The Team House - From Force Recon to MARSOC | Peter Perry | Ep. 146

Episode Date: May 21, 2022

Perry was on some of the first MARSOC deployments after spending some time in Marine Recon. He saw heavy combat in Afghanistan, and shares some of his experiences with us. For all bonus content including: -2 bonus episodes per month -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests -Ad Free audio feed. Subscribe to our Patreon!👇 https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links): https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: 👇 [e-mail] #ForceRecon #MARSOC #MarineRaidersBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. And our guest tonight is Pete Perry. He served in Marine Recon and in Marsok, in on some of those early deployments to Afghanistan, also deployed to Iraq. It served as a young enlisted guy. We're really excited to have you on the show here and kind of hear a little bit about the birth of Marsok and how the unit developed and about some of your personal experiences in combat with the unit. So Pete, thanks for joining us tonight. Yeah, thank you guys both for having me on.

Super excited to be on here and just kind of tell the story that not so many people know about. So thank you guys again for having me on. Should be a fun night. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. And, you know, I want to start off asking you about your origin story, about a little bit about your personal background, your personal history and a, and, and, you guys, the path that sort of took you into the Marine Corps. Yeah.

So funnily enough, I actually almost joined the Air Force. I'll get to that here in a second, but grew up military brat. My dad was a whizzo and F111 flew in the first Gulf War. And then he was a backseater at 15E on the Strike Eagle, did a cool deployment to Bosnia. So he and I have a very unique father-son relationship. But that did cause us. I mean, we lived all over the world. I spent 10 of my 18 years living in England and the Netherlands and then throughout the United States.

Grew up, you know, like I said, big-time military family, both grandfathers. One was in the Navy. He was on, I think the USS Terror, like a wooden hole minesweeper in World War II. Other grandfather was a paratrooper in the Army in like 1951 in Germany, which is actually really cool. I have his original lead sleds, which is that was a pretty cool gift once I graduated, Basic Airborne. And then from there, probably grew up a lot like you guys did, play in the Army or Cops and Robert or something out in the woods or in the backyard all the time.

And then from there, just grew up, getting ready to kind of, that fork in the road, hey, am I going to go to college, get a trade or join the military? and then at that point I started talking to an Air Force recruiter hey man come on in Pete you can do security forces they're the elite of the elite the Ravens yeah and uh dirty recruiters right and uh from there like I made it as far as up to MEPs and then I actually left MEPs just somewhere in there I was like you know what this this isn't for me it seems like a really rushed decision got home the Air Force recruiter actually called me like on you know this is 2002 so still on the house phone landline

uh p what what the heck man i thought you were in i'm like now i'm good don't contact me again hang up the phone hands still on the phone it rings again hey this is sergeant jones u.s marink you ever think about joining the military and i'm like yes and then from there like cool what's your address i'll be there in 20 minutes and the dude showed up um so yeah and then from there I joined right in. I was 17 when I enlisted. And then back to that father-son relationship, I actually had to get a waiver sent to a bunker in Saudi Arabia where my dad was hanging out doing some of the air strategic or just the air planning for the invasion into Afghanistan. Got that and then made my way through the rest of high school and joined the Marine Corps in 2003.

And the way the Marine Corps worked or still works, it served in the infantry I'd take it before going the recon route? No, no, I didn't. So at that time, let's see, when I first went in, I went in to be a satellite communications. Oh, really? You know, hey, I can out and go get a good job with a phone company or whatever, you know, half truth my recruiter told me. And then, you know, so I made it through boot camp. And then if you're a Pogue, if you're not an infantryman, then you go to Marine combat training, which is only three weeks.

So it's like you get to go LARP infantry, right? You get to go pretend infantry for like two weeks. You sleep in the dirt and it's real rough. And then after that, I went out to radio operator school. And just from there, I had a very different opinion than Marine Corps. You know, I don't know if that happened to you guys going through your pipelines. where I thought every Marine was like John J. Rambo, six foot two, 280 pounds, just meathead. And I remember one of the guys I graduated with the boot camp, like, wet the bed almost nightly.

And I'm like, I got the same thing as me. I got to get away from these kinds of guys. So where was your like your radio school and were most of the people there like kind of training for like fob type radio or satellite communication stuff or was it all like how did they split that out sure so everybody goes in just field radio men so that's your you know 119s 117s at the time i think we were selling the PRC 5s just the man portable larger radios and then from there if you're in the top couple percent of that you go to a follow-on course and then if you're at the top a couple percent of that then you make it to that satellite communications specialist or whatever

the MOS title is. So just that it gets smaller and smaller. And just as luck should have it, I was smaller and smaller. And just as luck should have it, I was actually, I was at radio operator school during the Christmas leave block. So I came back with a snowboard. One of the instructors saw me. We started to talk.

And he had lead sleds. So of course, you know, I'm a young Marine. I'm going to ask him about it. Hey, what are those? Where did you get them? the short of it is he had just come from third recomb battalion as a radio operator and tells me all of these things about marine recon which i'd never heard about you know obviously i grew up reading books about rangers lirps s f guys in vietnam no clue what marine recone was and then

just as luck should have it at the end of that radio operator course they had four slots to third recomb battalion in okinawa japan and i got one of those slots and then that that right there is what just kind of lit that fire and really changed my trajectory in in the Marine Corps they put you some uh they still call it endoc when you went through yep very similar to you guys and rasp we have rasp or rip recon indoc platoon um where you're a roper you actually wear your rope it's a very specific knot that you have to wear and then You've got to wear that and a 45 pound sandbag and run everywhere until probably, yeah, if you're going anywhere, you're going to wear that stuff.

If you're caught without it, you're probably going to do at least 500,000, 8 counts. You'll get some incentive exercise, as they say. And I did that for probably three and a half, four months, and then I went to basic reconnaissance course in Coronado, California in 2004. Now, how that must be tough for them to to find guys that go up through the commo course, because they're not guys coming from the infantry who are already used to field conditions or in shape or whatever. Like, I mean, every Marine coming out of boot camp is in shape. I'm not going to say that.

But it's probably a different type of person kind of up through the combo course, right? Big time. Very different type of person. Nothing wrong with that. The services still need that type of Marine. However, to your point, a very different. very different mindset and a very different view towards that profession. Right. And so, you know, if there's like 50 kids in my comm class, then four of us got orders to go to recon. And then out

of that four, two of us were assessed and selected. And then I was the only one that made it out of that, right? So it's kind of that just volunteer. The same stuff you guys went through, you know, 100 people volunteer or show up. And then it just gets smaller and smaller. Yeah. And was there quite a shortage of commo guys there because combo guys and cormon i imagine are like they're tough to get into that into that field it's tough to get people to stick around and then it's tough and that's a hard job you know as you guys know traditional green side patrolling you know you've got the one or two guys that are on watch that are awake and everybody else is going to catch some sleep if they can depending on priorities of work but if you're that calm guy especially if you're doing

hf calm shots in double or triple canopy jungle in okinawa japan you just won't sleep until you get calm. Yeah. And I think just the weight, too, you know, you're going to carry a lot of stuff. And you guys know, too, when you're the younger guy and that team or that platoon, they're going to test you. So, hey, you're going to carry extra 5590s or you're going to carry the soft light. Whatever it is, they want to make sure that when things get really sideways,

that you're there, you know, you're going to, you can perform and do your job. So. Now, for most guys going into, You went into recon or force recon? I'm sorry. I went into recon first. I mean, don't a lot of guys have to spend, like infantry guys, do they have to spend a bit of time in the fleet before they can go recon? Yeah, I believe it's changed now. I think you've got to be at least an E4, I think, to go assess and select or be selected.

Or maybe it's like two years, time and service. They've done a little bit of that revamp. When I first went in, they did kind of like an 18 X-ray program where. taking guys straight off the street and you would go to boot camp your infantry school get whatever infantry MLS and then go straight to recon school. And so I think there's probably wise of them to get, you know, let a guy get another couple years of experience under his belt. I mean, and you just have more to offer your team and your platoon at that point as well.

Yeah. So for, you know, I know we're going to talk about all this stuff, but for the people who might not be familiar with like the different things in. the Marine Corps. Can you tell us sort of the function of Recon, the function of Forest Recon, and then the function of Marsok? And I know we'll get into the story of Marsok, but yeah, yeah. So recon is going to really service more of it, the division and maybe Mew level. They're traditionally more of a reconnaissance asset for the Force Recon guys. Force Recon, you know, prior to Marsok standing up would be on a Mew,

so a Marine Expeditionary Unit, so that's a handful of Navy vessels, with a bunch of Marines and they're kind of the really big, slow war Uber, you know, should something kick off. And then from there, the Force Recon guys, you know, typically if they were on a Mew, they would be called, you know, Mew and then SOC capable. You know, they have a special operations capability. They could dive. They could do, you know, static line or military free fall, a lot of the direct action and then a lot of just, you know, we'll call it sniper support. And then from there, the biggest difference probably is just the title. It was a Title 10 and just a lot of the authorities that you're given

and granted once you're actually in a part of U.S. Socom that big Marine Corps, Force Recon, and the Recon battalions don't have. Correct me if I'm wrong, Pete, but doctrinally, isn't the idea that Recon acts sort of as like scouts, like maybe 20 clicks ahead of the front lines of the Marine Corps, and Force Recon was designed to work further 80, 100 kilometers ahead of those front lines? Correct. Correct. And that certainly goes back to the Vietnam days, you know, just a lot of that lineage of, and you're exactly right, probably in terms of distance as well, that deep reconnaissance, you know,

ability that a force recombatoon would have. So that's another big differentiator. And then just experience as well, you know, when I went from recomb Italian, the average rank was probably E4, E5, and then you go up a notch. I think maybe the closest equivalent would be maybe, you know, RRD for you guys, where it's going to be the guys have a bunch of experience, a bunch of deployments, and they've been assessed and selected again at a higher level, but still within kind of that Ranger umbrella. Yeah. Well, before we get into all the Marsock stuff,

can you tell us about hitting the ground as a recon marine, what that was like when you got to your unit and then gearing up for deployment? Absolutely. So I graduated basic reconnaissance course. I think fall of 2004 and then caught probably tail end of our pre-deployment workup. So just a lot of, again, heavy guns. You know, we threw in while I was at school. The guys did, you know, a hay-ho package down in Australia.

And then from there, a lot of it, we really were just the basics of just Greenside patrolling. And then a lot, you know, very suddenly that shift focused towards more of a direct action. And within that time, you know, the beginning of our shooting. package started a lot of like the stack tactics like hall boss really old style like you know everybody ducks in a row behind one gun really old style cqv um and then it transitioned from that to a little bit more of like the dynamic five-man clears that kind of thing and then we actually left okinawa in february of o five and we went and spent a month in southern california

at which time we did some really good, I would say, is realistic a training as I'd seen it at that time. There's a place down in San Diego called Segal Studios. It's not Steven Seagall. It's another guy. And, you know, that was the first time I'd ever seen, like, the mock-up villages, a lot of the mulage and some of that stuff for medical training. So a lot of that. And then we, let's see, we got to Fallujah Iraq in March of 2005. and then at that point, you know, it was my first deployment and we're in Fallujah, we're on the mech, we're on Camp Fallujah, and for the entire workup, you know, we're watching glimpses of like the battle of Fallujah.

So we're really excited and hyped up that this is where we're going to go. We're absolutely going to fight, you know, hope we all make it back. It was honestly the mindset going into it. And when we got there, we spent a lot of times in more of the rural area outside called Zidon. Amaria, there's a couple of spots outside of like Fallujah proper. And I would say at that point, probably misused a lot of times, very much like a conventional line or infantry asset where, you know, we would go out and do a presence patrol. We would average probably three to four foot patrols a day. So kind of a presence patrol, a cachet sweep with disruption.

And then at night, you know, we'd move firm up somewhere else and then go hit a dry hole. You know, our intel and this diffusion of intelligence coming in, I would say we were probably zero for, we didn't have a single, we didn't have a single target. So it's very. I'm trying to remember the dates, but we had Matthew Cothran on here, episode 119 handler out with Forest Recon and Fallujah. I wonder if he was with you guys. Oh, man, that name almost sounds familiar. Dog hater, he got shot out in a building. His name is Chaps from Barclos.

He's on barstool. There is a radio host. It doesn't ring a bell. No kidding. That's a small... I'll shoot it to you later. You can take a look. I mean, for sure, you guys must have known some of the same dudes.

I guarantee it's very small. Yeah. Guaranteed. Yeah. All right. So I'm sorry to interrupt. Go ahead. You're good.

And so that was just, you know, we got in one... I can't even call it a full gun fight. You know, it was one of those things where we had two different factions of Iraqis fighting one another and then they saw us and then both turned on us. It was like a couple rounds at them and then they left and we're like, huh, I guess I shot a guy. I'm not really sure. I mean, I saw him fall down, but all right, cool. And that was it. And for 10 months, you know, we drove around. We got blown up a bunch. I got really good at doing direct action, but just never anything kinetic with inside of any of the targets. And then I left that deployment just like, oh, that's, that's it.

Huh. And then so that was most of 2005. So we were right in between both really big Fouloges and then really big Ramadi. And so I remember I got home from that deployment. And by that point, I'd been in probably half of my enlistment. And I remember I called the monitor and the Marine Corps, the guy that's in charge of your job field. And I remember asking, hey, I'd like to go to First Recom Battalion. And I want to do one more deployment to Iraq, make some tax-free money, and then get out and go to college. And he was like, actually, we're not going to send you to First Recom, but we'll send you to First Force. Do you know anybody over there?

