The Team House - From Army Ranger to SMU Operator | Brad Thomas | Ep. 242

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Brad served in the 75th Ranger Regiment and was part of Task Force Ranger "Black Hawk Down" as a Ranger in 3rd battalion. He then went on the join The Unit and spent 12 years there pre and post 9/11.Since leaving the military, Brad returned to his passion: music. He gathered a group of veterans who now make up the band “Silence and Light”.Check them out here:⬇️Instagram @bradthomas_officialSilence and Light Website https://www.silenceandlightmusic.com/--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Today's Sponsors:Magic Mind ⬇️https://magicmind.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]#deltaforce #75thrangerregimentBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, the Team House, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park. Hey guys, welcome to episode 241. 2.2. 2.42 of the team house.

I'm Jack here with Dave. And our guest on tonight's show is Brad Thomas. Brad served in the Ranger Regiment and Army Special Operations at a long career there. And now he plays in a band called Silence and Light. We're really excited to have you on the show, man. Thank you for coming in studio today. Yeah, thanks for having me. and great meeting you Dave

we haven't met but I was informed you were rocking the shirt and people were screenshoting that and sending it to me and I don't know who this guy is but you know let's figure it out always happy to support the band man yeah it's great you guys have a great band and then knowing your background

makes it even cooler so yeah appreciate it it's funny because I think a lot of people hear the music and they're expecting it to be like super jv you know and uh they hear it and they're like man you're actually really good like this is actually good music yeah it's not you're like your friends band that you have to go support like it's yeah it's great music yeah there's a lot of that too though yeah there's a lot of that too but yeah appreciate you guys have me on jack and i met i think way back 2011 maybe even 2010 something

like that and uh i helped do an article about the Ranger Recon detachment and how it started to shift from the time I originally got there in like 95 through the time that I left there in 98 so it was a ton of fun

I'd love to revisit that subject sometime because what RRD starting like 84 somewhere around there? I think so I think it stood up the same time that 375 stood up and RHQ stood up I think that makes sense after Grenada and I think it was called, I remember it being called the cult team.

And cult team was like something it was more about. Like close observation. Yeah, it was like, Halo in and drop bombs. Yeah, yeah. The concept was like, yeah, Halo and in behind enemy lines and lazy targets. Yeah, the cult teams were like a special team. But yeah, I would love to revisit that topic at some point because it's a cool history. And then obviously they've gone on to do so much else, you know, the last 20 years, it's been wild.

But yeah, no, that stuff's super fun to write about. I think it's one of those, you know, when people ask about the time that I served, there are a couple of things that stand out to me. And I don't know if you guys have the same kind of when you look back, you know, at however long you served. For me, 20 years, when I look back at the first like 18 months that I was in the Rangers, it feels like that period of time was eight years long. It was the longest period.

It was just so grueling and demanding and having to prove yourself and everything else. It feels like of the chunk, you know. And then I start comparing that amount of time with other places that I served and how much time I was on the same team with the same four guys for like five years, you know. and you're thinking man this was just a blip like I served on one team longer than I spent in B company third ranger battalion right you know and anyway it's crazy so I think and I'd be interested in hearing your take on this but I feel like your brain's still developing you know when I got there I was 21 just turned 22 and you know your brain is still in development so really that time becomes

you're impressionable. It becomes a part of, really a part of who you are, you know. And not like later in my career where, you know, we were talking about this earlier, but like, I'm not moldable play anymore. Right. I am who I am. And I either do the job that you want me to do or I don't. But I'd be curious on your, I feel like it's also part of the, part of it is that it is the biggest culture shift that you have in your life. And so, you know, like when you've been in the, military for, you know, a longer period of time, yeah, your duties may differ and yeah, you may be given more responsibility or things like that, but, but you're already part of that culture. So it's sort of just more of like course corrections or whatever, where when you go

from, you know, whether it's high school or college or, you know, from like me, just from the street, from my, you know, place on the street to, you know, to enlisting. that like it's a big deal like it's a big thing and you know and yeah you there's there's like definitely like a trajectory too and like you can read war memoirs going back as far as you want you know 50 60 70 years ago and it's like when the guy first shows up like oh man this is awesome this is the shit you know we're awesome they get to the by the end of their career and they're like jaded oh it's all political now bro everything's different now it's not what it used to be it's not hard Yeah, but if you think about it, like there's some kid right now in 2023 out there in Ranger Battalion, like this is his time, man.

Yeah, this is the heat right now, right at this moment. It's a big deal for him, you know? Experiencing the same thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that's one of the things that stands out is looking back, that period of time just seems like it was forever long. And the other thing that stands out is, you know, people will say, oh, when you got to Delta, it must have been. been, you know, amazing. It must have been great, whatever. And it was. But it's not the same type of environment where when I was in the recon attachment, we had to do everything ourselves. Right. You know, nothing was taken care of for you. So, hey, as an E6 plan a waterborne training trip for two weeks down at Tyndall Air Force Base. I'm coordinating with air crews and doing that. what kind of training are we going to be doing and i don't know there was a part of it that

you owned it right yeah the whole thing right and not just hey here's your here's your stuff it's all there go out yeah your fat sack yeah yeah so that was i felt like one of the best kept secrets in the army you know it was a small group of you know nCOs we were all you know first name bases while i was there we got to grow our hair out and go from high and tights to, you know, Army standard. Which was really popular in the regiment. Oh, yeah. They really love that.

Yeah, right. Especially when idiots like me like to push the standards, you know. We're like, you can't just have an Army standard haircut. We have to look like really like civilians, you know? But, yeah, that was a great time, you know? Brad, what was it like, what was your origin story in terms of, like, When did you start looking at the military as a life for you? So there's the answer that I would have given you in 1990 when I joined.

And then there's an answer that I would give you, you know, having perspective and looking back and kind of recognizing the things that influenced me. My dad, a PhD doctor and, you know, grew up fairly well off. Great family, you know, no trauma. and all of that. And I'm super appreciative of my childhood and everything that I had. My dad, for excitement and thrills, worked as a volunteer fire captain. And so every Saturday, Sunday, he drugged me to the firehouse. And I got to see him and his buddies, you know, kind of tooling around with one another. And they all had nicknames.

And there was this camaraderie. And this is something that, you know, this is my answer in 2020. I wouldn't have told you this, you know, in 1991 I joined. But seeing that, I wanted to do that. Emergency was a huge show on TV at the time and definitely had an impact on me. And I wanted to grow up, be a fireman, run fire calls, you know, running the burning houses and all of that stuff. And so those are some of my earliest memories.

Five years of age, I think my parents. took me to my first concert, may have been six, which was Barry Manilow. Nice. And when I saw that, it was kind of like, yeah,

fuck all that fired apart and shit. Like, I want to do this. This is what I want to do. I want to entertain people. And so they ended up buying a piano under the conditions that I take piano lessons and blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, you know, so I think that, you see my dad, And that kind of camaraderie between, you know, his teammates was really the thing that inspired me. When it came time, you know, graduating high school, I'm getting ready to go to college. I was a classical guitar major, which, by the way, doesn't buy you anything in the world or get you anything in the world.

By the time I got there, I went to the fire department where he worked and was like, what do I need to do? I'll volunteer. I'll take fire science classes at college. I'll do whatever. And they're like, hey, we're not really hiring. So it kind of left me in a spot where I'm playing music, I'm playing in band, you know, trying to make that thing happen. And it just kind of, you know, ran its course over a couple years. And that was it. And at some point, a buddy of mine was in, he was in the Air Force as an EOD guy and was home from basic training in AIT and on Christmas leave and he was telling me about these guys that jumped in behind enemy lines to rescue down pilots and they came recruiting at the end of his basic and I was like hmm it kind of just

the spidey senses started to tingle a little bit and that was really where it started you know And so, you know, what made you go the route of like Army as opposed to Air Force Parer Rescue or something like that? So I actually went to the Air Force and went to the Air Force recruiter and said, you know, I want the right to try for this unit. And the guy lied to me flat out and was like, yeah, I can get you a contract and I can do all this. And he couldn't. And I ended up enlisting, signing. and was going there every week to say, when's my contract?

He basically told me if you sign, I'll get you a contract. So I signed no contract. And I'm like, all right, what's going on? I'm leaving there one day. And the Army recruiter was like, hey, man. Those low down recruiters, right? He was, what's going on? What are you doing here?

And I said, well, he won't give me a contract for what I want to do. And he goes, what do you want to do? I want to be in Delta Force. And the dude just cracked up. And he's like, well, you can't do that. You got to do something first like special forces. And I go, okay, I'll do that. And he goes, well, you can't do that either.

You got to do something before that like a Ranger. And I go, okay, I'll do that. He goes, I can get you a contract for that today. And so that's literally how the Ranger thing came to be. I had read, you know, like we were talking earlier, I had read some, you know, Vietnam era books, you know, CIA in Vietnam, Rangers in Vietnam, you know, those types of things. But it wasn't like a huge interest, you know,

it was just kind of something that I read at the time, you know. But anyway, so when the Ranger thing happened. So then he gets a VCR tape out, puts it in, sit down and watch this. This is what Rangers do. And it was a film about Ranger school. Had nothing to do with like the Ranger Regiment. I'm pretty sure they showed me the exact same video.

in like 2000. I want to say we have the video over there on the shelf, don't we? Yeah. Will the guys doing push-ups wearing a rucksack? Yeah, probably that. There was a live fire in desert phase. They showed that. They showed daylight jumps out of like a 141.

It was just all ranger school swamp stuff. And I thought, this is cool. Yeah, I'll do this. Yeah. No idea what I'm getting into. So it's interesting. I'll have these kids hit me up. on social media and they're like, what did you do to prepare?

And I'm like, yeah, not a fucking thing, man. I watched the video. I smoked cigarettes and drink beer. Yeah. You know, I didn't do anything to prepare. So anyway. There's something to be said for preparation, but I also think that like, because there's so much information out there right now that kids tend to get, like, overloaded and they think

there's some magical formula that they, you know, they need to hit like these multi-ordinary points in order to be ready for, you know, any type of selection. It's like, yeah, be fit, if you can be fit. But beyond that, you know. Well, there's, there's, in my mind, there's a tangible selection. And then there's the intangible stuff. And something I got to experience recently with my youngest son, who went down the road of, hey, I want to follow in your footsteps and do that.

And I was like, hey, statistically, chances are pretty slim. You know, the attrition rate is pretty high. So it's one of the things that I tried to instill in him was it's one thing to say, well, how many push-ups do I need to do? How many sit-ups, pull-ups, all that stuff? But then there's this thing that happens where it's like, you're getting smoked the night before. You're up at four because your squad has, you know, got detailed to go do ammo whatever. And then you're doing that. And then you're going into the PT test, not fresh.

You know, it's not like everybody's getting this clean shot at something. You have how you fit in with your peer group, you know. And some selection courses use peer eval, some don't. Some matter. Some don't, whatever it might be. But, you know, that's something that it's like those things aren't a standard, you know, not getting hurt. or being hurt and going all the way through something with torn cartilage in your knee or something like that. There are just so many things that are intangible that aren't a standard.

It's not black and white. It's very ambiguous. Yeah. And there's also something about, you know, if you look at seals and they're on a swim they have to do, there are guys in, you know, regiment or SS or wherever who wouldn't, who are tough dudes and can do anything. They just can't do that. And then you have seals who. are phenomenal, you know,

well-rounded athletes and everything else like that, but wouldn't be able to handle the miles under a ruck, that if they had gone another way on either side, they may not just because of the specificity of what it takes on the body for those two types of events. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, the mental aspect of all of that is the biggest key.

You know, like you can't be a dud physically and expect to roll in and ace everything. Right. And it's all good because I got it up here. Right. There's a balance to that. And I feel like so much of it comes from mental, you know, and not even, I don't think, toughness. The thing that fed me was guys quitting. Yeah.

You know, and I remember thinking like the Ranger Cadres showed up at airborne school. and it was like this screaming match that happened and people were like literally like frozen you know paralyzed and we throw all our bags on the truck and everybody starts to climb on and they get the fuck off the truck like you're not riding on the truck

your bags are riding on the truck and the truck takes off and we run behind the truck up to the ripped barracks and there were already probably you know if there were 60 people in formation there were probably 20 that quit right on the spot. Yeah. And dude just kind of like barrel chest in his way through the formation.

Who wants to quit? 10, 9, 8, 7, 7, 7. Yeah. Hands just flying. And they're like, it's not that bad. Right. I haven't started yet. Right.

Once the actual standards and testing of that started and you start to see people, you know, quit or not make it, that definitely gave me energy. Right. It was kind of like, well, it's not that bad. yet for me you know right um it's also all it was always interesting to me people who quit after events or before it's like like i understand if like during an event like you're just like your balls a dragon and you're just dog tired you're like okay i can't deal but but they wouldn't they would get all the way through the event right they get all the way through the event and then and then

And then the, like, the R.I. Or, you know, the Ranger Cadre or whoever would, like, light a fire and go, okay, you know, if you want to quit, you can come sit by this fire, get nice and warm. Like, if you want to quit, it's like, you just made it like through this, like, ballbusting road march. Yeah. Yeah. The psychology of it is very interesting. And I think that, you know, you mentioned the amount of information that's out there now is pretty. is pretty phenomenal.

I haven't Googled it. Like I haven't Googled Ranger Selects, you know, RASP or any of that. And recently found out, and maybe you guys know this, but there's like this whole

Rasp RIP argument online. Oh no, there is? Yeah. There's some beef? Oh, like, you ain't shit unless you, you know,

rip, like rip guys, Rasp, you know. Yeah, there's a whole thing about that, which I found kind of entertained. In RASP, it's like,

it's like eight weeks, I believe, and I mean, like they get way, way more training than any of us did. Like, it seems like the standards are higher, much higher than they were when we went through. Yeah, I don't even know, I don't know all the standards and what they are, but they kind of front load, from what I do know, they front load all of those things.

So once they get a kid through that passes all the prerequisites, then it's more about training them. Right. Which is probably a product of GWAT. Right. It is. Hey, we're just smoking these guys for three weeks and they can hang,

but then they show up and they don't know anything. And then they're on a plane, you know, going overseas to deploy and they have no skills at all, except for I won't quit. Right. You know? Right.

So, but anyway, yeah, it's a whole, it's a whole conversation on. I didn't know there was, I didn't know there was actually like, Rip

essentialists that are like you know the ride or die for rip yeah I mean it was good but I mean times change and evolve and guys are getting better training now I mean it's

it's probably very similar to the to the argument when Rangers school dropped desert phase like that you know that oh you didn't do desert phase you didn't do rain like did either of you go through desert phase

I did not I did you did not yeah I did actually three times Yeah, three times in desert phase. But so this is even to prove the point even further. I didn't go through in Dougway. And Dougway was the hard desert phase. Like Fort Bliss was nothing. You got over.

