The Team House - Hellacious Combat w/ the Army Rangers & Rescuing Marcus Luttrell | David Waterhouse | Ep. 314

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseDave served in Iraq and Afghanistan with the 75th Ranger Regiment. He did 6 deployments in 4 years. Check out Dave's documentary “Ranger” on amazon prime:⬇️https://www.amazon.com/Ranger-David-Waterhouse/dp/B0B8T6YBZV?dplnkId=1bb426a0-6b5f-4850-a8c0-4cbc8d93dec7&nodl=1Dave’s non profit helping veterans ⬇️https://furtherfasterharder.orghttps://www.instagram.com/furtherfasterharder_foundation?igsh=MXI0NnkwbGR5aDY2Mg==___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnPodcast/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:Mando ⬇️https://shopmando.comPromo code "TEAMHOUSE" for 40% off your starter pack.GhostBed ⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 50% OFF!!!____________________________________Pre-order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]0:00 start #75thrangerregimentBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House. channel and podcast if you'd like to and we really appreciate that so go it and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house special operations covert ops espionage the team house with your hopes jack murphy and david park hey everyone this is episode 314 of the team house i'm jack here with Dave. Our guest on tonight's show is David Waterhouse. He previously served in Second Ranger Battalion in Iraq and Afghanistan took part of many, and in some cases some fairly prominent, well-known operations. And he is also a participant in a documentary called Ranger. Where can people find that documentary, by the way? It is available on Amazon Prime for a rent and purchase.

They just go to Amazon Prime and look for a Ranger. Ranger, yes, sir. Okay, awesome. Before we jump into in the interview, I just want to do a shout out to our sponsor for tonight's show, which is Mando. They make whole body deodorant that's safe to use anywhere on your body. So that's right. Pits, balls, fivefolds, belly buttons, butt cracks, and feet. Created by a doctor who saw firsthand how normal B.O. is being misdiagnosed and mistreated, and it's clinically proven to block odor all day and control odor for up to 72 hours. Mando deodorant product options include the solid deodorant stick formulated and powered by mandelic acid to stop odor before it starts and spray deodorant, aluminum-free and

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So you can smell fresher, stay drier, and boost your confidence from head to toe with Mando. So without further ado, welcome to the... the show, David. Thanks for coming in, man. Thank you guys very much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, so Dave and I just finished watching your documentary, like a few hours before you guys came in. It's super cool, and it's one of those rare sorts of moments for people to get a little taste of what is kind of like a,

it's a subculture, you know. It was something that, like, the American public wasn't really aware of or didn't, really understand on a human level. And I think through the course of your documentary, you kind of tell like the ranger story. Like what's it like to be in a ranger platoon in war? Sure. Yeah. And that was our goal setting out,

was to make it consumable and people to be able to digest it best that they can. I mean, it's real hard to explain in words sometimes. Sure. What it's like and, you know, what the actual, you know, difficulties and struggles that we deal with not only over there, but when we come home. And we tried to just make it that it could be digested by any,

when they could pick it up and watch it and be like, you know, oh, here are these guys that do all this stuff, but what do you really know what we're doing, you know? And that was our goal was to kind of target not only the community, but also, you know, families and just normal everyday civilians who are curious about it. And it's very, it tells both sides of the story too, right? It's not just, you know, here we are beating our chest

because there is that. I mean, in any special operations unit, like, you're good at what you do and your job is killing people. So there's going to be a certain amount of that, but it's also about the realities of it. And, you know, the victories and the losses, and then the personal sacrifices that go on long after the war ends or long after you leave.

Absolutely. You know, I'm very fortunate to have a wonderful wife and great kids that are as accepting as they can be of the way that, you know, I've been kind of shaped by those experiences. But, yeah, I mean, It's one of those things that once you're in it, like it kind of never stops. There's always going to be part of you that's still kind of living in that moment. Sure.

And it's just trying to find that healthy divide between, you know, remembering and being proud of what you did and also trying to move forward and, you know, not be a burden to your families. And, you know, how that be the overwhelming sense that. Yeah. And also, I think one of the challenges is, is, you know, where does that, where does that part, where do you put that part because it doesn't go away you also don't want to be

you know like Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite and you know if I only would have once you know if we would have once like you know kind of living in the past but you also you know but you also can't deny you know this very

formative period of your life and try to pretend that it never happened just so everybody else around you's comfortable. Sure. And I think that was one of the biggest things in this documentary helped a lot was, okay, it's all out there now. So you can judge away, but I don't have anything to hide. So I'm comfortable in my own skin, finally. You know, up until that point it'd been like, well, I don't want to say this. I don't want to say this. I don't want to make, like you said, anyone uncomfortable. Right. When really it's, they're uncomfortable with what I'm telling

them because they don't have the ability to consume it, not that it's uncomfortable for me to say. Right. Right. And unfortunately, that has a reverse effect because it makes you clam up, you know, trying to make them comfortable, which makes you want comfortable. So it's, it was, that was one of the things that was really fortunate to come out of this was like, okay, well, it's all out there. I got, I got nothing to hide. So pick it apart. And I feel fine about it moving forward.

Yeah. Yeah, we've talked about this on the show a few times in the sense of, especially when you come from the, first off, you have to learn how to deal with civilians again. You know, how to talk and polite company that, you know, shooting people in the face isn't, isn't a topic of conversation. that they accept. The humor is very different and that, you know, there's this, there's this idea, like when we talked about, like, speaking with therapists sometimes and, you know, and you say, well, okay, I did this, and then they go, well, and how did you deal with it? And you're like, well, I didn't really have, like, I didn't feel bad about doing what I did.

And then, so a lot of times it's not how you feel. and it's not necessarily how they feel, but it's that all of a sudden they're reflecting this thing that you're like, am I supposed to feel bad about this? Am I, like, am I supposed to, like, is there something wrong with me that I'm not feeling the way they think I should feel about this? I think that's a perfect point,

and I forget what movie it comes out of, but there's a line that says the distance grows bigger between us by all the things that weren't said. Right. And that kind of gets lost in that vacuum where it's like, how do you start your climb out of that? I mean, because obviously everybody that's been over there that's seen certain things,

you're going to come home, you're going to be a little different. I mean, than someone that is doing what you would consider a normal everyday civilian activity to come home and be like, well, let me tell you about this time. We did, you know, this crazy activity,

this crazy mission, or this happened, and there's nothing tangible for them to relate it to. Maybe even on a roller coaster or something, but that's different than diving out of a plane, you know, loaded down with kit and walk in 20 clicks to get to where you need to be. Yeah. It's like, oh, we go hiking for fun.

Like, why the hell would you ever do something like that? Right. When you're forced to do it? You know, it's like, guys would come back and they'd be like, hey, you want to go hike Mount Rainier? I was like, dude, we just hike the Himalayas. What the hell are you talking about? Yeah, go ahead.

I'll be at the house. You know, like, no, I'm good. Let's jump into your story. Tell us a little bit about, you know, what your path was, you know, growing up as a kid that took you towards military service. Sure. Yeah, I grew up playing competitive sports. I was baseball soccer and golf in high school.

And I was a pretty good baseball player. I had a scholarship opportunity for University of Vermont that I was too busy having fun in high school and blew that opportunity. So all my friends went away to good schools and I was kind of in community college banging around. Barely going to class, you know, just partying and being an 18, 19 year old kid. And then 9-11 happened. And I was floating through the world. I had no direction or anything like that. And then 9-11 happened.

And I just, I mean, I remember, we were just down at the memorial today, walking through it for the first time. And I remember I was talking to my brother. And I'm like, I remember videotaping the news when those events were going down. Like, it was so impact, those images just seared into your brain. And when that day happened, I remember it was a couple days into the war in Afghanistan. I saw this kid on a ridge line and a rocket went right over the top of his head. And I was living in Myrtle Beach at the time with a couple of times. of my buddies that didn't go to college either.

And I remember sitting there and I couldn't shake the image of this. And I'm like, well, why am I here seemingly hiding behind privilege and that kid's over there? And I felt like, again, I was hiding behind privilege and I was like, no, I want to go do that. Even if it kills me. To me at that point, it was bigger than me. It was about doing something outside of my comfort zone. And I had hoped that having, you know, all those sports growing up would help give me a little bit of an edge going through the physical. process of it. But like you guys know, the physical part is a fraction. It's all upstairs.

Now, had you ever thought about the military before? Did you have any family members that had been military? My grandfather was in the Merchant Marines in the Korean War. But that was, for our family, that was it. I mean, but I always grew up watching more movies. Play in war and in the woods when I was a kid growing up. But I don't think I ever actually really gave it serious consideration. The idea of enlisting wasn't really. No, I didn't. I mean, I was like, oh, that'd be cool, or that'd be an awesome job to have. But no serious consideration until after that day. And then I sat on it for about a year.

So when you were sitting there in Myrtle Beach and thinking about this, did you know about the Rangers? Did you know about special operations? Like, was the military just one big sort of? I'll say I knew, I won't say I knew what special operations were. I knew Rangers were a form of kind of a little, soldier I didn't understand the hierarchy with you know with Delta guys or you know Dev grew guys or I didn't quite understand that hierarchy at that point but I knew that it was

it was a specialized thing and if I was going to go I was going to at least try to do that and if that didn't work then you know I'd go do what was asked to me but I mean that was really kind of I had read a few books I don't remember the names of them and all the movies that came out you know we're kind of crummy that depicted even as a civilian I'm like that doesn't look like that that's how that would really play out. And so that was kind of what I wanted to do kind of initially right off the bat. I really didn't give much consideration to any of the other branches. It was my dad, I grew up in a shipyard.

He's has an environmental company out of Boston. And when I told him what I was going to do, he's like, you're going to go be a seal. And I was like, absolutely not. I've been working around boats since I was a kid. I hate boats, man. I'd rather be on the land. Yeah. And so that kind of between those two options and then that's,

So I ended up going with the Ranger route. So when you walked into the Army recruiter, like you had Ranger on the brain. They actually tried to blow me off. Really? When I went into the MEPs department in South Boston, I walked in and he was like, well, what do you want to do? And I was like, I want to be in Ranger Battalion.

And he goes, oh, it's not looking good. You know, what do you want to do in Ranger Battalion? I was like, I want to be in the infantry. He goes, ah, there's no slots for the infantry. Yeah, right. You work in the motor pool or something like that. And I'm like, look, man, if I'm working in a shop, my buddy owns a shop like five minutes from here, I can go work for him.

I'm not going to join the military to do that. And he points to a picture behind his desk and it's his kid. He goes, my kid's in Ranger's in time right now. So I see why he was kind of guarding the scroll, if you will, to an extent. But I was like, okay, when he didn't give me what I wanted, I was like, thank you for your time. I'm sorry to waste it. And I stood up and shook his hand. He was like, sit down.

So I think it was like that first test of how bad do you really want this or you just didn't love with the idea of doing it. I think he's kind of garden it a little bit. He was probably also like trying to fill numbers and other. He made up this story. Let me call the Pentagon. Right. Exactly. I'm sure you have a direct line.

Yeah. A guy at the Pentagon in Georgia recruiter. Yeah. Let me get Obama on the line and see if he'll write you a waiver. Yeah. So I didn't buy that for a second. So I basically called his bluff and he was like, all right, well, I'll get you in for, you know, one station unit training, which is basic and infantry combined.

And then you've got to airborne school and then you'll, you'll, get an opportunity to go to Ranger indoctrination at the time. It's RASP now, but it was RIT back then. And then, you know, it gave me an opportunity. Got my foot in the door to try, which is all I could ask for. And so what year was this? This would have been 2002 when I enlisted,

and I ended up leaving about four months later in January of 2003. Okay. And so you go to Benning, you do your infantry, you're airborne, and then you're on debt because there are no RIP slots? There was a rip slot, but we ended up in rip holdover.

Okay. And after each rip class, there's like a mandatory one week break before the next class starts. And you have to be in rip holder for two weeks before you can start rip. And we got there with one week left in the class. So we had that and then we had the one week where they were on break and then three more weeks of rip holdover while the class in front of us went. One week of holdover while they cadre got a break and then we went to rip finally. So I was in the RIP pipeline, be it in RIP holdover or RIP for like 10 weeks. Wow.

Okay. So people are like, oh, it's a three-week course. I was like, not for me. Yeah. Like, we were there for a minute. Yeah. Yeah. So then you finish RIP and did you choose Second Battalion because you know it was the best?

Actually, I did. And I was an East Coast guy. So first range of battalion and third range battalion being in Georgia and my mother lived in South Carolina. So I was like, well, that's, you know, that makes sense. Yeah. And they gave us our little pecking order, their little list. And I had one, three and two was my last choice. And the Rip Cadre takes it. And, you know, we've already shaved our tambourets. We're getting ready for graduation. And he's like, great. You know, the 15 of you infantry guys are all going to 27. I don't know why he had his fill of paperwork out. He was sending a stare anyways, you know. It's like, and then there were two

other guys that went to regiment, basically. Yeah. It was, that was it. And I was off to 275. And the, the funny part about getting there was Mr. There's no slots. There were only five guys in my squad when I got the 27-5. So there was more than enough slots. And I ended up in a God squad right when I got there. So that was tough. Everyone was tabbed. I was the only private.

So that was a fun entrance into battalion. It was like congratulations. You're solely responsible for cleaning the A, the platoon A officer assigned to. Other guys had like three, four privates. Just me. That is exciting. Yeah, I was

awesome. So by the time you got there, where had these guys already been? They had been, they had just gotten back like a week before from a six-month rotation in Afghanistan. Okay. And the reason they were on that six-monther is because of the invasion of Iraq. So they were deployed to Afghanistan and then actually, I guess it's the equivalent of soft getting stop lost. And they had to keep a couple of a company in Afghanistan while the entire rest of regiment invaded Iraq. So that was known as a six-monther for our guys. So that was the main one.

I think they had done one, like, real short stint right after 9-11, like maybe October of 2011. Okay. And then the six-monther, and then I came in, which would have been the platoon's third deployment. But most of the guys had only done the one by the time they got there. And what company did you go to? Charlie Company. Okay. First platoon, Charlie Company.

I loved it. Nice. I wouldn't have been any other way. Yeah. So what was there, when you got there, like, so what, you're a, you know, non-tab, like, you're a private, PV2 private. Yeah, you're a private in a God squad. What do they smoke you, or is it just straight to training? Like, are they, what is going on?

Smoke show. Yeah. I mean, you graduate from RIP, you put the little, you get your scroll pinned on, and you're like, oh, man, I'm on top of the world. Then you get to battalion, you're like, I am an aunt in this place. Like I have no experience. Very humbling to walk in those halls. And yeah, a lot of smoke, but honestly, a lot of training too. I mean, obviously this is the very beginning in the GWAT.

We basically lived on RF1 the whole time we were there. So we were busy. We did a lot of range time. We did, you know, the first time you get on a helicopter. You know, you jump in doing airfield seizures and stuff like that. So a lot of training. And then that led up to in that first November in 20th. excuse me, my first deployment in 2003 was to Afghanistan in November.

So I'd only been in regiment when I deployed for like three months. Wow. So that was. So these guys were doing a pretty quick turnaround. It was pretty quick turnaround. For them, yeah. Because usually we're about three and a half on, five and a half off. And this was basically six on, two and a half off, and then back over.

Yeah. So they were not the happiest people about it. They needed their break, but it's... But they're maintaining two fronts right now. They've got Iraq and Afghanistan. It was what we invade in March, I think, right? Yeah, March. You're only looking at, what, seven, eight months?

Right. And they actually deployed the entire regiment to Afghanistan on my first deployment. So it was all hands on deck. We were only there for about a month. But I don't think we could have made it a month and a week. I mean, we were in pretty bad spots with health. Honestly, we're real malnourished and walking up in the Hindu Kush and humping a ton of weight.

and bartering with the villagers to let them sleep in their barn and giving away anything we could. Was this winter strike? Yes, this was winter strike. And that was they called, it was a surge. They thought they had a hit on the big man. Yeah. And they mobilized all three battalions to go in there. So can you kind of walk us through winter strike?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it was that was obviously the name of the operation. We all got into Boggram Air Force Base. And like I said, they had what they thought was, a hit on the big guy at the time and so everyone's you know pretty excited or whatever but once we found out what the mission was it was like hey you guys are going to

get inserted into the mountains at about 10-5 and you're just going to patrol and walk these valleys going house to house and looking for intel seeing if you know anything leads to anything so basically we got yes combed the desert yes it was combed the mountains

and so they just kicked us off first battalion was in charge of driving us up to elevation and like high luxes and dropping us off and then we got off and it was zero out and we were not prepared for that kind of weather

at that elevation not only that type of weather but but I imagine that even with a trip to Afghanistan you know Afghanistan is a bunch of different climates and a bunch of different elevations like each part of Afghanistan is very different

and sitting in Bagram and doing DAs, you know, with 160th, is a very different mission than hump in the hills. For sure. And so I imagine that you guys, like, your kit shakeout and things like that, like you're probably carrying too much weight. I weighed 168 pounds when I got there.

And when I, we stepped on the scale to weigh rucks. With the Skedco, I came in at like 106. It was my ruck. Yeah. So I was almost carrying, I was carrying more than half my body. Which anybody who has been up in these mountains knows, you're not lasting very long with that kind of weight. No.

I mean, you plus your packing mortar rounds for the guys. I mean, it's had to be equally distributed out, and it was, you know, one MRE a day, basically. And then we were bartering for, like, rice and beans and stuff. And, yeah, it was, I remember as we were kind of going through this, I had a lieutenant, or, no, he was a major. I think he was a battalion X-O. And he had come up to our little O.P.,

and there was an element. of us walking him back down and he was like, you know, we had Ked on so he couldn't see rank or anything. We were just his little PSD element to move him back down the mountain. And he's like, hey, have you been to mountains yet? I mean, Mountain Phaser Ranger's School? Yeah.

I'm like, no, sir. He's like, it won't be shit after this, bro. Like, DeLon is going to be nothing after if you're able to make it through this. So when I was in mountains, and I'm fast forwarding a long way, that always cycled through my head. I was like, hey, if I can make it through winter strike, man, this is nothing. Yeah, yeah. What do you mean I get pancakes every morning?

Right, right. Like, yeah. So, yeah, it was, we were out there for 15 days. And then they picked us up, ex-filled us back to Boggroom. We were supposed to have clothes to change into, but the plane carrying our sea bags got shot down. So we showed back up to Boggroom after two weeks and no shower and had none of our clothes with us. So, I mean, we had fleas all over the inside of our pants. I mean, blood spots everywhere from mashing fleas down.

And we had to put the same, take a shower and put the same nasty uniform back on. I mean, they were standing up by themselves at that point. And we went into the chow hall, and I remember this, like, Sergeant Major, like, screaming at us because we were dirty and smelled like shit. And, you know, he was, he had probably never left the base since he'd been there. You know, it's like, hey, man, we're just hungry, dude. We haven't hardly eaten in two weeks.

Yeah. And he was more concerned about our appearance than he was about actually putting food in our belly. Right. He was a non-soft guy, but still, I mean, it's like, come on, man. Like, does it look like we just walk to read the room? Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, I mean.

So we came back We were supposed to have like a week And they were going to send us back out So we do everything PCIs Get everything ready And then people started bedding down And we weren't

I bet we weren't asleep for more than an hour or two And someone knocked on the door And they're like hey Deb grew Has a target package And they want to go in Phil tonight And we'd only been there for like six hours Got in like one meal in a shower

And they were like get packed up Got loaded up Went to the clamshell hangar birds landed picked us up re-infeld us for another 15 days up in the Hindu Cush so I we were there for 31-ish days 30 plus days not many no maybe 31 that's and I lost 27 pounds 25 pounds something like that it was double it was you guys getting like speedballs dropped or where it was it we had donkey trains okay that would we'd have to go they'd set up a little element every day a group of dudes whoever and they rotated through and we would walk down probably about 1500, 2,000 feet in elevation

down to what we called the hotel which is kind of where the head shed was and we'd have to load up donkeys and walk with the MREs up there and that would be our day or two's rations and what we weren't eating MREs we were eating the villagers yeah and so you guys are just going village to village house to house house house to house looking for number one. Or anything that was going to point us in that direction the number one. Were you taking any enemy contact?

