The Team House - How Force Recon Transformed into MARSOC "Raiders" | Worth Parker | Ep. 372

Episode Date: September 27, 2025

In this episode, Worth Parker shares his extensive military background, detailing his journey from a young Marine officer to a leader in MARSOC and JSOC. He reflects on his experiences in Iraq, the challenges of transitioning to civilian life, and the importance of ethics in military operations. Worth also discusses the Afghanistan evacuation efforts and his current work supporting veterans through writing workshops, emphasizing the need for vulnerability and mental health awareness.Find out what Worth is up to here:https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-worth-parkerhttps://www.instagram.com/b00kwar/?hl=enToday's Sponsors PIA VPN ⬇️https://piavpn.com/TeamHouseFor 83% off plus 4 months free!GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 25% off sitewide! For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial 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/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 Start03:24 Commissioning and Early Marine Corps Experience06:16 Leading a Scout Sniper Platoon10:38 Transitioning to Intelligence Officer12:04 Joining the Reserves and Force Recon14:16 Post 9/11 Deployment to Iraq19:26 Lessons Learned in Combat21:55 Working with Special Forces27:05 Returning Home and Transitioning to Civilian Life28:40 Joining MARSOC and Its Early Days31:02 Experiences at JSOC53:03 The Afghanistan Evacuation Efforts01:17:30 Writing and Helping Veterans01:26:25 Final Thoughts and ReflectionsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

The Team House with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hello, this is episode 372 of the Team House. I'm Jack here with our guest tonight, who is Worth Parker, Worth served in the Marine Corps as a force recon and Marsok officer. He is also the author of the book Always Faithful about the evacuation of allies from Kabul when Afghanistan collapsed. And he also runs a few clinics for helping veterans with writing. So we're going to talk about all kinds of different stuff here today.

Where, thanks for joining us tonight. Yeah, thank you for having me on tonight, Jack. And I should mention this is your second time on the show. The first time was a different topic. It was you and Mick. And maybe there's one other guy. I can't remember. I know Mick was there.

Yeah. That we did. So that was about the Afghanistan evacuation, but now we'll get into this. You can start off telling us a little bit about your origin story. You mentioned to me that you were an Eagle Scout. You come from a Marine family, really. Yeah, I mean, kind of in a happenstance, I mean, not like in a bunch of career Marines in the family, but yeah, I grew up in North Georgia, primarily Athens, Georgia.

And the family is pretty strong service ethos, really on both sides of the family. But on my mom's side, there were, there's a senator and two state governors and then a host of Marines, soldiers, sailors, airfolk, et cetera. You know, my cousin's buddy and Joe were company commanders at Porkchop Hill in 1953, and Joe got the Distinguished Service Cross. Buddy got the Silver Star. Then buddy got shot in the head in Vietnam right before the LZX-ray thing with the aircap and Hal Moore's crowd. So, you know, I always admired those folks. My dad was a Marine officer. Just did his three years and got out.

My grandfather, against the wishes of his own dad, was a Marine machine gunner, dropped out of college, enlisted, and ended up getting shot at Sugarloaf Hill in 1944, came home, and then he was a judge. And kind of went on into the law, which is what a lot of folks on my mom's side of the family did. But anyway, that inspired me. that plus having a scoutmaster

who was a special forces NCO and who really spent a fair bit of time with me and took me just like the old special ops association conventions when they'd have those in Atlanta and so I get to go meet all these old cats and I really came to audio lots and I was a

was an am a voracious reader so you know I had all 17 books by you know every LARP in one platoon from whatever company in the hundred and first and, you know, the point from the point man to the RTO and read all those kind of books growing up. So anyway, I went off to college and then commissioned in 94 and that was that,

more or less. I mean, there was some circuitous routes taken, but that was how I got started. Hey, what's up, guys? I want to thank our sponsor, PIA VPN. That's private internet access. Have you guys ever been at a coffee shop connected to their Wi-Fi and just wonder how security it is and it turns out you're not secure at all. It's like sending a private text message to a group chat. Everyone can see all of your personal data from your passwords to your browser history. It's all out in the open. And I do not need my browser history out in the open for people. That's a problem. But the solution is private internet access, PIA. It's super easy to use and the app protects all of your devices. It hides your IP addresses and it creates an encrypted tunnel from your internet connection so no one can snoop on your data.

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We really appreciate you guys. Thank you. And tell us about then coming into the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant. This is like 1994. Yes, I commissioned a 94. and I'm pretty confident I was the youngest second lieutenant in the Marine Corps at the time. And I was, I know I was the youngest Marine in Marine Forces Pacific, or the youngest officer in Marine Force specific when I got there.

