The Team House - First Female Tactical PSYOP Team Leader | Melissa Najera | Ep. 251

Episode Date: December 31, 2023

Melissa served as a Tactical PSYOP Team Leader during her 2 deployments in Afghanistan, the first woman to ever serve in that position. She also passed assessment and selection for an Army Special Missions Unit. She is a badass.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Today's Sponsors:Factor Meals For 50% off your order ⬇️https://www.factormeals.com/teamhouse50Hims For a free online consultation ⬇️https://www.hims.com/teamhouse-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To help support the show and for all bonus content including:-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#psyops #armysmuBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Special Operations, Cobert Ops, espionage, the Team House, with your hopes, Jack Murphy, and David Park. Hey, everyone, welcome to our episode, Christmas episode. I hope it's going to be episode 251. I'm Jack, here with Dave. Our guest on tonight's show is Melissa Nahedda. She is a Army SciOps veteran, served in psychological. operations and deployed as the first female psychological operations team leader to a combat zone. And we're really excited to have her on the show tonight. So Melissa, thank you for coming on and doing this. Well, thanks, Dave and Jack. I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. And so I'll start with the same question that we ask, you know, all of our guests, so a little bit about your origin story. If you could tell us a little bit about your upbringing and how that kind of took you towards military

service. Yeah, sure. So I was born in El Paso, Texas, the desert. I was raised halfway there and I graduated out of Tucson, Arizona and got accepted to NMSU. So that's where I did my schooling at for around three and a half years there. I did ROTC and JRTC throughout my time. So I was always bound to be in the military. I knew from the beginning that this was going to do. I just couldn't pick what branch between Marines and Army. I ended up choosing the Army because I went to a Marine Devil Pup small camp that's a They send bad kids to, but I asked my dad, in fact, I begged my bad dad to pay for me to go to it with another friend. And we were the few ones that volunteer to go, and the rest are the bad kids that go. And you get, for around three weeks, you get, usually like crap by your marine people. It was great. I loved it. I've always enjoyed that type of stuff, anything physical and intense, I like.

But I did talk to the female drill sergeants there, drill instructors, and they said that there was no place for the female really to go, aside from, supply quartermaster and that's not what i was looking for so i went ahead and chose the army and in 2002 after you know year after the towers i uh joined active duty i mean i joined uh the reserves out of msu and and alpaso texas i joined the reserves there i uh had a gt score of 118 but i was given four options i guess i don't know maybe because i'm a female and maybe because i was going reserve but i was given uh to be a laundry and bath a few jeweler, 88 Mike, and a sewing parachute person. And I was like, I can't sew, I can't cook, I can't, I can't cook.

I couldn't do none of that. So I said, what's the ones that can give me the dirtiest and, you know, most in the ground? And they said, fueler, so I went with fueler with the GT score of 118 and a 300 PT score. And then I did around three and a half years there. The war kicked off in Iraq. And I was still going to MSU and I was still in the ROTC program. I was never going to commission. I knew I was always meant to be a knuckle dragger and enlisted,

but I had fun with them for three years, and my master sergeant was only behind me when I said I was going to go active duty and stay enlisted. But in 03, the war kicked off. My reserve unit activated and we were going to go to Iraq. And I was like, man, I'm going to die from this reserve people because there was some crazy shit going on with these reservists or something else. And we ended up not making out there.

Turkey closed their borders. So we stayed at the home front and all our ship made it out there and we didn't. So we lost all our equipment and tough boxes and vehicles and tankers. But in 05, I went active duty. I requested Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And in 06, I went to Iraq as a fueler, which is not the best thing in Iraq to do. But when I came back, I knew I wanted to get a quartermaster and I went to the SIPQ course, the qualification course in 08. made it through and

continued through there. Sears School Griffin Jumpmaster and then in 2010 and 11 I went to Afghanistan with an ODA and then 2011 and 12 I went again for another rotation Can you tell when I came back I wanted a third rotation but

women weren't out there at the time and I almost got blown up a couple times and they thought I was in a body bag for a bit so the command got I think scared and when I came They instantly threw me to the battalion or the S3, and I wasn't ready to stop. I wasn't ready to take a knee. I was desperate to go back out.

The last rotation, we ended on a kind of bad note. We lost somebody that we didn't get avenged for, and I just felt like going back out. I felt I wasn't done, and the unit wasn't willing to send me. SIEP was giving me a hard time, and I've always been fighting back and forth with SIOP. So I chose to lead them, and I got accepted to go assess for a special mission. unit and I went over there assessed for 45 days, came back and was accepted and started an OTC in 2013. But it's a long story, but in between there, I, in 2015, I ended up pregnant. I was married for 10 years already and I chose to come back to Saip and thought I'd go over to

the female side and the Kag side, go try out with them. But I just was naive and had my baby and chose to just finish off my time in Saip. about it. And I ended up just retiring. Can you, we've never had a fueler on. And, and, you know, we don't talk a lot often with people who have been on the more support side of things. Can you tell us what the training was like and what your role was as a fueler? So back when I went in 2002, we were still not full blown to basic and AIT. It wasn't full blown into wars. People were doing CQB and basic training and you're still doing Baynet course and all that that old stuff. I don't even remember what I have bad memory. I don't remember most of AIT.

I was in Virginia. I was maybe a six months or so. I don't know how. But they all say when you get your units, you're going to learn. So when I got in 06 to the active duty because reserve room, you don't learn nothing. I just took advantage of my reserve time and had fun at the RTC and went to airborne school and Mount Warfare school. I was on the reserves plane, you know, one weekend a month, two weeks a year. But when I went into active duty, and within a month after going active duty and going to Fort Bragg, I deployed with them. And that's where I learned my job, how to refuel Brandeys. I did aviation refueling, so I refueled Kiwis, Shanox, Casas, Serpas.

And then I got to refuel some tanks as well. back in 2006 and seven, that was when the fuelers and your 88 miles are really getting hit hard with casualties from being on the roads. Yeah. And we were supposed to be on the road hauling, which meant I would be, you know, pulling a five-ton or a hemmed with a JPA, big-ass bar on my butt. But I guess the plan is the line just right, and we got pulled off that mission. The unit that we ended up replacing got kicked out of country because they were. siphoning gas and some big old like the whole command went down and it was a big mess it was immediate and so we got pulled off our mission and got shoved into that one and I guess it saved quite a bit of us

so I got the the comfort side of Iraq I didn't get to get on the roads often we didn't drive I just refueled aviation and did the ADAG mission so quartermaster is necessary quartermaster is everywhere right you lose a war without cornermaster but it was a for me. I should say that wasn't my. That's not what I intend. I intend to actually go to 80 seconds when I went active duty and they sent me to 18th thereborn for and I don't know if you've been on Fort Bragg but it's on the other side of the train tracks, the railroad. And let me say, it is definitely on the wrong side of track. It was a shock and I, you know, I deployed with them and I was like, nope, one time's enough. I'm got to get out of here. So I just didn't fit in.

