The Team House - Army Ranger, Special Forces CIF Team, & Command Sergeant Major | Bill Hanes | Ep. 283

Episode Date: June 16, 2024

Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Bill was born in Wuerzburg, Germany on October 22, 1970 at an Army Hospital. He enlisted in theUnited States Army on 24 March 1993 and served his first four years with Company B, 3 rd Battalion,75 th Ranger Regiment (Airborne) at Fort Benning, Georgia. After completing the Special ForcesQualification Course in 1999, he was assigned to Company B, 1 st Battalion, 10 th Special Forces Group(Airborne) at Panzer Kaserne, Germany.From 1999 through 2004, Bill served in several positions on Special Forces Operational DetachmentsAlpha (SFODA) 024 and 036, 1 st BN, 10 th SFG (A) culminating as a Senior Medical Sergeant and CellLeader. In May 2004, he joined Company D, 2 nd BN, 1 st Special Warfare Training Group (A) as aSenior Instructor/Writer for the Special Forces Advanced Reconnaissance Target Analysis andExploitation Techniques Course. Bill returned to Germany to serve in the Commander’s In-extremisForce, CO C, 1 st BN 10 th SFG (A) for SFODA 0136. In July 2011 Bill became the CompanyOperations Sergeant for the newly formed Crisis Response Force, CO C, 2 nd BN, 10 th SFG(A) at FortCarson, Colorado. He next served as the Group Operations Sergeant until selected as 1SG,Headquarters Company where he served from November 2012 to May 2014.In 2015 Bill became the Company Sergeant Major for Company A, 2 nd BN, 10 th SFG (A) for two years.He then served as the NSOCC-A/SOJTF-A CJ3 SGM from November 2017 to September 2018. InJanuary 2019, Bill was appointed 2 nd BN, 7 th SFG (A) Command Sergeant Major. In 2020 Bill wasappointed as the Group Command Sergeant Major for 2 nd Special Warfare Training Group (A). InJanuary 2024 Bill retired after 30 years of service.Bill participated in Operations JOINT GUARDIAN in Kosovo, JOINT FORGE and BOLERO in Bosnia,IRAQI FREEDOM and NEW DAWN in Iraq, ENDURING FREEDOM – TRANS SAHARA, ODYSSEYDAWN, AND OBSERVENT COMPASS in Africa, and FREEDOM’S SENTINEL and RESOLUTESUPPORT in Afghanistan. He has deployed numerous times with EUCOM, CENTCOM, AFRICOM,SOUTHCOM, and various unnamed operations.https://www.sogfoundation.org/——————————————————————Today's sponsors:AeroPress Coffee Makershttps://aeropress.com/teamhouseBetterHelp Online Therapyhttps://www.betterhelp.com/teamhouseTo 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]#specialforcescifteamBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House. channel and podcast if you'd like to and we really appreciate that so go it and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house special operations covert ops espionage the team house with your host jack murphy and david park hey everyone welcome to episode 283 of the team house i'm jack murphy here with Dave Park. Our guest on tonight's show is retired sergeant major Bill Haynes, who had an outstanding career in the Ranger Regiment and Special Forces. And today, he is part of the Special Operations Genesis Foundation, which we'll talk about in just a moment. Got a couple things I want to tell you about up front. The first thing is the AeroPress. If you're on the go and you don't like the

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the code team house at checkout to save 20%. It's time to say goodbye to crappy coffee and yes, to better adventures fueled by better coffee. And thank you AeroPress for sponsoring the show. our second sponsor of the show tonight is Better Help. That's Better, H-E-L-P, Better Help. Hey, you know, we talk about post-traumatic stress on this show quite a bit, but you don't have to be a combat veteran or have seen combat to, you know, to have struggles. Everybody has struggles.

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That's BetterHelp. com slash team house. Guys, you don't have to do it alone. And then real quick, we want to say thanks to Billy Gould from one of our favorite bands Faith No More. Apparently, they do care a lot. He sent us this bottle of Yabiga, which I think basically means fuck it. It's Serbian plum brandy, made on a farm.

But, Billy, thank you so much. We really appreciate this. I'm going to take a quick. That's the real stuff right there, the Rockia. And I mean, when we read the letter, like, wait, really, faith? Like, is this in a cover feat? This is like... Love the band.

Cheers, David. Hopefully that's as well. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, this is delicious. And this is I propose, since we're going to talk to Bill about that part of the world. Oh, this is delicious. Okay, everybody, check out Yabiga if you can find it.

It's amazing. So, Bill, just to kick it off, I want to jump right into the Special Operations Genesis Foundation. Can you tell us about what that foundation does and you're involved? in it? Yeah, Zach. So I, once I retired in January from the military, my experience as a leader in the U.S. Army, John F. Kennedy's Special Warfare Center in school led me to believe that there's a serious gap in our nonprofit support to the Cadre and the families in SWIC.

And SWIC is short for that long word I just used, right? So we support the category and the families, specifically within the first 24 hours to the first month of a crisis or whatever it is that they need help with. And then in that time period, as we're helping them with whatever they need, we are working diligently to transition them to another nonprofit that specializes in whatever it is that they need, whether it's mental health, whether that's addiction, or if it's some other kind of thing, we're trying to also work through some scholarships and some different grant programs where we can partner with some of these other nonprofits that are doing really well these things.

And then once we hand them over, we'll give them a small grant to go with that so that nonprofit doesn't come out of all pocket for it. And so helping out those guys and gals at SWIC is pretty important because not only we're helping green berets, We're helping civil affairs. We're helping SIAP soldiers. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention my co-founder, Jamie Aguirre, who is a prior civil

affair soldier. And she is my right-hand gal. She's really knocking out of the part, doing all the backside stuff, all the computer stuff, all the messaging. And I just couldn't do without her. So that's what we're doing. We need people to help us. We need support.

So if helping out special operation soldiers, especially those that are creating our next generation soft soldiers is something that you think you could get behind, visit us at the SOG Foundation.org. So SOG Foundation.org. Or follow us on our Instagram, which is SOG-S-O-G-F-N-D, or visit us at any of our other things like LinkedIn and Facebook. Special Operations Genesis Foundation. So that's just a far on no profit. Thanks, Zach. So if people do want to help, and we're talking even now, so if you go to SOG Foundation and go to home, you can donate,

but you're also looking for volunteers to actually give time and help with some events. Can they do that at a distance? Do they have to be in the Bragg area? No, absolutely. Doing anything teleworking would be great because sometimes we just need products created. sometimes we need events run. And if somebody's in their area think that they can run an event

and they're willing to do that kind of work, then setting something up like that would be great. And of course, you know, more hands, less work, it would be great. So yes. It's really cool that you're doing this, Bill, because I know I never worked at SWIC, but I've heard from instructors, you know, that those guys work a lot.

And some of them that said that they spend more time away from their families and at work at SWIC than they did when they were in a maneuver element with special forces. I mean, those guys really do get worked. And, you know, unfortunately, we do have things happen sometimes in SWICs. Sometimes soldiers die in training, family crisis. If something happens to your kid, it doesn't matter what unit you're in. And I'm glad that there are people out there thinking about, you know, the people assigned to SWIC and, you know, making sure they're taking care of. Yeah, Jack, I'll tell you that, so here's the thing where I where I'm a little bit concerned, right?

Because what happens is our guys and gals that serve in the operational attachments do that for about three to five years. And then they come up on a side bit to SWIC to serve at the schoolhouse as a cadre member. So they take all that time of being gone away from their family. And they show up to SWIC and they're told it's going to, you know, take a knee. but really it's only a predictable schedule that you know you're going to have your holidays but you know you're still working long hours and sometimes you are working through the weekends but you know reconnecting with the family because sometimes the families have grown apart

or mama and the children have you know because most of our got most of our our guys our guys right so mama's in there she's already learned to survive on her own the kids have done the same and now you're trying to re-inject yourself or you're trying to reconnect. Sometimes that's a struggle. But then it's also a struggle when you start thinking, you have time to start thinking about all the things you went through the last three to five years. Right. And the reality is that they have counselors and they have resources at Fort Bragg,

well, Fort Liberty now. But that staff is spread across the student population too. So you would think like, hey, I can get the support that I usually have. at an operational birth, but the reality is it's less. Right. And only if you have significant need will you get in and see them, right? So that's where the benevolent space comes in real heavy, because if the leadership comes to a benevolent organization like the SOG Foundation and say, hey, we need help. How can we get after this? Then we can put some resources to it that they would

normally otherwise not get access to, right? Because the army, because if the Special Operations element can't take care of it, then Army TriCare takes care of it. And that's an Army, you know, Gen 1, A1 version of whatever, set item, right? And there's probably nothing that's going to turn off a guy from getting help, like getting an Army solution to them. Yeah. Right. Right.

And, you know, you bring up a really good point that I've never thought of is, you know, these people have been going hard for a number of years. and generally when people are operational, that's not when the problem surface, right? Because they're in it, all the stuff stays in the back. It's when they come back, they have the family stuff,

they have the personal stuff, they're back in the real world with bills and this and that, and they have time to think about everything is when things start bubbling up. That's correct. And, you know, in the cadre are then, So now here's the other side of the picture, right?

So now you've PCS the guy, removed the guy and his family from whatever, you know, wherever he was at. You said, hey, to his wife, if she's working, hey, go find a new job. And sometimes they got to restart from the bottom again, right? And if they're credentialed, because they're a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, then they got to get recredentialed in the new state that they're in, which is, you know, North Carolina or Fort Lewis, if they're up there teaching at Fort Lewis, or if they're at Yuma, Arizona, or if they're down at Key West, or, you know, if they happen to go to D.C., where we have a couple of guys up there serving. So, you know, now you're adding that stress to the family. He's getting a different job.

And sometimes you feel disconnected from that because here you were operational, and now you're just here teaching at the schoolhouse. And there's, you know, a little bit of disparity in a lot of the guy's minds on, hey, is this the best suit for me? because I was really good when I was operational. So you had that, the reintegration, a little bit of maybe dealing with some operational type stuff. And you got a good mixture of some problems, right? And then here's the other problem too. A lot of these nonprofits go to SWIC

and they use SWIC as a means to do fundraising. So they'll do demonstrations and they'll set things up for them. And I'll tell you, when I was a leader, some of the things that I saw was when I reached out, to these non-profits, these larger nonprofits, and asked for some help, there was a delay of about a month. When I was an operational group,

I had to kick them off me. You know, as a leader, I'd like, hey, stop, I'm good. His soldier's good. We've got plenty of help. Hey, go directly to, you know, his team sergeant and ask specifically a team's arm because the soldier in the family's taking care of at this point. And, you know, they'll reach out to you if they need anything more.

But at SWIC, it was a little bit of a, dry desert and support, in my opinion. And so, at least in my experience. So I'm just trying to help bridge the gap and then reconnect, because there's some really great nonprofits out that are doing really good things. And I'm not trying to recreate the wheel. I'm just trying to augment and then give direct support in that gap of that one, that initial contact of a crisis to that first month.

Bill, you know, I'm, I mean, I thank you for doing. that and I hope people go and check out the foundation. I'd like to talk about you now and ask a little bit about what, you know, how it was that you grew up and what was it that took in it? I mean, there's an interesting story here that you have a twin brother and you both, you know, paralleled each other through the military. How did you and your brother grow up and what took you into the military. Yeah. So I saw in the bio that was posted that, you know, a brother and I were both born in Worsburg, Germany, and a military hospital. My dad served in the army for 25 years. He retired as a command sergeant major. So we moved around a lot,

but we served, well, he served. We were there with him for about 10 years in Germany. And so that's when I, you know, we were stationed in Bad Tuls, Germany for a little bit where 110 was assigned for a while. And that's when I first met Green Berets. And great stories. So my brother and I are at the school in the playground, playing Mr. Cross from where we lived. And it was a weekend. And a Huey helicopter comes over. And the guys start repelling out, you know, real slow and real methodical.

like repelling is. It's not, it's not overly dynamic. And the guys get to the ground and they start firing their blanks off their M16. We thought it was the coolest thing. And we were there watching them all eager, you know, just soaking it all in. And one of the guys after the bird took off and they were done with their initial, you know, and they didn't do much afterwards either. Right. So it's pretty okay. Ken now that I look back at it. But he hands us the M16 and says, hey, you all want to fire the M16. And we're like, oh, yeah, that's great, man. And that kind of galvanized at that point.

I knew exactly what I was going to do when I got older. So, yeah, so we just, you know, Army family, spent a lot of time, you know, at unit functions and supporting my dad. And I always admired what my dad was doing. It just seemed like a real noble cause to defend the Constitution and defend this country. And, you know, back in those days when we were doing the Cold War, they do their big maneuvers and they do their big, you know, type readiness type things. And I always kind of liked the way, you know, the concept of there is an enemy out there.

You got to be ready. You got to be training because you're going to go fight, right? And my dad had served in Vietnam as well. And then, you know, seeing old photos of him in Vietnam. Yeah, it just at that point, I knew when I was old enough. I did try college because my mom wanted us to do college, both of my brother and I. It wasn't our forte. We did well enough in wisdom like we were failing out of it, but we weren't excelling.

It wasn't your thing. Yeah. Yeah, so we pulled pitch and we, uh, he, Henry went in first because he bailed for that one semester. He's like, I'm fine, I'm out. And, uh, I finished the semester, came in three months later. A mom, she didn't like it too much, but my dad was there when I, you know, took my first oath.

And, uh, that was pretty cool. And, uh, so yeah. So that's kind of it. And, and then Henry and I both went into a Ranger regiment. He served in Alpha Company. I served in Bravo Company. And then he went Aubrey. Yeah, Third Ranger Battine.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, third Range Battalion. And then he went to Team 3 and served Team 3 for a little bit. And then around that time is when I went to selection and went SF and as rest of its history. So you went through Rip and graduated. You got to Ranger Battalion in August 1993. What was it like when you arrived in the unit? Yeah.

So here's the thing. So when I showed up in Ranger Regiment, it was right. So they had just deployed to Texas to do their big train up in preparation for Somalia for Operation Gothic Serpent. So when I got there and I realized that's where they were at, it was, well, it's going to be like a normal training event, right? They'll come back. And then when they come back, you'll get on your, you know, you get inside your squad, right? So I'm like, all right. Well, from there, they end up pushing out to, um, back to Fort Bragg. And they started doing their training in Fort Bragg.

And that was when everybody knew like this was going to be a real deal, right? It's going to happen. And so I was like, hey, man, I'll fill canteens. I'll load ammo. I mean, nobody will have to load their magazines. Just get me over there where they're at, right? And they're like, no, we're not taking any new guys. So I missed Gothic Serpent by, by, by,

a week or two. And so, of course, when they came back, I will tell you that, unfortunately, a lot of those guys were suffering from post-traumatic stress, you know, looking back at it, they were angry. They were angry that they were allowed to be so unsupported when they asked for Spector and they asked for more support. They didn't get it. And, you know, obviously that's the environment. You know, now that I look back at it, that's kind of the environment that we work in special operations. Sometimes you don't get everything you will that you request. And when the shitstorm hits the fan, hopefully you got enough. And so they did a great job down there.

So don't make no mistake about it. But, you know, it wouldn't have had the results that it had, had there been more support for them. And so they were a little angry. And I'll tell you, the hazing and, you know, you guys, having served in Ranger resume, you guys know that there's always a bit of that, but it's probably a healthy amount. but what I experienced was an amount that I realized pretty soon that if I wanted to survive, I need to become a pit bull. And so then I got caught up in that a little bit. And the reality is that that caught up with me by the time I graduated at the time.

