this hospital bed and everything. But yeah, so anyway, we snuck out of there and we went to a concert in North Charleston and like went to the fort out on the island there. And yeah, totally snuck out of there for a while. And, you know. Is this also about the time to tell the sheriff of Amarillo story? Okay, yeah, yeah, let's transition to that. Perfect. So we, so I finally, I remember having to sit down, so we'll get to that. So I haven't sit down with one of the, I think it was the back surgeon guy who tragically, I tried to look

him up because I love this guy, Dr. Burke, he was a, I don't know what rank he was, but he was, he was an officer and he was the back surgeon there, the main back surgeon. And he ended up getting, when I tried to look him up he i found his obituary and he had gotten run over by a truck while he was cycling with a big group of cyclists and a dude killed him there in augusta georgia um and left behind a wife and like a newborn baby and that killed me learning that but anyway he sat me down and he said look he goes um how badly do you want to stay in the army you know and i was like uh can i jump out of planes and he's like nope and he's like if you really want to stay in and make a career out of it like you could do, you know, you could do paperwork stuff and everything.

I said, look, I gave the Army, it was super short, but I gave the Army everything I had. And I did what I wanted to do, right? I was airborne infantry, had a crazy deployment, did all the things, got wounded real bad. I said, no, I just want to go home. So he's like, okay, I'm going to medically retire you. So I got medically retired at 20 years old, turned 19 in Baghdad, turned 20 in the hospital, medically retired at 20. So I leave the military with a with a E4 retired ID card.

So getting, you know, on base with a retire. I still look 12 or 13, getting on base with the retired card, you know, the gate guards are just like, what that? Like, you know, still to this day, they're like, how are you retired to E4? But yeah, so my, my, again, I was young and dumb, right? And I was like, I'm going to pack my car with the little belongings I have. And I'm going to drive all the way from Augusta, Georgia to San Luis Obispo. I'm going to do it as fast as I possibly can.

So I ended up doing that in 45 or 46 hours straight with one stop in Amarillo, Texas. And on my way, so I left at midnight, like literally got to the place where I was going to sign out for the last time. Like 1159, boom, you know, I sign out. And I leave. leaving in the middle of the night, didn't get much sleep. And as the sun is coming up in Arkansas, I'm like nodding off while I'm driving. But I'm thinking to myself, like, man, I, I, you know how many times we were on like multi-day missions and I stayed up, you know, like, you know, I'm fine. Well, I fell asleep and went into the median at 70-some miles per hour and spun out several times

and almost hit oncoming like semis at the last second like it swerved me back this way. And and it was like the only strip if you've been in Arkansas on the highway it's like mostly trees and boulders and stuff It's like the one grass patch that I luckily like survive and even the tires were still on the rims. So I just kept driving. I'm passing people calling 911. You know, they're like, what? This dude's past me. He just crashed.

And I got a bunch of energy drinks at a gas station and then finally make it to Amarillo, Texas where I had a hotel and stuff. And I wanted to eat at the Big Texan. So I go to the Big Texan. I'm famished. And I'm like, I just survived another near-death experience, right? So I'm going to get the most expensive thing on the menu. And it was like a $90 humongous filet mignon, like a 32-ounce flamenon, like biggest thing ever. And the Big Texan had that 78 ounce steak or whatever.

And if you ate all of it, you would get it for free, you know, and you get your name on the wall. It was like on all the food documentaries back in the day. So I'm there and I get the most basic that you get this, you know, boot of Coke and you get all these sides. and I'm just chowing down and they have this band that comes around and they play music and they ask, you know, where are you coming from, all that kind of stuff? And I told him, so after I finish it, I'm like trying to wave down the waitress. I'm like, you know, hey, I really want to go get some sleep real quick because I got half of the drive left. And she goes, oh, it's been taken care of. And I went, that was the most expensive thing like on the menu.