So how did SIEP's come up on your radar? How did you find out about it and think it would be a good fit for you? Well, nobody knows what the hell Siaf is, right? I found out about it when I went to the board course of PLBC back in the day, but I don't know what camera was called now. Like the Warrior Leader Course or something like that. Yeah, yeah, War leader course, but PLDC back then, you know. And there was a SACPRA there.

I kind of talked him a little bit, but they, stuck themselves. And when I came back, I knew I need to leave the unit. I couldn't stay there. I'd be requesting go to airsofts to your school. They were just, you know, I was just too motivated to be in that unit. And I started rubbing people wrong because I just, you know, I couldn't just go out there up-tempo, very slow and lazy off-tempo. And so I just started looking around, and I remember I heard about Saip, and there was a buddy of mine. She said her husband was civil affairs and I started looking to civil affairs and I said okay well yeah you know

building schools and build wells and all that but I didn't know what Saip was so and I didn't realize that Saip was so close off to females at the time then so I went for that one and I said in a packet they accepted me and I went to go at the time we still didn't have the

at the 11 day now assessment selection for Saip it was I was a precursor to it so it was like a Genesis program three years of building before the assessment course for them but I went through that and went through the course and then they got accepted and finished it off. And that's what I realized maybe I should have gone to see a in the beginning. So for for viewers out there who don't understand what Psiops is, what psychological operations are in the Army,

could you give like a little description of like what that career field is like? Yeah, it's kind of hard to give a real quick description. Like when someone talks, like, what would you do as that stuff? You're like, shit, what don't I do? It depends on your, your, you. your series, right, 18 Bravo or whatever. You can give a longer description. It's fine.

Sure. Yeah, the biggest thing is just we influence and change human behavior on specific target audiences that we've picked to better the support of the United States. And how you do it is where it becomes, how you do it, when you do it, and who you do it to is where it becomes tricky. But we just influence and change behavior.

Just like I think the other females said, when they do it to us, it's propaganda. do it to, we don't have to Americans, not allowed, but when we do it to adversaries or our partner forces, it's SIOP, and when civilians do it, it's marketing or media. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And a lot of people, unfortunately, kind of think that SIEOPs are just like pamphlet droppers, that you guys take cardboard boxes full of pamphlets and dump them out of the back of a helicopter. But I mean, there's a lot more to it, isn't because some siopers, yeah. Well, you know, there's,

a lot of our own cybers, I think that's all what it is, that it's just leaflets. And we had a real big rude awakening when we started working a lot more in Afghanistan. We realized you can't just drop leaflets. Over 90% of the population is illiterate. They're just going to, then when you wipe their ass with it, right? Because they don't wipe their ass like that. So it was pointless to go at that medium. You had to find a different way.

So we had to adjust to it because a lot of your older guys from the first golf, That's what they did. They dropped a lot of leaflets. And it was real successful in the first call for. You had, you know, I can't remember how 400 some people surrendered in Iraq because they dropped them. They did psychological action. We call it Syak in one village. And then on the next village, after the leaflets were dropped, they knew that we were about the bomb because the previous village did.

So they all, you know, dropped their weapons down and came out. So it was useful there, but it wasn't the same in Afghanistan. So they had a just fire there. And so what was your first position when you got to Sciops? I mean, it was this, what is it on Bragg? Is it the fourth Sciop Battalion or fourth Sciop group? It changes every time. I don't know.

Pick a day, pick a name. So originally when I first got there in 0809, it was the fourth psychological, fourth POG, four psychological operation group. And then they created another one that was fourth and eighth because then it split the battalions amongst them. In Saob, 9th Battalion, as of still now, is the, was the only, tactical battalion was tactical and all your other battalions lined up with the region first battalion lined up with seventh group um seventh battalion was with uh third group with uh africom and whatnot but it along the way it changed the ms sock which was just a big old gaggle fuck and

then it went back and i don't know i've been out for five years and i keep up with a couple of my my buddies there and i hear that they're actually falling under first sFC now so there's a lot of I'm going and groaning right now. Yes. Sit back here and laugh. So what was your first duty position when you got to the unit when you arrived there? So when I first got to it, I got, it's the assigned to Ninth Italian, and then I got pushed down to a line company, a trolley company. And when most females, and I guess because they do a board and they go through it, your old timers go through and distribute the people coming in.

And I guess I was an undergrad for the SAB course, and I had a couple of them, the distinguished things. stuff and PT in my language and I'm brown, you know, so I fit in. So I was, I might not look okay on paper. So they sent me to a trolley company, a line company. But females don't usually go to the line companies. And if they do, they go to the PDD, the product development detachment. So the way that one company is set up is there's three detachments, usually 12 men, just kind of like an ODA.

And then there is a support one of product development. And they're the ones that usually back in the big bases, big bobs. And that's where you put your females. Well, I instantly went to a Charlie Company, the, I'm trying to think the attachment. Sorry, I might have a child to bust in. No, it's okay. To the first attachment.

And since we were on a mission at that time, every, they rotate a mission. I don't know if they do that NSF too, but they rotate a mission that keeps us here on home and if there's a national disaster, Katrina happens again, that whole company will go and support that. At the time when I got to a trolley company, that's what we were at. So I guess they saw it fit for me to be, it was okay for me to be in a detachment, even though women weren't allowed there. Then Haiti happened and instantly they pushed me out of there into a training room because they didn't want me to pull them with it because I was a female. But at the time, I had, you know, more qualifications than half our Slippers and I had been,

you know, eagerly going to all these schools and Sears School and I can outruck quite a bit of people and, you know, Jumpmaster Griffin Group and all that stuff. And so the minute we came back from Haiti, I fought to get back on the detachment. And when we deployed to Afghanistan the first time with Charlie Company in 2010, I was in the detachment, but I was considered the detachment headquarter. So that's what I snuck on was with the officer, because if we have a detachment, then you have your, like you guys have your alpha and your warrant, well, we have an alpha and a team a team daddy an officer a captain and a uh east seven usually should be on there and i was you know the the helping hand in there i snuck on as part of the headquarters and then when a team went down

and was a team leader was need to be removed because of stuff going on i ended filling that back spot and um i got on a team and that's the way it went so the so at the time they were reticent to put women on the tactical siops teams that are sort of like out there working side by side special forces ODAs. Yes. Okay. Yeah. And even though the MOS is not considered

a combat MOS, therefore there is nothing on paper. That was my biggest file, Tom. Show me on paper that says I can't be on a detachment. Show me on paper. I can't be on a team. If I can't cut the monster, then I'm good. But if I can now do half these guys, why can't I be on a team?

