The Team House - CAG Operator (Sniper, Assaulter) | Jesse Boettcher | Ep. 190

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

CSM (Retired) Jesse D. Boettcher, a native of Luck, Wisconsin, enlisted in the US Army Reserves as an Infantryman in 1988, and entered active duty in 1990. CSM(R) Boettcher’s first overseas assignment was with the 3rd Infantry Division in Wurzburg, Germany. In 1992 he was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division at Ft. Campbell, KY to serve in the 1/327 Inf. Scout Platoon. In 1995 CSM Boettcher attended the Special Forces Qualification Course. After graduation, he returned to Fort Campbell, KY to serve on ODA 551 in 2nd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group (A). In 1998, CSM Boettcher volunteered for selection and subsequent assignment with a Special Mission Unit. He served as part of the National Mission Force for 12 years as an Assaulter, Sniper, Team Sergeant, and Troop Sergeant Major. In 2010 CSM Boettcher became the first enlisted Soldier to be selected for the Army’s Congressional Fellowship Program. After working on Capitol Hill for a year as Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s (R-TX) military assistant, CSM Boettcher worked as the Congressional Liaison for HQ US Army Special Operations Command. He then served in Afghanistan for a year as the CSM of ISAF-SOF. His final job in the Army was in Germany, where he served as the CSM for 1st Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group. CSM Boettcher has numerous deployments throughout the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, including 11 combat deployments. CSM(R) Boettcher’s military awards and decorations include: The Silver Star, Legion of Merit, 6 Bronze Star Medals, and other awards commensurate with his rank and time in service. Check out Jesse here:⬇️ https://jingonow.com/ https://www.instagram.com/friendly_but_not_your_friend_/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDjgyBKsawTLpfPf5PykPqg Today's Sponsors: SLNT (Silent) ⬇️ https://SLNT.com/?rfsn=7107485.9bde8d SLNT® sleeves, bags, cases and wallets are all exquisitely designed to ensure your devices become invisible, untrackable and silent. Get 10% off your order by using this link or using the promo code "teamhouse" at checkout! https://SLNT.com/?rfsn=7107485.9bde8d Ten Thousand Apparel ⬇️ https://www.TENTHOUSAND.cc/TEAM The brand believes in being Better Than Yesterday, a stoic dedication to continuous improvement, not overnight success. GO TO :⬇️ https://www.TENTHOUSAND.cc/TEAM for 15% OFF YOUR PURCHASE! Thank you for supporting the companies that support the show ! To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #specialmissionunit #specialforces #theunitBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Team House know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our team house. bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not-so-good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Dave, you want to grab these bags.

These are Faraday bags made by Silent. And they make them all different sizes. There's also a backpack, these little waterproof bags. And you put your electronics in here and they cannot be, you know, digitally red or people trying to, you know, break into your devices. remotely. And you can check all of these out at, what's the website for these day? SLNT.com. And use the promo code team house and you will get 10% off of your purchase. So, slantt.com and use the promo code team house to get 10% off your water.

And you can also find them at SAP Gear. They're on SAP Gear as well. And then the second sponsor for this show that I need to mention, I actually don't have any of their apparel. here because I actually use it when I exercise. 10,000 apparel. They make really awesome workout gear, really good workout shirts, shorts. They make, like, I don't want to call them sweatpants, but like stretchy pants that you can use for exercising. My favorite workout clothing company, and you can find them at 10,000.c.c. slash team. That's 10,000.cc slash team. And you use the, is there, nope, so you just go to that website and you will get 15% off your order. Yes, you can hit the link in the description or you can use the promo code to checkout.

Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, the Team House with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey guys, welcome to episode 100 and 90 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave. D is producing and apologies to the live stream crew that we continue to have some issues with our internet service provider. We'll work on getting that straightened out. Our guest tonight is Jesse Betcher, retired command sergeant major, spent time in third ID, 101st, fifth special forces group, went on to serve in an Army Special Mission Unit as a assaultor, sniper, team leader, and troop sergeant major before he went on to do a congressional fellowship, serves as the ISOF command service. Sergeant Major in Afghanistan, and then he served as the Command Sergeant Major of First Battalion

Tenth Special Forces Group. So, Jesse, thank you. Thank you for your patience, and thanks for joining us tonight. Yeah, hey, I appreciate. I just want to clarify, I wasn't the ISAF CSM. I was the ISAF soft CSM. Yes, thank you. One star level, not three star level. Thank you. Thank you. So Jesse, I'm going to just kick it right off and ask you if you could tell us a little bit about your upbringing and how that took you towards your military service. Yeah, I mean, I guess my upbringing did somehow lead to my military service, but it was probably not a conventional upbringing, at least during that time. My parents divorced at a very young age.

It was about two. And it was, you know, they live close by. So I would visit my dad on the weekends and during the summers and stuff. So I got that influence from him, which was quite an influence. And then the rest of the time I was living with my mother that was a completely different, you know, lifestyle. She was raising four kids as a single mother. So she was working all the time, day and night. I didn't see her all that often.

And then when I was with my dad, even as a young kid, it was we were either out in the woods, you know, hunting or fishing or trapping or in the bar where he was drinking. I was, you know, in the back playing pool or whatever. When I was about 10, my mom moved this down in Texas and didn't really, didn't really fit in too well down there with my Wisconsin accent, got bullied a little bit. But that's where I, you know, I learned to, after about a year of taking that, I started about fighting back a little bit. And then when I moved back to Wisconsin, when I was probably 12 or 13, then I, you know, not proud of that, but I was probably kind of a bully there myself, not like steal your lunch money kind of bully,

but just like, you know, asserting dominance. You know, you got to knock a couple of kids teeth out once a while to do that. But I think those high school years, you know, probably ages 14 to 16 somewhere in there. were the most formidable, at least for me, you know, I don't know if they are for every young man, but, you know, living with my dad, it was, he's a unique individual, just, you know, tough as leather. I mean, if you can imagine like a grizzly Adams kind of guy, except always, you know, drunk and, you know, kind of pissed off all the time. So that's what, that was my lifestyle, you know. And I guess that kind of, you know, I saw the good things in him, though, and I tried to take away the good things.

You know, I mean, you know, always keep your word, work hard, you know, but then I learned some of the, you know, not nefarious stuff, but it's like, hey, it's, it's okay to do things wrong if it's for a greater good. It's okay to go poach a deer if you need to feed your family kind of thing. So that's just, kind of, you know, my upbringing out in the woods, you know, like I said, trapping and hunting at a very young age. Even, you know, by myself, I would go hunting and trapping at 10 years old, that sort of thing. And then right after high school, I graduated from a small, really small town in northern Wisconsin. There was only 34 people in my graduating class. And I was, I think I was 34th in the class. I wasn't, I wasn't the best student. I mean, I wasn't a bad kid. I was always respectful to my teachers. I just didn't, I didn't like school. You know, I had other things to do. I had

a lot of freedom, probably more than most teenagers, so, you know, so I kind of took advantage of that. I'd be out, you know, drinking beer and playing poker, you know, all night. So I couldn't make it to school the next day. But, but, and I ended up leaving the house when I was 16. just because of some differences with my not so friendly stepmother. But I realized that the importance of having a high school diploma, so I managed to graduate with not the highest GPA, but I did graduate. And right after high school, I moved out to Hawaii, excuse me,

which again, I did not fit in in Hawaii either. So I did not. like it out there. My older brother was in the Navy and he was stationed out there. So I stayed with him. And other than other than that brother, I didn't have any really military people in my family. So I didn't, you know, have that growing up or know much about it. And my brother was 10 years older. So, you know, he wasn't there to share a lot of that knowledge. And he was went in the Navy, which is, you know, well, I wasn't going to go in the Navy. But I think because I hated Hawaii so much, well, I shouldn't say hate, I really dislike Hawaii.

I didn't fit in. So I think that's one of the reasons that, that I joined the military. You know, I'm like, hey, if I go to basic training, it's back in the mainland, you know, Fort Benning, Georgia. So I'll get off this, this little tiny island, you know, it's just, it was so small. I mean, it's smaller than than the county I grew up it, you know, and I used to, I would travel a lot at 16 years old. You know, I was going to rodeos every weekend all over Wisconsin and then, you know, adjacent states and stuff like that. So I was just used to traveling and doing stuff by myself and having a lot of freedom and then put me on that tiny island in the Pacific. I didn't enjoy that. So that's when I joined.

I just joined the Army Reserves, though. I didn't want to go full time. You know, I didn't want that commitment. I didn't have that sense of patriotism and duty and serving your country and all that. So I just wanted to go to basic training. you know, get in shape and maybe have a little bit of a challenge just to see if I could, if I could do that, you know, I didn't know how hard it was. It wasn't really hard, but I did not enjoy base train because they took away all those freedoms,

you know, that I had just spoken about. So I didn't like that at all. And then after that, I moved back to Wisconsin and was in a reserve unit and across the border in Minnesota and as an 11 bravo infantrymen and I was in a scout platoon in the reserves and that's when I kind of started to like the military a little bit more. We'd go out on our, you know, one weekend a month and the two weeks in the summer in, you know, northern Minnesota where it was pretty cold and rugged country. And I kind of like that, you know. So I was I was thinking that I was going to go active duty at some point. And then in August of 1990, I was up at MTT mobile training team

sniper school in Fort Richardson, Alaska. And that's when Iraq invaded Kuwait back in 1990. So I'm like, that that's it. That was a deciding factor for me that I'm going to go active duty and be a part of this big war they were talking about. I want to be a part of history. So as soon as I got back from Alaska, I went to the recruiter and signed up active duty in late 1990 and, you know, stayed in for another 26 years or so. And so you went over to 101st Airborne and did some time over there. And then at a certain point, you decided to go to, well, yeah, at that point, they were calling it special forces assessment and selection.

Yeah. So when I first went active duty, I went over to Germany with the third infantry division, spent two years there, had a pretty easy time there, almost too easy, you know, had a lot of free time. But I didn't get in too much trouble, never got any nonjudicial punishment or Article 15s or anything. So I survived, you know, being private and specialist. Yeah, I got to the 101st and I'm like, okay, now I'm in the real army. And pretty shortly after getting there, I tried out for the scout platoon and really, really like that. Spent probably two and a half years or so in the scout platoon. But while I was in Germany, I got a briefing from the Special Forces guys over there, the 110 guys. And I'm like, maybe that's what I want to do. Maybe go be a green beret. And, but it just took a while to, to go get a slot for selection. I had, you know, some GRTC rotations and went to Ranger School and in airborne school and stuff like that because it's hard to go to airborne school from 100 first.

They're not big fans of airborne people, but that's another story. So, yeah, eventually I got the packet together to go to SFAS Special Forces Assessment selection. and went out there on January 3rd of 1995 and didn't really, didn't really enjoy selection. It wasn't, I mean, the only part that I did enjoy was when I was out by myself, which was, you know, maybe half the time. The other half was all this stupid team week and team events and carrying, you know, ammo crates full of concrete for ungodly distances. and pushing three wheeled jeeps and all kinds of stupid stuff. You know, working as a team. And I don't know, at some point, I realize I'm not the best team player, you know.

When I'm out there by myself, just walking through the woods, going from point A to point B following a map and compass, I mean, yeah, I didn't really, I never really had a problem with that. And I kind of enjoyed it, you know, you move at your own pace, whether, you know, you can go slow or fast. And if you go too slow, though, you're, you know, they're going to pull you out. But yeah, I didn't really have a issue at selection during the individual events.

And then went to fifth group. So back before Campbell there, Bravo Company, Second Battalion. And didn't really, I know I'm not, I haven't been making any friends with the green brace because I've kind of talked a little bit badly about them and some other podcasts. You know, but I don't know. They're just, I just wasn't impressed. You know, I thought that that at the time, that was like, you know, the pinnacle. And that's the, that's the place to be. And it wasn't, you know, I was just really disappointed with the quality of guys, you know, in the special forces, A teams.

And I know that times are different now than they were in the mid-90s, you know, when we're at, you know, peacetime army. And it just, I don't know, I just, I didn't enjoy it. I didn't like the FID missions. I didn't like the winning the hearts of mine and being all friendly with that, you know, whatever, you know, savages over. And, you know, we were the fifth group. So we had the Middle East. And some of those guys over there, you know, North, Northeast Africa and the Middle East, I just, we just didn't hit it off real well. And I had some, I won't say bad experiences, just like some probably classic SF experiences, you know, trying to, you know, trying to, you know, trying to.

be nice to these guys and convince them that, you know, we're there to help. And, you know, we know better than they do in training and stuff. And I just, I remember this one time we were, break, we're out doing a field exercise training with all these, you know, commandos. And we stopped for chow and I pull up my MRI, you know, number 12 or whatever. And this, and I'm sitting next to like the company commander or whatever. and he pulls out his like little tin can of whatever goat guts something and so I offered him my crackers you know just to be friendly you know good sF guy and uh and he declined but then he offered me

some of his goat guts and I'm like oh no thanks and so it's almost dark and I remember I'm eating my food and I didn't even see it until it was too late out of the corner of my eye but he reaches over with this, you know, dirty African fingers and stuffs this food right into my mouth. And, you know, what are you going to do? I mean, you're not going to spit it out. I don't offend the host nation, right? So that's just one of those experiences that I'm like, man, I don't know if I want to do this, the rest of my career.

And then another event, I think it was on that same deployment. We're going up some really steep kind of craggly mountains on some goat. trail there. And the guy in front of me, one of the Africans, he reaches back, you know, to like, lend me a hand to help me up. And I mean, I'm a young fit guy. You know, I didn't need a hand, but I'm like, again, I'll try to be friendly. So I took his hand and he, and he, like, pulled me up. But then he, he didn't let go. Like, he kept holding my hand. And like, we're, like, now starting to come out on the level ground and he's still holding my hand. I'm like, no, I don't, I don't want to play this game.

So anyway, it wasn't the best SF guy. So I did, I only did maybe two years in the special forces. And then I'm like, man, I'm probably going to punch out. I'm probably going to get out of the Army. And I didn't even have a plan. I didn't know what I was going to do at all. But I didn't want to, I just wasn't happy there, you know. So I told the team starting, I'm like, I'm going to get out.

Then he's the one who told me to recommend that I try out. with the special mission unit. And so I have him to thank both the team starting and the warrant on that team who had been to selection previously, and neither made it, but they, they spoke very highly of it. And they said that they thought I would be a good fit there, even though they had never served and they didn't make it.

They somehow saw something in me, I guess, that, you know, they recommended that. And so the very next month, I went to a recruiting brief, that was in December of 97 and I'm like oh yeah this is this is it this is what I want to do this makes more sense this is more up my alley and and then in March of 98 I went to that selection and as soon as I got the selection I'm like yeah this is where I belong looking around at the you know the other students there and the in the and the Cadbury and stuff I'm like yeah this is this where I need to be so that selection was for me it was easier, I guess. I don't know. I just, I enjoyed it a lot more.

I wouldn't have mind going back through that again. You know, if they said five years later, you have to go back through that selection again, I'm like, yeah, no problem. But if they would have told me I had to go back to SFAAS again, I'm like, no way, am I doing that team week shit again? But at the special mission unit selection, there's no team anything.