Like, who was it? Like, I want to thank them. She goes, no, no, no, he doesn't want to be thanked. like, you know, just he took care of it, you're good. And I was like, listen, I have to know who did it. She's like, it's the guy right over there. So I go over to him and I say, sir, thank you so much for the meal. Like, this was so nice. Like, why did you do it? You know, and he's like, well, I heard you talk to the band that you were wounded in Iraq and on your way home.

I was in the 82nd Airborne in a Lerps unit in Vietnam. I was, I'm 82nd in a Rista unit, you know, in Iraq. So we got to talk in and he gives me his card and he's the sheriff of Amarillo. He said, if you ever need a job son, here's my card. You could be a deputy in Amarillo. And I never been back to Amarillo, unfortunately. But yeah, so made it home, medically retired, the ripe age of 20 before I could legally buy a beer with all that. Yeah.

And then, yeah, then the transition started. And they medboarded you at, I think you said that they gave you 30% disability for all that shit that you had going on, which is like what PX privileges? is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So at the time, so being medically retired, I always had the base access and any type of thing that you would get as a retired member, I would have got, I still get, right? So I had all that. But my, yeah, my rating was 30%. So then the VA comes and they assume that 30%. Well, I had no idea that you could add more. And back in 2007, 2008, I mean, it was not like today. Like today, you know, like people are getting out, you know, that spent all their time on a, on a boat and never saw a combat and they're leaving with 100%. So it's, it's way, way, way different.

But and I just had no idea. You know, I'm young and I kind of like putting the military kind of like closing that chapter and, hey, I'm going to move on. And, and, yeah. And so, yeah, 30% I think mostly for like scars and like maybe headaches or something. you know, my back generated like almost nothing. I didn't have any PTSD or anything, nothing on there, you know, at all. And it took a long time. It actually took me kind of almost hitting like rock bottom.

So I remember I told you I saved that signing bonus. And the entire time I'm in Iraq, I'm like getting jump pay and hazardous duty pay. And I'm like investing everything. And before the crash, investments are doing pretty well. and I'm making, you know, a nice little goose egg. And I'm going to go, or nest egg, I think I said goose egg. I'm going to go buy, like, I'm in the hospital and I'm like, mom, dad, there's this awesome like F-150, like, I can custom, you know, build this thing and I'm going to pay cash for it.

And they're like, you idiot, like, that's going to be worth nothing in a few years. Like, you know, save your money and like, you know, buy a house when you get back. And I'm like, houses are so expensive, especially in California, you know, and everything. Well, the crash happens. while I'm in the hospital. And housing became a little more affordable. And so, yeah, I was able to get a house while I'm in the hospital. Oh, wow.

So I had a house to come back to. My sister and parents had gone in on it as well. And so, yeah, so I got this house to go back to. Yeah, thanks to that signing bonus, I guess. Oh, and the TSGLI. The TSGLI was the traumatic service members life insurance. policy. So that helped too. So I had all these things going for me and I'm kind of this like small town hero, right? Everybody knows me. Everybody's coming up to me when I go to the grocery store because

they see me on the news and I was wounded and, you know, some people thought I died, you know, and all this stuff. And so I'm getting all this fanfare and everything, but things are kind of getting worse and worse mentally, you know, and nightmares, not sleeping, all the, all the stuff. And then I get to a place where, oh, so my thought was I was going to go into law enforcement, go into SWAT or something. But I'm also developing this Crohn's disease that I don't know about, right? And I almost died. I didn't say this, but I almost died of MRSA after my wounds,

landing in that trash field. Like I was in the ICU for a while before my parents could even see me when I got back trying to beat MRSA. So maybe from that and the antibiotics and everything, whatever, even combat stress, you know, can trigger. Crohn's disease. There's Crohn's disease trying to kill me. Um, and I cannot go through another, you know, boot camp, you know, cop, uh, whatever it's called the cop boot camp, police boot camp. Yeah, okay. Police academy. Yeah. There you go. Please academy. So like it just, it, it, it ends up,

like, it's not going to work out. Um, and I don't know what to do with my life. Like, I have no, I would thought I was going to be in the army for a long time, you know. Um, And so I think my grandma saw this article in a newspaper and said, hey, like she knew I was unemployed. I'm like super depressed, like have no direction. And she tells my wife like, hey, you should take Lance to this, you know, it was this VA all hands meeting type thing. Learn about benefits, job opportunities, all that kind of stuff, right? And my wife's like, hey, we should go to this. And I'm like, absolutely not.