And here's the other thing too, right? Like you go to rip back then and they basically smoke you. You show up there for the first couple of months. You get smoked. You go to pre-ranger, you get smoked. you go to Rainer school, you get smoked. So when you come out as a tab D4, what do you know how to do really well?

Smoke a person. Then you create an environment where that kind of environment is encouraged. And you know, and you got somebody who goes, okay, well, I'm not going to fall prey. I'm going to be the predator. Right. And yeah. So I got caught up and it got an article 15 out of it.

I got moved from BCO to Seco. And got a fresh start over in Seco. How did you survive that article of the team without getting RFS, release for standards in range your jargon? Yeah, so the relief for standards is a real thing, and it was a while there where I was really worried about that. But because it was evident there was a leadership involvement or, let's say, inept leaders that allowed that kind of culture to exist, they weren't going to crush the young E4. right and the squad leader at the time that I had was right at his PCS time so he was able to leave without receiving his punishment essentially and really and truly the only person they got even though you know platoon sergeants platoon leaders squad leaders were all aware was going on they saw what was

happening and then statement after statement of soldiers stating that they realized that they had a larger problems. So I did my 14 and 14. I did provide the shiniest floors in our platoon area. And that's probably what saved me is that I kept my nose down or my head down and I kept my nose to the ground. And I was remorseful, right? Because I realized, especially now looking back at it, what happened to myself and what happened to some of the other soldiers, some of the things that I did to other soldiers, I wouldn't want happening to, you know, the new generation of soldiers coming And then especially if it was my nephew or my niece or somebody in my family, I wouldn't want that kind of stuff going on. Right.

They go through a selection process, just like SF, although a little bit shorter. Hey, man, they make the cut. Leave them alone, right? And if they're not there, they don't have the right mindset. Well, then relief or cause them, get them out, right? But anyways, that's good. Could you talk to a little bit? Yeah, for people who didn't serve in Ranger Battalion or maybe in an infantry unit like the 82nd,

and maybe don't understand what you mean when you talk about hazing. I was wondering if you could get a little deeper into that. And I mean, of course, as team leaders, squad leaders, et cetera, we'll use some physical punishments, some push-ups, some flutter kicks as a disciplinary measure. But then it can reach a point where it becomes excessive and it does become abusive. And I was wondering, you know, with the experience you have, you know, kind of in now seeing all of it in hindsight, if you could talk a little bit about like where is that line from a leadership perspective?

Yeah. That's a, I mean, I got to say that's a, you hit the nail on the head on that. Where is that line at? And it's pretty fine. When you cross over it, if you're mature enough, you know it. Right. But here's what I took away from my experience. And then all the rest of the time I've spent in the military watching good leaders and how good leaders operated.

Right. So let's say you've got a private. out there doing some silly shit and you know you need a correct action but you need a little bit of time to figure out what you're going to say and how you're going to handle the situation so what's the easiest thing to do drop and do 25 knock out some pushups right or knock out some flutter kicks right and so you tell them to do that and now instead of you watching form and count and all that what you as a good leader should be thinking about is, okay, what did they really do? How do I reach this soldier? What do I need to say to be effective at this point? And then when you got that calculated,

whether he went to his 20 or 25 pushups, you stand him up and then you say what you're going to do you know, to fix the problem, right? So the corrective action. And then you have them move out, right? But when it starts to become personal, or you start to take it personal, and you start using that form of discipline, that form of corrective training to a point where that is your corrective action, you know, doing 30 minutes, doing an hour, making the person sweat to they don't have any more sweat to give, where they start to puke or, yeah, it starts to become counterproductive. And clearly if you put your hands on a soldier, and I was in that environment where I saw squad leaders put their hands on soldiers and slam them on concrete, right? And so it got pretty bad there. And the thing is, there was plenty of leader to saw it. So again, this is where other leaders have to police each other up. Because sometimes soldiers will do things that will get under your skin fundamentally, like in your core.

you know that they're just not the right person. And in the Ranger Regiment, you think you can put enough pressure on them to make them quit. And if they quit, they get, or you can make them do something silly with the RFS. And that's where things get a little bit. That's when it gets too much, in my opinion. Just correct the training, get your thoughts together, let the soldier move on. And if you've got to build a packet, do it, do it in written form. Do it the right way.

Yeah, I like the, I like the, the focus or the reminder that the focus should be the coaching and the teaching and the mentoring and the you know doing some push-ups is just you know the the wake them up a little bit and then we get to the important part right right and gives you that chance to think through and get your clear head too um so you know he's getting his head pulled out of his butt he's realizing you're in a position of authority you're you're staging yourself as a leader to be effective and then you execute that and then you move on and then if you need follow it up with written counseling.

And, you know, ultimately, we all kind of hate the sound of written counseling. But the reality is when I sat on separation boards as a sergeant major, those leaders who did written counseling, good written counseling, counseling, like you were counseling your child in written format, right? The times you needed to pull their head out of their butt or put a boot in their butt or the time when you're putting your arms around and taking care of them, right? And you see that in a counseling packet as a sergeant major on a separation board, then you know, you got good leaders and then you can really kind of, well, you can definitely believe that that

leader has done everything they do to rehabilitate that soldier and they just haven't responded. So now it just makes it easier for you to go, yes, separate from the army. Bill, I know this is kind of jumping ahead a bit because I'm pulling a lot of your leadership experience from this. And also what you're talking about is more a culture of hazing, you know, that is off the rails as opposed to covering up for soldiers doing stuff. But I want to ask you about, because we've talked about this on the show before,

how sometimes the military will look at the next in-line leaders all the way up to maybe the platoon leader or even the company commander and punish them for something that a Joe has done. And do you think, and their enlisted leadership probably suffered from that too. do you think that the military's habit of doing that to leadership of making them responsible on this micro level causes leaders to a either overreact or be cover up things yeah that's correct they do especially when you're dealing with privates right because there's a belief somehow that a leader can be there at night when a soldier is making a dumb decision downtown somewhere right and if the soldiers still make a a dumb decision that somehow, even if the leader wasn't there, that he's somehow still responsible. And so here's the thing. So my nephew, one of my nephews, I have one serving in the 82nd.

I had one who just left the 101st. He got out. But I heard from my nephew that platoon sergeants would tell and first sergeants would tell the younger soldiers to tune people up. Right. Right. and to smoke them. And of course, my nephew would talk to my brother and I and having the experience that you have as a senior leader. You know, I told them, well, one, if they want to smoke soldiers, then they should be doing it. Right?

Because we all know it's a fine line. So the more senior you become, the realization is that you know you shouldn't be doing it. Right. So you try to influence the others to do it for you. And it's kind of like a gang kind of thing like, they do my dirty work for me. And that's poor leadership, right?

And punishing leaders for that creates that environment because then what happens is those leaders feel the pressure. And then they realize they don't have enough in written counseling to separate the soldier and nor will they probably ever get enough on them to separate them. So we're going to get, you know, boil this down to smoking. Right. And the worst part is those young team leaders, are expecting, I say team,

platoon leaders are expecting those platoon sergeants to know how to handle that. And they don't have enough experience themselves. And so they just kind of turn a blind eye. Really what I would say is those platoon leaders really need to say, I don't know, there's a better way of handling this. Right.

And that's one of the things I loved about SF is because you got your branch, you got a senior team sergeant, you got a fairly, you know, it's a new platoon leader or a new team leader, but the team leader has enough wisdom in the army to know what's right and wrong. And you do real leadership, which is, hey, man, not acceptable. Fix your shit.

And here's your paperwork to sign. Let's not make this a habit. Right. Yeah. Everybody knows then, okay, like, hey, he just counseled me. So I better pull my shit together. And, you know, a senior E6 is going to do that. And, you know, that's the difference between, you know, having teams of E6s and E7s versus the platoon.

of, you know, PV, you know, one through, you know, three, and then some spec fours and young U-5s and everybody's running amok. And so you feel like you might have to do those things to get everybody in order, right? But really what they're looking for is decisive leadership, you know, leaders they can look up to that they know they're going to take care of them and they're also going to get them through combat.

That's really ultimately what the soldiers are looking for. And if you provide those two things, I think the rest of it will fall in place because either they'll be too scared to let you, to fail you or they'll be so inspired all they want to do is great things. Right. You start getting around in the middle ground

and that's when everything starts getting crazy. It's interesting because I, and not to go, you know, to keep being this, but I think that's one of the things that especially young PLs don't understand is if you do right by your people, they're going to do right by you. Like, you don't have to be the spotlight.

They're going to make you look good because they want to work for you. That's correct. That's correct. And I think, you know, with young privates, you've got to have to kind of figure out what motivates them, what's going to get them motivated. And if you can figure out what those things are now, you know you're going to have a platoon of 30, 40 people. So you've got to figure that out, right, maybe on an individual level. And that's probably the hardest part of the work, right? But the idea that the one all fix all thing is smoking them, right? You're going to turn half of them away. And the other half you're going to motivate in the wrong direction. if you do it too much or you do it in excess, right? It's kind of like parenting in a way, because if you yell at your kids for every little thing and if the repercussions is always the extreme, then when they do the extreme shit,

you've got nothing else left to do. And so what do you start doing? You start beating the shit out of your kids because that's all you've got left to do because you've done yelled at them for everything else. And so it's the same thing with leading, right? If you yell at your soldiers and you're extreme on everything,

When they finally do something bad, what are you left with? Well, smoking the shit at it and we're putting your hands on them. And now you're just out of control. So what was it like for you in 93 when you're there? And all these, like, dudes show up with their combat scrolls, because that's kind of a big deal. Yeah. Did they get combat scrolls out of Somalia?

Yeah. So they got CIBs and combat scrolls. Aiko got their combat scrolls. It was bitter, man. they were upset and rightfully so right we had um a company commander that um was questionable and again i wasn't there i can only tell you what the fellas talked about right so rto there's there's obviously rounds being fired rTO goes across the street um he gets hit company commander grabs he runs out grabs the radio and leaves the kid there and you know for a young private that seems

horrible. But in reality, that radio's your lifeline to all to whatever life support you have up above you, right? Or in the rear and calling in QRF and of course the commander had to wear with all to do that. And you know, the young soldiers maybe didn't realize that, right? Their priority was, hey, you should have picked up the soldier and brought him to safety. So then a platoon sergeant had to come by and and pick that guy up. and get them across the road. And so they were just bitter individuals. And so when I tell you that when you first, when those guys first came back and all

the new guys were out there and it was like a shark tank like no other, when I tell you that the smoking occurred and went on all through the night, like that shit's real, right? When people are passing out and getting IVs and being forced. hydrated. That's for real. For six months, there was relentless. I mean, one guy, one E4, ended up getting an article 15 because he wanted a kid to low crawl through this mud puddle out in front of the barracks. And he actually put his boot on the kid's head because he kept keeping his head up too high. To make the point, you need a low crawl with your head as low as you can. He puts his boot on the dude's head. And then the guy shows up the first formation with,

with, you know, the skid row of having gravel and dirt ran across, you know, his face run across that shit. And then they go, what happened? And he's like, I was low crawling. What do you mean you were low crawling? Well, I was low crawling with his boot on my face, right? So that was kind of, I mean, it was very intimidating, right? And so now you're, I mean, I remember being told, like,

hey, go over there and take that individual out. In other words, like, just knock on his ass, right? And basically they wanted me to tackle him, bring him to the grave. And so, you know, I do a two-leg take down and just walk over to a guy and just take his ass out, slam him on the ground. And, you know, and my thing was, so you're going to tell me to do it. And if I say no, because I know what's wrong, you're going to look at me as a lesser person. And then I'm going to get smoked for it.

So here we go. I am your pit bull. Watch this. I'll let it happen. Right. This is going to go down well. And, you know, finally, his squad leader, the soldier squalier came to me and say, look, in the future don't do it, man, because that's not good. right i realize you're being told to do it but that was a good as an example of a good leader

telling me a like that's not the right answer man but i realize you're being told and i will talk to those individuals too and then shortly thereafter that kind that kind of shit stopped but uh you know i would like to think that it's not happening anymore i would like to think that 20 years of combat has brought the brotherhood together and made people be better leaders but the reality is when you're a young leader. And like I said earlier, when all you're being taught as a leader is to smoke people, whether it's now RASP, Free Ranger, Ranger School, right? I mean, we've all been to Ranger school. That's not fun. And there's a lot of smoking and shit going on. So you don't have to do one thing really well, not lead, but smoke. And that's kind of tragic when you think about it.

Yeah. Bill, talk to us a little bit about, you know, you and your twin brother and you both go to Ranger School together more or pretty much. Oh, yeah, we didn't see that fast, yeah. Come back and now you're getting ready for Haiti. That was the thing that was happening in 94. Tell us about what it was like in Ranger Battalion, getting prepped up for that. Yeah, so we went to a location in Florida, very, very remote, put up in intense, literally a mobile, mobile, you know, deployment center. and man, we were out literally in the middle of nowhere.

I think there was a prison. We were so remote. There was like a prison out there. That was the closest thing to us. And, you know, we got the brief from the commander. Hey, guys, this is the dress rehearsal, right? Everybody needs to be on their peas and cues. This is, you know, everybody's watching because everything needs to be on time.

And everything needs to go down very well. Everybody has to be where they need to be at on time. And so we were all pumped. up. We're like, yes. And I was thinking to myself, man, I am a year into this and I'm getting ready to jump in just like they did in Panama, right? And I'm thinking, or, you know, do the thing in Grenada, right? And I'm thinking, man, is this going to be awesome? And here's what happened. The next morning, a newspaper article came out where a retired military person, I don't know for a fact, but I was told that it was an officer who basically spilled the beans on how we were going to do that target, how we were going to take down Haiti.

And it was predictable for anybody who knows the TTPs. And so it was a wash. And I was like, man, I hope they hang that dude up. I hope they quarter his ass, you know, because that was, you know, back then that was like, that was the show, right? You're one chance. You thought it was only going to be one chance. And so then we go to. to a brother and I then go to Ranger School.

We go to Mountain Faze Ranger School. And I think we're maybe a day or two in it. And one of the Ranger bat boy and Ranger instructors, say, I need all the bad boys over here. So we're like, oh shit, what's this about? Right? Because, you know, usually they only do that for one of two reasons, right? Like, hey, either something's happening operational or somebody died

and they're trying to prepare everybody for, you know, something tragic happens, right? A helicopter went down. Who knows, right? So then they tell us that Haiti's kicking back off. And hey, this battalion's over here. This battalion's over there. Does this other battians do this other thing?

And everything's going to happen. And so everybody was like, holy shit. Now the rechance, you know, Haiti 2.0 is going down and I'm in Ranger School. The next day was Knott's. And so for anybody who's been in Ranger School knows that knots aren't tough. Not really, right? You got enough time practicing it. but that day, Noss was the hardest thing you could have done in radio school because we lost a lot of dudes, a lot of dudes.