You know, we had all the things from, What about when you're on your cycle? I was like, look, this is the 2000s now. 2008. I said, I literally take depo, so I don't even cycle. Second of all, half the rest of the world lives in a place that doesn't have water. Do you think they die from having their cycle out there? I said, we saw a gas and some people who are baking some funkiness up in there.

It's like. So. It attracts the bears. I was just thinking about the bears. The bears. Yeah. What's up, guys? This show is sponsored by Hymns.

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Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know. And I guess it made, my thing was always it made Slap feel elite by saying no females are they're above there and I know the mission does come with it but um when you're the red head step child which slap is they hate it but we're the red head stepchild to the sF right they um they have to prove they always try to prove something they're always proving right

and by not having a female on there put some at the same level as as your sf was um and it's funny because they all the command all everybody would always tell me you can't be on a team because of all these other excuses your rag and everything and then on top of it no team No team is going to accept you. No SF team, no SEAL team, no MARSOC team is going to accept you. Well, Marsha didn't exist about then. But I was like, well, how about you let me deal with that? And if they don't accept me, they'd kick me out.

Because I don't know if you've ever worked with SOP. There's a lot of VALSO operators that can't work well with other teams and SEALs and SF. So I said, why don't you let me see if they do accept me. If they do, then if they don't, they kick me out. Right. You know, the funny thing is that they accepted me way better than Siles did. that so what was you you kind of explained that you were kind of cooling your heels and headquarters just waiting for that opportunity to get over there when you saw it jumped on it

what was it like when you arrived i mean where what uh if you could tell us like what fob and i think he told us what team you were with like where you arrived uh and where the mission what the mission was when you got there well so to begin with i wasn't uh i wasn't wanted to sit and way. I was very a go-getter and I wasn't just going to sit on the headquarters. I knew my head that the minute I got on country, I was going to find a way out. So once I got there, I started establishing my point of context and I started, you know, just mingling, just talking to people. There was this, this SAR major, actually the AOB SAR major. I forgot how we came about. We were talking and we were in a big meeting with everybody and he was talking about doing a black SIAP,

The hell. Where... Which is really rarely done. Where it's not apparent that it's coming from America. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Because most of the time,

slap is all truth. It's quiet sob or grace shop. We're not telling you what it is, but we're not telling you it's somebody else. And then you have your deception. Your deception campaigns are so rarely happening. But one was coming up. They were trying to put something together to talk about

it was just kind of bogus but whatever it was we're going to drop some parachutes with with dry eyes and to try to make it look like they believe that there was these gold soldiers going around we're going to try to influence that and get that going and try to get you know a scare going on there and they have no current jumpmasters right now there at the aob and i was current qualified jump master and um and static line jump master and so i actually started taking on the whole mission by myself and setting it up and we were working with the rigors and all these different stuff and when that sorry made and so I was the AOB SAR major saw that in E5, back then I was in E5, was willing to take on that. And the female, he started seeing potential in other places and started wanting to take me out with the commandos.

Because I was in Kandahar out of Camp Brown as the headquarters, as a headquarters. And since right there, the commandal units there, they started talking about taking me with them. So once my higher up headquarters heard that, they said they felt tension on the other side. that they were going to lose me one way or another. They were going to lose me to the commandos and working that mission or they were going to find a place for me and a team. So when the opportunity came that a team leader would need to be a place, command felt it better to at least use me that way instead of lose me to the SF guys

and who do you use as a more than the commandos. I have to ask Melissa, did this ghost soldier's mission ever happen? No. It did it. It's so hard to get this deception mission going, but too many things we're going to wrong with the idea. Yeah. You know, who's going to unbuckle. It just, you know, days and days of brainstorming and who's going to unbuckle the stuff and who's going to retrieve the shoes. Are we willing to release these shoots? And it just, it wasn't worth putting everything into it.

But it got me out there. Got me in with the, with the people that I needed to mingle with and forced my hand on my SACOP. Because when we go inside out, it's kind of like how you guys do. Your A-O-B is pretty close and it was in Camp Brown, right, if you were there. And then you'd spread out through there. But for SIEOP, one whole company goes in the country, and that company headquarters is in Bagram, and then all the rest of the teams, the Tashans spread out through the throughout the rest of the place. And then they push the teams off to their supporting units, you know, to the COs and the ODAs. So usually one ODA takes a two or three man team with them for SIOP, and, you know, my headquarters is all the way in Bagram, and then the whole sit rep just

runs up. So. And so what was it? It came down and they had to find a place for me. I want to ask though, like what was it like when you got down there working with the ODA? Like where did you go? What was the mission when you got there? So 3134 when I got down to them was working VSO. When I got with them, they had just lost two of their guys. Because they got there and within three weeks of the being in country, they lost their alpha and their Delta in one blast. And the team took it really hard. And that's when that whole replacing of my team leader had a hat or the SAC team

that had to be helping because he was bumping heads or rubbing wrong or, you know, not being cognizant of the way the team was feeling and being very giddy. And hey guys, when the team is going through a big loss, they lost their command and their delta. And you know, back then the year, well, they're over. always hurting you're always hurting for medics and they only had one medic and one officer so we they took the a delta from the a ob and um a the warrant took over as a team so when i got to them they already didn't like the they were having a problem with siop they were in a real big rut because

they had lost two of their guys their junior bravo got pretty tore up to um it was a slow start when i got there and i just i just knew i had with everything i just knew i had i just knew i had had to just carry my own weight and let their minds make them in their own minds, you know, whether I'm an asset to the team or am I just a big, you know, burden. And I mean, as a tactical SIEOP soldier, what was your part, like, how did you integrate with that ODA and how did you help them, you know, accomplish their mission? So in SIEF, we always say, you know, we're all about influencing and influence the enemy to do this, or influence the local populace,

but the first person, the first thing you have to influence is the team you're attacking with. You have to be able to sell yourself to them and be able to get, you know, to work with them. If you can't do that, then you're not going to get your job done as good.

Yes, there's time when you can just try to just be on your own or run your own missions, but it's not going to be as successful. When you have your CA, your SOIP and your SEP working together, just when you have the best outcome. So I went there and I did it real quick.

I knew it was going to be a little weird because they were used to have a fee, emails there, but I was just going to just, I don't know, just be myself and just stick to my guns. And just I went there and gave me a brief, a real quick, down, dirty brief, what I could what I can bring to the team, what we can do. And I guess we just went from there. And I mean, as that relationship started to develop, I mean, how did it work? It worked good because, you know, in Afghanistan, it's even more so than Iraq, where the women are untouchable, target audience, everything from medical treatment to, you know, doing the clearing a village.