Was there? Not initially. And we actually intercepted some calls, some cell phone calls. And it was them chatting about us. I mean, they were watching us for sure. And that's one of the things that I don't think

unless you've been to a place like Afghanistan, and I didn't even feel the same way when I was in Iraq. You always feel like that set of eyes is on you. Every step you take you're like someone is watching us right now. and the land being so spread out and so sparse it's like dude they could be 500 meters away behind a rock you're never going to see him and um so that was uh i always just i've never felt that paranoid in my entire life well i mean they they could be in the you know you're going through a village they could be sitting in their window in a hut talking on their phone and what are you got you can't just shoot somebody because you're talking on a phone exactly and you know

And one of those messages that was intercepted was don't shoot at the guys with the black Velcro, they fight back too hard. So they're being very selective about picking out hard and soft targets. Yeah. So we did not get engaged for the first three and a half weeks. And it was so damn cold that we were like, hey, we got, they were going to, we started a fire. And we're on one side of the valley. I was on guard duty with another one of the guys there. And we're just sitting there kind of leaning up backs on the hill, just staring across this big, wide open valley.

and I just remember hearing, boom, and then looking out and being like, what is that giant orange shabow? And this RPG came in from across the valley, landed about no more than 10 meters away from the fire that was going. And, I mean, one in a million shot with an RPG from that distance. You're talking hundreds and hundreds of meters. Landed it right on top of us,

through rocks all over everybody. And we had been humping all that ammo for so long. Everybody jumped up and just went spindex on the side of that mountain, dude. And, like, I was trying to direct people. I'm like, yeah, it was that cut over there by that. Ritt tried saying that over 20 dudes shooting, you know, our first sergeant picked up the first weapon that was next to him, which was a sawgunner's saw.

He's empty in the saw out, the sawgunners running around. Has anyone seen my weapon? First aren't, like, your rounds out, chucks it at him. Like, it was just a spend-ex. Yeah. And then, I mean, we even heard dudes that were from a recchia omen down in the valley, firing 203s from like 3,000 meters out. It was like, boom, boom.

And it's like, they're way down here. Yeah, everybody. Dudes are partly just trying to shed weight. Shed weight. That was all it was at that point. Shed Wade. And that was the only contact we took for that month. That's funny.

But yeah, that was my first. Mortars are like getting it on. Oh, yeah. The whole valley erupted. And I actually work with a guy now who was in BECO. And he's like, oh, we heard you guys. We were way down the mountain. But we heard what sounded like a hellacious gunfight.

And I was like, yeah, it was one RPG. Yeah. It's one RPG and just a bunch of wasted ammo, basically. If I remember the chronology correctly from the documentary, so this happened, and did you go back to Afghanistan again for Red Wings? Yes, but that was actually my fourth deployment. Okay, okay. So we finished up Winter Strike early December, and we came home, and, I mean, they were going to send me to Ranger School when I got back from Winter Strike, and they were like, you're in a God Squad, dude, just go get your tab. You obviously could make it.

And I think I did like 24 push-ups or something like that in the PT test. because I just had no muscle mass left. And when we walked in, the CQ guy had gotten there while we were gone, so he had never been. And he's sitting at the CQ desk watching all of us come in. He goes, the whole downstairs smelled like urine from that ammonia, from our bodies, eating our muscles for fuel. And this was after a week or three day, four days of being pulled out,

and the whole trip back through Germany and everything. And we were still deteriorating. And like I said, I did 24, 25 pushups, and they were like, yeah. I was like, I'm sorry, man, this is amazing. I could do. No one thought any less of me of it. They were just like, you know, if you can pass a peak T test, might as well go and get it over with. Yeah. So after that, we ended up doing a training cycle for a little while, and then we got spun up for a surge again in early April of 2004. So how many months was that, roughly? That would have been through December to probably right

around the first week of April, so about four months, three and a half months, maybe. That's a fast turn. Real quick, let me say, let me say thanks a very, to our second sponsor tonight. If you sleep hot at night, so if you're not on winter strike, you know just how disruptive it can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night

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have you had difficulty regulating your temperature? Absolutely. It becomes a big issue, doesn't it? It's, I'm like, sometimes I'm freezing cold, and I think there's a circulation problem, and some nerve damage from the lower back. And so sometimes I'm, my feet are so cold or, like, sensitive to the touch.

And the other time, if I could peel my skin off, I'd still be too hot. Yeah. So it's a constant battle back and forth between hot, cold, and kicking a leg outside the blanket, keeping the rest in. Yeah. That actually sounds pretty cool.

I'm probably going to look into that. Yeah. I mean, I got to the point where I'd have to put my pillows, like, out on the porch to dry. Just soaking wet. Yeah, just wake up soaking wet. But anyway, so you guys turn around for this pop in April. And it was another surge.

To Afghanistan? To Afghanistan again. And after the first one, everyone was like, hey you're surging again and it was like you gotta be fucking kidding. Sorry my language we were like dude we were still recovering from the last one. Yeah you can say whatever you want on the show but also

you know you're like you're in the Scott squad did any more private show up while you guys were gone? Not in my squad but have you now that you've been through this suck fest with these guys have you sort of earned your way? Oh yeah big time if you if there were only three of us they went to CCO

from my rip class but I think five went to B co five went to A co and three of us went to SICO. And all three of us went to the same platoon. And that's how understrength one Charlie was at the time. Like, hey, here's three dudes. And it was like, oh, shit, we got three more guys. Like, what do we do with these guys, you know?

So we go through the training cycle. We get geared up and ready to go back. And, you know, we're obviously a little about it. But you definitely were accepted after that one coming into the second one. It wasn't like, okay, you're a cherry. It's like, dude, that broke everyone off. Yeah, you're right. You know what I mean?

So it's like, hey, if you can, you can. can hang with that, you know, the rest of it. And guys coming off the six-monther were like, dude, we didn't do anything like that on six-month-er. Yeah. And they were in like kind of the southern part of Afghanistan. And that, to speak to a point you brought up earlier about the different types of terrain, people, when I first thought, they're like, oh, it's just mountains.

Or some people thought, oh, it's just desert. And I'm like, no, no, no. It's like, it's everything. Yeah. It's like, why do these wars have to be in crazy places? Like, can we have a war in like San Diego or something? I mean, not really. Right.

Temperate place like that. It's moderated. Right. But yeah, that was one of the big eye-opening things was looking down on it and being like, dude, it's desert, there's forest, there's mountains, there's, I mean, you name it. It's one-stop shop for pick your terrain. Yeah. And so, yes, I was accepted. And, I mean, I was still private.

I still had to do my AOs and stuff and do all that and run everywhere. And, you know. But I definitely, as far as like, name to man, yeah. So when we got spun up for this one, actually, it was our turn to go to Iraq because. we had missed out on the invasion. So like, oh, yeah, Sikko's got first dibs on Iraq. But one platoon from Siko has to go back to Afghanistan, and it was us. So the whole rest of the company, second, third platoon and headquarters went to Iraq.

And us and one alpha were the only two platoons that deployed back to Afghanistan. We were like, did we do something wrong? Right, right. Can we go play in the street, not the mountains? And the first two weeks of that deployment was the same thing as we were. winter strike. We were mounted for a little while, driving through some of the canyons. It was a little bit more in the spring, so guys were a little, you know, enemy fighters were a little bit more aggressive as fighting season. Yeah. And, but we, we kind of spent the first week

and a half mounted. And then Aiko came and they took our Humvees. I'm not sure how that, I think they just outranked us. I think they had their first sergeant with them. And we had a platoon sergeant and that was our highest guy. And so they were like, hey, we're taking your humvies. You guys are dismounted now. So we ended up walking up. like setting up this OP on the Paki border for a while. And we'd just go sit up there and just rotate guys out and watch the Hatfields and McCoys fight themselves in Pakistan. They would wake up every day, pray,

and just lob mortars and rockets at each other all day and pray and then break for nighttime and wake up and do it all over again. So we just sat on the border just watching these two towns, villages. Who knows how long this has been going on? Just destroyed the shit out of each other. Hundreds of years. Those blood feuds would last forever. And it's funny because they'd always try to

suck Americans into them by like reporting the other village as Taliban and stuff and it's like they they they didn't care like no human life means it's they don't take it as the same way that we do no there's a price on there there's a blood price that either they're willing to pay or they're not if they're not then they fight and that's just how that's it that's it that's just the deal so we did that and um and i don't remember how but we ended up getting up getting the Humvees back and then we drove from like wherever we were like through Khyber Pass through Gardez and ended up in a at a Ford operating base that the Italians had set up earlier in the war and it was named Fab Salerno and so we ended up pulling into there and we it was all day all night

gaff from where we were and so we get there everything's just dusty as hell so we clean all the weapons up, you know, dust all our shit off, make sure everybody's plused up and finally like, okay, we can bed down. They had GP medium tents and some cots in there, which, hey, you know what, I'll take it. Sure. And so we all get in there. It's, you know, dark kind of early. So we start bedding down. And we couldn't have been to sleep for long. And all of a sudden, we're like, hey, get up. One Alpha is in contact. And one alpha had come behind us after we had left. They were probably like four or five hours behind us, maybe not even that much. And we had come through the same route.

And when we came through it, the canyon walls were so steep. You mean, you couldn't super elevate a big gun to hit anything. So you could have just dropped a hangar day and leaned back and we couldn't engage you. And I looked, I was driving and I looked at my T.C. who was my squad leader. And I was like, this is a bad spot, dude.

And it was broad daylight. We were rolling through and the mirrors were almost scraping the canyon walls. It was so tight. We all made it through, got to Salerno, and then one outfit's in contact coming right through the same spot. that we identified earlier as a bad place to be. And that was unfortunately when Tillman was killed.

And so we were, they got us up, they got to stage at the front gate of the FOB for, you know, QRF. And we sat there, Humvees running, ready to roll for about 10 minutes. And then we got the call to stand down and be prepared to receive casualties. And so we didn't, you know, we didn't have a number of how many eagles were down or whatever. We just knew there'd been an engagement of some sort. And so we download all of our stuff and one alpha comes in. And, you know, they're getting guys off the litters and, you know, docs are taking them.

They're doing what they can, blah, blah, blah. And I just, and I say this in the documentary. But, I mean, I still can hear the words, you know, don't tell him he doesn't know yet. And I had not known, Pat. I knew he had an NFL player that was in the battalion. But in all honesty, and I think down to the man, you can ask anybody that was there. Like, he never gave a shit about that.

He was just, he was a ranger out there doing the same as us. He didn't, he didn't once. special treatment. He didn't, he was just, hey, I'm here with you guys. So that was what I've heard. I never, like I said, I did not know him. But he ended up obviously being killed by friendly fire, but at the time, we didn't know that. And where the chow hall was, was on the big side of the base at Salerno. We were in the little tiny soft compound, but that's where chow was. That's where the MWR was and stuff. And as this story was breaking, we would be walking over to the MRA to play pool or, make a call or whatever if the sad phones were, you know, someone was on them. And Sports Center would be on. And on Sports Center, they're all their role in is Pat Tillman stuff on a loop. And some of the other, it made it so bad that they were looking at us, like they knew that we were part of that element. So we couldn't even leave our compound because people were Googly-eyed.

Like, oh, you guys were the ones with Tillman? It was like, dude, I'm just trying to get a chow, dude. I'm not trying to get engaged in a conversation with you about this. And so, like, that was real strange. but we were busy we were out every night and we took down a ton of targets in that area

and so we actually had a more exciting as far as operational tempo concerned than the guys that went to Iraq did on that trip yeah what just jogged my memory what time frame was this what month this would have been April of 2004 April of O four okay so

I am fuzzy on the actual day I must have gotten a Salerno in it must have been in the fall like September, October of 04. Because we left mid to late May. Because that was, because it was a surge.

We were only there for like six weeks, seven weeks. Okay. Yeah. Because I was only there, did a normal three-month employment. Christmas goes by and we left early, 05. But that was a strange time. And I mean, we've had a couple different people on talking about Pat Tillman,

including, it was an officer's name, slip in my mind for a moment who just wrote a book about it. Pete Blaber. There was, I mean, I do remember there was being a lot of controversy and a lot of, even internally in the regiment, a lot of political pressure it felt like. And I remember, I distinctly remember this moment where they brought us all together. And I was in ACO-375 had nothing to do with any of the things you were describing.

but they somebody up at regiment felt so adamant they actually brought us in and like the company commander gave us a little like pep talk like you know the regiment did nothing wrong i have total confidence in the colonel blah blah blah blah blah blah it's like and like you said it's a little weird it's like what's going on here i'm just an e3 or whatever yeah i was i just got in my pfc in after the winter strike trip i'm like yeah i'm an e3 i'm no longer you know mosquito wings or whatever yeah so i mean you know As far as I was concerned, and in the whole platoon, everyone, I mean, we just assumed it was, he was just KIA. You know, I mean, he just got, you know, hit by standard enemy fight. He got, he dismounted and started, you know, he actually asked at one point if he could drop his kit so he could move faster up the hill.

And they were like, no, but feel free to go pursue, but, you know, you got to keep a kid on. And then the engagement happened. But we weren't privy to any of those details, you know, so it wasn't until later that we found out that it ended up, like, all those. whispers ended up being true. Right. I mean, to me,

to speak to your point about having a battalion commander call a brief to say something, that's not normal. Right. Like, what do you know

that I don't know because something isn't, you know, stirring the Kool-Aid here right now, you know. But yeah, that was, that was tough.

You know, the toughest part of that and a lot of people don't know is that Kevin was there. His brother. His brother was there. And the next day

they were putting Pat on to a C-17 Well, they couldn't land a C-17 there. I think they were putting them on a bird and flying him, and then he'd get on a C-17 hole. And our guys were on funeral detail. And they had us and Aco lined up on the side of

where the hooch was, the hooches were on this dirt trail that led out to the airfield. And we're all standing there with our M-4's position of attention as the high-lux goes by with Pat's casket in it. And Kevin was walking about ten steps behind it. Just not having a great day as you can imagine and I that was the moment and and that was the moment when

I realized how real this was I mean that hit home I don't think I was ever going to be the same after watching that like what if that was me right what if my brother was you know watching me or what if I was watching my brother like how that changed me right seeing seeing that such a personal I mean it's all personal one of our guys gets hit let's be honest but that's a different level yeah and I just remember just being like, this isn't for public consumption, man. And it was just a bunch of dudes that were doing the same thing. It wasn't like an outsider was looking in, but I still felt like I was violating the privacy, even though he's one of our guys.

It was just really hard to watch. Yeah. I still, to this day, feel, you know, Kevin's just an incredibly strong dude. I don't know how he was able to do it. It sounds like, you know, as a young man, like, the finality of death, like, hit you in that. Absolutely. That was, I mean, oh, cool, we got shot at in Afghanistan last time, but no one got hurt. Right.

You know, got some dust. Close crawls. You know, hey, whatever. You know, that's why I signed up for with, you know, some of this, right? But then that was the first time I'd actually seen someone get killed. Well, and seeing, you know, it's also, obviously, you know, different guys have different friendships in battalion, right? And so, you know, you lose, or in any unit. And you lose people who you know of or you know of.

you lose people who you're cool with or you lose somebody you're close with. But I think there is a significant difference between any of that and seeing the effects of losing a family member. Absolutely. That, you know, that you don't normally experience until you go back home and then go to their funeral at Arlington and, you know, and see their family and how it is. And here you have family there and you're experiencing that loss with them. It was it was it will never be the same after that. Yeah. Because I have four siblings.

Yeah. My parents were divorced when I was young, both three married. I was the only child from the first marriage. Each had a boy and a girl. I'm almost 10 years older than the next closest siblings. So I was like the automatic built-in babysitter, right? And all I could see when I was watching that was my brother and sister. Yeah.

You know what I mean? I couldn't you can't help but like slip there when you know and they were so much younger. I mean, I was only 20. At that point I was coming up on my 20. second birthday. Yeah. They were 12, 11, 10, you know, coming down through age. And I was just like, God, I mean, what if they have to go, like, bury me?

Like, what's that going to do to a pre-pubescent teenager or a group of them, you know? Like, not to mention your parents are going to be devastated, but your siblings. I mean, sibling bond and stuff. We didn't have rivalry. I was so much older. I was like, shit. Yeah. There was no quarreling or anything.

Right. But, yeah, that was, yeah, that was a moment. I'll say, I'll leave it at that. But like so many other times during this war for many, many units, you lose somebody and the job, the job goes on, right? You're all back out. Nobody, you don't get a break. You don't get time to process.

You don't, you're, it's, the job's there. As soon as, and I'm sure you could speak to this too, as soon as families are notified, you're back out. So next night. Yeah. So you're like, oh, dude, that happened yesterday. That sucks. All right, here's the off-order for tonight. We're hitting, you know, this area, this house.

Here's the, you know, here's the package. Yeah. And there's no time to grieve. You don't get to slow down. Yeah. So your foot's on the gas the whole time. Yeah. And I think that's one of the problems that I had, and I think probably I'm not alone in this.

You never get a chance to unload any of that. You get out with it. Right. Yeah, yeah. Now I'm like by myself trying to deal with all this stuff. You're moving so fast that you're not processing what. that experience actually was. And yeah, it's not until

a lot of times people get out of the military and now you're sitting there and now you have the time of process. Not just that one thing, but... Yeah, all of this other stuff. Yeah, it's big soup of stuff. And also, you know, sending guys back out

to prosecute targets that are responsible, whether directly responsible or indirectly, like in Pat's case... I could tell you this. When we went back out, everyone was fucking responsible. We didn't know. You're getting some. You're getting some.

You were pissed. Yeah. We were very effective. Yeah. But, I mean, we were barking up the wrong tree on that one. But if that's what galvanizes the dudes and helps complete the mission, I don't know. I'm not a big liar, man, so I'd rather just know the truth than we can move forward. But I think everybody felt a little slighted by not, okay, you trust us to do all this other shit, but you can't trust us to tell us the truth.

Right. Hey, we effed up. You know, like it happens, dude. It's war. Yeah. Bad people, you know, bad things happen to people. But what sucks, especially a polarizing figure like that, they gave up so much to be there. He didn't have to be there, but then you look at it, none of us did.

Yeah. You know, he wasn't any different. He just maybe got a higher paying job on the outside than the rest of us did. That was it. Yeah. Do you think any part of that was the command's uncertainty as to what actually happened? Or do you think it was a cover-up from the get-go? I can speculate.

I would say probably a mixture of both. Okay. I'd say once the fog of war kind of war, kind of war-on. Yeah. And they were able to put some pieces together that I think it turned from a, well, we're not really sure to, let's not admit to the world that we killed Pat Tillman on this objective. Right. Would it have been, I mean, and this has nothing to do with Pat, would it have been a big of deal if it was me? Right.

Probably not. Right. You know what I'm saying? It was because of who he was that they were like, whoa, and all the media attention and the circus that came with that. Right. And like I said, he always just wanted to be looked at as a regular guy. He was from all accounts from everyone I talked to that knew. And he didn't want special treatment.

And then the media took it and ran with it. But I think there was a lot of CYA that was going on there for sure. I mean, looking back on it all these years later. So after you return home, you're getting into this whole deployment cycle now that happened in the War on Terror. What's it like going back home from that and then spinning up for the next one? So we got back about the third week of May. So that was about a month and a half rotation. From the surge.

Got back third week of May, had like a quick leave, quick five daily leave or two-week leave or whatever. Came back, had Ranger Bowl, and then left for Iraq on July 1 for our regularly scheduled deployment. Wow. So we were back in third week of May and right back out the door five weeks later for another three and a half months to Iraq. And that was my first trip to that. theater. So no turnaround time. Where, uh, where did you land in Iraq? Either biop or Balad, uh, when we initially came in and then we had we, we got on Chinooks and they flew us out. And we ended up, um, at the MSS that was in Baghdad. Okay. That was your AO for that

yes. Yeah. We launched out of there. And that was one of my favorite parts of your documentary. And actually also, I don't know where you guys have it or found it, but all that footage of Rangers hitting targets. I was like, I've never seen any of this before. It was, a lot of it was from the shared drive of things that, I mean, we all know what happened with a lot of that stuff. The eye drive. Yeah. So a lot of it came from that, just a compilation of stuff, but, you know, I guess it doesn't really matter now. It's kind of cat's out of bag, but they were like, no cameras, no pictures. We were like, whatever, dude. What are you going to do be sending Iraq? Everybody got a GoPro. So we all went. No, there's no GoPro. No, we had, I mean,

I remember going to the PX in the green zone and getting this little silver green digital camera. I'd put it in my kid every night and whenever I could. But some of the footage is similar to like GoPro type footage. Yeah. And I was surprised to see it. I was like, whoa, shit. That was from back in the day. That's cool.

Before we, I mean, I don't even think some tier one units for using GoPro's back then, to be honest with you. It just started to me. Yeah, I don't think they were, they may not even have been out yet. So tell us a little bit about that deployment and getting into like now you're doing urban combat, making that shift from Afghanistan, going after time-sensitive targets. The first thing I will tell you about Atlantic Iraq in the middle of the summer was, we got off the burden. It was about 128 degrees. And we went to cloud in sight for like three months.