She's going to be a bunch of Vietnam vets who are pissed off at the VA. I don't want anything to do with that, you know, yada, yada. So I end up going. She takes me there and we're sitting in this auditorium at a junior college. And sure enough, it's a bunch of Vietnam vets who are pissed off yelling at, you know, these VA guys. And I literally, my wife has grabbed my hand. She's like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

You were right. You were right. And it's not even the VA. It's the California Department of Veteran Affairs, by the way. And so they're yelling at the way. the wrong people. But my wife, Graznan, he goes, we can leave. So I stand up. And at the time, Roger

Brodagan, he was the secretary of the VA, or sorry, the CalVET, the California Department of VA. And he goes, hey, young man, he's speaking. He's like, young man, please stay there. Please sit back down. I'm almost done. I came here for you. And I was like, oh, shoot. So I sit down,

make it through. I mean, they're literally yelling about like, you know, impotence and, you know, all kinds. of weird stuff. Like, it was, it was bad news. So when it finishes, he comes up to me, and the first thing he does is he hands me gift cards to in and out, when they had those, like, in and out bucks. So he's already, I'm already going to listen to you now, right? And he's like, hey, there's this new program in California called Operation Welcome Home. I want you to go through it. I want you to meet this representative. We're going to get you all squared away. So he ends up, like, getting me this

Army emergency relief thing to help me like pay the mortgage we were about to you know not pay He helps me get a job as a contractor so I end up working for SRI Do you Stanford Research Institute? Yeah, so the Stanford Research Institute had this had this branch of contractors conis and oconis that would train and put on XCTCs and exercises all over the country getting you it's deployable. So, and it paid amazing. Like, I'd be gone for like four to six weeks, but the pay was incredible.

And I'd go out and I'd help put on these huge exercises, or I'd go and I'd hide and I'd blow up, you know, Humvees with SIM IEDs. It was amazing. So they get me plugged in doing that. Oh, and at the time, my GI bill had been denied. The VA said, hey, you didn't complete your full term of service. You don't get your GI Bill. I just took that as gospel. Well, then he goes through the whole thing

And he's like in the line of duty combat wound He sends it off I get my GI Bill So during the school year I start going to school Using my GI Bill during the summer I'm contracting You know working as a civilian Getting our men and women deployable One time I got to work with Arista unit

Which was super cool Because they're like taking helicopters everywhere And I'm load them on birds And I'm you know It was legit to kind of have that experience again So one day I'm driving down the road and I get a call from someone who sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He's the governor at the time. And I'm like, no, who is this?

Come on. And I pull over because, you know, back then you had to like hold this cell phone up and everything. And then his chief of staff guy comes on. He goes, hey, this is David. I'm with the governor. That was Governor Schwarzenegger. we'd love to invite you down to San Diego for you to give a speech, you know, about your experiences with Operation Welcome Home and how it's helped you. I'm like, whoa, okay.