You can't go into the females. You can't go in there. You know, they'll hide all the females in one room. They say you can't go in there's females, but you don't know what else is in there. So I came with that. I came with the benefit of being a female and be able to touch that target audience inside version as well as being able to go in there and sell myself and tell the ODA, hey, I could search these people.

I can search that part of the building. I'm small. I can fit in goat tunnels. I've been inside of goat pens looking for weapons. And then on top of that, I might not be physically fit now. I'm a little out of shape. But back then I was, I can hold my own. So I told them all different stuff.

Like with any job, you don't know, you start, you have to find your niche and you had to find a way to do it. But I just took it day of time. How did the sciop piece, or did it, I mean, integrate with the ODA mission? on this particular tour. Well, VSO is a real big thing for SIOP because we're living amongst, the same with the ODA, the SFIs, we're living amongst the populace. You gotta deal with the MULA, you gotta be able to know their culture,

you gotta be able to know who to influence, who are the influencers, how to influence them, what mechanism to use. So I brought that to the team, we worked a lot with the MULAs, we work a lot with the, who's really big on female schools. We had a civil affairs team, there near the end. But at the beginning, we didn't. So I kind of took on the civil affairs, my first rotation, the civil affairs position as well as the SIAP. And we did a lot of the medical

stuff because the DELTAs and all of them, once that team took that hit, they kind of backed off their offensive and were more stagnant. They took it, the VSO turned into VSP instead. And I think that's when we had the SEALs, they pushed the SEAL team or tried a team down to to that location and to push up to where they were going to initiate another VSO because that SFT noted 3134 that I was with was supposed to push from Cochris, VSP, up to and make another VSO up in another town called, shit, I can't remember what it's called now. It's been so long. But when they're moving up there, that's where they hit those IDs.

And after that, they didn't make that push up there. So they just kind of stayed stagnant there in that VSP. while they brought a SEAL team, Trident team down to go run that mission. If anybody worked with Trident, they're not meant to do FID missions. They're just not partially aware or capable or maturity level so low that it just was a bad mix about to happen. But they pushed the team down to our VSP. We dealt with SEALs there and ODA. A lot of type A personality is about to kill each other.

until they pushed out. And so I just, I don't know, it was a slower mission in my first rotation. A 3-1, 3-4-1 was more like a fit should be, not much offensive. We worked with the Mullah. At times, we worked with the Darwishan town that was there, village, so well that the, you know, I got to go on with the Mullah's wives. I would make food with them. I'd hold the babies, and I'd come out and sit and talk with the mullah.

So I kind of played both sides and it really helped out because with the district governor, I did the same thing. I went and talked with his wives, his children, and then I'd go and sit with the guys and talk that route. So I got to go both ways. I put on my burqa and I take it off and I was good. So that sounds like that VSO mission pretty much went the way it was supposed to go, you know, thankfully. Yeah. And then return back to the United States at the end of that rotation. and does this, do you maintain this position as tactical team leader?

I mean, is that something they keep you in now that you're there? No, I came right back and right when I got off the bus, they said, hey, we're not even going to give you an SDR senior out there. You're not going to get an award for being out there. I said, I don't give a fuck, shove your award up your ass. How would you go out there for an award? I went out for the experience. I mean, I don't care about no award.

In fact, the ODA are giving me multiple awards because I helped deliver three babies out there. with the Delta. And so I did care about an award, but I guess they ended up coming through and giving one, somebody fought for it or something like that, and I got an award. But the minute I got back,

they threw me to the training room again. Every time it was the same thing. I was up in the training room with the bitch. I don't know if I can say that. I was up in the training room doing that. Admin work, which I am not good at. Well, you know, all the rest of them stay down there. The neck rotation,

And then when they go out to go train with the ODAs, you know, right before you go out, you go PMT, your pre-mission training. At Fort Bliss, where it's my hometown, I fought real hard to try to get on it because I knew I was going to get on a team. There was no way I was going to do a rotation in the headquarters after already having a team. So I was trying to get on a PMT, but they were like, nope, you're not going to get a PMT. You're not going to do pre-mission training. All the teams went out and did pre-mission train with the ODAs. and I stayed there, and when we came back, I found a way to get on a team again,

and I went back out without doing pre-mission training. It's the way it is. You just got to accept the good with the bad. So you had a, it was again, you know, by hook and by crook, making your way to an ODA? Yeah, it's always been. I've always been fighting with Saup and the whole, you know, just because you don't have a swinging dick you can't do it.

I'm like, hey, half these guys, some of these, I'm saying, some of their dickstone some of our cypress are real big brainers but not as much physical and there's some great ones that there's bad ones you know just like ODAs are the same right SFCs are the same everybody but um

I was like if I can't cut it then I got it but if I'm cutting it better in some of these guys just because I have a slit instead of what you know what's the deal and you say well the whole death thing you know

I was like I'd be the same I'll be twice as much sometimes shit So on the second deployment, which ODA-D-A did you get sent to? What base was this on this time? So the second rotation in 2011 and 12, I went with 34-34-4. And that's when you guys had just started the fourth battalions. So I went out there with them.

A lot of them were younger, and it was their first rotation. But those guys are like my brother from another mother. and I have some nostalgic, yeah, I'm super nostalgic about that rotation. I, you know, it was a lot rougher rotation. We have a lot more ticks, a lot more aggressiveness. We had a team sergeant that got replaced and put into this ODA, and he was a team sergeant that came in was a very highly decorated third group guy,

Master Aunt Paul Faisal, and he just took this team to another level and had a great time with them. And so you said that this mission or this deployment was quite different than your first. Can you tell us a little bit about like how the mission differed, how the how the enemy situation differed? So the first the first rotation was a lot slower. We did a lot more med caps. I took in all of the females and we gained a lot of information from them. We delivered babies. We took care of kids that got blown up.

I found a lot of ways to use Taliban. mistakes to, you know, to influence the local populace. And any time they hurt somebody, they, you know, blew a kid up, they blew up the school. I either made radio broadcast at the time. That's one of the messages we're using because we realized they, Afghans couldn't read well and they weren't caring about the leaflets. So we knew that at the time Taliban had took into music, so we decided to bring radios in a box. We called Riyadh.

I don't know if you heard about them. So radio in a box and you got a, you know, 10 minute, quick course on it. how to set it up. I got electrocuted multiple times with the damn antennas and set up an antenna on a radio station, radio station in my living hooch, and we ran on, you know, music. We got music from your class one terps, your locals, and we would broadcast music, and in between it, we broadcast, you know, commercials, propaganda, whatever you want to call it at the time. Saia, we broadcast our messages. I would do interviews with the locals. I interviewed the the Afghan National Army, the ANP, your local police, your ALP.