And I was like, oh, all right. Cool. Yeah, I know a couple guys and, you know, definitely that the lore of like forced reconnaissance was, you know. Right. It was intimidate, very, very intimidating. And so, and then, you know, kind of the same thing is almost like that calm school where it's like I could have gone left and just gone to like an infantry unit or a support unit. But instead, you know, I was very fortunate and was allowed to go to recon. And this was another one of those very just right place, right time. Hey, dude, we won't take you a battalion recon, but we'll put you at force. recon and so I got there in December of 05 and then just yeah very very exciting very fast-paced it was it was a cool place to be at that time well well what was the difference between recon and force recon I mean I know we laid it out a little bit but from your own personal experience so by that point I was an E4 had done one combat deployment and a lot of those guys were already on their second

some going into their third rotation the just the sheer just folklore itself of like you know you're walking through like the company hallway and you're looking at some of these pictures and you're like I've read about that like the sunrise at midnight like I know about that recon team and now I'm here like these are really big shoes like I'm not I can't fill this you know it's just a young man and then you're there and you're just you I'm sure like you guys when you first check into a place like that you're just you feel like you're surrounded by giants almost like you around guys that you look up to. And again, just the community being so small, guys that may have left third Recom

battalion that I looked up to like when I first got there, like, you know, that guy's already checked in and done a deployment. And so I'm already, you know, very intimidated. Honestly, as a young man, very intimidated, but then really excited to get to work. In terms of one of the funny things about the Marine Corps is, you know, the Marine Corps at at large, at least the Command at large, there are no elite Marines, all Marines are, all Marine are elites. We don't need to. elite forces. And that's really stood in the way of like recon and force recon because they're both really top-notch organizations. How did that culture work between you and the big Marine Corps?

It's a pretty contentious relationship. I'm sure that it still is, you know, speaking with the guys that are still in. You know, that was the original kind of summation of why the Marine Corps didn't join US so calm when it stood up in Aedes, you know, you can't have an elite force within an elite force to your point David and so um really highly contested honestly um i mean you would just be walking through if you did have to go on or be on the main side of Pendleton i mean your uniform looked a little different probably some of the devices you know you're wearing your dive bubble or jump wings or just things like that that would honestly become almost a target um you know and i'll say i'm trying I think of a funny story.

Yeah. I mean, dude, I don't know if this ever happened to you guys. We'll go back to Camp Felizia. I'm a young E3, maybe E4 at the time. Hey, we're going to go out for three days and do counter IED on Route Mobile. So you're living in a hole for three days. And then, hey, we're going to extend you for 48 hours. Oh, okay, cool.

So, you know, at that point, probably ran out of food. Right. Very little left. And then we would get back to those giant, giant, deep-fack chow halls on the meck. And you're filthy, cammy paint, all your stuff. And some first sergeant or gunny would just turn you away. And you're like, dude, I haven't eaten in like three days. Yeah, right.

I'm 19 years old. I just want some food, dude. I'll get it to go plate. I'll get out of your hair. I won't make a mess. And then you would get that conventional just, you know, Hey, Marine, why do you look that way? Hey, right.

And you're like, do you know what happens out, you know, 10 miles that way? And it was always kind of that, like, very weird. Yeah, yeah. There's a weird relationship. I mean, I'll jump. I'll kind of fast forward towards the latter part of my career and I'll give you a funny story on that. So I check into my E6 PME, my professional military education to get promoted E6 to E7. Day one, Sergeant Major comes in and everyone's in their alphas. So that's the green suit and all of your ribbons and your, you know, dive bubble or device and your shooting badges. So it's a lot of stuff. But very quickly, you can see everyone's entire service record right there on their chest. So the sergeant major comes in, a couple of ribbons, nothing too crazy, and immediately starts to berate. I think there were 17 raiders, a handful of infantrymen, and a bunch of recon guys. And the first thing out of this guy's mouth, you know, all of you Marines that have been doing nothing but back-to-back deployments, you guys are what is wrong with the Marine Corps.

The Marine Corps is about drill and ceremony. And we're kind of like looking at each other like, no? I think it's about fighting and, you know, doing that kind of stuff. That is such a weird culture. It's like history, history just passed this guy by. Right. This is, yeah, this is 2015. It's not like we're doing for 15 years, dude.

So I think, you know, sorry to jump ahead, but I think that that's a way to kind of capture some of that mindset. And that's not everybody. And some people, you know, my mission while I was there were to take those E6 and say, hey, if you've got a stand-up stud, young Marine, push them towards Mars. This is what we do. This is how we do it. You know, just because you have a beard, you're not combat, you know, ineffective. Right.

Stuff like. So. I mean, that guy sounds like you wanted like the Marine Corps Award, like medals or like badges for DNC, you know. A little drill in ceremony. Let me see your about face there, Marine. Oh, not so good. So with, it's crazy. So with force recon, you were on your way to Afghanistan at that point, right?

No, our workup was actually to go back into Iraq and just do direct action or potentially be attached to at the time would have been the 13th Mew out of California. And so that was the focus, nothing but breaching and CQB and just getting really strong, right? Like, you know, we would always joke like the recie guys would just kind of be on that hostage diet, really, you know, face sunken kind of skinny. and then all your DA guys are just a bunch of gorillas, you know, walking around. So we definitely got on that program and then, yeah, we were preparing for that. And then this would have been probably early 2006. We were up in Hawthorne, Nevada. We came back.

We spent about 40 days up there in the desert doing long range mobility, sniper stuff, you know, some fun stuff up there. And we came back and it was kind of a, it was really funny. I remember we got back to the parking lot and they're like, hey, things are changing. We're not, and they just disbanded Force Recon. You guys are in something called Mansock or Sock or Heart something. You guys are in SoapCon now. Have a good day.

That's how I found out. No joke. Like some random dude, some random guy probably. You're in Man Sock now, kid. What? You're in Man. It's the worst name. Please change it.

So it was something where the, you don't know what we're going to call you. And then I remember shortly after that, like, somebody had the idea. They're like, all right, grow out here, like, you know, have a long hair and a beard. And I'm like, oh, this is cool. Like, what else do we get? And then, yeah, from there, it was just, you know, at that point, we didn't really know what was going to change. We still continued on for the duration of that entire pre-deployment workup. Like, we were going to Iraq, probably going to get on a Mew, right?

So a big boat and just slow float over there. And then not too long before we deployed, they're like, hey, you guys are going to go to the Philippines. Cool, new guy. Come here. You guys are going to go to the Philippines and go do a J set. And so we had at the time, you know, in terms of structure, we had it was called the Daser platoon.

So you had direct action and surveillance reconnaissance. So you had roughly a 50-man platoon. So more for like the historical aspect of it. They took force recomb. fourth platoon and disbanded that and turned that into Marsock. And then we became, so it was Marine Special Operations Battalion Company A, and we were the Dasher platoon, and then we took the same force recon model and we brought over 25 infantrymen from 3rd Battalion First Marines, from 3-1, as our like trailer platoon, as our security

platoon. So within that organization, we had three 10-man DA or like a Salter type elements. and then we had two of the most senior teams. I think they were eight to ten men each, and that was our surveillance reconnaissance. They're all Marine Corps scouts snipers. They've all been in force recomb. I mean, these were the best of the best guys to be in that position.

And so from there, we left Southern California. We flew into the Philippines, and we ended up doing, I think, like a 50 or 60-day J-SET. and so we took you know the SR guys went to one spot we went to a very southern portion of the island and then our trailer platoon went to another another part and then at that point we were like are we going to go home in a month like what are we going to do and then towards the tail end of that they're like hey surprise you guys are going to go to afghanistan you guys are flying to i think we came to Kuwait and then to Kabul like shortly after that and then from there we just you know yeah it was it was pretty funny and i mean i think probably um at the same time we had the first

the very first east coast marsock platoon their dasser platoon was actually kicked out a country for a whole bunch of stuff that everyone has since been cleared up but at that time it was very it was very precarious right and like we joked about earlier you know our i'm going to paraphrase here but our pre-deployment speech from the two-star at the time was, hey, don't fuck this up, you fuck this up, it's going away. And then he just walked out of the room. And all of us were kind of looking at each other like, all right, no pressure. Like, don't fuck it up.

Here we go. And just an editor's note, in a couple of weeks, we're going to have Fred Galvin on the show, who will be able to tell us in depth all about that first Marsock deployment and how things got turned upside down. And I'll just say on my end, Pete, I was just a, E5, I guess, at the Special Warfare Center going through the Q-course when a lot of that stuff happened. And I mean, there were crazy rumors going around Socom about what Marsoc did and how these guys just went through a village, just lighten up every house and all this stuff that turned out

to be completely false. But that was what the talk was within special operations at the time. Oh, yeah. So now imagine we show up as, you know, already we're new. Already like, Big Marine Corps has already made this very difficult for everybody else. And then you throw that in. And so, no kidding, we leave the Philippines. We fly directly into Afghanistan. We're at Faw Brown or Camp Brown on Kandahar. And they're kind of like, well, we don't really know how to employ you guys.

What do you guys do? You guys like SF? You guys like seals? What do you do? What do you do that we don't already have? And so just very quickly, we took the, hey, we're the new guys. We'll wash windows. We'll sweep floors.

Whatever it is, we'll take it. Like, we've got to prove ourselves at this point. So we stayed on Kandahar for a few weeks, and then they pushed us out to Fob Price. There was a seventh group team out there. And the short of it is, no kidding, right? Like, we were literally on a leash where half of our platoon would leave with the senior half of the ODA, and then the other half of our platoon would leave with the junior half of the ODA. And no kidding, we had to have adult supervision, that whole horse run.

that whole first trip was very much like okay like can these marines do this are these guys a bunch of cavemen or like can they adapt and be welcomed in and actually succeed within this community well what's so crazy though is had you not deployed his morococ how do you just deployed his forest recon the greenberries wouldn't have asked that question at all like you're the same guys i mean did you guys when they like renamed you did you have the same basically t o ne and everything like that um No, I mean, it was almost doubled at that point. I mean, a Forest Recom platoon is probably 24 men on average. And then you would have a security platoon. So we doubled that platoon size, still had the entire security platoon. But then I think one of the bigger differentiators, and this is where I will give like upper Marine Corps or whomever some level of credit, we had and have always had a very robust support element.

So instead of an ODA showing up, you know, to Fob whatever or A. whatever and then needing to pull from the own EV or pull from SOTIF, see just showed up organically and had SYN, humid, calm, motor tea, everything. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, and so that's, again, you know, I will give kudos back to like big Marine Corps and some of that expeditionary planning was, you know, we've got to be self-sufficient and we've got to be able to figure it out. And if we just bring all of these mines together, we'll probably be okay.

And honestly, it worked out really well. And Marsock was kind of an outgrowth of debt one, was. in it? Oh, big time, man. Big time. That was the proof of concept to U.S. Socom that Marines could get outside of the box, could perform. And those guys did really, really, really well. And for, I would say, probably 95% of that, you know, the debt one component, I think every single one of those guys had been in Fortrycon for, I think, 10, 12 years. So a couple of enlistments. Every one of them had been to Ranger's school. Like, they had very comparable requirements to some of the higher level units.

excuse me and then put all those guys together and they went out and did really good things and so that's that's certainly the lineage you know you've got recon for sure recon and then out of that they took the cream of the crop put that into debt one and then from that they said all right marine court here is you know the way it kind of funneled down to us you know was hey donald rumsfeld you know once we need we need more soft guys and so you guys are you know Rumsfeld's Raiders or whatever, some silly thing, right? And then, which the raider thing goes back to World War II. Obviously, you have Carlson and Edson's Raiders.

And something that not too many people know is when we actually stood up as Barsock, a handful of guys from my platoon, I believe three guys, went out, sought out living World War II Marine Raiders and asked them permission, you know, hey, can we please carry on the title of Marine Raider? And the guys were, you know, super humble, absolutely allowed us to do it. And from there, very early on, you know, 2006, we immediately identified as Raiders, to which Big Marine Corps said, absolutely not. You will not use that name.

You cannot have that title. How dare you? You are a Marine. The slogan used to be, you are a Marine first. Special Operations is what you do. Right. And you're like, that's so silly. Yeah.

Yeah. They still had that. Some of the other units have it, too. And I guess it's especially harsh in the Marine Corps, where there's like two identities, two masters who are trying to serve at the same time. Like in SF, there's this cultural clash also. Are we unconventional guys? Are we trainers?

Are we DA guys? Like, who are we supposed to be? And it sounds like the Marines certainly have gone through that. And we'll talk a little bit about that more, I guess, as this unit evolved. So what was that deployment like when going out with? with a quote unquote adult supervision. I'm not sure how much adult supervision seventh group has to offer. No offense to my seventh group friends.

But however, let's talk about those Central America, South America deployments, folks. Oh, yeah. Those guys were so good, man. I think we learned a lot from them.

They were so gracious. I mean, they brought us in. So at the time, Renggresh, we're on fob price. So three quarters of that fob had been occupied by the Brits. And there was a very small soft compound.

When we got there, I think there was some, I think, I see six guys, the seventh group guys, and maybe another small contingent, maybe some randoms. But man, those guys were great. And I think that opened my eyes up. You know, the first trip we went out, the very first mission was a QRF. I think it took us three and a half hours to get there. And we're driving on a hardball road. You know, by the time we got there, I think there was one or two, KIA,

and I think an agency guy was either WIA or KIA. But that really, like, opened my eyes. Where coming from Iraq, you know, 18 months prior, there's people everywhere. You could just be on a rooftop and look around and like, I see that unit. I see that unit. Okay, these guys are over here. There's air assets everywhere. And then you get to Afghanistan.