It's everything you do from day one as an individual event and you know nobody's yelling at you you get no encouragement or discouragement it just it's all on you 100% on you and and i i like that i mean i'm not going to say i flourish there but i feel like i i did i did well there and uh you know the probably the hardest part of that of that selection process for me personally and i know everybody has their own experiences but for me that probably the most difficult part was at the very end when you do when you're done with all the physical stuff and you have to go to the the commanders board and i was in there for about 34 minutes and uh it it didn't go you know real well they weren't they weren't real uh they weren't

easy on me but uh you know after that they said you know congratulations you're you're accepted so yeah that's my story up until then that's great just it sounds like i mean you know you mentioned going hunting and trapping even at the age of 10 so you you had this very individualistic like childhood and grew up that way where you were just happy being out there on your own and you also had a background that i think you know hunting and trapping is not they're they're not skills that a lot of American youths, Americans have anymore. Did you find that, you know, like when you went to the hunter and first and you finally got into scouts and then you went to SF, you had this skill set that, you know, that people just

didn't know how to use and you wanted more of that sort of individual type of mission out there hunting and trapping, like doing your thing? Yeah, I mean, totally. I kind of would have been nice. I think if I had more like survival training, I think, you know, as a as a kid, I mean, I went and, you know, I'd sleep out in the woods. I remember one time I was 14 and we went on a moose hunting trip up to Quebec. And it was me and my dad and two other guys. And I knew when I went out that morning that I wasn't coming back that night.

I didn't tell anybody. And in hindsight, I probably should have because they were probably worried about me. We're way, I mean, very remote end of the road in northern Quebec. And I just left. And I didn't have any blanket sleep. You know, I had a can of sardines in my pocket. And like I put on a little warmer jacket in a book of matches. And that's all I had.

And I'm like, but when I walked out of the camp that morning, I knew I wasn't coming back until the next day. Just to kind of test myself, you know. So I haven't really been in any. I've been obviously through some different survival training in Sears School and stuff like that, but I haven't, you know, excel that, that I haven't mastered that. And so I watch that show alone. And I'm like, man, I'd like to be on that show and just kind of test myself with those. I don't know if you watch that show, but they're out there by themselves just with basically nothing.

I have to find all their food, water, shelter and survive as long as they can out there. So I guess if, you know, stuff like that. But yeah, the Scout platoon gave me that kind of individual freedom. We could be out there and just small, you know, sometimes we're just in two-man teams. And I like that more than being with a company-sized element or even a platoon-sized element out patrolling. And I'm like, you guys are making too much noise. And, you know, you're going to give our position away. So I definitely like being out there with a very small team or even completely by myself.

So what year was it that you went to selection for the SMU? 1998. Sorry, if I said that wrong, it was March. Yeah, it's about a month long or so. So March April of 98. Okay. So you were there then fairly quickly to 9-11. Like, well, no, you weren't 98.

Three years. Yeah, three years. What was it like when you got there? Did you like what you were doing? I loved it. I mean, I absolutely loved it. And there's not many things on this planet that I can say that about. Yeah, from, I mean, immediately from the first from when we started OTC, the operator training course, which is a really extensive, I won't say grueling, but it's it's a challenging course. And it's, it's, I mean, it's six days a week. And I would, I would go to work in the morning and it would be dark. when I got there and when I left it in the evening, it was dark. And I did that, you know, for months, six, seven months. And, man, I enjoyed every single day of the training program.

That's another thing. If they're like, hey, you have to go back through OTC, you know, if they were to told me that like five years later, I have done, yeah, no problem. I'll go back through. I'll go through selection again. I'll go through OTC again because those I really enjoyed them. But, yeah, when, you know, looking back, there wasn't a whole lot going on in the world or, you know, in special operations

between during that time. So Somalia happened in October of 93. So my instructors, a lot of those guys were Somalia vets. And then I ended up going to the squadron that was participated in Gothic serpent and stuff. So that's kind of, you know, how we dressed and all. And they, We would talk about all the lessons learned from Somalia, and it was small this, a lot of that. So it was good. I learned a lot from, you know, the firsthand accounts of the guys who were actually there on the ground.

And they shared their knowledge and experience with me as best they could, you know, but then a couple of, you know, three, four years later, we go into Afghanistan and we're not using Somalia tactics or equipment necessarily. Like, because in training, we're wearing these big, thick, you know, chicken plates, front and back, six, eight, ten magazines, big med kits, IV bags, all this stuff. But when you start humping up the mountains in Afghanistan, you're not going to be carrying all that kit. You know, you strip down to thin, lightweight body armor, maybe three magazines.

You're not carrying IV bags and stuff like that. So, you know, the military tends to focus on or fight the last war. Last war, exactly. And that's what we're doing. I'm not saying that's a bad. thing because it's always, you know, it's going to be hard to predict your next war. So, but we made a lot of adjustments. And we were able to make them really quickly, you know, win that unit for like, hey, this isn't working. We want to try something different. We could do

that. It's not like in the big army where it's a, you know, it takes years to make even small changes. We could make them very quickly. So we're, you know, flexible and adaptable that way. So I want to, you know, talk about the bulk. But before that, I got to give a shout out to the sponsors for the show. Dave, if you want to grab these bags, these are Faraday bags made by Silent. And they make them all different sizes. There's also a backpack, these little waterproof bags. And you put your electronics in here, and they cannot be, you know, digitally red

or people trying to, you know, break into your devices remotely. And you can check all of these out at, what's the website for these, day? SLNT.com and use the promo code teamhouse and you will get 10% off of your purchase. So, slantt.com and use the promo code team house to get 10% off your water. And you can also find them at SAP Gear. They're on SAP Gear as well. And then the second sponsor for this show that I need to mention, I actually don't have any of their apparel here because I actually use it when I exercise. 10,000 apparel.

They make really awesome workout gear, really good workout. shirts, shorts, they make, like, I don't want to call them sweatpants. Yeah, they're, but like stretchy pants that you can use for exercising. My favorite workout clothing company, and you can find them at 10,000. Dot cc slash team. That's 10,000.c slash team. And you use the, is there, nope, so you just go to that website and you will get 15% off your order. Yes, you can hit the link in the description or you could use the promo code at checkout.

All right. So, Jesse, your first deployment with the unit was 1999 to the Balkans. I was wondering if you could tell us what that was like for you. I mean, it's maybe a little bit anti-climactic. We were doing the Piffwickery, as we call it. So Piffwick is a person indicted for war crimes. And so some of us were tasked with going over there. and trying to to capture these guys.

Most of them were not in areas we could go, meaning like Bosnia and Herzegovina, but they were in like Serbia, so we didn't have access there. In fact, when I was there, we were bombing Serbia and throwing some tomahawks over there. But if they ever came across the border into Bosnia, and if we had intel on that,

then we could roll them up. So that's what we were, you know, doing over there. It just, it wasn't, I mean, it might sound really sexy. And, you know, if you're the only, if that's the only game in town, which it pretty much was at that time, you know, then it was, I guess, kind of cool at the time. And maybe looking back, it was, but you don't see a lot of books written on it because it just isn't really, you know, worthy. I was joking with somebody, somebody mentioned, you know, somebody should write a book on that. I'm like, yeah, it'd be about four or five pages long, probably. So,

So we did not me personally, but there was a few guys that got rolled up. I did partake in some of the surveillance of one of those guys. So, you know, we did some good stuff over there. Is that sort of like the precursor of what was to come after 9-11 as far as hunting high-value targets? I mean, I guess you could say it. I mean, there was so the unit is, you know, primarily for hostage rescue. you know, they're pretty good at man hunting also, you know, killer capture mission. So I'm not going to say that that was the precursor because, you know, they were,

they were doing that in Somalia, you know, and probably some other places, you know, maybe in South America or whatever, you know, hypothetically. So, no, Bosnia wasn't the precursor, but it was good, it was a good kit shakeout. for some future things. I would say a lot of the low-vis stuff because, you know, we weren't, we weren't wearing kit. Although we did one time, you know, we were kind of dressing up like some regular Army dudes. I think it was first cab over there. So we got some uniforms with some first cab patches on them and stuff and, you know, put on like PFC rank or whatever. So we could, and got some Humvees so we could go out and, you know, play the part.

But most of the time it was all civilian clothes. and so just configuring your low-vis kit. We had bigger radios back then, so trying to figure out whether your earpiece and mic and, you know, carrying your guns and how to hide that under a Bosnian leather jacket now. So there was some lessons learned, some good commo, you know, lessons and some new kit came out of that.

But like I said, nothing super sexy, worthy of, some, you know, books. Well, maybe a chapter. But then you went back in the year 2000. And I was wondering what you could tell us about the second deployment over there. Yeah, that was a little bit maybe, I don't know if it was more sensitive, but it was just a small team. There was just four of us. And we were just kind of doing some, you know,

I guess kind of area of familiarization. I mean, there was a mission to go into Montenegro to rescue a guy there and then that fell through. But, you know, we kept some guys over there to just kind of keep up the, not the facade, but I ended up traveling a lot, like extensively to pretty much every country throughout the Balkans. and then over to Italy as well. In fact, at one time, I remember because they didn't have the euro then. So I had seven different types of currency in my wallet at one time and trying to keep track of all the different, you know, money and exchange rates and stuff like that.

But it was a good time. And again, you know, saw some things that, you know, most people will in the U.S. military don't get to see. I mean, like who goes to Albania? I mean, I got to, you know, go there quite a bit. I know other guys go throughout Bosnia and Kosovo quite a bit, but Slovenia, a beautiful country, you know, Croatia and stuff like that. So got to see quite a bit and do some stuff that not really sexy, but it was good. I'm not an intelligence gatherer, but I was, you know, gaining area knowledge and information, kind of a precursor to the AFO, if you will, the advanced force operation.

which, you know, a lot of people can, they have different names for whether it's OPE, operational preparation of the environment or in layman's terms, it's just area familiarization. So, yeah, it did some of that in 2000. And did you find yourself taken, I mean, again, you know, working in small teams or by yourself, do you find yourself enjoying working in the sort of like clandestine low visibility manner? I do. I won't say I'm very, I won't say that I'm very good at it. I'm definitely not an expert or a master at that, but some people are,

and I was privileged to develop the work with some of those people who are really good at. So even though I'm not the best at it, I enjoy it. So, you know, my last probably four years in that special mission unit, I was doing more of the clandestine type stuff. And yeah, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's not as, you know, nearly as dynamic. You know, you're not blowing indoors and, you know, shooting dudes as much. But it's, you know, it's kind of that a little bit sneaky, you know, cloak and dagger and, you know, some surveillance stuff.

And I did enjoy it. And that's something that, you know, there's always a lot of room for improvement. I think with, like, CQB, you can get extremely good at CQB. But I think at some point, you know, you're just going to kind of pete because QB isn't really that hard. You know, everybody does CTB now, everybody, you know, every infantrymen in the Army, every Marine. Obviously, some people are a lot better than others, but the, you know, just the dynamics

of it, the schematics, it's not really that hard. So you can only get, you know, you're going to get as, good as you can. And then I don't know if there's always going to be a next level, you know, but with the, uh, the low vis stuff, it's, it's always different, you know, every environment and every surveillance detection route, every, uh, scenario is going to be a little bit different and a little bit unpredictable. And, uh, you know, I, I kind of, I kind of like that, I guess, you know, um, the surprise, you know, or CQB, it's like, okay, there's a door. You go right. I go left, left, right? And it's, there's not always, you know, you get some surprises, but it's, after a while it,

it's just, uh, gets to be pretty redundant, you know. And then where were you when 9-11 happened? I was, uh, at Fayville, uh, at my house in Fayetteville, North Carolina, just, uh, racked out on the couch. Some girl called me up in a panic. I was like, you know, turn on the TV and, and, So that was the first I heard about it. All I had to do that day was drive. I was going to be Cadre for the next selection class. And so I just had to go up and work selection. And obviously I didn't go in that day or go to be Cadre that day.

I hung around Fort Bragg for another week or so because they weren't sure where we were going to go or what we were going to do. They're like, hey, you're going to deploy immediately to the middle. at least or you're going to, you know, they, they were, they brought in some U.S. marshals and gave us classes on the procedures to be an air marshal. They're like, okay, some of you guys are going to go be air marshal. So we weren't sure what was going to happen. You know, nobody did in those first few days at least. And then they realized once things, you know, settled down, they're like, okay, you guys are

still, we're still going to run selection. So, you know, a couple guys are still going to go up and do that. So that's what I did, you know, A few days after 9-11 as I was working Cadrey in the mountains running selection. And, I mean, that must have been kind of a difficult time for you. I think Pat McNamara said the same thing that he was part of S&T when 9-11 happened. And it was kind of like a difficult time for a lot of you guys because you weren't going anywhere in the immediate future. Right.

But we all knew that we were going to be. you know, heavily involved in this, you know, it was, it was the biggest terrorist attack on American soil ever. And we were in, you know, the premier counter terrorist unit, you know, in the U.S., if not the world. So, yeah, we knew that we were going to be busy. And we had it narrowed down pretty quickly, you know, where we were probably going to be going and who was responsible for this and stuff like that. So, yeah, it still took a, you know, about five weeks for guys to get in on the ground there in Afghanistan, you know, while I was, actually I was back from selection by that.

October 19th, we sent some guys in, both the unit and the Rangers and Fifth Special Forces guys. I think all on the same night, October 19th of 2001, they sent guys in on the ground. But yeah, I wasn't there for that. I was back at Fort Bragg at that time. And you guys made it over in April of 2002? Yeah, I was right at the end of March around maybe April 1st of 2002 when me and my my squadron brothers went over there and spent like maybe four months. I think we're there until maybe like late July or something like that.

And then we came back from there. And within a short time after that, we weren't prepping to go back. on a rotation to Afghanistan, we started preparing for Iraq because, you know, the writing was on the wall there that we were going to be going into Iraq. So tell me about what that time was like, you know, for you and your teammates, I mean, prepping and getting getting ready for that mission. Yeah, there was a lot of, I mean, I was just, you know, during, during COVID, you know, there's all that, you know, the military is forced to get the COVID. vaccine and stuff, which I totally to screw it. But then I think back to when, you know, I got vaccines, experimental vaccines for anthrax and actualism. I had to get my smallpox because I never had smallpox as a kid. You know, I was just a little bit too old to get that. So,

you know, in like December of 2002 or January of 2001, you know, I'm getting pumped full of anthrax, botulism, smallpox vaccines. But the difference between that and COVID, vaccine is, you know, we had targets on our target deck that were, you know, known or suspected to be producing things like anthrax. And if, and if you go in there and you get exposed to that, you're probably, you know, very high chance, probably know, what 90% chance that you're going to die from that. So if they're like, hey, you can take this vaccine and then there's only a 10% chance you die, yeah, I'm going to take that as opposed to the COVID. And I know we're not supposed to probably be getting political or whatever. But I mean, the COVID vaccine and the experimental

vaccine that's completely unnecessary because even if you are exposed to it, which probably everybody has been by now, you know, you got less than a 1% chance of dying. So I just totally disagree with those forced vaccines for the military or for anybody, healthcare workers. Well, well, Jesse, let me, I mean, let me ask you then, you know, there's a portion of the 82nd immediate response force that was essentially deadlined and non-deployable, because of COVID, especially when they got back from like Washington, D.C. I mean, for, for an organization like the unit that is a rapidly deploying unit that has to be ready to deploy to meet America's national security threats anywhere in the world. I mean, what do you think if like two-thirds of

the unit has COVID and is non-deployable? I mean, so, I mean, I had COVID. And it's not, for me, if you're a, you know, a healthy guy and not a geriatric or morbidly obese or all these underlying health conditions, you know, leukemia or whatever. I mean, you're going to get sick for a few days and then you're going to be fine. I just don't think it should deadline entire, you know, the DRF or whatever on call, you know, force, whether it's 82nd or the unit or whoever. I just, I don't know. I'm, I just didn't like the way, you know, that whole thing was handled.