But, you know, I was a baby. I was a straight up mama's boy and I had a lot to learn. I learned it a fair, you know, I was raised. My parents were divorced. My mother, in her own words, I raised him to wear Brooks brothers. And all he wants to do is crawl around in the mud. And there was some truth to that. And so off I went to OCS where I had a good hardening experience that I needed.

And then I went to the basic school where I learned a fair bit more about hardening and then on to the infantry officer course. And that was a super formative experience for me. I would tell you that the Marine Infantry Officer course, and I've gone to, you know, obviously a lot of schools since then for stress inoculation or for tactics or for whatever. but the first one, really the second, I guess, post the basic school, the infantry officer course was the single greatest, and I think it probably still is. And your first assignment was second battalion, third Marines?

Yep. I was the scout sniper, platoon commander, so all my buddies from the infantry officer course went to the rifle companies, or a number of them anyway did. And then I had gone to the Army's military intel officer course at Fort Huachuca en route. So I showed up about six months after them and took the sniper platoon. And I was the first of a new MOS that the Marine Corps started back in the early 90s in response to intelligence failures during Desert Storm. And General P.K. Van Riper lambasted Marine Corps intelligence post-desert storm. And in typical Marine Corps fashion, the Corps came back and said, cool, you got a problem, come up with a solution.

And so he started reimbursed. engineering Marine Corps intelligence program. And one of the failures he saw was leadership within company grade and field grade officers. And so he said, all right, we're going to put these guys into combat roles first. And so if you became a 0203 ground intelligence officer, you were probably headed either to a recon battalion or to an infantry battalion scouts and Iver platoon. And thinking I was going to be in for three years at that time, I really didn't see any reason to do anything else. but go straight that way.

If I had to do all over again, I probably would have been a straight, you know, infantry guy. Is that kind of how the Marine Corps does things that they bounce you around a little bit, trying to make you more well-rounded as you've become more senior? Yeah, I mean, that's very much the way that the Marine Corps manages, officer assignments. You know, I say all the time.

I spent 27 total years as a Marine, about 22 of that was active. The only thing I am an expert in is employing experts. you know, if I had to do headspace and timing on a 50 cow, I mean, obviously, I'm five years past retirement, but I'm not sure I could have done it on retirement day, and I'm embarrassed by that fact, but it's true. And I have friends who still could do it 25 years later, but I'm not mechanical. But so those kind of skills, I know to look at the right Marine to do that thing. And so I think, you know, my major skills that I learned were smelling bullshit, figuring out

who's really squared away and really competent and capable and trustworthy and then trusting those people. What was it like trying to lead a, or I mean, not trying, but you did lead a scout platoon, a scout sniper platoon in the mid-1990s. Was that challenging in any ways to, you know, handle a bunch of Marines in a training environment largely? I mean, they're great Marines. It was a challenging because of the usual lieutenant dynamic.

You know, and I'm, the Army has a way they treat their second lieutenants. The Marine Corps has a way it treats it second lieutenants. The two are not identical. Obviously, I'm parochial, so I'm partial towards the Marine Corps way. I showed up. I had a bunch of salty one deployment, Lance corporals who had taken the scout sniper indoctrination, the tail end of an Okinawa deployment, and they were now the Corps of the platoon. I probably had, I think I had one sergeant and two corporals.

One of those corporals is a good friend today. He's now a, he's the guy in charge of the marksmanship program for the Texas Guard. And is like a CW.O. 4 or 5. But I had that crowd when I walked in. What I did not have was staff and CO. And I had spent my whole life for parent. All I wanted to be was the Green Army man with the binoculars and the pistol. Yeah.

And who I always associated with being the lieutenant. And so now there I was being it. But now I also was a brand new MOS. There had never been an officer in charge of a Marine sniper platoon. It was always a staff in CO. And so I'm supposed to be doing training plans and all the stuff that a second lieutenant is supposed to be learning. I don't know how to do any of it. And it doesn't, the headquarters and services company did not have the architecture that a rifle company would have had to bring me along.

And the other, the ex-o of the company was a guy that was, I mean, he was there for a reason. reason. The CEO was actually a really squared away guy, super good guy, but he didn't have time to raise one single lieutenant. He was trying to run, you know, because the headquarters battalion is the guy with all the responsibility, or excuse me, headquarters and serves company guy, is the guy with all the responsibility and really none of the authority in the battalion. So he's got to be a really strong officer. But anyway, I had a, we had a great first sergeant named John Myers, who used to slap me around in a loving way. And, I mean, physically, he was a big, and, you know, intimidating, former interrogator type, and he would thump you.