I think it was like originally Bliss and then they moved it to Dougway and they moved it back and forth a couple times. But, you know, for all the guys that were senior to me in my platoon, they had gone to Dougway. That was the hard one. It snowed every day. You know, even in the summer and all that stuff. Eight feet of snow. Yeah, but I did Darby Desert Desert, Darby Desert, Mountainous, Florida. That was my Ranger School trajectory.

Well, I mean, you must have been good at Ranger School by then. Yeah. Bro, I went to Ranger School as a, I was an E2 when they sent me. They had to promote me to E3, I think, just so I could go. and yeah I did Darby a couple times a little extended training stay there did Christmas Exodus at Ranger School nice yeah yeah yeah yeah

so I had a I had a golden opportunity I got to B Company 3rd Ranger Battalion in April of 91 and when I got there I was the 12th guy in my squad So there were 11 dudes more senior than me and the majority of them privates. By September, we were going through, and I don't know if you remember these or if they called them the same things, but it was like platoon X-Tibs.

Like X-Tevs. Yeah. So it was like all we did was patrol Monday through Friday and it was miserable. Yeah. And it went from May through September. So absolutely an ass kicker physically and in the heat of the Fort Benning summer. And anyway, so by September, I'm the fourth guy in my squad. There's a squad leader, two team leaders, and me.

Everybody else was gone. Either guys had gotten hurt or they had quit or DUI or whatever. I was the only one that passed our platoon, pre-ranger PT test and they're like all right Thomas you got the golden opportunity you've been here five months and you're going to Ranger school

and I had no clue what I was doing zero clue I was in the same I was in E2 they sent me and when I got to Ranger school there was guys from my platoon NCOs that had gotten DUIs

that were there and they're like what the fuck are you doing here you shouldn't be here yet and kind of called me out on stuff and they had a field day with me and yeah it made for a miserable absolutely miserable experience so i was telling my son that story and he was like man aren't you like angry about how things turned out and you had to do so much extra time and you know i basically failed it you know and you know there was no guarantee that I would stay in the regiment and what was going to happen if you know who knows and interestingly it was kind of like everything in my life after that would have been different

had that event not happened yeah like you wouldn't be here yeah like nothing would be the same yeah so these things have this much greater impact than I think we can even recognize when it happened. So although it was a failure and it was something, you know, everything that came after that, I wouldn't have been in Mogadishu the same way. That would have been, that would have been different. Everything would have been different, you know. It's a character building experience. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Let me give a shout out to our sponsor for the show tonight. It is Magic Mind. Magic Mind is a product that you can add to your coffee, soft drink, whatever you prefer. It gives mental energy and focus. It improves your coffee, lets you drink less coffee,

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And the Magic Mike. I got the Cheetah Spot banana hammock ready to go. You know, you guys, I'll dance up on this coffee table for you guys if you need me. No, we all belong to your only fans. You're already subscribed. We know what it looks like. good. So how did that work for you?

What, what, uh, were you recycled each time or did you go back to, uh, battalion in between? So I did Darby Desert Desert and I begged my last patrol in desert phase, a guy wandered off. We were doing a split, platoon you know split squad type thing wasn't with my element but dude wandered off in the desert and was lost for four or five hours and i got a no go for that and you know rightfully so whatever um

i begged for a day one recycle and i remember going into the you know company commander at the time and asking him i also got graded twice by the same r i which was supposed to to be not allowed and I never saw the guy give a go my whole time there so I'm not going to say you know I did see him later in life in Fayetteville North Carolina selling mattresses in Sears and I was going to go up to him and ask him how life was working out for him but I didn't my my RRI in mountains who no go would be and again rightfully so ended up being a NCO on the scuba team down the hall from being fifth group. He's a really good guy.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't, you know, there's no grudges or anything like that. No, no, not at all. You know, you're doing a job and if you saw me, you know, a certain way, cool, whatever. But begged them for a day one recycle and they're like, no, you're going back. So I went back to B Company for maybe six, six, eight weeks something like that and then went right back they sent me back to pre ranger and then went back through but that was a talk about a low point yeah you know but just thankful for

the opportunity to be able to go back and probably wouldn't have worked out that way if we were still at the same strength we were when i got there yeah i would have gotten bounced down the road yeah i'll say and i don't know about s f because i've never been to s f as but i'll say one thing about Ranger School is that there are a lot of guys who do get screwed over like it it

there are there are the guardians of the tab there for sure who you know if they take a disliking to somebody it's very hard for them to overcome that sometimes yeah you know so so I got

when you you know you're gaming everything And, you know, you're getting G2 from a guy that recycled and information from people and half of it's bullshit. Half of it isn't. And I remember from pre-ranger showing up at Ranger's school. And they were like, stand behind each other in a row because they break down the companies. And that way you'll all be in the same company together. So we did that.

And, you know, my pre-ranger homies. And I'm in a row of 11 guys. all from the same pre-ranger class. We all know each other. And they start breaking down what companies what. I'm in A company. And formation is complete. They're like, all right, march back to your company areas.

And here comes my platoon sergeant from B Company 375, who's now an RI out there. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Where's Thomas or B Company? I'm like, eh, false motivation. and he calls me out and he goes you're in C company now move your stuff down there so I pull my stuff out of formation and now I'm in with guys I have no idea I don't know any of them and I get down there we get in formation they're assigning okay who here is E8 who hears E7 who here's E6 and they're assigning squad leaders and everything else. E8 ranger school that's hardcore so they made me the company first sergeant as an E2

I don't know how to march a company to the chow hall. I don't know how to do any of this stuff. And they just started pulling pranks on me. And it just, it was miserable and it definitely affected, you know, you think my peers. Yeah. I thought I was doing a good job. Yeah. It was horrible.

Yeah. As an example, they call me in. The tack calls me in to his office. And he says, hey, First Sergeant, I started December. one December. Hey, we need five people from the company to stay back from Christmas leave. Go ahead and go through those leave forms and pick who you want to stay. Oh my God.

It's like Word of the Flies, man. So I go, well, I'll be one of them, you know. And then I randomly pick four leave forms out of the stack. And the dude just grabs the leave forms and he walks out into formation. He goes, all right. So and so, so and so and so and so. Your first sergeant picked you to stay back from Christmas Exodus to do details here. Holy shit.

It was just stuff like that. And one day I signed 18 major minuses, you know, which for failure to inspect because cat eyes were crooked on rucksack. So while everybody in the company is sitting in the bleachers getting a class on how to do an ambush, I'm going through the rucksack formation, you know, where everybody's grounded their gear. And those cat eyes are fucked up. Those are jacked up here. Signed another major minus. Sign another major minus.

So I got 18 major minuses. And then at the end of the phase, I was like, there's no way I'm going on because you can't have one major minus. You're not going on. Right. At the end of the phase, I'm thinking, okay, well, I'm recycling Darby. This is going to be great. and they're like we're going to take a chance on you and send you to desert phase

and it was like okay awesome I'm having a great time so that that whole thing just kind of drug with me to the next phase and then recycled and you know whatever so it's life you know I mean it's amazing though that you

that you you kept your spirits up enough to five months later or I mean six or eight weeks later like go back and, like... Yeah, I think, too, it's like, that's survival. Yeah. It's like, I have to pass this school to be in the Ranger Regiment further than being a private.

Right. So it's the only thing I can do, like what, there are no other options. Yeah. You know. It's a one-way trip. Yeah. The other thing that I've talked to my son about is the other untangible, intangible parts of any selection process, timing and luck.

And you can't do any, no matter how much skill you have, if timing and luck don't line up and aren't on your side, you're not going to pass. Yeah. Yeah. And that was a huge thing. Yeah. I feel like it probably worked out for the better. I probably learned a lot more. I probably got to meet, you know, and I did get to meet a lot of other guys.

There's a one dude my second time through, he and I met in, we were in different platoons in B company. but we're still friends and still go down to Benning together all the time and go kick around the old barracks and do all that kind of stuff. But yeah. That's awesome. So how long had you been back from Ranger School

until you guys, until my good issue happened? So graduated, I should have graduated February 91. And then ended up, up I think by I was back in like March I think that summer

I went to Pre-Ranger so it was like in July went to Pre-Ranger and then started in maybe August and graduated in November so went straight through the second time and I didn't have any like zero issues the second time through was in a different company

and in fact the guy that was pulling all the shenanigans all me when I got there the guy that had been my platoon sergeant in a mb company like apologized he was like hey man we we were just having fun with you like we didn't think it was going to be this whole thing and you know whatever but went right through so graduated in november of 92 uh had torn cartilage in my knee and went you know all the way through with a jacked up knee got back got my knee scoped kind of recovered from that and that's about when we were going on the the the

the jerks in tex which is where we got uh you know sent to go do the train up for mogadishu from there so the timeline was pretty quick you know and how large because you had mentioned that one of the reasons you went to ranger school and then got sent back was because your platoon wasn't up to strength had they filled that out by the time like you guys were ready no We were still, you know, maybe I think five guys in my squad, five, six guys. And they had, you know, moved some people around from different platoons. But that was kind of across the board, you know.

The company went from, I think Panama had happened. And a lot of people saw that. There was a huge push from Desert Storm. So, you know, when I joined in 90, I joined in May of 90, we can't get you to basic training until November. That was like, there was no way they could get me there any faster. Don't tell them you did drugs. Right. You know, like you can't talk about any of the not taking you.

And the army was very selective. They almost didn't take me because I was allergic to milk when I was a kid. And that was this huge, like, waiver, had to go have doctors, write all kinds of notes and say, you know, it wasn't going to affect me, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I think the Desert Storm Push was where, so when I showed up to Rip, as an example, and Rip Holdover, we had bunk cots. I've never seen them before, and I've never seen them since. But we were in a four-man room. And so there's eight dudes in bunk beds, and then there were two bunk cots in the middle of the room and just jammed full. So we started with like 300, 300, whatever, and finish with like 70.

Wow. And that was my rip class. Wow. I've never heard about cuts before. Me either. Yeah. A ton of fun. I bet.

I bet. A ton of fun living out of a D bag. That's why I picked 375 to go. Because I was like, I don't feel like packing this D bag and moving anywhere else. Like I walk right over there. I can see the, 375 you know barracks So getting sent to 375 wasn't punishment for something you did?

No, no, no, no. Oh, interesting. So what was the workup to like, like, did you know what was going, was there, did you know what was going on in Mogadishu? Did, was there like this awareness in the country, in the military for you guys? No. Zero of that. I remember being a little kid and seeing something on 60 minutes.

This must have been in like the early 80s, maybe late 70s, and there was something about Somalia. And so I remember hearing and knowing kind of roughly where it was on the continent, but there was nothing, which sparked a lot of conversations about somebody in the Ranger Regiment knew more than, you know. And I found out a ton of interesting information. For example, first bat did a whole train up during the summer of 93 to go do that mission. But like that word never got to us at 175. And I don't even think that they knew that they were training up for something.

I think... I've heard weird stuff like that, like that they had guys training up for Haiti. And nobody understood what they were training up for until after. It almost happened. Yeah. Yeah. So interesting on that. I've also heard another story from a guy who was like Rip Cadre or Pre-Ranger Cadre, I think when I went through Rip.

But he was like, his name was kind of famous for being one of those guys, you know, legend dude, J.B. Spizo. And he told me a story about from 275 that they jumped into downtown Mogadishu did a show. of force, walk through the city, walked to the airfield, got on a plane, and flew away. What? In 1984. And it's true story. You can actually Google it and find it.

Holy shit. And I was like, mind blown when I heard that. Yeah. Like, you got to be kidding me. In 84. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, never knew it.

So anyway, to answer the question a little further, nobody had any we had no idea hadn't heard any of anything about anything at some point during the JRX and I think we were there like almost a month in total it may have been three weeks I don't remember exactly but at some point

leadership you know pulled all of us into the tent the command tent and was like all right here's the deal there's something going on we've been provided getting aid, you know, to this country and the warlords are fighting and they're stealing the aid and they're killing UN, you know, peacekeepers and there are some Americans that

have been killed and the president wants to potentially go do this thing. And so that was kind of it. Yeah. Just kind of like a, hey, there's something up and a couple of days went by. It could have been the next day. I don't remember. But it turned into, hey, we're going to go do this. and going to go do this train up and be prepared to go do it,

which still didn't mean we're going to go. Right. It's just more like, or we're going to be more prepared to go. Stand by to stand by. If the word comes. Yeah, and that's kind of the way it rolled out. That's interesting. So what was a train up like for Somalia?

I mean, did you have area experts come in? Was it mostly just everybody, you know, it was more like a like a training exercise in terms of like area non-dependent training or um yeah we didn't get any like detailed information i don't remember seeing a map of anything you know picking specific locations or any of that it was more like here's here's the thing and here's how we're going to go do this let's practice how we're going to go do this yeah and so we spent uh eight or 10 days at Fort Bragg practicing, you know, here's how we're going to go do this. We learned a lot of simple things like have a glow in the dark, you know, dry erase type of

device, you know, acetated, glow in the dark thing with a grease pencil so we could pass around notes in the helo, you know, and I like to remind people of just the difference in capability of back then. Right. Because everybody's seen, you know, the dude with the four tube nods and... You didn't have like holograms that you move around at the hands and like turn around. Yeah. Not even radios. Yeah.

You know, so just the ability to communicate amongst one another. We didn't even have that, you know. So we learned a lot of those and kind of worked out all the bugs on that, that type of thing. The actual how we went and did it was just kind of the same. It was repetitive. and it was just in different environments, in different conditions, in different, okay, now this happened. You know, we're going to bump an aircraft. Now you're going from this aircraft to that aircraft.

So combining of chalks and these guys are getting cut or, you know, whatever, that type of thing. So practicing contingencies and things like that. But, yeah, it wasn't. I'm sorry. We got basically, because we're Rangers and disciplined, we got to stay intense out on the other side of like Fort Bragg in the middle of the pine trees. Every night like humid as balls, thunderstorms like lightning clapping off all around you. And our d bags and rucksacks had to be stowed underneath our cots, you know, because we

didn't want to look fucked up. Right. So tent floods out like every night. So you've got your stuff like hanging up like a gypsy camp all over the place during the day while you're training, come back and have to like, you know, collect up all your things and make sure everything's dried out. It was like every day that was happening. So it was a win.