And we got to the MSS. And I'm talking to one of the, we're ripping with 175. And there's privates down there. I'm still, I'm still a PFC. I still haven't been to school at this point. We're right back out. And he's like doing his A-O for the, for the little MSS. And he's sweeping the little under the, the, the, the little under the,

driveway area and I was like bro I'm like how long does it take to get used to this heat he doesn't even break brush he's just still he goes you don't and just keep sweeping right so that was huge getting used to that just holy cow like the absolute I mean to get down to like 110 at night and you're like it's 110 but I'm like chilly I need to put it smoking yeah it's freezing out because it's freezing out because it's temperature drop but as far as operationally I had blast I mean we were running around with the with the tier one element the whole time we were there. Daytime hits,

probably half the time, nighttime almost every night. I mean, we were busy. But it was a fun kind of busy. It wasn't humping through the mountains of Afghanistan busy. It was get on Blackhawks, go hit this target, land in the front yard, quick SSC, roll some dudes up,

get back on the Blackhawks. We're eating chow in 45 minutes from the time we leave. Yeah. You spend more time prepping and fly in there and back than you do actually on target. Yeah.

And so that, like, off tempo was, That was like what I pictured when I was like, oh, I'm going to go be a Army Ranger, infantry dude, like door kicking and this and that. And we kick doors in Afghanistan, but it's a lot different. This is like that period of time where, you know, you guys are sitting around wearing Ranger panties and a brown t-shirt playing Halo. Oh, yeah. You get the call, hit pause, going to a combat mission, come back.

Console hasn't even shut off yet, right? It hadn't even been long enough for the console to shut off and you're back down and your PTs. And we had a pool in our backyard there, too. And so water sports became, that we play water polo. We built a diving board out of like plywood and crap. And we had a sand volleyball court in the backyard. Yeah, if we weren't on a hit, we were playing Halo or playing volleyball or going to the gym, that we had a little gym in our house too.

So everything was very contained. This one kind of, I don't want to call it, it wouldn't even seem like a fob, but I mean, I guess technically it was. It was the male utopia. Yeah, it was the who's who of units in theater at that time. You know, it's funny because you mentioned that heat. And one of the things I'll always say is, man, like, watching Army mechanics, like, work on vehicles during the day in that heat. I was like, yeah, exactly.

Their tool, like, every, I was like, I will never look at any other, like, any non-infantry or operator, operator role as a pog or a remph or anything. Like those two were working their asses. Absolutely. And I tell people all the time. And you get a lot of, especially since the documentaries come out, some people have seen it. And you get a lot of why I didn't do what you did. And I'm like, shut the hell up. I was like, dude, you were pulling gate guard for six months.

Who the fuck wants to do that? Like, at least I was getting out and going and doing stuff. Like, you're stuck here. Like, that sucks. That's a shitty job that someone's got to do. And you did it. You should be proud. There's no, this isn't a competition.

Every part needs to work in order for the thing work. Yeah. You mentioned like 1-7, right? Yeah, it was the first. Were they strikers? They were in Abrams at that point. And they had Bradley's too. And Bradley's.

And then, you know, and then I think that there were other units. Like, a lot of those units were, like, just, they were going Winchester and Sotter City. Like, they were just getting it on. Yeah. And holding the rest of the city back when we went on this, right? Because, I mean, we all learned from Mogadishu, like you can't just go can't go in with 50 guys

and I mean not to a city like that if they decide they want to play that city collapses on you and we don't know the results of what happens when that happens and you're looking at the best operators in the world so like without them

we aren't capable of doing our job without getting slaughtered so I mean like I said when I hear these guys come up and they're like I didn't do as much as you did I'm like dude stop selling yourself short like that it's not that's not what it is I don't know anyone that feels that way

yeah I don't I don't either like for my personal experience Even in an Afghanistan, you know, we've had guys, conventional guys on that, you know, we're either in like Fallujah or they were in those little tiny-ass cops out in the middle of nowhere with no support getting hit every day. And it's like that that's a war that a lot of the softened scene. No, absolutely not. And like I said, that's not something I'd want to do for, I mean, those guys are there for a year. And then some of them are getting stop loss for another year.

16, 18 months. Yeah. At least I have a pretty good idea on top. target date of when I'm leaving. You could be here until my two birthdays from that for all you know. So you guys are out there prosecuting targets every night? Like we where do these targets come from? I mean, are there just that many bad guys? At that time, it was it was a target rich environment. Yes, that's a perfect way to describe it. It was a very target rich environment. I mean, it was like fishing with hand grenades, no pun intended. I mean, honestly, it was like, go to that house, you'll find someone.

Oh, that guy told us to go to this house. Yeah. And one of the things that, you know, worked in our benefit being in the soft community was we got time with our detainees. Right. I think we had like 24 to 48 hours before we had to hand him over to like the Abuji thing or whatever. We didn't do any of that nonsense. But we had like a little bit of time with them to kind of wear them down a little bit. And so we got a lot of intel from just detainee reporting and stuff. And your tech guys are doing all the exploitation.

All that stuff. Yep. So, I mean, a lot of times you guys probably resetting that night. hitting. Oh, we had follow-ons sometimes. Yeah, just based off of what you gather on one thing. This is the intel we collected on this target. Okay, let's put this together. You get a quick frago over the radio, basically. Or maybe at the back of a vehicle. Command would jump in and it'd be like, hey, we're rolling here. And it's like, oh, shit,

we're going to be out for a minute tonight. Yeah. Sometimes multiple follow-on objectives. And sometimes it'd just be that one. And it was all to pay. Any significant operations from that one that stand out in your mind? Not the mainstream meteor or anything like that would know Well, I'm not asking for what they would know I'm asking what you know There was one that was pretty Outside the norm

We came in We came in on Blackhawks It was us in a Tier 1 element And we came in on Hawks And we were flying And this is a pretty big target It was one single house But I mean it was a monster house

kind of outskit, you know, outset of Baghdad, not in the city, a little bit of a field, kind of rural feel to it. And we could see the target. We're coming in and we're probably like 30 seconds out. And all of a sudden the entire rooftop lights up. Just gunfire everywhere. We're like, oh shit, targets burnt. We're done.

Well, it turns out it was a wedding. And so we had no idea, right? We just knew there were bad dudes there. So, like, we got the target package and here we go. were out and then 30 seconds not even like birds were flaring it was probably less than 30 and all the celebratory fire turned to why are there six black hawks over there and they all just shift fire and started engaging the hawks and one of the birds got clipped by an RPG clipped one of the rotor blades and it had a hard landing in a field it was basically like a crash landing basically no one was injured

I mean I'm sure people sore the next day but um bird didn't go down but so that immediately changes everything. Sure. When you get a downed aircraft, right? Now you've got to kick out perimeter security. You got to make sure the dudes are good. They were good. They were that part of the tier one element. They got out, assaulted the house.

There was like, there were like 80 people there. And there were like six, six hawks worth of us, so maybe 40 guys. Yeah. Rolling up against in so many canaries, so many women and children on that objective. Probably 2025 crows. Yeah. And I think there was one, one Delta guy that got messed up on that. and he rolled somebody over and he died on a frag and yeah and um he got medevaced out and then

they were like okay so they grabbed everybody that they needed took off with the main element and left i was kicked out on security for the bird and they're like hey don't worry QRFs imbound we're like okay cool so i'm not even like laying in the sand fleas everywhere i'm like i'm i'll stand i don't care if i'm silhouetted like i have enough there's enough distance between any sort of structure that I'm not going to get picked, right? So I'm standing up. Chinook comes in. And I'm like, okay, cool.

Shinoop full of freaking dudes. And like six dudes ran out the back of a carrying a rotor blade for the Black Hawk. That's it. It's like mechanics or something. Bird lands. They all run off the ramp with the rotor blade. Bird takes off. They get up like nuts and bolts and shit.

Like taking the other rotor apart. Put the other one on. Is this a tail rotor that they're? No, it was the main rotor. The main rotor. Yeah. And they put the new rotor blade back on. The Chinook lands again.

Six guys grab the broken rotor blade, run on to the back, and the Chinook takes off, and we're just sitting there in the field, like, were we supposed to be on that? Like, no communication was getting, you know, disseminated at that point. And I was in charge of always grabbing the turp before we left. And you remember if as you're headed, oh, actually, I think you were the one that was MSS or both of you. As you head down that road towards the end where the ranges, that house on the right-hand side was where the turps hole used to bed down. And so I would always go down to their house and be like, hey, you got 10 minutes, get your shirt. shit on we're about to roll. And so I got to know the turp obviously by like going and getting him

every day. His name was Nick. And I go down and get, you know, Nick comes over to me as I'm standing there pulling security. And he's like, he's like, hey Dave. I'm like, what's up, Nick? He's like, it's probably the most honest question I've ever been asked in that situation. He goes, he hated helicopters. He'd never been on a plane in his life. The first thing he's ever been on is a helo in country, right? Hated him. And he nudges me. He's like, hey, Dave. He's like, we're not to get thing on that broken piece of shit, are we? And I'm just like, no, Nick, they're not going to put us on that. They'll fly other birds in.

They'll fly that one back on a skeleton crew. And I shit you know if this is what he said. He goes, I'm not getting on that broken piece of shit. I have friend. He lived 15 miles outside Baghdad. I call he come pick us up. I was like, yeah, that's never going to happen, bro. And he's like, and then so sure enough, the birds,

the Blackhawks that we came in on got reallocated to another tier one element. So they sent in little birds, about six little birds to pick up the 12 of us that we're still in the ground. He sees the little birds coming in. And all I remember hearing him say is not the little ones. And I turn around and he is in a dead sprint away from the HLC. So me and another dude have to run him down. And he's just wearing like just plate carriers.

He's got no kit with him, right? And so he's cooking. And we're in full kit dragged down through the sand trying to, we have to tackle him and drag him back. Throw him into the inside of the little bird and then snap onto the skid. so he can't get out and we're like, you know, thumbs up to the, to the, on each side and off we go. And we get about, and you can see the Black Hawk is laboring. It's like the lead vehicle, right, or the lead aircraft. And you can see it.

It's fluctuating in elevation. We're like, this thing might go down again, you know. And it starts going down and it comes to land in this field. So we all land. Boom, freaking everybody kicks out, security little birds take off. They start doing whatever mechanic crap. And they didn't tell us that they were spinning ordinance on the house. so we're probably about

maybe two, three clicks away from the house and they dropped like a couple of thousand pounders on it and I mean, the ground like threw me off my feet. I mean, I didn't fall, but I mean it threw me forward just from the impact of it and we thought we were getting mortared or rocketed.

I mean, that's how like up in your face it was. Yeah, no, no, no, they just shacked that house. I'm like, well, I hope they got all the women kids out before they did that. I'm sure they did. Yeah, you would have heard about something that crazy, but yeah, yeah, they They shacked it and then they finally got the hawk working. By that time, the other element had finished their mission,

so they showed back up with hawks. And that was the only time of my entire life where I sat in the door of a Black Hawk by myself, had the whole door to myself. And we start coming in. And as we swing a hard left to circle into the HLZ, frigging RPG comes from across the river and goes right by the open door, just right over the top and hit us.

We landed safely. Everything was fine. but I remember walking away and we're walking up from where the helipad was or where the air strip was right there back to our house. And another one of the guys who was sitting on the same side of the aircraft I was on a different bird was like, did you

fucking see that? I was like, hell yeah. It's like we're going to go through all that. We're literally about to touch down and we're going to get knocked out of the sky by another RPG but nah, nothing hit us but we were fortunate on that one. It was a challenging time too because I think there a lot of like a lot of the I don't know if it was then or like more around 2005

2006 but but a lot of the bad guys started getting savvy to like the room clearing to the tactics you started seeing more barricades inside more guys in the floor like a lot of like wild shit where absolutely you know they just

started becoming a lot more savvy I used to people would always ask me and it's because you know we obviously come from a first world country and they're like oh those savages, they don't know anything, they're ignorant. And I'm like, really? Well, if they're so ignorant, why do they find new ways to kill the most advanced military in the history of mankind? Yeah. They're not what you think they are.

Yeah. They may be not what your standard is used to as to far how they live or the way they treat people, but don't for one second think these people aren't smart. Yeah. They may not go to Harvard, but they can make an IED. I bet you can't. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. So people, that's a common misconception. Yeah. Yeah. There's a certain, like, a lack of logic, but with that, again, like ingenuity, I remember in Afghanistan seeing they had built some sort of mill or generator, I guess it was, using a car engine and a river, like, you know, using, I still have no idea what it was, you know, but there's an ingenuity. They find ways to take those kinds of things and do things that you're ingenuity there.

years think of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were, I don't know where they got this. This was actually to backtrack on Winter Strike. We walked into this one village and they had a rotor blade, just a single rotor blade from one of our helicopters, and they used it to dry their clothes on. It's like a clothesline. It was like that like powers a multi, God knows how much million dollar aircraft they're using to dry your, you know, clothes and shit. Yeah. They'll find ways to use anything. Yeah. Yeah. If you need water, let's slap a belt on that, put a few pullies on it and bam, we got running water.

Yeah. So after Baghdad, you're turning around now heading over back to Afghanistan. We go back from Baghdad. We get back the first week of October. I was home for a week and then I went to Pre-Ranger and then to Ranger school. So you did get to- After my third deployment, I finally was strong enough. Yeah.

You know, went to school, went straight through winter class, graduated in January. Came back in January. Back to, I got like a 10 days of leave or something. and drove across the country with my truck from Boston to Seattle, 3,000 miles of I-Fa- or I-90 the whole way. It was brutal in the winter. Get there. And about mid-January sometime, third week of January,

and then went straight in the training cycle. And then we left, we left May, June, 1st of April. Back to Afghanistan. Back to Afghanistan. Okay. And we were actually, it was us and three Charlie. were stationed at Boggram Airfield, and we were, their platoon was JSF, which was Joint Strike Force, and our platoon was QRF, and halfway through the rotation, we switched, and we were JSF, or we were

JSF and they were JSF is like the guys on standby for Mon. Cross border to go get them on, yeah, yeah. And we didn't do anything. We went on one mission in three months, and we just sat at Bogram and went to the gym and ate, and it was like platoon exavals for three months in Afghanistan. And after what we had been doing, we were just bored to tears. Yeah, that was the problem with those deployments. And thank God I dodged that bullet.

But from talking to the guys that because there was like, maybe they'd throw them one mission throughout the whole deployment, you know, so guys can go and get their shit. But that, you know, every company commander was like trying to set the training standard for a bag room deployment. And so you had like, those dudes were getting like three, four hours of sleep sometimes because they were like, like you said, platoon. X-evals for months on end.

We almost had T-shirts made that said, what is it, JRX or joint training something, Bagram, Bagru, Afghanistan, 2005. For people who are listening, the squad ex-evales and platoon X-Avals are just massive suck fest that happen, you know, at battalion or in regiment. And it's not something that you expect.

to see or experience when you're in a deployed environment. You train for combat. You don't train in combat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we are at East River Range, which is right outside of Eastgate in Boggham. We'd be there three times a week, four times a week.

I mean, it was either that. We were teaching guys were getting taught medical stuff. Guys were, you know, getting in bite suits and working with dogs and, you know, doing all, anything we could do to pass the time. Yeah. But if you guys were only getting like four hours, like four hours of sleep like the like that maybe not you're no actually oh you were saying you guys some of some of the guys i worked yeah yeah i was well rested okay i was in e5 at that point so i was

so it was good for you guys then yes and no okay it's after coming off everything we've come off sure sure sure sure i think it was probably the worst thing that could have happened sure because then you had time to actually start to start to process right right right um i mean still xbox you know was was live and everybody was bawling out on that And everyone was swole. Everyone was going to the gym twice a day. Yeah. Eating three, four times a day with midrats too. And then all that changed on June 28th.

So you had at Bogram as part of the task force, you had, you had, I assume, Rangers and whatever tier one units that were prosecuting, that were doing the DAs that were coming down. But then you had guys who were set aside specifically for QRF, quick reaction force, for those of you don't know. and then for the Joint Strike Force, which was number one, if he popped. Yeah. And those guys were not going on the DAs. We went on one mission in three months. One. It was the longest 90 days you can imagine.

I mean, there was nothing hard about it. Right. It was just, how do I fill this time? Right. It's only so many times you can eat and go to the gym. Right. So many times you can watch the same eight movies. Right.

And that compound in bag room is like, Quonset huts and then like guard towers around it and it's always gray and bleak and like I'm sorry for the comparison but like it kind of looks like Auschwitz or something from Schindler's list it's got that gray hue to it it does like the grayish blue hue it's depressing it is very and then every once in while like the spark will be like a coyote steps on a landmine the Russians left to some shit and the whole base goes on alert right yeah I mean either that or you know like oh we're taking incoming for like five seconds. Yeah.

You know, it landed like three miles away on the other side of the base and everyone's running for the lives. There's Burger King there, like the PX was, you. Yeah. I mean, it was like very commercialized at that point. And so this is like around 2004, 2005? This is mid-2005. So by this time, Bogram is built up.

Yep. First sergeants are in full effect safety belts, right? Not for us. Yeah. But if we left the compound, we fell under. Yes. fell under big army rules. Speeding tickets for gators going over

five miles in a hour. Do God help you go to chow wearing your black fleece? Or if you, because we didn't wear a headgear inside the soft compound. Yeah. So, or salute. Yeah. But as soon as you cross those Hescos into conventional forces land,

I remember like a butter bar walking by like four or five of us on the way of the PX. He's like, he stopped us. He's like two things. One, where's your PC? And two, why didn't you salute me. I was like, we're in a combat zone. That, like, dude, you graduated from like infantry school, like 15 minutes ago. Like, just

just go. Don't, don't, let's not make a thing of this. I'm going to report you to your commander. Go ahead. He's going to tell us to just let it go wear a hat next time. Like, I remember on Bogram, the first time I saw an officer chewing somebody out for not saluting and I was just walking by and laughing.

He's like, oh, you guys, and I'm like, I'm a civilian. Like, leave me the fuck alone. I was like, Do you know what a sniper check is? Here, I'll salute you. Sniper check. He's like, don't do that. I'm like, sniper check. Oh, sniper check.

And he's like, don't do that. I'm like, that's what you're asking for, idiot. You're literally yelling at me because I'm not doing that to you. So pretend like that's not what you're asking for. Yeah. You're asking for a sniper check. So what was, what happened June 28th? June 28th was any other day.

And we were, I was actually, I might say this in the dock too. It's such a specific thing because I remember every second of it. me and a couple of my buddies, the fellow team leaders, were in our hooch playing Tiger Woods Dream 18 on PlayStation 2, I think. And we were talking about, hey, you know, everybody's like out of dip or whatever. When we finish this game, we'll hit the PX, you know, grab a high luck stripe down there, you know, grab some food, grab some dip, you know, some beef jerky, you know, whatever, plus up on shit. And we're still in the middle of the game and the door gets kicked open and it was my squad leader at the time, or another squad leader, first-batun squad leader. First Battoon squad leader Brooks, Tony Brooks's squad leader

Chris Masters, he's now the new RSM, strangely enough, used to be my squad leader on the trip too, but we, he kicks the door up and he says, hey, get your shit on. Bird just got shot down outside of bed. So everybody kits up, everybody

piles out the back real quick. We're like standing kind of like where our vehicles are and like, you know, it's like the gravel lot, basically, if you will. And immediately they're like, you know, we're still not even getting very much intel about what the hell happened. They just say, get your shit on. And then they start making cuts because of the altitude that we were going in at.

And so it became a weight issue. So we lost a lot of dude. It was basically NCOs, Tabspec fours, and like some machine gunners and stuff. You can usually fit a whole platoon on the Chinook. Yeah. In this case, like half of that maybe. Between 16 to 18. Yeah.

And that was just for elevation. And so a lot of the dudes, and I honestly, I feel bad for him to this day. I mean, I don't because they don't have the same. Visual. Yeah. But I couldn't imagine what it would be like back there knowing that a little over half of your platoon and all of your leadership is out there and you're sitting in the hooch just like you were yesterday. Like nothing happened.

Yeah. And that was one of the things I was very thankful for throughout all six of my deployments was, I was scrubbed from one mission on my second deployment, the Tillman trip, and the mission got kanked. I remember they were like, How else you're out on this one. and I walked around that GP medium just pissed for like 45 minutes and all of a sudden the flap opens up and everyone piles in. I'm like, that was quick and they're like mission got kinked and I was like, I've never been so happy for a mission game because what if something went wrong and I wasn't there? That was the only mission I was cut from and the mission got kinked. So I was always thankful for that.