You're like, I drove three and a half hours and I've seen nothing. Yeah. Like, we are definitely in bad guy country. And three and a half hours is the QRF, right? Three and a half hours is the quick reaction force. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a dude. exactly and so we get out there we help those guys out best we could we remain overnight and then we're like oh well we're out here let's just go do some combat reconnaissance patrols so the next day we get out and you know from the seventh group guys we're already smart on listening to icons and you know labeling and marking trucks in a way that when the Taliban would call it out over their icon we can identify who they're talking about the icon for those of you guys that are listening it's you can go by the radio like Walmart formerly Radio Shack it's just a plain text single channel no crypto anybody can listen to it so you can just literally put a scanner on and hit

channel 114.50 and you can listen to whomever's on that frequency that so anyway back to that first deployment was great like I said we would typically go out for probably three to 10 days and just do movement to contact. We would just drive out of Fodd Price. We'd get into the Wadi, head north. We would be, you know, paralleling the Hellman Valley River, which is a north-south running river. And then, you know, as soon as the sun would come up, we would already kind of have been on high ground, which surprised there's a lot of legacy anti-tank mines up there from the days of Russia. So we learned that lesson pretty hard. Fortunately, we know we didn't lose anybody up front from that, but we definitely went through a few trucks.

And then just back to kind of being out there where it's predominantly a soft conflict, you know, a GMV would hit an anti-tank mine and we couldn't tow it out or the remnants of it. We would just strip it and then just drop j-dams on it. You know, and again, coming from Iraq, we're like, you know, my truck gets hit with an IUD,

we'll just call a seven-ton and they'll come tow us. But here, like, no one's coming to get you. Like, you're very, very much out there. But yeah, back to that first patrol. So we show up on that QRF, to your point, David, is hours to get there. A couple guys are already dead. The next day, I think we were in Hyderabad, Kaliagos, some place is kind of sketchy in the helmand. And one of the first incoming mortar rounds kills a guy.

You know, we had a British captain attached to us and, you know, he took a round or took a frag to the chest and unfortunately expired. But that very quickly woke me up to like, oh, man, Iraq and Afghanistan are very different on so many fronts. Yeah. And so then we spent the next 72 hours just I think we ran AC130 Spectre dry. We ran a B1 dry, bunch of F-15s. And we were fighting tooth and nail and very quickly, you know, adopted what seventh group was doing. And that's, you know, get in, occupy high ground, Icom chatter from the talibate.

abandon will begin. You'll see all the women and kids leave. You'll take a couple of semi-accurate rounds of either rocket, mortar, recoilless rifle. And then from that point, we'll engage with heavy guns and then, you know, just call and cast. And I think one of the bigger differentiators probably a little bit through that deployment was, I would say, we were slightly more aggressive than the green berets we were with and just probably just because we had more numbers. You know, you guys know, Jack, you're in an ODA, like, you don't have a whole bunch of guys with you. You know, so we have this robust platoon. We have a security element.

So we can actually, you know, dismount and go an assault through an entire village. Right. They didn't have any image with them at that point. Dude, I think we had a truck of five guys. Check the block. That's it. And check. Yep, we met Sotomay.

Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then most of the time, you know, the engagement would start and those guys would just leave and you would talk to him. We're like, dude, what are you doing? Like, this is your country.

Come fight, man. Come on. Like, we'll help you. We'll work with you. And they're like, we're just making sure our egress route is safe. So we'll just be a couple terrain features away. Yeah. Thanks for you.

And so, you know, right? I know. And so, yeah, great, great deployment. I know. We, yeah, I think till a few hundred dudes within that deployment, just like our M-SOT alone. Like so MSOT is Marine Special Operations. team. So between us and the ODA, we did some pretty good, pretty good damage on that first trip. A lot, a lot of fun. So was this the resurrection of Marsac that you had, uh, where you were now

back in the good graces of special operations command? I think at the end of that deployment, it was definitely one of those things. But I mean, for the, for, I mean, for years, Jack, we would, I would tell people like, at the Stodiff. And you're like, oh, yeah, I'm a raider and they're like, oh, Marsok. And they're like, oh, Marsok. And they're like, I'm, I'm, like, The fuck's a Marsock. Yeah. I'm like, oh, no one knows. Yeah.

Yeah. No one knew. Yeah, I think that very quickly, I think, changed the trajectory of Marsock. And it's just because, as you guys know, sometimes just having the right people at the right time was enough of a, you know, a differentiator that not only did Marsok, you know, it's still going today. I would say within a year and a half of that deployment, we were given ODB level responsibility. and RC Southwest and the Helmand, you know. So I think that spoke volumes of just where we were and the caliber of guy coming to the fight. What about like money and toys?

I mean, you know, you went from Force Recon to Marsok. Was there a noticeable difference all of a sudden? Oh, man. Night and day, David. Night and day, dude. My deployment to Iraq in 2005, we took Vietnam era Kevlar or Flacks, cut all the Kevlar out and line the floor. you know, I had my little L-shaped steel door.

And then on this deployment, I'm in a GMV. Yeah. I'm like, oh, this is cool. I'm like, we went from having like maybe a 249 on the top of an old shitty Humvee to a 50-cal, a 249 and a 240, a bunch of rockets and a mortars. And then five, you know, gun fighters inside of a truck. Right. That was a big one. And then just a lot of the skill sets, a lot of the schools, a lot of the, you know, AFO and some of that stuff.

Yeah. You know, once the aperture started to open. Oh, there's some really cool stuff. And so I think that was, you know, and again, we're laid to that. You know, we don't have any of that infrastructure set up. So, you know, we're sending guys to 18 Bravo, 18 Charlie. Our corpsmen already go to the 18 Delta course. Then we're bumming off of NSW for some of our, you know, level one, two, three stuff.

And then eventually we believe we got into our own program. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was really cool. It was such a disservice to, you know, to recon, to recone, to force recon, maybe to another extent, to Anglico, to those units that were out there, especially units, but we're competing with the rest of the Marine Corps for the peanuts. Honestly, the Marine Corps has always gotten. And by keeping themselves out of that SOCOM J-SAC money, man, they, you know, it's crazy. After that deployment, what was it like as far as like Marsoc developing their own selection course?

Because previously these forced guys got kind of, I don't want to say grandfathered in, but they were the first generation of Marsock guys. How did the selection come about? Yeah. So you bring up a great point, man. And so when we stood up in 2006, initially it was, excuse me, we should mimic an assessment and selection of a special mission. unit and if you don't make it, you don't make it. And so the entire command was like, well,

we can't do that. Like, we need people to go and do this function right now. And if we do a selection and half of you make it, like, what are we going to do? So denied, you guys cannot do that. And so for a lot of the senior guys, they're like, this will come back at a certain point when some young guys, like, did you go to selection? Did you do that? No, I didn't, dude, but I stood up the unit and did back-to-back deployments. Does that count? Like, we're still, we're good. But that was definitely a push from a lot of the senior enlisted guys within transitioning from Force Recon into Marsok was, let's mimic an SMU selection. Let's do it. And if you make it, you go. If you don't, sorry, man, you're going back to Recon. Good luck.

Best of luck to you. And then from there, to your point, Jack, like, you know, absolutely grandfathered. So around that 2008-2009 timeframe, they're standing up. So at that time, you have first M-Sob, Marine Special Operations Battalion on Camp Pendleton. You have second M-Sob, and then you have the headquarters. And at the time we had, it was called FMTU, foreign military training unit. That was no kidding, just to bolster numbers. They just took a bunch of infantry guys and said, hey, you guys are now Special Operations Marines. Here you go.

They then later turned into, it's called M-Souag Marine Special Operations Advisory Group. So they did nothing but just pure fit for the first couple of years of Mock. And then from there, you know, so there's a lot going on, right? We're in the height of the global war on terror. We've now disbanded first and second force recon. We've now pulled a bunch of infantry guys to stand up this foreign military training unit. Big Marine Corps wants their people back. So that's contested.

and at the same time we're trying to model a selection like I said really after green like what do they do how do they do it why do they do it you know and at this point I have zero saying this right I'm such a young guy in this but you hear the rumblings you hear the development you see what's going on you know you're coming back from your deployment you're giving you know actionable objectives for them to train two and I want to say probably around 2009 is when that first selection was ran and then they stood up the schoolhouse and started that that that pipeline. And something else I wanted to bring up that just occurred to me is Marsoc also created like their culminative exercise, I believe. Is it Durnah Bridge? It is. And it sounds like that was like really like you guys, well, I'll let you say. I mean, what was it that Marsoc eventually

the conclusion they came to as far as their identity, what they want to be, what they want to do, what their role is in Socom. Sure. So I would say what we've turned into now, definitely mimics an ODA. I mean, your average your MSA, your Marine Special Operations team is probably almost an ODB light. You've got your 14-man, you know, Raider team, and then guarantee you'll have,

like I said, your support package per team is a human, SIGANT, Motorty, comma, data guy, all that extraneous stuff. And then typically you're running three to four teams within a company. Very quickly, that kind of, you know, know, our buddy's in seventh group and then later on in third group and fifth group. And I'm like, dude, like, why didn't you guys just, I mean, do something different, right?

I mean, so I think we have a couple different naming conventions that are slightly different from an ODA to like an M-SOT. But beyond that, like, we're pretty much modeled directly after you guys, so. Did you, did you guys find, like the seals, not necessarily the seals, the guys, because they're, their guys. they're going to square you away. But I mean like the command and the Navy in general, did they try to like push you guys down because they didn't want the competition? No, no.

Honestly, I would say even at the command level, I would say beyond the first probably year to 18 months, I think people were very skeptical. And then I think once we were proven in that summer of 2007 deployment from the West Coast, I think that was proof of concept of like, okay, we'll let these guys stick around for a little bit, but we're still unsure. But like I said, I mean, Dave, we leaned so hard on the Army infrastructure and NSW's infrastructure for a lot of

those special operations skill sets that we had no clue about. They're so far behind on. Yeah. And so I would say after that deployment, you know, people like, oh, yeah, I've heard about you guys. Like you guys, you guys deployed and you're like, yeah, we did pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, we did. like we're going to keep going. Yeah. And so I would say for the most part, everyone was very professional. It was definitely like big brother, little brother. Yeah.

You know, if we were doing some of the Rangers, some of those ODA, guys were very much like, all right, little brother. Like, this is, if you're going to come play, like, stay out of our way, but this is what we're going to do. And then I think at a certain point, we kind of finally showed like, hey, we are on par. Right. Let's do it together.

That's great. Yeah, because, I mean, obviously I knew the SEALs and the SF guy. Like, the guy, The bros will be bros, right? They're always going to help another guy. We're all just bearded bros. Yeah, but I didn't know how the commands would be. And it almost sounds in some ways like the convention, not the conventional, but the regular Marine command was more of an obstacle than like the naval command or anybody else like that.

Oh, big, big time. You know, there's something else. So we sit up in 06, big Marine Corps came down and said, hey, we're going to put a five-year time limit on. guys within Marsock. So for you guys that are, so at the time, the MOS military occupational specialty is 021, you're a reconnaissance men. It was, hey, you have five years to be in Marsock, and then after that, you'll go back to the conventional recon time, because at that time, force recon was disbanded. There wasn't enough manpower. There wasn't enough, you know, sheer numbers to stand that back up. So it was, hey, you got to kind of touch the magic, but now we're going to send

you back down. And that's not a ding on the recon battalions. What those guys do is incredible and extraordinarily difficult. However, you know, to you guys, it's like, hey, you're in Rangerbat or you're in an ODA, now go back to just shy of an infantry foot. Right. And so very quickly, it became very contested with a lot of the guys of, I'll just get out. Yeah. Like, what are you going to do? We'll just leave, you know, which is, I think, probably unprofessional, but I think it got the point across. Um, so short, after that they came out with the new military occupational specialty of 0372 but then that was just you know to help bolster retention numbers within the organization what was their reasoning for doing

that five-year sort of drop dead time yeah so the marine corps i would say it's good and bad where you know they'll take a guy that's an f18 pilot and for the first portion of that enlistment he's flying he's dropping bombs he's landed on you know little down out in the sea. And then for the little bit of that, they're going to put that guy on the ground. And he's no longer flying. He's now a forward air controller. So it's very, it's back to that Marine Corps expeditionary style of war fighting. It was kind of that same thing where, you know, it's unlike the army where, you know, you could stay in the infantry, I believe, your entire time. And for the Green Corps, they're looking to help spread that knowledge. You might have a guy, you know,

previous to Marsok and even before the war, before the G-W. you'd have a recon guy that would do eight years in recon but then in order to get promoted would have to go serve big marine corps so it would have to go be a recruiter have to be a drill instructor just in order to stay in so there was always like that give back back to big marine corps we call it a bee billet so it's something like drill instructor recruiting whatever it is and they're like you have to give back to big marine corps like what if we took one of you and put you at an infantry battalion or put you back in a reponcaltune and so just immediately guys unanimously were just like, I'll get out.

Nope. And I think I'm sure that's not the reason that they let us stay. I'm sure it came down to more just the fiscal nature of it of like, hey, you know, how much do you put a soft guy through training? You know, zero to 100, probably well over a million bucks. It's a lot of money. Yeah. Right?

And it reduces the, it chips away at the continuity of the unit also if you're having really, really quick turnover. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, big time. And so fortunately, that was resolved and that went away, but that was very much like big Marine Corps, like trying to get you back, right? Like, hey, we're going to get you back and you're going to go out and you're going to take this great stuff that you learned and you're going to go teach everybody else. And part of that argument is, well, half of what I could teach you, we can't even do or not even authorized to do. Like, this is silly, you know? Right. So it's interesting. I'm going to ask you about spinning up for the next deployment 2009. I want to give a quick shout out. Actually, we're sponsoring ourselves this time around.