But he got me a staff encio, and I'll be the first to tell you that there's what they tell you your staff insos are going to be when you're at the basic school. And then there's the reality that staff enceos are human beings like everyone else. And there's that spectrum between the guy who walks on water and the guy who's on divorce number seven and the DUI number two. And most people fall out in between. I got Mike Kirchweil who walked on water. And I say to this day, now retired sergeant major, Michael Sean Kurtzweil is the reason I had a career.

And despite my best efforts to ruin it. And he was a counselor. He was a leader. He was a trainer. And he was absolutely without ego. And so he could manipulate me into doing what needed to be done and make me think that I had told him to do it. And that wasn't slimy. It was generous.

Yeah, yeah, he was compelling or persuasive. He trained his lieutenant the way you're supposed to do. And then did you have to go and do some time, like after that as like an actual intel officer? I did. And that was, you know, I was super immature coming into the Marine Corps. I'd spent, again, my whole life fantasizing about how this thing was going to be. And I have only been the last couple weeks admitted to several friends that I'm an idealist. And that gets in the waste of reality sometimes.

or maybe reality gets in the way of my idealism. But either way, I had an idea about how things were going to be. And I believed I was exceptional enough that I could run between the raindrops, and they would be that way. And then the Marine Corps said, yeah, go be a battalion intelligence officer now. And I felt like I was being punished. Had I been a grown-up about the thing, I would have realized I'm going over to this other battalion

where the battalion commander wrote all the command and control publications for the Marine Corps. or rewrote him, I should say, and is a student of the game, and is the best battalion commander in this regiment, and he not only is willing to let you sit at his feet and learn, but he wants you to, I would have been a much better officer for it, but I wasn't grown up enough to do that. And so I was his intelligence officer while, you know,

meanwhile constantly looking backwards, wanted to wear a boony hat and, you know, carry a knife in my teeth. Yeah, you hadn't gotten that opportunity, or at least not enough of it from your perspective. So you went into the reserves at that point. I did. I wasn't getting what I wanted, so I took my ball and went home.

And I'm real upfront about that. And, you know, people tried to make a few options for me more in line with what I wanted. But I ultimately was like, okay, I'm going to get out and go to grad school. And I'm going to join the reserves. And so I went to third force reconnaissance company in Mobile, Alabama,

because I wanted to be a Fort Reconnors. and I took their indoctrination and I was not much of a swimmer and you got to be and they had to pull me off the bottom of a swimming pool because we were treading water with weights over our head or with a weight over our head and you know you can't get the 10 pound weight wet and I'm treading and treading and I'm just slowly sinking sinking sinking until the weight is now underwater along with me and I just kept sinking to the bottom of the pool and so I finished the whole end of I. which is about 48 hours of just getting your junk kicked. And at the conclusion of it, you do an interview, you put on your best cameys and you go in there and you stand in there in front of all these staff and COs. And this one guy said, well, sir, you can't swim, but you seem to be willing to die to be here.

So I think we can train you. And I knew I was in. And I stayed at that unit for eight years and built some amazing friends. and met some really, really, you know, cool people that are lifelong friends today, officer and enlisted, really more enlisted, truthfully. And that was a way to scratch the itch for a while. And so you're in force now.

So presumably you had to go to dive school, jump school, all that good stuff. Did all that. Managed to make it through dive school without putting on water wings, although I very much wanted to. And then jump school. and did hey-ho, never did free fall, but went out to Yuma, you know, and did the, we used to jump the MC5

with a static line deployment. And so went out and did that. And then 9-11 came, and I knew I couldn't stay on the sidelines. I had worked as a pharmaceutical rep. I had gone to law school, and I was actually in law school after 9-11 when we finally got the call from my reservation.

unit that we're going to send a platoon with first force to Iraq now we're going to send two platoons with second force later and I was the operations officer for the company at that point and I turned to my buddy who was the active duty inspector instructor at the company and said you know I think if I wait till this summer I could probably take one of those platoons instead of going now and being like the night watch officer and he said yeah I think you probably could make that happen So that was straight chiconnery, but I wanted to go and do the deal. So I got some guys who had just come back with first recon from doing the Generation Kill, march up to Baghdad, and then some homegrown guys.