It became the ultimatum where guys would be forced out of the service if they didn't do it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just, I have a real, I have a real problem with that, I mean, I just, I mean, COVID, like that whole lack of just, it really, it really bothered me more than, than I probably have led on to people. I just, the way I saw all of our freedoms being taken away. And I mean, that's like one of probably the single most important thing to me is, is freedom. You know, I can say that because my wife, kids aren't in a room. And now I see just all these freedoms being taken away and people voluntarily like giving up the freedom like, oh, yeah, my, you know, my safety is more important. No, no, it's not because it's really hard to get your freedom back if you just give it away like that. So, yeah, I mean, I was not in the military, obviously at the time. So it didn't affect me.

But, you know, my wife is she's a reservist. In fact, she's been on active duty orders for almost a year now. And she, she had to get the vaccine. A friend of ours who's, you know, devout, religious, you know, Catholic, I think a colonel in the reserves, she's like, I'm not going to get this vaccine because it goes against, you know, I want a religious exemption and they wouldn't give it to her. And I guess because, and I didn't know this, but I guess some of the vaccines they use, I don't know, stem cells or something with a board of fetuses.

I don't know all the details, but she ended up traveling to another country on her own dime to get a vaccine that was, you know, completely like synthetic, not made from, just so she could stay in the military. Oh, wow. And then now, I think now they rescinded that ridiculous mandate in the military. You don't no longer have to. Yeah. They're talking about it.

I thought they had. I don't believe so. I think they've been talking about it. There's about, I want to say like 800 people in the Army who ended up getting kicked out at the end of the day. Yeah. Are they going to be allowed to come back in or anything like that? Yeah, they will because they got general discharges. Yeah. All right.

We don't have to get too political about that. I forgot what the original. Yeah. Yeah. This video is already demonetized. It's okay. No, but we're talking about the invasion of Iraq and preparing for that mission. Or even, yeah, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it was exciting. You know, we had, you know, all of us in our squadron had done some time in Afghanistan. And that wasn't, it wasn't super sexy. But now we're talking about, you know, we're going to be the ones invading this country. And, you know, and I'm not going to go into the politics of if we should have or not or if they did have WMD or not. That's, that's actually irrelevant to me and the other soldiers because we're going to do, you know, what we're told, unless it's completely unethical or illegal. So if our commanders are like, hey, you guys get ready because you're going to be invading Iraq, then we're going to do that, whether or not we believe there's WMDs, like I said, that's irrelevant. So probably around December of 2002, we, you know, we were training, prepping up for the invasion. And so all through the spring and then probably early March, of 03, we forward deployed over to Saudi Arabia and we're ready.

We've got all of our kit and equipment and vehicles. And we're just waiting for the, we're just waiting for the call. And we got the call, you know, probably the morning of March 19th. And then so we immediately started making our way towards the berm. And as soon as it got dark, we crossed over. with a little help from our good friends at 160. And could you, could you tell us a little bit like elaborate a little bit about that night what it was like pushing across the berm?

Yeah. I mean, it was it was magical. I mean, it's like the stuff that, you know, you watched as a kid in movies. I mean, we're, there's a no kidding big ass giant berm. So we brought a big like D9 bulldozer to punch a hole through there so we could. could drive our wheeled vehicles, you know, because we couldn't make it over that giant berm with, I mean, it's probably, you know, 25 feet tall or whatever.

So use a bulldozer, punched. I don't know where they got the bulldozer. But we brought some engineers with us up there. You know, we, we had a crew of, you know, probably 40 shooters, but then we had another 20, like, support dudes, you know, mechanics and engineers. and we had an armor and, you know, we had different support guys, EOD guys and stuff like that, of course, medics. So we, as we're starting to go over the berm, the 160th guy started taking out guard towers with the, with the Daps and the little birds. And so you're just, I mean, you're watching, though, like you're in a movie, you know, the rockets, 275 inch rockets are hitting the guard towers and, you know, burst of,

of mini guns and and we just drove across, you know, I don't think there was any of us actually that fired around during the initial crossing over. And then that very next night, though, the night of the 20th, when the rest of the Army was making their way across from, I guess from Kuwait they were coming from. So when they were just crossing their berm, we were already hitting our first target, big, big target we had some really big targets out there were just you know like said maybe 40 shooters but we had a ton of air support fast moving and stuff so uh we could take out uh you know the a lot of dudes with with the aircraft before we went in on foot and you were kind of uh i think you were telling me

that your uh your element made their way to to crit but like all on the way you're hitting military targets that had been designated yeah we're hitting target it's, I won't say every night, but probably about every two or three nights, because we had we traveled, you know, something like 1,100 miles. I mean, Iraq is really big. You know, it's, I don't know if it's probably like, I mean, it's big like Texas, right? So if you cross the way on the western desert and you're hitting different military targets along the way, so we would move at night and then hit targets at night, and then we would

sleep in the in the daytime and rest, you know, do our priorities of work, whatever, maintenance of weapons and vehicles and other equipment in our rod site, rest over day site. And we, you know, we just kept moving along, kept moving east towards, and we didn't even have, we didn't have like a specific target, like, hey, we're going to Baghdad or we're going to, to Crit. We were just given the mission to move in an easterly direction across the desert and hitting targets of opportunity and other predetermined military targets along the way. And that's what we did. And around the 27th, 28th of March, we went up to, we started approaching Haditha Dam right there in the, you know, in the whatever they call it, the Sunni triangle.

And that was very, very heavily defended. Because even though Iraq is mostly desert, there's still a couple of water features. You got the Tigers and Euphrates and then you got a couple lakes in there where they dammed it up. And there's actually some real muddy and swampy areas there in between. So you can't just, you know, drive across like it's the surface of the moon. You can most of the times. But when you come to those choke points where there's, you know, that river or whatever or a lake, there's only going to be a few places where you can cross that. So they had those very heavily defended Haditha dam. There was, I don't even know how many. you know, artillery pieces and anti-aircraft pieces they had there, but it was, it was a lot.

So what we would do is we would drive up pretty close, you know, when I say pretty close, I mean like a half mile away, actually probably a mile away. And we would just start identifying and lacing targets. And then the fast movers would just start bomb, bomb, bomb. And we did that for two or three nights in a row. And then finally, we're like, hey, we're not going to, we're not going to cross here. Anyway, we're not going to cross dam. So we backed off from the Hidah Dam.

Meanwhile, I think the Rangers came in there, I think third battalion guys. And we went up farther north to a near a town called Rawa, and we crossed the Euphrates there. And again, you know, you drive 50 miles before you hit a bridge. So that bridge is pretty heavily defended. And again, it's like right out of a movie. I mean, we're taking out all the bunkers along the both sides of the rivers and going across in our light skin vehicles. There's guys on ATVs going across this bridge. And I'm like, man, that's, I'm watching.

I'm right in the middle of this. I'm like, this is cool as shit. And you made your way to, if you want to tell us about objective grizzly, which you said was like a huge target. Yeah, I don't remember the exact day we hit that. That was up near one of those lakes, Lake Thar Tharthar or whatever. Anyway, it was a giant. So again, we're a small element. There's about 40 shooters.

And we're like, hey, here's another military target. But it's a massive military target. It's like if you know what our NTC is a national training center. It's like a giant maneuver area, you know, thousands of acres. where they do like tank maneuvering and training and stuff like that. And there are, there's like a contonement area with barracks and, you know, whatever,

their little PX and, you know, a little mosque or whatever area where the few soldiers are. So there's not like, you know, 10,000 soldiers there might only be a couple hundred. But it's just a massive area. And they have these giant bunkers for,

their ASP, their ammo supply points. They're just filled with all of these, tank rounds and artillery rounds and stuff like that for the training rotations that come through there just like we do with our army. So they're like, hey, you guys, go hit that target. It's massive. I mean, it took hours and hours to clear all that.

And again, even though we're heavily armed and our vehicles do have some, you know, M2 machine guns and Mark 19s. And we have a bunch of machine guns and javelins. we're not going to do that with just those weapons. So I'm not saying that we did this all by ourselves. We have a lot of airplanes above us with a lot of bombs and bullets to help us away. So when you get when any of these guys want to try shooting back, a lot of guys just ran away, the Iraqis. But once a while, you know, some guys that try to maneuver on us or shoot back and stuff.

And, you know, that's a last you heard from them. It sounds sort of like the operating. or Olympics, this sort of like thunder run you guys made through Iraq. Yeah. Yeah. Thunder run. That's a good one. Yeah.

So we hit some really big targets like that. And then we crossed the Euphrates on March 31st of 03. And then two days later, April 2nd. I know several guys have talked about that. But we actually got, we got attacked by a couple hundred dudes. And they had, you know, a hundred or so coming at us. and another 150 set up on an ambush position over in a wadi across the ridge and, you know, expecting us to kind of like run away once, you know, we were being attacked, but we didn't run.

We just stayed where we were and we fought for hours. And, I mean, it was a really long, you know, gunfight and ended up, you know, killing a lot of dudes. unfortunately we lost one of our guys there otherwise that would have been just a you know a great day but yeah Andy Fernandez was killed unfortunately on that day but uh yeah I know a lot of guys have talked about that extensively it's been written about a few books but I mean it's a big deal then and probably even now you know to have like I said 40 50 guys get attacked by a couple hundred and but and for the first probably three hours it was just us on the ground. It took about three hours probably to get some helicopters in there because, again,

we're at, this isn't the insurgency like the year or two or three to get later. This is, we're still at war, right? This is international armed conflict with, it's our army against the Iraqi army. So we didn't, even though we had a lot of fast moves, we didn't necessarily own the, the airspace. And we didn't have fob set up or anything like that. It's just us out there in the western desert. So it took a, it took about three hours. finally to get some daps in there. And then they're the ones that saw all of those dudes set up in the ambush position who'd been waiting for us for hours.

And then we got the Mata back in there to get Andy out, a couple other dudes that got wounded. And then we got bringing some A10s in and a couple of F-16. So, yeah, we pretty much laid ways to the bad guys that day. And what was sort of, how did you guys arrive at to crit? and how was that sort of determined to be like your limit of advance? So we ended up getting, meeting up with some conventional guys who had some Abrams, some M1 Abrams tanks. And so by this time, you know, this is probably April 7th, maybe something like that around there.

I don't know the exact date of that. But we coordinated with this tank platoon, I think it was four. I think five Bradley's, not Bradley, sorry, Abrams tanks. And so we're like, we're going to, we're going to have you guys go with us and we're going to drive into the edge of to crit. We had no intentions of occupying space there or, you know, gaining a foothold. All we wanted to do is kind of, kind of harassment, but also sending a message that, hey, the Americans are here. we just came across the desert and now we are in, you know, Tickrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein. So we went into the edge of town and there was, I mean, there's major highways there just like there is, you know, around our cities here in the U.S.

And there was this big clover leaf, you know, like we have here. And they had it all barricaded with spikes and all this wire and crap like that. But we got up there and put the tank. for the tanks up on the clover leaf and then we had our white skin vehicles as well and we got up kind of on some high ground and got out some our machine guns and stuff and just you know some guys would you know some of the iraqis would come out towards us with their little you know technical vehicles Toyota high eluxes and stuff with the machine gun on the back or whatever and they would just get basically vaporized by the 105 main guns of these of these Abrams tanks

So it was a, I mean, again, it was an exciting thing. And we felt like we felt really good. I remember the next day. So we just went in there, you know, killed some dudes, shot up a bunch of stuff. And then we, before it got light, we pulled back out of there. So again, and that was the plan. There was never a plan to hold that ground or invade into,

into the city limits necessarily to create. We just wanted to go up there and show a force. Hey, we can do this. We can come into your town, kill some of your soldiers, and then pull out, and there's nothing you can do about it. And we didn't lose, you know, anybody. We didn't, I don't even think we had any, anybody get wounded that night. So you're saying that the Iraqis were bringing technicals to a tank fight?

Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and they were, I mean, they were trying to maneuver on us and stuff like that, because it's pretty obvious where we were. I mean, but it just wasn't working out to their advantage. You know, they don't, they just don't have the technology. And I mean, as simple as night vision goggles, you know. And the few guys that did have, like, like we would come up on guys and different

military dudes that had night vision equipment. And it would be in the box, you know, in the back of the truck or whatever they didn't, you know, or they would wear it around their neck. Yeah. They didn't have the mounts for a helmet. So even if the few guys that did have the equipment, they just, they weren't disciplined enough to, to use it across. appropriately. So, yeah, we have a huge advantage then, and I'm sure we still do now.

But yeah, so we did that. And then the next day, I remember we went up on this big, I won't say mountain, but it's a big ridgeline hilltop, very not probably tactically sound, but on all of our vehicles, we raised up American flags. And it's like, I mean, it was just a good morale boost, you know, for like, here we are. Like, we're like, here we are. We're just in these light skin vehicles, you know, come and get us if you want to. And I don't know. It was a good feeling. Yeah. And how did, I mean, just that curiosity, I mean, you pushed all the way to the crit, like you said, pretty deep into Iraq. How did you guys end up getting redeployed from

that location and getting out of there? Okay, so we pulled out of the crit, went back to, by that time we had established a camp at at grizzly at that target that we named grizzly which was their ntc area with all the tank training area so we established a camp there and then a few days later we went back into to crit because now we had those other conventional forces there some of the marines and some of the army guys i don't remember it may have been it may have been fourth ID or third ID. I don't remember, but there was some U.S. Army conventional guys, then some Marines who had made it from the south up into the Crit. But they had just kind of

gained a foothold. So they hadn't really cleared. There was two palaces, two Saddam's palaces there, one more opulent than the other. So we're like, hey, we're going to go and hit those, just our guys. So we went in there on either the 12th or 13. It would have been the 13th of April. And we hit the first palace and we occupied it. We stayed there that night. I remember I slept on a couch. That was the first time I'd slept on anything other than the desert floor, you know,

in a month, a full month. But I still didn't get a shower. And then the next morning, April 14th, we went and hit the other bigger palace and and then we occupied that as well and then finally I finally got a shower after a month and I slept on a bed there so that was pretty nice yeah I remember that that was the day my daughter was born I got a phone call we had one satellite radio and uh it's like hey jess you got you got to call and they're like hey your daughter's born it's it's a girl like I didn't even know at that time you know before if it was going to be a bore girl so I'm like all right that's cool

It's so surreal. And, yeah, again, I'm just curious, like, how did you guys, like, return home from? Oh, yeah, sorry. I was just trying to go through the timeline. Yeah, yeah. We're coming. This is 20 years. Yeah.

20 years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we hit that second palace. And then we only stayed there a day or two. So 16th, 17th of April. And then they're like, hey, this other squadron is here.

You guys probably need a break because we've been going, running and gone at nonstop, you know, for a month. And, you know, which probably doesn't sound like much because, you know, the next year we were doing that literally, you know, we did that for years. But this was the first time that we were doing it that frequently. And we had traveled, like I said, all the way across the desert. So another squadron came in. We kind of swapped that with them. And then we went back all the way back to one of those airfields out there in the West.

I don't remember if it was H1 or H3, but one of those airfields. And they're like, all right, you guys can head home. They brought in a, I guess it was probably a C-17 out there on a desert air strip and loaded up and flew home. Like it was just, and that was around the 20, probably 22nd of April. So we were in Iraq through, you know, just over a month. And then I didn't go back again until September. yeah, September of 2003.