But I always did think about those guys that didn't. And, you know, like, yeah, you missed out on that, but I'm glad you missed out. You know, looking back on it, you know, like you're glad that those guys were spared some of. you know, the grisly details of what you guys experienced. There was nothing pleasant about it. Yeah, yeah. And so we all, what's the force that's going to go and conduct this, we get on Chinooks right on the airfield at Bath,

and we take off and we fly to Jalalabad. And we were sitting there, just kind of waiting for it to get dark. Honestly, we're waiting for that cycle of darkness. And I was sitting up on a roof with another team leader, same one that was playing Tiger Woods with me and we had quit smoking at that point and we were just dipping

and we had bummed a cigarette from like an Afghani National Army guy or something at the gate and we're sitting up on this building on the balcony and Jabad and we were passing it back and forth just I look at him and he looks at me and I'm like you know we're gonna fucking die tonight right

like we're going into a crash site where a Chinook got shot down on a Chinook and they know we're coming and he passed a cigarette or he said that to me We kind of back and forth, and I was like, I dropped a cigarette on the cement, squished it out. And I was like, fuck it, let's go get it over with. We're going.

We're going one way or the other. So if we're going to go, let's just go. At this point, you guys must have known. At this point, one bird down and four guys M-I-N. When we got to J-Bad is when we got the full brief on the compromise seal element that initiated the QRF, which in turn was the bird that got shot down. And that one was the one that had the eight-man. seal element that was going to go provide on-ground QRF and then eight guys from the 160th that were part of the crew.

And so we sat in J-bad, waited for it to get dark. And as it got dark, we, you know, turbines kick on on the birds and everybody knows that sound. You're like, all right, let's go to work. And we get on and we fly all the way there. We're at the 30-second mark. And, I mean, everybody's even already up on a knee, ready to unsnap and, you know, you already got your gloves on. You know we're roping because the terrain was. And all of a sudden, the birds turned around.

It was too foggy. A mountain rainstorm had blown through. You couldn't see shit. You really couldn't. And so they flew us back to Jalalabad, and we had to sit there for a day and wait. Just sitting there, knowing. And there was actually one of the guys that was on the 160th guy used to be a medic in 375, Marcus Marcos Marales. And our medic actually was from 3752, and him and Marcus were friends.

So he's got a dude he personally work with. And we all have a soft guys out there. But now our medic has the flight medic that's down. And, you know, we don't know if they're alive or dead. I mean, we're watching them on imagery or whatever. Fires are still burning. And even when we got there the next day, fires are still burning. That was probably the longest day of my life waiting.

Because it's like just staring at a car accident. And you just can't get out of the way of it. You know, like how do I occupy 24 hours knowing that this is still waiting for me? me right and but you know time passed and i remember us all laying down on the tarmac the night of the that would have been the night of the 29th so about a day and change after the initial incident happened and we're laying on the tarmac and i would be lying to if i told you there was a part of me that hoped that it didn't get kanked again and the other part of me just wanted to get it over with it was like 50 50 like dude we're like flying in a certain doom here

and it was about midnight one o'clock And those turbines on that 47 kicked on. It was like, fuck, here we go. Same thing. Load up. Fly all the way back. So now they've heard us fly there, fly back. Very next night, fly there.

And it was still so foggy. When we stood up to rope, the crew chiefs normally would kick the ropes off either side. They would identify the chem's laying on the ground so they know that the ropes laying flat and it's not suspended in the air. Look at each other, thumbs up. Rope master in front of you. step up, hey, they check the ropes, good to go, follow me, rope out. All happens in about five seconds, right? The crew chiefs on the back, kick the ropes, grab the rope, they're looking over.

Too much time's taken, right? I'm like, I'm the second guy on the left side of the aircraft, right, facing the back. And my squadlies in front of me and the other squad leader in front of him, team leader, team leader, I'm team leader. And I'm looking at the crew chief, and they're looking at each other, and they're like giving each other the shoulder shrug like I can't see the count right and then they're like go

go and they start waving us go go go and like that's totally out of order of how the command is executed to try to place this a little bit with some of the previous interviews we've done were you on the same bird as Tony Brooks yes okay and then there's another dude Nick Moore

Nick Moore good friend of mine he was on he was with third platoon they were on the other bird the other bird that came in so there were two shenosa came in And I think probably most of our audience is following this, but when you're fast roping, what he's saying is like the Rope Masters, they're watching to make sure that those ropes are on the ground,

especially when you're in uneven terrain, right? But maybe it gets caught up in a tree, maybe the bird's not low enough, all these different things, but they, because of the density, because of the fog and everything, they can't see these ropes. So these guys don't know if they're roping off

into oblivion, basically. You've got to think of how crazy that is, too, that the rotor blades of MH-47 is not blowing away enough of the fog. Right. You're still not able to see anything. That's crazy. All I could see was that little sliver on the lowest knot on the top of the rope,

the little green, their little blue cam taped on the side top, just to know where to grab below it, so you don't hit that knot. Yeah. And the crew chiefs are like, go, go, go. And like, our rote masters, squad leaders step up. They grab the rope and they look down and then look at each other and then look down again and I'm standing watching

all this right in front of me and they look and they look at each other and they look back down and I can see I can see a mouth I can't fucking see it and anyone that spent enough time on a helicopter you become somewhat of a lip reader at some point because you can't hear much right so even in at night I can see see it and then one of them goes, fuck it, and swings out on the rope. And I was like, I remember grabbing a leap of faith below that chem light and swinging out and being like, fuck it. We got on this rope because of fuck it.

Most ropes, 40 feet, 45 feet tops. And you're watching that rope disappear into the fire. Can't see it. Yeah. And so you swing out to clear your gear from the ramp. Yeah. And I was on, most of the time you're on, you know, top to bottom. Get on the ground. I mean, obviously the landing is the safest place.

Anything you're doing from this guy is. going to be inherently more dangerous, right? Optimally, we'd all like to land on the X, not rope into a rooftop or something. I was on that rope for so damn long I had time to think about shit. Like, question my life choices. Like, I was on that rope for a long time. The rope was a 90-footer, and we hit, I hit the bottom of the rope when I landed. That's so, and the other thing that people should be aware of is the longer you're on that,

you're wearing, like, really thick gloves. Yeah, we're wearing the leathers. You're wearing really, hamburger help or gloves. Yeah, you're wearing thick gloves specifically for that. rope, but the longer you're on that rope, the more friction you're building up, the hotter it gets while you're going down it. Absolutely. And one of the things that inherently, your reaction is to squeeze with your hands harder

because you're descending too fast when in actuality it needs to be your feet. Because you've got the cushions of your boots that, you know, are going to absorb some of that friction. In that moment with all that weight, you're just holding on for dear life. Yeah. And so, I mean, people I came down, I had blisters on my fingers that were that big, you know, that I just had to stick a knife in and squeeze the pus out of and move fuck on. I mean, there was, I don't think, I don't know about the other bird that Nick was on. I don't think anyone from Arbird had, like, mechanics gloves or, like, light skin gloves on, which you can usually get away with on, like, a 30-footer, 25-footer, no problem. But you get in anywhere over that 45, 50-foot range.

I mean, you're in those thick cow-hide leather ones. You're in a double-gloving at that point. Oh, I wish I could. I mean, it was, I almost felt, because I had double gloves on, I felt like I didn't have enough dexterity with leathers. Yeah. I might fall off the rope if I could both. So I was like, well, I'm just going to go with the leathers. And even with those, I still.

Yeah, it's terrifying. Because the rope is so thick. Yeah. And especially if your hands are cold where you can't really feel anything, then you're like. Then you're, am I squeezing too tight? Yeah. I'm about to come out of this glove. So like, I didn't, some other guys got some more's blisters than I did for sure.

I was kind of lucky, but I was only carrying an M4. Right. You know, I'd, in basic load of ammo, I mean, I didn't weigh 10 pounds. We didn't have, like, rucksacks or anything that we were going with. It was just what we had. Yeah. When we left, they told us we're only going to be gone for six hours. We were there for 13 days.

Yeah. So we hadn't, like, a bottle of water per, no one had any dip. I know that sounds irrelevant to some of the viewers. Dips a huge thing in the military. Like, you run out of a dip. Yeah. Everybody's got cans of dip, and we had none. I think one dude had, like, half a can.

And he was like, hey, I got a little dip, and everyone was, like, digging their meat. And he's like, this is for me. Yeah. So everybody's detoxing from nicotine while around there at the same time, right? Yeah. And yeah. So I'm like, I remember thinking in my head and I'm like, one of two things is about to happen.

I'm either going to hit the bottom of this rope or I'm about to fucking fall and this is it. Yeah. And so I spread my legs. And I spread my legs and within a second or two, I'm like, boom. And I hit the ground. And I'm like, no fucking way. And I take one step. and my Mark 46 gunner comes down the rope behind me

He's a little boy from Georgia named Spence Roller or so weren't That's how he talked He comes down like a missile with that 46 Hits the ground And just chop blocks the back of my legs And I start going ass over tea kettle down the hill Now I mean we don't have

I don't have my nods are up right Like I can't see anything And I'm to do to do him down this hill I don't know Am I about to go off the side of the cliff now? Yeah I tumbled for I don't know how far And I eventually stopped or whatever

But like I said the grade was just really, just really, really steep. And then the rest of the guys got off, and I remember they cut the rope. And so you got to, for the audience, like Dave was saying, these ropes aren't like ropes you buy it lows. They're a good two handful, you know, from 90 feet up, that rope and hit the head of a couple of our dudes on the ground

when they cut the ropes loose from the bird. And I remember. remember one guy yo and, you know, yells at the top of his lungs like, fuck. And one guy goes, shh. And the reaction to that was, I think they fucking know we're here, Mike. Like, I don't think it's just, is the appropriate response. Like, hey, are you good? That rope just hits your head from nine stories up.

Yeah. Now, shh. And it's like we just had these massive birds over ahead. Two Chinooks that were here last night too, just came back again. And us being here is no surprise. No surprise. Right? I would be surprised if they're surprised, obviously.

But what had happened and it didn't know, I thought I had rope burns. And they had dropped those unknowingly, of course, into stinging nettle, which I didn't even know it was a thing. I've never even heard of it until this night. And I'm zooming my nods in, my sleeves are rolled up, and I'm like thinking I got rope burned because we were just on it for so long. Adrenaline, you know, I didn't feel it until it started to calm down.

I'm talking like, I am burning. And he's like, I'm burning too. And, of course, the sweat opens your pores up. And it's just, apparently, I mean, it did go away untreated, but for a good hour, everyone was on fire. And we linked up with a third platoon. They were on the same kind of ridge we were, and we started our movement. And we walked all damn night. And it was, as we first started walking, my buddy Z was on point.

And I was right behind him, the squad leader behind me and so on. And we're walking up this ridge, and he stopped. And this is under nods. He stopped and I bumped into the back of me. And I was like, whoa, dude, I couldn't see you. And he goes, dude, I cannot see. I could walk off the side of a cliff right now. I can't see anything.

Just no illumination whatsoever. None whatsoever. And he's like, you walk next to me. I'm like, dude, yeah. So we walk point together, which is not really a common thing. Yeah. And we walk side by side together and we can't walk. Did you guys turn on your, like your light, your floods, your eyes?

You could still. It was almost worse. Really? It was the, there was. Oh, because of the fog. All the reflection. Oh, they tried.

We tried a fog. I forgot about that. The flood actually did make it worse. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. It was just straight,

no loom, nods with the fog. Yeah. And we walked all night long and we finally got to like this. And you could see, like, probably the only thing you could see

was the only light source in the valley, which was the fire that was still burning from the actual bird. And so we get to the edge of, just as days breaking. It's just like dawn. You can finally see.

and my battalion sartn, he kind of drops his kit and walks over to the edge and kind of looks at the damage briefly. And he turned around and came back and gave us a quick little brief and was like, this is bad. This is going to, this day is going to change your life, like without question. Even after everything we've done, this is different. And so we kicked out perimeter security and we had roving patrols. And then about 12, 12 of us were about 10, 12 guys that were. from our platoon. And then there were some PJs down there that were with us.

And everyone else pulled perimeter, and we just started excavating the bodies. Yeah. And that took all day. I mean, they were literally scattered. The seals that were on that bird had unsnap. The bird had flared and they had leveled. And ropes were kicked and they were unsnapped.

So when the RPG came in and hit the inside, and the bird, the centrifugal force of it spinning around, basically launched those guys out the open ramp in the back. Yeah. So they were kind of scattered all over the side of this mountain, all over. But all the 160th guys were still strapped in, and when the bird inverted and slammed, they all, I mean, that was a, they were riding it in.

And that was one of the, not that this whole event isn't tragic as shit, but Marcus Morales, the Ranger Medic, was supposed to be going home like the next day. He wasn't even supposed to. He was like off mission at this. point. Pack your bags. You're going home. Just had a kid. The flight medic that had taken over him or was ripping with him and got sick. And Marcus, being Marcus was like, hey, don't worry about it. And I got you. I'll go. Jesus. It's rough. So I actually found Marcus. We were policing up the bodies. And the only reason I know is because there were only about three dudes out of all 16 of those guys.

They're wearing dog tags around their neck. Dog tags don't burn. Which I found out. So when I found him, he still has dog tags around his neck. And I knew at that point who he was. And I kind of walked up on what was left of him. It's, you know, I think I told Tony the same thing. I mean, I understand that this, what you're describing, like, it really doesn't get any worse than that. And that was probably the worst day of everyone's life.

It was out there that day. I can, I would say it was, I won't speak for any, but that was definitely the most graphic worst day of my life. And, but, you know, I hope that everyone who is out there also knows that, like, you guys were really doing the honorable thing to go out there and recover those guys. I would want someone to come get me. Yeah. Yeah. And that's all I kept thinking in my head, if that was me, I don't want to be left on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan. Like, come get me. Yeah. At the same time is that selfish of me, because you know other people's lives are put

at risk to come get me. And I'll tell you, that fog was so bad. The next day, that next morning and through the day while we were policing up the bodies, our roving controls and security elements were getting engaged because we had walked through all these ambushes that they had set up for us from where we infilled to where we dropped our kit to go down and police the crash. But it was so damn foggy they couldn't see because we walked right by them.

We couldn't see them under nods. So they didn't stand a chance of seeing us. And we walked right through all these ambushes they had set up. So we got attack basically from the rear. All like third platoon, Nick's platoon, and those guys were providing those I don't want to call them presence patrols, but those

patrols and security. Controls. Yeah. And so, like, they were getting, you know, some engagements and stuff from behind. We'd walk right through, had no idea. Was ISR able at all to penetrate that? We had 16s flying. We had a J-TAC on the ground with us that was coordinating air and stuff like that.

There were definitely some bad dudes out there. Make no mistake about it. I mean, I never personally engaged one or saw one, to be honest. Our unfortunate job of that was mostly just cleaning up what was left for me. I can't speak to what went on on the other side. And so, you know, you guys were set down in an offset. You patrolled to the crash site. You recovered bodies.

How were you managing pickup? We had deployed with, we, so when the PJs came with us and got attached to us, They put all of their, like, the, the, the, God, help me guys, with the saw, like, the jaws of life. Yeah, we didn't know. The saw's all. Yeah. And everything. Yeah.

So they had the saw as all, like, the circular, like, mounted to the Alice Pack frame or whatever. And, and then a lot of the stuff, they were dragging in Skedko, on that terrain, which was brutal. I mean, I don't think, I can't tell you another better way to do. I don't think carrying a rigid litter would have made a difference. But, yeah. Yeah. with a bunch of their, you know, emergency, you know, crash acts type stuff. Yeah.

Jaws of Life in there. But, yeah, so we, I don't know how we were not loud enough moving through that to get engaged at some point. Right. We weren't quiet. There was no way to be quiet. Right. Dudes were falling all the time. RTO, which is a radio guy, he actually, on the infill, he slipped off the rope towards the bottom and landed and went to go roll out of the way.

and the guy behind him came down and landed directly on his forearm and snapped his forum in half. He ain't getting medifacted. So he had to tough it out. I mean, and I remember once he fell while we were walking from infill to the crash site. And Z and I were quite a bit up ahead and we just hear this blood's cardling scream. Yeah. Burt fell. It's, I mean, it's so fortunate that you guys roping in an environment that hostile and that like non-permissive, just the environment, not

the bad guys if you would have had one or two broken legs that would have been and you can't cancel the mission you can't there was no way to get us out right it was it was literally right right you at least got to get to the crash time we had to blow an hlz at the top of the hill and that's what that's what i was going to ask is it so so how did you guys create an hlz or at least a pickup zone debt cord around a bunch of little tiny trees and after we got the the last of the bodies up. We waited for night. And we had cleared enough space at that point, blowing up enough trees.

First starting had a blast while we're doing that. He's wrapping dead cord around everything. Burning, bow! And we're like, okay, now definitely no we're here. Yeah. Clear enough of an HLZ. Bird landed, loaded the bags on, and they took off with the...

We ended up... Excuse me. They took off with 15 body bags in an MRE box. We couldn't... There wasn't enough. enough of the 16th guy to put in the body back and um we found the first and we didn't have names for him honestly Morales was the only one that we knew because of the the ranger connection um so we just had numbers it was very impersonal it had to be absolutely and um so we

we were being like okay we got 13 okay we got 14 and then we couldn't find two and we we we had hands across america this like so many times times. And me and my platoon serge, we're coming uphill and we were right by where the fuselage was. And as we're coming up the hill, we kind of got a clearing and both of us at the same time, we're like, I got a boot.

We can see a boot sticking out. And we're like, hey, and we kind of ducked down and look and we're like, we got 15. And it was one of the pilots. And the cockpit was like resting up against this tree. Everything's charred and wires everywhere and just twisted

metal. I mean, you can probably envision. and I looked at my platoon starting. He's like 6'4, 6'5. I mean, he's a pretty tall dude. I'm 6 even. I'm not short guy, but standing next to him, I look short. I'm like, I'll go, I'm smaller. So I climb under the fuselage.

Everything at this point is stop smoldering for the most part. So I climb under there and I try to grab him by the front of his kit. Just see what I can do to get him out. Well, let me back up, actually. We try to pull him out by his legs first. that's an image that is seared into my brain as well. We grabbed him like kind of like mid-calf, just try to jerk him out of the,

out of from under there, and his skin just right to the top of his boot, just all the way down to the bone, like, in our hand. I left my gloves at the crash. We'll just leave it at that. I mean, they were covered. So, like, once we realized that, man, we ain't getting him out that way, and he's down to just bone on his legs, right?

I'm like, I'll just go. That's when I'm like, hey, I'll go. I'm smaller. So I climb under the fuselage where the cockpillar. it is. I go to grab him and I can't I can't unfree him and as I'm kind of feeling around the back of him I'm like this dude's kit is melted to the base of this tree

like the Kevlar had melted him to the tree so I had to wrap my arms completely around him so like his head is here and jar him unmeled him from this tree and once I get him separated the only way for my platoon starting to get out was to grab me by the boots and pull both of us out. So the guy that I'm, the pilot is on the ground.

I have my arms wrapped around his entire upper torso and I'm getting slid out on top of him as I hold him and get pulled out by my feet. So I had just remains just all over me. And then it was on the hunt. We got him packaged. And then it was on the hunt for 16. It was right about dusk.

And we stumbled up on a pile of bones. They were clearly human. And that was all that was left. Everything else had melted. And all we had left was an MRI box. So we put him in that. And we stayed for another 12 days. You want to seltzer? Yeah, I'm sorry. Can we just pause this for a second? I got to pee. We're not going to pause because we're live, but you go pee? And Jack and

and I'll fill the air. Oh, okay. Yeah. Just give me two seconds. Let me... Yeah. No worries at all. I'm not trying to cough up the whole interview. Yeah. I will tell folks about

we defy the lost chapters of special forces history of this book coming out in December 9th. And it covers, as the title suggests, aspects of special forces history that haven't been written about previously. There's a chapter about

Blue Light, America's first counterterrorism team, Detachment A, the guys who were undercover in Berlin, Detachment K, the liaisons in Korea, green light, the guys who jumped in with backpack nukes during the Cold War. And then there's a chapter on the SIF, the commander's in extremist force, and sort of the history of the various direct action courses on Fort Bragg, Sepahawic, Sephardic, SOT. And so this book is available for pre-order right now. The digital and the paperback version of this book will come out on December 9th. So just a couple days away.

Please check it out. I think you guys will enjoy it. And so we're doing an interview on the 9th. On the 9th. About the book. Yeah. So we'll be talking about it then. Yeah.

So the stream on the 9th. If you guys have questions about the book or anything in it, feel free to get back to us with it, and we'll discuss that on the show. Sorry, I'm back. I want to apologize. Not at all. Had a little coughing attack there.

I apologize. So you establish a HLZ, you start evacuating these, you know, the remains and these body bags. What was the rest of the duration of that trip for you? It was about 11 or 12 days of looking for, and Nick Morris platoon was actually, he did more of this than I did. There was another kind of area that we got sent to. There was a little further on down the mountain that I'm not going to go into detail about,

but we just kind of split the force in half, and they stayed back and started looking for that original seal element. And I know they were able to find two of them. And then that's when they started to detect the beacon coming from LaTrell's kit. And then they made their way down with the SF team and ODA team into that village and rescue Marcus. But that was the remainder of those that week and a half was actually just trying to find the initial seal element that got compromised. So Nick and his guys were able to get, you know, two of them. And then Marcus. And then it was the needle and the haystack looking for the last one.