And I interviewed him and I had this program going kind of saying, let's get to know your local police. So that the people kind of felt, you know, make that connection. And most of my time was doing interviews, delivering babies, taking care of kids, plugging, you know, injuries, taking pictures, and making products from Taliban's mistakes. And creating a cell tower and running, you know, hotlines. emissions because even though they don't have toilet paper or whatever they still always have

cell phones out there as long as you put a a south tower then you can get them connected and we run tip lines and we actually got quite a bit of good hits with the tip lines and in five up it's hard to measure your success it's almost unmeasurable right because everybody influences something so you can't say this was influenced because what I did you could try to piece the puzzle together and be like well because of these we call them MOE's measure effectiveness I think my product helped do this. But in reality, you can't say black and white that it is because of what you did. But we did have some really good MOUEs measure of effectiveness when we had our South Tower blown up multiple times because the locals were calling in too many tips. And so Taliban

got real pissed off and was blowing up the tower and we go fix it and they blow it up. And we put guards out there and then they blow it up again. So it was, um, it was ideal. It was perfect. Like the like the VSO or Fid should happen. and I trained the locals there. Your ODA trained them. 18 Bravo trained the police and all that. That's the way that one ran. The next one was a lot more offensive, more offensive.

We were constantly going out and doing, you know, raids or caught up level 2s, kind of level 0s. It was a lot different, and it was good to see both sides. On one side, deliver babies on the next side were, you know, delivering death. We had a lot more casualties on the second one, too, when I was there, so.

If you're okay, I mean, can you tell us a little bit about some of those, like, close calls and firefights that maybe you guys got into? Yeah, yeah, no problem. So, you know, IDs are everywhere. My first one, too, the big difference was we were in vehicles a lot. LATVs, your RGs, your MATVs. My second one was all on foot.

because everything was, you couldn't get down the roads. They just blow you up. So this team started and just had us walking all the time, you know, 12Ks and making movements all around through our, and we were just present patrols everywhere on foot. We, because you're on foot more often, you're likely to hit an ID and not survive it because compared to the vehicle, you know, it's just the way it is.

On one of them, we had already, it was just a bloody weak kid. a lot of the Afghan kids would come to me because I was the face in our little VSO. I was brown like then. They thought I was Afghani. I spoke posh to. I was a female. And then I was working the Civil Affairs mission. We had no civil affairs team there.

So I ran all the humanitarian aid. I would collect all this stuff. And I gave out all the beans and rice and socks for the kids. And I had a school program going on because our thought was Taliban is recruiting these young, 10, 11, 12-year-old males because they're ignorant, just like a gang, just like here in the United States, they recruit, gang member recruit young kids because they're naive, they're malleable, they're naive, yeah, they're just, they could take advantage of them. And so we figured if we educate them young, then we won't have to fight them later. So we started doing a school in the

radio, school in the box. I would give out, we went all the way to Bogrom, they created a curriculum, and we'd give up these educational books, and we'd run. teaching programs on the radio and I'd give out radios that sometimes yes they would use for moms but you win some you lose some and and so the kids would come to the base looking for me and you know they would say my name and their little Afghan accent and when they came visiting that week they got blown up to the kids that usually would come and I went and took we've got pictures of them so we can make products and use it to help influence some more and then the following mission a couple days later. I was supposed to be on that truck with the Afghan police,

but my leadership had come in, so I got pulled off of it, and so I could take care of them. And then that truck, you know, they very few times they actually used the vehicles, they blew up. I had my radio speaker in there that somehow managed to make it through, but it had body parts on it and chunks. We went back and retrieved the bodies of the Afghans. I had, in fact, I still of a picture where the two SF, the 18 Delta and the Charlie were in the back of this Ranger. And right

before when they told them, hey, don't go down that route. It's got IDs. The Afghan would have listened, so they just jumped out the back. And they went down 10 feet more and blew themselves up. So I have pictures of them in the back when they were leaving. And I was like, well, let's see. I would have been in the middle and the inside. Oh, man.

But so that the following day, we had another mission, and we went back that same route and missed IDs the whole way there, we were going to set up a checkpoint for the Afghan police. And we were up in the top and separating some stuff. And we had, at the time, because everybody was spread so thin, they started attaching a platoon of infantry guys to the SF teams. I don't know if you remember. And we had a 10th Mountain platoon out there with us. And they're pretty young guys, really, you know, motivated and good. They were physically fit.

And we took them out on this mission and took a couple of the 11 Charlies. And I think the 11 Charlies, that might have been their second mission ever with us. And one of the 11 Charlies that I had ridden with, he was a gun guy. When he got out, they were standing up these heskos. And he just stepped on IED and turned into a bag of bones and gave another younger kid, ended up with a triple amputee. And me and the Delta worked on them. We ran up there on the hill because they started.

realizing we'd take the high ground, right? We'd always take the high ground. We'd make our checkpoints up there. We'd take it. And so they just started riddling the whole top of the mountains in the hills with IEDs. And that's what they did. And we hit the IED. And if you had probably 105 round in it because it caused a lot of damage. One KIA, I think like three wounded and triple MPT. And the Delta was up there. And I would start working with the Delta to help him fix the triple amputee and got them out. So that was a, it was a really long day because then after that we had a clear. We found seven more IEDs, the 11 Charlie, found them all.

We were clearing him. And then we had to ride back the same way that we knew that the Afghan Ranger was still there where we had to treat the dead bodies. And on the way back, I took the gun because there was no more gunner on our vehicle. He was in a body bag. And we had, and then the, yeah, so there was actually only two of us in RG, the driver and myself three and then the T.C. So I took the gun and the 11 Charlie and the dog handler were walking.

And the dog sat on a Tribune I-D. Holy shit. And another one, it just didn't go off all the way. And so we met her back the dog and the handler with him. It was just a really long, long week. And it ended up being on October 13th, Friday the 13th. So it just was. It sounds like a nightmare.

Yeah, we had a couple more, but there's a couple that stand up my mind, but those two, that one in December 3rd was the hard ones. And, I mean, how did the rest of the deployment go? Like, after that, I mean, do you guys have to, I know it's always difficult to pick up after you take casualties like that and keep going and driving through the mission? It's pretty rough. Yeah, the team sergeant was real smart. He had been on, I think, 13 rotations or whatever. he had two silver stars and he knew he understood he'd been through casualties before and he understood that you couldn't let us take a break so even though we came back and we you know had all that stuff

and we had people in our ice cook because we were living out in the middle of nowhere you don't have nothing you don't have no no uh we had one little ice cool uh cooling trailer and that's where we put the bodies at but he knew instantly to get right back out so the next day we were out on missions you just can't let people sit and think about it we just jump right back into missions the ones that got metavac and one of the 11 bravos that got metavact ended up real bad he he tried commit suicide a couple times because he just couldn't cope I think he didn't get to cope with us he didn't get to heal with us there and they brought him back and he stayed in candahar and you know he had fragmentation of his buddy that had died all in his body too so it just kind of hit him real

hard and compared to us we just got right back on the horse and did mission after mission And it helped us keep going. We didn't stay on it. We did a lot of cross-training. So that helped out a lot. I worked with 18 Delta a lot. I got to do a lot of hands-on stuff. I would teach them how to do the messaging that was.