So I had a couple months out before I started getting back into it. So, I mean, let's, you know, as we fast forward a little bit, what was going on with you? You ended up becoming a sniper and you ended up starting that rotation back to Iraq going back and forth to Iraq.

And what are you seeing as you go on these deployments and what are you seeing in Iraq as the insurgents? the insurgency sort of starts to kick up. Yeah, I mean, it picked up pretty quick. So when we went back in September, there wasn't like an insurgency. Yeah, it didn't exist. There was like, I remember seeing the first reports of these roadside bombs, you know, these IEDs that, you know, we'd get a picture sent to us.

And it was like, oh, look at this. You know, they took an artillery piece and they did this. And they were there were so few and far between, you know, there would be like, you know, maybe one or two per week in all of Iraq. And we would get the intel updates on on these, you know, IEDs. So we didn't even realize that that was, you know, like the beginning of the insuracy. At that time, you know, we're still, we're going off the deck of cards, guys, right? Yeah.

Well, it was actually 54, not 52, but Uday and Cusei had just been killed in July up there in Mosul, you know, three with some help from some of my coworkers. And then, yeah, we're just going, we're, we're manhunting at that point. We're just starting to go after high value targets. And then when we couldn't find those, we'd go after whatever other shitbag, you know, that was looking to maybe be connected to these roadside bombs and stuff like that, that were starting to pop up. So it kind of escalates.

it escalated pretty quickly. I think, so I was there in Iraq from September all the way until September 03 until January of 2004. And obviously during that time, Saddam was captured. I wasn't involved, but I was up in Mosul when it happened. And I'm like, okay, now, now it's over, right? Back in May, we declared that all major combat operations are over. There was a few roadside bombs.

But now, Saddam is captured. This should be at the end of this. nonsense. We're going to somehow reestablish a legitimate government. And this is going to be the end of the fighting in Iraq. And we can go back to Afghanistan where we know that there's the real guy is responsible for 9-11. But it didn't play out that way. Obviously, there's just a lot of, there's a lot of people that don't like Americans and don't like the West and don't like, you know, who we are and what we stand for. And so that was just, they saw that as, you know, a lawless place where. they could just come from other countries. You know, initially it was just the Iraqis, some holdouts of the bath party and some, you know, fanatics, Zunis or whatever. But now you're getting in all of these people from other countries all over the Middle East, you know, not just not just Syria, but, you know, they're coming from Iran and they're coming from Syria and they're coming from North Africa. And they're coming from all over the place just for the opportunity to, you know, maybe kill an American or kill some Westerners. whether they're on their jihad or they just want to, you know, get, get frisky.

So the insurgency really escalated pretty quickly. And it didn't die off quickly, you know, it took a long time to kind of taper down. How did your for like the, you know, you grew up basically with these, you know, Somali vets saying this is the way we do war. And then you went to Afghanistan, which is a different way of doing war. and then you went to Iraq, which is, I imagine, a different way of doing war, but also not only, but also you're learning as time goes, right? And you're changing the way you do war when you go to those places. How did you see the evolution of your, your tactics and strategies then?

I mean, I don't, so one thing, I left the unit 13 years ago, so I have to assume, that they're not using the exact same, you know, TTPs, tactics, techniques, and procedures now that they were then. But I just don't necessarily want to, you know, potentially divulge some information. I understand. Yeah, some of our tactics, you know, did change because, so like I said, we are primarily the reason that we were created and why we existed was for hostage rescue. So that's, it's different when you're doing a hostage rescue mission than if you're just going out to kill or capture capture some some shit bags and there's there's no there's no good guys on target you know it's it's different there and you don't necessarily uh you don't even have to go in

in the building right you can just you can just stand outside and you know get on a microphone and be like hey bad guy come outside with your hands up or we're going to bomb your house you know so where you can't do that with a hostage rescue you have to go in really fast flood the building and shoot the bad guys before they can shoot the hostages. So it's a different mission set. So it took us a little bit to kind of learn that because we're so focused on, you know, being very discriminatory in our shooting. And there's a lot of times, especially earlier on when, you know, you know, you know it's a bad guy and he's running away.

And like, well, he doesn't have a weapon. So, you know, you can't shoot him. But then later on, you know, some of the ROE, the rules of engagement change where it was allowed. And I'm not, you know, I'm not, you know, fessing up to any war crunch here. I'm just saying because this goes through very extensive. Yeah. Because what they're doing is they're running off target, running up to a ledge the overlooks the target. Yeah.

And grabbing an RPG that's been stashed up there or whatever. Right. Also. Exactly. So. Yeah. And I'm not saying that that was the. norm, but there are some very specific targets that, you know, Intel says, hey, we know for a fact.

There are no women and children here. We know for a fact that everybody on this target is bad. So then you have authority on some specific targets. Right. And again, only a select few where it's like you can shoot squatters. So, you know, there can be an unarmed guy running away and you are well within your legal right to engage that. enemy combat, even though he doesn't have a gun. Right. Because we're, you know, he's, he just threw his gun down and now he's running away. Right. I got a got to.

Right. So we had to, you know, change a little bit that way, just, you know, thinking on, you know, hey, we can, you know, we can, we can shoot more of these guys because there's a lot of guys early on that should have been shot. Yeah. I'm sure later, you know, they got shot eventually because they deserved it. But yeah. But as far as our tactics, I mean, some of the stuff, like I said, we didn't have to land on the X and go right into, you know, blowing in the doors and windows and going in real hard.

We realize we maybe don't have to do that. We can land off on the Y or we can do an offset and land three miles away and walk in or we can do a knock on the door and call them out, you know, with the interpreter or whatever. So we learned that we could we can mix it up too. We don't want to be predictable. And again, I'm not, I don't think I would be giving away any TTPs there because, you know, some things are, some things are not going to change. CQBs, some things are going to be the same. Like I said earlier, CQB is pretty, it's not that hard, you know, breach door, left right, left, right, player sectors. Shoot bad guys.

Don't shoot the good guys. We've talked on the show a number of times about just how that evolved in Iraq and Afghanistan, how, you know, whatever, like you said, all units were doing CQB at a certain point in time. And then everybody realized, why are we doing CQB when there's not a hostage? You know, why are we, you know, flood in this room or this house with personnel when there's a simpler solution, you know, even have a gun, fight from from the windows is better than being inside a, you know, a room that's been built up and barricaded and bunkered. Yeah. You know, Jesse.

We hit some of those too. Yeah. If you take me to 2005, 2005, 2006, the, when the insurgencies getting really hot at this point and, you know, what you were doing at that point in time going over to Iraq with some of the guys. Yeah. So I'm drinking a I'm even drinking a ripet here. You have not. How did you did you have to ship those all home from Iraq? Yeah. They sell them at the they sell them at the dollar store. I did not know that. It tastes just like deployment. Yeah. Anyway, uh, tastes like

2000. 2005. And that was at least for me personally, that was that was the man, that was a busy. Yeah. That was my busiest year by far. I spent probably most of that year in Iraq, and we got skinned up pretty good. We had on one rotation, and we're only doing like about 100 days at a time, you know, three to four months at a time. So it's not a full year. And one of the reasons for that is so you don't get burned out. Because when we go over, we're hitting literally, I know guys say that maybe figuratively or whatever. We're hitting targets every night.

We were literally hitting targets every single night. and often more than one a night. So you can do that for 100 days. It would be hard, really hard to do that for a full year. But in that April to April to July of 05 rotation, yeah, we got skinned up pretty good. And so I was a sniper team leader. And I did most of a lot of time in Iraq up in Mosul. And in fact, this rotation, I think I started out in Mosul and like April.

But then quickly after that, moved out to Anbar province, I think stopped in Ramadi for a bit, but then went way out west right near the Syrian border. And we're based on a little fob out there near the way out, well, kind of by Al-Qaim area. And that rotation, I would say probably over 60% of our squadron got purple heart. on that rotation. So just to give me an idea of how skinned up we got. On June 1st of 05, there was a pretty good firefighter. One whole assault team got wounded. One guy got killed. Guy named Steve Langmanack and then everybody else, everybody else on the team got wounded. Team leader got hit real bad. A guy went through selection in OTC where he probably got, I think he

had like 70-something wounds from between bullets and trapnel. And then a couple weeks later on June 17th, that's a, so I've actually, I've read about this quite a bit in several different books. I mean, probably six different books. There's been reference to Bob Horrigan and Michael McNulty getting killed and, you know, how tragic that was. And it was. It was just a huge blow to to the morale and to the unit. And but almost every instance, while every instance I've read about or heard other, you know,

third party is not completely accurate. So I was actually, you know, right there that night. And I've never, I've never talked about this publicly, but I mean, it's almost 18 years ago.

So on, it was a, on June 16th, on that night, I think it was a Thursday night. We did an offset landing. We landed a long ways away farther than normal. It's probably five miles away from the target. And that's because we went in on a Chinook,

which, as you know, are really loud. So we didn't want anybody to hear us. And we went in with more guys than normally. Normally it was just either my team or maybe another one other team. So not a lot of guys. But in this case, we had five teams going in because it, was a pretty big target. And we had watched it for a while in this little village.

And we knew that there was a lot of shit bags there. There was a pretty big building. And they had a mortar tube set up in the yard. And we just knew that we were watching these bad guys go in and out quite frequently. So that was the main target. And so that's where three of the teams were going to be going. And right across the street, though, at one point, the ISR, the drones saw some of the bad guys taking what appeared to be a hostage. He had a black ski mask on, and they were taking him across the road to this other smaller house.

So that's really the only connection we had to that smaller house. So they're like, hey, Jess, you and you and the other team can have this secondary target. So I'm like, all right, we'll take the, we'll take the trash target, you know. But one thing I'll say coming into this town, so after we walked in there for a few hours, about five miles in the dead of night, it's just kind of an eerie feeling when you got into town because it was, you know, when we've done this hundreds and hundreds of times, this isn't like, you know, any of us are new or inexperienced. We're all pretty experienced by this time. We've been doing this for a few years. But there was just something real eerie about this little village. I think walking down the street,

it was just maybe it's because it was so quiet. It was too quiet. There wasn't even any dogs barking. And there was some little, I remember seeing this fighting position, just a few bricks set up on this on the street. It's a dirt street, like their main street. There's no concrete or thing.

but they had this fighting position set up there. And I'm like, that's not normal, you know, to see on the main street, even though it is Iraq. So we go up to this, to our target where there's two teams in the main building across street, three teams go up there. So we snuck in the town. Nobody knows we're there. We have the surprise element, right? So we're going to do a deliberate assault with a countdown.

So we're putting the explosives on all the. the breach points and we're going to do a simultaneous where we're going to blow all the doors on both targets at the same time. And on our target, you know, most of the houses in Iraq have a big wall around like a 10-foot wall and they'll generally have a big gate, big metal gate that opens up for vehicles and then a smaller like what we call a pedestrian gate, just a normal door size just to walk through. So my team was going to take the big metal gate. And put a big charge on there and blow that. And the other team was going to take the smaller pedestrian gate around the corner

because we had identified that in imagery. But when we got up there, that smaller pedestrian gate didn't exist. It was just somebody had laid like either an old door or a sheet of plywood or something up against the wall. So in imagery, it looked like it was a door, but in reality it wasn't. So we're like, no problem. You guys can just come through our breach point. to blow this main gate. And then it's a short distance, you know, maybe 30 feet from that gate

to the front door of the house. So did the countdown, blew all the charges at the same time. And it's a race. You know, we're we got we got 10 guys and they're like two teams racing to this after the gate blows. We're racing to the front door. And immediately in the two breaches, Breacher, Mike McDulty, and then the other team's breacher, Bob Forgan, you know, they want to be there first because they've got the charges to get the door open on the main house. And so they're the first two there. And then it's a Navy SEAL that I had attached to my team for that rotation. And then it's me. So I'm number four in mind going up there. And Mike and Bob hit that breach point at the same time. And again, we didn't do anything really a whole lot.

different than we've done hundreds of times, but the difference was the people who were inside. This was a, uh, turned out to be a foreign fighter safe house. And not only that, but they were, they were well disciplined, right? So they were conducting safe house operations. They're in a foreign country. Um, and they're in a high threat area. So they have, they're off on security. They had two guys awake in that front room and they had left the door ajar. So if they heard anything, they could just shoot through the door or through that open doorway. And that's what they did. So from the time we blew that charge on the gate until the time Mike and Bob made to that front door was just under seven seconds. And I know that from the from the video. And so this is two o'clock in the morning,

right, on Friday, June 17, 2005. And the two guys who were awake inside, they immediately sprayed at that at that door with achings so now you got 60 rounds of ammunition coming and immediately Mike and Bob both got hit um Bob uh Bob fell forward into the room and then Mike he got hit uh he's and he said I'm hit and so the seal who is number three man he grabs Mike and pulls him out but you know now things we've lost all our momentum uh the breach is blocked and i was number four man and now i'm number one man so i'm like uh okay i i can't continue going in there by myself because i don't know if anybody else is behind me because mike just got dragged out so uh so the first thing i did is i there's a big fluorescent light uh right there highlighting the courtyard

There's a big picture window. So I'm like, man, we got the rest of the troop right here. You know, now the medic's there. You know, the troop commander, everybody's right there. So I immediately pull out my pistol and shot the fluorescent light just so they weren't all backlit. And I'm like, okay, I want to regain momentum and go kill these guys. So I'm like, okay, I got everybody, you know, I'm going through the names and I can see everybody or the one guy I can call on the radio. So I've got my guys.

kind of for. So I talked to the other team leader who's next to me now. I said, do you have everybody? And he's like, I don't have Bob. I'm like, oh, shit. So I peek in the door. And one thing I left out, maybe I should leave out, because I felt kind of stupid at the time. But the way the, the entryway was this little kind of alcove. You went through one door and then another door. So there's a concrete, just a small little. vegetable maybe six by six. So that's where I was standing. And I remember the wall right next to me exploded. And then I'm like, well, what was that? And then it happened again. And then at third time, I'm like, oh, that's that's machine gun fire. But I was embarrassed that it took my brain.

You know, I mean, three rounds from a AK, you know, that you're talking less than three tenths of a second. But it took my brain, you know, a quarter of a second to process that those, the wall was exploding next to my head because of machine gun fire. So I don't know, I don't know how I didn't get shot, but I'm more surprised how the seal didn't get shot because he was actually in front of me. But so I'm like, okay, Bob's in there, but I really wanted to regain the momentum and go in there throwing a very large, uh, thermo thermo. Thermo.

Thermo. Yeah. Is that, is that a, that's not classified. No, they're out there. I've talked about it, so I hope it's not. No, you can look it up on Wikipedia. Okay, so we'll say hypothetically, if I had a thermal barric grenade, that's what I wanted to use because they're freaking devastating. Yeah.

And, you know, compared to an M-67 fragmentation grade. So I'm like, if we're going to regain momentum and go in here, kill these guys, I want to throw this thermal barrett and get it deep in house. but I can't because Bob's in there. Yeah. So I'm like, so I'm thinking, Bob's now he's in my way. He's blocking the breach. He's slowing us down.

So I went in there and I dragged Bob out, got him out into the courtyard. And then I got the rest of my team and whoever's left from your team. And I'm like, are you guys ready? I said, I'm throwing a thermal barrack. So I went in as deep into that first room as I could and threw it all the way into the kitchen.