And they thought they were going to get back to their platoons and deploy and go do Haiti. And then, of course, Jimmy Carter, right? He goes in there and quote unquote, saves the day. And, you know, as guys are off, you know, staged off of the aircraft carriers and flying in to do the airfield seizure. like Carter you know helps people come to their wisdom and then everybody gets turned off and of course when I graduate

because I was like no I'm holding to it I'm not going to you know waiver on this I'm in Ranger school I'm doing Ranger school and I so when I graduated Ranger school and then of course you see all that you know I hear all the shit talking of everything that happened in preparation and then when they got

the word that they had to turn back around deep down inside I kind of chuckled because I'm like I graduated you didn't go because I wanted to be with you. So when does it come into your mind the idea about maybe going to selection and doing this whole special forces thing? Around the time that I got in trouble phrasing. So I always wanted to do it, but then I really got emboldened with it, right? Because I had an opportunity to go to Ecuador as a young ranger to do an exchange, an NCO exchange. So they brought some Ecuadorian soldiers up to the United States through School of

Americas. And then they sent a couple of Americans down there. So we had two guys from airborne school. They were Rangers, Ranger tab guys, and then myself and then a couple other infantry guys and then a couple of school of, you know, American guys that were at school Americas. And we went down there and there was a Green Beret in that group. And then I met another greenberry down there and just their calmness, just the way they were, the professionalism, the false bravado wasn't there. It was, yeah, it is what it is, man. I'll show you what I need to. That's the sense you get, right? I'll show you what I need to show you when it's time. But right now, I'm just, I'm just, I want to be laid back and I just want to just relax. Because this is the time

to relax. Later, shit's going to get hard and I'll turn it on, right? And I thought, that's what I wanted. And so then I start to formulate my plan. And I'll tell you, man, for anybody that's been around out there in the old area that peed and field that there was a nice track that they had out there. And it was kind of real fine gravel. Man, because I feared getting blisters or getting injured at selection. So literally at night, in the middle of night, I'd wake up and I'd go out to the track

with my ruck, my shorts, and my, um, my jungle boots on. And I'd walk, in fact, I'd stop wearing socks because I wanted to toughen up my feet. And so then I didn't walk on the track. I would warm up and then I'd take my boots off and then I'd walk around the track until I started getting the hot spot. And I would do that several times a week on top of all the other things that we were doing just to toughen up my feet so that I wouldn't get any blisters.

And it really paid off. It really did. And so that's when I knew. I wanted to make the shift. I wanted to be around good leaders. I wanted to be around people that, I mean, I don't need to yell at you. I don't need to, you know, motivate you. You're motivated on your own.

And if you're not, you're not going to be a part of us, right? And, yeah, and then, of course, they didn't fail, right? Like, there's been some low points in my SF career. There's been clearly some high points, but generally on the leadership side, it's been all solid. everything from the officers to the senior enlisted. And again, there's been, you know, a few that have disappointed, but in general, all good leaders, and they all know how to motivate people.

Because when you're dealing with your partner force and you're dealing with foreign people, you've got to dig deep in your talent box to figure out who they are and what motivates them. And if you can do that, motivating or not motivating, but leading soldiers, fellow green berets, isn't tough, right? You just got to, you know, and of course, that's the problem, too. Everybody knows that everybody's picking and looking for angles on each other to figure out, hey, man, what am I going to say to Bill? So Bill jumps on board and, you know, goes knee deep in what I need him to do

and excel at this, right? So, you know, you realize it, right? When they're saying certain things, you're like, all, man, I know you're playing on me right now. But it's all good because I'd rather have that than somebody yelling at me or. Right. Yeah, so. But so you go to. to the Q-course, you become a special force medic.

You want to tell us about, you know, when you first get to group, and I mean, you had mentioned to us you had kind of a bad experience on your first team. Yeah, so let me, if you don't mind, I'm going to back up real quick to, to an experience at Q-force, right? Because so I went to Sears, oh, now is the other thing that motivated me to go to S-F is why I went to Sears school. And there, the CAD rate were phenomenal. the retired guys from Vietnam that were there teaching.

Absolutely phenomenal. So I go to selection. Again, phenomenal. Hey, task condition of standard, move out, do the best you can. And I love that. I absolutely loved being told, do the best you can, and just going out there and performing. And then I went to, then I signed in, once I got my class date,

I signed in, went to SUT. And again, because that's like a mini version of, of Ranger school did really well because that's that's all I'd been doing, right, patrolling as a young Ranger. So did really well there. Again, hey, no, no frills and and no yelling, no carrying on. And I go to the 18 Delta course. Now, mind you, I didn't, I never really took anatomy in school for, because we moved around a lot. I just never got anatomy in my science class. So, or any of the health stuff, I did always like, or science type stuff.

And so I show up to the 18 Delta course with a clean slate, and I realized I would have to work my little ass off. And then I met some really unprofessional instructors at the 18 Delta course. And I left there thinking to myself, if I had immunity with a bomb, and I could blow anyone building up, that would be that building. You know, thank God I didn't have immunity. And thank God I didn't have a bomb. But no.

But and then when I went to, then, you know, then I got, I was relieved because then when I went to Robin Sage, I got back to around that same solid leader, you know, hey, just do the best you can. We're giving you a mission, plan for it, execute it. And then just do really well with your quote unquote partner force at Robin Sage. And I was, man, it was refreshing. And then I show up to language school. And I now looking back at it, I know what the young NCO was trying to tell everybody, which he got up in front. front of everybody in the big auditorium that was there and he basically said hey look if you mess up we're going to take a tab from you we're going to take your green beret from you and they're going to kick you out

and if you do this we're going to take a tab from you we're going to take you tab from you we're going to take you bring a green beret from you and we're going to take you out but it was just so negative at the time i was like and they selected me for for learning russian but i already had a deal pt in german and so and i had orders already to go to 110 so i thought well this is my one shot now And I don't want to be around this negative shit anymore. So I went up to one of the cadbury in the back and I said, hey, I just wanted to see, you know, I got Russian, but I got DLP in German. I'm going to 110.

And the guy goes, 110 and you got a German DLP. Let me look. He looked at it. He's like, yep, you got a good enough score. Start signing out. Go get your orders. You're out of here. And so, yeah, so then I show up to 110.

after spending a little bit of time with my family that's in Germany and shook my first team and it was a very senior team and we're talking like guys that were on the team that were at their you know over 15 years some of them at their 20 year mark and they were just getting you know they were close to getting out and you know they've been operational a large portion of their career and so here's you know young young bill haines and I was just wanting to get after it. right and uh team sergeant would come out over to my room where i was at doing my office work and he goes hey where's uh such and such at uh he already went home he left around noon said we aren't doing anything so he's going home and he's like okay well well about sudden such i'm like yeah he left too

and like the team started had no control over anybody and i was just thinking to myself like this is the united states army how could this be happening that the team sergeant didn't release anybody but Everybody's going home. And then, of course, when we had a couple of things go on, you know, the team got split up. And I got sent to another team. And so did the other guys, right, to go augment their teams and make them full, which is an indicator that your leadership and your team isn't trusted, right? They, they, otherwise, they would bring and augment that team, right?

So they didn't. So anyways, I was pretty frustrated. And at the time, I was ready to VW from that South. and just go, you know, back to infantry and say, I quit. I'll take, you know, needs of the Army. Give me infantry again because this is buffoonery. And luckily, it was like just around six months, maybe a little less than six months.

We got a new team sergeant. And I got to use his name because I know he's long, and retired, but Dave Connor, Dave Connor turned that team around, and it was one guy. Nothing else changed in that team, one dude. And here's what he did. So he told everybody, hey, look, in the morning, you will be standing in formation on Monday. Everybody will be.

And then we'll turn and go do PT. But if you got an appointment, you got something going on, you just need to let me know. And then you can turn and burn after that. But you will be at the formation on Monday. And, man, the first Monday came around. Well, the first Monday where somebody didn't show up, right? And so this guy, he doesn't show up. He stays up inside the team room.

and, you know, Dave looks down the line, he's like, hey, where's, you know, Soldier X? And everybody's like, well, he's going to go see the doc because he's got a knee bone issue. And Dave goes, okay. And so, you know, he gives the, you know, back in the old school, even then we reported on Monday our body count, right, for the week, right? And say, hey, here's who we got, here's who's on school or whatever, right? Who's present for duty? So, Dave goes, all right, um, hey, to IC, take the team.

You guys are going to, you know, take that route because that'll be the route that we're taking today. I'll catch up to you. I got to go talk to Moni. And basically, he fired Moni on the spot. Wow. Yeah. And he said, I told you you will be here. You, you, you aren't.

So clearly you don't want to be in the team and you don't want to be, you don't want to obviously respond to me as a team sergeant. So you're off the team. And there was some backlash. The team leader and the team warrant, you know, had a close. door session. And as a young E6, I was like, oh, shit, they're ganging up on the team sergeant. I'm going to see how this plays out. Yeah, yeah. It's like mommy and daddy are fighting each other. You're like, oh, shit. Exactly. And then, of course, me being a young, you know,

leader at a Ranger regiment, you know, I left as a squad leader as a staff sergeant, although young, right, I'm like, oh, I know what's going on here. And let's see if this NCO's got, you know, worth his salt. Man, and Dave, I didn't hear. I didn't want, I didn't stick around because that was a privileged conversation that I didn't need to be a part of. But in the end, when I was paying attention, and when Monty packed his shit, and later I found out, this is what he told him. Hey, look, here's the deal. You either find yourself a new job and you'll leave with an instant we are that you can survive. Or when we get back from leave, you don't have a job.

I will fire you and I will find you one. And then you'll get a relief or cause. Oh, wow. Yeah. And here's the thing. And that's how the Army should work, right? Clear tap, you know, hey, this is the Army. You don't get to pick and choose where you're going to serve

and what time you're going to serve, right? So, and of course, me being a little bit more disciplined, you know, Sarbanator, command sergeantor for a father. Like, that was my cup of tea, man. I was like, yes, finally, somebody. And, but what I really loved about Dave was he would take the advice from all of his younger guys, all of his teammates, and he would process it. even if he contradicted what he said or if you had a different thought about the plan or whatever we were doing,

and he would listen to you. And you could tell he was listening with the intent to understand. And then he would take a moment. You can tell him, he's the, you know, the gears are grinding, right? They're working. And then he'd tell you what his decision was. And not all the time did he agree with me, right? But I always appreciated him listening.

and I thought, okay, this is the guy here. This is the guy I want to be like. And when I'm a team sergeant, that's what I got to be able to be as well. Comfortable in your own skin enough to listen to other people's thought processes and their beliefs, especially on something as powerful as a mission, right? Right, right?

Yeah, because everybody gets very passionate, right? Everybody is like, who people do. And so it's like, you're part of the mission to breathe. And then it's, don't question my mind. mission, right? Being, being secure enough to, you know, hear a subordinate disagree with you and be like, okay, I hear what you're saying, but in this instance, we're going to do something else because this is my judgment. Right. And, you know, it goes, and it's like three, three different courses of action that can occur at that point, right? One, you say, you know what? I didn't think about that.

You're right. Let's incorporate what you just said. Or two, hey, no, I thought about it. I heard what you had to say, but I'm still on track with my way of believing, right? Because I've got more experienced than you. And I've seen this unfold and we're going to do it this way, my way. Or you go, hey, you know what? I kind of like certain elements. Let's mix the plan and let's blend the plan together. But if you're comfortable to leader to do that, that means you're really mature. And Dave at the time was, I think he was around 18 years in the Army. And he was just a hell of Green Beret. And it was, it kind of saddened me. He had a bad leader as he got picked up for Sergeant Major and he called me, I think it was in Germany. No, I was at Fort Bragg. Oh, yeah,

I was at Fort Bragg instructing. He called me up and said, hey, look, I'm thinking about leaving the Army. What do you think about that? I'm like, Dave, we need good leaders like you at Sergeant Major level. Please don't get out. You know, help protect us, steer the ship right, and keep the buffoonery down, right? but he ended up leaving and I get it right ultimately you got to make a decision if you're if you're tapping out you're tapping out and that's that's good yeah no another one of those decisions where your subordinate disagreed with you and thought you should exactly no it's time for me to leave but never thought of it like that but that's great that's a good what

what was the dynamic like though between the team sergeant who came in and made this this this change and obviously the team warrant i assume but definitely the team leader Like, they didn't switch over. So, so the upper leadership of the team stayed the same, even though that team was sort of, you know, bogged down. How did, how did that relationship work? I think everybody was, I think everybody was, so Chief Teeney, Kirk Teeney, again, I'm in contact still with Kirk.

And Great American, my first team weren't, and absolutely probably the one of the best team, a team warrants I've ever had, right? Just a great dude. I think everybody realized the deficiency of the other team sergeant and everybody, it was like a breath of fresh air that finally we've got a good

NGO leader taking the reins and driving the horses, right? And they embraced them. You know, other than that one moment because they thought they're used being too rash. Right. So, but what happened was

what they didn't realize, because you know, you don't know until you see, the result, right? Because either that creates a calamity of everybody feels unprotected and well, I could be the next one. Right. Right. Well, what happened was, imagine

a target where everybody's shooting, you know, at three meters and your shot groups like this, right? And you shouldn't be because Team Sergeant's letting you do whatever you want to oh shit, a dude just got fired for doing that.

Everybody went right into a three inch dot. And then you were keyholeing because now you had guys who instinctively wanted to do army shit, green beret shit, and do it at the highest level. It just, everybody was distracted and everybody realized it was dysfunctional. So, hey, I'm going to fuck off. But now you get to that point where, you know, everybody's in queue and everybody's leading off each other. And what ended up happening was shortly after that, we did the Trojan warrior competition. where all the teams at 110 competed for like a three-day event.

And our team went from zeros to heroes. We actually won that competition against all the other teams within 110. And only one person changed. Pretty brilliant. And as time goes on and, you know, you mature as a green beret, you ended up on the crisis response force. Also probably back at the time was it still called? called the commanders in extremist force?

Yes, SIF, yep. You tell us a little bit about, you know, how you got there. And if you can tell us a little bit about the history, also, I think a lot of our listeners and viewers probably aren't familiar with the history of that particular element. Yeah. So when I finished up, I was around two years, we had done a deployment to Bosnia. I had a new team sergeant who just came from the SIF. he and I talked and based off my personality and and the different things that I demonstrated he's like hey man I think you would be a good fit what are your thoughts and I'm like yes absolutely would want to go to the sif and he goes okay I know the company sergeant major I'll walk you over and do an introduction and so we went over there you spoke highly of me and you know the company sergeant major was like yep I remember you when I was the A code sergeant major

I remember, you know, you doing great things there too when we had you on board there for a couple of different events. So he brought me on. And then, of course, you got to go to Sephardic, the shooting course. And then I went from Sephardic straight into the sniper course and went back. And then, you know, it was just a really good time. So the history is this. So there's two main parallels that need to be addressed, right?

because there's always a yin and yang. So there's the blue light force that fifth group came from. The criff or the SIF back then kind of evolved from the blue light force, which was a unit stood up to basically do that hostage rescue high end kind of mission where either total success or total failure, right? You're just on that blade's edge of, hey, this is going to be a difficult mission. you're going to probably lose a lot of dudes, but you guys are the right guys with focus training to go do that.

There was also the Berlin Brigade that was doing a lot of clandestine, a lot of high-end targeting as the Russians and the Cold War was kicking off. And so there was a lot of that going on with the Berlin Brigade as well. That then turned into Charlie 110 Therisif, right? So that kind of those two evolutionary flows are important because when the National Mission Force stood up, prior to that, they were deciding who was going to take that mission set over. Would it be SF or we were going to create this new thing? And the new thing, the National Mission Force basically prevailed, mainly because, and I think it's always going to be a thing, right? I think they realized it back then.

the SF teams already had a lot going on with their partner forces and the potential of being that Trojan force behind enemy lines. In Germany, specifically, if the Russians pulled through, hey, band, we're going to send guys to the mountains. They're going to build their partner force. And then we're just going to run amok behind Russian enemy lines. and you know so that's where it kind of you know evolves so once that happened then we were

basically a subset to the National Mission Force if a crisis occurred and so Charlie 110 and all the other SIFs would pre-stage and start reporting and once the National Mission Force came in it was a handover

and then we would augment in behind them or with them depending on what how large the target was and where they thought we would be best suited. So then we would go hand in hand with them on a target set if needed. So I always liked that idea of knowing your partner force, knowing the country enough that and you had your language skills to help bridge the gap, which the national mission force may not have.