Half the time, they didn't know what I was doing because it's hard to explain Sia. But they knew that I'd carry my own weight and I'd also help them on whatever I could on that side. I wasn't afraid of, you know, sandbags burn shit or do whatever everybody else had to do to carry your own weight so in the end of the day i mean this turned out to be i mean i'm just thinking back to what you said uh earlier that you know s f ended up accepting you more than siop did and it sounded like you guys came together really well

yeah they um they didn't see no problem to it once uh you know i lived amongst him right there i you know you shit side by side you p side doesn't matter once you get to that doesn't Bullet doesn't care if you have a split or if you don't. It's going to get you one way or another. I mean, I make jokes about that. I was like, look, they'd be putting my little feet. I was like, hey, I got smaller surface space that's true. You're an I, B, you got big old King Kong flea.

I was like, when we went to Griffin group, I was only female too. And, you know, when you're getting shot out with the paint balls, I picked the biggest SF guys, big old muscular SF guys. And me and you let's be on team, because guess what? He's such a big target. Man, I could just run beside him and I wouldn't get away. So you just kind of make fun of with the stuff that's there and play paper,

scissors, rock to see who's going to step on the next IED and just kind of keep it lighthearted. But, yeah, these guys, quite a bit of them. I see him as a brother from another mother. They, you know, the team sergeant, you know, saw us all as his, you know, his children, I guess.

And they were willing to give me us, because it was a Halo team. Both of them were Halo teams. And this team was, you know, give me a Halo slot, because I've been trying to go through Halo school, but Saip wasn't never going to let you do anything because I just, Saip's mentality was,

if it's not Saip relevant, then you're not going to it. Because they have such a big chip on their shoulder from SF, theoretically half the Saipers and Saiple leadership, anything that sounds like it might be SF-related, if it's, you know, offensive instead of defensive, they're like, you don't need to go to it. You don't need to go master gun to courts.

You don't need to go to life tissue training. And I had a big fight always with the Cyrup leadership, He's playing to him like, hey, I can't do cyber I'm fucking dead. So why don't you let me live first? You know, let me go to these things that are keeping me alive because we're going on the same exact missions side by side as an ODA is.

So the only difference that they got training, they get to go to Master Gunners course. They get to do life tissue training. My life tissue training was on ground, which, you know, it's not fair to me and it's not fair to the casualty that I'm working with. Yeah. Did you grow up with brothers?

Yes. And my father only had three girls, but he was in the military, and I've always been a tomboy. Yeah, I was just curious, because it seems as though you fit in really well with the guys also. Like, you know, you just, you use humor to just make it an everyday situation. And so I was just curious if you had brothers and, you know. Yeah, and people would ask me that too, with people that heard that I'd be the only female in these locations, they're like, why aren't you scary guys? I said, why would I be scared of the guys? I said you can be in America and you get raped.

I mean, I don't want to say the R word, but you're like, you'd be anywhere and something can happen. It doesn't matter. And they're going to respect you as much as you put out as in effort, not put out. But they're going to respect you if you just carry your own weight, if you become part of the team. If you're not, you know, don't let nobody cross the line. And they can respect you like a sister, like a brother, like a soldier. Yeah. And I never ever had an incident with an ODA.

The seals are a little something different. But and and your conventional is even worse than your your your soft is. So I want to be as a female by myself, I would prefer any day to be with a soft element than with the conventional forces. Yeah. And so you mentioned that was that the third deployment was with the seal teams? No, it was with that first rotation. Oh, I got you when they cycled in. Oh, okay.

Okay. No, I would not. I tried to get third deployment, but they saw it got scared, I guess. or that's what I say. They say they didn't want a female casualty out there because at the time they hadn't opened any of the combat arms out there. Most higher-ups didn't realize that I was even out there. And that wasn't the way they should get shot from blasted with,

you know, all of a sudden you have a female KIA, even though it shouldn't matter what it is. But they got it important for me to take a knee and pull me to the battalion. That's when I decided I wasn't ready to stop, so I went to a special mission unit instead and try to find some fun over there. Could you tell us a little bit about what that process was like? Well, first you assess it. It's just like with the SFAAS for you guys,

just with the special mission, it's a little longer. You guys are 20 days, no, 29 days, what? Something like that. Yeah, something like that. Stuyup is 11 days while your SFA, your assessment selection. For a Smew, they give you order for 45 days, and it depends, you know, sometimes it's less,

and sometimes it's right around that one. But it was intense, but I do good at intensity. I do good at that. I do good at I can ruck all day. I've done the baton memorial death march multiple times. I've done it with a ruck. So I can do 26 plus miles with, you know, over 40 pounds easy at a shuffle run rate. So I had experience on that.

So I did good. I feel I did. In fact, I felt comfortable. You know, in basic training, I always felt comfortable. and then you come out of basic training, you go to your unit, you're like, what? This is not what I thought it was. I didn't sign up for this.

So with the Special Missions Unit 2, they told me that they'd never taken a SIPP enlisted before in that specific part of the Special Missions Unit. But, of course, they can't disclose what you're being assessed for, which one. So when I got slotted, I got slotted into the place where they thought that SIAP would fit, and that was in the signal side and I hate technology and I was not ready to

for Saup and for my mindset I was our best means of getting our product because of face to face you know talking people and so in my mind that transitioned over to humid not SIGN and I fought hard to try a transition to that one

and the process has changed because of the fight that I made and they realized that they're interchangeable, but I assessed. I got to accept that I went through OTC and at the near the end of OTC is what I realized what the job was going to be. And I don't want job satisfaction, not my pay or promotion. And some people are like, hey, this is it.

You get here. You're made it. You're made. You're going to make started major. You're going to be pushed. You're going to make great money. And I don't care. If I don't like what I'm doing, I'm not going to do it.

Yeah. That's just the way I was raised. So when I realized it wasn't what I was thinking it was going to be, I tried transition. And I had a lot of pushback, but just one thing led to another. Yeah. But another female was there, too, that was trying the same thing. Both of us were she had already been working with seals before in Iraq. There's a good coffee.

what did that breakdown on her? She ended up down in Syria 2019, Shannon Kent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me and her were adamant that we should switch to the other side and we, you heard her? Yeah, yeah, of course.