And it blew every window out of that house. Every door that was open got shut. Every door that was shut got blown open. They're just, they're pretty cool, a little piece of kit. But when I did that or right before I did that, at some point, the four do, because there was four guys inside the house too awake, but the other two got woke up right after that. We didn't know it, but they ran out the back door. luckily we had a ranger blocking position set up at that corner and they shot and killed off of those dudes but we uh so then we went in and cleared the house and that house was i mean it's you talk about a safe house like they had RPGs lined up PKMs RPKs uh we had upstairs and every room upstairs was barricaded with sandbags and fighting positions inside inside the house uh

So it was, it was pretty hairy. But we get it. And then we get up on the roof. And at the time, we didn't realize that the whole freaking village is bad. Like, they're all, they're all bad. And we didn't realize that. So I'm not like blaming anybody or saying we got bad intel. But we knew the two houses we were going to were bad.

We just didn't realize that every house in that street and probably every one of the village was also bad guys. You know, we didn't realize that. time that, hey, there's no women or children here. And every dude is, you know, age 18 to 40. And so, yeah, so we end up getting in pretty, not extensive, but a few pretty good gunfights from the rooftop, too. Because like the guy at the next house, you'd see him peek up out of the window. And one of the things that, you know, I would sometimes do is when you get the looky-lose in the window, you just put around through the top corner of the window, and then you don't see them anymore, right? That's what I know, if they're a normal person, if there's just an innocent homeowner looking out

the window. But if you're a bad guy, you're now going to, you're going to come back up and look and you're going to try maneuvering and you're going to. So when those guys came back up and now they have guns, so it was a pretty extensive gun fight from the rooftop, you know, to the next house and then the house down, you know, so we're shooting. shooting at houses pretty much all around us, except for right across the road where the other three teams are. They had a complete dry hole. There wasn't a single person in the primary target house, you know, but ours was the main one. So, so Bob never regained consciousness. He had taken around. He had a pretty big beard and he took around in the neck right in his beard. and, you know, Mike, unfortunately, didn't make it either.

That first round hit him in the left shoulder. He's a left-handed guy that spin him around. So then he caught one through the side and missed his place. And then he caught a third one in the femoral artery. So unfortunately, both Mike and Bob died at night. But, yeah, I've never really talked about that. I might be leaving out a few details. Yeah, so, you know, killed everybody in the house, killed the neighbors.

And, you know, another thing watching when we watched, you know, the video later, because we have groans up there, when we breached our gate, like three houses down, immediately machine gun fire came from the house through their gate. So that was also another, you know, safe house. And they were up and ready. And they just had this technique. they're like, hey, if you heard an explosion, just start shooting up at the door because that's what they do. So after that, you know, we did, you know, change, change up some of our tactics and techniques quite a bit to make sure that, you know, we weren't going to do that again. But like I said, it's not like we made a mistake or screwed up or did something wrong because what we did that night, we had done hundreds and hundreds of times before. Successfully.

You know, we just, yeah. So, ISR, your ISR had seen those guys moving from the main house to your house, but they, but they, but they weren't like on station long enough to see that, that the first, the main target was everybody left? No. Yeah. They only saw, there was some, all that activity, more to, all kinds of known bad guys going in and out of that main house.

But there's only one time where they saw him dragging what appeared to be a hostage over to, you know, our, that was the only connection that they had. So they didn't expect much to be there, but it turns out that's where, you know, the bad guys were. Yeah.

And that turned out to be something of like a, I don't know, I hate to say it, but like a watershed moment or a inflection point for the unit losing McNulty and Oregon. Yeah. And again, I'm not, I don't want, let's see, I don't want to take away

or, you know, diminish anything about those two guys. They were incredibly talented operators, and it was a huge loss, of course. But I just, I didn't understand why, you know, it's been written about it in all these books. And people talk about it. I'm like, like, it was tragic. Yeah, but what makes that more tragic than any other operator's deaths? You know, two months later, there was an incident where three operators were killed on the same day and the same, you know, really huge improvised explosive device.

And that's not talked about with the, you know, compassion and, you know, empathy and sympathy the way Mike and Bob were. So I don't, I don't understand it completely. I mean, it was tragic, but I mean, you know, I don't, I mean, Bob was getting, he was, there was his last appointment. He had, he was retiring. He already had his paperwork into retire. He's just like, oh, let me go on this one. one last deployment because he wasn't normally one of our squadron dudes. He was a, he was a senior dude from another squadron, but he just wanted to get in one more deployment.

So that's why he came over to our squad for that one. And they're like, hey, you're going to be the breacher, which is normally kind of a newer job for a younger, newer guy, not a really seasoned guy like Bob was. But that's why he's the breacher because he's like, I'll do whatever job need. I just want to go and one more deployment, get and fight. and, you know, for God and country. And so, yeah, I mean, great American. You know, Mike, I mean, he was a phenomenal operator. He hadn't been there all that long.

In fact, he's one of the guys I put through selection in, in 01, you know, right after 9-11, and I had to go through. He was, he went through selection then. So he had, you know, been in the unit a couple of years. He had just recently come over to, actually, he had been on my team on the sniper team for about a year, probably just over. a year. So not a super new guy, but had a really good history, really good reputation. Even before he got to the unit, you know, he was in the 101st, he was in 25th ID, and just, you know,

his former co-workers there still speak very highly of them. And when you came back home from this trip, as you had mentioned, your squadron and the unit had taken some pretty serious casualties. and you fell in, you took a team leader position on a team that had been, you know, they were all WIA, I believe, correct? Yeah, so, yeah, we got back from that deployment in July of 05, and, you know, we had, you know, we weren't even there for our own, you know, the funeral ceremonies, memorial services and all and stuff for our teammates, you know, so just one of the,

the ways of the war. But yeah, then we took kind of an extended, you know, leave. And the squadron paid for us to go on a kind of decompression trip up to, we went up to Gettysburg and saw some other sites, went to the White House and a few other places, you know, and did some stuff just kind of as a, I don't know the word when you're, just to like get us away from, you know, full brag a little bit. And then, but right after that, so by like August, yeah, that team I mentioned earlier that on June 1st of 05 got the whole team got shot up.

They now needed to reconstitute that team. So there was one guy, original member of that team who just had kind of a minor wound. So he was able to recover and come back to the team. But they're like, hey, Jess, you're going to go over and be the team leader on that. on that assault team. And I'm like, yeah, that's great because I had already been a team leader on a sniper team for probably over two and a half years. So I knew that my time is up. And so now they're going to give me a whole other year as a team start, which is, in my opinion, the best job in the entire U.S. Army.

So I'm like, yeah, I'll do that. But now I got brand new. I had to get like a hodgepodge of guys, you know, a couple guys from other teams. and I got two brand new guys just out of OTC. And then, you know, another two months later or so right back to Iraq, back out to, actually we went to Ramadi. So we were based pretty much out of Ramadi for that rotation. I mean, I don't know how you remember it, Jesse.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. But, I mean, was that time frame like just a blur of operations as you guys were just hitting it so hard. I mean, it didn't seem like at a time. It's not like we were, you know, necessarily felt overwhelmed at the time. It was, it was just, it became a routine, a pattern. You're like, hey, we're going to deploy for 100 days. And then we're going to come home for 200 days or actually less than that.

We'll come home for about 170 days. And then we'll go back over for 100 days. And we just, we did that for literally years. And so, I mean, it was enough of a break, I guess. I don't know. It didn't seem really overwhelming to us at the time. But there were signs and symptoms that it was starting to take, you know, an effect. I think an emotional effect on a lot of guys.

And so you would see guys like good operators who'd be like, you know what? I think I'm done. I want to go work and, you know, try to get one of the office jobs. maybe at our research and development office or maybe in the training area or something like that. And you're like, what do you mean? What do you need a break for? You know, you just had a two weeks leave, you know. So I wasn't, I probably wasn't real good at picking up on some of that, even my own guys,

you know, if they were suffering a little bit of fatigue or whatever. It was happening, but it wasn't that obvious at the time. I think it took a few years later to realize. man, that really took a toll, not only, you know, mentally and emotionally, but it, like, physiologically. And I think a lot of guys have, I talked about another podcast, the operator syndrome, excuse me, which I believe is a real thing that often gets misdiagnosis as PTSD, because it has a lot of the similar symptoms. But I think TBI, especially with, you know, the assaulters who are in very close proximity to hundreds, if not thousands of, you know,

explosive, blast. So they might not be real big, all of them. And if you're outside and get enough standoff, you know, in the open air, but when you're putting a pretty big charge on a door, on a metal door inside a building and you don't have enough area, you know, you can only get eight or ten feet away. and you're like, oh, wow, that kind of rang my bell. That hurts a little bit. You don't maybe think about it.

You continue to go and doing your CQB and clearing the house. But, you know, when you do that over and over and over, you know, hundreds of times, I think it's going to, you know, shake your brain a little bit and cross some little ruptures of capillaries and stuff. I don't know. I'm not a doctor. But I think that over time in the years that that adds up. And you might not have the effects right away after that appointment or even the next year, but I think, you know, several years later, and I think that that might be one of the contributing

factors to, you know, the high diagnosis of PTSD and even, unfortunately, you know, the higher levels of suicide rates we say that we're seeing. So I don't know, just my theory. I'm the medical expert. We've talked to people who are like pretty medically savvy on that and what what you're saying lines up with them. And one of the challenges in this community is because you are exposed to so many breaches and so many, you know, all the time, that a lot of times TBIs are either misdiagnosis

post-traumatic stress or the two blend together where they can't really tell where the symptoms of one merge with the symptoms of the other. And you're right, it's just this cumulative effect over time. even once you're far removed from that environment. Yeah. Yeah, I can speak to that. I think my kids can too.

They're like, yeah, dad has some anger issues. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I can be a little bit irritable, I think, sometimes. Yeah. Were there any significant ops that kind of stand out in your mind from that time frame, 2005, 2006, after that when you were a team leader? I mean, the Mike and Bob one, you know, obviously sticks out more than others. you know, I mean, I've ran that through my head, you know, tens of thousands of times.

And again, you know, the shrink would be like, oh, you have recurring thoughts of that. You must have PTSD. Well, I was just trying to, you know, play it back. It's not like, I don't know. I don't think it's, I don't think that's PTSD. But, I mean, the ops do, they did tend to blend together. You know, I don't, I couldn't even tell you, you know, within the closest hundred. of how many of those, you know, direct action, high-risk missions that I've done, all of them, you know, involving explosive breaches, almost all of them.

So, I mean, somewhere, you know, I guess somewhere more memorable. Usually the ones where you have, where there's gunfire exchange, you know, those ones are more memorable. And I think, I think some guys tend to exaggerate. Well, I know that they do because, I mean, I was. I was involved in a lot of missions and I know how many of them involved gunfire. And it's not it's not that high of a percentage. You know, some guys are like, yeah, we're getting in gunfights every night. Well, then I think you're doing something wrong.

Yeah, if you're getting in a gunfight every night because, you know, out of a hundred targets that we hit, literally there might be definitely less than 10, you know, I would say between, uh, I don't know, six and eight maybe somewhere in there. So six and eight percent might involve some gunfire. And that's because, you know, we're just, yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to sound arrogant, but we're really good at CQB. And we use that speed, surprise, and violence of action.

So that works. You know, if you're going with surprise and really violently and quickly, you can overwhelm the enemy. so rapidly that they just they just don't have time to in most cases they don't have time to grab their gun and you know fight back and most of them don't want to they're like they realize that all of a sudden you know an explosion explosive explosion goes off on your door and a flashbang comes in and now those four dudes are with with guns in your face where like yeah yeah you really want to grab a gun and try to you know shoot you're going to die so I mean, guys realize that.

And a lot of times they won't. They'll have guns on them. They'll have guns in the room. And they'll, but they know to get away from the gun because they know that we're, you know, discipline and we're, we're not going to,

you know, shoot a guy who's standing there with no gun with his hands up. That's not, that's not what we do. That's what they do. You know, they don't give a shit. They'll shoot,

they'll kill women and kids or whatever innocent civilians. You know, that's what makes them terrorist, and makes us the good guys. Yeah. because we don't do that. We're very selective and discriminatory. But the guys, sometimes they do.

They want to, you know, they might hear the helicopter coming 30 seconds out and they'll have time to grab a gun. They'll take some pot shots and whatever. And they, you know, that's, that's going to be a bad day for them. Yeah. What, you know, you mentioned that, you know, the, the, you know, like sending you guys on a trip to, like, decompress. What was the command starting to realize that guys have,

have a shelf life, not necessarily a shelf life, that, that, that, even though everybody's living their best life and living their dream life, they still need time to come down from this. Yeah, I mean, I know that they did because, uh, on that particular, you know, in 05, that's when, because that's, that's unusual to just like, grab the whole squad and be like, hey, we're going on this field trip building, like relaxation kind of thing on a tour of, you know, personal guided tour of Gettysburg and a few other monuments in different places in D.C. and stuff. I mean, I'm like, I've been here a few, you know, I've been here for seven years now. This hasn't happened before.

So that's unusual. So the squadron CSM at the time was a guy named Bill Thetford, who went on to be J-Socs C-SM and then the Socom CSM as well. So good guy, smart guy, and he had also a Somalia vet. So I remember him talking to us like after Mike Mollum. Barbara killed. He was like, you know, he had some, some empathy. He's like, he's like, hey, you know, after Somalia, you know, we had six guys get killed. And for us, we, you know, we packed up and, you know, the Clinton pulled them back. So they left Somalia within, I think within probably a

few days after that. And then that was it. They could go on with the recovery. And, you know, they were back at Bragg and back with the families. And Bill's like, you guys can't. can't do that. Like we're, you know, we've been doing this for years and we're going to continue doing this for years. And, you know, you just lost two guys and, and, and we have to go back out. In fact, right after Mike and Bob got killed, we went and hit another target down that same night. You know, we brought the Medevac in and got those guys out. We went and hit another target. And, you know, I think it affected, you know, I could see some guys. They were maybe You know, you could tell it was on their mind and stuff like that.

And I'm like, I don't know. It kind of bothered me because I'm like, you know, that's over. That's part of, that's part of combat. You know, that's been happening for, you know, guys have been out of combat and war for thousands of years. And you can't just, you can't just shut down. You know, you can go mourn and think about it later when you're back at the file or back in the States or whatever. But not when you're still kidded up. Right.

And it's, you still got bad guys around you. We're going to hit a party. You got to, you know, devastating. in the fight. And you can't take it the other way where it's like, all right, we're going to get some payback no matter what the circumstances on the other end are. Yeah, I mean, but that, so the next target wasn't like the next building. It was we had to, uh, we actually loaded up in Helos, right, flew to, you know, right, another couple miles away. So it wasn't like payback or retribution. We'd already killed like everybody right in and around that house. But that's what I mean, though,

is you have to watch for guys carrying that. It's like, I don't care who it is out there. I'm just going to like, Oh, okay. I got, I got what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I never, I understand what you're saying, but I never, I never saw that.

Yeah. There was, there was another incident, February 3rd, it's just had the anniversary. February 3rd of 2006. We had a guy, get killed in Ramadi. And it took about a week to figure out that whole put together, that whole target set of who the guys were and who was responsible and where they were located.

And, yeah, Lance Cornett got killed. Anyway, when we went back in a week later, I'm not going to say it was retaliation, but we probably went in a little bit harder than normal because we knew that these were the guys who were responsible for killing Lance a week earlier. So there wasn't a lot of like, we weren't really like being nice. Yeah. Yeah. You didn't care about the call out.

No, we didn't do a call out. So when, after you did your team leader time, you had this pretty unique opportunity to go to OST. Do you want to tell us about what that was and what that job was for you? Yeah. that's a little bit sensitive. So OST doesn't even exist anymore. It used to be a thing.