But we got to use the PX once. Ooh. It was super cool. I mean, you guys were spoiled, isn't it wild how they make the suck part of the experience? Right? Like we're going to stand out in the rain for like an hour and then you can put your

wet weather gear on air. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. Okay. Yeah. What now, you know, what was the mission for the Rangers,

the best light infantry in the world at the time, you know, as I think they liked to be known at the time. What was the mission in a UN environment like, you know, Somalia and Mogadishu? So I don't know, I'm not well read on the entirety of the operation. Okay. I don't mean Black Hawk down or, but just Unisom 2 was a separate portion of,

of whatever the name was for the UN mission or the U.S. involvement in the UN mission. So I don't remember what that was. Unisome 2, you know, was a separate thing. And, you know, our job there was just to provide security for the assault force. And, you know, that's what we did. Right. Whether it was vehicular kind of further out or closer to the target building or whatever.

but that was that was our job there right okay and then we did a lot of you know it never gets talked about but the number of missions that we actually did there that's why it was just about to ask seven or eight yeah um not to mention hey we need to bring this guy to the u.n compound so that he can have a high level meeting with so and so and we've got to provide security for that was like daily stuff you know things were going on so um you know we were doing a lot of driving through the city and a lot of cruising around and signature flights every night and things like that. So, you know, I think people think of that whole experience. We're there more than 60 days, I think about 65 days.

And we did a ton of stuff. What was that like in that era's Ranger Battalion, like a combat mission is a big deal in 1993? Yeah. So, you know, trying to explain those days to... It's difficult to... a generation of people that spent 22 years fighting in the GWAT. You know, it's kind of hard to convey that.

You know, most of the people that served in the 80s and 90s didn't see combat. Right. Like, probably the large majority didn't see anything. And, you know, if your company wasn't picked or your group wasn't picked or whatever it might be, you're not going to see any of that. Yeah, maybe. you got in on Panama, maybe you got to do a training pump down to, you know, Honduras or something like that. Yeah. So we, you know, we're fortunate enough to get that. And I remember we got, may have been our very first mission. We got in a pretty, pretty good gun fight. And we were in a

blocking position kind of facing outwards and it was kind of on a main drag and there was a stadium behind us which wasn't the stadium that we ended up in the notorious soccer stadium yeah it was where i deed gave all of his speeches and things like that and there were 12 guys that had come up behind us and there were these cinder block walls and they're like this is something i'll never forget the cinder block was like that decorative cinder block that it had like gaps and And these knuckleheads stuck their guns through there and some RPGs. They couldn't really traverse the weapons. So there was a hell of a lot of gunfire coming from there.

But anyway, we got in that. And afterwards, I remember having the conversation about, do you think we'll get CIBs for that? You know, if this is the best that happens, if this is the biggest gunfight we got in, are we going to get CIBs for that? Or is this just a combat scroll? Are we even going to get a combat scroll?

Are the guys that were flying around in helicopters? Are they going to get it? Right. You know, nobody really knew. And what I was told at some point later, and I can't remember by who, but somebody who must have had some information, the plan for us was it would have been combat scroll only up until October 3rd. So, you know, multiple gun fights and things like that, mortared, you know.

Interesting. And up until that point, it would have been combat scroll only. And I think that people, like, listening to this, people might not appreciate that in a peacetime military, having the combat scroll, having the, the CIB, like, they're really, it's, they're really big deals. Like, when you'd see, like, Grenada Rangers walking around or, you know, the guys from Panama with their scrolls, like, it's a big deal. So, of course, that's going to be the conversation that you guys have after a massive firefight. Yeah, it's so, I mean, like you said, man, it's so difficult to, like, explain what that culture must have been like prior to 9-11, right? And maybe we're somewhat going back to that now. I mean, I imagine there's a lot of guys out there who don't have CIDs and special ops units.

Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely interesting. But I remember, you know, one of the other things, it's like a state. stand out just of that event and kind of bigger picture. But getting back and, you know, the aftermath of everything. And it kind of being like, hey, we're all NCOs now. Like, we know what we need to do to train our guys properly. And we know what's important now because we've seen it firsthand.

And the mentality was, all right, good job. Glad you guys are back. You know, now you can get back to Real Ranger. Right. Make sure your boots are shined and all that stuff. And you think about like the professional jealousy, you know? So you're talking about one company. And when they talk about there was a platoon from another company that came over,

but it was like key people. It was like a platoon of medics, FOs, you know, maybe a handful of squad leaders, people like that. It wasn't an entire platoon. There were, you know, there were some guys there that got chopped. a way to do extra bodies on the C-Sar bird and things like that. But if you think about out of the entire Ranger Regiment and however many people that was at the time, there's 120 guys maybe that experienced this thing.

And it was kind of like, yeah, we don't really want to talk about that. Let's get back to the real stuff. The patrolling. You just need a road march and stand to. and, you know, all those kinds of things that, you know, we all laughed at from that point. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about, more on that, the aftermath, because I think, unless there's something that specifically you'd like to get into about the battle itself, I'd like to ask you sort of about the cultural impact that that had on the military and on the guys who were there and sort of how that changed. But like you talked about a little bit, some of it getting swept under the rug, too.

yeah i think that our company did a really good job of kind of getting rid of a lot of the dumb stuff and i'll give you an example um and this isn't necessarily like a tangible thing that had to do with our preparedness for war but in a way it does um our first sergeant you know if you were married you know had your family support group meeting and all that stuff and I remember my buddy who I went to Pre-Ranger with that I still communicate with and still hang out with down at Benning and stuff like that. At the very end of the meeting, you know, the First Sergeant is kind of wrapping things up and she's like, I have a question. Yes. First Sergeant, what exactly is the word and why is my husband waiting on it at 6.30 at night?

True story. He goes, you know what? It's a damn good question. And I'm going to do my best that if we got nothing going on, we're going to get people out of here and done for the day. And he held true to his word, you know. And that was kind of the first, the start of the culture being, you know what, there's no point in sitting here in the barracks

waiting for the platoon sergeant meeting to be completed. Right. down there drinking beers and whatever and we're just the privates are up here getting smoked and right you know there's no nothing of value happening at that point right and that started it and then the the leadership some of like the platoon leader that came in to replace my platoon leader at the time you know imagine what he's walking into here's a platoon of dudes that just did this thing and he was very respectful of the whole thing like you tell me what you guys you're guys think you need to do and I'll support it.

I'm like, wow, this is kind of like a change. Yeah. So I was in an interesting spot. I had told my chain of command prior to going to the JRX in Texas that, hey, I'm out of here. I want to go to the recon detachment. And the selection for that was actually in October of 93. So like, cool. After the JRX, when you get back, you can start your train up for that selection or whatever that

entailed it may have been like a week off or something i don't remember but uh anyway it was supposed to do that in october 93 and i don't think that they ran a selection course that that fall but anyway it was just a something i remember yeah so for people who might not know i mean let's talk about the word for a second what what was the word and uh and why were you waiting around for it the word is closely attached to the poop also yeah It's also the poop. Yeah. The poop, the word.

So the word, the word was basically, you know, the first sergeant is meeting with the platoon sergeants. And they're talking about training events. They're talking about, you know, probably big level stuff. And what that would translate to is squad, squad leaders, team leaders, privates, sitting around in the barracks waiting for the word to be returned, which was, hey, 06 first call, 630 PT. Right. So we would sit around for hours waiting for them to come and release us.

Yeah. And that's what it was, you know. So almost as much fun as training, training to time and not standard, right? Yeah. So for, because we didn't really talk about the battle much, but for people who, I mean, probably people, everybody's seen Blackhawk down and whatnot. Can you tell it from your experience, if it got things really. right if it got things really wrong um so i i can't say that i've like read the book okay and i don't think that there's any intent to that other than like i know what i did and talking

with my buddies in different platoons and in different groups it took us the better part of you know 18 months after the event to really be able to kind of piece together exactly what happened. There was no big hot wash. You know, hey, what happened? Nobody was a part of anything like that. I'm sure at other levels there were, you know, talking joint assault force, you know, security force, air assets. And I'm sure that there was some sort of hot wash at that level.

But we really never had anything. I'm not sure that there was. And there may not a thing, yeah. I know that there were from the air side, that there were some things that happened that they wanted to bring out. And it wasn't allowed to be brought out. You know, not my story to tell. But yeah, it was just kind of. So when I saw the movie, I recognized even before seeing it, I got invited to a private screening.

And Ridley Scott was there. Jerry Bruckheimer, Will Fickner, one of the actors, and Mark Bowden. And so to back that up further, I had gone to selection for a special mission unit in North Carolina,

and I had been selected right about the time that the whole Philadelphia online inquirer articles started being right. And I was waiting my wife at the time was due with our first child. And so they had told me, don't come up for the operator training course, wait until your son's born, daughter, whatever, and come up to the next one.

So I'm in like a four-month hold, more or less. And so the article start dropping, and people are all over this thing. And it's the talk of the town, because, you know, online stuff is new, and definitely people are weighing in that shouldn't be weighing in, and there were some unit people that were weighing in, and that was an issue and everything else. I got a call from Mark Bowden at my house

who had gotten my number from someone else that he had talked to, hey, I need to talk to you about a couple of critical moments that you're involved with. And I said, I would love to talk to you. But here's my situation and I don't want to do something and talk to someone that I'm not supposed to talk to and screw up this opportunity that I've got to go to where I want to go. Let me ask and find out if it's okay and then I'll get back with you. So I talk with the Usasak Public Affairs people and they said, absolutely do not talk with him. we're going to try and squash this whole thing. Don't talk with him.

Absolutely not. So I call him back. He calls me and I can't remember which. And I'd say, hey man, I would love to talk to you, but I got told no. So I'm sure that, okay, so peel back that onion a little further. Like, if that story, if that book, if that movie, was in the court of law, it would never uphold. Because it's largely hearsay.

I heard this guy did that. I heard from so-and-so that he was here and did these things. I think the timeline is very accurate. And I think that there are things that are kind of set in stone that there probably isn't a whole lot of debate. I recognize going to see the screening and before even thinking about going to see the screening and knowing that a movie was coming out

you can't make 120 people and have 120 characters in the movie they're going to distill this down to the bare essentials and smash them together a little bit so this guy does 50 things really that's an example of 50 different events that happened to 50 different people and combining it like I get all that

I also get that it's an 18-hour battle. We're compressing that into a 90-minute format. You know, I'm happy this story was told. I think that that's been an incredible thing. And just so that people know and that number of people that that touched, that Jason Everman, our third-party friend, he joined because of that. Right. Because of that event, that was the impetus for him joining.

Right. And how many other people, thousands and thousands of people to join the military because of that. You know, so I'm glad it was told accurate in terms of events and how it happened and how it played out and things like that. I think it's pretty accurate. Yeah. I don't think that it did justice to how barbaric it was and how up close and personal things were. That's, you know, the first thing that kind of stood out was. is all right, you know, getting a little anxiety watching this and they're getting rid of rolling

and you kind of know what's happening. I don't think that it accurately conveyed the absolute chaos that happened. And when I look back, 2023, me, can see the failures at just so many levels. 1993 Me, you know, hey man, we made it happen and it was great and we got through it and, you know, we kicked their ass and there are X amount of thousands of them dead and we only lost 18 and blah, blah, blah, and all of that. But when I see, you know, 2023 Me looks back and says, we had no contingency for what happens if the volume of gunfire is such that we can't communicate. Like, how do I tell my guys what we're doing when there's that much shit flying through the air and it's that loud? How do I convey that? Do we get inside a building and talk somewhere safe so that people know what's going on?

And that's not what happened. It was just everything running amok, having no idea. So as an example, first time I got out of the vehicle and I started engaging people, I think I'm at the target building. We're not even close to the target building. We fought our way to the target building. And then we got to the target building. My vehicle left and drove down the road. And I ended up having to singleton down to link up with the vehicle. I had no idea what was going on. It's not like, hey, here's what's going on. You know, we're going to go do this. When we went to go pick up Blackburn and Casey Joyce was killed right there when that happened.

Yeah, it's a Blackburn. It's a kid that fell out of the halo. We went to go pick him up. I had no idea. I thought we were ex-filling. Like, mission over, we're headed back. Right. So just to kind of convey the chaos and not having a radio,

not having any situational awareness to what was going on, what you're doing, nobody had a chance. It's not like we could even talk. You'd see people's lips moving and screaming and people yelling and stuff, but that was about it. So I don't know if the movie necessarily, you know, captured that. Yeah, the gravity of the situation. Right.

I've been in a lot of gunfight since. And I never felt like I felt there. Right. Just not even in the same. I mean, shit could be going sideways. A helo crash, a helo shot down, QRF is being called. All this stuff might be happening. And I'm like, yeah, we got this.

You know. totally different situation. This was completely different and unlike anything that I ever saw after that. Out there flapping. Yeah. Do you think, what do you,

this might be asking you to sort of guess and you might not want to guess. So, but why do you think that Usasak was trying to squash it? Was it a military thing that they didn't want people to know the details? Do you think they were getting pressure politically

because I don't think if I'll defend them in this and say it was kind of unprecedented, right? So if Panama happened, it's not like we had all this footage and their CNN right there and seeing people drag through the streets and all that. I don't think we had the same kind of connectivity and the internet developing years later and becoming a thing, allowed him to kind of piece together a lot of the book

and a lot of the story in a different way. I don't think that yousasak, if that's the approving authority of something, I don't think that they had any idea how to deal with something. There's no class in that, you know? I think much of that applies to this day

that they still have difficulties dealing with the media and don't understand and think like we can just, this will all just go away. This all just showed away. And if we apply enough pressure on someone, you know, maybe bring our, we have attorneys and maybe try and, you know, season to assist or whatever, you know, I don't even know. I'm, you know, speculating there. But I've talked with Mark Bowden since then.

And I was trying to put together for the 30th anniversary, which just happened. I was trying to put together I didn't want it to be a podcast but I was trying to put together a mechanism for how to tell some of these really incredible stories of not war stories but kind of other stuff that happened

that people aren't familiar with or know about and again some of them aren't really my story to tell but the only way that I felt like I could tell all these stories was through like a podcast because you could have different people on. You can kind of let the conversation evolve, not like a book where it's like,

here I'm writing about what this guy experienced or something like that. And anyway, kind of got everything lined up for that. I talked to Mark Bowden. Would he be interested in participating? He was absolutely yes. And really one of the things that I wanted to talk to him about

was the Hollywoodization of real people. So, you know, Matt Eversman being the main ranger character. Josh Hartnett's character, who did a really good job of portraying the guy, you know, like really did a great job of portraying him and kind of his mannerisms and everything else, you know, went out on the initial assault

and never went back out after the initial assault. And so imagine being Matt and being asked by everyone that knows that you were there, you know, hey, when this happened, well,

well, it wasn't really there. Right. Well, no, that really didn't, that was somebody else. Right.

That was, you know. Did they have to pay him life rights to use his name like that in the movie? No, I don't think so.

I mean, I got, my name got used in the movie and I didn't participate in any way as Brad Thomas. Yeah. Really?

Yeah. Well, the other thing, though, is that, you know, if people in the community, people who were there or whatever. Like, hey, you weren't there, motherfucker.

Yeah, exactly. But if they're like, hey, like, what did you tell Valdon that, like, you were there the whole time? He's like, I, like, I told him exactly what I did. Well, Bouton didn't make the movie, really Scott did. Yeah. Yeah. And adapted from the book and all of that. But it's just, from my perspective, how did he gather information?