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So Pete, 2009, tell us about kind of like, you know, spinning up for that deployment and getting into it, heading back overseas. Yeah, so we came back. So that deployment was extraordinarily low, right? I think we did 55, 60-some days in the Philippines, and we did a whole Afghan rotation and a big Marine Corps in the interest of bringing people back said, hey, guys, we're going to put you on the Mew. And so they actually put us back and we've flown. at home for a month and a half with the 13th view, which is kind of funny because they don't have operational control of the unit. And so at that point, we're taking up significant resources. You know, we probably had like a hundred and, I think it was a hundred and 25 man signature.

Then all of our gear and a lot of, I mean, there was a lot of stuff. So we came back from that deployment. Probably took a couple weeks to leave. And then, you know, they sat us down in the room. Hey, guys, good job. who doesn't want to go be an instructor and who's not going to get out. Raise your hand. So most of us, you know, most of us raise our hands. And like, all right, you're no longer Alpha Company.

You're now Delta Company. See you. That's how we stood up. What would have been the fourth company at the organization at the time was now we're ending up Delta Company. So they're no kidding, just Shell Game. Like, we don't have enough guys yet. So Alpha Company will put over here.

and then Delta company you're in. Yeah. And so. So Alpha Company did their deployment. They're off. They're off now. We're sending Delta Company. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Crazy. At that time, we've got Bravo Company. Yeah. Relieved us. Those guys are over there. Charlie Company's in the Hopper.

They're, you know, months away from going over there. And then we're third in line. And no kidding. I think probably three or four guys left from that platoon. And so going into that 09 deployment into Delta Company, was amazing because at that point we're no longer than you guys you know we still kind of had that hey we'll do extra chores we'll put our hand up first because we're still new and we still have to prove ourselves but very quickly it changed the pre-deployment workup was very different in terms

of exposures of training uh the level of training uh you know your weapons are starting to change right you went from this old school m4 a1 kind of like clunky old colt to like oh i have like daniel defense like wow this thing's super nice You know, so some of that stuff started to occur. And then at that same point, you know, we're taking a lot of the lessons learned from Afghanistan. Like, hey, what didn't, what capability didn't we have that we wish we had, right? So like mortars, that was a big thing we took away from the seventh group guys. I believe their team sergeant, first name's Tony, great guy.

The second we were troops in contact, that guy was on the 60, just handheld the entire time, just killing guys wholesale. So immediately we're like, okay, this is a capability that we need to harness. And then so we do our normal pre-deployment workup, which usually entails, you know, a couple of months at home station. So for us, Camp Pendleton, your medical, your comms training, shooting, long range, your mobility stuff. And then from there, we're training all over, you know, the continental United States. And then at that point, let's see, when did we get there? probably February of 09 is when we got back out there. And by that point, that was really interesting to see because that's when some of that buildup had started, right?

Like there's a much larger Marine Corps signature there, much larger conventional army signature to the northeast. And then that deployment was great. We were sent, my team was sent out to Bob Robinson, so in Sangan right along the 6-11, and we were attached to a third group team. And same thing, got along really, really well with those guys. And then that deployment was very different, just obviously just for where we were, right? Like you guys are familiar with like a two-team fob. You know, it's a two-team fob for a reason. The probably bigger reason is just enemy like contact.

You know, and that was probably the bigger thing. I would say during the six, seven months we were on fob rob. On average, we were attacked every other day. really oh yeah it was interesting like you'd be going for a run like around the fob or whatever and then just all of a sudden you just hear just an insane volume of fire started like oh shit back to work here we go and it just was such a regular occurrence you know we we lost a couple of our our host nation or partner nation guard force you know we had a really accurate very aggressive sniper enemy sniper So it's just one of those things where we went from being on a nice camp.

We're on Fobb Price. It's safe. The Brits are doing all of our external security. There's no concerns. Robinson, we're just south of Sengen. We're in bad guy country. And we're getting attacked, like I said, on average every other day for almost six straight months. And so, you know, you would be asleep in your container.

And then all of a sudden, like the 120s are going off. off and you're like 25 yards from the 120 pit you know so it was a very you didn't really get to shut off right there was never really that off switch yeah because you're you're you're walking around your fob and you're like is that a guy that's not a guy that's not a guy you know things like that just you couldn't never let your card down so you're very much in the red the entire time and so that was that was interesting and then at the same time the iED threat really started to change you know I went from a very high metal signature legacy Italian Russian anti-tank mines and then just really rudimentary IEDs.

And then by 09, this is where we're starting to get to a lot more of like the victim operated, you know, pressure plates, probably low metal signature, but still relatively high. You know, you can pick it up or see it, detect it relatively easy. But I would say that was a noticeable shift in terms of how we operated and then just contingencies and planning in general. Do you know, this might be above, like, your pay grade, but I don't know, were you ever aware of or did you ever find out? Why were you guys attached to SF?

I'd send to a work out well for you, but do you know why that happened? So the first time, I would say, it was probably just as a result of what happened from the East Coast guys on that first trip. And again, those guys are all phenomenal. I know a bunch of them have all been since cleared and should have been cleared immediately. Right.

So I think that was probably just a lot of the higher level. level command insurance policy of just hey at least they're out with these guys we'll be fine and then at the 09 time frame I believe it was fob robinson I want to say anaconda there was like two or three two team fobs where it was just so kinetic and there was just always something going on at least that's what was told to us you know initially my team got there and like hey you guys will be in delirom which is more of like central afghan you're kind of in between you know gresh can like for a right like almost in the middle um which would have been a pretty pretty boring deployment um however they said hey i mean dude no kidding we're getting ready to go on our very first

patrol out of deleron out of that village and they said hey we just had a bunch of odaa guys get hurt or killed something happened we you guys are going to go to sang and you guys are going to fob rob like three days figure it out and so i remember when we drove into it the oda that we met with was like you guys you drove what way and you got your trucks right like and you're like that that's when it really started a hit of like huh you guys seem pretty worried yeah yeah and then you start to figure out like oh oh that's why they're worried yeah and I think I remember reading like the insum the intel summary where a couple of guys enemy Taliban fighters had gotten into a portion of the fob you know they made it through the hesco or over the hesko and we're dicking around on the

And we're like, huh, this is very real, very quick. Yeah. Yeah. Pete, you mentioned a number of anecdotes, you know, in some of the material you sent us that I'd just like to hit you up about because I think there's some very interesting operations you were on. To tell us about the clearing operation of Watan in Afghanistan, where there's a rooftop IED that you guys got hit with.

Yeah. Holy cow. So, okay, so this is my third Marsok deployment. This is fall of 2011 at that time. And this is a pretty good measure, too, of just, I would say, Marshaq's just ability. At that point, we've got the seventh Kandak or seventh commandos. So Afghan Special Forces Commandos, our ratio had switched, you know, from,

like we're joking about earlier, five guys and one Humvee that would leave. You know, my first trip in 07. to now in 2011 where we have a forced one to five ratio. So for every one American, for every five Afghans, there's one American. So we would be able out 90 commandos, six interpreters,

and probably 12 to 15 U.S. And that's it. And we'd fly out with 160th. You'd have 30 commandos, two Terps, your American package, you know, per bird.

And then we'd all land and mutually support one another. For the Watton mission, we had VSP, your village stability platforms. So we're supporting another MSOT from our company. They're trying to move closer to the river into very, very, very much bad guy country.

So it's supposed to be, I think, a nine or ten night op. Get in, land, nothing too crazy. We fight the whole next day. That night, we ended up moving about 2,500 meters through extremely high IED land, right? And so your pre-mission brief, it's low, medium, high, either very high or extremely high. And so most of the time when we were going out in the helmet,

it was always the highest IED level. We start, we're looking, you know, for a place to remain overnight and firm up in and fight from the next day. And that was kind of our MO. You know, we'd land, we'd have our compound of interest. There was either a target there, a JPL, or, you know, some reason that we're going there, we'd go there, conduct that business.

and then just firm up within that. And so prior to, you know, we're gaining all of our pattern of life. So we know for sure that, you know, women and kids may occupy this compound, or at least it's safe, right? Human beings can walk around in there. So I knew roughly 2,500 meters to my north. We've had good pattern of life on my compound of interest. I feel good about it. We get up to it.

And it met all of our criteria, right? We saw livestock walking around. There was a fire in the compound. And I had honestly thought, you know, hey, whatever guy that was here probably just didn't want to be hassled by the A&A or Americans right now. So the guy just booked it and that's it. And so at the time, we had moved to doing tactical callouts, which I'm sure you guys are familiar with. You get to the compound.

You get complete perimeter security around it, put a couple guys on a rooftop. We would have one of our posh two speakers, another raider or a terp. Get up on the roof. Hey, you guys are surrounded. Come out with your hands up. And so we're in that process. Nobody comes out. So the Afghans, the commandos start going in there. And then on their walk out is when one of the guys stepped on, we think, like a 12 to 15 pound pressure plate. And so no kidding, myself and my buddy Jake, or, you know, do toes like over the edge of the roof. We're looking down. We're just watching the guys to, you know, walk out of the compound. And then next thing I knew, I woke up on my back. My nods were off. My cultures were. off and I knew I was on my back. So I'm like, okay, fingers, tested that, toes, good. Okay, cool, there's no holes. Good. And I looked over, my buddy Jake, Jake Chivontes, actually now,

oh, you guys know Jake? Oh, you guys know Jake? No, no, I was saying you checked the old beanbag, too, doing that. All right. Yeah. So, yeah, Jake Sorvante's, great guy. This is his first deployment. He now owns and operates singing instruments. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of them it's a great watch company yeah i've rinse a pile yeah so anyway uh i look over jake and jake's kind of moaning right this is his his first time he's been blown up like that close we get up do a quick sweep on him turn the nods on turn the pel tors on and then from that point you know kind to go back over to what's left of it look over and you can see casualties and at that point you know get off the roof and then we immediately went to work on those guys fortunately one of the other elements

was about 1,100 meters to my east, excuse me to my west. So, you know, we get these two casualties, we get them out in the field. You know, and at this point, too, you've got to sweep for all this stuff, right? You can't just walk over there and, like, go pull your casualty out of a hole. Like, you have to finger sweep up to them, right? And for our listeners out there, imagine, right, you've got a hard angle like this, and you're literally sweeping away at dirt until you get to a hard edge, and you can see that 90 degree angle.

You're like, oh, that's probably a pressure plate. That's not natural. So that's a hard part in that type of a scenario. You can't just run and go get that person. Right. For self-preservation, sweep up to that guy, get to him, and then pull him back, and then you can work on them. And so I sell it from one of our 18 deltas, gets to work on the casualties.

One guy ends up dying. One guy lives. And then at that point, my commandos were so. demoralized that it was just, hey, we're done trying to find a place to firm up tonight. I called the other elements and, hey, we're going to walk over to you. Please clear a space. See you soon. Fairly concussed.

You know, I've walked like five, six steps, boom, fall over, get back up, keep walking, fall over 10, 15 steps. And then eventually we get to that compound. And again, like, we're walking through, like, you know, essentially a minefield. And that's not even being dramatic. And for that, like I walked number one guy, point in on that deployment, like the number one human being. The team that we ripped out with did a great job. However, a lot of those comfort-based decisions that the commandos would make, we just, we couldn't afford it. And it just became out of frustration one night where my commandos were trying to go one way.

I'm trying to tell them with the laser, hey, go this way, go this way. And they wouldn't do it. So I just took off. They follow me. And then from there, I'm like, oh, I made. I made a mission. Like, I can walkpoint. Like, all right, it's sketchy, but we'll figure it out.

And then from that point on, I think for the next 30 missions, I probably not even probably 30 missions, I walked to point on that deployment. So it was, it was hectic. It was a little stressful. I imagine. We made it. Yeah. And then what happened at that point?

Because you said that you got a patch he's overhead. Yeah. So we get into that compound, go to sleep, a couple hours. wake up immediately Icom chatter. Hey, we see the Americans. We're going to advance for an attack. So I take myself in a handful, probably five Americans and probably 10 Afghans. And we leave, we go out, we get about 150 meters out of the compound and get hit pretty hard. We ended up assaulting through the majority of that fire and then maneuvering about two, a little over two kilometers throughout the rest of that afternoon, just fighting and killing dudes. We get to a compound.

I'm looking at my Garmin, Montana, the sweet GPS. I'm looking at that. So now I can see the full GRG. I know where we are. Like, man, we're really exposed. Like, two, little over 2K, like they've got, if they wanted, like, decent enough freedom of movement in between our two elements. So, hey, we'll stop. We use a wall breach, breach through the wall.

We're in the compound. And now we're redistributing ammo. We're trying to find water. So we got, you know, water purifiers. We're doing that. and we're redistributing ammo with our commandos. And at the same time, so the one picture I sent you guys

where it's got the misfits, the fiend skull, and I'm carrying that bladder. That picture is probably 30 seconds before what I'm about to tell you guys. So we're hanging out. We take off all of our gear. We've got one or two Afghans up on the roof on security.