So I end up doing this big old speech down in San Diego about how Operation Welcome Home helped me. I didn't realize that was the first freaking veteran through Operation Welcome Home. I thought it was this robust thing. It had just been stud up by Arnold Schwarzenegger. I meet Governor Schwarzenegger. the first time I met him was in a live or not alive but they were interviewing for nightline and like they just like push me into his like scene as he's walking down the aircraft carrier and you know what I told you my story I told you what happened right so he has to have been

briefed the first thing he says to me is he goes Lance Juncker he's a true American hero he he was crushed by a boulder in Iraq and I'm just like oh oh no like my guys are going to kill me if they think I told him like a boulder crushed us, right? Like this, this is not good. And so I'm freaking out, but luckily they overdubbed like that whole thing. And it was just like, Governor Schwarzenegger's legacy will be helping veterans, you know, whatever, like while he's saying these outlandish things. But I end up after I give my speech, he ends up basically asking me to be his like poster

child for veterans and takes me to D.C. several times and I meet everyone. I mean, I got a coin from the president, spoke at the White House, the Pentagon. Wow. Caucuses, like, you know, I'm like writing this wave of like, whoa, I'm this like poster child guy. You know, I have like the keys to the city of California, was veteran of the year of Cal, one of the first veteran of the year for California. So it's like all this good stuff's happening. And I remember I'm in one of these meetings, you know, talking about my experiences and stuff. and this guy was one of like a staffer for like some major you know some some major congressman

I don't know who I don't remember who or was a governor or something and he comes up to me and he goes like hey what makes you different and I'm like what do you mean and he's like well you don't seem to be like struggling with anything like you're not dealing with like um you know like survivors guilt or any of that stuff like what makes you different I remember thinking like I don't know like I don't know. And I swear from that moment on, like, everything hit the fan as far as like T-CSD and like, like, yeah, just all, like, things we're getting bad to working in that space where just getting taken advantage of like you're the token veteran. Not by Governor Schwarzenegger. He was amazing.

That whole staff was amazing. But other congressmen and women would be like, oh, I'm posing with the veteran. I'm helping veterans. And this one, this one congressman from down here in San Diego, he's no longer, I'm not going to say his name or anything. Thank God he got voted out right after this but we're leaving his office and he says um I don't care that you brought the veteran I'm just glad you brought his hot wife wow I like turn around to like like you know I'm a stunned and the door shuts you know and we're like off running late to the next meeting we got to go to the next meeting and I just as I'm walking back

I'm like that couldn't have just happened yeah and I remember going like I almost just lost my poster boy status. Like I just about decked a congressman and I would have lost that poster boy status. So yeah, I remember that. So yeah, as that wave was kind of ending and I'm getting my political political science degree, a lot of the Crohn's disease is like trying to kill me and PTSD is just getting super, super bad. And yeah, and luckily, you know, I have just an amazing wife who never let me, you know, get too far without dragging me to something. Because that first thing really helped. And then I had an amazing counselor at the vet centers for a really, really long time that helped a lot too. And it probably wasn't until, so some things helped

with like the flashbacks and the nightmares was neurofeedback therapy. I kind of was one of the first veterans through this program that did all this neurofeed, neurofeedback. And they thought like they could fix me in 20 sessions. They're like, we'll give you 20 free sessions. I mean, nothing. I don't think anything happened. And they're like, they just kept doing it. And probably like 70 some sessions into this.

I was like, I slept through the night. I didn't have a nightmare. Like my flashback, because I was having flashback, like legit. Like, see, smell here, feel an explosion or a sniper shooting at me or something. Narnly. Yeah. And so that, as that started going away. And you start sleeping.

Sleeping is so important to healing all that. So, you know, that's one of the biggest things is you've got to sleep and you've got to sleep deep. You got to get into those core deep and REM cycles and you've got to start, you know, rebuilding all that from that trauma. Yeah. And then, yeah, counseling really helped. And then it probably wasn't until my daughter was born six years ago. and when she was born, I remember having a panic attack

while she was crying and like in her room like screaming or something as a baby. And I remember like, I can't do this right now. Like I'm having a full-blown panic attack and I'm like, I have to get her. I have to take care of her.