Right. How many people did he talk to? Right. I was really curious as to how, what was his process? Right. When did he, you know, when did he find out, when did he know who he was going to use and, you know, who he wasn't going to use or any of that? Yeah. I thought that that would have been an interesting perspective to been able to tell that story. Yeah, for sure.

And then another part of it was going to be like kind of before. What was life in the Ranger Regiment like prior to 1993? Yeah. And you kind of can't really tell the story without going back in time a little bit and talking about, you know, the differences of how dumb we were and how nothing really made in any sense. And our PT program was horrible. And, you know, we talk about that now with some of the young kids that are in.

They're like, what? And I'm like, yeah, so check it out. If you fell out of the run, you did remedial PT in the afternoon after lunch. So imagine being in the state of breakdown. Right. And then, hey, you know, you couldn't run a six-minute mile. So we're going to do another run this afternoon. Right.

Yeah. And then tomorrow morning we're going to get up and run again. Yeah. Just every day, you know. So did this other ever, this series ever come about? No, it didn't. And there were a lot of really good stories. And there were a couple reasons it didn't.

One, like reliving that stuff. It's not like. It's tough for some guys. It puts me personally in a head space that's, it's not like I'm, walking around suicidal or anything like that it's just man it's not a fun subject you want to live it every day right and then have to talk about and then we discovered this thing and now we need to try and get this guy on and everything else um last summer so this all kind of conceptualized last summer ended up spending almost all of july and august in the studio recording an album and when that got

settled you know people don't understand the amount of work that goes into recording is one part of actually you know releasing an album you've got artwork you've got all the mixing all the mastering all of the hey we need a strip vocal version for this thing have all the social media stuff like it's it is a monster and I was so happy and like proud of the album and everything that we were doing and going through and it's like, I'm in this zone, like in this vibe. And the last thing I felt like doing was just like going back. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm like, man, let's, if we can put this off to summer 2023 and if we can release the first episode by like October, that'll be a win. And then it just turned into scheduling stuff. Yeah. I'm going all the time doing whatever. Yeah. You know, just couldn't get it done.

But really it was almost by choice. Yeah. Yeah. There were some really powerful stories. You know, I'm not going to name names. There was a, here's a full circle moment. There was a ranger squad leader who during the battle directed his squad to fire at what he thought were bad guys on the rooftop of a building, which weren't bad guys on the rooftop of a building. They were assaulters.

And that guy almost immediately. got sent home fired sent down the road so imagine being that guy and living through the trauma of that battle and the magnitude of that and being completely ostracized he was an import

which didn't help him right and I can't say whether he was a super likable guy didn't work with him didn't know him personally but imagine being that guy and overcoming all of the things that we all overcame as a tribe you know and I thought his story would just be incredible to tell

because he's got shame you know embarrassment guilt all of these things that are really the stuff like that's the stuff that fucks guys up it's not I did a horrific thing or I saw something bad or it's all those other things that are kind of rolled into it so I'm telling this story to one of the other people that was going to be involved. And one of the other people that was involved was like, man, I would love to talk to that guy because we had a fratricide incident on the very first operation. And the guy that was so vocal about what he did was the one that was cranking rounds off at Friendlies on our assault.

No, shit. Big smoke screen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you start, that's what I'm saying. It's like it's not, the intent wasn't for it to be, you know, here, relive your war story and tell your war story. It was really to be telling these stories. I know personally, another thing that kind of came up from the 30th happened a year prior. There was an awards upgrade that happened.

And I don't know if you guys heard about that. Okay. So somebody decided, and I've heard through the Grapevine, I don't know this to be true, that it had something to do with the wards that are given during a specific battle. If it hits a certain mark, then like anybody from the task force could be buried in Arlington or something. That could be totally wrong. So if you know the real story, hit me up on social media and let me know what the real story is. I'm trying to find it out. Anyway, we're going to upgrade all these people. And first of all, you know, I know military awards are about as jacked up as they could, you know, ever be. Right? What? But as an example, like, if you're at this level, this is the award that you got. If you're at this level, this is the award that you got.

I know a dude that got an ARCOM with a V device. True story. There's like, that's kind of like the private that was running around doing stuff in the street, dealing it. Okay. Deal in death. Yeah. And, okay, so imagine this. It's ridiculous.

You know, and this is kind of a sensitive subject, I think, to some degree. But if you're a casualty, doesn't mean that you automatically, like, a valorous award isn't what you're awarded for being killed in battle. You're given a purple heart. You're posthumously maybe promoted or things like that. But someone gets killed and they get a Bronze Star with V and here's private guy running. around for 18 hours laying it down and he gets an Rcom with V device. So anyway, the awards upgrade happens. And imagine being, you know, I'm a semi-public person.

Imagine people asking, hey, did you get upgraded? Did you get upgraded? No, man. No, I'm a shit bag. I didn't get upgraded. Like, I don't know how they picked who got upgraded, but 29 years after the battle, which was probably 28 years after the award ceremony, I'm still like feeling shame or embarrassment

by the award that I was given and that I wasn't upgraded. But these other people were. And I don't think that anybody looked at it that way. I think it was just like, hey, we're trying to write a wrong. We're trying to get people silver stars that got only bronze stars. We're trying to whatever.

I don't know the impetus or the intent, but I felt like at the time, and I didn't even know if I was getting upgraded or not, having conversations with some of my peers and was like, man, this is a bad thing. It's going to make and ruffle a lot of feathers for people that are getting things. Other people aren't getting things.

And it's more about the people that aren't getting things than it is the people that are getting things. So anyway, it's just, do you feel like that whole battle was somewhat like, I don't know, like the zeitgeist around? it was accentuated because of the intense, I don't want to say media scrutiny, but the intense amount of attention that that particular battle got, that it's something that became like Army legend, you know,

not just Ranger legend, but Army. Yeah, I don't know. Like I said, I think it was, I think it was an important, I think it was an important moment in our military history, and our first engagement with Al-Qaeda. We didn't know that at the time, but that was really our first kind of engagement with that. I think it was the first real example of the media being there

and having stuff. So as an example, we ended up at about 10 o'clock the next day. We end up in a stadium. We're kind of reconsolidating, reorganizing, and dead and wounded or being moved out and transported and things like that. We still have to drive back through the city to get back to the hangar. And I don't think we got back to the hangar until about 1 o'clock. So we get back to the hangar.

Everybody's taking their gear off, kind of doing a reunited thing with other guys that we haven't seen yet. And all of a sudden, in the back corner of the hangar, they had a TV. And, you know, we'd watch movies back there. And you got like 400 people task force trying to watch, you know, naked gun or something. that back there. So anyway, all of a sudden, everybody starts running back to the corner. And so we make our way over there. And the first thing we see is like, dudes getting drug around through the streets. So nobody knew. Like, nobody had a count. We didn't have accountability for people. So we didn't even know that there were people that weren't accounted for. In my mind, it's like, hey, we're,

we're back home. We got everybody. You guys got everybody. We're all back. And things are cool. We didn't know until I think it was three or four days later that Durant pops up on CNN and I don't think that they knew whether he was alive or dead. So just that in itself, you know, I guess kind of speaks to the chaos and yeah or how the media was involved with something where to watch CNN to find out what you've been to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things that I remember about that time is, you know like I would say that a lot of the military has you know like a lot of it or used to at least generally lean somewhat conservative so there would be this uh you know Republican Democrat thing but but there was a real there was a real split at that point in time

because people felt like you know where the government would not give them ACs you know because they didn't you know because they they didn't want to appear to be too like harsh they didn't want the imagery of American, you know, forces over there. So we, we don't have necessarily, you know, the soldiers didn't necessarily have the things that they really needed, you know, relying on Pakistani armor and, you know, and things like that. Sure. Because the Americans didn't have what they needed. Sure. I've had a few conversations about just like the political aspect of the whole operation. And there are people that are very

heated about that, you know, to this day. We'd had these things. No doubt. An AC130 flying around immediate game changer. I totally get it. We were there very covertly.

Yeah. To the point that people got haircuts to look like we were all just some Rangers coming over here to do, you know, like, it was a very kind of under the radar, not intending to be. So how can you go do that and then have all this shit flying around overhead,

you know, fast movers, naval gunfire, whatever you want to have? And so I look at it like we could have either gone and done it or the military could have said, here's our bottom line, and if we don't get this, we're not doing it. And maybe it would have never happened.

Right. I think it was an important mission. I think what we were there to do was an important mission as much as any GWAT mission could be. And all of the things that we ended up doing there. But I don't think politically, I don't think America was in a place or the landscape was in a place where like,

hey, hey, we're going to send over this thing and it's going to be this big offensive. We're going to do a war. We're invading. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was really under the radar. So I'm not, and I'm a very apolitical person. I try not to do anything political on social media.

I don't want to divide people, you know. But I can understand why we didn't have some of the things that maybe we would have normally. Yeah. And why that would be, you know, a risk. Yeah. And also, I don't want to speak out of turn, but there may have been someone like we, legal prohibitions about having aircraft with strafing capabilities, but we had AC130 historian on the show that would be a better person to talk about that than anything I know

about. Yeah, I mean, we're there, you know, we're in this country to hand out aid. Right. That's why we're there. Right. The aid starts getting stolen and they're killing people to get the aid and then they're, you know, black marketing it or they're, you know, doing. doing whatever, handing it out to only their tribe, whatever it is.

And, you know, so coming in with this big, here we are, you know, like I get it, you know, there are plenty of other things that we've done elsewhere that isn't, you know, this big march into the city. Right. Yeah. And after something goes really, really wrong. Of course, we look like assholes in the afternoon. Why are we even here like Benghazi?

Right. Right. Right. Let's talk a little bit about Ranger Recon. Okay. After that whole event, you came back, you had already kind of like committed yourself or voiced to your leadership that you were interested in going to the selection for this. Yeah, let me answer that and then I'll let you finish.

So I had told them, hey, I want to go to this. Selection was supposed to be October of 93. That didn't happen. And obviously, when we got back, my platoon definitely took the brunt of everything. And we're pretty much wiped out. the NCOs. I was soon to be, I would have promoted to E5 had I not said I want to go to selection for this thing. So I would have promoted that summer, June or July or whatever. They actually did a promotion board over there and I would have gone to that and gotten promoted. So anyway,

you know, hey, I'm pulling myself out. I'm going to go do this thing. When that happened and we got back, it was like, I would feel like an asshole if I said, hey, I'm leaving. I feel like I've got to help rebuild the platoon. I know what we need to do to be successful. I want to make sure that we get back up, you know, plused up as much as we can before I go and leave and do something else. So you've got me for like another 18 months, you know, something like that. And ended up spring of 95 is when I went to selection. But then I'll let you, I'll let you finish your question.

No, you're probably like, what was my question again? No, you're on the right track. So you want to stay around and make sure the platoon got back up on its feet before taking off. Like, I mean, just like, I don't know if you know the exact numbers, but like as far as casualties in your platoon. Yeah, pretty much every NCO. And then my last peer, with the exception of one guy, got hit by the mortar round that hit on the 6th of October.

And it killed a unit guy and wounded a bunch of folks. But we were standing out in front of the hangar and we were smoking cigarettes. And it's funny because I had met Wayne Downing there on the 6th. And Wayne told me to, so General Downing, Ranger Legend, 4-star General. I think he was the Subcom General at the time. I had met him that afternoon, and he was like, you know, Ranger Thomas, you need to quit smoking. And I was like, whatever. This was a jury Boykin that told you to stop smoking.

No, no. So General Downing tells me I need to stop smoking. And anyway, I'm out front, and it's evening or whatever. And me and a couple of dudes are standing out there having cigarettes. and a couple of dudes smoking cigars and stuff like that. And I take like two steps and like, hey, I'm going to go back inside and do whatever. I take like two steps and like this thing hits and the lights go out. And then you hear people screaming.

It was just like total chaos. And I think we thought like, okay, we're going to go back out into the city. I don't think we even knew what we were going to do or not do. But anyway, so my last kind of pier. got hit in the neck. Nick is jugular. But he came walking in and me and a buddy that came to my platoon and it's like a reinforcement that came over that day. He and I had been roommates like when I first got there and stuff like that. He got a D.Y and had been sent down the road. He had just come back and he was like, I'm supposed to be in B Company. Totally lied. Got on the plane saying that

you know somebody had told him he was supposed to go back to B Company. And he shows up there and was like, what's up? But anyway, a friend comes staggering in and he's like, he goes, I'm going to pass out. We're like, no, man, you're good. So break out the flashlight and kind of start working on him. And he goes unconscious. And it was kind of like, well, he's dead. I'm going to start.

And the brain kind of immediately started to move on. And anyway, that was a long, drawn out way to answer the question. But that was kind of like my last peer. and, you know, really after that, it was just slim pickings. There were dudes that were getting medically, you know, discharged. There were people that would never fully recover, you know, still in the process at some degree. You know, maybe my ankle's going to be good. Maybe my foot's going to be, whatever.

So, yeah, I don't know percentage. It seemed like all the privates were good to go. But gunners, everybody. You know, I think there were, so 120 people on the ground that day, I think it was something about that. And 77 Purple Hearts. Okay. So that's a good number. Yeah.

It was pretty significant. And then another, however many it came on the six when more people got hit with the mortar. So you stuck around for another year and a half or so and then went off to selection. Tell us about RRD selection at that time, 1995. Yeah, 95. So it was extremely basic, and I think they had been through different iterations. And I can't remember. I used to probably know more of what it was.

They used to go do this, and I don't remember now. But I know that I went through a very basic kind of selection for it. It was a PT test, a road march. There may have been, you know, one other physical type event. and then it was kind of like a board, you know, commander's board. And me and another buddy from my platoon both made it and got selected. So it was pretty basic. I don't think there were a lot of people trying out, though.

Do they still put you up in the mountains in the Lonega at that time? So that was something that once I got there, and this was kind of what the article was about. So at some point in 96, Colonel Izzynski, the sixth colonel of the Ranger Regiment, decided that there were some other people that were doing missions for the Rangers, then he didn't want that to happen. And he wanted Rangers to do Ranger stuff and probably being a little, you know, cryptic here. Anyway, he basically said, I want the recon detachment to be on par with other organizations. And whatever it takes to get there, I want some smart guys to help figure out what needs to be done to get this group to the 20th century. And we had things like Bosnia was, you know, happening. And so semi-permissive environment, not.

not combat operations per se. So he came down and talked to the regimental S2, and the regimental S2 came and talked to the detachment. And he said, I'm looking for a couple of smart guys that are senior that can figure out how to put together a training course, a selection process, and what it takes, you know, what we're looking for, trying to figure out what we're looking for. So I raised my hand. I had been there for maybe a year and it. That was 97. So I'd been there for about two years. It was like an assistant team leader.