And in the crisis, you don't have time to hire linguists to translate for you. So then you become this multi-purpose tool where, I can report, I can snite, I can assault, I can be your, I can, I can translate and know the partner force, I can give you the download on the commander. I can tell you what the unit strengths are. I can tell you what their weaknesses are if you're going to go on target with them. And so, and of course, the interoperability was something that I thought was very critical. And we did a lot of training together just to make sure that we had that interoperability. So I think it was very paramount.

It's actually kind of tragic that, you know, those. would now turn into the crisis response force, that they went away because I think there's a lot more to play, and I'll be interesting to see how the next 10 years unfold. I've got some ideas of what I think and why I think certain things happen, but there was always a little bit of animosity with the battalion commanders for losing their crifts to the National Mission Force. And the real reason is, and let's just be very candid here,

them and their staff weren't invited to those missions. and when you're looking for the one event that's going to go up that's going to write your check the block for your next promotion, you want to be a part of that. I think if the National Mission Force would have actually incorporated the leadership in a small support package, there would have been better blood between SF and National Mission Force. There was this interesting dynamic from what I understand that.

Yeah, like as you point out, sometimes the SIF would tell their own chain of command like hey we got this j-sock mission we're not doing your thing like sorry bro but then on the flip side of it i mean yeah i get it imagine you're a battalion commander and an entire company in your battalion is not available to you you can't deploy them you can't do anything with them that's correct and you know when that when that upsell would go and you know they would ask like hey we request this element to go they would go they would of course say well good good we can provide, you know, some C2, some staffing functions to help out. And they're like, no, the package will get too big, brings too much of a

signature, not really, right? Now fast forward, Iraq and Afghanistan kicks off. We're working with the national mission force. And now the national mission force says, hey, we request one frift company plus a dog enabler, plus these other enablers. And battalion commanders go, no, you guys pretty much have got it, right? Because you're the National Mission Force. It's your mission.

You put all the enablers on this. And so then we got flipped back, but then it didn't help with the blood between the two organizations. And so when the opportunity came, it's like, well, are they easy to work with? In my opinion, I don't know, but my opinion, are they easy to work with? No. Are we paying a lot of money for it to make this thing work? Yes. I mean, we were getting a pretty decent chunk of money.

to do the things we were doing in that company. And so when the time came to budget cuts after the war kind of started winding down, it's like, okay, can we do something with other elements? Can we do, do, do we really want to do this with these guys that are always a bit of a pain in the ass and leaders are always difficult. Okay, yeah, let's cut them away. That's my opinion. I know it's more complicated.

Yeah, no, I don't think you're far off at all there, Bill. there is a bit more like politics where you had the like socom commander all the way down through Usasak and special forces command they were all it was the first time that none of them were previous sift guys they weren't sift veterans and so this they kind of lost their protection there from that chain all the way up to the secretary of defense who is chris miller who gets a memo at his desk like yeah we want to disband the sift mission and uh it's a that's part of why it happened also. And I don't really mean to opine too much about, like, was that the right thing to do or the wrong thing?

Like, I can see both sides of it. But it does leave us with the question of, I think you were pointing out a bit or you were alluding to, if something does happen in extremists, if something pops off in Sudan, if something pops off in Malaysia, who is responding to that? And I mean, the National Mission Force can respond to that, but would it be, better to have a force in Okinawa. And you know, we can talk as we go forward and I start talking about my experience with SOC Africa and standing up Charlie 210.

I can get very specific about a specific event. But the bottom line is this, right? Leaders and leaders relationships matter. I think that in the end, when you as an organization are so inflexible and and you don't palate cooperating with adjacent units, whether they're conventional or their other parts of J-Soc, then you're going to find yourself useless, right? And I kind of chuckle at the idea that, you know, at 10th group we got this thing where, you know, there's a CD out there talking about, it's like a poem that was written by Aaron Bank.

And it's talking about, you know, SF being a small acorn growing in a forest of giants, you know, the other branches of the army, right? And how they kind of snub their nose at us and how they, you know, had disdain for us. And now look at us, we're a mighty oak now after so many years of being around. But I always think, yeah, but we are like that with all the other, with J-Soc and all the other special operation elements. you know, it's these leaders that, you know, nothing good will ever come from being hard to work with or being inflexible. Yeah. Right.

And then I find it so so disheartening when I find there are parts of our organization that gets very rigid, right? And, you know, as an example, right, a lot. Well, some of the reason why there was so much confusion, let's call it confusion in Somalia, was because the Ranger commander thought that they were in command and they didn't want to give up any of their command authority or what they thought they had to J-Soc right and J-Socs like well we're the big boys in town clearly we're the C2 element right and clearly we're running this show and so there was this

strife and I remember as a young private hearing about this with the guys that talked about the strife between the two organizations now since then I think they learned of course when you start losing dudes, you learn real quickly what you shouldn't be doing. And so they clearly delineated. Once we have control, once you get deployed underneath a mission set with J-Soc, we are in control. And I think that was very good because egos, especially young infantry officers, right, will try to figure out a way to put the light on themselves sometimes, especially if they graduated for West Point. So, Bill, on that note,

One of the criticisms of the SIF, I guess, that was out there was that it never executed its counterterrorism mission with J-Soc. Even though they did a bunch of other great things, you know, they evacuated embassies around the world, including some that people really don't know about in Central Asia or West Africa, training host nation counterterrorism forces. And then you had the experience of going to Bosnia during the hunt for Piffwicks for persons indicted for war. war crimes. I actually didn't know that the SIF team was over there doing that. Yeah. Yeah, so we did, right? So it's clear you got to delineate two parts of the Piffwick thing, right, versus a adopted foot war crime, like you said. There's the part that we shootly named GIFWIC, which is like gift wick, because it's a present. Basically, the person who's, here you go. Yeah, yeah, because the person knows that they're being that they're wanted that they did some some they had committed some war crimes

and they know they're going to leave the life of being on the run and they don't want that so they turned themselves into local law enforcement and then the local law enforcement coordinates to bring them in and then into your custody and then you know soft elements would then take those individuals process them and then get them on an aircraft to the hay where they'll be. go to serve their time if they're found guilty. So that's one part of it. And so a lot of people, there's some people out there I hear talking about it.

Now, there's a few other times where, you know, the teams went out there and actually did, you know, clear targeting and picked a person up. But that was very, very few opportunities. Now, the SIF at Charlie 110 actually had a, a couple of missions where, you know, and actually by coincidence, we had sent some recant teams. And my recid team was one of the first team, actually was the first team in to take that mission over. And we created a pattern of life on certain people.

And just extended when we say pattern of life, right, not the individual himself, if we saw them, if we knew that they were there, or if we just bumped into them, you know, of course, we would grab them. if we had clearance to do that, right? But that didn't happen. But what we would do is we would target the entire family. So we would find out addresses for moms, dads, brothers, sisters. We'd pay attention to deaths because what happens is a lot of times that you get individually committed war crimes,

whether they're Muslims or they were serves, they would go over into another country, nearby country, and they would hang out so you couldn't go after them because it's a sovereign country. You can't just go into any sovereign country and snatch people. But they would come in for a funeral. They would come in for weddings. And so, you know, my team was out there.

We created these patterns of life. We created packets on certain individuals. And then, of course, we turned that over to a national mission unit. And then they would hold on to those things. Another rec team came in. They did something similar. And then lo and behold, person X came up on the radar screen because of death in the family.

And I remember deploying, right? Like it was like a two hour recall. Bam, we're going to Bosnia. We fly in and I'm there standing in front of the S2 and this young, young little fella was working for us. He goes, hey, man, we got awesome intel. This stuff you won't believe, man. It came from the national mission force.

It's awesome. And I'm like, all right, I'm interested. Like, my juices are flowing. Like I'm feeling the vibe here. and I grabbed the packet, I opened it up. And I'm like, hey, bro, are you fucking serious? I go, I made this shit. This is me, man.

This is my product. You just got it from these guys who we turned it into. Like, get out of here, bro. So anyways, we ended up doing a target. And what was really great about that was the two reccy teams for the SIF for our troop, well, actually for the company, had been very familiar with the entire area. area that we were operating in where this person was living. And so all we had to do was refine a little bit of his actually daily comings and goings.

So we knew coffee shop, we knew Jim, the report was he was a martial artist, the report was he's usually armed and he was supposed to be some kind of Billy Jack badass, right? For anybody that remembers Billy Jack. And so, man, we, we had that area locked in, we moved in real slow and easy. We had our, you know, our markings for later, because we were all in civilian clothes. We were all in civilian vehicles. And the pattern of life was he'd come across the front of his apartment complex, park, and then walk into his, and it was a pretty decent walk. And anyway, love story short, of course, day of execution.

He doesn't follow that. He comes in the back way, of course, and he's late compared to what his pattern life was normally. And so he gets out of a vehicle, they call it, and two teams. Red trucks open up and two teams just come flooding out. And you got to imagine these two, you know, like two teams of big ass linebacker looking dudes and full kit comes running towards this guy. The guy's running towards the front of him

a little bit delayed from the guys running back to the back of him. He doesn't even know he's coming. They're ahead by a little bit. So he's locked in on the guys running towards him. Doesn't know what to do. He freezes. And the guy's in the back hit him and just lay his ass out.

And he's there on the sidewalk, just eating shit, right? And vehicles are spinning into place, you know, doing, you know, J-turns and blocking positions are going into place to kind of keep the public out. It was even though it was in the evening. We just didn't know, you know, what the response was going to be with something like this going down. And anyways, we get the guy. He goes today. And, yeah, I don't know if he was actually found guilty,

because I didn't care enough to know and follow that shit. But he went to the Hague, and if he found him guilty, he was definitely serving some time. And another great story was we had a guy who we wanted to get, but we had pattern life on his driver. So the idea was bringing his driver in, do some questioning. But at the time, the theater commander wanted to get his NATO forces involved. So the idea was, because we had the assets and the resources and the training, we would go in and take the target down.

Well, we would stage and lock the target down. And then we'd let the French soldiers come in and enter the building and basically take them out and they would put them in their custody. And then basically the newspapers would read, you know, NATO forces, French, right, did great and wonderful things, blah, blah, blah. Which is all good. I'm all about that shit, right? But not the French. I've worked with the French. No.

No. Anyway, so lucky for us, he had a brand new BMW. Now, at the time, what we didn't realize was the sensors on those BMWs are pretty, pretty good. So one of the assaulters came up and pulled out a knife. So just in case he actually made it to the vehicle by any weird chance, he couldn't get away. He sticks the knife into the tire, to slit the tires, alarm goes off. And let me tell you what you got to do in Germany to get any dude. Tell him his vehicle's wrecked or have that alarm go off.

And they're coming out looking what's going on. Then you grab them, right? Perfect TTP. Anyway, so knife goes in. Dude opens up the door. He's in his tidy witties. At this point, we did have authorization that if he was combative or if he tried to leave the building that we could grab them. So right there, he's in arm's reach.

We grab them. and we grab them off to drive them off to an HLZ. And the interesting thing with all those guys that we grabbed, and there's quite a few of them, they all shit their pants or pissed themselves or they start vomiting, right? Or they do all of those things because they're so scared shitless because the way we would execute was so phenomenal.

We wouldn't talk. Everything was really quiet. And as soon as we grabbed them, We'd bag them. We'd put earphones on them. And we'd put, um, blocked, blacked out sun and with one son went in dust goggles. And total sensory deficit. And they didn't know if Americans got them or if it was the other guys that, right?

He knew he'd done arm to, right? Like the other group just grabbed his ass. And so they're scared shitless because they don't know what's going on. And, uh, I think that was probably one of the most satisfying moments in my career. When you found these guys and you hear them. reports of what they did to people. Yeah, yeah. And what they did to, specifically women.

Yeah. Because, you know, for the people who watched CNN, and it was like, oh, the Muslims are, are so poorly treated in Bosnia because of ethnic cleansing. They were cleansing each other. They were fighting each other and they would do horrible things to each other. It wasn't just the Muslims being on the backside of this. And so we're talking, go around, hey, guys, we're going to get ready for a major offensive. go around town and police up the women from the other religious group that we're going to go after,

bring them into the camp, and you guys can do whatever you want. And I listened to the testimony as we drove a survivor into a village to show us, to show the lawyers, right, and basically it was recorded for the courts to say, this is where X happened, this is where this other thing happened. And it was, and here is where I was. rate not for once or twice not for a one day where multiple men did what they did to me it was i was raped by multiple men until i passed out when i came through i was still being raped and and it just happened like that for days and so to bring those individuals into custody was absolutely a

highlight of my career and i and i hope those individuals individuals rot in jail. I don't know, but I hope they do. I mean, that's awesome. And I mean, it's got to be, like you said, pretty awesome that as a soldier, you had been looking forward to this day for a long time. I mean, Haiti got kanked. He just missed Somalia. But now you're in Bosnia, like, rolling up some really bad dudes, you know, like you said, tagging and bagging them and getting them off to an LZ and putting them on a helicopter. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it was pretty sexy. right? Because that was the one time in my military career where you got the paperwork and you were

authorized the beard, right? Because you were completely, like I had all kinds of different IDs. I had badges to say, hey, look, if you got any issues, what I got going, talk to general such and such, leave me alone, kind of badges, right? And get out of jail free cards. Yeah, you know, and it was, you know, I got, you know, identification saying I'm a civilian and it was complete cover. And so it was absolutely at that point, I even remember telling my dad, if I don't ever serve in combat, I'm going to be okay because this is some pretty bullshit. Yeah. And not to mention, I was in Kosovo, too, and we did some cross, you know, some border observation type stuff that, you know, captured some really good stuff too.

So, man, that first part of my SF career, that first tour, I was like, man, I hit the money pot going to, uh, to, uh, to 110, right? this is going to be the highlight of my career. It's all going to be grave after this. So Bosnia, then Kosovo was probably like 1999, 2000. That's correct. That's correct. Yep.

And now we start also getting into, I mean, we're coming up. You didn't know it at the time, obviously, but we're coming up on 9-11. And can you tell us a little bit about, you know, how that unfolded and how it changed special forces and sort of like what the next step was for you? Yeah.

So I remember being in the Chow Hall when the towers were struck by the airplanes. And I remember thinking, okay, this is a pretty significant thing. And then, of course, going to the crisis response force, I'm thinking, I'm going to be even one step closer to getting my gun on and hitting some hard targets, either in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever these little bookers are at, right? And so as we as things start to unfold and our 10th group brother in forward stage and they come through pants or concern, I'm like, well, wait a minute, these guys are deploying, but we're the forward deployed element and we're not deploying. And the rationale was, hey, you guys been at it for a while, living a good life, doing shit.

it's time for the guys in the rear to do something, right? We are being Colorado Springs, right? And then, of course, what I didn't realize, which later came to, because everybody was really disgruntled. Like, morale at 110 dropped at that point, especially when you knew your brothers are going in Afghanistan on the initial, like possibly even before the balloon went up and everything was official, right? And so morale dropped.