And off we went to Camp Lejeune on my first wedding anniversary and headed off up there for three months. For pre-mission training. And what was, you know, conceptually, where were you guys heading? What were you training for? We were going to Iraq. We knew we were going to OIF2. We were deploying in August of 2004. We had no, someday I'm going to write some really, really, really angry, rantey screed about that period of time.

Because I flew up there in December of 2003. Yeah, 2003 with three other Marines. And by the time we got to the Raleigh Airport, we had one cell phone between us because it was 2002 or whatever, 2003. We had a message that said, two of you get on a plane and come right back. We got a prepared to deploy order. The other two of you go to Camp Lejeune and set up the summer training like you're planning to. So I go down there with the company Ops Chief,

and we send the other two guys back. And we got down to Lejeune. we did what we were supposed to do. We set up a bunch of training requested ranges. We did all the training support requests, all the stuff that you do as well as found building, et cetera. Well, six months later, when I showed back up to Camp Lejeune and walked into the op shop in a second force, all of those TSRs, et cetera, were sitting in the bottom of the training assistant training chiefs inbox. You never moved them, never processed them. We don't have a range set up. Our bill building was the no longer existent French Creek barracks.

We had two functioning toilets for something like 69 Marines. And one of those went down under that load. We, you know, and I'm used to, I've lived in condemned buildings before as part of being a Marine, not even like in training or, you know, hey, you're deployed. You're going to live in this bombed out shelter. No, like I've lived on condemned buildings on more than one Marine base for an extended period of time. And that's normal. But, you know, we had feasts mounting up out of the toilets.

It was grotesque. And so that, that was, I'm still really angry 20 years later about the way that onboarding happened. What do you think the breakdown was there? Go ahead. What do you think the breakdown was that resulted in that? Somebody didn't do their job. Yeah. I mean, flatly, a guy didn't do his job.

And there were there were personnel things that I, you know, I'm not going to litigate two decades later. Um, personalities and personnel. But, uh, the flat reality is none of the paperwork required to train, feed and house a unit that was being that they knew they were gaining was processed. Um, and, hey, you know, that's a two-way street. We didn't do our job of going, did you file the paperwork? Yeah, we did. It's good. You know, we didn't do a confirmation brief.

years ain't till. So, you know, that didn't happen. We recovered it, but it was kind of reminiscent of when I was a second lieutenant. Suddenly, I'm in a situation of I don't know the training areas. I don't know the place. I don't know the procedures. And I got to come up with a plan to deploy two platoons to war in 90 days. And oh, by the way, none of us has ever been to war, except for the few guys who had just come back from doing the march up with first recomb battalion. And so if you ask them, well, what do you do when you go to Iraq? Well, you drive really fast. You do convoy ops, you know, you stop and get into firefights, you do ambush drills, counter ambush drills. That's what you do. And we learn how to live out of a Humvee. Well, you know, what we did was

DA raids. I did seven months of door kicking. And so what should have happened is we should have spent, you know, days and days and weeks and weeks on a flat range and then in a mouth facility and et cetera. But that's that's not what happened. So we kind of made it up on the fly. And so you guys get there with the second force. It was Al-Qaeda Iraq, right? Mm-hmm. And what was the mission that you guys were assigned at that time? I mean, it was pretty classic Marine Corps mission.

I couldn't tell you the exact mission statement, although we were working with First Battalion 7th Marines. Their opposite was still a good friend of mine and works at Marsok now. He kind of used us as his brute squad. And, you know, there were three rifle companies there, but one of them was guarding an ASP that had massive holes in the fence line. You could watch people walking in and walking back out with munitions on ISR. So that company was literally living and patrolling at an ASP to try and keep it from becoming a supply line to the Muge. One company was holding down Camp Gannon in Husebo, which was probably at the time.

before Fallujah really kicked off was probably the most dangerous city in Iraq. The back fence line of that camp was, is Syria. And so not only were they fighting the Muz, occasionally the Syrians would accidentally whip a mortar around across the border. So that company was there. And then we had a company at Al-Qaim with us. And they were actually out doing what the, you know, mobile assault platoons out patrolling. And a mobile assault platoon was effectively a mounted infibund.

trooperatoon driving around finding IEDs with their tires. Yeah. And so, and God bless them. I mean, the absolute definition of bravery is those Marines. And so, you know, we used to, we would eat with them in the child hall. And we had someone who would come and hang out with us and we would do training with them and help them, you know, some of their CQB kind of stuff. Because I had some guys who were super switched on on it, obviously.