Like she's my daughter. And I remember almost being able to like force the panic attack like it left. And I was just like, whoa. And then I started learning more about our nervous system and about PTSD and really you're just researching everything. The sleep side of things, meditation, brain waves, the chemical side of your brain, trying to get those neurochemicals set up. So when I got the brain waves better, and then there was another group called the Angel Warrior Foundation that Dr. Gordon, he's been on Joe Rogan podcast a lot. He's, I went through that program, got kind of the chemical side of things better, the neural

hormones and everything. You get those better. And now everything's kind of working symbiotically, healing. And then, you know, I had tried meditation a bunch VA settings, that kind of stuff, never thought it was helpful at all, didn't even understand it. But then I tried it on the Calm app, especially the, the, you know, the, you know, the, There's this Jeff guy on there who does the daily trip. And he has this one like meditation for beginners or whatever.

And I did this 30 day course. And I remember like at first I was just using the app when I was having an anxiety attack or like a panic attack or something. And I was using it very symptomatically. Like it was a reaction. I'd use it. I could call myself down. And then as I started going through these different programs in there and realizing like, okay, if my body and my mind, if I can like get my heart rate, so jacked up and I can have these panic attacks.

If I have that kind of power here, well, then I also have that kind of power here to kind of like start to like regular things, right? So it took a really long time, but I had a goal to do to meditate every day for a year and I did that and that was super, super helpful. And I started getting like ahead of the panic attacks. I started getting ahead of the anxiety.

I started building up like, you know. The resiliency to it. Yeah, resilience to it, right? So that was really huge. And another group that was super beneficial to me was Operation Surf. They take you for like a week-long surf camp type thing. Incredible. Everybody should go through that if they can.

That was incredible too. And that really pieced together the meditation side too, because when you're on a wave, especially a big one, if you're doing anything where you have to be in the present moment. You can't be thinking about the future. You can't be worried about the past, right? You're on that wave. You're going to get crushed if you're not.

Same with riding horses, whatever it is. You know, if you're in that present moment, it's hard. Those are interesting things that, like, I was talking to somebody about this earlier, or last week, actually, about high performance driving. It puts you in this moment. You have to focus on this thing. For me, you know, I've gotten. really in the past into painting scale miniatures. You're super focused on this one thing.

And that does sort of like relieve some of the stress and the anxiety, right? 100%. And what it is, that's a flow state. Okay. So being in that, and you can get in a flow state with meditation, you can get a flow state with sports. You can get it. Now when you and I were doing raids and stuff,

you're in like a team flow state. You're at the pinnacle of a flow state. combat is is the drug when it comes to being in a flow state right because if you mess up you're dead or your guys die um and so luckily doing things like surfing and riding horses stuff like that you mean there's still danger involved but it's not it's not you know at that level of combat at least but i think you know that addiction that everybody talks about with war really is those neurochemicals that flood you, no epinephrine, endorphins, all that stuff that gets rushed when we're in combat, it's really hard to get more of that, you know. And usually we try to find

pretty damaging ways to, you know, fill that need. So yeah, so now that I've kind of come, you know, all this way, I actually full circle work for the California Department of Veteran Affairs. is as like the San Diego rep, the local inter-Agency network coordinator. So my whole job is trying to get veterans plugged into benefits and benefits to veterans, plugging organizations together that help veterans, all that kind of stuff. So it's really awesome to be so involved in that space. I go to all eight military installations here in San Diego and do like a California-specific TAPS class and help in that transition space trying to teach people like,

hey, you know, don't do what I did, you know, like, if you think something's wrong, like, bring it up to the VA. And it's all changed, you know, it's a lot better and streamlined now and stuff. But it's from all of us old guys that had to, you know, trailblaze and path find our way through the VA at the early stages. But yeah, so I love, I love, you know, the job I have. and then the biggest thing that I've that I've gotten into the last a few years here has been an organization called saddles and service and it is a you know we you've probably heard of the like equine therapy right so it is not necessarily it's really not like a you're not going there and getting therapy right and it's it's an organization organization that was started by veterans and a spouse of a veteran who was dealing with all these kinds of stuff and really just found healing and hope through horsemanship and then decided, you know, hey, let's try to bring this to as many veterans as we can. And for me, when I was