And our Air Force CCTV is named Sasha. Phenomenal operator. He's talking to a British Chapatchi, hey, we see a guy moving north to south. He's about 100 meters north of you, appears to have a weapon moving directly towards you. I couldn't believe it. I'm like, there's no way. I just use five pieces of C4, five blocks of C4 and blew an entire wall down. Like, they have to know where we are right now. And so I remember I put on my Peltors and I've got no gear on. I have just my M4 with one, two or three round and a full mag,

you've got 28 rounds and my Peltors on. I'm like, just in case my rooftop security is going to see him and they're just going to dust this guy with a 240. I remember looking out the gate, I'm like, no shit, there he is. So I look over a couple of the boys and I'm like, hey, we'll let him come down once he's in the alleyway because he was coming through a field and then it hit two compounds and then a big alleyway. I'm like once he's like five or so meters past both compounds, we'll just open the door and we'll dump him and we'll just, you know, the day continues.

Because the thought was then at that point he can't go left or right. He's channelized. Right. We own this guy. So the British Apache is calling him out. Hey, we see a guy. Well, my interpreter comes up. Hey, Commander Pete.

And this bad dude sees him. Bad dude tears off running. So I go chasing out after him. So I've got Pelotors, suspenders, a t-shirt, some cry bottoms, and my car bean. And that's it. My buddy, Eric, who's our bomb tech, he comes out after me. So we go chasing out after this guy. And now I can see the barrel of his AK.

Like, oh, this guy's done. So we get out. We're out in the big field. were shooting at him, my buddy, Eric and I, the guy falls. It's probably like thigh high poppy at this point. And we can't see him. Eric jumps into the ditch into this canal that the guy took to go north. So Eric is running towards him and I'm running directly at this individual. And as I get about probably maybe five meters at the most, at the absolute most, we may we lock eye contact again. he's on his back. I can see his chest rig now.

He's got his AK and from his back full on. Oh shit. Don, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. I have nothing on. Right? And I see him and I'm just continuing. I'm looking at him. And I'm like, oh, no. And I just keep shooting him in the chest. At the same time, unbeknownst to me, this British Apache,

hey, I see three guys. Oh, they're engaging one another. Oh, they're engaging him at extremely covain. A man has an X on his back. That's me with my society. spenders, hey, we're going to go ahead and hit them. And then my CCT, Sasha, ended up pushing this gun run just slightly north. So back to us on the ground, right? And this is like a company wide clearing operation. Like, our, my company commander can hear this. We're out there with a

third group team. Like, people know what's up right now. So I'm still advancing forward on this guy. I hear my buddy Eric yell, I'm out of ammo. Because the same thing. Yeah. Totally. some of his peltores. I hear him, y'all, I'm out of ammo. So instead of going straight on him, I kind of button hooked around to the side and then just closed and just shot him in the face until I was out of ammo. Run out of ammo. And then immediately I'm like, did a picture of this guy we're about to get hit. And so there's a picture of me like knelt down next to this dude. And then the very next picture is us pinned down in this like small bit of defalade. So now this gun run from the Apache is going off. No kidding, maybe 30 meters to the

north like terrified absolutely terrifying the entire tree like go go do do do just going off and i'm looking over my buddy eric we can't make out what it is and then we're kind of just like it pauses it stops and then all of a sudden the earth just starts spitting up around us and come to find out there's a pkm about 125 meters to the north of us oh shit very much very much locked in on where Eric and I were withering fire at this point. Like, I mean, I'm laying on the ground. I can see it. And I'm like, oh, this is going to hurt shit.

And then I'm like, all right, well, we can't move without fire. So I remember I moved up to the guy as he's expiring, grabbed his AK, reached into his shit, grabbed a fresh mag, reloaded his AK, popped up to a knee and started putting rounds where I thought it was coming from. And then all of a sudden, boo, the whole tree, like, boom, and it drops. And so now I'm back like pancake. And now I can see the I can see the Apache. I'm like, oh, we're golden. I'm like, hey, next gun run, Eric, like next gun run and definitely not this calm, right? Like, we're going to do it.

Like, next gun run, we're going. And so, you know, third gun, I pop back up, take some shots. And then as soon as that third gun run starts going, we just end up, we just haul ass back to our compound. By that point, all the boys have all their gear on, their car. coming out to try and figure out how to come get us. My buddy James, who is our medic at the time, he's in 18 Delta. He jumps off the room. Same thing. No gear, just a scar with 10 rounds. He's out there now. You know, so now there's three knuckleheads with no gear. This dude that looks like hamburger beef and this British Apache that's just wanting to just get some. Right.

So the three of us idiots, you know, we run back, do our thing. And I remember, you know, you talk about like stock with your partner nation force and rapport you know i'm like wearing this dude's insides and my commandos are like commander p like thank you yeah yeah like i mean it's a cool story because it worked yeah right that that's honestly it um well i mean like most cool stories are are cool because they worked right yeah yeah and then uh that so that's probably on dinner time that that occurs, we come back. I bring the rest of my guys up to me. Nightfall hits and then I called in. So our cast stack was ridiculous, right? Our close air support. On an insert night, we would have, you know, one or two preads. We'd have either two, sometimes

four F-15s or two A-10s, AC-130-s Spectre Gunship, and then we would have our rotary wing support, so a Huey and a cobra. And then we would insert on either three or five MH-40. sevens from the 160th. So we were we had a lot of weight behind us. Um, and so that night, you know, we, we ended up having to leave that guy there. I've got his AK, a fresh mag. Uh, you know, we got to get biometrics on this individual and see out, you know, who this guy is. Right. So we got, we get biometrics on them. The database of guys we killed this day. Yep, exactly. Um, come back and I'm like, you know what? Let's just use this guy kind of like hunting, right? Like, I don't, I don't hunt, but this sounds like a good idea. I called our

Roneering support, and I had a Huey come and sit on the deck for like a minute. I'm like, hey, man, can you guys come sit on the ground for like a minute? We're going to fake that a 47 has landed and we've exiled a false extract. False extract and we're going to get these guys this morning. And so, boom, it works. The Huey lands, they're on the icon. Hey, the Americans have left. The Americans have left, okay, stay where you are. First light, go check out their comcom. Go. So we're up. You know, we knock out our little holes, you know, through all the mud. We're watching this guy, right, that I'd killed the day before. And sure shit, here comes a guy with a shovel and he's on his ICOM radio, right? Which you guys know for us, that's, you've got positive identification at that point.

You can see the radio. Yeah. You see the big intent. I'm like, oh, you're done. Yeah. So the guy gets closer. And he's looking. literally on the other side of the wall. And they're like, I can hear him blah-la-la-la-la-la-la. And then our guy's like, hey, I-com chatter states. The Americans are gone. Bring them in.

And I can hear him on the other side of the wall speaking posture, giving out commands. So he walks from right to left in front of my gun port, and I see him. And I'm like, oh, buddy. And I can see clearly he's on the icon, which again, we've got positive identification, enemy combatant, it's on. I hear him again. Blah, la, la. And then our guys, Icom chatter states, and they say it.

And then the guy walks over, and then he looks right into the hole. It just goes, and I dumped him real quick. And then from there, you know, the gig was up at that point. They knew we were still there. Unbeknownst to me, we had probably three or four guys to the east of us also moving up. We just didn't know it. And that was it. Those guys ran away, and that was it.

Pete, that's a fun. You're pulling out the classic, some Vietnam era tactics with a false extraction there, man. Dude, you know what? I carried a Ranger handbook on every single patrol I went on, and I swear to God, I read that thing regularly throughout that trip. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's a good. I could do that. That's a good idea.

And I would do it, right? So, I mean, and that's a lot of, in my opinion, what makes soft so great is it's the brilliance and the basics. it's just doing the basics better than everybody else. Being tactically proficient. Yeah. Well, it's funny because earlier when you said, you know, it's, you know, it's a cool story because, you know, it's a cool story because it worked.

It's like, I mean, that's kind of how most cool stories are. They're either cool because they work or their cautionary tales when they don't, you know. It's like that, it's like that hero or zero moment. Like, oh, he was a badass. He was a badass or he should have known better. Oh, 100%. Oh, that was, I had that moment just with myself, just that evening, you know, kind of found a quiet corner of the compound, I'm just smoking a cigarette. You know, I don't smoke like here in the States, but overseas, like, I don't, I never dip.

So it's like, cool, we're on something. So I'm smoking my cigarette. And that's probably the quickest I've ever smoked a cigarette in my entire life. Because I just remember looking through my Elcan and just seeing the muzzle flash and just being like, fuck, this is going to hurt. And just kept marching towards the guy and just putting rounds into him. Yeah, that's worked. Yeah. Can you tell us about the, it was a nighttime operation where you guys got compromised on the way to the target?

Oh, man. Yeah. So we go in, we've got a target. We've got to pass a couple compounds on the way there. Of course, you know, they hear us coming up, but we're in trucks. So they hear us. So in route to our target, a bunch of military age males are popping over the wall. So we have to go and address them.

Well, one of the guys was like, hey, let's just breach this door, right? Let's just keep it going. So they breached the door, bad move on our part. That alerts the entire village at this point. Right. So dry hole, we take those guys dropping back with the security platoon. We hop back down and now we're moving in a ranger file towards this target. Good buddy in mine, Joe, we'll call him Joe L for this.

Joe L gets up. He's walking point. He sees their sentry with an. AK, you see a bunch of lasers on them, we dump that guy, and then almost immediately, probably three or four guys with AKs and at least the PKM opened up on us. And we're probably 25 to 30 meters away from them. So now, you know, we're contact right, you know, back to Vietnam Air Tactics. We're in a Ranger file, contact right, everybody's doing it, good volume of fire. Well, then another position of enemy opens up, and now they've got RPGs and another

machine gun and now it's getting weird and so now like we're trying to shoot these guys trying to see what's going on and the volume of fires hey i mean they they know exactly where we are and i remember i'm trying to shoot these guys and off to probably maybe two meters away so six feet my buddy rj is off to my left and he's third in the order of march we're shooting shooting shooting and outside of my 15s i just see this bright bright white flash and then i'd see rj just slumped down and he's down. And then I remember getting small and I'm like, RJ, you okay? Dude, like a robot.

Just didn't say shit, pop back up and kept fighting. Right. And so what had happened was a round went into his M-900. You guys remember those really big surefire handheld support assists? Oh, yeah, yeah. So he had one of those. And around from something hit that flashlight and then exploded into his throat. Jesus.

Oh, my God. He took it. You know, a little hole here, a couple of little. holes pepper in his throat falls over and just doesn't say shit gets back up and keeps fighting kid you not just in it so i'm like oh shit like we're doing this so we're fighting fighting uh chris another one of the junior guys in our team it's probably the seventh or eighth in the order of march he has a law or an at four i forget he's got some rocket so he goes out gets away from us and he's trying to fire this thing off murphy no no rocket we're done oh shit so now

we ended up doing an Australian peel, right? Like right back to Vietnam Air Tactics. This is right back to what I practiced as like a young 19-year-old kid in the jungles of Okinawa. You know, first guy goes, who peels off, second guy peels off,

third guy peels off. I put in a fresh mag, put my rounds out, and then run back, do a reload. And we end up having to peel all the way back. We tried dropping cast that night. We had coalition air,

and they're like, oh, we don't see any enemy combatants. No cast. have a good night and that was it um we ended up having to get back to the trucks and then we just used organic weapons systems from there and then carried on about our business uh Pete uh there's a few other things I wanted to ask you about but since we're here I can see the uh the the Pete Perry I love me wall behind you can you show us the oars because this is a Marine Corps tradition uh tell tell us about these what they are what they mean to you why they're giving you sure sure so

What this is, so there's controversy in the recon, force recon and Marsau communities of where it actually originated. However, what I was initially taught was when a Marine Raider would leave his team or his platoon in World War II, they don't have anything else to give him, but they would have his paddle because you're a part of a boat team, and they would take parachute cord and do these very ornate wrappings around it. The size of the paddle depended on what you did, what type of. of an impact that you made and then just your time you know actual time there you know I've seen good guys leave a unit and not get anything I've seen guys leave a unit get a plaque

I've seen guys leave and they've got fully operational you know Harris 117 you guys know you guys know the KDU that detaches from the radio like inside of the handle of their paddle right so these these things can be really ornate each wrap is supposed to represent something different. Each color is for something different. So this particular paddle is from my time at First Raider Battalion. So as you guys can see, it's definitely splattered in blood because we killed a lot of dudes. And then on there, right, it's typically the devices that you've earned. If a guy is leaving out of the service, typically you'll put ribbons, sometimes metals on there. But yeah, each thing is supposed to represent something different. So on this one, it's actually really neat.

The guys didn't use 550 core. They actually used leather. So this thing is super tough, super taught. And then, yeah, so this is from my time at first Raider Retire. And then on the bottom, you know, you'll typically put a couple different quotes or different things down here on the bottom. And then I got this one and I left the service, right? So like I was saying, different things are on there. Guys will do different things, right?

Oh, that's nice. Yeah. On the back. Yeah, that's amazing. The blade says Raider. Oh, yeah. Trying to do that. But yeah.

And so, you know, I can look back at these. These are some of my most prized possessions, right? My house catches like wife, kids, paddles, hard drives, guns. Right. In that order kind of thing. And so, yeah, that's kind of issue. And is the green one from recon? Yeah.

So this is for my time at Recom Italian. You know, same thing, a younger guy, a smaller stack stuff. And then you got the Reconcrete on the back. And then again, just different things. And typically what we'll do when a guy leaves a unit, right? Like if we're going to award somebody with a paddle, we'll have a big paddle party. And that's where just everybody else that this individual has worked with can say their kind of last words or just final piece to them. and then at the end, that's where you as the recipient can go around

and, you know, you say your final piece to all your guys. And so, yeah, that's a cool way. That's a cool way to offer guys some closure as they leave the unit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good way to, I've never even thought about it. But that's a, it certainly is closure. Like, cool, this chapter done on the next.