And I remember one of these Marines saying to me, you know, I couldn't do what you guys do. Like go in their houses every night. night and blowing down these doors. And I was like, you're literally out there driving around waiting to get exploded. I psychologically speaking, there's no debate who's tougher here, buddy. But anyway, they were out there the closest thing to an offensive arm. So eighth platoon of second force recons job was initially kill or capture HVTs. And then that became in politics.

So it became capture or kill HVTs. but, you know, what's the distinction? Yeah. And they kept you pretty busy. How long were you deployed over there? That was seven months. And I mean, we were not moving with, like you talked to some of my Ranger regiment friends.

We were not moving with the speed of the regiment. But, you know, later being deployed forward with a lot of the regiment, I recognize, like, if you read McChrystal's book about the development of the task force in Baghdad and procedures, et cetera, or when I talk to my friends from that element of SOCOM, you know, the way we learned was kind of happening in parallel. My CEO at Second Force, who took the company right before we deployed, and is a very dear friend of mine to this day, had come from the CT world and had kind of, we, he went, okay, we got to organize a targeting board.

We got to organize an Intel cell. we got to start doing these things for real. There was no, it was a very nascent ISR. ISR was an intel analyst in a Huey with a long lens camera overflying our targets. But they built target packages for us so we could actually start looking at where we might go. And then that, I mean, by the end of that deployment, we could look at a house and know from the shape of the house. Like, oh, that'll be the prayer room. Here's the entryway.

probably kitchen is going to be right here. Like we've just been in so many that we knew the layout. But anyway, that was, it's always interesting for me to talk to folks from that side of Socom and realize how organizations adapt under pressure is pretty identical. What were some of those like lessons learned to those conclusions that you guys were coming to learning through experience? I mean, a lot of it was just basic tactical stuff. And some of it is, you know, to the, I'm sure to the tactical crowd would be super boring.

Discipline, basic Marine Corps discipline, solid SOPs. Like, I organized my platoon. I had 25 Marines and I just split them down the middle. And I had an Alpha Element and a Bravo Element. And, you know, Tuesday night, Alpha Element is driving the trucks and running the guns. And Bravo Element, I'm going to let my dog in a minute. Bravo Element is going to do the actual hit. you know I always went with the assault element my platoon sergeant always ran the perimeter

um and you know every every mission you know we had a timeline the guy and I published it the guys knew when to do what but I still published the timeline we had a warning order every time we had a con ops every time we had a con ops brief every time everybody got briefed together I learned sometimes that my plan was fallible and that I needed to take suggestions from the peanut which they you know we were very much a unit and I I believe strongly you know in the old in the concepts of debriefs briefs briefbacks etc where everybody sits in and everybody has a voice and you know sometimes the corporal who pipes up from the back and shreds your good idea is 100% correct and if you fail to adapt to his or her good idea well you're screwing yourself in the whole

unit. So I think that was a big thing. As I said, I split the unit down the middle. And so every, after we'd done an assault the night before, the folks who were in the assault element would build a tape house identical to the target. And the guys who were drivers and gunners the night before would debrief via the tape house. Here's where this happened. Here's where that happened. Here's where we found this thing. And I just think that, and I didn't drive that because I was kind of a one-man planning cell. I didn't sleep for seven months because I would my guys might sleep eight, nine, ten hours hopefully. But I was up planning, briefing, debriefing, going to see the battalion, adjacent battalion commander, whatever had to do as, as the officer to keep things

rolling and then grab an hour of shut eye before we went out the door, which frankly, I was usually too hyped up and anxious to grab an hour of shut eye. And then we go out and do the thing. And you worked in conjunction. Is this the deployment where you were with? with a SF team at the same time? Yeah, I was with a fifth group ODA. Will Bowman was the ODA commander. And so I was with those guys, and then they departed.

They did not have a partner force. And so they departed to go east and work with an actual partner force and do SF things. But I did enjoy, I loved working with those guys. Will that was a Marine who had actually gone to the basic school, one class behind me.

So we knew a lot of folks. And then sort of like me, he wasn't getting what he wanted in the Ring Corps. So he jumped ship and became an Army SF guy. And then a 10th group team came in. And I worked with those guys a couple times as we were stepping out the door. If you're in the market for a new mattress, you've probably seen all the brands out there vying for your attention.

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but it was a big change. I was on a one-year activation, and I had finished two years of law school, and I had undergone a pretty significant mental shift. I mean, I told you, I've finally acknowledged I'm an idealist. I went over there, like, I'm going to teach the Iraqi people about the Fourth Amendment. And, you know, four months later, I was like, you slap another pound of C4 on that door. To cause, we can.