Yeah. And actually, they exiled us before. We found the fourth one. And it was our time to leave. And third range of battalion came in. So they went immediately, like landed on the ground, and Afghanistan immediately got sent by Hilo out to Thresher to continue the search as we ex-filled our guys.

I want to say it was within like a day or two. And they just probably just fresh eyes at that point. Yeah. I mean, like after you comb the same ground over and over again, like just having a fresh set eyes probably worked in their favor. But I mean, at the end of the day, like 375 found that last guy and we were able to get everybody home and then obviously Marcus being the lone survivor of the out of the 20 the 19 of them that went down as part of Operation

Red Wings and Red Wings Recovery. Go ahead. I was just going to ask, during that time, were you guys making a lot of contact? I never got shot at once. Never got shot at once. The J-TAC had a good time. Oh, I bet. I mean, like I said, there were people all over the place.

They just weren't engaging us with small arms fire or anything. Yeah. But one of the days in particular, it was like close to, it was like the second or third of July or something like that. And A10s and F-16s or F-15s and, you know, dropped out of the sky and just annihilated this top ridge line of this hill. And it was kind of cool. It was like not celebrating people dying, but it was like, well, that's about the coolest Fourth of July fireworks of every single. seen in my life. Yeah.

And then we ex-filled and two days later we were home, which was... Probably not. I don't think anyone was ready to come home. Yeah, probably not great. There needed to be a little bit more deep oppression time, I think, before an event like that. Yeah. And then all of a sudden it's like, hey, we're back in Washington State. Like, don't go hell on the city of Seattle tonight, boys.

Have a good one. It's very jarring, isn't it, to come back from such, you know, both a combat zone, but also an area that's so austere. and then to come back home and I you know walking around a Walmart and just like feeling completely overwhelmed or going or going out to a nightclub and dealing with with college dudes who just think that they're college kids yeah I think to speak to both of your points I think that was probably the hardest come home for me yeah even after all the other deployments already leading up that because i remember going to do simple things like you said like walmart or i'd go to the px or something and i'd be walking around and i'm looking at these people going about their daily

lives like nothing ever happened yeah and i'm like do you guys have any idea what i was doing like five days four days ago yeah and you're just to do too do and but you know what that's the way it's supposed to be right they're supposed to be that way right but at the same time like we talked about earlier that makes you feel a little ostracized because you're like i can't just come out and tell this dude at walmart like look man, I've had a bad week. You know, like, go easy on it. And then I, in a lot of ways,

that come to manifest itself, in my opinion, two ways either you fight, or you shut the hell up about it and clam up and go about your way. Yeah. And, and even though, I think, even though a mature, a mature soldier will,

recognize that this is the way it's supposed to be, there's still a level of resentment that can't be controlled, that can't be logiced away, that it's not, you know, it's not like you demand more respect because of what you, but any amount of respect that any human being, I think that's the thing that,

like, used to really get me, was the lack of respect, not for me as, you know, a combatant, just have more respect. respect for fucking people because you don't know what what I did yesterday what you I did yesterday and and that goes both ways yeah I mean I don't know and that dude might I got out in prison yesterday for all right now you'd been in there for 25 years or so I don't know right what that did to me personally and I'll only speak for myself is it made me clam up yeah to family to loved ones to my girlfriend

to everyone it was like I don't want you to know what I what these eyes have seen what I've experienced right I'm like trying to protect you from this so I instead of going the I went more of the homebody. I don't want to leave the house. Like, I'm safe here. And I still struggle with that to this day. I'm like, if I don't leave my house, the odds of shit happen to me are pretty low.

Yeah. You know, every time I go out on, you know, to anywhere, you know. And it's not even so much anymore. I mean, there's always going to be that little paranoia. Like I don't like my back, you know, facing an open area. I don't like to be around huge crowds. But even now more so as I'm older, I'm like, I'm content to be at the house.

Yeah. I don't know any of my day. dudes that I came with that are like, dude, I was out at the bar last night until three going crazy. I'm like, I was in bed at 10.30. And like, I'm going to garden tomorrow. It's going to be awesome. Like, you know, I have a buddy of mine that was on that crash site that paints now. You know, Tony Brooks wrote a book. Everybody kind of went in to their own little whatever, you know, their zone, their comfort

zone or what makes them happy or what takes their mind off of it. But at the end of the day, no matter what you do, it can't take a way. it doesn't remove that but we all shared in that together. It's like everyone is trying to find their own way to comprehend and deal with it. And I think it's been long enough at this point that I mean I'm able to sit here and talk about

there was a long time where I couldn't. Who to hell wants to hear this? I mean, this is not pleasant, right? And then with the doc and finally telling it and being more comfortable telling it more comfortable in my own skin. I mean, I'm not going to tell the checkout dude at the grocery store about.

about this shit, right? But, like, I mean, if there's a safe environment, like this environment, I feel very comfortable sitting here having this conversation, especially with your guys' background, knowing all the day. I feel much more comfortable in my own skin than I did. And it took a long time, a long time to get there. And I still, it's a work in progress on a daily basis. Yeah.

I mean, I got a wife and three kids. I guarantee you could ask all of them, oh, he's a good dude. He could be better. Yeah. I mean, it's just being self-reflective and honest. Like, yeah, I could do a better job. but I do a good job. I can always try to be better tomorrow than today.

And some days I fail. That's every human. Yeah, and I'm okay with that. And that's the thing. Before I felt like I couldn't fail anything or I couldn't have a bad day or if I had a bad day, I isolate myself. I'm not going to talk to anyone.

And now my wife, we've been together for 11 years. And now I'm just like, not today. I did not sleep well last night. I was restless. I had some dreams. She don't even ask what the dreams were about anymore. She's just like, I had some dreams.

Just let me chill on the porch. Let me smoke a few cigarettes. Stare at nature. And I'll come back in when I'm like capable of having civilized conversation with you. So you met your wife. Oh, way after. Way after. Yeah.

Yeah, I was divorced once. That's actually impressive on her part because I think it's one thing if a wife, even if you don't tell them everything, but if a spouse is there during and has a sense, then they sort of get it. It takes a special type of woman to adapt after the fact to that. And that was one of the lessons I learned. The woman that I dated the whole time I was in,

she was with me from the time I was in RIP all the way through post all the deployments and getting out. I never told her anything. And I don't want to skip ahead too much, but it was like I was trying to protect that person. My relationship after that, when deteriorated, is solely that was on me. I wasn't prepared to deal with this shit, right?

And she suffered for that. Our relationship suffered. I'd take 100% ownership for that. I didn't give her a chance. But I did learn something from it. So when I met my ex-wife, I told her everything, because I was like, well, I'm not going to make

that mistake. I'm at least going to let you in. And that's probably one of the hardest things for guys in our line of work to do, is to let those barriers down, let those shields down, and like let someone else that's not one of your boys that you can call a three in the morning if you're having a bad night and talk it through. It's like I can actually talk to this other person that I'm with on a daily basis that I share my life with.

Letting those barriers down was probably the hardest thing I've ever done. Once I did, I feel like I may have told her too much. Yeah, I get it. And so it's like, you know, I'm waffling back and forth between not enough and too much. And then, you know, whatever happened between us happened. And we cordially went our separate ways. And then I met my wife, Tracy. And she's just amazing.

She just, she looks out for me. She doesn't even have to, we don't have to have a conversation. She can just look at me and see my face and be like, it's one of those days. I'm just going to leave me alone. Let him watch a movie. He'll be fine in a couple hours or something. I want to definitely get into your, you know, post service. life and also leading up to this documentary.

There's one more appointment, two more. Two more. Take us through that. Okay, so we get back from the crash. That was in, we got back mid-July, July 14th of 2005. Full training cycle for the first time ever in my career. So we were back home for five and a half months. And then I went Advan to Ramadi.

I left, but they gave us Christmas. So I left on like the 27th of December. So right after Christmas, me and a weapon squad leader flew over as the two Advong guys to go make, to go rip with the, you know, get the lay of the land from the 175 guys. And so we landed, we got to,

and right before we left, they deemed Ramadi to be the most dangerous city in the world, the insurgency activity. I mean, it was out doing Fallujah at that point. Ramadi was, I mean, it was real bad at that, in that stage. So coming up, the crash everybody's still recovering from that and then they're like oh we're going to chuck you

into the worst city and world it was like okay what could go wrong here and so uh so we go ad vaughn and the day we got there or the evening we got there we flew into there was a fob called shark base and it was right on the right on the river and we landed in in our Chinook and got off and went and linked up with the guys and they're like hey you know for chill out or whatever we'll come get you in the morning we'll go give you a lay of the land take you down to like we're the big uh big army bases down there i think it was johnson city or something like that is what they called it and we'll take you down there and show you everything in the morning we're like cool so we bed down to get up in the morning link up with the 175 guys and they're taking us out of our fob down to the big base and

they're like okay this is you know sniper alley or RPG alley like be careful going down these roads and we had heard huge explosion like 30 minutes before we left but it was it seemed far away it obviously didn't land in our compound well as we're driving down this road all of a sudden we start hearing all these honk they know horns honking at us just like it sounds like New York not to I mean it literally does boo boo boo boo boo boo boo boo boo boo boo and we turn and look and here come all these high looks is past us and there's just body parts in the back of them just I don't think I saw one whole human just legs, armed. I mean, blood was dripping out, you know, like when it rains in the

back of your tailgate again. Blood was running out as these cars. It was when they bombed the glass factory. And the glass factory was in Ramadi and it was an Iraqi army Iraqi police recruiting depot. And they had this big pouring out of people that wanted

to do IAIP and it was recruiting. And so there were like, you know, our guys were there, like military officers were there. I think there was like a major, like some high-ranking, higher-ranking dudes. And some guy walked in, suicide bomb, boom, like, killed, like, a shitload of people. And that was, and I were like, dude, what is all this? And the 175 guy, again, common theme.

He goes, welcome to Rammadi, man. And, like, didn't even bat an eye at it. And so that was the first day we were on the ground in Rami. And it killed, like, 90-something people in that factory. Mostly Iraqis, but there were some U.S. military personnel killed, too. And so, yeah, that was just like, welcome to Ramadi, man. And it was just foot on the gas go. As soon as the main body got there, we didn't stop.

It was just, you know, I talk about following objectives. There were follow objectives for following objectives, for following objectives. We'd leave at 11, 12, and we wouldn't come back till daylight, pretty much every night. So for you guys, was there, was there like an actual ground offensive in Ramadi like there was. Like in Fallujah? It was very similar, but different, similar but different, I guess. And you guys weren't really part of that, but you were prosecuting targets.

We were putting together the packages to go hit those targets that night. And basically we would coordinate. I know the Marines had a big chunk of that as well. And then I want to say there was some army element. It may even the 82nd. I'm a little fuzzy. It's been 19 years. Yeah.

But there was another army element. And our big thing, and this kind of was, the standard for wherever we would go on any deployment was, you know, once you're operating inside these guys is a-o, you basically alert them, hey, we're going to be hitting a target between X and Y hours of the night. You know, we need A, we need QRF stood up and B, you know, blocking positions if that was what wasn't required

for that particular mission. So I remember, you know, talking to some Marines that were there afterwards that absolutely hated us because we'd be out, you know, all night long every night. And like, if we're out, they're out. Right. Except for we're moving and they're standing at the corner of a road trying to keep the city. You know what I mean? So once again, everyone matters and everyone had a job to do.

And but that, yeah, Ramadi was crazy. And so what was... It was like Iraq O'4 on steroids. Yeah. And so what was that like for you guys in terms of, I mean, was there contact on most of your targets? Was the surrounding neighborhood responding to a lot of your hits, things like that? We took a ton of IDF in direct fire, mortars and rockets and things like that. A lot of the stuff then, one of our biggest fears is they were starting IED bridges and things like that.

And I remember going through, like when we were on ground and we're rolling through those. I remember I would always crack the hatch. I wouldn't open it all the way. I always cracked the hatch because you hear about these guys doing rollovers. drown it and it's like I still think we're going to drown in this river if we get blown off this bridge but at least the hatch is open and we stand a sliver of a chance. Right. And I mean that was the best you had sometimes.

It's like we might stand a toothpick of a chance if the hatch is open. Yeah. We're still driving across a fucking bridge. Yeah. So like you're just hoping it doesn't go off. We guys in Humvees or the Emmerichs? Strikers at that point with the big RPG cages around them. Not really the smallest vehicles, about 50,000 pounds roughly.

Yeah. That was our, for ground, that was what we were using at that point. We used the Humvees, honestly, for just, like, driving around the base and stuff. They were, like, that in high looks is we didn't take them out on patrols at that point. Yeah. So, yeah, mostly strikers, and we did a mixture between ground and air. Yeah. And then, so with this, with this ground offensive that the Marines and probably some conventional armed.

Battle of Fallujah's, I think is what it's referred to as, yeah. So how were, how were you? guys how was the interoperability were you moving forward of their lines were you moving within their lines mostly within mostly within mostly within i mean there were a few that were outside of the city i would say where you get into like more of your rural stuff like i was talking about that wedding and bagged that kind of like when you kind of get outside the city you don't need nearly as much cordon protection or anything i do remember we hit this house that was rural we came in on two black hawks who were like 14 of us or something and we roll into this house we clear the house we clear the house

Allison, as business as usual. And there were like, like 20 males, military-age males in this house, right? And it's like three women, a handful of kids and like all these dudes. And we're like, dude, we can take like three or four dudes with us. That's it. So we had to call QRF, not because we were in contact. We have detainees that you can get picked up. So we picked our, you know, pick of the litter, if you will.

Right. They're coming with us. And then the rest of them, so we had to call QRF, which was Marine Force that was coming. up. And so like the majority of our dudes are in the house and my between starts like, hey, house, go sit out on the, on the in the front and just wait for these guys to show up. And another dude standing right next to me, another team leader's like, yeah, I'll come out with you, man, keep your company. I'm like, cool. We haven't taken any contact or anything, right? We just, just a lot of dudes in this house. There's more of them than there are of us dudes, which is rare, right? We get out to the front and I look

over to my right and I see headlights. And I'm talking, these, these headlights are like miles away. and I'm like, we are in the middle of nowhere. What 50 vehicle, it looked like a highway coming towards us. And just all white light, it's like two in the morning. I'm like, no, this cannot be our QRF, dude. But they didn't have nods. They didn't have pectoos. They didn't have anything.

They had iron sights on M16s and 12-gauge shotguns. And this is 2006? 2006. It's insane. And they rolled up with like a 50, vehicle convoy of Marines that got dispatched for QRF to come get 12 to 10ies. Like one set of nods per squad.

Yeah, I don't think the drivers didn't have knots. There's no, I mean, honestly, by 2006, there's no excuse for that. There's no excuse for them. They had white light. And they're rolling by us. Just weapons out the window, just flagging the shit out of us. Because it's not their fault. They don't, you're not. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not going to shit on them for it at all. I was like,

we have different jobs, but like, you know, we're like, hey man, you mind lower than that? Yeah. Pointing it directly at my, you know, center mask, please. And, yeah, there had to have been 50 vehicles in that convoy to come get 16 guys. It's like you could have sent like five gun trucks and a deuce and a half. That would have been more than enough. Yeah.

They sent everybody out. Yeah. And I just remember looking at them and looking at us. And they're like, damn, man, are you guys like special forces or something? It was like, yeah, something like that, man. The guys are inside. The Blackhawks are five minutes out, so we're waiting. And then they're sitting there and their homebies loading these detainees up.

Here come the Hawks. They land in. We all run out, grab our dudes, chuck them on. We're off. See you later. And they're just like, fuck those dudes, man. That sucks. And we're stuck here with all this.

And these guys are doing cool guy shit. You know? Yeah. Again, it comes back to everybody has their unique role in this. Yeah. I'm like, we couldn't take 20 dudes. Yeah. Those 16 dudes may have given up more information before we took.

Yeah. You know, we just never see the end game, really, unless it's, you know. Yeah. Was the. hump house story? That was Ramadi, too. Okay. That was my last mission.

So before we wrap up, Ramadi one, any other ops that stand out in mind that you'd like to talk about? Yeah, we had a bad day, close to the end of the deployment. March 18th, 2006. It was a hit, Objective Miami. I still remember. I still see the GRG in my head. And a GRG is a grid reference guide.

I would wear, like, you know how a quarterback's, like the play sheet, I'd slip in, the GRG, have it folded over so I could see within a couple hundred meter grid square. There's Target House and this and that. I'd wear, like, you know, Tom Brady wears his. Sorry, I got to bring up Brady. I'm from Boston. Kill me later. Kill me later.

And, you know, I've got that thing, and that's, I still have it to this day. And so it's Objective Miami and Objective Miami, too. The main force was going on Objective Miami, one, which was a house, no different than any normal house that we'd hit. That's special about it. It wasn't part of some overly, you know, elaborate compound or anything. And so I was sitting, it was me, a couple team leaders, and a gentleman, Dale Brim, and we're sitting in in the hooch in Ramadi. And we hadn't seen Dale in like a while.

It's probably been like a year. And one of the other guys had gone through Ranger School with him. So they were buddies from that too. He was an A-Co guy. Dale was. And so we're sitting there chilling with them. And it was like business as usual. You know, we're sitting there fucking joking around.

It was like, all right, bro, he's like, hey, we're rolling on Miami. It was like, all right, bro, we're on QRF for Miami, too. Miami one was the main hit. Miami two was, if this hit happened, the most likely place that they're going to go is to jump into the river and swim it across to another safe house on the other side of the river to distance themselves. If they do that, our little 10-man element is going to launch on Miami-2. So we're, later, Bram, hey, bro, catch you at Midrats, right? Right? Like middle, you know, middle chicken wings and, you know, you pig out after a mission.

All right, bro. Catch you in 20, 30 minutes, man. These missions weren't taking that long at that point. And I remember, you know, fist bumping him out the door and they left. And the other guy, one of the dude, one of our team leaders left with them. They all were on the main hit. And then me and the team leader, there was my squad. We stayed with our squad leader and our couple of our nugs. And we went down by the airfield to be ready. They had a black hawk sitting right there. And we were all just standing there, birds off, flight medics just chilling. So you guys were not going to fly unless they squirted. Unless they squirted. Yeah.

Maneuvered. Yep. So, yeah, sorry. maneuvered. And so we are sitting down by the airfield and the flight medic had like kind of, you know, gotten up and walked up to the talk. And we're kind of, maybe like five, ten minutes goes by. and all of a sudden we hear the turbines and the rotors start spinning

and we're like oh shit we have people maneuvering and so we're like getting up putting helmets on make it through my way hey com's good yeah radio check blah blah blah and the flight minute comes running down from where the talk was there only four houses on our little on our little area comes running down this sand dirt path jumps in the black hawk and just takes off and I remember looking at the fellow team leader of my squad leader I was like we supposed to be on that

because they just left the eight of us sitting here. So like a minute or two goes by and we're like, man, coming back, dude. So like me, the other team leader and Squarleader walk up to the talk. And as we walk in, they have all the monitors up and everything. And we come in and we can see, because the objective is only like four minutes out from where the base was, right? So by the time we walk up the hill,

they're coming in to focus on all the monitors. We see the Medivac bird coming in. And the Metaback bird lands. and what it ended up happening was Dale Bram and another ranger, his squad leader, Ricardo Barraza, had made entry into the house, we're going through the first floor clearing rooms

and hit this one room on the first floor, and as they came in, one dug left, one dug right, and there was a guy behind a stack of mattresses in the middle of the floor with an AK. And it's not like, you know, how we have AKs here in America, because these are full auto, so I mean, it's not semi-automatic. So the guy was just hid behind the mattresses,

threw the AK up over the top and just let a burst go right at the door. I mean, Fatal Funnel, right? Yeah. And as they turn one digging left, one digging right, they both got hit about right there from the side. And both went down. Saw a gunner came in, finished him off. The enemy combatant, let me be clear.

Finish the enemy combatant off. and then immediately went into the medical process of it. And the last radio call they got, I don't remember who was from. I want to say it was from Ricardo, but I don't want to misspeak was I'm hit and I can't move. And then no other radio communications from them. They medevact them. And they're reading off, as they're medevac in them, they're reading off battle roster numbers because we don't say names over the net.

So it's a code that identifies who. Paul signs. Yeah, like first initial last name, company, last four. But, you know, you have the manifest in front of you As they're reading it off in the talk. And, like, we're like, you know, it's Brazza. And it's fucking Bram. And we were just talking to Dale, like, 15 minutes ago.