growing up in San Luis Obispo, my grandfather, Pop Strong, he lived in San Yenaz, still does. And he was cattle rancher. And so after he, he was actually an LA City fireman. And when he retired, he became a cattle rancher. So he had been doing cattle ranching for quite a while before I was born. And when I was born since the day I could walk, you know, had cowboy boots and cowboy hat and was out there as much as I could helping my grandpa and learning that kind of way of life. And then when he retired, I was probably like, I don't know, eight or ten or something. And, you know, you kind of grow, you have to grow out of like the wanting to be a cowboy you know phase of your life right um and i never thought that that i would ever have that opportunity or get to do those kinds of things again or anything

and when i saw saddles and service um i was actually doing physical therapy so the crones disease after it you know decimated my digestive track and we finally got some medicine that was helping to stop that. It went around that and started attacking my SI joints and my hips and everything and I could barely walk. It was so much pain all the time. And I'm doing physical therapy

and my physical therapist owned a horse ranch and she said, hey, I've got this guy, this Marine who he's kind of struggling and I've been invited him out to my horse ranch and he seems to open up when he's out there around the horses. Like would you come and talk to him about benefits and stuff? I know what you do for a living and all that.

So I go out there and I'm like, oh, I like want to keep coming back. Like I want to, I love this horse thing and this might be a way to get back in there. And then one day she's like, hey, there's this really awesome group called Saddles and Service. I'm doing a fundraiser for them for Veterans Day or whatever. And so I see this saddles and service and I research and everything. And it's like the seven phase program for veterans and first response. And it takes you these seven phases where the first, you know, you're learning like the physiology and psychology of horses, the predator prey relationship, all this stuff, all about the horses.

Then you're like learning how to groom them, learning how to lead them, walk them, you know, all that kind of stuff, all the groundwork stuff. And then you learn how to ride and you learn the different phases of that. And then you end up doing like advanced cowboy skills and all that. Start ending up working cattle doing all the yellow. Stone stuff. And then the final thing is they send you to Yellowstone or another work or sorry, Wyoming or another working ranch and you do a week long, you know, full blown cowboy, you cattle drives, the whole bit, brandings, all that kind of stuff. And so when I saw

it, I was like, oh my gosh, like that's my little kid cowboy dream like come true again. Like I got to do this, but I'm also like can't walk. So they found this other. drug they can give me, it's like an injection. And the day that I got that approved and I took my first injection, I signed up and I got my other buddy that Marine to sign up. And we signed up and we, you know, went through the program and now he's a ranch manager at one of the ranches that was donated to them, the Circle T. And then, and now I'm, you know, I work a lot of the baby colts that they're they have. They got eight or seven colts that were, what I didn't think of that? I lost seven guys in Iraq and we got donated seven colts that were going to slaughter and they were rescued and we took

them and we've been training them up doing a whole cult starting program. Shoot, dude, I've never made that connection, seven and seven. That's incredible. But I've been working with these babies and learning myself, you know, how to train them from the earliest stages all the way up to riding them and everything. But yeah, it's been an incredible life-changing, you know, opportunity for me. It's felt like coming home, you know, like back to when my grandpa and I'd go out to the ranch. And now, yeah, it's kind of like all I think about is getting out to the ranch and working

horses and cattle and stuff like that. I want to ask you about the next chapter. But real quick, I'm going to pitch to the audience. If you haven't already, please sign up. sign up for our Patreon. $5 a month gets you access to all of these Teamhouse episodes as well as eyes on, add free. You can ask questions to our guests, all that good stuff. If you sign up at $10 a month, we will send you a team house patch. These are pretty cool. We just got these in recently. So really appreciate it, folks. And thank you for supporting the podcast. And so Lance,

tell us a little bit about getting into screenplay writing. Oh, yeah. So we'll go there. So this is a super random thing that just happened to me with, so your producer D has a good friend named George. And George has been a producer writer for quite a while. Movies. I can't go into his whole background because I can't remember at all. But, you know, one of those producer writer guys.