And, you know, said, I want to be a part of that. I want to figure out what it takes to get us, you know, into the next generation. So I put together the selection process. And my buddy, Scott Sterling, who has died a few years ago of cancer. And he and another guy took on what has become the reconnaissance training course. So they put that together and I put selection together. And that's kind of how I came to be. For the square community out there, tell people what RRD is.

What, like, what did you guys do? What was the purpose of this unit? So I don't know, I mean, from the stuff that I did there, nothing of it is, you know, super opsec and, you know, secretive or anything else. But they're basically, you know, coming in and looking at things and figuring out atmospherics and doing all that kind of stuff so that the group that's coming in to do whatever is, you know, got a little bit of situational awareness about what they're getting into. That was a total bullshit answer, but thank you, Brad.

So let's talk a moment then. And there's also like a, there was at the time a bit of a stigma around RRD that I'd like to talk about because I think it was still lingering a bit even when I got to Ranger Regiment that you and I had talked about, that there is this idea that, you know, RRD got compromised on every training operation. And I think that kind of stuck with them for a little bit. It was kind of unfortunate, but could you talk a little bit about like why that came about? So when I got there as an example, the team would get utilized. Like my team supported Third Ranger Battalion.

So if there was a company that was doing a live fire operation out on Kilo-22 at Fort Benning, they would have my team go in and like, hey, you go figure out where our support by fire position would be. You go figure out where, you know, report in. weather, report in, whatever, all that kind of jazz. So we were really kind of being underutilized. And I lost track of where I was going with that. Where that the battalion and a lot of the Joes, you know, the guys felt that RRD was just always fucked up and always compromised.

So the point would be like you're sneaking around out there and you're trying not to get caught by either a fake enemy or a bunch of privates that have. been assigned with being op for for a target and they're being maybe a little overly aggressive because they want to try and bust find you yeah they want to try and bust someone uh so anyway what we were told there was here's where you want to push the envelope like you want to try and see what you can get away with and what you can't get away with because it's training and it doesn't really count see what's possible so you know you'd have an enemy situation as an example.

The enemy has roving patrols out to 700 meters out from the target area. But really these privates were going out like two kilometers, you know, and they're beating the brush looking for you. So here you are pushing the envelope and now you're getting rolled up by, you know, a couple of jackasses that are doing something that they weren't supposed to do anyway. It doesn't fit with the enemy situation and scenario and all of that stuff. So to your point, yeah, that was that was kind of like the bad blood. It was like those guys are always getting compromised.

Those guys are always getting rolled up on target. Those guys are always this. They're a bunch of cowboys. They're, you know, oh, look, now they've got long hair. Right. And, you know, all they do is. Which was the real issue? All they do is, all they do is jump.

Yeah. Right. Right. Right. And, you know, that's, that's another misnomer. It's like, strap a bunch of shit onto yourself and jump out of a plane at night into a tiny little fort bending drop zone from 24,000 feet. Yeah. And you want to talk about a gut check, you know? Yeah. Stepping off that ramp. Well, that's, I mean, that's the story. The story I'll tell that when I was a tab spec for in Ranger. Italian and RRD came and gave us like the absolute worst recruitment brief I had ever seen in my life. They're like, yeah, hey guys, you come to RRD and you can jump out of airplanes with an extra 800 pounds of gear in this bundle. And yeah, we jump with an extra 800 pounds.

You can free fall and do. And like, we're all looking at this like, yeah, no, no, no, absolutely not. No one was even remotely interested in this job, which is, again, it's unfortunate because there's a lot of stuff that that element does that's really interesting and good and yes well especially now like they but also at well this this was 2004 or five i mean this was they were doing some interesting stuff also at the time like i don't know how it is now but at the time the you probably had just internal sabotage to not internal to rd but but the idea in regiment is you either grow up and die in regiment you go to delta or you're

a shitbag. If you go to R.D., you're a shitbag. If you go to S.F., you're a shitbag. Actually, if you're on the line and you go to the sniper section, you're a shitbag. Like, if you're anything but an assaulter, you're a shitbag, you know? And the only acceptable place to go from Ranger Battalion is either, you know, Fort Living Room or Delta, where you're an assaulter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, very much a cultural, you know, a cultural thing. I, I, I was kind of expecting that to some degree when I left. And I think, like, I remember they gave me my going away plaque maybe a month early. And it was because it coincided with, like, the Ranger Ball.

And they're like, hey, man, we're going to give this thing to you here. So you got to be there. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I remember thinking that. And, you know, like, how am I being perceived? You know, is it I'm quitting? Right. You're quitting.

Yeah, yeah. And I think the camaraderie from having all been together in Mogadishu, it definitely wasn't viewed that way. That's great. Yeah. I didn't feel that way. They didn't make me feel that way. They gave me this huge Somalia-shaped plaque that has all kinds of like cool pictures on it and, you know, artifacts and stuff like that. So I didn't feel that way, but I know what you say is true.

Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Any other final thoughts about RRD before we move on? Like I said, in my mind, looking back at, you know, the scope of the whole career, it was definitely, you know, one of the best kept secrets in terms of the amount of satisfaction I got job satisfaction. You know, I know that they're way more versed and way more things now and probably way better trained and everything else. but at that time it was the only real place that you could be where it wasn't I'm a sergeant, you're a private, I'm going to yell at you until I get you to do what you should be doing

and things like that. And that just never really fit me. Yeah. I did it. I was a helion for, you know, probably two years. They're probably sorry. Sorry to people that maybe I crossed at some point. I won't mention his name, but I had this very humbling moment happen. And it was kind of like the shift from when I went from Helian to being like maybe an actual leader. And I had this kid who, you know the deal, man. When you see kids, you can kind of tell like not going to fit, going to fit, you know, need some work, needs whatever. and I had this kid and I was ruthless with him for about a week

and he was hanging in there and I was like, I'm going to change my tactic. And so I called him into my room and I'm like, all right, man, here's the deal. We can keep playing this game and I keep smoking in all of that or you can just quit. And, you know, there's no shame in that, whatever. And he goes, okay, Sergeant, I quit.

And I'm like, Like, that's all it took, you know, being nice to you and you're going to quit. And I said, why did you want to be here anyway? And he goes, well, my dad was a ranger in Vietnam. Yes. And I was like, fuck, man. Like, that was a deep moment for me. Yeah.

And realizing, like, I'm torturing this kid because I can. He probably needs it to some level. Yeah. and get pushed a little bit to see whether he's going to hang in there. But that was a moment where things kind of changed for me. Yeah. Like, all right. I need to get these kids squared away.

It's not my job to be a dick. They've already, they've already had that. I'm going to, I'm going to lead them, you know, and I'm going to be different. Yeah.

And that's, that was kind of a start point for that, for me. Yes. And how did it go from making that jump from RRD to J-Soc. So I mean, I joined the Army with the intent of, hey, I always want to end up. Telling your recruiter, day one.

Hey, man, get me there. They need me. Yeah, right. They don't know they need me yet, but they need me. Yeah, I mean, that was the intent. I think if there was any, if there was anything in recruiter's job isn't to, like, lay out your career progression and everything else. But I didn't understand.

Like my goal very quickly went from, I want to be in this unit that I view as the tip of the spear and most other people view that way. It went to, I need to survive. I need to survive here. If I can't make it here, I can't make it, you know. And so it became a survival thing. And then it's like, well, I'm actually thriving in this highly aggressive, highly competitive, physically and mentally challenging environment. Like I'm living and I'm going out boozing. You know, and it's like anybody can do this when you're not hung over.

You can do it when you're hung over. A whole different level. Anyway, then it kind of was like, okay, your goal is to get to Ranger School. I make it through that finally. Then, you know, once they realize they got you and you're going to stick around and get to combat, that was a whole separate thing. Then it was, hey, we're sending you to Jumpmaster. We're sending you to Sears School.

We're sending you to get you schooled out, get you promoted. and all of that stuff. So I recognized at that point, like, I need to make a step somewhere, and that was where the recon attachment kind of came in. But, you know, I didn't realize it was going to take me eight years to get to the place that I ultimately wanted to go. And so similarly, kids will hit me up on social media. Hey, I want to go here.

And it's like, man, just get in, prove yourself. Like that will come. Right. That's years down the road. Yeah. Like years down the road. And I think with probably the social media buzz and people seeing pictures of stuff, it's like that's, they think that they're, you know, going to be there. But ultimately, it takes a lot of sacrifice and a lot of time and a lot of, I mean, it's your life.

Yeah. For eight years, that was my life, you know, just to get in the door. Yeah. And so to answer your question, I always wanted to end up there. You know, that was kind of my plan. Even the recon thing was more about, and something maybe I learned about myself is I'm not good at just sitting in one thing, you know. Like I need to constantly challenge. I like to challenge myself.

I think that's when you grow. I think that, you know, that's when you learn the most about yourself. And so just being happy with being in the line company, it just wasn't doing it for me. That's not to say that it's not fine for somebody else, just for me. And the same thing happened to me later when I got to the place I wanted to be. It was, okay, I've been here for five years. How many more times can I go do this? How many more times can I?

It's a very cyclical lifestyle. And it got very boring and kind of stagnant. And, you know, that became a thing where it's like, okay, what do I do now? I've got 14, 15 years in, and it's five years to cross the finish line, but this is kind of getting old and all that stuff. What form did that take for you is like, you know, I understand whether it's like seizing airfields or clearing rooms or whatever the mission is. At a certain point, you gain like a certain level of proficiency. And from what you're telling me, it's like, I'm kind of ready to like move on to the next thing. Yeah. I think once you get to a point where you realize, like, whatever they throw at me, I can solve the problem. I can handle it. I can physically accomplish it or whatever. I don't know what it is, but I always feel like, you know, it's four years, five years, and I'm kind of ready for that next challenge.

Right. That's one of the things that I've been like with music. It's always a challenge. It's coming up with the next thing. The creative process. of writing something. Where does that come from? You know, and I put myself in like different mind frames for that versus something else. But yeah, I don't know. I just, that's just me, you know. I'm always looking for something else when I got to the unit. I remember seeing these guys that were like, he's been here 12 years. You know, he's been here 16 years. And you're like, wow, that's crazy. Like, legend. And, you know, that was right for them. But for me, not so much.

Yeah. You know, it was, all right, what's the next step? What's the next chapter? What am I going to do? How am I going to continue to challenge myself or find something or learn something new or do something different? So did you find something that was fulfilling in those last five years for you? Yeah, I ended up working like maybe the last four years, three and a half, four years. I ended up working like in the combat development R&D type.

of thing which you know was a great transition out of the military but that kind of gave me I don't know the ability to learn about how body armor is tested and how what a helmet how it needs to perform to do X Y and Z camouflage uniforms apparel gear all that kind of stuff so that was incredibly rewarding you know and fulfilling so I had a ton of fun with that Yeah. Did you, you know, did you have an opportunity then? Because here you are on the cutting edge and on the cutting edge of like R&D. And I imagine it's part of the procurement chain. Did you have an opportunity to see things that were in development or theoretical that may not even be in production yet, but stuff that's like, wow, if this ever like comes online, it's, it's a game changer. Yeah, and that was kind of like my role was to be able to see things and figure out how to apply that to something, you know, operational to solve a problem or a deficiency or a shortfall. Yeah. You know, so if a, if a military unit says, I lack the ability to be able to do X, the first thing that the military unit looks at is, can that be solved with training?

if not you know is it something that we need an item if it needs to be an item we're not defining what the item is and saying we need the x y and z brand thing that does you know whatever you're basically saying we need something that's going to enable us to get from here to here uh in a safe manner whatever yeah you're kind of writing a requirement for what the thing should be yeah and then you're throwing that to industry to see who can fill you know that void yeah that's kind of how that how that works now do you do you still like watch the industry in terms of like what people are creating what kind of new things are out there um to some degree and you know have developed a bunch of stuff myself yeah and with folks and you know that's been lucrative and and everything else so

I'm not in it so much as like, who's got a new boot? Right. I don't look down at that level. It's more like looking at capability gaps or, you know, missing pieces that's something that could, this would help. You know, this is a good idea because these guys are missing this one thing that would make their job easier or better, whatever it might be. Right. what do you and we've seen technology especially war fighting technology like changed so rapidly over the last years what to you as maybe as a futurist you know not with

you know current technology but as a futurist what do you think are like some really exciting emerging technologies right now for the war fighter um there's a lot of stuff that I've seen that I won't talk about uh that's probably the most exciting stuff. And yeah, not my place to say. You know, I will say that when, if you go to a show, like a soft week, which used to be Sophic down in Tampa, and it's kind of like Socom's Industry Day, more or less, if you go to that, it used to be, did you see that new Artarex jacket? Right. Did you see that new, you know, Merrill Boot, whatever? It used to be all about the gear. And now it's

all tech. Everything is about tech. I correlate that to the guys and gals being super happy with the stuff that they have. If the thing that's touching you every day sucks like you want to change it.

If the thing that's touching you every day is pretty good, you know, let's worry about other things. Well, I'm still happy with my woebe and my bear suit. Well, with my sleep life. You know, this This year it was like a lot of drones. It was a lot of technology.

There's a little bit of like Arctic warfare stuff. Yeah. That you definitely wouldn't have seen that stuff five, ten years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the world's changing and ever-evolving place. So, you know, there's all kinds of things. I feel like in the gear apparel world,

nothing is really going to significantly change until the battlefield changes. Like, that's about as mature. as it can be for the current, you know, landscape. And, you know, they've got everything dialed in, you know. Yeah. It's, we've been operating in one basic area. Yeah. For 22 years.

And the stuff that people have is good. Uh, the levels of ballistic protection and how tweak that is, you know, it's about as mature as you can get it. Stuff isn't getting any lighter, really, maybe a little bit here and there. But, um, there's no real. deepen technology because, you know, there really doesn't need to be. It's about as refined as it could be. Right.

So if you were to say, all right, we're going to now be fighting in the jungles of the Philippines and we need gear and uniforms and things like that that are going to sustain us there, I think, wow, okay, there's a whole lot of opportunity with that. But, yeah, tech is the big, that's the big thing. And you heard it here first, guys. Brad Thomas, expert in the field, says we're going to be fighting in the the jungles in the Philippine next. Insider knowledge.

Dee, make sure you clip that. I'm just kidding. But yeah, it's, it is interesting because, like, even looking at like cold weather gear, right? Like, you know, like the civilian market has always moved so much faster than the military.

But the military, and I think that, like, J-Soc, Unis and J-Soc had led that charge where, they were, you know, adapting, like, you know, whether it was like Rakely Blutes or, like, just, they were out there experimenting and had the budget and the procurement process to experiment.

Sure. Where, you know, I think, like, during the 90s, we were wearing cold weather gear, the same cold weather gear they were wearing in the Korean War. Yeah, probably. Yeah, or, you know, I get to the Ranger Battalion in 91, and I'm wearing a Vietnam-era web gear. I was a sawgunner in Mogadishu.