And so, like, they met a vacuum to the cache at the main Army hospital. And me and the other, the team leader and squad leader, we're like, we jump in a high looks and drive down there with, like, there were a couple of guys went down with us. And we were kind of sitting there. And surgeon came out, and he called it. And he was like, hey, guys, they're expired. Yeah.

And obviously, no one wants to hear that shit, right? And, like, this is how crazy war is. This was almost an acceptable answer to our bereavement was, Jensi could have got shot on this operating table, and there's nothing I could have done. The bullet just tears through too much stuff going through on that trajectory that, you know, through that part of the body. And so, like, that's the consolation prize you get.

Like, you couldn't have done anything to save them. They could have got shot right here. I couldn't save them. in the lives. Consolation Prize, that sucks. Right. You know, but at least the medics did their job. Medevac did their job.

They give them the best chance they could to live. It's just one of those wounds. Getting shot in the face is not a preventable cause of death on the battlefield. Right. Neither is getting shot through all that shit. Right. And we didn't have side plates. They actually, them getting killed two weeks before we were going home, was

what introduced side plates into the soft community. Really? Mm-hmm. Which I absolutely. Because they took shots laterally like that. Because before that we didn't have side plates. At least we didn't. And then the next deployment, they had the Cumberbun thing

that came out with those side plates that crush your diaphragm in and it feels like you can't breathe. But that happened right after they died. So I don't know that that's 100% true, but normally 2 plus 2 is 4. We didn't happen before that. And right after that we had side plates.

Yeah. They were definitely looking at, you know, how can we stop assultures from dying on targets? I remember the little thing that comes down over your balls? That was a thing that was a thing that was introduced at one point

because guys would take rounds through like the pelvis and the formal dick plate or whatever they called it back then the problem is the more stuff they want to add like the less guys want to wear it because you know when you're going over walls or when you're like doing stuff like

all that stuff gets in the way it inhibits movement it's like you could wrap a guy in cast iron and protect him but he's got no mobility he's got no mobility He's got no mobility. And so it comes down to how do you...

Because it took a long time to get guys to even wear chicken plates. Oh, yeah. Right? They wanted to wear Molly or racks or Rhodesians or something. I can move fast to this way, but you have no... So it's always a healthy or a constant battle between speed and security. Yeah. Yeah.

And the mission changes so rapidly because you'll have guys... You know, you start going in those hills on like on a pursuit. Dudes will be dumping their plates. Like Tilling? He wanted, hey, can I drop my plates? No. Speed versus security. I mean, again, getting shot in face. Yeah.

But, yeah, I want to be able to move, but I also need to have some protection, so it's a healthy balance. And it's interesting you bring up wall teams, the entire deployment. Myself, Z, and Chris Masters, the new RSM, were on the wall team in Ramadi. So every night, on every hit. Up on those ladders? Three of us. We'd lay one, Pope ladders. I don't know if they had the real lightweight.

they weigh like five pounds right they lay one on one side Chris would go up Chris Masters would go up hand him the other ladder he'd lay it down the other side he'd go over whichever order it didn't matter it was just like whoever's turning was whoever's standing there and then me and Z would go over

the whole rest of the platoon would be on the street behind the cinder block wall this day yeah and it'd be the three of us masters would go up in the gate and me and Zaring would lock down the whole house just the two of us every night and I remember being like Can we switch for a night?

Maybe be the roof team or SSE for a night? And they were like, nah, you guys are pretty good at the wall. It was like, you realize every night it's just three of us versus this entire objective until we open that gate. Yeah. Yeah. If that doesn't grind your nerves after three and a half months of doing that shit every night. Yeah.

A couple times. Well, and, you know. They're talking about going over the wall with too much gear. You're making noise. You're making noise. There's 12, 15 windows to cut. You're getting hung up on the wall, you know, with whatever you're wearing. dogs in the compound all of a sudden like you're not doing anything sneaky you know are you trying but trying your best

kit makes noise yeah so start taking us through romadi two rmadi two was my six and final i um i was supposed to be getting out this was we left in early i think it was like toberian and I was supposed to be getting out on terminal leave on the 21st of December. So I wouldn't even have made the full rotation. After Ramadi won, we had an absolute mass exodus of every team leader in the platoon. One dude went to Rekki, a couple guys got out, one dude was going green to gold, one dude was going to snipers. And then this was my, I'm done after this, right? And so everyone else was gone

And the platoon sergeant Looked at me and was like We got all new We had six new team leaders I didn't even have a job I didn't have a call sign He was like I'm putting you in charge A squad

I was like I'm an E5 I mean I'm the senior E5 In the platoon but I'm E5 You got three E6s on the line platoons Which usually weapon squad leader Is a senior E6 in position PSG goes down You're in charge dude

From an NCO standpoint right So there was a little bit of ruffled feathers when I got bypassed everybody to go be weapon squad leader because our weapon squad leader left too. So someone had to fill it and I'd had the most experience in weapons squad throughout, you know, the course of it.

And I had good rapport with the dudes. So it's like, it was easy. It was easy fit. I had great team leaders, great gun team leaders. And we've had an unbelievable weapon squad. And I remember coming up before we got our new weapon squad leader in and I we didn't get along. I'm not going to bad mouth them, but we did not

along at all. I was getting out and I trained up some great dudes and he came in and tried to make his mark by disheveling probably in my opinion and not only my opinion, arguably the best weapon squad in the battalion for sure because we went out to Yakima and did a competition and we did really well. And he came in and tried to change everything and the guys hated it. I hated it. Not him. His method, the way he went about it. Sure. like why are you going to mess this up these guys are they know everyone knows what they're doing everyone knows your job and so right before we left my batun sarin was like well he's senior e6 even over the east 16 leaders or squad leaders so we're gonna put him in front of weapon or in charge of weapons but we're going to put you in the same hooch with him and i was like that's terrible i do just raft about that's terrible i do

and i was already in checked out ranger mode and so my batun sarin's like i need you to come with me i was like dude I get out of the Army in like two and a half months. Literally, I'm not even going to be there for full deployment. And he was like, I don't know what to do with these guys. They're all new. I need, the squad leaders are good. All the team leaders are good. All the team. This is like the most Ranger battalion story ever.

Yeah. Oh, you have five days left in the Army? They're coming with us. So I end up going. And I am, I used to wear a shirt in, and I'm an asshole for doing this. But I was pissed at this point. I found this shirt at Target that said, I'm really happy to be. here and I would wear it take it home and wash it every night and wear it every day of the week

into the squad leader meetings and they'd all be in PTs and I'd show up late in civilian clothes wearing I'm really happy to be here t-shirt and just stare at everyone just pissed that I was actually still having to do all this bullshit yeah right way past the point of caring about anything that anyone cared did not care and no one said any retired on active duty no one said anything to me because they were just like just let it be just let it be and so you know I find out I'm going and I'm just like I'm like

where are we going? Are we going to like to Crit? Are we going to you know Missou? And he's like we're going back to Ramadi I was like Of course we're going

Yeah Why wouldn't it? Because they only tell you Like three days Before you leave Where you're actually going And I'm like okay cool Back to Ramadi

So we end up there I didn't have a call sign Because all the call signs I've been used up So they were like hey My nickname was house Waterhouse takes a long time to say team house hey house so the first couple hits we go on i got a radio i got everything but you're

house actual i'm house ag you're house actual so that works so like the delta guys are sitting there that are in the talk and they're listening to the shit and like after we're in one of the hot washes and like okay moment of clarification there is someone that keeps saying house on the radio are you guys what is house who are you talking to are you talking about a physical house like what or what and i was like i'm house and they were like your name is house. I was like, well, actually it's waterhouse. It just takes too long to say. And he was like, thank you. That clears up. More shit than I can even

sell you because on their end, they're like, what is the, it wasn't like Leamington, or like, hey, 1-4, 1-7, it was house. Right. So they had no clues, but I didn't have a job. So like, I would just float around with the Patoon's heart in the medic. And I'd be like, hey, I'm going to go to SSE tonight or I'm going to go do Roos Security or I'm going to

do interrogation or whatever. So it's like, honestly, I did whatever I wanted. And no one was going to say anything to me. I'm getting out. I already put my time in. And so I was just, I floated. And, yeah, at the pump house to get to your point. So it is... I love this story, by the way.

It's about December. I'm leaving, supposed to be leaving country on the 12th. I'm still there. And it's like the 9th. We got it up for you, though. Last mission. And I get out on the 21st on Terminal. I leave country on the 12th at the, by the time the end of the story.

First off, nobody should ever tell you. It should never be your known last mission. Oh, everyone's, we were running out of calendar days, man. But you know what I'm saying? It's like, like, that, that's, I mean, why don't you just write a letter to your, to your, you know, your, I told my foot, sorry. He was like, House, I need to come on this one last mission. And I was like, dude, I saw this movie. At this point, I'm not using rank.

We are on a first name basis. I'm like, bro, I saw this movie. I get whacked on my last mission. And I was like, I'll tell you what, though, I love you to pieces. You know, I'll come. I'll always go. But if I get fucking killed, it's on you. He goes, I got you.

You know what? You know that voice? I got you. I'm like, all right, sorry, let's go. And he knows who I'm talking about. And so we roll and we infill by boat. And, I mean, we're fully weighed down. Wait, is it German?

Yeah. That's so funny. I got you, house. I got it. I'm going to give him. shit about that. And so we roll and we go on these, the SWIC boats, which are super cool.

I don't know if you guys have ever talked to any of those guys. These things are armed of the teeth. They're like military, like interceptor type boats. They got 50 cows. They got mini guns on them. I mean, they are, they are. And this is the first time we'd ever been around them. Well, we'd get on them.

And I'm like, dude, I weigh 225 without kit. I weigh like 290 with Kit on. And I'm like, you guys got like a life job. jacket in here and the dude hands me this life jacket it's like it wouldn't fit my 10 year old you know I mean I'm like this is like a snoopy life jacket that like a little kid would wear at the lake right I'm like like do I weigh like 300 pounds yeah I'm like we weigh like 300 pounds yeah and and what had happened was the guys on the river had started getting wise to it like you had brought up earlier Dave like they they're not dumb so they started iED and choke points in the

river. Most of them were kind of like right around where the bridges were, and they would hit those choke points. And so they were starting to ID that and we're like, dude, if we get blown out of this boat, like... Do you know if any of the SWIC boats have been hit for those? I actually have no idea, but I will tell you this, still, those things are awesome and they fly. Yeah. And that we actually, a quick side note, one of their gunners on the mini gun was sick. So as we're loading our guys on, one of my best friends still to this

day. And we're like, hey, we need one dude to cover down on the minigone. Our dude got sick or is hurt or whatever. Can pull one of your guys? And I'm like, yeah, I'm like, hey, Tom, go, go get on the minigone. He's like, okay, you know, Tom walks up, very cerebral dude. And he's like, all right, man, I just need a quick fam. He goes power, trigger, 3,000 rounds a minute, you'll be fine. And walked away. That was his fan, right? He's like, okay, I got you. Yeah, you'll cut a house in half. Just, just aim, don't aim. I don't know. You'll be good. And so we cruise there. We get there unscath, thankfully, and we downloaded it's middle of the night, and ISR had picked up that they were getting smart. They were conducting attacks, but they were burying their weapons away because

in Iraq, it's standard practice standard, they are legal. They all can own one AK for self-defense, self-protection. That's totally within the law. So these guys are smart. They keep their personal at home. They go dig their shit, conduct their attacks during the day, go back, bury it for the nighttime, go back home, hey, I'm totally legal. You don't got shit on me. ISR picked up on and started tracking. Well, they tracked it right to this pump house on the river. And they were, you know,

they had them digging up weapons, getting in cars going out, conducting their daily, you know, nonsense or whatever. And so we pick up on it, so they launch us. So we get at this pump house, we download, we start looking all around like the external area. We're like, I mean, it's got to be like dirt. It's like freshly, like,

you know, I mean, you know the difference between something's been rained on and something just got dug up. Couldn't find shit. So we're like, okay, so we fall back into this compound. There's no one there. It's like two o'clock in the morning. We set up cameras on the roof. We have our sniper team kicked out. They have a great hide site underneath this like 18 foot trailer, tractor trailer, but just the trailer part. Mildly high grass, perfect cover, great line of sight. Like, okay, we put a camera up on the roof, perfect. We sit down. Me and Jay are in the bathroom. And I explain this in the dock, but these are not like American bathrooms. It's like a hole in the floor. And like,

like that's it in this little rectangular room basically. So we're sitting there for hours. He's got the monitor right across from him, looking at the camera. We got snipers. We got a radios on. Helmets are on the ground,

weapons are leaning up. We got eyes everywhere. No one's going to walk past this. About 7.15 in the morning. I'm sitting here leaning up against the wall, half droning. Me and Jay have been talking all night. He's leaning up against that wall facing this way. And all of a sudden, I just see a shadow in the door.

I just assume it was one of our dudes There were like 14 guys in there I'm like that's got to be one of the dudes Being like hey I'm up And I look up and it's an Iraqi First of all how the fuck did he make it in here Without anyone seeing him right So it was like the last thing I expected

To look up and I was like yeah And like I was taking it back for a sec Right I was 715 in the morning So I just instinctive like I don't even remember standing up Like I was just on my feet all of a sudden And I just grabbed the dude Like put him down on the ground Like I'm not roughing him up

I'm just getting control of him Yeah I get him down and Jay's like, where the, all I remember is, where the fuck did he come from? And I'm like, I have no idea. I'm like rolling him up, right? So we get him, we move him over to the building next door inside the same pump house. And we have the turp and docks over there. And they're talking to him.

We go in and start talking to him. And then all of a sudden we get a radio call. And it was, we were, we split. We landed in two elements. About 14, 15, I was occupied the pump house. And then there was this main road in this really, really bad market up there. and our other half had split up to another house that was right off the main road

but had great eyes on like the market itself I'm not going to say this was Somalia-Bakara market but it was someplace you didn't you were not welcome and they were not scared about letting you know that they were more than willing to come out and fight and so we hear first we hear the snipers

and they're like hey a car just pulled up and we're like say again and they're like hey a car just pulled then by the river and we're like okay stand by so we leave the turp with the medic and the and the detainee and we roll out to the front gate and they're like hey they're digging shit up and we're like our first customer in the day all right and we're like okay you know my two concerns like hey jays like hey just keep eyes on blah blah blah let me know what you see and they're like okay a couple seconds goes by it's like oh they're digging up RPKs okay we got RPGs okay yep AKs but okay this is the whole

this is the whole package and all right go ahead take them out. And so subsonic ammo suppressed. I mean, it sounds like a BB gun, right? They must have been within like... Oh, like 100 meters. Yeah. Yeah. They just had a great hide site. They had the high grass with the overhang

from the tractor trailer. It was beautiful. And that should be a case study for how to be a good, effective sniper from close range. That's pretty bowler. I won't lie. No, it was impressive to watch. And it really kind of a rare opportunity for snipers. For snipers.

For snipers. From not a distance, it's over a couple hundred meters. And they were well within. But actually doing a sniper mission. Like it, like, snipers really got relegated to a lot of Overwatch. Or rooftop security. A lot of rooftop security, stuff like that. Like, rare for them to be able to build.

Well, the problem was there was no rooftop to get on. Exactly. Hey, we got it in place and we have them. Yeah. They were a waste if we don't use them. But look at this place. We scouted out at night. And then when we, you know, they got there.

And then when the day rose, we were like, hey, how's your position? Do we need to relocate you before activity starts? They're like, dude, we got a great. hide here. Yeah. All right, fucking keep what you got. Yeah, yeah. That's fantastic. And so they shoot the three guys and they ended up standing like side to side like in a row and

they take the two on the outside and then they both go to the one in the middle and engage him and two on the outside drop. The dude in the middle starts running. Adrenaline probably, I can only imagine. He runs a little ways. Because they're using

subsonic. Yeah, so it's so over-penetrated right. And they're not wearing kid or plates or anything. So, I mean, eventually it's going to kill them. But like, the two dudes drop and the one guy takes up. Yeah. And runs around like the far side of the compound. So as soon as that happens, they're like, hey, we got a dude running. We got a maneuver element. Yeah. And so we split out from the main gate. Go around. Two dudes are down in the grass right there. Jay comes around, stitches their dude up coming around the court. All legit. SSE on the bodies. Get them out of the way. Yeah. Re bury the weapons. Yeah.

move the car. Nice. Reset. Yep. And wait again. Because we knew there were more groups than just the one. Yeah. So it's just like rinse, wash, repeat.

Like we're going to do the same damn thing. And so everything's back to normal. We go in and start reinterrogating the pump house operator. Like, do we know you? You can't dig 20 feet from your building and not know anything. I mean, stop. I mean, let's stop fucking with each other here, right? Like, we're not.

No one's punching in. No one's being rough with you. Just let's be honest. Oh, mister, I don't know. Oh, it's like, dude, I've heard this many times before. And all of a sudden, hey, we've got a vehicle headed down towards you guys. And it's coming from the house that was up by the market. And we're like, what?

And they're like, there's a vehicle coming down towards you. So they engaged the vehicle, thinking it's a V-Bid, vehicle-borne IED. And vehicle stops. They get out and have an element from that house, go clear that vehicle. Immediately that house was burned because the market had woken up. everyone had suppressors on everyone was suppressed on that mission with the exception to the machine gunners

which we were like stay down until shit hits the fan and then you could open up but every M4 on that mission was suppressed then you see four dudes come out of a house down this big wide open field to go check this car out and the dudes shot up pretty good but alive and they grab them

and they start dragging them back to the pump house because we're closer than dragging it back to where the market was and this guy's screaming and shit Well, are there still guys in the house also? When we split the aisle, there were probably about 10 dudes still in there, including our company commander who was in there.

Ended up taking, he refuses to, he's like, I'm not giving myself an enemy marksmanship badge, but he was standing in a window and a round hit one of the metal window panes and ricocheted and like a piece of shrapnel hit him right underneath his Oakley's. And we were like, oh, sir, shit, you got shot? And he was like, no, fuck, I did.

Don't ever tell anyone I got shot. I'm not giving those kids enemy marksmanship badges. I didn't, I scratched myself shaving. We're like, okay. And so we dragged the guy back, and then all of a sudden, that's when all hell breaks loose. The market realized we were there.

And they just start hitting that house. They didn't see where they had drugged that dude, they just knew that he came this way. And they had these big, eight-foot walls, 10-foot walls. They had this cement pad in the middle. It gave you, like, an extra three feet. And if you stood in your tippy toes, you could just see over the wall to engage.

So they're engaging dead ahead from where the market is to where this house is, but we're on their flank. Right. And they have no idea where they're. And how far is this house from the pump house? Probably 200, 300 meters. Well within M4 range. And so we're like, and they start engaging on our guys and we're like, okay, game on. So we're on their flank and we just, they didn't stay a chance.

Yeah. And I mean, we jacked a few people's days up to say the least on that day. And then once that happened, that element completely collapsed back down the pump house so that we're all consolidated, which is good. But then they started lovin mortar status. Yeah. And they had the jenga trucks, you know, and the high luxes with like mobile mortar platforms. And we didn't have any like close air support brought daylight. So like 160th thing flying.

Yeah. So we had marine like hughies that were providing air cover. Yeah. They were shooting at the hughies. from the street. You can't get the Air Force. Like the AC, the pilots wanted to fly, but their leadership wouldn't let them.

They won't let them. And so it was just us. We were just stuck there, just sitting up all day. And I remember asking a mortar guy. I'm like, these guys aren't shooting like 60s. They're shooting like 81s, like big rounds out of it. And I look at one of the mortar guys, who was one of the snipers. He was a mortar guy before he went to snipers.

And I'm like, hey, John. I'm like, what happens if a mortar around lands inside this compound? He goes, oh, we're all that. Okay. Simple answer. I don't mind simple, but thank you for cutting to the point. And so we sit there all day. They're coming over the top of our head exploding in the river behind us,

landing short in the field, just all over. None of them obviously landing in the compound. So it gets to be towards the end of the day. And I'm sitting there and a dude I went through Ripwith is there. And I'm like, you know, it's my last. day. Fuck it. I was like, I've pulled so much guard. I'm going to get up on the Coppola on top of the roof, pull one more guard shift and call it. So I get up there, he's like, I'll come with you. So you got two NCOs up there chilling. We got kid on. Our

helmets are sitting on the ground. We're just laying there, leaning up against like a conduit for air conditioning or some sort of unit. So you're getting hit by mortar rounds, or they're going, they're shooting, but they're on mobile platforms. Oh, and all our air support left. All your air support left. It was just us. But there's nobody for you to aim at because they're just, they're wherever they are. They're just prey and dropping them in hoping them.

And they're just trying to hit, but they don't have any like FOs out there. There's not like a point of origin site that they're launching. There's no pit, right? Everything's in trucks to keep moving. At this point, the hughies that the Marines had supplied have already turned around and beat feet. It's just us.