And somehow he got connected with Salis and Service. and the ranch. And actually in August, I had another real bad Crohn's Flair and couldn't go to the ranch for quite a while. And then as I started getting better, she was like, you know, hey, you need to come out. We're having this writer-producer guy come out. You need to come out again. And I had started coming back out, working the babies and everything. She's like, make sure you're there tomorrow. This guy's coming out. I want you to share your story. So he came out. And George, lost his cousin, I think our nephew, to suicide. He's a veteran. He was a Marine. And it's been really pressed on his heart to do something in that space, right? And the whole goal of saddles and

service is to help in that reduction of veteran and first responder suicide. And so I share my story And then I have over the years been kind of doing some writing here and there of just, you know, you know, random kind of veteran related kind of like a novel, but, you know, just super piecemeal stuff. And then my story and that you've heard and all that. And so sharing that with him, and he was like, hey, like, you know, the goal here is to like make a short film, like a fictional short film that encompasses like a lot of the stories. Because there's, they've helped over a thousand veterans at this. ranch. And so taking a lot of these stories, putting it into like one character, right? So it's

kind of manageable. And making a fiction, you know, movie story about a veteran who is, you know, helped by horsemanship, natural horsemanship and all that. So it just kind of organically happened where I would kind of send him some stuff and, and he, you know, would give him. me feedback and finally was like dude you're going to join the like riding team you're going to be a part of this you're going to help make this you know kind of as believable and as honest and authentic as possible because this happens all the time right where people you know want to honor the veteran community and military and service and stuff but it just comes off super cheesy all marky especially when it has to do with horses and stuff um so the whole goal is to try and do something that does justice to all of our stories and what we do there at the ranch and I'm just there to help help out as much as possible. And you can learn more about it at do the thingmovies.com. It's going to be called at Liberty.

So, you know, slash at Liberty. You can find it. Maybe Dee can put that link in the description. Cool. So that's, people can learn more about that. Saddles and Service. dot org they can you know um you know go there as well um yeah just amazing stuff so um really excited about it so quick little thing when i was five years old you know i was a real cowboy right

helped my grandpa out at the ranch and everything somehow um the Bank of america was doing this huge marketing thing where they're doing billboards all over the country with like you know real cowboys and real workers and stuff like kids and so i was chosen because i was a real cowboy kid and i was all over the country on billboards right cowboy hat like my 15 minutes of fame made like a hundred a hundred dollars an hour um doing this photo shoot back in you know like early 90s which which is still the most money i think i've ever made for hour especially if you count inflation um think in the military i made like 23 cents an hour and in the military i made like 23 cents an hour in Iraq, you know.

So when that was done, this producer or whatever wanted me to play this cowboy kid in a movie. I was going to be shot on the set of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. And I really thought I was going to be like, you know, the next, you know, kid cowboy actor. Well, it ended up like falling through. But since I was five years old, like all I've ever wanted to do is being like, you know, a cowboy movie.

And so now, um, He's like, okay, you're going to get your shot. We're going to make this movie and you're going to help write it, but you're also going to be in it. So I'm really looking forward to finally getting to do that as well. Dee, do we have any questions for Lance? Sorry, we'll pull it up here. No worries.

Littering and. Littering and. One question from M. Corbyn. Is his friend's last name really, Grendel? Brendel, B with a B. B.R. Brendel. Yeah.

We didn't hardly any of us went by real names when we were over there either, right? He had a pretty funny nickname. I won't say it on here. Yeah, they, yeah, we all had nicknames. But yeah, Brendel. So, Lance, anything else you want to tell people about before we get going tonight? Anywhere you want to direct the audience, too, to go take a look? I mean, we'll have a URL down in the description for folks, but is there anything else that you want them to know about?