Yeah. Now, that's very, that's very nice. Yeah. Let's see here. Tell us about you also got to work with a fifth group team. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So same thing. We're just a little bit south of that big 10-day op down in Watton talking about that.

I think they're enzamblay was the name of it. So this was kind of a funny interaction with this fifth group team where they'd been to Iraq a million times. You know what I mean? What's the one crazy fifth group video where they're like throwing to? flashbangs and just oh that's it's a sift it's the siff yeah it's a 15 yeah yeah right and so it's like oh that's what we were doing and you're like oh this is very different like we're closer to like gubernan era stuff mixed in with like really cool modern jets and sensors and platforms but beyond that like this is kind of a we're in it um and so i remember their team chief their warrant was like

hey we're going to go down to this place that americans have never been to we're going to have a We're going to have a meeting. We're going to have a shore with the village elders. So we get out there. Same thing. I'm walking point. So we're carrying on average. No kidding, fellas, because we had to turn in our weights to the 160th.

Every month, every American would go out in excess of 130 to 150 pounds of additional weight. That's great. Regardless of what you did. Yeah. And they had each of you, each of you had to weigh in. You step on the scale and take the weight to report up to the. pilots. Yep, exactly.

And so it's like, we know for a fact, like how much weight we're carrying. And so me and the rest of my guys were going out there. We're kind of doing like a commando light is what we would call it. Right. So we've got their ANP, so they're like local national police. And then some of like their militia guys out of their VSP site, we get out there. As soon as the sun's coming up, the Taliban are like, holy shit, Americans. And the other Taliban are like, no, they don't come.

I'm here. We're good. Carry on. And they're like, no, no, no, for real. There's a bunch of them. They're coming. Get ready. So we get into the compound. We're hanging out. And then sure as shit, the team chief is like, hey, man, remember that compound of interest that's like 1,200 meters that way through open desert? I want you guys to go check that out. We're going to fight all day.

Like, I'll go there tonight, but like, we need to firm up because, dude, we would bring, I don't know how many sandbags, you know, we would get into a, compound once it was cleared and safe and we would have all of our commandos no kidding fortifying like gun pits up on the roof we'd attach and cut through the mud now we've got gun ports and we're putting rockets through them we're setting up our mortars our big guns like we're ready to go and so i'm like hey sir i do i would really like to do that tonight like under the cover of darkness and he's like i think you'll be all right i'm like i dude we've been here for like five months you've been here for like five days It's not that way.

So he's like, just go. I'm like, all right, man, we'll go. We get like 50 meters out of the compound. We see the Americans hit them, and we just immediately get hooked up. I'm like, oh, shit. So we assault through. We get to a little bit of defilade. The fire is now coming to the north.

And we're hanging out. We're putting some good shots on these guys. And I would hear this behind us. And I'm like, the hell is that? So I get as low as I can. I'm looking back. And they're shooting. their, what is it, a 38 millimeter, the Vogue round,

like their equivalent of like a 203. Like their equivalent of the Mark 19? Or like the, it's the, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're equivalent of the 203. Yep. And so now they're sending those at us. And we're like, oh, shit.

But fortunately, it's like knee-deep mud, right? This is like March. So they're water in all the fields, everything's soaked. And so these rounds would land like five feet behind us, and just blow up in this mud. We got to move now. So we call back to this warrant. We're like, hey, troops in contact.

We need casts, you know, let us know. And we get back like, oh, we're in a meeting. We're in the Shura standby. We're like, this is not good. Like we're getting hammered right now. Withering fire. There's rounds coming in. So what we ended up doing is because we didn't have ground force commander approval.

I'm like, hey, you know what? We have the daytime MC-130. Let's have them just do a giant wall of fire just from, what do they have? Is it like a 28 mil or 30 something mill? Like whatever like their machine gun, the loan is. So they're just putting rounds to the north. I'm like that will negate these guys being able to egress and we'll just close with and destroy them. So we're running towards them.

You know, same thing. Ranger Handbook, Alpha element, base of fire, bravo element, maneuver element, running towards them. So I'm running towards these guys. We have our base of fire. We're the maneuver element. We're moving up. up and I'm talking to the daytime M.C. 1 30. We're talking to him. Hey, man, keep going north up through this, you know, through this canal and 25 meters turn west. You're like, running, right,

running. Man, going through this canal. All right, turn. Boom, I'm running. And like, hey, you should see a guy. He's right in front of you. I'm like, all right, cool. Oh, there's the guy. And so it's me, and we had a rep from Jayedo with us, a former unit guy. So he and I are moving through this canal. I'm in the canal. This gentleman's up on the bank and we're moving through. And I see this guy like 10 meters away, five meters away. I'm closing on him. And he doesn't, this might sound kind of goofy, but dead dudes generally look kind of funny, especially if they've been dead for a few minutes. This guy didn't look goofy to me. So he's laying there and he's got his arm over the PKM. And so I'm standing there. And then as we're moving up, he goes and starts to move for the PKM.

and I just, you know, shoot him in the head so many times, put him to sleep. He's done. And then the rest of the guys were able to egress out. But it was one of those things where it's like, you know, it goes back to we're telling the fifth group team. And this is nothing on those guys. They're phenomenal. They had a really great trip. They did a lot of good stuff.

But in that moment, it was like, sir, this is a bad idea. So out of curiosity, so the person who told you to, who was like, Roger Dodger, safe in the daytime was the same one who was in a share of meeting and was too busy to approve your call for your your your cast yeah that was my element and then the other the other mobile element and so it was funny because i i had the 18 charlie and i think one other oda guy they're out with us and so they're trying like hey man like whatever's name was like dude like we're in it like please support and then we had i'm drinking tea right now calm cool cool cool calm down having some child yeah relax yeah you're like I'm I'm I'm not as calm as you are

things are very very different where I am right now so yeah you know you know so we do we do we do our we do our business we get back and we're debriefing in the compound and the guy was dude super professional like he wasn't like once we debriefed he was like oh cool like you know and you can tell in that moment you know it's very very very vulnerable for a guy to be like, hey, dude, I fucked up. My bad. I'm sorry. He didn't fuck up, but it might have been one of those things where we're coming in telling him,

and this may have happened to you guys. Hey, you guys are going to go to Village X. It's this bad. And you're like, there's no way it's not bad. Like, these guys are probably stretching it a little bit. And then you get like, oh shit, it is that bad. Yeah, it should have listened to his NCOs.

It's also challenging, though, when you have a leader put you in a position that where wisdom or at least caution, you know, can look like cowardice because they're not giving you that option. So when you're saying, hey, this isn't a good idea. We should wait for nice.

Like, that's the prudent thing. And so when they won't accept that and they go, hey, it's like, get out there. And then it's like, okay, shit, right? And then you go out there. And if you don't get hit, you look, like, you know, the, you know, Chicken Little, like, oh, the sky is falling. But if you don't get hit, you can't go back and say, I told you so. You know, it's just like, it's tough when leaders put

you in that position because they don't sort of respect your situational awareness or your interpretation of the situation. Yeah. And I mean, that happens all the time, man. I mean, SF, Raiders, Rangers, whomever, I would say, are certainly guilty of a little bit of that. Like, dude, you know, and that guy's been doing this for 20 years. Right. Like, I've been doing this. Like, okay, cool, right? Like, who am I to say, you know, hey, dude, like, whatever you're thinking is wrong and this is what's going to happen.

Right. You know, and so it's an absolute benefit of the doubt. You know, that's their first time ever going there. That was their first major movement outside of that fob. That was a great learning experience. Everyone lived. No one was hurt. Right.

Great. Right. And so I think after that, they're like, oh, like, this is a little serious. Right. And so we had a similar thing with that third group team. So during that big clearing op, we bring them in and we're like, hey, guys, here are all of the horrifying types of IEDs that we find in the helmet. And we get done with the brief.

And they're like, so you guys are like messing with us? And you're like, no. You know, like, yes, there is an anti-tamper finger sweep like IED. Yes. Like absolutely, I don't rip your head off. I don't think it's so bad. And then we get out there and they're like, oh, it's definitely that bad. Thanks, guys.

You know, and so I think it's one of those things where we've all been there. I've done it, dude. This is my fourth appointment. What am I going to see that I haven't seen before? Right. And you get out and you're like, you're very quickly humbled. Right. So.

Speaking of the IEDs, can you tell us about the clearing operation you did in the bazaar where you found a huge IED? Yeah. Yeah. So we're up. We're probably west of Musa-Clure. We're in a place called the Gandymreeze Bazaar. It's like 400 shops.

We get in, immediately Icom chatter is going off. They're calling us on, you know, we're doing, I figure what it's called when you actually prep with the AC130 on. Like pre-assault fires. Thank you. Yep. So we're doing full-on pre-assault fires for all three elements. We're doing our thing.

We get in not too contested, firm up. And then the next day, we fight tooth and nail all day long. And then from there, we're taking like pretty, pretty accurate sniper fire. So the next day it was, hey, we're going to move through. We're going to clear this entire bazaar and then, you know, try and rid ourselves of this sniper threat. Well, we're going through this bazaar, going through this bazaar, and I'm climbing up,

like, this makeshift ladder, right? So the same thing. Like, you sweep up to it, right? Put a ladder up on the roof, get up, and I'm trying to get some situational awareness. And for me to, like, you know, I could touch it was, I think it's called the R-T-R-D-2. It's a R-C-I-ED thing. So you see the battery, you see the antenna, you see the coil loop, and you're like, oh, no, here we are. Shit.

And it's like immediately you're frozen. Yeah. You know, daytime, they can see me. I'm fucked. Like this is a lot. So I called over the radio to my mom tech. Hey, Eric, hey, dude, I think I see an R-C-I-E-D. What do I do?

Hey, man, come off the ladder. We were fortunately running jammers. Yeah, yeah. But that's probably why I'm still here. Yeah. But yeah, dude. It was it was one of those experiences where you get back and just you know how close you were to just it being your very last day. Yeah.

I think the jammers and the jammers, I mean, all through the war, the jammers, the jammers technology. Like, I think it'd be hard to ever estimate how many lives those jammers saved. It's one of those things where it's like if no IEDs go off, is it because the jammers worked or because the IEDs weren't there. So it's something that you can like underestimate or, you know, You never know. Yeah. Hey, I'm going to be rude real quick. I'm going to take an intermission for a rest of the back.

Go ahead. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, folks, join us next week. We're going to have Doug Wise on the stream. He is a career CIA officer, did a ton of stuff. Really interesting guy.

And I think maybe this is the first time he's ever, like, been interviewed on a podcast or anything like that. We get the good ones. Yeah. We get the good ones. Really cool. guy. And then the week after, as we said earlier, we're going to have Fred Galvin on the show. And that's going to dovetail really well with this episode because Fred was on the very first Marsock deployment. And as we alluded to earlier in the episode, those guys, straight up,

they got fucked. They got fucked over for politics, political nonsense. But Fred will tell us all about that stuff. He has a book that just came out. thankfully where he tells his story and the story of his Marines. So we'll catch up with him in a couple weeks. So Pete, back to you, man. I have one question here from a viewer. Interesting question. Jackson asks, will Marsok ever stand up a J-Soc component,

or does it just make more sense for Raiders to go to? Oh, for the exchange program where Marines end up, they serve some time in Delta and then come back to the Marine Corps. Yeah. So, Jackson, great question. Thank you for your question. Thank you for tuning in. There's definitely been discussion.

I've now fairly removed from that. I would say eventually I could certainly see it happening. I know that we do have a decent enough presence within J-Soc. There's a handful of guys that are there that are doing very extraordinary things. So I think it would, if anything, it would kind of be like the debt one kind of thing, you know, is how it was often talked about how it would go is, hey, we'll pony up our best and brightest and we'll do a tryout just like we did for conventional, or not conventional, but regular so calm, white so calm, and see how it goes. So I could, I could see that happening in the next probably five to ten if it ever did. And this is something I'd like to open up here at this point. is kind of a discussion from your point of view.

As Marsock has certainly evolved as time went on, as the unit matured, as we're now kind of getting into this, I struggle to say, post-GWAT era, but we're certainly moving into a new time frame for the United States military. Missions are changing, units are changing, priorities are changing. I'm interested in what do you see as the role of Marsac? think it will, I don't think any unit in special operations are just going to continue business as usual. They're all going to have to evolve and change based on the theaters of operation

and the new mission sets. But from your perspective, what do you see, what do you see is Marsox's role in the special operations community moving forward? Sure. I think, I think it'll be a lot of the same. I think it'll be, you know, we can bridge the gap. And it's kind of funny, right, because people will look at seals and be like, oh, they're the only ones that can dive. And you're like, there's a whole dive SF teams. That's all they do. And they're really good.

So I think for a little bit, it probably just depends on like theater of conflict and where it is and what's going on. But I would say for the most part, it's probably business as usual, you know, in terms of whites off with the ODAs, the, yeah, ODAs, the Raiders, and probably a little bit of NSW. So I think this, the DA, the counterproliferation, the FID, Some of the SR type stuff, I think, will certainly continue.

And I think it'll be like anything else where, you know, it's innovator die. And I think at that point, you guys know as well as I do, when you go to the T-Saw Commander Sotiff level, Siege of Sotiff, like you're just as much as a salesman within your special operations team is some guy that works at, you know, Apple. Right. You're a salesman. Right. all the guys. And so I think it'll be really interesting. I think some of the near peer or peer threat stuff will be very,

very interesting in terms of how that plays out, preparations for it. And then just technology, too. I mean, I think like anything else, just as more things become easier to get, like night vision or thermals, I think a lot of our tactics.