And we're just waiting for nighttime for the boats to come back. We have no ex-fill plan. Yeah. And it's daylight. We called to see if task force would fly for us. And they, same thing you just said, Dave. They were like, they said no. And we're like, I guarantee you the crew of that is itching to go.

It's someone being that aircrafts worth too much money. Same with the AC130s. Yeah, absolutely. Those guys wanted to fly. But the command is like we'd rather lose troops on the ground than an AC 130. 100%. So we get up, we're sitting there, shown it's dusk beautiful sunset for shitty day honestly always is right and i'm like yep i look at my watch

i'm like fucking done dude i'm done all i got to do is get on this stupid boat drive back to the stupid base getting on a stupid helicopter getting on a stupid plane flight back to the states and i'm done soon as we stand up we are shoulder i mean our shoulders are touching each other my right his left soon as we stand up we're silhouetted single sniper shot comes rips right between the two of our heads and the only reason I know my right ear started ringing his left ear was ringing we both dropped down on top of the roof and I had lost it at this point I'm like I'm so fucking tired of being shot at dude all I was thinking was oh I'm gonna do a good deed pull one more shit I'm just trying to survive the next 24 hours just get me the hell out of this country right up all I'm like the finish line on my toe is touching it and we dropped down in our pertinent our first sergeant's down in the courtyard he just has a parent moment he's like god damn it that's where we wear helmets like it would have mattered for around that big Like helmet would have just been one thing more to pass on the weight of my brain, right? And so we climbed down from the roof and the boats show at nighttime boats show up. We get on boats, drive back to the base.

I get off. It's about daybreak by the time we get everything, you know, I'm squared away. I download. I'm shucking. I kept like two mags for me just for the ride back to biop or bala. I don't remember I flew out of it. Shuck like all the rest of my rounds out of my mags in the ready room, drop my, you know, whatever I got with me and stays there.

and took two M4 mags in my M4 with me. And I took some pictures up on the roof that morning. Some of them are actually meant to be funny, like the Charlie's Angel one is meant to be funny. And we take a few pictures, and that was it. And I got on a helicopter, flew to the main airports there in Iraq, and biop or blood, I don't remember, and flew home to the States.

And just like that, it was over. So you got home. You didn't come home with your unit. You got home. And how long did you have to out process? Nine days. Nine days. Four of which were weekends.

Five days together. I'm not making the shit up. I showed up to a meeting on a Tuesday and civilian clothes. And she said, I can't have this meeting. The instructor was like E8. And she's like, you can't be in here in civilians. I said, well, I'm not going to be here next Tuesday. I get out of the Army in four days.

I leave on Saturday. And this is only, this meeting is only once a day. She was like, well, you can't be in here. And I was like, you're going to have to get the fuck over it. And this is in front of, like, all these other people getting out, all in their uniforms. And I'm mouthing off to a master sergeant as an E5 in civilians. Like, fuck yourself. Give me the brief.

I'm leaving. And so she gave me the brief, yeah. And I got out in five days, man. And this is one of the things that the Army is great at. And this isn't just Rangers. It's just, like, you just came back from a combat zone. I almost got my head blow enough. Four days ago, three days ago.

Four days ago, five days ago. And now, welcome to the civilian world. I'm listening to an E8. Tell me I'm in the wrong uniform. Yeah. And you want to talk about trying to bite your tongue? I didn't have the ability at that point to bite my tongue. Yeah.

And then you're back on the block, right? Then you're first civ div and... I got back. I left on the 21st. 21st I left. No, I had to wait until the 23rd because my truck had seized... engine because on the deployment before that we were parked in gravel you know 275 gravel yeah the old gravel well i got into a slow drip and uh i lost all the oil and because it was gravel there was no

snake yeah so i was driving home on i 5 after we got home from a modi 1 left lane 80 miles an hour rush hour in my whole car every light turned up and i lost all control and i had a seized engine so i had to get my truck fixed before i could even leave so i get home have to deal with getting out my truck is deadlined i'd take that get a whole new engine put back in it and then get my u-hole pack all my stuff up and then i start driving across the country i think i got to north carolina at greensborough like the 26 or 27th so so then now you're home yeah and and like the world is your oyster right should be you would think it would be i've never felt so alone in my entire life yeah and that was one of the things that it took me a minute to realize actually it's kind of making my hair stand up on

and thinking about it is I didn't realize that I was never alone right like if you're if you're when you're in in the military like that whether it's stateside or you're in combat zone like you're going through it as it's it's it's ingrained in you where's your where's your basically where's your battle buddy right or where you get a battalion where's your range buddy yeah you never go anywhere by yourself and I didn't realize that like if you're if you're in the middle of afghanistan you got to go the bathroom, someone comes and pulls security for you. You're never alone and all of a sudden

it was cricket, cricket. And I was like I didn't realize how alone I am right now. And didn't realize I was that dependent on all those guys and that they were dependent on me. We were all codependent, right? But you don't see that because it's that far in front of your face.

Is it codependent or interdependent? It's probably a better word to use as an independent. And it's interesting. I don't know. I think there's flash of codependency in there too? There probably is, but there's also interesting because it was the guy who

never wanted to hang with the other guys that was always sort of the oddball, right? Like the guy who... We had our few. Right, but he didn't want to go, he didn't want to hang whether it was to the bar or go to the movies, but he wanted to do everything by

himself. Oh, we had a couple of them. What do you do night? He's in pajama pants at 10. I'm going to see the late night. You want anyone to come with you? No, I'm good by myself. Yeah. I never went anywhere by myself. We were always at the bars together, a group of those.

But you wanted to be. That was part of it. You know, how many times you see frat boys out by themselves? Yeah. They're always out as a group. You're frat boys with guns. Those were the stories that you would tell like the following week, right? Was like...

What happened at the bar last night? Oh, dude, I cracked this dude in the face. Right in Olympia, right in front of the police station, right? Yeah. We had one dude take eight tasers. He was celebrated in battalion for being a badass. for taking eight tasers. Right.

Case got dismissed due to excessive police force, but... But did he get RFS for that? Holy shit. Went to court, had the paperwork and everything. They dropped the DA dropped the case because they hit him with eight tasers. If the glove does not fit, you must quit. No, he showed...

I would believe it was a lie until he showed me the paperwork. That's wild. And he was like, dude, they dropped the whole case. So... He was one of the snipers that shot the dudes on the pump house. Really? Yeah.

No, I, uh, I served with... one gentleman in Ranger Battalion who came through the gate belligerently drunk and opted to fight the MPs. It's never going to work out. It did not work out well. But when they had him on the ground

they decided to fill him in and stomp him a few. And so the whole thing got thrown out because of excessive force. Same thing? Yeah, they went above and beyond. He took the seventh taser and turned around to all the cops and hulked out and said, is that all you fucking got? And then they hit him with eight. And

dropped him to the ground and he's got i mean he burns scars all over from the fucking bronze that that that is that's downtown a lindian oh yeah i'm not going to say his last name his first name's john he's a great dude that that is legendary it's um but but so you now after four years of let's not even talk about the combat aspect of it but four years of having a purpose Having a mission. Having a family. Some you hated. But they were still your family.

Always. Now you're sitting... Greensboro and North Carolina. By yourself. I was living with my girlfriend. She had a full-time job. When she left for work in the morning, it was just me. And...

But I was productive as shit. Like, dude, housework was done. Yeah. Everything. All the clean, bed-made. We weren't dirty people. I have OCD. She's the same.

So, like, our house is already clean, but I'd be, like, vacuuming lines in the carpet because I'm bored. And then it'd be, like, 9 o'clock, I'd be like, oh, I'm going to get shit-faced because there's nothing to do. Yeah. And so that's what you do is you get drunk because it passes the time. I'd be wasted by noon. Yeah.

And then I'd be going back at about three for another case. Yeah. And that'd be tied them in the toolbox of my truck so she wouldn't know about it. Yeah. And how long did that go on for? Hmm. Three and a half month. So she moved and was like.

Until she was definitely. with it. We got back together after that. Yeah. For another years after that. But it got to the point where I wasn't able to pull myself out of it. Yeah. And she deserved better than me. Honestly. I mean, I... Deserved better than what...

What I was getting. Where were you at? I was not putting out what I should have been putting out. Sure. Sure. And so where did the change start to happen for you? A long time. Can you tell us about that? Sure. So the first year was incredibly hard.

her and I split, I moved back up to Boston and was doing shipyard work with my dad again. That's like my fallback when everything anyone, you know, anything would happen growing up. And so I was up there from probably May of 2007 until

July, I'm sorry, to December of 2007. And I called my mother, who I did not have the greatest relationship in the world with at that point due to some of her activities. And she He was like, hey, your old room is still here.

We have, you know, my brother and sister were still in high school, but your room is still here. You have your own bathroom. Come down. There's more opportunity for you down here. Where was she? South Carolina. Okay. Greenville, to be specific.

And so she's like, hey, move back down here. And, you know, there's some opportunity down here. I've told people about you. You know, maybe you'll have a better opportunity here than up there. I mean, I know you're tired of working in the yard, right? And so I'm like, against my, what I thought was my better job. judgment. I was like, okay, you're right. I'm not doing anything here. I'm just drinking myself to death, right? All right, let's try something new. That didn't work. I moved down. I was home for two weeks.

And my stepfather had borrowed my truck and went to Ace Hardware to go get some shit that wouldn't fit in his car. And he ran into this guy that worked at this unbelievable company, North American Rescue. They make the cat tourniquet, a ton of bandages that you guys have seen, trauma dressings, gauze, stuff like that. I'm not a medic, but the guy that was in the parking lot was the third Ranger battalion, senior medic, and he was with the RRD as well. Saw the Ranger tab and scroll on the back of the truck and approached my stepfather and said, are you in battalion? He goes, no, it's my stepson.

He goes, is he in or is he still in or is he still in or is he out? He goes, he's out. He goes, how's he doing? Right? And my stepdad, to his credit, he looked at me, he was like, not well. Just 100% like, not good. stranger in a parking lot like not well dude and he like handed him a business card he goes hey i'm giving me a call go lunch so unbeknownst to me that lunch was an interview process so we go to lunch

i don't remember we know we're nowhere special have lunch we shoot the shit for a little bit takes me back shows me the office shows me the facility shows me where we're going to be moving to the new building all this and he's like hey we got trip coming up in two days we're flying down to so calm to brief so In what's Tampa, I believe, right? He's like, yeah, we're going to private jet it down there. And we have a PowerPoint presentation we're going to put on for socom. You're interested in coming. I was like, yeah, let's go.

And I felt like I was like, oh, shit, do you see socombe? Fuck, hell, let's go. But he hasn't said anything about a job yet. No, he just asked me if I wanted to. Yeah. He just wanted to see if I want to come. Yeah. You know.

And so we go down there and I walk in and like one dude looks at me. He's like, waterhouse. And I'm like, oh, my God. What are you? I see this dude. I hadn't seen him. like three years. Had you been, had you, in this time, had you been in contact with your old guys? Or did you, you'd cut it off? I talked to Jay a little bit about football. Yeah.

Because he was a huge Seahawks fan, if you remember. I talked to him about football a few times, but not really. I was, I was, I was, I felt completely out of the loop. Yeah. It's like, I don't know, I almost felt like me calling them, especially because I was drinking. Am I doing the drunk dial call? You know, like, you're calling back to. You're calling back to next day after you look at your call log like hey sorry like when you're apologizing for shit you don't even remember what you said yeah problem and uh so no so we do the so-cum thing and i see a dude i hadn't seen in a long time and like i kind of just like fell back into it right we give the brief and i'm like he we get home and we land and i'm like hey thank you so much you know for for allowing me

to come along that was that was really cool it's good to you know be back around the guys for a minute and he was like you want a job i was like he goes do you have have a job and I was like I'm looking he goes you're really looking I was like not really no not really at all I had no no VA benefits or anything and uh I was just broke-ass soldier that had no direction and so I got the job and he was like we'll start you out of like $45,000 a year that was more than I was making the army he shot at so yeah let's go so I started working there I worked there for about two and a half years and I will I will attribute that company taking a chance on me even though I was a non-medic for taking a

taking a chance on a vet and that changed my life. That's cool. Started to change my life. I mean it took them, it didn't happen overnight. Sure. But it was that morsel that I could like see that I was like, hey, this is tangible. Right. This is something I can do.

We're doing a lot of training, helping a lot of like SWAT teams and, you know, there were some soft guys that came through through there too. We got a facility built in this warehouse and, you know, there was, you know, con-conX boxes you could, you know, do shit and do medical stuff in. Definitely 99% geared towards the medical. But one of the things that was cool is I brought the tactical. side too. Right. So, I mean, we thrive ourselves in, especially in soft, on tactical medicine, right? Right. So, like, I was able to look at, they're doing all their med stuff and I come up to a dude and be like,

do you really think you're pulling security in the right place right now? You know, I mean, something the medic wouldn't be able to, or necessarily pay attention to was what I was focused on. Like, you're hiding behind a tree that's this big. I mean, how many times have you heard people say that to you when you're going through training? Were you see that giant oak tree that's hiding behind one that's this? Why don't you move two feet to the left? Yeah. And so, like, I kind of find my niche in there. And then we started to go, you know, I went to a bunch of trade shows,

was able to talk to craft and be able to talk to, you know, EMS guys, you know, SWAT medics and Army medics about, like, you know, hey, here's some of the stuff that's in the pipeline. Here's what you need to know. Push turnicates on your guys, you know, blah, blah. And, like, so I kind of develop, like, a knack for the vernacular of, like, how a medic would talk to those dudes. Right.

And I remember one of the first things I did. after I kind of got ingrained in this is I called all the dudes that I was in right that were still in and I was like go to the medical classes dude because once you get to be a tab or an NGO you're like hey privates go do medical shit and you'll sit in your room and play Xbox just fuck that I know everything I don't need to I'm like go to the med classes dude we were just really lucky yeah that no one really like we didn't need to implement that as much as we possibly could have yeah and so like that was the first thing that jumped off the page with me was we didn't pay we didn't give that enough mine we were focused on doing warfighter shit yeah but that's a that is just as equal if not as important component of it and it was it was always kind of brushed off to the side as an afterthought so do you do you think that um this being sort of the start of your is healing process is that the right absolutely okay i think acceptance okay and that be that is what began it to me i was like yes this happened to you Yes, you feel these things, but this can't be, I want my time there to be something that I did and in a hell of an experience that I shared with all these dudes, but it is not what defines me 100% as who I am as a human.

Right. It cannot be the catalyst for everything that is David Waterhouse. Right. There is other parts of me too. I like the golf, man. I like to, you know, I like to grow cucumbers and tomatoes and shit. Yeah. Yeah, like that's not every.

Yeah, I'm a dad. You know, I'm going to my kids' band practice and, you know, school plays and stuff. And, you know, that's not what solely defines me. Yeah. So during this, during sort of your dark period before this job, and even after it maybe, but during that, did you know, did you know what was like, did you know you were in a dark period? Did you know what was eating at you? or did because obviously it's a number of things right

it's operator syndrome it might be post-traumatic it might be TBI's it's a loss of purpose like it's a lot of things but did you know that or did you just like was it just like this morass and you just felt down and didn't know what to do about it It dragged on for a minute

yeah and more than that and so was it getting a job that somebody like taking a chance on you or was it getting this job to put you back in the community that you loved? Both. And I don't talk about this in the documentary

but that job was amazing and saved my life for sure. But I still wasn't satisfied. I worked there for two and a half years the first time and we had a change of command, if you will. And I remember going to work one day and I was like I can't do this anymore because I didn't they had changed the culture of the place when it was bought and I remember walking in for the first day and an on company time on company computer I mean I was salaried so it didn't matter but like and I walked in I sat down at my desk and I was I had all my you know my frames picture you know a platoon picture from each deployment some cool guy shots some awards some you know my P-OW MIA fly

flag, my American flag. And I was looking around and I was like, what the fuck am I doing here? This sucks. And I Google Triple Canopy. And I went to work for defense contractors, a private security personnel back in Iraq in 2010, 2011. I couldn't get enough. It's a drug. Yeah.

And I did a couple of rotations over there. And in Baghdad again, I was close to the embassy where I was back in 2004. It was crazy to see how that had changed. but I attributed to someone that's addicted to like opiates or drugs

or some sort once it's in you it's always going to live there sometimes it's going to be a little spark sometimes it's going to be a bonfire but it's always going to be lit that pilot lights always lit

and I don't know if that goes away from what I have talked to a lot of dudes and it's okay I don't want it to go away to an extent but I don't want it to consume me or control my life those are two different things it's okay to feel that

where do the documentary come into play? Like when did that come up on your radar? How did that come about? Well, I, uh, there was a, the director of the documentary, Sean actually lived right next door to me. And, uh, he was, I've known him since he was seven years old, uh, when we moved in next door. And he loved to do the Army in the Woods thing. And, um, when I came back, he was, he's about my brother's age, about 32, 32 right now. So when I came back, he was like in his late teens, he was under 20, maybe 19, 20, something like that. And I came back and, you know, I'm like, you know, he's super been in the military or

interested in the military for his whole life. He wanted, you know, he wanted to be like Marine Force Recon. It was his big thing. And, but he was, you know, unable to get in or whatever. And so he started coming over and we just kind of almost like a therapy session of me just like telling him or like showing him some videos or some pictures and stuff. I'm like, oh yeah, here's this, you know, here's the, you know, when we were on this mission, this that. And I'm showing all of it to him.

He's like, dude, we should write this down. You should write a book. And so he started taking notes, just in the garage with the two of us just sitting there smoking and joking, you know. And he started writing the shit down. And he was like, dude, people would want to read this. Now, this is like 10 years ago, longer, 15 years ago that he started doing all this and jotting all this shit down. And he's like, you know, we got to like 400 people. pages of this manuscript, right?

And, like, we were on, like, the second deployment. I was like, dude, this thing's going to be, like, a 3,000-page book. Like, this is not something that we can tell this way, and we don't know anything about writing books. But we both like movies. We both like docs. We both, like, you know, fall asleep

to a movie almost every night, you know? And so we're like, well, let's just try our hand at it. And he'd done a lot of video footage and stuff like that. And he'd always had an interest in film. So you're like, well, The stuff's starting to escape me a little bit. I'm not quite as sharp as I used to be.

Maybe we should jot this stuff down and maybe just put it, you know, try it on camera. That way, you know, my kids can see, you know, that's why, you know, he's a little off from center. And, you know, here's why before I start, you know, losing all this information or, you know, it starts to run together too much. And then when we put it all together,

and it was like four days, three and a half days of shooting, the first day was an absolute waste. I had never spoken on camera before. It takes a moment. And, you know, the thing, like, when I was growing up in high school, my mom made me take debate and debate too, and I hated her for it.

But then when you're up in front of the RS, or the command sergeant major and the battalion commander given a brief and you can, like, articulate, I'm like, thanks, mom. I appreciate you, pushing you through that. Hated you at the time, but it actually served me. And so I don't have a problem

talking in front of people, but the camera doesn't give you any response. Right. You don't know if you're the comedian that's bombing. Like, if you're bombing in somewhere, like, you're going to know, the audience is going to let you know you suck. Right. Staring at the little blinking red light on the top of the camera is strangely one of the most intimidating things I've ever done in my life for the first day. Yeah. And so, like, I went home and I was like, that was terrible. That was just terrible.

And I was like, okay, so I got in front of the mirror, and I was like, all right, we can treat the shit out of yourself. And I started, like, coaching myself, like, an NFL player, like, watching tape. And I had him send me a few clips. And I was, like, sitting on my front porch. I was watching, like, 20, 30 times the first night. Because we were filmed three, four days in a row. So I knew next, you know, tomorrow, I'm back on this.

So I went home and did my studying. And got back the next day. And we filmed for about two and a half more days after that. Got about eight and a half, nine hours of footage. Cut it down to, I think the dog comes in about 154, 155. And we were able to, you know, he was able to do a great job condensing it down and doing a great job editing and we I still when it was all done I was like I still don't know if anyone's going to watch this and he was like let's just kind of beta test it send it out to a few people gauge their response and the response came back pretty overwhelmingly that like hey this is something people might want to watch and so we just kind of on no we had no idea we were doing we've never and how long ago was this that that happened two and two and a half years ago probably when we started doing the filming it took about six months to edit

and then we entered it into a bunch of film festivals and then we got very positive review back from that and then we started to look at okay well won some awards yeah you know honorable mention in a few you know a couple of good awards and okay well like let's see if we can find a way to put this on a streaming platform and kind of just reached out to amazon pride and they were like, yeah, it usually takes between six to eight weeks to get some feedback, you know, yes or no. And like 10 days later, they were like, yeah, it's a solid yes. That's phenomenal. And then just like that, it happened.