There's a couple things I think. You know, one is everybody's journey is different, right? The most important thing, I think, is not giving up, is always trying to find that thing that's going to get you out of bed in the morning. It might not be horses for you. It might not be surfing, but it might be archery. It might be, you know, painting the little things like you were talking about. It could be, there's so, the world is humongous.

There's so many things that you can. do um i i i hate it when veterans think um even you know sharing my war stories and stuff it doesn't like i don't know doesn't make me i'm not super jazzed on that more jazzed on like this part like don't let those stories be the best thing you ever did in your life like let that be like one chapter you know you've written a book and i read it and and it's like there's there's chapters of your life there's things that you're doing you're not stopping right um it's it it it could be one of the best things you did in your life, but it shouldn't be the and only best thing you did in your life. You know, for me as like my, I'm not really trying to be anybody and I don't have social media

really or anything like that. Since having kids, like my focus has been pretty much solely on, I want to be like the best father and I want to be the best husband and really, you know, really putting everything into that. And being a good dad is not is not doing this. you know, all day, you know, with your kids next to you and stuff. So I just want other veterans, you know, for me, I try, like, meditation and different things, even different, like, medical things. I tried several times and would think they didn't work, right? And I always encourage people, like, try it, like, at least three different times,

even, like, waiting a while and trying it again. Try that thing three different times with three different providers or three different groups or whatever and to make to before you know you write off you write that off or whatever you know and some veterans that you know it might be a service animal is really you know all they need it might be um you know might not even be like a veteran group you know it might be a completely separate thing you know getting involved in journalism you know something super um you know different but yeah anybody that's you know struggling it's i think it's easy to look at at the news and your phone and social media and just get so bogged down with all the negativity and all

the you know bull crap and think it's so important if the political theater you know that happens constantly in this country you know it's like if you were to like literally I turn the the news app off on my phone you know no social media and it's like my six foot world this house everything's great yeah yeah and I have control over it I don't have control over anything out there I didn't have control in the military. I didn't have control in war. But the things I can control is what you need to put your focus in all your time and energy into. Getting mad about every single thing and all that stuff that you can't control, you know.

Yeah, I think it's pretty useless. With that said, you should still do things like, you know, your last episode is about Chapman. and everything going on with him, right? So by all means, absolutely signed that petition like I did that David, you know, started. You know, there's not a guy that I served with that would be in that situation where, you know, two people would have gotten an award

and the dude that's alive would take the exhibit. That got, everyone I served with would be like, absolutely not. Like, don't even include me in the museum. The guy that died, you know, And I don't know a single person that would do that. So sign that petition. And we all got all of us veterans who, we all have to police ourselves and our own

and look out for things like that and try and make a difference. And I don't mean, you know, don't do those kind of things or have your head so far in the sand that you don't know what's going on. But the more of the negativity that you can get out of your life and focus on the things that you can control, the happier you're going to be.

And your recovery is going to be better, too. Absolutely. You know. Yeah. Well, Lance, thank you for sharing your experiences with us tonight, man. I mean, it's a wild ride. I mean, yeah, ups and downs. But, I mean, overall, I mean, some really good things, too.

Yeah. People always ask me, like, hey, would you do it, you know, over again, you know. And if I had to do the same life over again, I don't think I'd change a thing because of all the good things that have come out of all the bad things. You know, and it's one obstacle, you get over the next one, and there's another obstacle, and you know it's going to come, but, you know, never give up. I think if I got to live two lives, I would really love to try being a pilot, you know, like a jet fighter pilot, you know, or whatever.

I think that would be fun, but you don't get to live two lives, so I wouldn't change it. Well, there's still time to get your pilot's license, though. Well, that's true. That's true. So thank you again, Lance. We'll have some links down the description. Go check out the projects that he's working on and some of the charity organizations.

And thank you, everyone who joined us tonight. We will see you again next either. If you're on Patreon, we'll see you on Wednesday, live. Otherwise, the episode will premiere on Friday. So we'll see you guys next time. Thank you. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Absolutely. Stay in touch, man. Yeah. Thanks.