A lot of our TTPs are going to have to evolve. But I think for the most part, it'll be the same kind of the pillars, right? SR, D, A, counterproperation, FID, that kind of. Has, did you see a change while you were there and from the guys you talked to? Now, like, is the larger Marine Corps, I say big Army, so I want to say big Marine Corps, too.

But is the regular Marine Corps, are they more accepting of Marsok now? Or is there still a contention? I think it's a lot more accepting. I think now, I mean, the guys, even down to the younger level, you know, really understand that they're an ambassador for the unit and that oftentimes they are somewhat of a black sheep when they go back to big Marine Corps. And so I think these guys get out, whether that's different schools, whether that's different training within the Marine Corps. And then for a lot, not even a lot, for every single pre-deployment workup, your partner nation force is often a conventional

Marine Corps platoon. And so you take 20, 30, 50 of those guys and they get to see the caliber of human that's there the type of mission you know very quickly i feel like those guys would be hopefully maybe not inspired it's probably too dramatic of a word but i think like at least fired up so i think now big marine corps sees like hey marsock's not going to go away we tried to bring all these guys back you know after their first five that went away hey you know the whole raider thing right like that was a something as simple as a name right hey we're the right but you can't be the raiders and so we did we unconventional warfare. We did I.O. and a PSIOPs campaign against big Marine Corps.

The Marine Corps times would come out for, you know, hey, you guys are fastroping. What, where are you? First Raider battalion. First Raider battalion. And then it would come out and we'd all get flamethroned for it. No, it's First Marine. You're like, no. There's a very, I wouldn't say famous, but prominent picture within the Marine Corps of then commandant General Amos with a raider patch that someone had slapped on under his shoulder.

and then that just lit the five raiders and more. You'll never, ever, ever be Raiders. No, you'll never get your own device. You'll never, whatever. And then just over time, you know, just same thing. Just you super, usurp a little bit of authority, get it out there. And now you have Raider battalions on a raider regiment and you wear the Raider patch. And, you know, like I said, I have, I have a bunch of times in this interview, like,

referred to Marsock as like a young unit. But, I mean, a couple of years from there. and they're going to be 20 years old. I mean, they're not that young anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's incredible.

Well, it's funny because, you know, they, you talk about how the, the, you know, the information war against the Marine Corps or the term Raider. And there are probably a lot of people in the Marine Corps saying, no, you can't have it because it just services this, you know, the older, the actual Raiders. And it's like, yeah, but the Marine Corps got rid of them because they didn't want Raiders then either. Like, that's a deep cut. That's a deep cut. You know?

Like the Marine Corps doesn't want Raiders. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And not only that, we, no kidding. Three, at least three guys that I know went to from my platoon and met and sought out and met living World War II Marine Raiders and said, hey guys. This is who we are. Here's our lineage.

This is what we would like to do. May we please? Absolutely, guys. Right. And so where it started was like us, like that first batch of guys in 2007 on the West Coast, here's a Raider patch. And then you had to earn it. It wasn't just like wear this thing.

It's like, oh, cool, Pete. Like you did really well on that gunfight today. Like, good shit, bud. Here's your patch. Cool. Now when you see a young dude do his thing, give him his patch. Right. Right.

And then it kind of went on a long time. I would say at least the first five to probably seven years, very close to that. where it was like you had to earn that. Yeah. And just it kind of, like I said, it proliferated from there where, no kidding, like Marine Corps Times, we're going to, you know, film you guys doing VBSS. What's your unit for a Schrader Battalion? Okay.

So. You know, it's so funny the difference between the Marine Corps and the Army because the Marine Corps, you know, the Marine Corps is, it is hardcore. Like Marine Corps boot camp is worse than a much tougher than Army boot camp. and, you know, the idea that every Marine is a rifleman, you know, and they really stress that. And so, you know, that idea also holds them back. But all Marines are elite so we don't need elite force. Then you have the Army where in the Marine Corps they hold back their special operations units.

But in the Army, you have something like Shinseki who goes, well, you know what? Rangers have a lot of pride and a lot of professionals. I'm, you know what, let's get everybody a black beret. Then that'll make everybody like a ranger, right? So, yeah, that's, that's kind of what they did with the army combat physical fitness test, which has been a big controversy in the army. It's like, they see these high performers and Rangers and SF and they're like, oh, well, let's make the entire army do that PT test.

And then they find out through statistical and scientific research, actually the entire army cannot, like physically cannot and will not do. They will not perform at that level. Right. It is just funny. And that's okay. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that's where some people get really hung up on that. Dude, how many deployments have you done, right? Let's say, Jack, you're the pay or the food guy for your ODA. Like, people still have to do all the admin stuff, get things there, move things around. Like, that is a vital cog in the machine. Right. And they should not be even what our standards are. Like, if we're that much of a more fighting element, we should be light years about that.

Right. So, Pete, tell us about your decision to leave the Marine Corps and kind of transitioning into the civilian world. Yeah. So, let's see, 2015, I was an instructor. It's called ITC. It's the individual training course. It's about nine and a half months long. I'd been there for roughly two, two and a half years. I was at that professional military education that I referenced earlier with that sergeant major. You know, you multi-time deployers. You're the problem. Right. While we were here, they're like, hey, guys, go back to your units and tell them about all these great incentives to get out and do all these things. And at that point, I had never really thought about getting out. I was like, I'll just do this until, A, I die or B, I just hit 20 or 25 years and I'll just figure it out from there. My wife and I found out we were going to have twins. And like I said at the very beginning, my dad was a fighter pilot, constantly deployed, doing cool stuff. but I wanted to be around for my kids. And it was one of those things where it's like, you know, my dad would catch a birthday here, catch a baseball game here, coach like a little bit of the seasons here, do some other stuff.

But the guy's out fighting doing his thing. I have the utmost respect for that. There's no weirdness, whatever. So anyway, at that point in 2015, I was like, okay, cool. We're going to have kids. We're going to have twins. Like, I want to be around for it. I'm going to get out.

And so summer of 2015, I decided I was going to leave. I left after 12 years of active duty service. And I'm glad I did. You know, it was a good time to leave, I think, just personally, just family life, life wise. But then also professionally, that was at the same time, you know, 2015, big G-WAT stuff in Afghanistan is going away. You know, only a handful of very select teams within the organization are going to go do like Big Mosul or go do these really big pushes. And that's it, you know, and we were just so used to, or at least I was so used to, like, every time I deploy, like, it's going to be so kinetic. Like, I'll be stoked if I make it through.

And then after that, it was like, well, if I decide to stay in, I'll go back to First Raider Battalion in the West Coast. My wife's from here. Man, I'm going to go to the Philippines for six months and go do FID. And that just didn't sound very fun. And it was one of those things where maybe at the time that was an immature decision, you know, just fit is an invent. very responsible, very adult-type mission, right? Like, DA, everyone, you know, everybody has watching like, oh, DA, that's got to be so hard. That's the easiest skill set there is. It's also the sex. It's also the sexiest. It is. Right. That's why you guys had more

indigent than the SF teams that you worked with it, because Fit is not sexy. And everybody who's done, Fid knows that. Yeah. Yeah, but it's also, uh, oh, I mean, Fid arguably has a much bigger impact. Oh, 100% than going and hitting singular targets. Yeah, 100%. But nobody talks about that time I was training that, you know, the Jordanian. No one makes a movie yet. Yeah, that's for sure.

Nope, there will be no book. Yeah. And so anyway, it was just kind of just the culmination of like, okay, if I go back and at that point I was looking at E7, so now, you know, maybe a team chief, right? So the equivalent of like a team sergeant in an ODA. Like at that point, you're fighting days. They're not numbered, but they're getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And so if we go to the Philippines, like we're going to go back to the West Coast, right?

I want to support my wife. I want to be a part of this. I want to be a big, you know, good family man. We're doing this. And then, I mean, just general living too, right? Like Wilmington, North Carolina or San Diego, California. Right. It's pretty.

So yeah, it was just, it was kind of a no-brainer of like, all right, I did 12 years. Super fun. Got super lucky. Ten fingers, 10 toes. Like, good run. Time to go. Yeah. And that was it. Yeah. So tell us about this new project you're working on that you want to start your own podcast pretty soon.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to call it right now, at least in trial after the fight. And the concept is to take former special operations operators and then interview them in like a 40 to like 60 minutes span and I want to hear about their worst day or one of their worst experiences and then how they dealt with it you know in the immediate aftermath you know

days weeks months later and then how they're dealing with it now and a lot of that you know where this comes from my wife and I are watching a documentary on Amazon once a marine it's about a Marine Corps infantry platoon they go to marja a guy gets killed and then these younger men are having a really hard time adjusting. And I think about it, like when I came back from those deployments, you know, fighting the entire time, like, I had good guys to look up to and good guys to go to for advice, good guys to kind of see, like, oh, like, I can mimic that. I can do that. Like, and but in watching this documentary, it was just so sad, right? Guys doing heroin, guys are killing themselves. And it's like, dude, like, maybe I can help love that, right? And so

the idea came about from that of just like, why not just do a project, where I interview some guys, they tell a really gnarly war story, and then how they dealt with it immediately following it, and then immediately after, right? And so where that comes from is when I was an instructor at individual training course, my very first class, one of my students, hey, it's Staff Sergeant Perry, if I were to do this in real life, how would I do it?

Doctrinally, and from the pub, from the book, it says this, but what did you really do? And so I just, here's an anecdotal story. Here you go, guys. Like, this is a real story. This is what I did. And after that, I was like, man, I feel really fucking good. Wow.

Did I just do group therapy? Right? Yeah. Yeah. What? You know, I started to feel a little better. And then, you know, throughout that time, and then I would do, like, peer instruction. Like, hey, like, I'm not the only guy that's experienced this.

You did two deployments as a 03-11 infantryman. What did you do in that scenario? And then that guy would tell his story. You know, like, fuck yeah, man, that's gnarly. Like, good story, good stuff, good tactics. Like, this is, we can implement this. And so it was kind of all of those things all at the same time where, like, man, I need a creative outlet. I want to help people.

And I want to let these other young guys know that like, hey, man, you can go through all of this horrible stuff and survive. And still come back to me. Great dad, great husband, great friend, great coworker. Like, and be fine. Yes, you might still deal with it. Yes, you might have a nightmare now and then, but like, how are you dealing with it? And so right now, you know, I've reached out. I think initially you'll say season one, you know, would be predominantly Marine Raiders

just because that's my wheelhouse, that's my community, that's who I know. But again, the structure of it is tell me one of your worst days, tell me the whole story in detail, and then how did you get through it, right? And so like, and part of that too is just like how I thought that I was dealing with trauma and traumatic events, you know, like, oh, dude, I was sad for like five minutes after that happened and I'm good. I dealt with it. Yeah.

Ten years later, you're like, yeah. You're dragging some guy out of his car on the street, you know, because he cut you off. Oh, wait. Is this coming from somewhere? Yeah. Dave, what happened? Yeah. Yeah, Pete, if you're ever interested in having a army guy on, you know, I'll tell you the story about

a friendly fire incident, like some really horrible stuff. And I'd be happy to return the favor because I really appreciate you, you know, coming on the podcast and telling some of these stories. Guys, in a heartbeat, right? And I think, you know, like, if I could end it, like, I'll put my stuff out there, right? Like, when we get to it and we start filming it towards the late summer, the goal is to have, you know, to 12, 13 episodes done, processed, headed in, ready to go by probably October and to start to put that out. and then, you know, eventually get into like season two kind of thing where it's like, hey, like PTSD and trauma and, you know, post-traumatic growth is not singular to only the soft community or the military community. It can be social workers, teachers, moms, whomever.

So the idea is to like spread it out to the masses. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, you're like you drive an ambulance every day. You probably have seen horrible stuff. How do you deal with that? And part of that too is like I want to be able to hack my own brain and emotions and that physiological aspect of like we've all been through a lot. Right. And that's okay. And I think once you start to tell a young man that like, hey, you went through some stuff, you might feel a little sad about it and that's normal and that's okay. And you're not weak. But you got back to real life. And this is how I did it. And this is how Brian did it. And Derek. And like, here's some real examples. Right. We'll be vulnerable. We'll put our show. And this is how I did it. And this is how Brian did it. Derek. And like, here's some real examples. We'll be vulnerable. We'll put our. shit out there and that's it right and because again back to kind of the anecdotal part of it you know when my dog handler got killed dude that messed me up still messes dude i'm still goofed up from right right

but once i came to terms with being able to own that and everything associated with it it got a lot easier right yeah and so yeah you know and i like i feel like it's very important to sort of normalize the whole discussion around post-traumatic stress because I feel especially in the military and especially in the special operations community, but kind of across the board that, you know, that like there's this myth that a lot of people don't seek out hope for post-traumatic stress because, you know, because they're too macho or they're too this or to that. But a lot of times it's also because I don't want to be a drama queen. I know people have been worked through worse stuff than me.

I don't really have a right to complain. And I don't want to like, you know what I mean? Like a lot of times. That's one of the, one of the many avoidance strategies. that veterans use well i mean it's yeah cut it deep i know it is it is post-traumatic stress there are going to be avoidance strategies like like if if we're just easy to go oh you know what i have post-traumatic stress i should get help hey doc help me then it wouldn't be an issue my ops are classified i can't talk about them with the psychologist yeah way of a way of avoiding it yeah yeah but i mean i

I would say for anybody out there that is listening to this, that has questions, that is struggling, some of the baddest men on planet Earth go talk to a psych and they get help in a way that I often equate it is you're on a mission, you're in theater, and the roof goes down, right? You took a rocket and you sprained your ankle and you then have to rehab your ankle and there's good days and there's bad days. And then it won't bother you for six months and all of a sudden it's cold and you're like, oh yeah, that ankle injury. to me that's how I look at like trauma PDS whatever it's that same thing you experience something and you sprained your brain and it's not permanent but it's going to be there but through some therapy through some physical therapy we can improve that so let's improve it yeah absolutely that's how I get it this maybe as caveman as that is but just I mean yeah I would say like and again like I'll own my own stuff.