I mean, it was literally, it was literally like that. And it was like, hey, you have a movie on Amazon Prime now. And I'm like, I'm not prepared for this. And like, I had another little mini meltout, a little mini meltdown. Like, my wife had to take my phone for me for like two days. She's like, you were about to freak the fuck. Not like out of happiness. I was overwhelmed because I was getting calls from people I hadn't talked to in 15, 20 years.

That's amazing, though, isn't it? And they're pouring out, like, hey, this story helped my wife understand me better. Like, she sees, like, what we went through. And I always equated to, you know, and I know I briefly mentioned it when we were chatting earlier. But it's like, man, me and my wife have been together for 11 years. Like, nothing I say, unless I'm like, get your shit. get in the car is going to be like as effective as someone else saying it to sure because you just you're around someone all the time you kind of get dismissive not on purpose yeah hey i heard you i've heard

the story before whatever yeah but if someone else responds to that and tells the same story to that person like all of a sudden it's got a different takes on a different shape right yes and so a lot of the guys were reaching out like my wife and my kids and my aunts and uncles and grandparents and mother and father have seen this and you know now all of a sudden they're like oh my God, you were there with this dude while he was doing all this shit. And it was like, yeah, I was in the same platoon with him the whole time. Yeah. You know, with Tony.

And, you know, even though Nick was in third platoon, like, we all, first and third platoon always got along. No one really liked second platoon. First and third guy, we were right above each other on the floor. So, like, we shared enough space. We shared the same hallway. Yeah. Or the same stairway.

So, like, and that's just that fun shit. Like, EECO doesn't like AECO. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's like sibling rivalry and shit, right? Everybody loves each other. Isn't it weird, though, how that whole, like, authority thing is that you can tell a person you're intimate with. You can tell them a hundred times, like something or, like you say, like, this is what I went through.

They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard you. Yeah. But then they watch somebody completely different on the screen, say the exact same thing. And it's like, oh, my gosh. This is impactful. Crazy. And that was the thing

that blindsided me. I did not see that coming. So, like, I thought it would be fun for the boys and for the kids. I had no idea that I'd be sitting here in Brooklyn, New York,

having a great conversation with you, Joe. You know what I mean? I never saw this in a million years. Yeah, you don't really understand, like, how it's going to affect people. It's downstream. Yeah.

I mean, you're like, I hope this goes over well, but if it doesn't, I may be, I may have mud on my face, you know, like, this could piss a lot of people off. And if, you know,

if people don't react, the way that it's intended to be, you know, trade. Sure. And you just never know, but, you know, everybody, all the boys have just been amazing. That's cool. I think that there are always going to be haters for whatever reason. There will always be haters. But I think that as long as you tell the truth is you know it,

and, you know, there isn't, there isn't a lot of, you know, sort of self-promotion and there isn't a lot of fabrication. I think that's where guys start to veer off that path. Is this a commentary on current events there, Mr. Park? It's a commentary on eternal events, some of which may be current. But, you know, it's one of those things. Because, you know, Jack and I have talked about this on the show. is that, you know, Jack says that, like, he gets, you know, requests from kids, not kids,

but adults all the time saying, hey, I'd like to know more about what my dad did in Vietnam. Sure. He's gone now and he never talked about it. And the thing is, is if he had talked about it, they probably wouldn't have listened because it's your dad. Because it's your dad. Dude, my kids are not. And also, when you're a kid, it, you know. You know, I love my children more than anything in this world.

My kids are not the slightest bit impressed by me. You want to talk about being humbled out, right? Where you let you go out and people were like, I was standing in the gas station the other day and I'm wearing my socks hat. And I'm like, I look over and this dude's just like, I'm like, I didn't even dawn to me. I'm like, why is this guy fucking bad dog in me in line? And then I'm like, oh shit, he may have seen the fucking thing.

And he's not a lot of people where I come from in South Carolina. I don't want to wearing red socks hats with a, you know, fucking tab and scroll on their forearm at the gas station buying a pack of smokes or something. And I'm like, looking to this dude and I started to get uncomfortable

and I'm like, oh, he probably doesn't know where he reconnected. Right. My kid's completely unimpressed. They, I'm just Dave to them. Yeah. They don't give a shit.

And you know what? Then I did my job right. Right. Yeah, exactly. I don't want them knowing like any of the shit that we're talking about. They know now.

They're old enough, right? Yeah. 15, 13, 13, 14, 12 now. Yeah. They're not dumb. They've seen the movie at this point, but I don't want them to look at me as like ranger Dave.

I want them to be like, hey, that's a dude that comes to my band practice. So that's a dude that tell me, you know, I love you, baby. You know, he's suit tight. You good. You need anything, you know. Do we have questions for Dave? It's interesting. I mean, I've had old school veterans from back in the day even tell me that they would not want to come on this show and talk simply because, yeah, go ahead.

You light up. they just don't want to come on a show like this like it's happy to like they'll have a coffee or a beer with me and talk about it but they're like I don't want to go on something like this because like it'll completely change my kids perceptions of me and like when they say they're kids they're talking about like 40 year olds they're always going to be your kids yeah my dad told me this when I was a kid he goes you know what the biggest problem about kids is you fuckers never go away

and I did I thought I was like you're a dick dude and then I got to be a parent and I was like, yeah, that dude's 100% right. Yeah. No, we're always going to be with. They're always going to be your children. Their kids remember them as like a loving father and they don't want to change that perception for them.

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, but the other thing is, what I was going to say is, like your documentary, I mean, our show hopes to capture the same thing, right?

Our show hopes to be a personal documentary for all of our guests, where whether it's their family that washes it or people who, you know, are trying to find out more about their parents and their parents may have worked with this person or done similar things that, you know, there are pieces of history that personal history that, I mean, it's an honor to capture that.

And that was one of the things, you know, there's so many guys and I know you guys had, my brother told me you guys had like a Lerbs guy on from Vietnam the other day. I would love to have a conversation with him. I mean, I used to work with the guy, Tom Eagles at North American Rescue. He was the most decorated medic from Vietnam. Spent six years over there. Oh, wow.

Unbelievable. Yeah, he's just, I mean, but he's late, you know, he's passed away a couple years ago, but unbelievable guy. Yeah. And actually introduced, part of the team that introduced the original granular quick clot to the Army. He was kind of spearheaded that program. I mean, they used to burn a lot of people. It was better than what we had at the time.

Sure, sure. And so, I mean, he was just instrumental. on that. And, you know, to sit down and hear his stories was just incredible. Yeah. You just like, just a totally different, like theater of war, like time and place, civil unrest. I mean, just all the different

dynamics that were going on and just to listen to him. He was one of the last, you know the embassy picture with the helicopter taken off? Yeah. He was like on the bird right before. He was like one of the last dudes out, yeah. And it was pretty crazy. And so before we get to the questions,

Tell us about this. Okay, so FFH Foundation is Further Faster, Harder Foundation. It is a company that was started Further Faster Harder. Further Faster and Fight Harder is obviously part of the Ranger Creed. So we played on words like that. It is a nonprofit organization that my brother is the CEO and founder of, co-founder of. And we are, we're just kind of getting off the ground. We're a nonprofit, but we're putting together our first documentary.

now, which is about the impact of Hurricane Colleen, Helene, excuse me, on kind of the Florida Gulf Coast and the Carolinas in Georgia and North Carolina. And so we started that foundation. It was kind of in response to the documentary coming out where we realized that there's so many dudes similar to me and the people that I know that have stories to tell and want to, you know, in a way, talk this out so that they're not walking around, just internalize. all this, right? And what our main objective is, whether it's through art, storytelling, is to give those vets that have been somewhere that may feel alone, that may feel like they

have a story to tell that want to tell. And we've been lucky to be afforded this platform, to be able to tell our story to help. And what we want to do is open up that platform to have other veterans be able to tell their stories and explain how they feel and how it impacted them and their family members. And hopefully through all that, you know, have a healing, just a healing feeling, you know, like you're not alone. Like, you know, you're not the only one that did this. I mean, we don't have to be from the same unit, from the same branch. We don't have to serve the same time. That's all irrelevant. But like, you went through a lot of things to do what you did to serve this country, some good, some bad, some indifferent. Do you want to talk? Do you want to, do you want to,

you know, help? Maybe you saying something could help someone else out. Right. And I just think a lot of people don't have that platform. And so that's what we tried to do. And my brother especially has worked extremely hard with further faster, further, faster, harder foundation, giving people that platform to be able to help other people as well. And where can people find that? There is a, you know, a, a further, faster, harder, foundation, is it dot org? Yeah, further faster harder. org.

Further faster harder.org. And is there any other place to Instagram? And that is the hashtag FH underscore foundation. Okay, and the links will be in the description below. And then in terms of, before we get to the questions, in terms of like your healing, your process, outside of finding new purpose, finding other things,

have you pursued like a steli ganglion box or psychedelics or therapy or like, are there any things that have made a difference for you? Gummies. Gummies? Yeah. Gommies have helped a lot. Okay. Both CBD and regular.

Okay. Not that anything serious. They like calm you or relax you? It calms me enough that my brain isn't running a thousand miles a minute. Okay. And like I said before, I have OCD, so you're already dealing with that is like kind of something that is the sink clean or the dish is done.

Yeah. And then you add this in if you know, you're having a day and like that just takes the edge off me. Yeah. Like when I went to the VA, uh, and no offense to them, I mean, I'm 100% permanent in total, right? Body's pretty banked up, but one of the things they were like, hey, you know, you have chronic pain, you know, you want like oxies or oxies and I was like, absolutely not.

No. Yeah. I was like, no. like, well, what do you do? I was like, well, I smoke. Yeah. You know, I'll take some gummies or whatever just to chill. That's it.

Yeah. I don't do anything else. I said, all I want is my 800 milligram ibuprofen. That's it. Yeah. I went there three times by the third time. The guy looked over his glasses, he goes, you fit the model of non-seeking drug behavior. You can have anything you want.

And I was like, I don't want shit. Yeah. All I want is that. Yeah. Natural shit and I'm out. Yeah. And that is, you know, thank God we're kind of getting into the, a little bit more of a society where that's more socially acceptable. Right.

And especially here in New York. Hopefully one of these days the VA will catch up with that. I have a feeling it's not long off. Yeah. Because a lot of people, when I told them that I told them that, they were like, you're never going to get 100% disability because you told them you smoke. Yeah. They've never brought it up ever again.

Yeah. And that was like five years, seven years ago. Yeah. When I first started the process. Yeah. Yeah. And my VA's in Asheville, North Carolina, which is a hippie town. That works too for me.

Yeah. I mean, I'll take every advantage I can. Yeah. But yeah, no, just little thing. I mean, nothing crazy. Yeah. You know, I'd much rather be coherent. Right.

I don't want to be a vegetable. I don't want my stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm not a drug dude, but I'll, yeah. Yeah. Joe, thank you very much. Thoughts on National Guard Ranger Battalion Rumors.

As far as I know, and I'm a little out of the game, but as far as I know, I do not believe you would have to enlist for active duty in order to get into Ranger Battalion. unless they have changed something dramatically, there is no path from the National Guard to like a rip contract or a RASP, excuse me, it's different now. Ranger Assessment and Selection Program is what it's called now. There is not a direct path from the National Guard

no matter what your MOS is to get into battalion that way. However, it may be something if you were interested in going to Ranger School to get your tab, that may be something like an enlistment bonus or something that you could do to potentially get that, like, written in. I think there's been like this informal, maybe it's been written about like some white papers and defense magazines that should we have a National Guard Ranger Battalion. Kind of like there's an SF, okay. But I would argue, no. Do you really want those people running around America all that much?

Being a samurai requires complete devotion to the art of the blade. You can't just do it part-time. It's not a half-ass job. You can't do it and go to work at a factory for five days and do it to us. I would. days. It is a lifestyle that you have to be complete. It's like being in the NFL. You're either in it or you're not. I would say

so I think SF Guard works because I think that that bringing in civilian skills into the special forces arena helps. Absolutely. I would say that if they ever thought

about a Ranger Battalion or a Ranger Guard unit it would have to be modeled after a seal reserve unit which is you can only go if you've been actively. Previously

because you have to have that foundation of knowing what everybody else is doing at all times. Well, I think that's one of the huge things that's overlooked in general

is one of the things that I didn't notice even though I was like, hey, I want to go be an Army Ranger, this is what I want to do. I was pretty certain before I went in. That's what I was 100% certain. That's what I wanted to do. I had no idea how the structure worked until I got to the time. Right.

I was like, oh, okay. I see the tears now. I see who I enjoy working with. I see who I'd rather not work with depending on. And I think being on that level and operating at that level kind of opens your eyes to like just the whole power structure of how not only like elements break down, but like what elements do what. Right. And SF mission is different than a Ranger mission, which is different than a Delta mission, which is different than a Dev crew mission, right? Everybody's got their own little area of expertise.

It's going to be hard for a 25-man SF unit to secure an entire airfield. You need a company arrangers, 100 dudes to do that. But, I mean, we can't take a city. We need conventional forces, divisions to do that, right? So getting to the point where you understand the hierarchy, not that it's a hierarchy of, I'm better than you, it's a hierarchy of necessity of battle space and understanding that.

And I think that's one of the things that I was blind to coming in. I was like, oh, they're all this. And it's like, no, these are the specialties and here's the differences. Yeah. And certain things are applicable in places and certain things aren't.

Which is why we have the diversity we have, which is why it works. Send 100 Rangers to Africa or to, you know, to Columbia for... It's not going to work out. Yeah. I'm just being honest. Yeah.

And there are... Even just on a fundamental level, like, I don't think anybody does fire and maneuver the way Ranger battalion does. Like, you know, fire team movements. Like, I'm up he sees. Like, nobody does that the way Rangers do it. Nobody does. They are the, obviously, considered, right? The most elite.

Light infantry in the world. Right. and there's a reason for that we train I mean they there's no this is not a nine to five this is a right fucking let you know

when we're done with you right and then then you can go get shit faced and party in the barracks right go out and burn the town down or whatever like

you're getting your work in first yeah always and for reasons like and for reasons like that I think that the only way you could ever look at having a guard unit is like said

if their previous service the same way the seals don't. I think that I agree with you. Joe, thank you very much. Which SMU impressed you the most? Cag, Dev Group,

HRT, the Hill. Who's tougher, forced recon or Navy SEALs? I'm not in the business of saying shit about anyone. I have my opinions based off of operational experience with every single one of those units you just mentioned, including some ones you didn't. I just with unequivocally

Delta is the most professional organization I've ever been around my entire life 375 J R J we're really sorry but you know 375 Houston checking checking in shout out 375 Vico

Rangers lead the way Jay Louis Vasquez great interview as always I hope you're having better luck with your new home I'm not catching that reference. Bueller? Yeah. Bueller?

My fridge went down like two years ago, but I got a new one. Maybe that's... Maybe you'd probably about your refrigerator. All right, what else? Gray Man, 0621. Is that a Marine Corps MOS? 0621? I don't know. Yeah, I believe the O's are Marine Corps stuff.

Like, I think infantry's like 0300 series or something like that. And 08 is artillery, but I don't know what 06 is. I'm not sure. I hope everyone has a blessed weekend. I think a blessed weekend. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you.

M. Corbin, thank you much. Why would Delta pass on a rigged chicken coop in Iraq that 75th had no problem handling? Do you catch that reference? I do. Okay. We were in Irmadi. and we hit this objective and it was I remember

the reason this sticks out in my head is because me and another team leader were forced to carry thermal barrack charges in an assault pack and I mean like he had five I had like four or five like we were loaded down and that's on top of kit and we had hit this

this objective that had the shitload of chicken coops we were clearing chicken coops ended up being by the time we were done with that target we were walking off and little birds were coming in on mini gun and rockets to destroy the objective that we had just left. So that may be what they're making reference to if that was someone that was...

That's the only chicken coop story I have, for sure. Was there a lot of resistance? Oh, we didn't shoot anyone. We just let cast take care of it. They came in, it was like something out of a movie. We were walking out and they were... Yeah. And just lit the whole damn house up. I think that those were like...

Those were sort of like later on war lessons, right? Because CQB was the sexy, CQB based on hostage rescue was the sexy, it was what everybody wanted to do until people started getting shot and realized that there are no hostage on target. And it's like, why are we rushing into these rooms

when we can either clear them from outside or just call Cass? The shack the building. And it did become, and I'm, this is again, personal speculation but I do think towards the end

it became a numbers game like is it worth losing a $60 million aircraft or maybe getting a guy or two killed and that's unfortunate but that's war I mean that's that is the unfortunate part of the job yeah it it is what it is we're told to go

where to go we don't have a say in it yeah I mean obviously I probably wouldn't have stayed in Ramadi too that long if I had a saying it or gone periods and honestly soft had a lot more say than conventional troops. Oh, yeah, big time. You know, I mean, conventional troops are like, hey, you know, put a cop in that valley surrounded by all these mountains and see what comes out, you know.

And there's like 20 guys there that are combat ineffective as an assault force. You know, it was funny. I was, I can't remember if it was strep over Coringall that came out. But I was, I watched both of them. It's been a while. But I was sitting there with my wife. life watching it and I'm like oh this is really good blah blah blah and all of a sudden there's his face on screen and uh his last name was hal he was our he was our pl on the crash site

and then all of a sudden I'm watching the movie and I'm like is that oh my god that's that's my old pl and he was it in the corangol yeah when that was going on so I saw him on camera yeah was like holy smokes see did we have anything on patreon no the documentary people can go and find it on Amazon Prime right now. Yes, sir. Finding it as a Ranger is the name of the documentary. We watched it just before we did this interview, so I hope you guys will go and check it out. It's pretty awesome.

Listening to David, like, kind of walk through his whole experience in Ranger Battalion, but also tell him the story of your platoon and what they experienced and what they went through. It's a good Christmas movie for your kids. if you want them to have nightmares until you know for a long but no but do check it out it's on amazon check it out support a veteran get on it get her done anything else you want to throw out there before we get going anything you want to promote or tell people about i would not as much i i really want to to get people funneled to the foundation yeah because that you know for us helping you know and we always said this as we started if we can help just one person this whole thing's worth it

And I think if I had to leave it with, one thing I want to leave the audience with is, especially for those veterans out there, you're not alone. And I think one of the biggest things that I got out that I felt was said, I'm all by myself. And again, we stem back to that. I haven't been alone in so long. I just didn't notice. And I think a lot of people get out and they don't have a good support network. Like they don't have family or they don't have good siblings or siblings at all

or people that they can talk to this about. And I think that creates, for a lot of people, a sense of isolation. And what we're trying to do is help them, you know, not only realize, hey, you're not alone, but you have a voice, too. Like, you went through and experienced a lot of things that most people in this life never will. And it's okay to feel certain ways, but it's also okay to talk about it. And, you know, sometimes being tough means being tender. I hate to use that kind of cheesy terminology, but I phallayed myself open to try to just get this off.

of like this is more than one person can handle for an entire lifetime yeah and we all need that network i mean and i i think that's really the message that that the foundation and especially is trying to is to promote is like hey you know if you need help reach out like talk to people shit email the foundation we'll get back to you like we we genuinely care and we we want to help everyone and anyone we can and it's hard it's hard to let that that barrier down but you know for for it certainly helped for me so that is further faster harder.org I would ask everybody watching this and everybody who does watch this and everybody who listens to this to please go to their website give them just send them five bucks like just get involved in in the

in the most basic way you can if that's all you can do we deeply appreciate it If you can do more, if you can contact them, if you can volunteer in some way, please do that. But it's further, faster, harder.org link is in the description. And we will be back. Actually, I think tomorrow we'll be doing a bit of streaming. Probably with Christmas music. The team has Christmas party. Christmas music and my commentary.

Yeah. And if you guys have a few questions for us, I might be willing to answer, depending on how deep into my cups I am at that point in time. The deeper he is, the more willing he will be to answer. Yeah, there's this inverse logic to it. David, thanks for coming and telling your story. We deeply appreciate it. The pleasure was all mine.

Thank you guys so much for having me up here. I mean, I can't tell you, you know, just every time we're able to do something like this to get the word out, you know, it helps every single one of us who are out there on the street. Absolutely. And their families as well. And, you know, that's the goal. Anytime you have anything going, like we'll plug it, we'll promote it, we'll put it out there to the world.

That's awesome. I just, I can't thank you guys enough for the opportunity. Thank you. Anytime, man. So we'll see you guys tomorrow evening, I think. So take care out there. Everyone, have a nice weekend. And Monday, we have Jack Murphy. Oh, right. Yeah. Monday, we're going to have our stream where we'll be talking about We Defy. So get your questions ready. If you have questions about the book, I'll be happy to answer them for you. Yeah, and also subscribe to the new IZON YouTube channel.

Subscribe to the IZON YouTube channel. There's going to be links down in the description. Thank you, guys.