Yep. People hated, I mean, people hated coming into work. And it was just like, venom. Just nobody was happy, right? And I remember going to the printer and printing Saddam and his entire family's photo and just stapling them to all of our targets, just so I felt better that I was at least, you know,

putting a hole in a paper target that had his ass on it, right? And, and so anyway, so, yeah, so we were pretty disgruntled. And then, of course, you know, unbeknownst to me, it was right. time in my career, I get picked up for a sleek assignment. And I was like, man, I can't believe this. And so I made peace with the idea of ask for the one place you don't want to go. So at least you're asking for it. And you'll make peace with it. And you'll be a better, happier person for it. So I asked for the 18 Delta course to be an instructor out there. So I got on the phone. I called up the Sart Major and I said, hey, sorry major. I want to come out there. I'm an 18 Delta. He goes,

wait a minute, we got you on assignment to Delta Company. And I was like, second baton, I'm like, well, what's that? And he's like, well, that's going to be Separdi. And I was like, okay, well, you know what? Sorry, Major, I apologize for most of the time. Yeah, so I got over to Delta Company. And I was instructing there for three years. And so when I got back, then it was on.

At that point, then so what happened was essentially, Sok Yur and the Yukon commander didn't want to release any of its assets because they thought maybe they might have something going on in Europe, right? Or in Africa that they'd have to respond to. So lock in those elements. But then as people started reading up, you know, as people started to surge and units started getting burned out and people were saying like, hey, man, we're going back to back deployments.

They're like, well, what units haven't deployed? And they're like, well, 1-10 hasn't done. deployed and and the story goes like secretary defense is like well why the fuck not and they're like well because of shock your commander and you know you come commander wants his forces and you know wants to be able to respond to things and he's like well backfill him or do something but those guys are good to go right because they haven't been in it i think i think the first group guys had a bit of the same experience that it took them a few years to get into the game that's exactly right jack because what happened was all of these you come all of these commanders for these combatant commands wanted to have a contingency element yeah if something happened right but the reality was is that they're all sovereign countries right you just don't go in and operate in those sovereign countries without an invite right and so to and here's one thing for you as well you know like we all know this right like like we had a bomb threat at the u.s postal office

at Patch Clinic or Patch Barracks, right? So who they called? They didn't call our guys to take care of that. They called who? The MPs and their special tactics element, right? Because like, why would they, right? In Germany, Germany's got their KSK. Why would they call us?

And of course, it's a pride thing. Same with the polls, right? They got their grom. Why would they call us? You know, they might ask for a little bit of support, but we ain't kicking in a door, more than likely, and we haven't, and we're probably never going to because they've got their counterterrorism organization, and you pay as a citizen for your counterterrorism organization,

as much as we all do for our counterterrorism organizations, when something happens in your country, they better be able to do the work and not have to call Americans in. So that's where, you know, you see the bullshittery in all this, right, if that's the word. And it was glad to see that someone finally got, you know, common sense and said, no, get these guys in the action and then after that it was game on i remember guys down in the irish pub complaining that we weren't deploying when i got back and then a year later it's like hey man we're losing a lot of dudes i don't know man this bullshit right why are we for it so much and i'm like huh imagine that you got what you asked for uh well tell us about you know when you got back there

in that first uh sift deployment to iraq so i was the uh company of ops sart and we actually went out there and it was a standard mission to train the commandos and train the counter the ICTF and so our guys continue training them like all the other SF teams did and then you go on target with them so they're in in Baghdad proper you know you would just go out there and conduct operations obviously mostly in the urban environment and you know back then you were actually doing a lot of your own door kicking and you were doing a lot of your own assaulting and the partner force basically came along with you just to give you validity to say okay yeah we took the partner force with us but but in reality that started to change

around that time as well um because shortly after that someone got the wise ass idea that hey their country their fight let them go in and do the first clear we've been training them let them do the things that they've been trained to do, right? Let them feel the bitter end of what happens when you're up against a hard target. And that worked out pretty well. And then the second rotation I had in 2010, that was with National Mission Force and in Missoule. And, man, we did some really good work there.

I mean, we had some really talented guys on that. on our troop. We had some talented leaders. We had a dudes running in the daytime. We had dudes running at night. We created pressure on that network in Missoule. And then and we did a couple of flyways too close to the border to get these people that are being ratlined in. You know, there's these foreign fighters. And we had some really good targets go down out there where we blew some shit up and spoke some dudes that deserved it. And you can tell they were hardcore, like a la Akbar, right at the end, when they knew the shit was going down.

And I will say because of our, and here's the irony, our train up was in Berlin, in the winter, and we had home vs getting stuck because the snow was up to the fender well of the front tires, right? And so we're in four-wheel drive, training for the desert in the snow. And our company commander, I remember we were all disgruntled because we want, you know, perfect training. We want perfect scenarios. And the company commander, Pete, good, good dude.

He ended up losing his life to post-traumatic stress. But good guy. I had him as my first team leader. And, of course, as a company commander when I was a team sergeant. And he goes, guys, it's PMT. it's all about working through the problem sets. You guys will be good. Watch.

And I'll tell you, other than one dude having an injury on the basketball court, playing basketball, another dude went in for minor surgery because he had some pain to find out that he had some serious medical issues. They had to get back to the States for, and we ended up losing him because of that procedure. And then a couple of close calls,

as far as, you know, it could have been close, but, you know, all of our training kicked in. And I got to tell you, it was phenomenal working with a whole bunch of American commandos at night, just rolling up in the city streets of Mosul or coming off a helicopter walking in 10Ks, all stealthly, and just locking a place down. And we had teams climb up to the rooftop of adjacent buildings because the guys were always sleeping. and enemies were always sleeping on the rooftops in the summertime. And that climbing team, hey, with Ben, I'm set.

And nobody knew we were there. And then we would initiate call out. And once we let them know we were there, old boys would stand up, grab their guns, grab grenades, whatever, rifles, whatever, and then instantly get smoked. And the gunfight was over before it even started. And that TTP saved a lot of American lives and it saved a lot of Iraqi lives. So, yeah, we had good leaders, but we had phenomenal, phenomenal assaulters. And that was a good rotation.

We made a big dent, in fact. What year was this, Bill? 2010. Dude, that's pretty late in the game. Yeah. If you had asked me, I would have told you with a straight face, we didn't have anybody doing ops in 2010 in Iraq. Yeah. Oh, yeah, it was game on, right?

And again, so a lot of our intel was coming from national mission resources. And we were going after some really good targets, right? And it wasn't, I mean, we had freedom of movement for the most part, driving on the highways and interstates that was in the end around there. But when we would go into the old part of the town to snatch up individual, we had clear positive idea that the individual is there. and we would roll in there nice and quiet in the middle of night because most of the time we would video outside of the town or the city part of it and we'd walk in and we would we would have them locked in with our sensors and man it was game on at that point and uh with the exception of one individual that scored and for for a lot of reasons we he scored it successfully um we got every

that we were going after. And it was pretty awesome. This was during the withdrawal. So I'm just kind of curious of like the big picture of like what you guys were doing. I mean, was this to like help cover the withdrawal? No, no. Here's the thing. Specifically, we were targeting targets that were of interest that were usually on the higher of the list.

So it was very surgical application. So it wasn't like we were in any major conflict. we weren't in any major like offenses that the army was doing or maybe even you know the rest of soft we were specifically flying in to like I said by the Syrian border to snatch individuals stop the rat lining coming in or as ISIS was starting to form up going after those targets to go hey look we know that network's getting created we got to get out there and start doing stuff right And so we, yeah, we were, we were, I mean, every night we would go out and then our daytime guys would go out unless weather was keeping us from going. And that was far and few in between because of the summertime outside of a death storm every now and then.

We were, we were hitting out pretty, pretty consistently. And I'll tell you that the daytime, we would roll out and imagine this. And, you know, for our viewers that have never been in the military, imagine driving in your interstate, let's see, Dallas, Texas. And a group of, let's say, six Humvees with a partner force rolling in trail would block you in on the highway, force stop your vehicle, get out with guns. And then if your ass is silly enough to pick up a gun, you're dead as they're rolling up to your car. And if you were smart, you didn't. And then they yank your ass out and, you know, turn you in to the Iraqi government for processing and to stand trial for. whatever terrorist activity you were doing, right?

So that was pretty good times. That's wild. I mean, I hope that someday that story is told in a more complete fashion about some of what you guys did over there during that time. And then you got the SIF also did some augmentation of the Secret Service while you were there. You want to get into that a little bit? Yeah, so I actually had the privilege of participating with the Secret Service twice. First time on a regular ODA as an augmenter to the outer cordon as President, I think it's Clinton.

Yeah, President Clinton was coming through the sniper alley there in Bosnia. And so essentially we were the QRF on the ground in the event anything was to happen. we had Snackers up on the rooftop. The Criff guys were doing other things a little bit more closer to the president's element, you know, his secret service element. And then later on in 2000, I want to say it was probably 2011, maybe, and maybe nine. So around that 2010, I think it was before the deployment, we went to Turkey, to Istanbul, where they were doing a summit,

leader summit there and Obama came in to visit there and talk with some of the leaders there and of course he had three different locations he wanted to go visit and talk to people and so we were there augmenting the cat team, the counter assault team. So basically

if something were to happen the guys on the inner circle, the secret serves on an inner circle takes the president, moves them to the motor cabinet and they start moving out and they're leaving to get to Air Force One and then they leave country, the counter-assault force will dive in between that inner circle and whatever's attacking, and then they go do their thing. And so, you know, they want to bring a little bit more of a bigger package and ask what can package with them, so they would have to

ask the Priff to come in there and augment and help out with that counter-assault mission. And what's that like for you in terms of, obviously, you know, they have their TTP, you guys have yours. Did you have to do a lot of train up for that? Or did they just kind of designate zone so that there wouldn't be too much overlap? Yeah, so I think it was pretty much a designated zone, right? So the thing is, on an inner circle, we're not messing with them, right?

Sure. They're not going to allow anybody else close to the president, but, and for all the right reasons, right? Now with the CAT team, you do some rehearsals, you do some familiarity training, but basically they know, that they're releasing you, the army guys, releasing you to fire and maneuver to the threat, and you're going to make contact and take out whatever threats there.

And so once you break contact from them and they tell you, hey, move and go to target, then that's what you're doing. Okay. And pretty much so then their, that their cat team is pretty much so staying there to make sure that the president's vehicle is able to move. Okay. Right. And so, yeah, a little bit two separate moving elements.

Right, right. So whereas if it were in a very permissive environment, say the U.S. or something, the cat team, they would be the primary, like the primary force to complete the action. But in place like that, they're actually almost staying in reserve and you guys are moving to contact. Right. Because the reality is, as that vehicle moves, you've got to plan for another initiated attack, right? And so that's what then they're there for, right? They're just making sure that the president is able to get out.

And then we're moving to contact. And then if they need us, then we may be able to flex later on somewhere else if need be. But really and truly moving that threat, making it difficult for them to continue to engage is what it's all. about that point. And how was that for you on both trips working with the Secret Service? Yeah, so my experience was phenomenal guys, right? Great Americans doing great things.

You know, I think it boils down to maturity as well, right? So you see a lot of senior guys, older guys, some of them even prior service guys that have joined up with the Secret Service to do the work, right, at that level. And my experience, specifically in Turkey where we were doing, we had some time on ADVON because we showed up early with them to really get to know the guys and have conversations with them. 100% professionals. And I've got nothing but great things to say about Secret Service. Now I know, you know, Secret Service and Seventh Group had a bit of a run in down in South America a couple years later. But that wasn't my experience. And my experience was nothing. But I was proud to see. those guys love their mission as much as I love defending the United States.

That's great. I would like to ask you also about some of the work that you guys did in Africa, and maybe to open up that conversation also brings up how 10th group ended up creating two Sips. You want to talk about that a bit? Yeah, so I think, you know, just generally speaking, right, that northern, section of Africa and West Africa has always been an area that 110 has been in and had responded to in crisis, right? So if an embassy became unstable or a country became unstable, we had to evacuate Americans. Typically, the Crifts would roll in there, sometimes depending on how big the problem set was,

maybe even an entire company from 110 plus a griff element would go to said country and help maneuver and get Americans out, right? So third group was tied up at a time with Iraq and Afghanistan. So because they were super busy, then basically 10th group, 110 specifically, specifically basically took over all the East Block countries and doing training with East Block countries deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan and Africa. And because the reality is there's a big terrorist network within Africa because there's a lot of poor countries.

You find a poor country, you're going to get terrorist organizations in there. There's this opportunity, right? And of course, you give somebody hope, you give them something to do, a young man, they're going to do it because they don't know anybody. veteran. And all they want to do is a paycheck. They want to feed their family or get medicine for their family. So they're going to do it. And if terrorism is the way to do that, they're going to do it, whether they believe in the ideology or not. So we were in there doing a lot of work. And then what happened was we realized that third group's element was all in Iraq and Afghanistan to include their SIF,

their criff. And they were being utilized there, much like we were being utilized with ours. And when deployments. And so it was like, hey, man, there's a need in Africa to cover down on Africa. So then 10th group got asked to stand up a second crisis response force. So when I left as a team starting from probably 110, I then got, there was all of the senior leaders on the NCO side to include, well, I would say that all of the leaders were hand-bid, but specifically the the NCOs were hand-selected. So we all got put together, and that company underneath the leadership of Matt Breivak and Tom, the company Sardnager, absolutely the best leadership I'd ever been around.

They were phenomenal. They were a phenomenal team, and even the ODAs, right, the troops, they were just phenomenal. The Sard major, the team sergeant at the time, the team leaders, it was, everybody was clicking. And then, of course, we had a lot of the Charlie 110 guys fill the ranks. We sprinkled in some new guys. It was phenomenal. And so as we were standing up and getting ready to go full mission capable, right, because there was a little bit of a time that was given to us to get equipment, to get trained, and then be fully mission capable, we had to take a trip to SOC Africa.

And what I will tell you is, at the time anyways, Sauk Africa, especially their J3, was an abortion. And I remember listening to this guy, and I'm going to say his name, and I'll take the consequence, Colonel D. India, who I very politely referred to as Colonel D. Idiot, was sitting there telling us that he was going to take the three teams and split them across

Africa in different countries to have a persistent engagement with different African countries. And I said, so let me see if I get this right. I go, you're going to take the upsell. You're going to split them in three, in threes, each team in a different country, in a continent that is three times the size of the United States. And when a crisis occurs, you're going to reconstitute them. Okay, sir, where is the ammunition going to go? Are you going to do an analysis and think that based off your intel, you're going to roll the dice and say, well, I think team X is going to be the one closest to whatever threat potential. So we're going to put the ammo there and maybe only have one team. And I go, what's your air dedication to move these individuals?

Because do you realize it can take days to get aircraft across Africa? Yeah. well you just don't understand their mass arm and i go well sir i've only been doing this for a while and then i heard the battalion commander and colonel de idiot say uh well uh we well we will we will reconstitute if we need to if we need to we will alert the uh the the the down cell package in in colorado and i said do you understand geographically what's going on here sir gentlemen I go, you got Africa, you got Europe up to the north where your airflow is coming from, and you've got everything on the East Coast that you're going to be able to pull from, and you've got Colorado Springs in the Rocky Mountains.

I go timeline-wise, what do you think is going to reach Africa first? Everything on the East Coast or the people in Colorado Springs. Right, right. And I said, absolutely, sir, you're going to create a nightmare. I said, we've only been responding to crisis from one, from within 110 for the last 10 years that I've been a part of 10th group and the history of 10th group. And he goes, yeah, but what happens is, and I remember him, what happens is things bubble their mash arm. Things bubble. I'm like, bubble.

What do you mean bubble? well yeah typically we'll see all the indicators I say hey sir there's been embassies that have that have fallen there are places that have gone to shit overnight

and we didn't see it and I go but okay okay whatever I mean obviously you're the people playing the day hence in extremists correct exactly

so then literally we go back to the state of course Matt Brideback and Tom were like that was fucking awesome well well done, right? And then, of course, you know, you know all the, you start doing all the homework and you realize the reputation of the people you're talking to. And you're like, okay, this all makes sense, right? So then it sounds, yeah, it sounds like maybe there's some misunderstanding about like capabilities or responsibilities because the persistent engagement piece, that's what the ODAs are for. Correct. Well, this is what happens when a geographic combatant command gets its first maneuver element. And the J3 and the Intel guys think that the most important thing is training their boogers with their one maneuver element that is a crisis response element.