I had a LBE that had 5-5-6 mag pouches on it that because it was the Ranger SOP, R-R-SOP, I had to carry six magazines in my magazine pouches. For a weapon you didn't have. For a weapon that I wasn't even carrying. And then I'm slinging around like bandoliers of ammo. There was nothing to carry that stuff then. And now, if you see what these guys have now and the way they're carrying it and how smart it is, and they're like, well, you know, this could be a lot better.

You have no idea. I don't want to sound like I am, but I want to be like, back at my name. Use a compass. And that's what you end up sounding like. But their whole world is like, you know, they're trying to improve what they've got and make it better and everything else. Yeah. They've got really good stuff. Yeah, until we have like Star Wars Bloss.

lasters that don't require magazines at all. Like we've kind of gotten to the point where we've maximized it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to us about retirement and what you went on to the transition process. And then we'll talk about the music. Sure.

Music always gets the fucking very end, you know. Because we're following a time. It's a chronological order. Because we don't like this hippie artist. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. This is like, Communists.

Like, every, everything that I do media-wise, it's like always at the very end. It's like, talk about your story. I don't mean the short-changing. No,

not at all. It's like, that's when people are like, I'm done with the, I'm done with this. I was ready to retire. And I feel like for a large portion of people that separated from the military,

whether that was retirement, or whether that was being medically retired or ETSing after eight years or whatever it might be, I got to do it on my terms. And there's a huge difference in being able to do something on your terms and when that's taken from you. So I lose the lower half of my leg and I'm out. Man, it's like that's, I was still doing my, I'm still trying to do that thing. Right. I was ready to retire.

It was kind of like, all right, I've had a good run. I did a ton of cool stuff. I work with the best people. I, you know, a part of everything that you could be a part of and then some. And I'm just ready to move on and do something else. Plus you did the thing that you went in to see the Air Force recruiter to do in the first place. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Exactly. So, yeah, I was super satisfied, ready to, you know, move on and find another challenge. I recognized going into that process that I'm going to lose my identity. That thing that I sacrificed eight years to become this and then I spent another 12 years doing that. I recognized that's all going away. And so I knew it was coming. And it didn't make it necessarily any easier, but I kind of knew that it was coming. and the one thing I would say, and this is like a double-edged sword,

I never fully identified as just being an operator. I play guitar. I'm a dad. I was a husband. I'm a brother. I love doing these things. You know, all of those things were as much a part of who I was as being an operator. and when it came time to not being an operator anymore, it was kind of like I can fall on these other things that I have that are interests, it could be hobbies, it could be whatever. I started struggling, not personally, I started struggling with other people coming to me,

telling me how they were struggling. And it bothered me to the point that I assembled a small group of, of former guys like me was like how do we fix this fucking problem there's people that are you know full bird kernels who are telling me that they're ready to not be on the planet anymore because they're struggling with something so badly and people that i would never have dreamed you know confiding in me and maybe i was a person that was easy to talk to um or whatever the double-edged sword part of, I'll go backwards a second, the double-edged sword part of not

identifying solely as a commando is that you're not the best commando. And in a school of great white sharks, it doesn't sit well sometimes, you know? So, no,

I never claimed, nor will I ever claim to have been the world's best commando. I've seen tons of the world's best commandos be horrible fathers, be horrible husbands, be horrible friends, be horrible drinkers, whatever, you name it. So when I talk with young people about what they're getting ready or think that they are getting ready to do, I try and explain that to them that just being the world's greatest commando,

you may be a failure in everything else in your life. So, you know, that, it takes a toll. Yeah. So anyway, I got to the point maybe 2012, 2013, two years after retirement where, all right, people are confiding in me that they're struggling with stuff. There's nothing that exists to help them. You know, I didn't want to start a foundation. I didn't want to be like, my buddy killed himself. So I'm going to do this thing. I didn't want to do that. I don't want to ask people for money. And I would every week kind of question. and go out drinking, whatever. What do I need to do? So I assembled this like small group of dudes like me that retired from the same place. I'm like, how do we solve this problem? And started going and talking with the unit leadership about we should be leading to charge on this.

It's not your job to transition people out of the military. Your job is to kill and capture high value targets, to do whatever. That's your role. I get it. but you have a lot of resources and if there's a way we can go about doing stuff that's going to make people feel better about separating or retiring we should be able to figure that out and I kept you know talking with them about stuff and got even more frustrated because it just kind of that's not their job and they don't know you know it's I didn't join the army to be a you know

squadron commander and then yeah yeah yeah it's interesting like the perspective of the person who's like in it versus out of it and like you can be the unit sergeant major one day and the next day you're out of it and okay no one out on the street gives it shit about who you are what you did yeah killing people isn't a marketable job right yeah if you want a contract or you want to do that stuff you know have at it but yeah that's that's kind of the thing that I recognize and the frustrating part was realizing that there is much of a problem a much of a part of the problem as what the guy that's struggling is. The military leadership.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is, their job is to keep their unit operational and running. Yeah. So it's easier to ignore guys with noticeable problems because those guys, like you say, can be high performers on the job. It's just when you leave them home for eight weeks with nothing to do, where they fall apart. Sure. So I kind of got to a point where maybe by 2014, 2015, it just kind of felt like stuff was falling on deaf ears. A buddy of mine, Tom Spooner, who started Warrior's Heart. And at the time, it was kind of a very, you know, there wasn't a lot of social media presence. There wasn't a lot of how do we get people help.

How do we help raise funds to get people help? How do we, you know, do that kind of thing? and he and I didn't necessarily have a formal agreement on anything, but it was kind of like if I can help out in some way and get the word, you know, the service you're providing with the facility that you've got going, I want to do that for you. So yeah, okay, cool.

And anyway, our mutual friend, Jason Everman, this was 2017 now. So I'm still kind of floundering around trying to figure out exactly what I want to do. 2017 Jason and I he came into Manhattan we were going to see Mastodon

at a Hammerstein Ballroom and I think he knew Bill Kelleher from Mastodon and maybe was a roommate with him for a while and anyway as I'm driving into the city

the light bulb goes off and I was like I'm going to put together some kind of music something or other, and I'll take the proceeds of that, and I'll contribute it to organizations that are helping guys that need help. And I can at least be a presence in social media and things like that to kind of say, hey, if you do this, this is who it's contributing to, and this is how it's helping. So Jason and I meet up and we're hanging in the bar beforehand, and I said,

And for people that don't know who he is, he played guitar in Nirvana and bass in Soundgarden and then played guitar for another couple of years in mind funk before Mogadishu happened. And he got inspired in 94 to join the army. So, you know, was touching the scene pretty significantly. And he and I had been friends for a number of years. would meet up in New York and hang out from time to time. But the light bulb went up. I'm going to do this music thing. I'm going to see if Jason wants to be a part of it because that just makes sense.

And I'm literally getting ready to go see him in just a few minutes. And I'm going to ask him to see if he wants to do this. So we're at the bar and I said, you know, we're having conversation and everything else. Hey, man, I got this idea. I don't know what it's going to be. I have no idea, you know. It could be just me and you playing. guitars together like I have no idea what it's going to be you know what I know you've been out of

music for a long time I know that you left with a bad taste in your mouth you know would you want to be a part of this and he's like yeah absolutely hell yeah so within a week or two I started a social media page and was kind of trying to convey as much as you can through pictures and a few words that people will read here's what I'm trying to do and it just kind of grew organically. So that was in like May of 2017. I think by July, I have a Marsak officer. Hey man, I don't know what you got going on. I want to be a part of it. Like, do you play an instrument? I play bass. All right. Well, where do you live? Raleigh. Okay. I come down to Raleigh. We hang out. I was like, man, a list guy, like just awesome human being, a phenomenal bass player.

you know kindred spirit all of that stuff and it's like yeah man you're you're the right guy so it just started to grow doesn't jason play bass no so he he does guitar stuff okay and you guitar yeah so that grows to a point that by the fall uh a list producer hits me up on social media sends me a DM Hey man Love what you got going on I'd love the producer album And I'm like

Here's this guy Right So I Google him And I'm like Holy shit This is Beber's producer Uh Celine Dion

Bad Bunny Dulepa So it's pretty up there The biggest Yeah The biggest So then I don't even know

Who the artists are That's like Who's this bad bunny guy? And I I look that up, it's like 498 cabillion, like, holy crap. So I tell him, tell him a straight up line. Sorry, James. Straight up line, man.

Yeah, we're ready to go. We've got three people in the mail. We're ready to go. And he's like, okay, my schedule, I've got like about a two-week gap in here in January. If you guys can get out to L.A., I'll book studio time. I'll find a place. we'll get a discounted rate. I'll do all this, you know, pro bono kind of deal.

And, man, we pulled it together, pulled it out of our ass, you know, and got it across. So who's the band at that point? So the band was a guy Brandon on drums and who you probably know. Brandon on drums, Jason playing some guitar stuff. So Jason has always been. and you know Jason, Jason is Jason. He's as unplugged as anybody could possibly be. He's always been like a fringe type of member.

So he adds things to the writing. He adds things in the studio and these little nuanced things that make a huge difference in a song, but you wouldn't know it. Like if you just listen to the song, the meat and potatoes is there. He'll just add a little flavor to it. Tyson on bass.

and Fred, who was an active duty E-9 in the Air Force, and he's our singer. So that's where we are in the fall. And we have four rehearsals together. Four. We literally joke about this. We're like, we recorded the first album with about 16 hours of total playtime together. That's crazy.

As a complete set, you know. So, yeah, we get to L.A. and we didn't even have enough material. We had about 12 songs. We recorded 8. We recorded 10 and we recorded that down to 8. But we didn't even know like what's our sound? Right.

That's our vibe. Until you start to kind of like these four songs go together. Right. These three kind of don't go. So we got to a point where we cut it to the stuff that we felt like fit together. once we got that first album done it's like now i know our sound i know what we are now it's very easy for me to write more stuff of that vibe right genre because now i know what we are but man it was like pulling teeth to get that thing done so outside of barry manelow who i love by the way outside of

barry manelow who were your other influences like growing up so my folks got i grew up in suburban Maryland, north side of D.C. like Bethesda. And my folks took me to, me and my sister to like a summer concert series at Mary Weather Post Pavilion. And I saw like as a very little kid, saw Chicago,

the Beach Boys, another guy, Mac Davis, who was kind of like a country guy. There was one or two others. And I saw that stuff and it was like, this is, you know, this is what I want to do. When I look back, and I had, it's funny because I had a guy asked me the other day through the DM, and he's like, do you feel like you missed out on a career in music and spent it, you know, 20 years in the military and you really should have been doing a career in

music and I was like absolutely not. I didn't have the depth back then to actually write anything worth a damn. There are a lot of people that are struggling with a lot of trauma and stuff that are really talented people and that all comes from somewhere.

And in a way it's like I had to go to the army to get trauma. Right. Get traumatized. To be able to write. I had a very accomplished musician once told me that you know today's generation are they've gone to these music schools

they've gone to art schools and they're incredibly talented at playing their instruments but the issue is they don't have quite the emotional maturity that they haven't really lived life yeah so people send me the you know here's this like nine year old kid on the guitar just ripping it up

and it's like okay cool write a song you know I've always identified with musical influences is I've always identified with the people that wrote songs. And there are different, you know, kind of camps that I subscribe to and like. But I look at a guy like Jerry Cantrell from Allison Shains, and he's not the most pyrotechnic guy on the guitar. But, man, can he wrote a song that fucking hits you?

Yeah. Well, I mean, in the gut. You mentioned Mac Davis. I haven't heard that name for years, but years. But he had, like, he was, I mean, he had some great songs that he wrote that other people performed. and phenomenal. Yeah. Songwriter is another thing.

Performer is another thing. So where did silence and light come from? Where did the name come from? So the name, it was something that Tyson threw out to me, a bass player, Marsok officer. He was like, I'm going to send you a picture. Sends me a picture. And I'm looking at it.

And it was like the valley floor in Afghanistan, probably circa 2015, 2016, something like that. And he's like, this was always the most surreal photo because it's like so serene and beautiful, but like the stuff that's out there is deadly. You know? And he goes, it reminds me of this poem called

In Between the Silence and the Light. And so we started talking about the poem. Then he sent me the poem and I started reading that. And I don't know how it came to be, but we just were kind of like, what about silence and light? And we Google it. And the only thing you could find was like maybe three Google entries about in between the silence and the light. And that was about it. And anyway, so that's where it came from. It really didn't have any significant meaning. I liked it from the perspective that, like, I don't want to be like,

war machine, you know? Right. It's like so overdone. like a name that makes you think of something like what does this mean to you right and people will say like to me it means this and i don't know what it means it just i wanted to be something that it's thought provoking yeah like what does it mean to you i don't know yeah it can mean anything oh it's like it's like the silence before the bomb flash goes up like no it's not bad it's not bad but um yeah that's where it came from though yeah And then in terms of like your band, like we've talked about your musical influences a lot, but in terms of your band, is there sort of a musical influence or musical influences that your band sort of draws from?

So I write all the music. I do some of the lyrics. And usually it's more about like, this is the vibe of the song. This is kind of what I was thinking it could be about. I don't want to put words in Fred's mouth or make him write or sing words that he's not good at singing. And so there's a lot of, you know, define who writes a song. Like, everybody's adding their own stuff. But it's kind of got to be in a box.

Right. You know, it's like you can't come in with some wicked tool drumbeat and it fit with something that's meant to be jangly nutshell kind of guitar. You know what I mean? it's got to work together. So we've done a very good job of speaking the same language and saying, this is kind of what I'm feeling. People kind of know we're talented enough to kind of know what to put into something to make it sound right. And then we just start tweaking it.

And then usually, I think like most bands, you put something down in the studio. That's not the way we rehearsed it a thousand times or played it or played it live even. And then you have to learn how you played it on the album. Right. Because you're like, wait, we tweaked that one part and we did this and changed this. And then you hear it and it comes out and you're like, man, I've been playing that wrong. But yeah, that's kind of how it comes to be. But like with this last album that released in June, it specifically came from a place in me.

And I had been doing a lot of traveling down to Benning and hanging out with friends and stuff like that. there hanging out with current ranger buddies and stuff like that and it's a weird place i spent eight years there and it was like the soundtrack of my life when i was there with stone temple pilots and nirvana and all of that stuff from that era sound garden and i didn't realize what an impact it made on me maybe not as a guitar player but just as a human, the first time I heard smells like teen spirit

was low crawling down the hallway you know, in the Ranger Barracks and hearing that song and it was like evil and you know, my team leader's cranking it and wow, holy shit.

And there was also this thing where life was very uncertain back then. Like you didn't know if you were going to be there. I'm like, will I make it through tomorrow? Yeah, yeah. Am I going to be here in three months?