Yeah. So I ended up pregnant before her, so she stayed in that route. I pulled back and then she ended up having her children later and her story, well, as it was. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. it happens

so you were trying to move positions and when you got pregnant at that point did you decide to leave or what was that progression like yeah I volunteered to go back to my unit because I had talked to the powers that be and along the route when I near the end of ROTC I said hey I don't think this is one's for me

then the command said well to do that you'll have to reassess. And I was like, I don't care. I, in fact, I did well in assessment selection. It's the same one. It's just they felt that they had to have separate ones, you know. Delta has to have theirs. And then different entities within that unit wanted to have their separate ones.

They have come to the thought that is the same thing. And now they actually assessed together. But back then to go from one to the other, it was like Psiop and CA, they just, mine's bigger than you. Yeah, I mean, it's wild to me that you were. assessing for a position they couldn't tell you what that position like broadly speaking like human or signals right like that seems like something you should kind of know going into it yeah i know you don't uh you just trust the process right they say trust the process and you trust it and then

halfway down there they just most people that did ended up getting assessed for that one they just then i've been this far i'll just accept it um there was just a few of us me and this other female that were that were outspoken about and saying like it just makes no sense that's sense. I'm not a signature. I've never touched this. They did mention like, hey, this is not going to be your realm. And I didn't understand what they meant. Once I went through the course and I realized it. And I, yeah, I realized I'd probably end up starting a nine mill if I kept in that position because I didn't like that type of job. I wanted to be on the ground. I needed to be on the ground. I needed to go back to Afghanistan. And I wanted to go back with the humid. So I

thought to transition. They accepted it. I talked to everybody. They said, yeah, that makes sense. I don't know why you were in that route. Why did you pick it? I didn't pick it. You know, no one tells you. So they said, go and go reassess again. And I was prepping to reassess, but I didn't,

me and my husband were married 10 years already, and I just had gone off the depot. And within like two weeks, I ended up pregnant. And I couldn't believe that I could have been. In fact, I was too much pregnant and joking out of airplane still because I didn't realize that I was just getting lazy. I kept working harder and harder, prepping for assessed to assess.

and then all of a sudden I popped hot for the wrong thing. That would be the time to take me, have the baby. And I thought in my mind, I'd come back and assess for something I didn't know. I'd go assess for the female cag side because I know they started theirs. And they had sent me a lot of letters, but I decided to try this one that I didn't know, try out orange. And I thought I'd come back to brag. I'd have the baby, cut sling load, and assess.

But I didn't realize that mommy was going to take it. over so yeah baby and mommy took over and I just couldn't couldn't go again I couldn't couldn't leave my baby I mean it's a it's a great story and I mean it's understandable of course I mean you're a full-time soldier and a mother one of those jobs is a full-time job doing both of them at the same time I don't know how yeah how it's even possible but some women do do do it and every role different I mean you have males that are fathers But in an early childhood of the child, most times they go to the mother first. So they're not the same roles.

It's different. No different than I understand that I'm not a man in special operations. I was female, and I had to come at it as a female. So I had to sell myself what I had to bring into a team. I'm small. I can hide places. I can crawl in tunnels. I can, you know, the big old SF guys can make it through the damn Afghan small doors.

and here I am making through all the dang doors and the goat huts and everywhere you can think of. So, and then I use the female portion to influence some actors at times. You know, when we be in firefighted, we go to the local, to the next village and let them know, hey, I take off my hat and I show them a female, I play the whole female.

I was like, hey, they just hit us, and then all of a sudden they run from us. And then we start telling the elders that these fighters are running from a female when she's coming to bring humanitarian nature. because I set up to drop some humanitarian aid from the sky, and it makes them look really bad. And instantly, you know, the word gets to them,

because they're all connected. They all know each other. So then they let them know that this female is making fun of them because they're running from a female, and they can't even fight a female in the U.S. forces. And, man, they hit us hard again because you can't ever pin them down. They just keep running, you know. So we were trying to find a way to piss them off, poke the hornet,

hornet's nest, and make them stay and fight. And it worked. So after the birth of your child, And is this about the time that you start thinking about retirement? I mean, how does it roll after this? No, at the time I wasn't thinking of retirement because I was a career. I thought when I first joined that I was going to be into the day they kicked me out. And, you know, 30 years in, I loved it.

And I just was naive and never thought that, you know, your hormones were going to switch like that. So I still came right back on it. I was, you know, started rucking and running real quick. And it was just, I was conflicted all the time. I take off to work and then my husband was trying to be a stay-at-home dad, but it's a whole different thing. Men short-circuit when they hear babies crying. That's why in Sears School they had the baby crying, right?

I was the only female in Sears School, and it didn't bother me one bit. I slept right through it. But the men, when they came out, they were like, I couldn't take it. I was going to kill myself because of the baby crying, right? It's just something different. So it was, I started thinking about it back then, but I knew that in file up, I can go to a regional side, the Kush side. I went to a regional battalion instead of tactical.

Just like what you guys do instead of your combat deployment, you do a J-SET or you go out, how different is your job from one to the other? You know, you can bring your family. I mean, you can't bring your family, but they can't stop your family from going to Ecuador or something. So that's what we intended to do. I was going to take an El Salvador mission.

My family was going to follow me. But one thing led to another. I was going to get accepted to one of my 3434-4 friends, the 11 Charlie had gone on over to the black daggers. And I liked to skydive and I love jumping and I was a jump master. And he was recruiting me to go over there. I submitted my packet and I got accepted over there. And I was going to go represent SIEP in Black Diggers. And that was the method of me staying, being able to stay here in states and stay with my family and take him with me traveling.

And they were all four. it, but my command was for it, but once the higher group command heard about it, you know, they, Saip is our own worst enemy, and they saw to it that that was going to happen. They blocked me from doing it. The Usasak first sergeants, our major, they all got involved in it, and it just sigh up once they make up their mind, they said, so because I said so, it's the dick measuring contest again, and there was no way I was going to win that one, and they just sent me to the schoolhouse instead, and they, after all the fighting I did, I used to always fight everywhere.

They opened up a position for Saup there, but another buddy of mine ended up taking it. But I lost that opportunity. I just got a sour taste after that. I stayed in a schoolhouse and decide to leave. Yeah, why in the hell would Saip not want a accomplished female soldier representing them? Because the black daggers for folks out there listening, I mean, that's like part of the public relations,

the outward facing soft recruitment that these people go and parachute into football stadiums. and stuff like that. I don't understand why they wouldn't want someone like you out there representing the force. I didn't understand that there. That's why I fight it so hard. I'm a person that common sense.