Right. Right. Which, hey, do those things. But I told them, I said, hey, what you do is you need to pre-stage this response element somewhere where you can get airflow and you can move together. Right. Like maybe like a place in Germany where you can pre-stage, those guys can focus on training. and then they go if they need to go. And if not, they stay there where they're at.

And then the two teams, the upsell and downsell, just flip-flop from Colorado Springs to wherever that staging location's at. Well, anyways, I end up leaving there because I ended up getting promoted to first ARN. So now I'm in there listening to what's going on. And I hear what happens in Libya. Right? and that was an utter shit show. Oh, and that was the other thing I told him. I'm like, here's what's going to happen, sir.

You are not going to be able to reconstitute Charlie 210 if you send them out there to all these different African countries. And what you're going to end up doing is you're going to end up pulling Charlie 110. You'll get used from, you'll get an agreement, a use agreement from, Sokir. Sokir is going to cut you 110-Krif. And then 110-Krif's going to deploy into Africa. No, that will never happen.

mass sorry. And I'm like, okay, I'm just telling. So Libya goes down and guess what happens? Charlie 110 stands up and because it couldn't reconstitute Charlie 210. I will tell you, in my opinion, that J3, the leadership of SOC Africa, I mean, I realize there's a lot of criticism about Hillary Clinton. There's a lot of criticism about decisions. My opinion, yeah, SOC Africa owes a big, owns a big part of this problem set and responsibility. what happened? You're talking about the crisis that happened at our, there's a temporary mission facility in Benghazi. That's correct. Could you tell, you know, from your perspective as a 10th group, you know, senior leader at that time, do you have any insights to like what happened that night and what, you know, your element's response was how you responded to it, attempted

to respond to it? I know there's a lot of controversy at the time or in the aftermath, like, getting stand-down orders and all this sort of stuff. I'd like to hear the truth from, you know, a guy who was there. Yeah, well, I wasn't there, but I saw the information flow, at least as it pertained to Charlie 210 and Charlie 110. But basically, Charlie 210 hadn't pushed into Africa yet, and this idea that we're going to alert them from Colorado Springs, I'm taking it back.

No, I've taken it back. They were in, well, regardless, they weren't able to, push Charlie 210 out fast enough because of their location. And so then they got to co-use Charlie 110. Like I said, they were going to. So Charlie 110 was in a training event. They got orders to go. Good thing is that that upsell always moves with all of their stuff.

That's another part that most people didn't understand, right? They're ready to roll. They're ready to roll at all times no matter what they're doing, right? They could be out there training a partner force. They could be out there doing their own training event. and they're going to get blown out. And when they get blown out, they got to have everything ready to go. Because they can't go back to the house to go pick their shit up.

Right, right, right. So then they moved down to Italy, Sicily, I believe it was, and they staged out of there. And they didn't get authoritative to go. Here's the bottom line. This is where it pains me to say this, but I agree with the decision not to send any more Americans in. Because the damage was done. Yes. The people that the ambassador was dead, right, relatively quick into the event.

And so by the time you responded, you got people moved where they needed to go and started moving things in because it was a no notice. It didn't bubble like Colonel Dandia spoke about, right? It was a flash event. And so you got a dead ambassador. You got people that maneuvered in to take care of the situation. They pulled out as many Americans they could. they brought in a few other assets people to help to help out but there wasn't a need to start a gun fight in my opinion they're in big gaza because it only got more messy you'd only gotten more Americans killed and once you have dead ambassador once you have dead Americans and once the the sovereign land of a U.S. consulate or an embassy is over time. taken, right?

I mean, I got it. You want to go in there and you want to fight? There's a, there's a part of me that says, hey, that's our land. If the country couldn't protect it, then let's go in there and kick some people's asses. But is it really worth telling another mom, another wife that her son or her husband is dead because we went after dead people? Right. Yeah, I mean, it's a really tough pill to swallow, but I think you're right there, Bill,

that, you know, if we were Johnny on the spot that night, and we weren't, we didn't have the things pre-positioned that we should have. But even if we were and we rushed everything over there, we would not have gotten any assets there in time to save Ty Woods and Glenn Doherty, who were killed at the annex that night. And sending more soldiers in would have given, it creates more of a provocation. whereas the guys who were at the annex had basically evacuated to Benina Airfield, I believe it was, in Libya, and prepared to ex-fill out of there. So it's a terrible situation, really. It is, right? Because here's the other part, right, where you want to get in there and you want to fight because we didn't have custody of the body, right? Or the bodies, right?

So now you want to go in and go, let's recover our bodies. So they don't get drug through like it did in Somali on the streets and use for propaganda, which, I mean, you know, there's so many layers to it, right? And you can see like initially, I'm like, no, no, no, send everything. Send an arm of aircraft carriers, battleships. Send, you know, SF, send Rangers, J-Soc, send, you know, you name it, send it there and take that. fucking country over immediately. But then you go, wait a minute.

They're dead. Okay, we don't have custody of the body, but we can get custody of body. We've got to go about it smartly now. Right. And so that's where it was heartbreaking, because you have to pause for a second. And although I think Hillary Clinton did it for a different reason, right? So I don't think that that thought process went through the decision makers at the White House. I think that's only what you get out of clarity from looking at it. in its entirety and think to yourself, okay, would it have been worth American,

another American life to go after a dead person and terrain that we've already lost? Let's just figure this out and move about it slowly and very deliberately. Yeah. That tactical pause, I think, mattered since, like you said, we were dead on her ass in response. Yeah, I mean, Hillary Clinton, in the aftermath of it, definitely did everything she could to avoid any sort of accountability for that. And that's pretty terrible. I mean, I wish the government had handled it differently.

They just came out and said, we're responsible. This is on us. Right. Absolutely, right? Here's another thing that I heard. I don't know it for a fact, but what happened was SF guys from Colorado, from 10th group, as well as from the National Guard SF out there. were providing that embassy,

plainclothes protection. I believe that's correct. Yeah. So they would provide them, provide the ambassador with security. However, the ambassador wanted Marines, because he wanted the prestige of having

uniformed military, uniform Marines at his consulate. So as he was seeing his threat levels going up, and he was a good guy. Like all the guys from 10th group who was working with him said, man, he'd go to the gym with them. He'd have conversations. He was a great guy, great American. But he wanted to force the State Department to provide him with Marines. And it was denied.

And because, hey, you got protection. We're giving it to you. So unfortunately, he made the decision to turn off the Green Beret support that he was getting. because his assessment was, if I do that, then I'm speculating, but I'm probably pretty most of a lot of, if I turn that off, then they're going to be, I'm going to force their hand to provide me Marines to that one. Yeah, there's a lot of weird stuff that happened. And I mean, my understanding was that the special forces soldiers that were in the embassy

in Tripoli, they were the ones who were told, no, you can't go to Benghazi. And the J-Soc guys were like, well, we're not under your. your chain of command. So here we go. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. I mean, there's so many layers and it's so complex. It is. You can dissect it down and spend days talking about it. But, you know, Bill Haynes's take on it is, you know, like a lot of things, right, like I ask myself, is it worth more American lives, right? If you're in the middle of the fight and the train hasn't been taken yet and your figurehead for America is still alive and they're all fighting for their life still. Hey man, swarm it, get it. Let's let's fucking, then let's kick

some ass. But once it's taken over and all the bad things happen, I don't know. It's very complex. And I don't know if you'd have a right answer. Even if you flooded it early and lost more lives and you still lost people, would it, and you maybe even lost the ambassador still, would you say it's a success? You can dissect the shit out of it and you still complain about that, right? Right. So I don't know. Yeah, it's complex. And I appreciate you waiting through that complexity and explaining that to people. And you can understand how there was a lot of confusion in the military and throughout our government that night about what was going on. Anything else? Other Africa deployments, I know that you guys were involved quite a bit in training partner forces across Africa, also Poland, Germany, if you want to talk about some of those opportunities that came up.

Yeah. had the opportunity to train hand in hand with the German KSK. And let me tell you something, those guys are phenomenal. They need more resourcing, like all of our special operations elements, right? They're always battling a budget, right? But great dudes, they deployed to Afghanistan. They did some heavy lifting in Afghanistan. The Polish Grom, another great organization.

The thing you love about the Grom is that their ego is up there. They're very competitive to American commando ego, right? And very capable. Unfortunately for them, and I think they've improved over time, but there for a while, they were struggling with their mission development, their intel development. They leaned heavily on Americans to do that. And they were just like, not just point us into direction. We'll go do the mission, right?

We're good. I think they've improved there. But on the tactical and. leadership side two great organizations and then of course you've got um within africa right not necessarily counter terrorist organizations but you train their special operation elements right and places like morocco Uganda a lot of the the western area you know you can send teams in to do some good training with their with their military now the problem is Man, you want to talk about ammo accountability?

Man, they count the rounds. You know, like, you know, in the big army, you know, I heard stories where they count all the brass off the range. And if they said they fired 5,000 rounds because they're 5,000 less in ball ammunition, then they got to have 5,000 rounds of empty casings, right? It's either I got the ball or I got the casing, but I'm going to be a zero sum. We're balancing a checkbook here, right? And man, they're the same way.

They want to see everything every day at the end of the day. And it took us a little bit to get used to that. But the kings are the ones that have kings or the presidents, right, are worried about being overthrown. And they don't want their people getting extra ammo to do that. So they're really, they scrutinized his shit out of everything. And of course, for us, right, we had certain things that we weren't allowed to, let them see. So we had, you know, kind of work through that and, you know, good SF, you know, can do and, and know how. And we were able to do it. But, man, it's a couple times, man, it's like,

no, man, you're not opening this up. You're not checking this, right? It's, it's there. It ain't going anywhere. Promise you. Right. It's coming with us, and it's coming in with us, and it's coming out with us, right? So. And after you kind of left this phase of your career behind, I mean, You became a sergeant major like your dad and went into some senior leadership roles within the special operations community. Tell us what that was like for you. Yeah, so I'm going to tell you, you know, my time is a company for a company sergeant major, the time served major with seventh group, and then my group started major time over a second training group. All really wonderful experiences overall.

I'm a fan of guys moving from different groups as a junior leader. When I say junior leader, like, you know, company sergeant majors, potentially, easily battalion sergeant majors, because you get to know the culture of another group. You get to know a mission set of another group. And, you know, it goes back into my analogy of, hey, if a guy goes to a lot of schools, it's not about giving him a whole bunch of schools. it's about making him aware of these different skill sets so that when he finally becomes a team sergeant instead of only being able to plug him into one team because he's never been to any advanced training

or he's been to one i got an option to put him on a rup team or an mff team or a rup team right i actually got i can put him on a rup team i can put him on an mff team i can put him on a special reconnaissance team. I can put him on a scuba team. I can put him on a mountain team. Right. And so for me, it's the same thing with leaders, right? So if you if you give them different experiences, then you can do different things with them. And as they continue to move up, they move up with a broader scope and understanding of the overall organization, which is the regimen. And so my time in seventh group, it was interesting because I was able to understand the culture of seventh group, especially with them being on their own installation out there in the Eglin area,

Dustin Egglin area, and seeing how they operate, and when they made that transition, what I absolutely loved was they created a clean slate for themselves. So if it was BS from Fort Bragg, they left it behind. And so a lot of things were streamlined. and the way they were doing business. Now, the other thing is they were running a little loose.

Like, when you find an ammo truck full of ammo at the gas station, parked at the gas pump, because the subway was there and they're going to go grab lunch before they went and did the ammo turn in or go out to the rage, and you're having to explain to the fellas and the gals like, hey, man, like Army 101. You got an ammo truck near a gas station, highly flammable. Like, that shit doesn't work.

Like, don't ever do that again. Like, I don't know what I need to say right now to get this through your thick skull. But, yeah, anyways. But, no, it was really good. And, of course, you see why it's hard to move our guys and gals in special operations, right? Because you got Colorado Springs. You got the mountains. You got Germany, right?

It's Germany. Like, once you get rooted in there, you don't want to leave because Europe's nice. Colorado Rocky Mountains nice skiing in the winter in Rocky Mountains is nice you go to Okinawa you go to Fort Lewis great great places to be right Mount Rainier and all that wonderful stuff and then you know you go to you know fifth group is great you go to seventh group you're at the beach of Destin people pay money to go out there to to spend their week their week their summer break at the oceans of Destin Florida and then you tell them after three to five years you got to move and uh they're pleading with you're like oh

so you know we do these boards right where we're selecting guys and so a lot of guys will make peace with and they're like okay hey look i'm i know i'm a high man on the total pole i'd provide a roster hey guys here's the top 20 people buy mOS based off your time and service or your your time on station right so your your local ones the longest in the tooth so figure out what you want to do when the SWIC lady comes out, figure out what you want, and I will help you get what you want, as long as your immediate supervisor recommends it, right? So some guys will hold out on you. So we're sitting in this board, and the group Sergeant Major finally, you know, we're down.

We got all the easy ones done. There's a few positions where it's like, one, they're not the choice assignments. They're the assignments that really nobody was. And so now you're going through, and the SARP major goes, okay, let's pull up. the rosters, right? All right, so 18 bravos. We need a couple 18 bravos to feel here. So let's get on the roster and he's looking at the whole group and he's looking at all people. And so he finally, you know, he goes through, you know, the first couple of them and they're all coming up with good reasons, right? Like, okay, hey, this is what's going on in their family. They got medical

issues or whatever and we really need to stabilize them for another year. But he'll be primed next year for PCS. Everything being more. So there's a real conscious effort to take care of families and making sure that me PCS to write people, right? So I'm like my first guy on this roster is like, it seems like halfway down this list. And I'm thinking, well, I'm good. So I'm not even really paying attention to the stupid stupid excuses of some of these that I'm hearing, right?

Because I'm like, clearly the CSM isn't going to get all the way down to my first guy. So, so now like it's like three above my guy. And I'm like, okay, no, wait a minute, I got to pay attention here. and then I'm listening to some of these stories and I'm like, okay, I get it. But however, my guy is three men, my guy is three, you know, third one down now. And so I'm, you know, I'm staying professional. I'm not, you know, trying to cut anybody down and make another Sarremajor look bad, right? So finally, and I'm thinking myself like, what kind of stupid story can I come up with?

So we finally get to my guy and I'm like, Sarremajor, you got to understand. my guy finally got to a vet that could take care of his cat his cat's got all his teeth messed up and the cat's got to get braces and now and now that he's finally got the braces we can't PCS him because he needs at least to have the braces on for at least you know a year if not too and the sarah major looked at me and he goes are you shitting me and I go absolutely sorry major I can't believe he kept down to my guy after all of those people you're like 20 people above my guy. How did my guy get put on this assignment, right? Or, you know, be even asked to go on an assignment. But he chuckled about it. And afterwards, he goes, I got to tell you, that night, I'm sitting there,

I got my cat on my chest, and I'm petting it. And then, you know, he kind of, you know, yonned. And I looked into his mouth and I saw how small his teeth are. And I was like, hell no, there will never be any braces on the cat's teeth. And I was, but, but so, you know, so what you learn there is, as a leader, right, in S. specifically SF, there is a very conscious effort to make sure that we don't PCS people and create undue hardship. However, when you're telling people to move away from the Rocky Mountains, from the oceans of Okinawa, from, you know, Mount Rainier, from the wonderful woodlands and mountains of Kentucky, or, you know, dust and Florida, the ocean, there's just people that'll

tell you they can't move and they'll come up with all kinds of silly reasons. to move people because you got to run an army. Right. Right. And then, of course, when I came to SWIC and I was second training group, CSM, I showed up. And for all the right reasons, we did free fall for all, right? Because we wanted to increase our capability. And there was a vision that we should get away from static line, because we're never going to static line in combat. We should make a force full of military free fall experts, right? And so there was a good push. Hey, get them while they're young.