The guy that I was roommates with that said that he would never quit just jacked it in this morning. And he's packing his bags and moving down to the RFX RFS platoon and he's gone. And it was just a revolving door of people.

Guys getting hurt on jumps. This guy's getting shoulder surgery and that he's out of the army, you know? And I didn't realize what an impact it had on me. But this album is really, part of me wanted to call it 1991 because

it really comes from there, man. Like every sound that you hear is something that was from that era. And it's not a, it's not, what do they call it? A concept album. It's not that. But it kind of is. It's kind of turned into that a little bit. Or it's like a little bit of everything that really affected me and made an impression.

I mean, people will have to ultimately go and like listen to the album to understand. what it is, but like, yeah, I mean, I hate to even put you on the spot to ask you, but like, what is that emotion? What is that place that that came from? Well, I mean, I think I just explained it to some degree. It was like uncertainty and despair and also hope and aggression and, like, all of those, every emotion that you could tap into at the time, you know, hey, you guys need to fight. hey one of our privates just got you know snatched down a weapons boot you got to go rescue it you know it's all of that stuff you know it's the driving around in and around fort benning on roads that i've driven thousands of times and feeling so completely removed from it because it's 30 years later

yeah 26 years later or whatever it might be it's kind of all of that stuff yeah and so it really was like this kind of man very accurate soundtrack of like all of my feelings and emotions of that time and you know what does tomorrow bring i don't know but i'm i'm gonna keep going at it machine gun in it yeah so um you know you buy their albumist you also listen on spotify silence and the light if you don't you're not an american i'm just going to put that out there you hate the troops you hate you hate you hate america um listen it's great music i mean i i i enjoy Yeah, you're basically, if you have Apple Music, like, first of all, it's on every platform that anything that you'll get, you know, we have CDs, we've got, so there are people that still have a CD player in their truck and they don't have the ability to connect. If we're old school, where should we go to get the CDs?

On our website. Yeah. So, I mean, if you Google Silence and Light or you Google me, you're going to find everything that you need to do. You can also get bomb-ass swag and T-shirts on their website. The links will be done. the description of this video by the way. But I want to say this and like there are a couple of things in it there's

this is almost like the sound bite that goes in front of this whole thing but sure the reason I'm doing what I'm doing and the reason that I started it was because I wanted to be you know the old adage of like Rangers lead the way

and lead by example. It really is I've lived all the stuff that anybody else can say that they've lived. And if I can figure out a way to do something that's healthy and positive and creative and gives back to the community that I love, if I can figure out a way to do it, anybody can do it. Just figure out what it is and, you know, and follow that dream. So I put myself out there to say that. It's not I want to be a rock star riding around in limos or anything

else is to say I'm a real person. I lived all these things. I did all these things. And if I can do it, no matter what you face or what stuff is out there rattling around in your brain, if I can do it, you can do it. The music, like if you buy an album, great. It's just more royalty that we're contributing to places like Warriors Heart, places like Marine Raider Foundation that do a lot of good stuff for for a lot of people. If you stream it, you're still contributing. So like, there's no reason why

everybody can't get on to Spotify or Apple Music or Google Play or YouTube or it's on every platform you'd normally get music. So, anyway, we're taking all those royalties and we're contributing those to

not knowing how like the Spotify, Google Play, things like that, Apple royalties work. It is Is it more beneficial for, I mean, is it more beneficial of people like buy an album? Is it more beneficial? Get the CD. Get the CD. Don't be a pussy.

Get the CD. The plan is to do some vinyl here soon too. But, no, it's more lucrative. Royalties are more lucrative with purchases than they are with streams. Streaming, you have to hit a certain mark before it becomes actually like Metallica. lucrative.

Popper Roach, lucrative. We could probably name artists, and at some point, it's like, it's pennies, you know? So if we sell a song for 99 cents, Apple is taken 30 cents of that. The, forget what the name is called, but the service that we use that does all the upload, basically codifies everything, and it puts a GPC code on it. and that's how music is bought and everything else is gpc code we get

once a song is done we end up with about 63 cents if you buy it if you stream it you know who knows we got to be in the thousands we're like broaching a million streams on stuff so yeah buy it done so buy it buy it buy it if you don't want to buy it stream it and we made a decision way long ago

we were like let's just sell CDs yeah and we're like I'd rather people just have access to the music. Yeah. And it's connected with a lot of people. There's two albums worth of really good stuff. It's only getting better. We'll be doing another EP here in a few months.

So now it's just like a three or four song thing. So this is what I recommend in order to help the causes. Buy it. Is buy it. Buy it. But don't listen to the CD or don't listen to it to what you buy. Get a hard copy. Listen to it on Spotify.

so that it adds up every time. So buy it and then stream it. Every little bit helps. Yeah, absolutely. The other thing is, you know, recording albums isn't cheap. Mixing, mastering, you know, you're talking about mastering a song is about $1,000 a song. So just mastering that album, which makes it the same, whether you listen to it on a device, or you listen to it in your headphones or you listen to it in your car.

That's the thing that kind of makes everything sound okay and no matter what platform. Just that in itself is about $1,000 a song. So we have 12 tunes on this album. That's 12 G's just in mastering. Mixing maybe about the same studio time, hotels, food, all of that stuff is incredibly expensive. So if people buy merchandise, that's a, one of the ways that we can help recoup and not even recoup. It's more like start to sort of offset. We've just kind of gotten to the point where it's like starting to pay for

itself. You know, and I view that as success from the beginning of like if we can make enough selling merchandise, you know, we play a show. We sell like $800 a merchant. Like, okay, it starts to kind of help to offset some of those costs. But that's the way. If you want to contribute and help the band, that's one of the ways you can directly contribute. is buying merchandise. I mean, you said that there's maybe an EP coming in the near future, but what do you see is the future for the band? Definitely going to be playing a bunch of shows.

So we've got one next week in Virginia Beach. We've got, I think, two or three lined up in Wilmington, Raleigh. But our goal is really to be like, we don't want to, it was a nice screen that's just life around this thing we don't we don't want to you know get in a van

and drive up and down the east coast playing for seven people on a Thursday night right like that's now we do a lot of special events and I've done a lot of one-off shows and things like that with different folks our first show

was playing with Lenny Kravitz in front of about 5,000 people so was that the instantly it was kind of like boom yeah yeah yeah yeah so we did that and we've done that I think three times

play with Third Eye Blind, play with Old Dominion. We did like just an unplugged kind of acoustic set because we're like, they're country, we're not. We don't want to come out and be banging all over everything. So, yeah, but 2024 should be a lot of shows. And our goal is really to kind of get in and be like the act that opens for the Melvins

when the Melvons play in Raleigh downtown in front of 2,000 people. We can bring in 100 extra people or something. You know, that's kind of. where we want to be. And for people who are not watching this, so the information for...

In audio, okay. Questions for Brad. Yeah. There are many questions. There are many questions. Hopefully there's not just like one. No, no, no. No, no, there's much.

Many. So check out silence. We will tax you, Brad. It's fun. Silence and white music.com to buy the CD to buy the swag I've got my swag and I'm buying more you have a really cool t-shirt that was out of stock

when I went to order it last time it's back on now is it okay so the issue with that was the screen printing this is one of the things you learn about a band is business man it's like no everything like this is silence on the music incorporated yeah it's got to have like am I paying taxes on the money that's coming in who's paying taxes on them you have to figure out

every aspect of this. Who's doing the design for the artwork? Where is this coming from? What font are we using for this video? I've got of that same questions about this podcast. I think Dimitri should be paying taxes on this podcast. You guys should hook up with Invader Girl for some of your swag.

Yeah, we've done... I hooked up with her like four years ago. Oh, did you really? Have you seen this? Yeah. Yeah, she's rad, man. Yeah, yeah. I started promoting her stuff all over the place. She's so amazing. Probably like four or five years ago. We're super happy to have an original work of hers here in the studio. Did you guys?

Go ahead. Please. I've got a print that she did. I kind of gave her some guidance on it, and she did one that was fucking amazing. That's awesome. Have you guys done any swag with her yet? No. Let me know when you do, because I'm all about it.

Okay. So, all right. What is this? Baker Hitch, thank you very much. Would you let Andrew Tate on your soft hand? You're going to have to ask the other Jack Murphy about that question. I am the reporter Jack Murphy, not the masculinity expert Jack Murphy. So look, I'm the real giga-chad.

That guy is just a fraud, but you're going to have to go in and talk to him about Andrew Tate. I can't answer that. And I don't think Brad can either. Yeah. I don't know who he is. Good for you. You're a better man for it. Alejandro Ranger 275.

Thanks very much. When you got to the unit, were you disappointed by the lack of dirt bikes with rockets, like the Chuck Norris movies? Got to ask the real questions. No, definitely not disappointed. Yeah, definitely not disappointed. He was there.

He was there to greet me. Chuck gave you the like, you son of a bitch. It's funny because I never I never saw that movie before you know I think at some point in like the Rangers I saw it but I never saw it

before joined in the military and to be honest I don't know where when I told a recruiter that's what I wanted to do I don't even like where did that where did you know that yeah because it wasn't definitely wasn't a thing when I think of a secret unit that has

motorcycles with rockets I don't think firemen I think mega force with the flying motorcycles but that's way before your time that's way before my time do you remember megaphors yeah yeah I do remember Chuck with a dirt bike and like firing

these like mini rockets off of these dirt bikes and there's like huge like gasoline explosion super lightweight technical yeah yeah also Alejandro 20075 thank you Geardo question I saw that you play orange amps

what made you choose them over others what guitars and effects are you running. Thanks for coming on, dude. That's a lot. Let's see. So orange are no longer. I haven't been playing those for a few years. So there's probably like some Google images and stuff like that that have those. But I'm currently playing Bogner's and I probably won't switch or deviate from those. It's like the first amp that I've found that has like an amazing clean and dirty channel. and it also, I had some Friedman JJs, which this guy will probably know what those are,

but it sounded like I felt like I sounded like somebody else. And the Bogners are the first amps that I played that are like, it feels like it sounds like me. In terms of effects, I'm pretty like basic. So I've got some stuff that I'll use to color stuff, but mainly that's just for live shit. I've got a bunch of vintage, pedals that I'll use in the studio, but they're not, they're not like roadworthy.

Like I'm not going to step on those half lit on a stage jumping around. Like it'll break them. So I'll use them in the studio and then I've got like rugged eyes boss stuff that I'll use like on my pedal board for live stuff. In terms of guitars, I'm kind of all in on on fender strats and I modify all those or I buy custom shop models, and they all have the same pickup in them, like a Motor City, Affoyu.

I use basically all, they all sound the same. And then I've got other stuff that, like I've fined the guitar heard considerably, but I've got other stuff that I'll use to record telecasters or Gibson Les Paul specials or, you know, stuff like that. But as far as just playing in the comfortability, like I'm definitely a Fender Strat-ish guy.

If you had an unlimited budget, has there been like a guitar that's come up for auction or that's been sold that you would have been like, that's it? The only one that so interestingly, I think David Gilmore's Black Strat sold for like $3.4 million at auction. No big deal. Yeah, no big whoop. Jimmy Hendricks's Star Spangled Banner, Woodstock Strat, would be the one that I would want. That would be the one. And I would play the fuck out of it. It's not staying in.

Really? Yeah. There's no way I'm letting that thing sit in a case. And I think the people that buy those are investors. Yeah. They're not. They're just looking for it to. Which, this is kind of like a crazy sidebar.

And I don't know like what our time is here. We're getting, but I'm a blabber. Whatever the fuck. Yeah, we're getting. You're like there's eight people watching. So. No, there's. I had this argument.

It's always a band argument with like, how long is David Gilmore's strap worth $3.4 million. Like, at some point, nobody cares about David Gilmore because our pop culture isn't feeding that machine anymore. Nobody's listening to that. So is it kind of like, then they'll bring up the counterpoint is like, well, I'm sure if Beethoven's piano bench was for sale that it would fetch a lot of money. Well, like, sure, but is Beethoven correlate to David Gilmore or is that just only have value

now while there are people that are rich from that era that can support investing in and buying that i just can't think of another instrument where it'd be like uh pick your guy you know who yeah i mean but but it's it's but of every generation they're going to be like officinados and of those aficionados and also and i was going to say of those officinados some get rich but it's also that some rich people as they're like what do I spend my money on sort of develop

taste too I mean like Superman number one went for $5.3 million right and it's not it's not that there are a ton of people that are crazy about Superman

like they know it from the movies but you have to be somebody who one has the money and two wants to collect I guess you know and yeah willing to spend above what somebody else is willing to spend something you want it. Absolutely.

So that it's in your house. Yeah. Yeah. I totally get it. I just feel like there's a time limit on the value of something like David Gilmore. Right. Kirk Cobain's acoustic guitar that he played the unplug show with and his cardigan that he wore during it.

And there was like something else that sold for like $7 million. You know? And again, it's like, okay, if you're a person that has that kind of, of income, cool. Sure. And you're a fan. Sure. But I don't know if that'll still be as notable in 20 years because the music probably

isn't going to be around the same way and will have moved on. Right. Generations by then, you know. But there will also always be like there are cycles too. And there are always people like Kirkobain Prince, like they're, I don't think they're stuff. They will always have a follow. no matter how

what generation and people you know people in that generation someone will have money and to think that I'm the person of my generation you know when I'm 80 my kids and grandkids

may not care about this yeah right yeah Jackson thank you very much what was the difference in culture like between the squadrons during your time in the unit

that's like anywhere in the military. Like, third platoon sucks. First platoon's the best. You know, it's just, it's always different. So what I've noticed in terms of culture between different organizations is like, it comes down to

like how small do you want to reduce it, you know? When we had Ranger Rendezvous every year or every two years, it'd be like 375 is the best. But once you guys left, it'd be like, well, be coming.

company is better than A and C. And then in B company, it's like, well, third platoon's the platoon to be in. And then, well, in third platoon, second third and weapon squad suck. So first squad is, you know what I mean? Everything is a competition. Yeah. It's just wickers it down. Yeah.

And you have nicknames. Like you make up nicknames for the other companies for the platoon. Like, yeah. Hate all the way around. Yeah. Unless, you know, it's just everybody's got a band together. But it's good to have a nemesis. like that kind of competition keeps you sharp.

Absolutely. Alejandro, thank you very much, buddy. Same question I got Pat Mac. What bands are you listening to and have on your playlist? Good question. What bands up and coming should people be on the lookout for? Let's see. So I'm in the middle of doing a lot of writing.