It was called the operational support troop, and it was just kind of a little bit more, like less overt, full kit, nods, it was a little bit more low-vis type of operations. But it was still, they were all, you know, operators. There was no, it wasn't support guys. just a little bit of a different mission set, maybe a little bit less dynamic and less sexy, you know.

You know, if you did a rotation, you might only do, you know, three or four hits during a whole rotation, you know, one or two per month as opposed to, you know, 45 per month as an assolker. So a little bit different, line of work but like I said you know I think I said before I wasn't necessarily really good at the low-vis stuff and but I do enjoy it you know it gives me some pleasure to to to belt to sneak in a place and in a disguise or whatever and not be recognized so yeah I probably don't want to go in a whole

lot of specifics on on the mission sets here but it's it's a valuable and I don't know what they're doing with it now. Like I said, I left there 13 years ago. I don't know where they're at with the program and stuff, but I liked it. I thought it had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, whenever you get a new commander, they want to kind of like take their two years

and change this and change that and change that regardless of if this thing has been working and it's made progress. So I don't know where it's at right now. But yeah, that was a good time. I spent my last four years in the in the unit doing more of the clandestine type, lovis type of stuff. That's a, yeah, pretty cool capability. And how then did this whole congressional fellowship thing come along for you?

I mean, I don't think too many people are even aware that this program exists. Yeah, so I wasn't aware of it until I got an email. So in, it was probably March of 2000. And I was just coming up near the end of my, my troops are major time. And I was also approaching 20 years of active duty. So I had my plan was to, to retire. And I mean, that had been my plan for, you know, since I got to the unit, I had laid out my 10-year plan, 12-year plan.

I'm like, okay, here's what I'm going to do in this timeline. Then at 20 years, I should finish my troops armaged time. and I'm going to retire. And I was like right on track, like, you know, to the, to the letter almost. And then we get this email from, I think it was from Bill Thetford, who at this time was the, he was the unit CSM. And it's like, hey, this congressional fellowship program, it's been around for a long time, at least, you know, since probably the 60s, maybe even the 50s, but it had only been open to officers.

senior captains, junior majors, where they get some training and they actually go and work on Capitol Hill, be a part of the member's office, either a congressman or senators, part of their staff. Anyway, in 2010, the Star Major of the Army, Preston, he said, hey, I want to open this up to senior non-commissioned officers. I want to get two E-9s in this program. because they had attempted it in 2009 kind of last minute. They actually did. They took an E9 and an E8, a female. And I think they were already up in D.C. And they're like, hey, why don't you go, we're going to put you in these members' office.

But they didn't give them any training. They didn't send them through the whole program. They just put them in there for a couple months as kind of a trial. And I guess it worked okay. So in 2010, they wanted to do it, the full program. the problem is they they didn't put the word out until like late March, early April of 2010. And the program started in May, early May. So you had very little time where all of these officers, they were planning this for probably years as part of their career path.

And they had their applications in, you know, six, eight, ten months earlier. And so I get this email. And I thought, oh, that's pretty cool. And I remember going home and I just kind of casually mention it to my wife. Like, hey, they got this congressional fellowship. We're going to open it up to one or two E-9s. And she's like, and I just was mentioning it as like a topic over dinner or whatever. And she like, she's like, oh, my God, you have to do this.

Let me see what's the prerequisites? And she read through and she's like, well, you meet all these. You know, you have this amount of time. in the army, you had to have a certain amount of, like, number of deployments. You had to have a bachelor's degree. You had to have a few other things. And she's like, you have all this. You meet all these requirements.

She's like, you have to do this. I'm like, what? Why would I do that? She's like, because, you know, nobody else does it. Plus, you get a free, like, master's degree from George Washington University. You know, that's worth a lot right there. So, you know, I took her advice. And I'm like, well, I guess I'll, I'll apply, you know.

So I did. I applied. I went, you know, jumped through my ass, scramble to get all the letters of recommendation and all my transcripts and all my, I had to get, you know, my last like five NCOERs. That's a non-commissioned officer evaluation report for you, non-on army people. I didn't get my last five of those, but all of mine are stamps,

secret. So I have to get them all redacted and go through this. So it was an ordeal. But I got a whole packet together, submitted it. And I did that right around the end of April, mid to late April. And then I get a call from Bill Thetford, who was up in the office of the Starmajor Army in the Pentagon. And he's like, hey, he's like, yeah, you're the, you got selected for this program. And I thought he meant, you know, I'm one of several who has to go up maybe for an interview or whatever else.

I'm like, oh, so is it an interview? He's like, no, you are, you're the guy. Like, you're the, they're only selecting one and it's you. So you have to report on May 10th. And like you said, it's like April 28th or something like that. It's late April. I'm like, are you kidding me? So I, that immediately like changed my whole trajectory for my life plans and my

retirement and everything. So I, I cleared the unit. I packed up everything and cleared the unit. a week later on on Friday, May 7th, and on Monday, May 10th, I reported into my new, well, it's weird how the orders work. I was actually, my orders say I'm assigned to some student detachment in South Carolina, Fort Jackson, South Carolina. So my order is say student detachment of Fort Jackson, South Carolina with duty at OCLL, Washington,

So I've never been to Fort Jackson, but even though my orders say that. So I reported then to the officer in the Pentagon and they're like, okay, go, you know, go buy some books and go over to George Washington University. You're a full-time student starting like tomorrow. So I did that as a full-time student for the next, well, the rest of the year from May until December. And then on January, I got a, I started working in a Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson's office, you know, on Capitol Hill. And I did that for a full year. I still had a few more classes to finish up. I didn't graduate until like May.

But yeah, I was a full-time congressional staffer. I mean, I was still a U.S. Army soldier. I just never, you know, I wore a suit and tie. and I was still getting paid by the Department of Defense by the executive branch, but for all intents and purposes, I worked for the legislative branch. And it was a, yeah, it was a super, I mean, very unique experience. Obviously, I think they still have the program.

I still think they put one or two E-9s in that program every year, and then probably another, you know, 15 or 20 commission officers. So, yeah, it's a unique program. I mean, I have me personally, I have nothing bad to say about it, but I went to a pretty good office. If you talk to some other people, like maybe 10% of the fellows that were like, oh, it suck. Well, that's just because they, the office they went to. They didn't get along with the staff or they just had a bad experience in that, in that member's office. You know, like, because you don't necessarily get the pick.

I think I got a little bit of a preference because we get a list of the senators and the congressmen of, and you can like pick your top three. And so I did that. But like I knew that like we had some people go to like Barbara Bob. I don't know if you remember Senator Barbara Boxer or like I don't know if fine sign had to him, but some like super Uber liberal people. Again, not getting into politics. But you know, if you're a career army dude and you're like lean a little bit more right or more conservative, you know,

And you get put in this super liberal office with a bunch of, you know, pink-haired, you know, he-sheys and neckbeards and Che Guevara wearing shirt dudes. I mean, you might not have a good experience, right? But I had a good experience. You know, everybody in the office, you know, I had, I got along with everybody pretty well. They're all young, a bunch of all the staffers are like, you know, 22 to 26 years old. And here I am like some 40-year-old, you know, crusty E-9. What was it?

What was your job as a Krusty E-9? like, is your job to advise them on like the needs of the military? No. So what I mainly, my main job was to, to attend or have the host a meeting with all of the military affiliated people who wanted to come and visit with the senior senator from Texas. So any defense contracting company out of Texas or any of the commanding general of Fort Hood or any other military type people who want to visit with the senator, they'll schedule the meeting. And then when they go to show up, it's me. They're not meeting with the senator usually. It's very, it's very rare that they actually get the meeting with the center.

So when they say when this general from wherever says, oh, yeah, I met with Sunderer so and so. They probably didn't actually meet with the center. Sometimes they do, but it's usually with the MLA, the military legislative assistant, or it could be a military fellow like me, you know, some knuckle dragon E9. And they're like, yeah, I met with Senator Hutchson. Really? Now, you met with Jesse.

So I mean, in that year, I probably, you know, sat in. hundreds, probably 300 of those meetings, you know, at least at least one or two per day, it seemed like. So that's what I did mainly. I handled some constituent issues. If, because they had like, she had a huge staff. I mean, Texas is, there's 25 million people or whatever. So she had a big staff. And there's several people that voted to just constituent issues because there'd be literally thousands of, you know, mostly emails, but also phone calls. and handwritten letters and stuff that come in with their complaints or issues throughout Texas. So they have a whole team dedicated to answering those.

And they do at least try to send some sort of response to everybody. It might just be a blanket response like, oh, the senator acknowledges your whatever. But if there are some specific ones that they didn't know about or they couldn't, weren't sure how to answer primarily if it dealt with anything in special operations, then they'd be like, hey, Jess, can you take a look at this? Can you handle this? Can you call this guy or whatever? So I did a few of those. I wrote a few speeches for her. She gave a, she was the keynote speaker at the annual VFW convention they had in 2000. This would have been 2011. It was somewhere in Texas. So I wrote that speech for after bin Laden got killed, I wrote her floor speech. for that. And I also set up a meeting. This is where I got some, like, kudos from her as I was able to set up a meeting with her and

Admiral McCraven. And she was like, she was like a giddy, you know, like a schoolgirl meeting him. So that will go. I have to ask, though, because, you know, admittedly, like self-admittedly, you weren't a fan of high school, right? I mean, you'd rather be out drinking and playing poker. And hunting. And you didn't like team events in SF.

You know, you'd rather be out by yourself. So now, not only do they send you back to school, but they send you in a play well with others' environment. Were you ready for that at that time because of your experience in the military? Did you, like, how did you go from that kid to that adult, you know, that, you know, Sergeant Major. Yeah, because it's like, because I was acting, I was like role playing, right? It's like when I was doing the clandescent stuff, I was pretending to be someone else or doing, you know, in the disguise or whatever, trying to blend in. And so I did that for a year.

So now I'm trying to blend in. I'm like, I'm like a, you know, I'm a college kid, right? Yeah, I'm four years old. But I'm in this, I'm in a, I'm a full-time student. so I'm going to just do my college stuff. And you went to protest, dyed your hair. Yes, smoking dope and growing hair long. No, no, I didn't go that far.

Like, I still like, so the good thing is most of the classes I took were very specific for the, it was at the Graduate School of Political Management. And most of the classes, the majority of us in the class, like where it might, were the other fellows. So it was all these other Army captains and majors. So I wasn't in there with a bunch of punk, you know, purple-haired, you know, dope smokers. It was probably over half of my class, of all my classes, and I took, you know, a lot. But over half the class was the other Army fellows. Right.

So it wasn't that much of a shock, you know. If I would go like, like if you send me right now to the university. see Wisconsin, Madison. Yeah, I'm not going to bel to play well with others there. That's not going to work with the Berkeley, right? I'm not going to, I'm not going to be able to fake it there. Right. And fit in no matter, like, I'm not that good of an actor. But yeah, I had, I had no, I had no real issues. I think the, I struggled a little bit with, uh, because I wasn't a good student in high school. And even my bachelor's, dude, it took me like, uh, it took me like 18 years to get my bachelor's through right after just like taking a class here

taking a class all the maps and dantes and clept or the clap and dants yeah i was that guy so it wasn't until i went to the star major's academy they're like holy shit man you have all of these credits if you just get all these transcripts and put them all together you know and take like i had to take maybe like three or four more classes at the star majors academy and they're like so i got my degree there, but it took, you know, 18 years, 17 years. It took a long time. So I didn't have really good, you know, study habits and this academic, you know, lifestyle. I mean, I just, I didn't have a good system for my note taking and my research ability. And, you know, and now they're like, hey, you have to write a 20-page paper on this topic. And so I probably

struggled a little bit, you know, compared to some of my other classmates who were like, real, like, academic, smart people. Most of them already had one or two master's degrees. But I, you know, I adapted and caught up quickly. And I don't think I look like too much of an idiot by the time. I mean, by the time it was done, they thought I was just another, you know, just not knows captain. So your, your military career does go on after this fellowship and getting your bachelor's degree. And I want to ask you, you know, the next assignment was going to be the ISAF soft command sergeant major. I mean, what was that job like?

And correct me if I'm wrong, like now this is, you're the sergeant major over like an international soft element essentially, a task force, if you will. Yeah, it was, it was huge. So what happened in 2012 was they created a suggestif alpha or. slash NSOC alpha, which I know there's a lot of acronyms there and there's acronyms within acronyms which always bother me. Nsoc alpha, you know, the NN and NSOC stands for NATO, NATO special operation. So NATO itself is an accurate. So I had an issue with that in IJC2, the ISAF Joint Command.

You can't put an acronym within an acronym. Anyway, it's like a mooshkin or what were those dolls, the Russian nesting dolls? For acronyms. Anyway, it just bothered me. 2012 they created ansock alpha slash sagittif alpha which uh was a two-star command so basically it was a division level command and it had like a division size of troops they probably had uh 14,000 troops in it and what they did is they took all special operations forces that were in Afghanistan all NATO and partner

partner nation forces. So countries like, you know, Australia and whoever, who are in, you know, New Zealand or whatever, they're, they're partners, but they're not NATO. So you can't just call it NATO. So 29 different nations of all of their, they're soft. And they put them under one headquarters, which was commanded by a two-star guy named Tony Thomas at the time, who went on to be a four-star and take Socom later. So he stood up, Sagittif Alpha 2012. And then I went over there like January of 2013. And they initially sent me to the Sagittif Alpha J5 to be the Sergeant Major there because that office, they did really good stuff. But I didn't know shit about J5, you know, plans and stuff. And I'm like, I'm an operator. I'm a door kick. You know, and here I am doing this admin stuff.

So that was a little bit of a challenge for me just because it was so different. But this office, there was like 12 dudes in there. They were all like senior officers. There was two majors and two colonels and then, you know, like eight freaking lieutenant colonels. But no NCOs, right? So they're like, hey, hey, Jess, you need to go over there. They need a little bit of, you know, just simple stuff like, you know, some, you know, some developing a training outline and stuff like that and some some PT or whatever they

I mean obviously I had some other tasks besides that but yeah had had learned a lot there met a couple of good guys in fact one guy named Eddie he is he's retiring next week as a 06 I'm going to fly out to his retirement ceremony but yeah we worked there for a while and then a few months later, I got a call from the Brigadier General over at ISAF Soft, who was an Australian who initially worked in the J5. So he knew me and then he went over and took ISAF Soft. Well, his senior enlisted advisor had to leave, go back to the States. It was a Navy SEAL.

So he's like, hey, Jess, can you come over here and be my CSM? I'm like, hell yeah. So I went, you know, made the big trip from Camp Integrity over to Kaya, the Kabul airfield there. And so for the next, how many, you know, eight months or so, seven, eight months probably. Yeah, it was the CSM at a one-star level for ISAF soft, which had also all of the task forces from these 29 different countries. So, Sajidif Alpha, and it might be different. I don't, I mean, I don't, I mean, not now. We're not there, but I don't know how long it stayed in effect after I left in 2014.

But, you know, Sajidaf Alpha had four different components in it. And one of those components was I sat soft. And that was all the international dudes, you know, the Germans, the Poles, the Danes, you know, everybody. There's, like I said, 29 countries. You went from being an operator to somebody with a 30,000 view. Like, did you enjoy that? Did you, did you like, did you strap hang? Did you get on some ops with these other?