If they're in holdover status, if they're waiting for assignment, let's get them into free fall. It's not that long of a course and we can make this happen. Well, when I showed up, there was around 500 people awaiting assignment, right, that had already graduated language school, otherwise completed. Because there's a bottleneck. Well, it was a self-imposed bottleneck because now, one, you're wanting to get them to MFF, but two, then the guys come back from MFF and they go, hey, look, my first enlistments up, and I want to re-enlist. and that's a month away. So can I just stay here another month and, you know, ride this out so I can get my bonus

before I show up to my team, right? Or I'm waiting for a promotion, which will happen in a month, and then I get more money. Can we make that happen? And for all the, you know, for taking care of soldiers, I get it, right? Like, yeah, sure, you know, but when I looked at it, when I first improv, I was like 500, why is 500 dudes important? Because that's a size of a battalion in SF. right? And I'm thinking, holy shit, we've got in holdover status, 500 baldunes who are otherwise qualified.

And, you know, I pulled all the guys in. And, of course, for the first couple classes, right, because the word was, hey, you can, you know, get your bonus before your PCS and serving your team. You know, I've talked to everybody and I say, hey, look, do I want you to have your money? Absolutely. Do I want you to have to sign up for two years just so you can get your extension so you can serve on an ODA? No, I don't necessarily want that. I'd rather, you know, you ride out at that time. But here's the deal. I got an army to run. And with running that army, right, I got it.

Like, we got to get teams full. I go, I got a battalion worth of green berets sitting around doing nothing waiting for their bonus. I said, timing's everything, gentlemen. I've said, I've had bonuses where I've paid my taxes. I've had bonuses where I got tax free. So, you know, unfortunately, you're at PCS. And so we got that down. So, you know, you learned a lot there, too.

And in our advanced skills, there's a lot of equipment issues, modernization. That, you know, the current regime and the current group of people at the schoolhouse, they're working towards getting done, you know, after 20 years of being in combat, you know, there's a lot of focus on the operational group, not necessarily the schoolhouse. So, you know, we identified that there was a lot of shortcomings with our advanced skills, school capabilities. So we're making progress. We made progress when I was there, and I know the guys are still making progress. It's just, you know, sometimes that shit takes time.

But it's a good run. Yeah, it's super interesting. I remember talking to some of the free fall instructors at the time when this was happening. And they were telling me about how it was sort of like we were chasing our tail. like to train more special force and soldiers to be free fall qualified, we need more free fall instructors. But in order to get more free fall instructors, we need more MFF qualified soldiers.

And then there's the Jumpmaster School and the Advanced Infiltration course. Like it gets increasingly, I mean, I'm just curious to kind of plumb your experience and knowledge. Like, do you, I mean, you said it was for the right reasons, but do you think that's a, an intelligent move to have the entire force qualified on MFF. So now that you have time to look back at it, no, right? Because I think the vision, we talked about it as young or as senior E7s and team sergeants,

how great it would be to have an all MFF force. But what you end up doing, like you said, so to make, to put more students through, you need more instructors, right? And so you end up pulling more dudes from the team, which gives you a problem because. Right. Yeah. So you end up stealing from the one element that you need most of to make sure you're successful downrange. Right. So then on top of that, you run so many jumps in a day. We were lucky we did not have a fatality out of Yuma. Right. Either instructor or a student, right? And when that shit goes down, I mean, So for the civilians out there that have never been to MFF school, imagine, you know, most people go to a place like Las Vegas or whatever and they'll get a tandem jump where, you know, that sensory overload. And you can see the videos online where, you know, it's complete sensory overload.

The person doesn't know what they're doing. They're just totally shocked, right? Now, imagine you're an Army instructor, Green Beret, in an aircraft, and you've got a student who has never conducted a free fall. and he's going to jump out on his own. And you've got to dive in after he leaves the ramp, you're leaving the ramp with him, and you're coming down with him and you're burning as much altitude as he is,

regardless of his body size or his ability to fly. Because, you know, if they start falling like shit, they'll fall fast, right? But if he's stable, you're going down with him and you're waiting right beside him until it's pool altitude time. And you're going to wait to see if sensory overloads kicked in. And he's just staring at his altimeter.

And if he is, you've got to pull his rip cord for him. Yeah. Yeah. Save his life. Correct. And now imagine the amount of adrenaline and the level of responsibility that that instructor has every time he gets up in the aircraft and he exits. Right. And then you add on there because of the weather and because of the dirt devil. that pop up in the early, in the late mornings, early afternoons, you're in there, you're moving to the hangar still at dark.

First aircraft's going up at the break of a little bit of light, and you're dropping as soon as you can see the DZ. Yeah. And you're dropping all day until those dirt devils come up. And so imagine pushing all those guys through with less instructors than you should, and they're doing it. And literally they had civilian packers, packing instructors, so the instructor would get on the ground, get back to the hangar, slam some fluid, grab a new parachute,

grab his next set of instructors, our students, and then he'd go back up and rinse and repeat and do that several times in a day. And you can't tell me that after, you know, anybody has been like engaged, hyper-focused on an event for an extended period of time, you know you can only do that for so long, and then you lose your ability to be hyper responsive. Right. Because your brain can only focus for so long. And here you had them doing it for pretty most so, you know, a good eight-hour day.

And we should point out, too, that the instructors are fairly quickly moving the students from doing, quote-unquote, Hollywood jumps during the daytime to doing night jumps with combat equipment. And you're right. It is a big responsibility. And then the other thing that needs to be mentioned is the, um, Intense amount of work it takes to be fully proficient as a free fall guy. Right. To have an entire Special Forces team be able to jump at night with all their combat equipment under nods and land on an unmarked drop zone is incredibly difficult.

That takes a lot of training to get there. That's correct. Because if you get guys off the drop zone, you've got a bigger problem on your hands. Right. Because do you have them in trees? Do you have in wires? Do you have a medical condition? and now you've got to take the team that made it to the DZ and please everybody up and hope and pray that everybody's healthy, right? And, you know, of course, we know in past experience that that's not always the case, right? A team that bites off more than they can chew, you know, we've had problems on drop zones before. Yeah.

And then on top of that, Jack, not only do you have the problem with getting them combat equipment, but now, you know, we're jumping with nods. Right. So, man, and I got to tell you, right, jumping with nods, that's no joke because your field of view is limited so much, right? And the possibility of mid-air collision is possible. It's a lot more possible than when you're not jumping them. You know, everybody can see the Kim lights and everybody can see each other because you've got your peripheral vision.

So I don't know, hey. So we were blade running. So I was glad to see that went away. And then, of course, and if you hasn't heard yet, what we've been doing now for the last maybe two, maybe three years, is we opened up scuba school, right? So imagine this. We don't have a long line of people wanting to go to scuba school, even at the Q course.

I wonder why. But, you know, the idea is they're healthy. We were having problems with manning our scuba teams. So getting them out there while they're young. While they're in language school, you know, you got plenty of time to do PT and get caught back up in your physical fitness. And so take the guys who want to do it who have the capability. you know, do a PT test, get them out on the pool, get them familiar with everything,

get them out there doing all the things that they need to do to pass scuba school. And what we've seen is that the success rate is phenomenal for those guys going through that prep course and going out there. So I'm glad to see that we were able to actually do something that actually made more sense, right? Like, we weren't filling up all our classes. We weren't putting enough dudes on the team. And the guys would go to team to a scuba team they may not be the best suited guys and so now you're trying to put a round a square peg into a round hole and that didn't work um so now hey look we'll take you you've got like either three months or six months depending on what language you're taking we'll prep you it

we'll send you down to scuba school and then we'll send you to your team and that that's that seems to be working out pretty well actually now talk to us after your uh your last swick tour there tell us a little bit about how retirement sneaks up on you and transitioning in a civilian life. What was that like for Sergeant Major Haynes? Well, so I got to tell you, I was fortunate, right? My chain of command after I came out of position allowed me plenty of time to prepare myself. And I did a med board because I had some things, right? You run hard. I had some cracks in my combat chassis. So I was able to get that taken care of. I was able to successfully med board. That took a lot longer. And that process for a person who wants to be efficient or a person who wants to be value added to the Army,

and that's to include my exit, you know, when you're waiting six months, when you're waiting six months for a board, right, you're like, wait a minute, are you, are you serious? And, you know, the people that I was communicating with are like, you got to hurry it and get this done. I'm like, yeah, I got it. You'll have it today. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm worried. I'm, I'm, I'm worried. with you, but you can only imagine how many E4s and E5s slow roll everything, right? And so I got, I got why they were so persnickety about things. But all in all, here's my takeaway. Chain of command NSF supported my exit strategy.

The Honor Foundation is what I attended. There's a SOTA, there's the Honor Foundation, and for the Rangers, they've got three Rangers. We've had two people from the Honor Foundation on the show before. Yeah, so I'm your third. Great, a great process to go through. It really helps you kind of figure things out. And the other thing is I actually had time to go to. It's no longer there.

She transitioned. Noel McCall, or Newell is her name from Patriot's Path. She really helped kind of get my transcripts squared away and help me. You know, she helps people prepare because she used to be a head hunter. for big companies to hire people. So she kind of gets you your first good polish, right? And it gets you squared away. Then I hit the Honor Foundation.

And the Honor Foundation is really just knocked out of the park in my opinion. That's awesome. The Bragg campus, well now the Liberty Campus that they run out of Southern Pines is phenomenal. Right? When I left them, I felt good about going out and doing a job interview. I felt good about having my resume taken care of. And then it even started thinking myself like, honestly, like, am I even going to get a job? Because I probably don't even need to get a job.

But they did a really good job on the med board side, although a little frantic sometimes and although a little overreactive, in my opinion, the team at it for Bragg, now Fort Liberty, did a good job. I understand there's a difference between dealing with a sergeant major and dealing with an E4. I think the Soldier Support Center, on the other hand, needs a lot of work. Right. And what I mean by that is when I sit in classes and it's focused towards E4s and E5s getting out of the Army doing jobs with cable companies and CDLs and farming and equipment

stuff and that's what they're trying to push in the job period to job thing, I'm just like, why am I here? Because I will never do those things after serving in the Army for 30 years, where I'm at my age, not necessarily my rank, but just my age. I'm not calling underneath the house running a live table. Right. So I was disappointed with that. But here's where I was really surprised. There is a sergeant major, a command sergeant major retired from the 82nd black guy that gave us the VA.

And so I went in there, I'm like, okay, I've heard all the nightmare stories about VA and about the Solar Sports Center. I'm just going to live through this and I'll survive it, right? I'm going to stay in my circle and not do anything crazy. So he actually did a good job, a really good job, so good in fact that I thought the information he provided was so, so on point. And I learned so much that I like, hey, man, I need to get with you. to bring my wife in and have a conversation on a death side with you so I can have more

interaction with you and go over this one more time. So it's going to get a couple times for me to really kind of get this all locked in. And he was happy to do that. And so there was some, so that was a really good brief. And I think they were hitting it on the nail on the head. On the VA side, as I was going to the med board, a little frustrated with the process. But the process is what it is. They got to weed people out. They got to make sure. they're going through the process for the right reasons and it's justified. So I get that. But my exams, all my engagements with the doctors from VA so far,

I thought that that was actually really well done, very, very thorough. Of course, I was very well prepared with my medical records and with my notes. So when they started taking my history, I had that shit down with dates and times and deployments, which a lot of people kind of brush over. And then when they're sitting there, they're doing a lot of ins and ahs and I think.

And, you know, they're moving on because they don't have much time with you. But they took an extended period of time with me. I did like three different sit downs with a doctor about my physical stuff, right? My med records. But, of course, I made sure, you know, there was a laundry list of things they had to go through. So they did three separate sit downs with me. And, yeah, so far, I mean, the VA can still disappoint.

But I did tell you what, Thursday I signed up with the VA here at Fort Lipp. You know, I hear at, in Fayetteville. And I pull up with my wife. I'm like, hey, I want you to go with me so you see the thing, right? So if it's ridiculous, like you hear the nightmare stories, you can see why I'm upset, right? So, but I always, I already told myself, hey, Bill, it's got to be a good day. Going there with low expectations so that you're not disappointed, you don't get your blood pressure up. So I see as I'm getting ready to park, there's a golf cart and a dude driving a golf cart and he pulls off to the side.

And there's construction on there right now. And it's always a little bit of a nightmare. But I pull in our park and I get out. And my wife and I start walking towards the entryway, which we were on the backside of the hospital. That's where we were able to get a parking spot. And the guy said, hey, you guys going to go, you guys going to the VA for an appointment? And I said, yeah, but I'm going to actually go. to in process, because I got to sign it.

It's my first time here. And he's like, okay, you jump on into golf cart. I'll drive you around where you need to go. So literally, I mean, and I thought to myself, as I got into the golf cart, like at no hospital ever has there been a golf cart to drive you up to the door closest to where you need to go. And I told him even that. I'm like, hey, this is a world class service right here.

And I'm thinking, man, VA, good job. So we walk in there, I get in processed, it goes well. And so, yeah, we'll see. We'll see how the rest of the VA saga goes. But right now, I haven't had the experience that a lot of guys have. And I turn to my dad a lot. And I keep telling him about my experience. And I think my dad and I think that generation of soldiers who went through and just through the poor experience they had with VA.

And because of the way the system was, they fixed a lot. Their generation, from coming home to a country that didn't respect them, spat on them, and did all kinds of vile things to them when they returned to the L.A. airport to the way the VA treated them, it hasn't been my experience on coming home or going through the VA process yet. They have improved a lot of things over the years. And I mean, I know a lot of guys got screwed by the VA over the years and there's some bad blood there. But they have made a lot of improvements.

And, you know, I do definitely want to encourage guys out there to go and check in with VA and give it a shot. Yeah, I think, you know, it's about the doctors. It's about the facility. And here's the next thing. I think former President Trump did a phenomenal thing when he made it easy to fire people. the easier it is to fire government employees, specifically working not only on post, on any military installation,

but in the VA hospital, again, it goes back to my first team, my second team sergeant, right? You fire the first person, and you set the precedence that you're not going to expect anything less than excellence, then guess what?

Everybody starts performing excellent. And so the VA is getting on board, I think, and I got to tell you, I don't have rose-colored glasses on it because I'm waiting for the rug to get pulled out from underneath me and then, you know, be, you know, unfortunately, solely disappointed. I'm suspicious of it and I'm waiting, but I'm glad so far it hasn't happened. They are also, the VA is funded to the tune of, I think, $299 billion at this point.

So they better be doing something there for the veterans with that much money. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I even ask the guys like, hey, man, are you working for VA? or are you a volunteer, like a former, like a former, you know, like a veteran who's just volunteering? He's like, no, no, I'm working for a contract through VA to provide the service. Our company provides a service. Yeah, they've improved a lot of these things, including, like, having drivers that will come to, like, an older veterans home and drive them to their VA appointments. Like, these are acts of Congress that have taken place to get those things spun up.