Like after the end of my 2012 deployment, we're almost a month to the day. Do I have time for one more story? Yes. Absolutely. So one of my worst days was when my friend and dog handler, Keaton Coffee, he was killed. May 24th, 2012. We're running around. We're in a place called Hyderabad, real bad spot down in the helmet.

We're doing our thing. And this is we're doing our rip. or a relief in place. So it's Keaton and I from my team, and then it's the whole new MSOT that's relieving us. We're so small, probably like you guys, where you know everybody anyway. So it's like, oh, I've deployed with half of this team anyway.

I'm like, this is great. So anyway, we're out in Hyderabad. We infill. That was the first and only time that I was ever put not where I wanted by the 160th. And that's not a slight on those guys. That was just like, you guys know where you're like, man, everything was kind of off on that one and then this happened and of course that so and dude the

160th guys are the best I mean those guys are like formula one race car drivers like oh you want me to land within like a meter of you I'll land on your head done and then those guys are incredible so we fight the whole first day the next night we ended up moving like 2k because part of that process moving so far is at a certain point you would advance beyond their defense perimeter IED belt. You would get so far and so deep into their root-loop and into where they were actually felt safe that when they woke up that next morning, we were already in ambush positions where they thought they were safe. And then we could go ahead and reduce them and just continue our business. So the short of it is I'm in an ambush position. Half the boys are back

like our main compound. We're getting I-com chatter. The different ISR platforms are picking up guys moving around, weapons. So I call back to our compound. Hey, boys, put some rounds out into a field, right? It's completely clear out into the field, then it's the river behind it. We'll see if we can't spook these guys and maybe push them south. And it worked in the past, right? So we're waiting for these guys to run down directly into my ambush position. And as we're waiting, you know, I hear one solitude shot, like one single shot. I'm like, oh, shit, huh? Don't think anything of it. And like 10 seconds later, hey, WIA, stay. standby for, you know, battle roster number.

Like, all right, so I grabbed the new 18 Delta, and then his name's Max, and then I'm like, all right, you guys stay here, just wait to ambush these guys. It was probably a commando up on the rooftop, like got hit, whatever, we'll fix them. So as we're running back, Max and I are just getting our butts shot off. It's about 180 meters between where our ambush position is and then our main element. And so we're just getting our butt shot off, get back into the compound. and the commandos are all yelling and pointing up on the roof, and there's the one ladder.

So my buddy Mike comes out from the incoming team. He's like, yeah, dude, I think Keaton is still on the roof. So I grabbed another ladder, put it next to that. I had a red smoke through the red smoke on the roof. Mike gave me his smoke through another red smoke on the roof. And then I started climbing up this ladder. And as soon as my helmet broke the plane of the roof, just boom, just ass on fire.

They was trying to, you know, they knew I was there. So I'm like skull dragon across this rooftop. Well, on the time that it took me to move from my ambush position to the firm base to our compound, one of the Afghan medics had gotten up on the roof and had just started a pressure bandage on Keaton. So skull dragon, skull dragging, skull dragging, I get to him, grab him by his ankles, grab him by his knees, and I just scoop him up, you know, and kind of baby carry him. He's got no gear on. It's the hardest, single hardest physical thing I've ever had to do in my life is to pick up,

Keaton was probably 6-1, 6-2-21-21-250, 200. No-Kit on and then pick him up and then run across the rooftop. And as you guys know, it's the undulating kind of rooftop, like little domes on the top. And just the whole time, you can just see rounds skipping off the roof. Like, it was, we're in it, right? The smoke's dissipating. We get back to the ladder. Lay Keaton down.

I lay down next to him. And then I lower him onto the ladder. My buddy Mike is probably three-quarters of the way out. wheeler Keaton onto him. Mike takes him over his shoulder and then gets down the ladder. I come off the ladder and we're still taking a really heavy volume of enemy fire at this point. So now cool, Max, the 18 Delta the medic, he's working on Keaton trying to put him back together. And then at that point, you guys know, it's like you're like the chaos coordinator, right? It's like, all right, Andrew, you get up on the roof. Let's get some fire going this way. Hey, Chris, go find me an LZ. Hey, Jake, go do this. Like,

let's start redistributing ammo. Like, we got to be ready for this. Hey, who's on comms with the aircraft? What are we doing? Right? So it's that immediate like you, you, you, you, you go. Okay. And then we knew we had to get them out.

We're taking a pretty heavy volume of fire. So we ended up blowing through a wall to get out just because we're getting hammered at this point. And when I say hammered, I mean very accurate sniper, small arms and medium machine gun. So anyway, we get the medevac. we do a couple gun runs from a Huey and a cobra and this tree line where we want to put them out. And then birds coming in. And for listeners out there, what's really interesting is as soon as someone gets hit, I swear it's almost, and correct me if I'm wrong, Dave, if you guys have ever experienced this, like Jack, same thing.

Like a guy would get hit and they're like, oh, we hit one, wait for the med of that bird. and you're hearing that and you're like what the fuck like we're in it like this is it like these guys know they just hit somebody and now they're going to wait for the helicopter like okay here we go so we're doing area prep area denial

with the Huey and the cobra the British Metavac platform comes in lands and you can just hear the rounds skipping off I mean it was they they had us right get Keating out get Keating on the bird Keaton leaves they try and take on

off and one at I think one or two of my commandos was like fuck this I'm out I'm going home on this helicopter like fuck you guys we're done and so we get this dude back off the bird we get all of our head count of all of our commandos get back in the compound fight for a little bit then it gets dark right and so we get back to the compound and the boys did really well right we had one guy obviously took it pretty hard but this is where you kind of get into that like generational difference right we have guys that have been doing nothing but deployed for 10 15, 20 years that are seeing this and have seen this. We have a guy that it's his first deployment and you can see just the emotional toll, right? And you can see how much more it affects the newest guy

versus the guy that's unfortunately had to experience this. And then I'm running the whole show, right? I'm in the middle of all of this and it's like, hey, I'm the commander for this element. This is what we're doing. This is how it's going to go. And so obviously you can't show any kind of emotion at that point. Hey, we're still out here. You know, we had guys probing towards our compound that night where we're shooting rockets and, you know, small arms to push people away. And then the next day, we fight all day. We've got more guys advancing on us to the point where we're throwing like hand grenades at dudes, right? Like it got pretty good. And then we ended up leaving. So it's about for Keaton, he got hit. He shot right above his, I believe it was

his left ear, shot right over his left ear, done. And then we met a vacuum. And I wanted to say about five, ten minutes after he touched down to Kandahar expired, right? Very unfortunate, super sweet kid and like total Hollywood stereotypical future. He was going to get home, marry his high school sweetheart, get out of the Marine Corps two months later, and then go work for his dad at the boring Oregon fire department, right? And so within that, you know, all of that happens. We fight the whole next day. We extract, get back. We do our crazy, you know, super long debrief. which I'm sure again you guys are familiar with. And then, but just for listeners on the backside of 99% of your operations,

you're probably doing anywhere from two to six hours, depending on your billet within a team of post-mission products, post-mission debrief, your intel summaries, storyboards. It's a significant amount of work. I say all that to say that I processed all that stuff, went through all that. I went out onto a little corner of the fob, cried for like five minutes. I'm like, all right, I'm done. I've grieved.

We're good. continue and then i flew home like a week later right and that was a really really stark contrast from like dude i'm in pasadena california the rules bulls down the street this is like super pretty like pleasantville america and i'm still trying to figure out like what happened last week like when my friend got shot yeah it's really drawing yeah right and so there's a lot going on trying to figure all that stuff out and so anyway that's where like this after the fight thing like I wish that somebody or something was around for me to look toward or two and just like, oh, this is normal.

Like, it's normal to feel sad. That's called grief. It's going to happen. You went through a traumatic event. That's okay. Deal with it. Move on. Right.

But at the time, very much wrestling with myself of like, oh, I'm weak. I shouldn't be thinking about this. I'm weak because I think about it. Like, no, man. Like, you sprained your brain. you went through something extraordinarily traumatic. Right. Seek help and then move on.

Yeah. And then be great every day that you have the chance to move on. Yeah. And that's kind of the origin story and spirit of how I want to do it and just, you know, if it helps a couple of young guys, then cool, man, mission accomplished. Yeah, I think that's a great mission statement, Pete. Because, and I've had somewhat similar thoughts that, you know, in the books, in the movies, we're very familiar with the sort of heroic narrative, these like little

soldier tales, but often the types of stories you're talking about, those are the ones that aren't really told. And so I think we get so much of our information and life guidance through the various forms of media. I think young soldiers are kind of left, unless they're very fortunate to have some sort of mentorship, somebody who sits them down and walks them through this, kind of left out there flapping to figure it out on their own. So I think that the type of project you're talking about it is definitely worthwhile. Yeah. So just, you know, again, the shameless plug would be we'll film end of summer beginning of fall.

And I would say probably before Thanksgiving, have everything done, edited, packaged, and ready to go. Well, when you, when you have it ready and when it's up and everything, let us know. And we'll give you a shout out for sure. You know, we'll plug you, you know, get some eyes on you, if anything we can do to help. A couple of- I really appreciate it. A couple final questions as we wrap up here. Andrew asks, would it make sense for Morsak to adopt kukreys or ridiculous large bowie knives

over standard issued knives as a branding measure? Same way the berets set themselves apart by donning special hats. Sure. Great question. Thank you for asking. I know a lot of the guys that did go to the Philippines and do J-sets or do FID were definitely given those knives. They're incredible. It's an amazing tool.

Some of them have been used on enemies, which is also, you know, ups the cool factor. Right. There was for a little bit when we first stood up, we had kind of an internal, if you were an 0372 card carrying raider, you would get a strider knife and then from that same sheet of metal that they cut it from they would make and mold a mug with the same serial number Oh, that's very cool.

And then I think from that, yeah, yeah. So I think there's a handful of like founding guys that have that and some other stuff. But yeah, there was always the discussion of like, are we going to have berets? What are we going to do? Are we going to have like a device? Like, what are we going to do?

And it's so funny because it's like our device. You're like, oh, that's like the knockoff trident. all your team structure, that's like the knockoff, like ODA, like, come on, guys, be original, all right? So, uh, Admiral apparent asks, if the Marines shift to a littoral amphibious focus, will Raiders fit in more neatly doing old school UDT stuff, but part of the Marine machine already? I think the Green Brays and the Navy SEALs and SWIC and the Raiders would all be fighting for that. And I think that all three branches and probably held the Rangers, too, there's a whole like water phase right i mean i think any soft unit could train and be on par for that

skill set i don't think it's yeah sorry if i misinterpreted your question i don't think that's that's solely for the marine corps for a little bit that was kind of the focus of like oh we do all the torral stuff like that's our differentiator and you're like so what like the water and like a little bit in like that's you're excluding yourself from so many missions so well thank you everyone who joined us tonight watching this in chat thank you pete for spending your friday evening with us uh we really appreciate it man where can people find you on social media and whatnot if they want to like stay stay up with you and what you're doing yeah thanks for asking so right now it's pete perry eight is on instagram a couple years ago i had a decent following i was working on another project

and then got off of all social media and i'm only now getting back into it within like the last couple weeks specifically for this after the fight project. So if anybody did want to say, hey, jump into my DMs or whatever, Pete Perry 8 on Instagram. If you shoot me a message, I'll shoot you right back. And so from there, look for more content to be built out. And then again, going into the end of the summer, beginning of fall, I'll slowly start to release some clips.

And again, this is guys that have Navy crosses, guys that bronze stars, silver stars, guys that or double amps, guys that have done nothing but combat deployments for two decades. And the whole goal of it is, like, to keep it light. You know, I know both of you guys have been in plenty of gun fights where you spend more time laughing than you did anything else. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. There's stuff that happens in war that you can't make up. It's true. Yeah. 100%. And that's what I want to get out to people because, Jack, to your point earlier, I mean, The whole portrayal in media is like, you do a deployment, you come home and you have PTSD and that's it. And then we probably got to put you down.

Whereas, you know, we know guys that have done extraordinary things that have experienced the worst thing a person can experience. And to kind of clear the air again, like to the listeners out there, like, your worst day is still your worst day. Just because you didn't go to war, it doesn't mean your worst day is any less than. mine or jacks or daves that's the message out there is like your trauma is your trauma and you can figure it out and there's a future for you after after your worst day and after your military service absolutely it's a great message 100% and so again just i appreciate everyone that tuned in and listen anyone that watches this in the future and to both of you guys for having me on thank you for reaching out this is an amazing platform and i had a blast we really appreciate you join what were you

drinking tonight for our guests who may not have seen your bottle. A little shamo black barrel. Nice. Yeah, we finished the Lagovoolin and we've moved on to McAllen. Yeah. So, guys, we will see you all next week with Doug Wise, career CIA, senior intelligence staff, and then the week after Fred Galvin for some more Marsock. So thank you again, Pete.

Thank you everyone who joined us last night. Thank you so much for spending time with this on a Friday night. And, you know, tell your wife that we appreciate it, you know, giving you the pass. I appreciate it. I'm listening. Sorry if I mumbled. This was a blast. Thank you.

I appreciate it. That's all good. And we'll see everyone next week. See you guys. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five. with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting.

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