Like, how did that, you were in an office? How did you adapt? Did you enjoy it? I enjoyed that a lot more than I enjoyed the, the J5 job. The J5 job was monotonous and it was all of this admin stuff. but then I go over to be the CSM of ISAF soft and now I'm like snap linked into a you know a very competent and well respected Australian Brigadier General who you know I mean he's a general right so he's getting treated very well and I'm with him everywhere to go so we're getting all

these we're going to visit all of these task forces you know there's 20 only two different task forces scattered throughout Afghanistan. So we'd go away up to Mazd, we'd go out to Harat, we'd go down to Kandahar, we'd travel all over Afghanistan on these, you know, these VIP flights, and we'd have all these meetings with the commanders of the task force, but also the local Afghan leaders. And, I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I enjoyed it. I drank a lot of

freaking bad tea. But nobody tried nobody tried to feed you goat guts though, right? Yeah. No, but I had some meals that were, yeah,

that's so good. Yeah, I guess I liked it because it was, it was different. Right. I get bored with doing the same

monotonous thing over and over and that's, you know, that's why I don't work on a factor, right? I like a little bit of, the unknown and some being surprised a little bit by something different so that was that was different was it kind of cool being like the CSM of like tom clancy's rainbow six like this international soft

element uh i mean yeah it's not like uh it's not like i was like holding PT formations for yeah no i get it i get dudes you know i mean right yeah i mean it was it was just uh yeah it was just a Yeah, it was just a figurehead position. I wasn't I wasn't writing any, you know, NCOERs for, you know, the German SKK guys. Right, right. Wasn't like that. And the, excuse me, you know, you finished out your career as the command sergeant major of First Battalion 10th Special Forces Group, which is forward deployed or forward stationed, I guess you could say, in Germany. what was that like for you going back to SF after all those years? Yeah, it was, so it was, it was different.

And I will say that it was better than it was when I left Special Forces, you know, 25 years before then or whatever. It was a long time. I don't know if it's 25 years. I left Special Forces in early 1998. then I went back in 2014, so whatever the, whatever that math is. Yeah, a lot had changed, but some things were the same, especially with the Ford Station, battalion, because they're, they're like, they're the coolest guys in town, right?

And they, so they might have a little bit of a chip on the shoulder, like, yeah, we're the badasses. in Europe, right? And so it just, I don't know, I just, I sometimes saw a little bit of, you know, that arrogance that was really kind of unwarned, maybe unearned or whatever. But I did want to go there. That was my choice. I said I want to go to either second battalion or correction, it was either third battalion 10th group at Fort Carson or first battalion 10th group.

at in Stuttgart, Germany. But I was leaning a little bit towards Stuttgart, and my wife definitely was because her mother lives in Germany. Oh, God. She's a fluent German speaker. And then I kind of was also because that's my initial plan when I was a private was to be in 110. When I was a private in Germany and the third ID,

and I got the briefing from the cool green berets, I'm like, that's what I want to do. You know, I want, and I have. had it all planned out. I was going to be in 18 Delta, Special Force medic. I was going to learn Russian, and I was going to be on 18 and 110 in Stuttgart, Germany, Panzer, Kuzern. Because at that time, it was in 1991. They just moved from Bad Colts, Germany to to Panzer in Stuttgart. So that's what I wanted to do. Then I went and did this whole other career. And then finally, you know, whatever, so many years later,

I have an opportunity to go to 110, not just to be out of 18, but I can do the CSM of the battalion. And there's definitely a lot of history. I mean, they're called the originals. That was the first Special Forces Battalion in the U.S. Army, you know, June 19, 1952, they were created. That was the first Green Berets, the first Special Forces guys was right there. So that was kind of cool. I don't regret any of it. In fact, I don't have really any regrets throughout my whole career.

But it wasn't super enjoyable. I had some unique challenges. I had some, you know, a lot of discipline issues that I just never really had to deal with. Definitely not at the unit. I mean, there's some, yeah, there's some criminals in the Special Forces community, you know, I had some just, yeah, a lot of discipline. issues. I wasn't really expecting that. But I don't think I was a super popular guy because, you know, I kind of maybe put people in their place a little bit. I'm like, you know, the

operators who are like, I'm the baddest dude there is. I'm like, actually, you're not that much of a badass. And here's why. And here's your times on that last hit. They weren't that great. And, you know, why are you doing it this way? So I kind of, you know, put them in their place and then the support guys are like, hey, we're, you know, we're just as important as, you know, the operators, uh, we're just as good as the green berets and, you know, they need us. They can't do their mission without, without, you know, whatever, pick, pick a support MOS, uh, you know, admin. They can't do shit without the admin support and blah, blah. So I would lay it out to them. I'd like, hey dude, if every single Green Beret went away from this battalion,

you, support guy, would no longer have a job. You wouldn't have a purpose. You wouldn't have a job. I said, but if every single support guy went away, the Green Brays would still have a job. So don't try to tell me that you are more important and they can't do shit without you. So I just had a tendency to kind of, you know. Yeah, take it. Take it down. one notch. Yeah. Yeah.

Just kind of like equally. So some people I think they like opened their eyes. But I think a lot of people just like, and this guy's kind of dick. And we can't wait until his time is. So, you know, and I instituted some, you know, some PT standards and stuff like that. You know, had guys do an 18 mile road march with a 40 pound rock in four and a half hours. You know, not not super hard. But I mean, if you're a if you're even a support guy.

because everybody in the battalion, even if you're a support guy in a special force of battalion, a forward station special force of battalion, you should build a ruck 40 miles. I mean, sorry, you should build a rug 18 miles in four and a half hours with a 40 pound ruck. And surprisingly, there were a few great berets who didn't quite meet that standard. And, you know, so they got embarrassed. And guys don't like being embarrassed. And I'm the one to embarrass them. So, yeah, I wasn't a super popular guy, I don't think, but I'm okay with that.

I think I brought a few positive changes, I hope. So, yeah, that was the end of my military career, though. And retired in 2016. And since that time, where did you end up settling down and tell us about how you got into local politics? Yeah, so I retired and moved back to Wisconsin. I'm really a big fan of Wisconsin. I mean, I was born a racer. And I don't know.

I just really like this state. It's got some unique features that, you know, other states don't have. And it's kind of out of the way. Like, it's hard. Most people don't like accidentally drive into or through Wisconsin. Like you have to make an effort to come here, probably like Maine. You know, you don't just accidentally pass through there. So I didn't move right back to like my hometown.

I'm probably about two hour and a half, two hours away from where I actually grew up. up more up in the north woods. No, no farms around here. People think in Wisconsin is all farms and cows and stuff like that. There's, there's, you know, no fields or farms around here. It's all, it's all woods and lakes where I'm at. So local politics. I'm like, yeah, I moved back here. And I kind of wanted to get integrated a little bit assimilated into this community. And so I'm like, hey, I'm going to buy a house. I'm going to start a business. I'm going to put my kids in the school and I just kind of wanted to make this my permanent home, probably for the rest of my life. And the problem with this town is it's real tourist. And so if you weren't born here and

raised here, then you're not from here. And you'll kind of always be an outsider. So it took me a few years to realize that. But one of the things I was going to try to do to get, you know, assimilated and welcomed was to maybe get into local politics. I ran for the school board probably about four or five years ago. And I lost. And I'm like, okay, that was a good learning adventure. So I wasn't upset about losing. I, you know, I'm not like, that's it.

I tried one and done. I'm out. I'm like, no, I'm going to see, look at some other options. In fact, I was planning to probably run for school board again if there was another opening. but an opening came up for county board supervisor in my district. So I got on the ballot and I, you know, ran an effective campaign, you know, and I, and I won probably by like 57, 56 percent, something like that. So bam, I'm now a county board supervisor. And I mean, it's probably not a big deal in most people's eyes because there's not, there's only like 18,000 people's.

people in the whole county. And there's 15 supervisors, you know, so my constituent base is like probably 1100 people. But I really started to enjoy it. I got put on the zoning committee, which I was against at first. But I'm like, man, I really like this zoning stuff. I think because, you know, I like those, those unique things that come up and have to deal with them. You were a CSM. Of course, you don't like people stepping on your grass. It's no surprise that you're design. How many rocks have you had your consensualcy paint?

No, I wasn't that CSI. I wasn't popular for other things but it wasn't because I was that guy. I mean, I was the guy who had my, you know, hat off, hands in my pockets, walking across the grass, middle of parade field, I'm flicking a cigarette, but I'm not

so I wasn't a very good CSM in that that's got put up. Anyway, so yeah, I'm on the county board and then I ran for re-election this in the spring of 2022 got reelected. In fact, I was unopposed when we ran against me. And then I'm on three committees and then I was elected the chairman of two of those committees. So, so yeah, I'm really enjoying that. And I was planning to, you know, maybe do that for a while, but just between us, I don't

know if you have any, any viewers here or not. but I'm actually going to be moving probably this summer, so I'll be leaving this county going way down south to the next county south. So not like Texas south, but next county. It's just between you, me, Dave, and the entire internet. And I'll still be north of eight. And people from Wisconsin know what that means.

But since I'm leaving my district, my county, I have to resign from the county board. So this summer by June or so I'll be, uh, you know, not, not doing that job. But I mean, that frees me up, you know, else the next election is in the spring of 2024. So maybe I'll look at running in, um, in my new county. Although I've already done some research on the, the current supervisor for the district I'm moving to. And, you know, he seems like a real good guy. He's retired, uh, police chief from the city there and stuff. So I mean, it's not like I want to.

If he was some weirdo, you know, nut job, then I'd be like, oh, yeah, I got to get rid of this person. But, I mean, he seems to be a good guy and people like himself, so I don't feel a need to go in there and oust him. I think it's really great that you, you know, after your retirement got involved in local politics and making a difference in the local community. And, you know, I hope you'll continue that wherever you settle down. Yeah. Yeah, I was also on that, I was the vice president of the local, of the veterans community center as well to you, but I kind of had a following out with those guys.

I don't know. I think they saw my podcast where I was kind of talking bad about the, about the VFW and some of the veteran service organizations. They're like, now, that's, that's actually not true because I resigned a month before I did that podcast. Now, I just wasn't agreeing with some of their way of the direction, were going so anyway i made an effort to to fit in in this county and they they haven't accepted me so try the next county is there is there a strong veterans community where you're at like it's it's such a small area but does it does it have a bigger veteran community than say larger areas

that are there are more urban i mean i think that's the case across america i mean if you you, and I don't know why that is. Well, for instance, let me give you a number and I don't have a lot of stats. But like I said, there was 34 people in my graduating class. Seven of us went into the military out of 34. So that's a huge percentage. What's a national average? I think it's, you know, whatever, it's low.

So I think people from maybe more rural areas and smaller towns. they can't make up for the numbers you're going to get from Los Angeles and Houston and New York. But percentage-wise, it's probably a higher percentage from those less populated areas. And maybe that's because, and I think one of the reasons why, at least where I'm from, is because there's no opportunity there. There's nothing there. It's not like you're going to graduate high school and then go, what are you going to do? There's just not a lot of opportunity for careers right there.

I graduated high school in Westchester County, New York, which is sort of the suburbs of New York City. And I say class of 120, I think I was the only person to go into the military. And the entire school looked at me like I was weird for doing that. Like, what are you doing, man? Yeah. In fact, I read the state that has the highest percentage or per capita people going to military. and this was several years ago. I read this like over 10 years ago,

but it was North Dakota. Right. So obviously the highest numbers come from California, Texas, and Virginia, because they have huge populations. Right, right, right. But the highest percentage of military enlistees was North Dakota. It was like they were over 4%, I think, of their military age. Yeah, because, I mean, what's in North Dakota?

Right, you know? Right. How do you get out of that? So you said, because this isn't live, We couldn't take viewer questions, but you said that there were some questions that you had received, like on your Instagram. I don't think we had, uh,

and stuff that you wanted to. Uh, on jet on, I saw some on Jack's. I'll pull, I'll pull mine up right now. Because I don't think we got any on Patreon. Did we, Dee? No. Okay.

But we definitely want to get to those questions. All right. Let's see what I have here. Or I can look at mine, too. I know that there was somewhat mine. but I mean I could just be making up questions. Who's the best looking guy you know and why is it you? Okay, so James Alexander asks,

I've always been intrigued by the PT plans of guys at that level. Respectfully, could you discuss his views on fitness and how he trained in his time at the unit? Yeah, I can talk about my fitness. routine while I was in the unit. I'm not going to, so I'm definitely not a, like a CrossFit expert or some kind of physical training performance dude at all. But so the same way I go about if I'm instructing someone on how to shoot, I don't

necessarily tell someone how to shoot. I just show them how I shoot. So my PT routine in the unit was I went to the gym. very, I would say infrequently. I maybe went quite often, maybe three days a week, but after about 15 minutes, I get really bored at the gym. So I'm not a gym guy, I'm not a gym rat at all. I do my 10, 15 minute, you know, workout, get a little swall on.

But my main workout was doing obstacle courses. And the reason why I think that that is important is, Because, I mean, look at what our job was. You know, if we're, you're doing operator stuff. And like I said, all those houses had walls around. So you're going up to a house at night under nods, all this kit. You got to climb up over a wall. You got to balance on this narrow, you know, maybe, you know, four or five inch top of this brick wall, you know, worth a 10 or 12 foot drop.

So you're balancing on there. Then you have to go up here, maybe set up a ladder, climb up here, maybe pull yourself up. and some other kit. So I think ways to be able to kind of maneuver and manipulate your body in and around things and over obstacles, I mean, that's so, translates so practically into what we did as our mission on a nightly basis. So my routine was once or twice a week, I would do what we call the gate to gate, where I would run from the bay all the way down range. we had two pretty sophisticated obstacle courses.

One was the long obstacle course and the other was the short one. So I would run down there, not in full K, usually just my BDUs and boots. And I would do the long obstacle course and then the short obstacle course. And then on the way back, I would hit all the range walls. So I'm going over the walls, climbing up over buildings, shipping containers. and that that was my main workout is is doing just the opposite course you were a combat focus PT guy it's very functional yeah yeah I mean it's functional and then because if you got these big muscle dudes who are just in there like hey I can bench press 500 pounds yeah but you

can't freaking you have no cardio cardiovascular endurance and you're not going to bell to to hump a ruck you know five miles in and you're not going to be able to climb up the outside of this three-story building, you know, which we've had to do with with kid and your balance might not be great on this wall at night with nods. So it was more important for me if a guy was kind of like like a little spidery and wiry kind of guy and more of a like a triathlete type body than the than the bodybuilder dude. You know, there's some there's some real big muscle guys and they perform well. I'm not I'm not taking anything away from them. But there were only, and we didn't do organized PT. Like everything

is on your, like I said, it's individual, you know, selection is an individual event and selection is an ongoing process. So, but there were a couple times when I did team events that incorporated quite a bit of PT. One of them, I remember setting up on that long obstacle course, I actually set up paper targets, you know, little bad guy cut up targets. And then I had the guys go down there in full kit, but with their sim ammunition rifles. And on every single obstacle in the middle of the obstacle, they had to engage a target. So they might be on a rope 20 feet off the ground doing a commander crawl. There's a target. They have to get their weapon out while balancing on the rope and engage a target.

So stuff like that is it's very, it's combat, effective, you know, physical performance training that worked well for me. So that was my routine. I think that's the only question I had on actually on my Instagram. I mean, I don't know. I'm not like, I don't have to answer weirdo questions. No, please do. Weird no, no, no.