If there's a real reason, you tell me, like, well, we need here. You need deploy on this one, and I would have accepted it. But it was just because I said so, we need you in the battalion instead to go be, you know,

the jump or NFC or some silly shit, you know, when you can put anybody there. Like, well, you're a jump master. You need to be the air. I was like, no, you do. don't. You know, I've always been to let me make my own road. And I end up putting heads with people when they tell me I can't make my own road. So I, but it heads with quite a bit of people there. And I just thought has a way of taking the soul out of you

sometimes. Yeah. We shoot our own young. We eat our own young. And, you know, it's all because we have chips on our shoulders from S-F or something. I don't know what it is. But I haven't figured it out. And so that was about the point that you started getting, thinking about retirement. Yeah, I was, I was already over 100 jumps. My body was starting to wear out. The kids got broke, started breaking me. I ended up pregnant on my second child.

And then, because I had been gone over to the schoolhouse and I was being an SLC instructor and kind of taking it easy there. And I had been a jump master instructor for our Eustok course running through. and then the SIA Jump Master course, and I decided when I ended up pregnant, that, yeah, I was pretty much done. And I had torn my shoulder and my back was tore up and, you know, knees and the basics. And they had asked if I was looking into that I was willing to take a medical retirement. And I said, sure, why not?

I was going to go ahead and just be a stay-at-home mom with my kids. And that's the route I took. So I just got medically retired instead. And what year was that? In 2019. Okay. So in 2018, 17, 18, I was at the schoolhouse. So not that, not all that long ago. I mean, tell us what has life been like post-Army? What have you been up to? How have you been adjusting to this new lifestyle?

Civilian life. It's easier to adjust because I moved all the way out here in the middle of nowhere. But stay-at-home mom is no joke. I tell you, you know, Sears school is nothing compared to motherhood and sleep deprivation and just lack of patience, you know, Sears School and being strong, how me be a mom to a very big five-year-old boy who is 60 plus pounds that wants to be carried everywhere. So it's a big adjustment, but I have a lot of nostalgia in some days. You know, I just think how different it would have been if I would have assessed and gone to another place or if I would have just been able to take another rotation down to

Afghanistan and and I know the SF, the SFAS opened up female, to females in 2015. Somewhere around, somewhere around there. Yeah. You know, I was,

I was thinking, I was thinking about it during this conversation, Melissa, it sounds like you were like a very highly motivated, competent soldier that was all about being a soldier and doing this job, but you maybe hit it, like timing wise, you hit it a little bit wrong because of,

you know, that law not being repealed, the federal law that then now permits women into combat positions. And it's really unfortunate. You went through, there's like a formal selection that we all go through. But then there's also this weird informal selection that you also had to go through. That's really unfortunate, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

And when that opened up, a lot of the team guys from 3434, but there was a lot of 18 series that go through the SMEU as well. and you go side by side with them in the assessment and selection. And we always talked about how different the assessment selection was from SFAS compared to the special missions unit. You know, just the difference between them motivating you and in the special missions unit. It's either you want to be there. You don't. You just suck it up or you don't. And no one's going to tell you anything else.

It's just a matter of your brain pushing you past it. And these guys that would go through, that's when I first realized me and this other female that we weren't in the right place. when we assessed with these other guys, and then they got put into the one part of the unit, and we got put into this other part. And even when we were sitting there, this classroom, when they first going through OTC, and they first split you up,

and they tell you where you're going to, and they read your letter that you're going to fit in, and we're looking at these guys that we'd gone through, and some of them, you know, deployed with someone. They were in a team, and I had worked a mission with them from 313 or something. And then they're like, what are you going over there? What's that stand for?

And I'll say, what are you going over there? And we started realizing that we were getting split. And these guys were like, shit, you went through all that assessment and selection and everything. You should, you know, you should be in the same route over here. And when we were fighting me and this other female that ended up dying, her husband was actually in the, Kent, her husband was in the other course. And we had worked with a lot of those SF guys. And they're talking about, you guys, you guys should have,

if it would have opened up the SFAS a lot earlier, for the females we would have just left the spew and gone and cest over there because he's like that's what you guys fit in for right both of us and we just you know bad timing wrong uh two years too late and um she ended up running her out and i went mine um wow i mean thank you so much for sharing your story with us melissa i really enjoyed hearing it yeah sorry if i speak fast no it was it was it was a lot of well mostly it was it was it was really fun hearing about your experiences. I mean, there's some rough patches, you know, terrible things that, you know,

you experience out there in combat. But I appreciate you sharing that with us as well. Before we get going tonight, I mean, is there anything else, any final thoughts or anything else you want to share or anything that I didn't ask that you wish I had? No, nothing that you didn't share, but I always want to say, because you always, anybody, nobody knows Siop. Nobody on the time what Cy Up is in the Army level. alone outside of the army. So like they say, oh, you were a psychologist, you were a, but it's

really hard to explain it. For you guys, how do you explain when you say, well, you're an SF? Everybody just thinks you ramble, right? Then you go try to explain to them. They said, what would you do is 18 Delta, I think, or 18 NEC or whatever you were? And it's hard to explain it because every mission can dictate, every, you know, one minute you can be doing, a fit, the next thing can be, you know, something completely different adjacent in another country. how do you explain yours yeah i mean that's why i think the recruitment videos always show you know the direct action mission because people can understand kicking in a door and shooting people explaining by with and through and you know we use surrogates to influence and this and that like

yeah people you've already lost the public uh a lot of times when you start to talk about it's honestly i mean same as recruiting it's honestly why village stability operations you know weren't used as much they should have been and why they were cut off because it doesn't brief as well as stack and bodies. Yeah. Yeah. Even though you think it works, it doesn't brief right. You're right.

Yeah. If there's not a metric for it, how can we show what we're doing? Yeah, is it even real? Yeah, is it even real? Well, again, Melissa, thank you so much. What are you even doing? Is it real? Yeah.

It's not measurable. See it at least like I built 10 wells. I built one school. Right. You guys can say I trained as 11 brawry. I trained this. I'm a teacher. I did this. I did this many missions. I captured this high value target. Sop is not quite the same. It's really hard to explain. What do you do? Yeah. Well, this is this has been terrific, Melissa. And thank you for taking some time out,

you know, while you got the kiddos around to speak with us for a little bit tonight. And we're happy that the, that the internet service held up, you know, since you're out in the middle of nowhere enjoying your own little boonies of paradise yeah yeah the boondocks yeah it's kind of resembles

of Afghanistan actually it's mountainous it's middle nowhere I don't burn my own shit but whatever I could if I want to well all right

so for the folks out there thank you for joining us and this is Christmas right so Merry Christmas Happy Kwanza Happy Hanukkah

I think Hanukes over by the time they see this but happy holidays everyone and um we'll see you guys the next episode will be our new yearly wrap up sounds fun cool thank you so much melissa