And when I do a lot of writing, I try not to listen to stuff that I feel like is going to color. my palette. Uh-huh. So I would love to be listening to certain things like Allison Chains and, uh, STP is probably, like that's my,

been my go-to for a number of years. And I feel like, I like stuff that's diverse. I like stuff that the guitar on this song doesn't sound the same as the guitar on that song. And there's an acoustic song. This one's got acoustic and electric and everything is a little different. Uh, bands like Aerosmith did that, you know,

not every song sounds exactly the same kill them all you know metallic's first album same guitar same settings same sound every song and it works for that acdc same kind of thing um so i like i like stuff that's a little more diverse um song to song on an album um but i am listening currently to a ton of 70s, like not even, I guess it would be like pop, 70s pop. And when I'm not listening to that, I'm listening to a new wave. And I was a fan of that stuff when it came out back in the early 80s, but it doesn't color, you know, when I pick up a guitar and start jamming a heavy riff, and it's not like, well, that was kind of like, love hey love you know or that was kind of like this and it keeps me away from that so you're not

adding a synthesizer to your name no no no what no synthesizer no keyboards yeah they're like silence and lights third album had keyboards yeah how tough is that as a musician because you know one of things you say is it you like switching it up where not every song you know where it's not the same guitar it's not the same sound but also like some of the fans it's like this is nothing like their other stuff like i like this sound of silence and light not you know it's interesting so like releasing this album and now because we have multiples on like we're verified artists on all the platforms we can see all of our analytics and everything else and our first album is actually streaming better than our second album although our second album is by far better

in terms of maturity in terms of everything. It sounds better. It just, it's way more, but where it falls. So it's like, when you go to our page,

the first one that pops up is the old album. And it's like, we're getting more streams on older songs and we're getting on newer songs. Not because they're not good. I don't think it's because people

don't like them. There's such a difference. There is a change from like, from one to two and the stuff that I'm writing for three, like I've already got eight songs pretty much done probably eight ten songs pretty much done we just want to do like a three song EP just to throw something out we also have a goal to like legit old school record meaning to tape live tracking

just like Zeppelin did just like everybody else did we we almost we did that on some stuff on this second album and we also took took all of our Pro Tools, digital recordings, and kind of came up with the idea of like running those to a tape machine and then bouncing them back. That's really cool. So it gave it like the analog warmth. Yeah. Tape affects the way stuff sounds.

So if you listen to Angus Young's guitar live, it does not sound like it sounds on the album. It gets compressed on the tape, which makes it sound a little heavier, which makes it sound a little more distorted, like all that stuff. It's super geeky, but we want to live track all of our scratch tracks, and then we'll overdub stuff and things like that, but then then bounce it to Pro Tools. And then we can kind of do the cut and paste and scalpling.

Like this kick drum is a little off. It's a millisecond fast or whatever. That's the genius of Pro Tools is like the second verse, you fucked up all the way through. We're just going to copy and paste the third verse and drop it in. It's literally, it's just like, That's the way stuff is recorded now. Yeah.

And it's all in a grid. And it's like very, the music doesn't change. The beat doesn't change. It's like everything's like a machine. So that's that whole feel thing. Yeah. So this album, none of it's on a grid. Like it's very much, you know, live.

That's very cool. Yeah. Jackson, thank you very much. Did you enjoy selection and OTC? What was your most favorite moment? Love that. Every moment of it. Looking back.

What was your most favorite moment looking? back on your time during the training process? Let's see, without fully answering the question because I don't think that I really can. Selection, I had a blast. And again, there's a tangible selection and there's an intangible selection. And timing and luck are as much of a factor as any skill. And I think when we live those things, we tend to say it's me, it's skill. I did this.

I made it happen, right? That's exactly. That's what boosts our confidence and everything else. Looking back, it's like, dude, I was one step away from falling off the side of this fucking thing and breaking my ankle and everything else. There's so much luck involved. My OTC class, we had a guy killed in a helo crash. So, like, the shit is no joke.

This isn't, this isn't, I'm going and doing paintball in a room. It's serious business. Right. And from day one, I think, When I passed selection and I got selected, the weight and gravity of the situation hit me. And that was, now it counts. Right. Now I'm just starting.

And then you get through the training course and you're like, now I got to go prove myself to my team. Right. So there is no sense of accomplishment. And I'm sure you get that even in the Rangers, in special forces, anywhere. It's like you're constantly in a point of having to prove yourself. You know, it never stopped. So you never like, oh, yeah, man, I made it. Yeah, I'm great now.

I think after you've been in the building a certain number of years and you're like, whatever they throw at me, I can handle. Okay, cool. You know, I'm amongst, you know, the tribe now. Yeah. Maybe it levels off a little bit. But, you know, yeah, it's no joke. Joe's got you.

Thank you very much. With your past experience at RRD, did the unit try to push you out of sea squattered into the operational support troop and do more clandestine stuff? I don't know what he's talking about. Okay. Clayton Jensen, thanks very much, buddy.

I don't see a question there. So if you have a question, throw it in the chat and I'll check back. And good to see you, man. Alain Paramari, thank you very much. from a Kurdish American Did you ever work with Kurdish soft? What did you think of them?

Thank you for your service and long live, long live Kurdistan and America. No experience. Adam White, thank you very much, buddy. Great seeing you last week. Great show, gentlemen. Brad, any chance you opened

for President Bush at Fort Hood in 2005, please permit the random question but if so i was a young private in your audience can you confirm her to not no i did not uh alohandro thank you very much buddy not a question thank you for writing look after me that and falling to pieces by faith domar some songs just really speak to the heart yeah man that uh look after me was uh i'll talk about that one real yeah that tune was written as a goodbye to all the people that I never got a chance to say goodbye to. And, you know, you guys know the deal, but when you're deployed and somebody is killed, like, you're still deployed. And the memorial service

and a lot of times the funeral and all that stuff is happening, you're still overseas doing, doing your thing. And I feel like I wanted to write something that was just, this is my goodbye to all the people that I never had a chance to. So we were in the studio with Josh, Goodwin, and I never completed the thought on him, but he was a Marine. He'd served four years in the Marine Corps. So that was his connection to the military when he reached out and said, hey, I want to produce your album. Anyway, that tune was originally written not to be an acoustic song and played it. We played it a couple times. We recorded it. And he goes, hey, man, something's not fucking working. You need to figure it out. But I want you to go in there tomorrow and

do this on acoustic. And I was like, okay, no pressure here. You know, we finished at like two in the morning after slamming however many beers and smoking weed and doing all kinds of crazy shit. And anyway, on the way to the studio, I got something in my head and was like, don't talk to me or I'll lose it. You know, I need to go in. I think I've got it.

And anyway, went in and started playing it. It was like, record. And I think I recorded that on. in like a 1948 Martin acoustic, which, you know, priceless kind of guitar, but, yeah,

super cool songs. So we stripped it totally down. And sometimes when we play it live, usually we'll pull out stools, get a little bit soft, everybody up, we're going to have a toast for our friends, and we'll talk about it a little bit.

And other times we'll play it the original way, which is kind of like heavy and everything else, but it's just kind of a fun song. Yeah. Even though it's a heavy subject. Yeah. I've had buddies that are like, man, I fucking was in the gym and was on the treadmill and the song came on. I was like, tearing up.

It's a heavy tune, man. Fred did a really good job of writing the lyrics for it. I mean, an amazing job writing the lyrics for it. So when you, like when you come up with a song like that, because like you said earlier, like songwriting is a complicated process. But when you were playing the music for that or when you're, you're playing the music for that, you're creating that. Did you, did you know what that song was about and then you conveyed that to him? It's got a vibe. Like, for me, music has a vibe and it could be heavy. It could be happy. Like, you listen to Van Halen, man. It's like, dude, let's break out some six packs and go troll skank and,

you know, like that's what it's about. And it just has a vibe. So it's very much good time party. And I've always been attracted to the stuff like Allison Shains where it's like, man, this shit. it's got a dark side to it and there's something there. And, you know, there's also something very therapeutic in about getting that out, you know? Yeah. Dee, do you know if we have anything on Patreon? No, nothing. Okay.

So, again, silence and light music.com by the CD. The links are down in the description. Buy the CD. Go check them out. Buy the swag. It all goes to a good cause and also helps them pay for their music. and keeps it all going. Like you said, like it's not a cheap endeavor.

And... Nope. Brad, what else have you got for us? Here we are at the end of the show. Here we are. So tell me about how when you joined the military, we can go... Yeah, let's start over. Yeah, we go six-hour marathon.

Well, we do that on our... 250-page novel, or book. No, I appreciate you guys having me in the outlet and everything else. And, you know, anything I can do to help. We appreciate you coming in, anything we're going to do to help. And we will definitely not only clip the piece about going to war in the Philippines, but we'll also clip, like, some of the music piece, so that it does get, you know, we want you, so it gets its own standout.

Like, we want. Yeah, no, we'll definitely clip you out of context to make it seem the worst possible. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, we're there for it. Yeah. It's cool. No, but we deeply appreciate you coming in because, you know, it's like you say, like we've talked, you know, about Mogadishu, we've talked about other stuff. And like you say, it's not, it's not necessarily that you want to talk about this stuff all the time.

Sure. And so we appreciate you taking the time to do that. And also, I mean, we wish you guys the best of luck with the music. I mean, it's great music. it's, you know, it's great music. So everybody listen or you're... Stream it. You're dead to us.

Stream it, download it, live a CD. Yeah. It's interesting. We've, like, fought tooth and nail. You know the deal, but like, people in certain industries definitely aren't friendly or helpful. And so for us, it's like, it's an uphill battle. We do better than probably,

98% of actual music that's being released. Spill some tea, Brad. Who is it that hates the troops? Come on. Yeah. You know, but it's one of those things where it's like, we brought in a publicist this last go-round. And she was like, first of all, publicists won't take you on if they don't believe in your story. Yeah.

And we brought in a publicist. I got to compete out of 12 like A-list publices. I got to compete like eight of them because they were all like, we're interested, we've got too much, whatever.

They all wanted, yes, I got ties with here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

nobody picks up on anything. Nobody picked up on a single story. You know? And you're just like, well, thanks for the help. You know, like you're going to write about

Corey Taylor and slipknot and, you know, the same clickbait on everything. You know what I mean? So we've done this ourselves. We built a brand.

You go to Google. We're all over everything there. You know, it's taken a lot of years and a lot of hard work. So I know we've talked about it a couple times, but like, no shit. Where can people go to find you? Instagram, Spotify. Yeah, Instagram, Silence and Light official. Brad Thomas official.

If you Google Silence and Light, we're going to pop up there. I think our music pops up there. If you type it in YouTube, you're going to find it. If you type it on Apple Music, Spotify, any of that, you're going to find. at Google Play, Amazon music. We're everywhere there. So all you have to do is Google it or, you know, look wherever you'd normally get music. Okay, so we're going to do silence and light hates Republicans.

Clip, Silence Lights hates Democrats. You can clip both of those. It'll create, it'll create, it'll create buzz. You'll get the hate clicks and the people that like are signed with you. I'm not going to even go over there. Yeah. So if you clip both of those. No, but, you know,

silence light bites the heads off live bats in concert. Yeah. Clip that. Yeah, you need the, you need the controversy these days, I guess. It's insane, man. You would just think it's like, it's a great story. These dudes are like, we're going out of pocket on this.

Yeah. You know, this isn't, this is being thrown 35 Gs of my personal money into something just to release an album and recouping. a quarter of that, you know, from royalties and merchandise and stuff like that. And then doing T-shirt collaborations and all that kind of shit. They can find your tour schedule on your website? Yeah. Yeah, shows and everything else.

But social media is the best place. And we do some on Facebook. It's just like such a hassle. And Instagram, it's like I can post a video on there and I've got like 55,000 views. And then I go to Facebook and it's just like, you know yeah yep i i know what you're talking about yeah so aside from uh the music silence light uh is there anything else that you're working on personally uh that you want to plug promote or talk about um probably too early to do the promotion thing it might be something that

come on brad next year come on um well it kind of ties into the thing i was talking about like trying to figure out this podcast yeah i don't want to be a podcast like i just I don't necessarily have the bandwidth through it. Come on, Brad. We're all here. We're all here. You're in the trust tree. You're in the trust tree.

In the nest with the baby birds. I mean, what if she's wearing, you know, Heidi Whitey's. What color is it? What color is? We don't know. We want to ask.

Yeah, I'm a part of a documentary that Ridley Scott's doing that'll come out next year. Okay. It's going to be a, Matrelex thing like a four part five part thing that's about Mogadishu

and I was able to kind of insert some creative stuff into that like I'm not a part of not a producer or anything else but kind of working with the producer like hey have you thought about this aspect have you thought about you know some of these types of things

and connected him with certain people and I was hoping from the beginning that it wouldn't be like the same people that have been on everything else and it's not so that should be a pretty interesting thing but it's not ready for

you know it's happening and it's moving forward but it's not done yet Brad if if you want to like continue your project with the podcast we'd be like happy to support you but if not like it will be

happy to support you either way we'll loan your studio space we'll own your D yeah So there's a dude that I'm buddies with John Waters, and you can look him up on social media. But he's got the Afterburn podcast. And he's a former like F-16 guy. I think I've heard of it.

He's got a huge following. So he was like, I want to do something with you. And that's kind of where this thing started. And then I started talking with the Ranger Buddy. And we kind of started to sort things out. And the plan was we would launch it off of his just as like here's an initial like three, parts now go get it here right thing and it would have seen a couple hundred thousand people like that yeah

you know so um there was also talk about um you know maybe a company that makes coffee would be you know interested in helping out i was like i don't want them having anything to do with this yeah so i don't want anybody telling me what creatively or any of that stuff that's kind of how i got to the point of it being a podcast yeah um i would love to do it I mean, I really would. And the thought that I had on it was that this would be like a serial. So this Mogadishu thing would be one part. But then like, I got all kinds of people that I'm friends with that were in 9-11.

Right. What kind of stories about 9-11 can we hear? Not the there I was, the buildings were falling. But, you know, all the behind-the-scenes stuff. And we could do one about Panama. We could do one about, you know, but you could start tapping into once you become a thing, you could start tapping in and doing other stuff. That was my idea for it.

Yeah. And, you know, so somebody was like, dude, you need to pitch it to, you know, these people. And it was like, like, I don't know. No, no. I hope you'll do it. Yeah. Only got so much time, you know. Well, if there's any way we can support you.

I appreciate it. Even if, even if, you know, you do it on another podcast platform. Because a lot of those, you know, the, there are a lot of podcasts out there that have a huge platform. much bigger than ours. And we'll plug you no matter where you launch it. And we're happy to help. Okay, cool. Like I said, if it does, it would basically be at the end of 2024, probably.

Yeah. And I think there was a lot of momentum and just kind of emotions and stuff like that that was gearing up towards the 30th. Sure. You know, and we started talking about it. And it was like the timing would be great. There's going to be other stories, kind of piggyback off that. stuff and now it's like

I don't know but I would be interested in doing it it just you know I hope you will yeah me too I don't see Clayton's I don't think Clayton never said anything so Final thoughts Brad Dave

No I'm good I'm good man Okay We'll see you guys on Friday with Pete Blaber And That's it that's the show Yeah thanks everybody Thanks be good

we'll see you guys next time