We like, you're going to make me, I got to put on my glasses. Yeah. Look, if you don't, I'll put mine on so you don't feel bad. Are yours the Amazon specials because mine are? Yeah, I actually got some. prescription by all right here we here we go i'm i'm on your instagram now jesse okay uh let's see what kind of weirdo questions i can pull out of here no don't don't do because there's a couple weird weird ones i saw in there that okay here's um well here's one i don't know if you could speak to this or

not uh is there anything you could say about the iraqi mohawk program ah man i don't know you know if uh we've been out of iraq for a while now um I don't know the sensitivity on it. I'm sure it's not classic. Obviously, it's not classified because we're using freaking host nation, host nation indigenous people with without a security clearance. But that doesn't mean it's not sensitive. So the Mohawk program was basically just grabbing up some Iraqis,

you know, good, like good Iraqis, if that makes sense. And they probably, a lot of them were prior military, but not all of them. So they were in the Iraqi army. And so they had some form of discipline and some military training. And they knew how to work a gun and maybe even a GPS. But so we would recruit some of these guys and give them a little extra training. And then maybe some equipment. And we would use them to mainly just to help identify and pinpoint some target.

targets for us. So because they're Iraqis. They can go wherever they go to the local coffee shop and they blend in. They don't have to put down in disguise or use a fake name or whatever because they live there. That's their town, right? So they can get information for us. And then if they find out where, you know, maybe this bad guy lives because they have a description of the house, you know, it's the third house. I'm right up the street, green door, whatever. Then we can give them a little GPS, and they can actually go there and we teach them how to use it. So they can hit mark their waypoint or they can take a picture with the camera we gave them.

And then they bring that back to us. So now we have an exact 10-digit grid and maybe a picture of the door or whatever. So there may be other things that they did. I had very limited interaction with those guys, but I do know that we used them like me personally for some getting that 10 digit grid on a target that I couldn't maybe go into that neighborhood because, you know, they had an early warning system. And I look, you know, like a Westerner or an American of Northern European descent. So, yeah, I'm not probably going to go anymore on that. This, he's also asking about Marlwai, which was, that was the Philippines after you, that battle happened after you retired. So.

There we got. Never heard of it. Yeah. Someone else is asking, he'd like to hear a little bit about trapping, in your experience, trapping. If you, you have anything you'd like to lay on us about that. Oh, man. So here we go. This is, all right.

This is what I do. I get to talk about trapping. I thought it was just going to be about. Commando stuff. Yeah, so I have not probably a lot of hobbies. I used to be really big into buying and selling antiques, but I just completely lost interest in that a few years ago. But I used to trap a lot as a kid.

Like I said, I started trapping by myself when I was eight. Caught my first muskrat when I was eight years old. I trapped with my dad before that when I was like my dad used to trap for like a living. He fed his family off of, you know, trapping in poaching gear or whatever. So I learned from him and I really enjoyed it. So I didn't get to do very much of it, obviously, when I was in the Army. So I'm like, when I retire, I'm going to, you know, here's a couple things I want to do. I want to buy and sell antiques.

And I want to run a trap line. So in 2016, I went, you know, bought all these traps and started trapping. But it was like, it's like, man, it had been so long. I had to relearn. I had forgotten a lot of what I thought I mean. So I would watch dozens and dozens of YouTube videos, which are really helpful. Like, okay, here's how you trap a coyote. Here's how you trap a fever.

Here's how you trap a make. Because it's very different for a lot of different species of furbearing animals. And I do enjoy trapping canines, you know, the fox and coyote, but we just don't have a whole lot right around here. And that's because we have a huge amount of wolves around here. The wolves just kill every coyote. In fact, I didn't set a single coyote trap this year. Last year, I said six. And on my second check, I had a big old male wolf in there that are not fun to release.

You know, because I don't have a tag. I can't kill him because I had to release him. Oh, he wasn't grateful? Like, he wasn't grateful that you were releasing him? Yeah. He didn't become your best friend. Yeah. In the year before, I caught another one.

And then also in my canine sets, I tend to catch a lot of bobcat, which I only get one tag, maybe every three years. I catch a lot of Fisher, which I only get one tag, maybe every other year. And all of those I have to release. So I've released a lot of Bobcat and Fisher and two wolves over the past couple of years. So I kind of lost my interest in trapping canine. So I've really, the past couple of years, started focusing on beaver crapping, which, it's it's actually a lot of fun and talking about PT that's like only PT that I do now is I trap beaver and that is a freaking workout like you want to burn like tens of thousands of calories

go out trapping beaver especially now in early February with two and a half feet of snow and a foot of ice it's a it's a lot of work uh trap beaver but it's also a lot of fun and the good thing is the price well maybe that's a good thing so because The price of fur is really low. There's hardly anybody trapped. Like I never, there's maybe only three other trappers in my whole county. Now I'm going to big county like area wise. It's the fifth largest in the state.

So because nobody's trapping, there's a huge amount of beaver. They're like overpopulated. Like people call me up in the summertime, you know, when it's not even a beaver season. They're like, can you come and trap beaver? They're eating all my, you know, decorative trees and destroying my shoreline or whatever else. So there's a lot of beaver. back last season I trapped 110 beaver just just here in this county just around you know basically around the house I got kind of a late start this year I'm only up to I think 35 but

I would just out skinned a couple earlier today so yeah I have a YouTube channel that's almost exclusively beaver crapping the fact I need to branch out put in some what's your channel for people who want to watch it uh I was just called tier one But YouTube added a couple digits on there. They added some numbers to our names and stuff. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah. So it's Tier 1 Trapper 747 is my YouTube handled.

And like I said, almost all my videos are beaver trap. And I went on an elk hunt with my son this past fall. I also put a video on there about that. There might be a couple other here and there. But most of them are beaver trapping. Jesse I'm sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. I think we really want to hear about how you release a wolf and a bobcat, like, but go ahead and finish what you're saying before you tell us that.

I was going to talk about my crapping trip, but I'll tell you, so I have a catch pole, like a dog catcher would use, you know, it's a long fiberglass pole with a cable noose. But it's only four feet long. And the noose is only about 12 inches around. So surprisingly, Bobcat are the easiest for me to release. They snarl and they make a lot of hissing and noises and stuff, but they're not like they don't try to come at you. They don't try to hurt you or anything like that. And when you get the noose around their neck and if you cinch it down,

then they kind of, you know, fight a little bit and jump around. But they're, they look mean, but they are, they're pretty, actually pretty docile. A big male fisher, they'll, they'll try to hurt you. They, yeah, I don't know if you know what a fisher is. They're kind of like a smaller version of a wolverine. They're in the same family. They're used to lids in the weasel family. Like a big, really big mink or a small wolverine, but really mean.

aggressive nail light like I've had them like lunge at me so they're not as fun to release the wolves are challenging as I've released too with my four-foot catch full and the first one was pretty easy it was a younger wolf and he was caught the crap that was staked right there to the ground so he didn't have a lot of room to maneuver and uh that one was fairly uneventful but the one I caught last, last season, it was a big male and it was on a on a drag, meaning it had an eight-foot chain and he was in some coddled, tangled up in some thick brush. So now I have to go in this thick brush where this wolf, big wolf, well over 100 pounds, has eight feet of chain, to maneuver, right? So I actually called up the, the local game ward. I know I'm like, hey, do you mind

coming out here. I said, I don't need help, but I just want another responsible adult nearby in case, in case, you know, I lose my foot here. Something goes wrong, you know. And so he's like, yeah, I'll show up there. So he just, and he didn't help. He just stood there, took a couple pictures and stuff as I'm like trying to go in there with this, this catch pole. And like I said, it's got a 12-inch loop. This freaking bull's head was probably 13 inches. Holy shit. Massive teeth. And so I'd get that noose close to him and he would like snap at it with his teeth. And then he grabbed it. And now I'm like playing target war like you would with your with your dog at home with this freaking wolf.

And finally I was able, it took a while, but I was able to kind of force it over its head and cinch it down. And now I'm wrestling with this wolf. And then the warden did come in then. And he held the pole while I was able to. to release the trap off its foot. And then he's like, hand me the pullback real quick. So now the wolf is out of the trap, completely the only thing keeping it from freedom

is me holding the stick with a mousse around its neck. And, you know, they're not, they're not going to, they're not going to like come in and attack you, you know. It's just one wolf by himself. So you just released the cable and they run off. It's, there's really not as much threat, you know. Really?

I don't think so. I say that because I've been uninjured so far. I know a couple people go to the bench. There was a guy's trying to release a black bear here in Wisconsin, I think two years ago, and they were going up with a sheet of plywood, which is a technique. He cut out a little hole in the bottom of the plywood. But they didn't have handles on the plywood.

They were just kind of holding on to the top or the sides. And the guy get his finger bitten completely. off by this bear. And then I know a couple people that got scratched by bobcats and stuff like that, trying to release them. But yeah, I mean, it just adds to the excitement. I think I'd go out there and chain mail if I had to release something like that. Just a full suit of chain mail and curl up in a little ball once I let them go.

Jesse. One thing, what I was going to mention is my upcoming trapping trip that I'm planning. I'm actually pretty excited about this. And I don't, I don't know. I don't usually get real excited about things anymore, unfortunately. But I'm planning a like a six or maybe even eight-week trapping solo trapping trip up to the interior of Alaska this next fall from probably like mid-October to early December. And I'll be targeting Wolverine and Lynx and Martin and wolves up there. So I can I can actually kill a wolf up there if I catch one.

So I'm really looking forward to that. It's going to be a good time, I hope. Now, when you go up to a place like Alaska, do they have bounties for a lot of those animals? No, not in Alaska. Some places do. I've never trapped any bounties. I think some of the western states might. But, I mean, I have trapped in, so I've trapped in South Dakota and Idaho a couple times in both of those places.

But Alaska is different. I mean, I'm really looking forward to it just because you can. it's unlimited. I can catch as many Wolverine as I want. And not that I'm probably going to catch, you know, I'm hoping I get one, but, you know, some guys get 20 up there a year. But there's no real restrictions on trap placement and the sizes and the bait, something like that. We're like here in Wisconsin, it's really restrictive. And some states are, you know, even more restrictive than that. So, and we have limits. Like I said, I can only get one bobcat over three years. up there I can catch unlimited links unlimited Martin unlimited wolves so I think it'll be a good time even if I don't catch anything

I kind of like being by myself in a tent for an extended period that brings me comfort now do you would you enjoy trapping more than hunting and if like what do you enjoy about what do you enjoy about trapping over hunting yeah I

so in high school especially I love bow hunting and deer hunting was like the biggest, you know, holiday of the year. And I don't know. I just, I don't know, lost interest. There's a few other things that, you know, I used to enjoy that I don't enjoy as much. So I still hunt now, but I hunt for subsistence. I hunt to put meat in the freezer and feed my family.

So I'm not at all a trophy hunter. You know, I'll get like one buck tag and four dough tags. And I'll go out and shoot the first four deer I see that I've done, freezer's full. And so I don't really get, unfortunately, I don't get as much pleasure out of hunting as I used to. But trapping, I was really, you know, when I first retired, I was like really into it. And then it kind of taper off a little bit. And the past year, I really started to get more into it, you know, with beaver trapping and stuff, trying some new techniques. I do mostly snaring under the ice for beaver, which, you know, it wasn't even legal back

when I was in high school. Now I could do that. There's other things that I can do now that I couldn't do then. They've changed. So, but even the canine trap, you know, coyote are pretty, pretty smart animal. They're a lot harder to catch than a fox. I mean, if I'm trapped in an area that has equal number of fox and coyote, I'll catch twice as many foxes.

Really? Because, yeah, people like, oh, the fox are so smart. sly and everything. And maybe they are, but those coyotes are smarter and maybe not more sly, but they're more like maybe skittish. Like if there's anything wrong, if they smell anything out of place or anything looks out of place, feels out of place, they're gone and you won't catch him again. But a fox, you know, you might miss them and then they'll come back. So they get this smart animal who's out, who lives in the wild. Like he's, he's, he's, he's, an expert in survival right every day he's out there uh you know surviving and he gets really smart

if you get that animal to come from a mile away to step on a little two inch circle uh i mean that takes it's it's challenging so it's you know it's rewarding when you when you do catch uh one of those smart now beaver they're just a big dumb rodent right they're like a big lab route they're not super smart but they can get educated if you if you miss one yeah up and the trap snaps in front of them they're not going to go near a trap again because now they know what it is and can harm them but other than that they're just pretty dumb rodents and like I said there's a lot of them around they're pretty easy to catch and yeah I enjoy it I'm trying to get uh my goal is to get a 100-pound vever and I didn't even know people are like what beaver don't get that bag and I'm like they

Thank you. There's like a 100-pounder caught almost every year in Wisconsin. Wow. The biggest I've caught is maybe like just over 80 pounds. This year I haven't. I've only gotten, I think, one that's 62 pounds, my biggest one this year. Jesse, is there anything else you want to plug while we're here? I mean, I think you mentioned you had like a T-shirt company that you're running off some T-shirts.

Show that off. Yeah, so, yeah, I got a T-shirt company. It's if you go to jingo now.com. I've got some patriotic shirts and some that are kind of like dark humor. And so, you know, Gingo is, you know, it's a patriot who's in favor of, of war, usually. So that's where that name comes from. And my screen name on Instagram is friendly but not your friend. So that's where that kind of, that's my best seller of friendly but not your friend's shirt.

I just came out with some hoodies too. Cool. in that design. So yeah, jingo now.com. Got some shirts there. I would like to plug a couple different companies, but... Sure. Go ahead.

Hasn't... But I can't quite yet. So I just got some offers to be a pro-staffer for a couple of different companies, but it's not finalized yet. So I'm kind of excited about that. Okay. If that happens, let us know and we'll plug you. Like, the...

plug you on our Instagram and, you know, Twitter and wherever people do their social media shopping. Yeah. Yeah, I already mentioned my YouTube channel, Instagram,

website. Yeah, that's all right. I don't know. I don't really have anything that I'm probably going to plug. I'll put on my Instagram. So I've got a few followers there.

I've only got like, I don't even think I have. 500 yet on on uh youtube so again that's my own fault though because i only put beaver crapping that's all right but but if you're trapping beaver those are perfect click bank titles yeah shaped beaver i've heard every uh every beaver joke probably i know i did learn i did learn a valuable lesson though so i'm i guess kind of fairly new to social media i mean i used to be on Facebook, but I'm not anymore. But Instagram, I've only been on there maybe two years.

And so I'm like, you know, catch this big, like black beavers. I'm like, hashtag big black beaver. And, yeah, you get a whole new demographic. Right. Right. Right. Oh, that was like the primus song, right? Winona's got to bring around beer.

Well, Jesse, thank you so much for joining us, man, tonight. Really appreciate it. A lot of fun. next or this this Friday we would have Joel Funk on he was a MH47 pilot so check us out this Friday we'll have him on and hopefully we'll have her internet situation fixed internet unfucked by then yeah but Jesse thank you man really appreciate you spending some time with us tonight yeah hey it was my pleasure I this is my I think my fifth podcast or interview I've done now in the last year I did my first one almost exactly a year ago with Kyle Lam

and yeah, I do, I enjoy them. I mean, it's, I feel a little bit weird talking about stuff that I normally haven't, you know, ever talked about in the past. But, honestly, they have been a little bit therapeutic, I think, for me too, you know. Absolutely. You know, to talk about some of this stuff. So I appreciate you guys inviting me on. Absolutely, man.

It's our pleasure. Anytime, please stay in touch. And, you know, best of luck in the next election. All right, man. Have a good one. All right. Have a nice night.