And it's because we have the sad stories where, you know, you hear a veteran who has suffered dearly, right, or lost his life because, you know, these things, right? Because I think to myself, right, luckily it was a slow time because it was the middle of the day. Most people weren't, the hospital wasn't full. But, you know, could I have walked? Could my wife have walked? Absolutely. And that isn't the point, right? But when there's a lot of veterans, especially paratroopers in our community here at Fort Bragg, for, you know, Fayetteville area.

who have been jumping and gave up their knee cartilage and their hips and their in their spine. And, you know, at 70, at 80, they can't walk. And it's nice to see that there's a golf cart out there for them. And so that was pretty awesome. And the kind of like to start wrapping up a little bit. And I know I kept you way over the amount of time I told you this interview was going to take. Good. How dare you?

To wrap it up with the, to talk about PT. a little bit. And if you'd like to share anything about your experiences or what you've seen from, you know, your soldiers, anything you'd like to tell the veterans out there or the guys who are starting the separation process. Yeah. So I'll start with this. When I first came in, the words of, I'm going to seek, you know, help for, you know, mental stuff for, for, for anxiety, you never heard anybody talk about it. It was all in the closet. If people were getting it, they were doing it on their own,

or they were just suffering in silence, right? Or they would, you know, do drugs and alcohol to manage that. And of course, you know, we all, when we're young, we're barrel chest of freedom fighters and we don't want to believe that there's this point of vulnerability that you may find yourself out of control of your own thoughts and your own ability to process in a healthy way what you've experienced, right?

But when the war kicked off, and I remember the first couple of guys there at 110 who committed suicide, and, you know, they had already a couple of those deployments under their belts where they're snatching people off the streets and they're out there, you know, being a part of the ass of the world, right? and you see all the heinous stuff that humans are able to do to each other, right? It affects you. And, you know, in my own words, right, what I would say is, Mama taught you not to hurt people and Mama taught you to be good to people. And then the Army, because of its mission and what we have to do to defend our Constitution,

they train you to do things and you think you're going to be okay with it. Yeah. Until you do a couple of things and then you have a moment to reflect. and sometimes it's after retirement. And then things start to decompress and then you start to unpackage those things. So I am really happy to say that in special operations, right there as a war started kicking off

and we started having guys commit suicide because of the pressure of that and the experience of that, that special operations started picking, hand-picking counselors to take care of their guys, right? And so it's gotten to the point now where in some case, and it's not throughout, but in some places where, you know, going to a counselor and talking to a counselor's mandatory, right? And one of the places when I was in SWIG, you know, when they came to us in my organization, we would have them sit down with nutritionists, the coaches, the physical performance guys, the physical therapists, and also the docs, right, the psychs, right? and go through not just your shoulder problem,

but hey, let's introduce you to who the Sykes are so you know which one you resonate with. And then you can set up a follow-on appointment once you get here, or once you're permanently assigned here. And that seemed to work out really well because when you normalize that, right? And we got leaders that normalize getting help because they talk about their experience, right?

And so one of the things I realized is early on, is that my anger management was was not good right and again you know when you think about the normalcy the normalcy of it right so when you're out there doing the stuff that you're doing what keeps you alive your fight or flight right that that that that brain stem function of i see something i'm going to react and i'm going to get all my juices flowing to react in a very violent and a very direct manner to that so you start to believe that that that That is the right way to handle everything because, hey, I've been doing this at work and it works for me. And I'm able to save my life and the people around me.

And then when you're around the guy putting up your fence and you blow your shit on him because he's not putting it in, right? Right. And he's at you like you're going, you're about really one step away from going psychotic on him. Do you realize that, okay, maybe, maybe? I need to go talk to a counselor, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'll tell you, you know, right there at the end, right, not only to take care of myself and my family for a VA through the VA process, I realized I needed to do it. And so I talked to some counselor, I talked to a counselor. She was phenomenal, right? And I think the sad part is that sometimes people, when they start to feel like they got to grab for things like talking about the loss of their pet. Well, yeah, loss of your pet, your dog is always going to be an emotional thing, right? Like, that shouldn't be a reason.

why you have post-traumatic stress or trying to say that's how, you know, so anyways, I sometimes our support personnel overuse, I think, some of these things that special operation provides, and then it's not there for the green berets, but I think we're doing a better job balancing now than we ever have. For our viewers out there, what I will say is I was three years a team sergeant and a crisis response force. Um, operationally, was operational for most all of it, right? Very, very little do we spend back in Stuttgart just for the trainups. And so we got 12 dudes to a team, three leaders, so that means nine dudes.

So in three years, right, you lose a little bit, you get some new guys. Eight dudes are struggling. When I look through photos and I'm thinking through people, eight dudes are struggling with some kind of post-traumatic stress, anger management, behavioral issues. Of that, I've got 10 guys that have, I'm sorry, 10 guys who are suffering through all of that, and they either been separated from the Army or have had serious behavioral issues where service in the Army is no longer compatible for them. And then of that, four guys have committed suicide. Right. And, And so when you look at, when I can look at these guys as young dudes coming out of the

Q-course to my team for the first time with all of the world in front of them, with all of the potential to do great and wonderful things, and you see them at their very best, physically, emotionally, you know, and you see them doing things that if any American could capture this in a video and see it. they would be in awe. And then after a couple of deployments, you can see them erode, right? And the problem is,

we as young leaders don't know what we don't know. And I sat on a separation board where a doc sat in the separation board came in to be interviewed. And she said, this individual is suffering from post-traumatic stress. And here are the things that I'm seeing where this is a clear delineation.

You guys are seeing it as a pattern of misbehavior. Right, right. Of being irresponsible. But this is clear PTSD. And I'm thinking as soon as she said, because of this, because of this, and because of this, I thought to myself, well, that's this guy that I know from the team from before. And that's this guy. And I saw it when I was a team sergeant, but I thought they were just blowing off steam. And I thought they were just, you know, just trying to, you know, have a good time after a six-month deployment of shooting people in the face.

And, you know, when I think about that young talent and then they end in suicide because of post-traumatic stress. And the reality is that the guys didn't get the help that they needed when they hit when they needed it, right? Paul was in the PA program a week from graduating the PA, the Army PA program, Physicians Assistance Program, and he lost his battle with post-traumatic stress. And there's nothing I would do that I wouldn't do to wind the clock back to that moment when I saw what I saw that I now know was a clear indicator of post-traumatic stress. Right? Like when Pete, my company commander, when he committed suicide, and I can only imagine as a commander, the level, and I feel it as a command sergeant major sending guys in the combat, and they don't make it back.

Like, how that affects, you know, leaders. And then here he is, he retires. When he's supposed to be in retirement mode, enjoying life, you know, something happens. And he's not able to manage it like he had been. And he loses that struggle, right? When Chuck, who, you know, we just had his second anniversary of his passing yesterday, talented individual, great American with, again, with a family, with the future in front of him, he retires and he struggles.

So I would just say there's a lot of nonprofits out there that are supporting guys. Sog Foundation will support the guys and gals, right? If nothing else, we can connect you to the people who can help you. So if nothing else, if you're so out of control, right, all of your brothers and sisters in special operations, I'm confident will drop on a dime everything they're doing to take care of somebody who calls them up, right? Sometimes they call is what's the hard part, right? Because nobody wants help and, you know, they don't want to admit that they're weak.

because we've been training guys to be tough, resilient, and to not need help, right? Be the ones that are the pillars in our community and our organization. Right. And then you're not. And then you're having to accept that. So, you know, guys, and I try doing this best I can. I'll call my buddies up that I've served with and just check on them at random sometimes and go,

hey, man, how you doing? How's everything going, man? How's the family? How's mama? And we need to do more of that. it just takes a deliberate effort to do that because that's when you're going to know i call one of my buddies up and he tells me yeah man i a couple months ago man i was so such a local and he had tbi significant tb he got blown up by an iad his vehicle got turned over on his side but the door

blown off and he's in his gully right and so he's looking down at the ground and he notices a secondary iad right staring right at his face right and so now people are rushing to help him and he's like stop i got a secondary here and god only knows the reason why that secondary didn't go off but it didn't go off but you can only imagine the tbi that he incurred with that blast and then the psychological trauma is standing there going like yeah okay is this thing going to blow because this is that what do i need to think about who do i need to pray to and what are the last thoughts going to go through my mind it better be my wife and children or only imagine what it was right and you know for

know first responders they go through a lot of stress too but man when you think about that one in that story and some on so many of the other stories like it's just an insurmountable amount of trauma that occurs yeah so guys if you're out there and you're struggling you're already made it to this point in the podcast and I urge you to reach out to people there are people who care there are organizations that care um I care you can always reach out to me you can always reach out to my foundation, we're going to connect you to counselors that will make a difference in your life. Please trust us. Man, we sweat too many sweats, too many hard events together.

We've spilled too much blood together to not take care of each other at this point in our lives. Tell people again where they can find the Special Operations Genesis Foundation, where they can find you and get connected. So at SOG Foundation.org.org. So SOG Foundation.org. Go on the website. You go into the, you know, contact us. You just put a message in there. That email goes straight to me. I will get it instantly. It's connected to my phone. And then we've got an ecosystem. We call it. Jamie has done a really good job of building an ecosystem. We've got tactical rehab. We've got tactical rehab with Rebecca Ivory. We got Warriors Heart. We're connected to All Secure Foundation that deals with PTSD, trauma, family, and marriage management with Tom Satterley. We've got return to duty with David Simon's spinal health and research and surgeries that are doing these connected to all the great spine doctors in America that are doing like awesome stuff for guys' backs. And, you know, We've got fertility specialist, military family building with Katie Bell.

We're connected with the Special Operations Warrior Fund because they do great stuff for our special operation guys. And I love those guys, by the way, because I've seen guys killed in combat. I've seen guys killed in training and their kids go through college because of this organization. We've connected with Thrive, which is a nonprofit that helps people with TVI. And check this out. TBI, they've had guys with balance issues for their life that they've dealt with for decades. Veterans from Vietnam and Korea who couldn't maintain their balance. And through physical therapy, they found that there's a crystal that crystallizes in the brain that manages your balance.

And through physical therapy, they're able to release that crystal. And guys who without medication are able to maintain their balance again. That's amazing. So really great research with them. And then, you know, we're tied in with the Special Forces Scholarship Fund for anybody that's looking for scholarships or a great organization that provides wonderful scholarship. So connect with us there. You can follow us on Instagram at SOG-S-S-O-G-F-N-D, Fox Trott, November, Delta, and then, of course, LinkedIn and Facebook, Special Operations Genesis Foundation. So we'd love to hear from you guys.

We'd love to connect you. Hit us up and we'll get you in the right direction. Sounds great, Bill. We got a few viewer questions real quick. DJC, thank you very much. Whose battle tactics on, say, a raid or assault were more efficient slash tactical? Rangers are Greenberg. Oh, boy, we're going there.

We're going there. Can I shortcut this for you a little bit real quick so we can move? Absolutely, absolutely. Tactics are tactics. You know, support, security support, and main assault. And, you know, the individual movement or something might be a little bit different or whatever, whether you're strong wall or opposing corners or whatever you're going to do. But an assault is assault.

Is that fair to say? I would approve that. Okay. Sorry, Steve. We just, we've kept him pretty long. Andrew Dunbar. Thank you very much. Can you elaborate in your opinion on the French?

It sounded like you had some anecdotes. So here's the deal. So my first experience with the French was at the French Mountain Course of Pain. Right. It's a direct translation of their course, right? And they were pretty arrogant people. I've been to Normandy for one of the anniversaries, and they're very loving and very,

appreciative of America for what we did in World War II, like no other. Like I have not received a reception better than what I did at Normandy in 1999. School of Pain at Mountain School of Pain, not so much. And it was pretty confrontational. Dealing with them as a NATO element, we've had problems with them collecting on us, and we've had problems with them doing things to usurp our objectives. and so, yes, my experience has been a little bit dicey with the French because they like doing their own thing.

And although they say they're on board, they may not be on board as much as they pretend, to be honest. And, Corby, thank you very much. Towards the end of your activity career, were you ever aware of fighters rat lining in from the Balkans? So we know that we've got male male-age fighters maneuvering not only through our southern border, but through Eastern Europe and even when the big migration occurred, even into Europe, Maine, right? We know that we have extremists in Germany, in Europe, for sure. The governments of various European countries are actively targeting and conducting reconnaissance on terrorists.

I know that for a fact. So it's a problem for sure. And open borders, although we love not having to show our passports every time we go from one country to the next in Europe, it helps facilitate the movement of nefarious players. And it's happening. and it's been happening. Andrew Dunbar, thank you very much. Can you comment on the apparent growth

of Russian influence in the sub-Saharan Africa in sub-Saharan Africa? Yeah, you know, to tell you the truth, I can't, I don't know, because, again, I've been out of it for a little bit now as I've been out of getting out of the Army, but I will say is what's apparent is Chinese, right? And to be honest with you,

with with russians inability to really take over ukraine um and when i've seen the old nuclear silos from the cold war and i've seen their equipment and i've seen the way they trained their east block countries i don't i personally don't think russia's a threat the russia's only a threat because they've got nooks right um now i don't know how truly tactically um the soldiers of china are right they have so many of them it's a concern because you yeah Yeah, but you could probably, you've got to have enough bullets to shoot them, right? You've got to have a knife sharp enough to stab them. But the fact that they're trying to penetrate in every continent and influence in every continent,

and they're doing a lot of nefarious acts. And I wish this is a classified medium to be able to talk about the rest of the things. But the reality is that China is the one to watch. And then I'm going to answer this one also because of. the language you used. I'm not going to put this question to you, but DJ Steed, thank you very much. He says, when you mentioned National Mission Force,

are you referring to Delta or another element? And I'll just say that a National Mission Force would be a National Mission Force, and there are a couple of them. J-Soc. J-Soc, yeah. That's great. So, and we'll leave it at that.

Dee, do we have anything on Patreon? No. Okay. Bill. Thank you so. much for your time. We appreciate it. We kept you a minute longer than we said we were going to. Gentlemen, it's been absolutely a pleasure, and I'm glad to have this conversation, and I'm glad to get the word out about the SOG Foundation, and to be honest with you, I do believe in being a quiet

professional, and the main reason that I agreed to come on here and actually sought you guys out was to do this, but also on behalf of getting the word out of the SOG Foundation. We're losing too many of our guys and gals to post-traumatic stress to TVI. And there's a lot we can do for the families because they suffer a lot too. And in order to get that message out, you know, I understand that talking about careers and talking about, you know, different experiences that Special Operation Soldier has is important to a lot of people because they want to kind of understand what 20, years of war and all the other secret school type stuff that we do, just get a little taste of it.

So I'm just glad you guys gave me the opportunity here. And I'm glad for the viewers. And the questions were all great. So, you know, Bill, I really, again, I really appreciate you coming on the show and doing this. And I think everything from, you know, the little, I mean, it's a little bit of a master class that you gave earlier on in the interview on small unit leadership. And I I think there's a lot to take away from that. The things we talked about PTSD, the things you talked about, you know, the hazing and harassment and where that line is.

I mean, this is all really good stuff. This is a great interview. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm glad. I appreciate the time. And gentlemen, if you ever need me to come back on and talk about more stuff, you know, feel free to reach out to me and I'll be happy to do that.

And next Friday, we'll be back with former Navy SEAL Daniel Corbett. Look forward to talk. to him. Bill, again, thank you. I hope you have a great rest of your weekend. Please apologize to my wife for taking up three hours of your time. Too, you're right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no worries, gentlemen. And hey, you know what? When you told me I can do it on the 14th of June, I really liked the idea because of the birthday of our national flag. So I thought it would be a great way to spend the 14th. So thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you guys on Friday.