And I don't think, like, that wasn't a healthy shift. That wasn't a good shift. I held on to my morals. I held on to what was right. But I definitely became more callous over seven months. And then I came home and I was like, I'm going back to that. And I was like any other person who'd gotten a taste of something and wanted. more. And, you know, it's like embarrassing to admit to a bunch of people, but it's true. Like I,

my wife would be off at her job and I'd be home from law school in my third year and I'd get home relatively early and I'm like, you know, clearing rooms and pying corners and stuff in my house to stay sharp because in my head, like, this is going, I'm going back. This is going to happen. And so I ended up back on active duty. The Marine Corps asked for volunteers and, um, in 2006, I went back in full time. Yeah, so tell us how that comes about that there's this new thing called Marsok and they're looking for volunteers. How did that happen for you? So I was, there was an Almar, an All-Marine's message went out and I got the Al-Marer and said,

hey, we're looking for, you know, select Marine Corps reserve officers to return to active duty and serve. You know, we got two hot wars going and we need you. Okay, cool. And I was like, well, I'm a forced recon guy. I didn't even think about the fact that I had. In the Marine Corps, I've been out for eight years. I'd already put a bullet in my head career-wise. And I didn't really, I just didn't think about it.

Again, I was very immature for a long time in some ways. And I now realize some of that's because I'm an idealist. Some of it was ego. I thought, as I said, I thought I could run between the raindrops. I'm special and, you know, some stuff doesn't land on me. But I applied. and I think three applicants were accepted. I think I was the only one who was brought back in in the MOS I wanted to come back in as,

which was an infantry officer. So I returned to active duty with orders to Marsock. Part of that was I was sitting preparing for my last semester exams, and my little cell phone rang, we'll flip phone. And it was a buddy of mine had been roommates with in two, three, you know, I don't know, 11, 12 years before. and now he was the monitor, which is the, like, branch manager in the Army, I think you guys call. And it's a career maker job, like for an older company-grade officer. And he's like, hey, man, I just, do I see your name on a message for orders?

Because he knew I'd gotten out. And I said, yeah, you do. And he's like, well, what are you trying to do? And I said, I'm going to Marsok. Talk to this guy, Pete Petranzeo, who was my CEO at Second Force on that deployment, who's now the G3 at Marsok. Pete's going to hook it up, you know, make it happen. And funnily enough, three years later, that guy called me and was like, all right, man, you're up for orders again.

What are you going to do to get the soft stink off of you? And I said, well, I've already arranged orders to J-Soc. So I guess nothing. You're different to them. I'm taking a bath in it. And so what was it like getting to J-Soc? all right, to Marsock in those early years, where you're trying to, like, stand up a unit and stand up a capability. It was so cool, honestly.

I was a total staff guy. Pete, in fact, Pete hit me up. He was like, hey, you want to go down to a battalion or you want to work in the G shop? Now, no officer in his right mind says I want to go to the G3. But one, all my friends from Force Recon were there. Two, I recognized I had a serious lack of knowledge. I was coming back to active duty as a junior major. I'd never done any kind of staff stuff.

I basically was, you know, a subject matter expertise in force recon operations. And as you alluded to earlier, the right pedigree for a Marine officer is to do a vast number of career broadening, knowledge broadening stuff. And again, I was immature, I was selfish, I wanted to do what I wanted to do, nobody needed to tell me how to do business. And so I said, you know what, it's time for you to grow up. and plus my wife, you know, is a never been a military wife for outside of the reserve. She's been through a combat deployment. But this is a new thing for her. So, all right, I'm going to go to the G shop with all my friends.

And honestly, I remember sitting one day in my cubicle in the G3 and I was like, I could do this forever. Like I'm surrounded by great people. This is, I've got cool work. I like organizations when the paint hasn't dried, the cement's still wet. You know, you're figuring it out. And credit to Pete Petronzio, he's a kind of guy who, you know, everybody hated us in 2006. The Marine Corps hated us. Socom hated us.

Everybody was mad at us. And we'd have staff meetings every morning at 7 a.m. And, you know, again, some Marine Corps. So typically it's shaving a haircut and, you know, uniforms. You show up at 7 a.m. My wife was living in Raleigh. I was commuting two and a half hours some morning to make the 7. a.m. staff meeting.

You walk in in a hoodie and, you know, a three-day beard. Just sit on the floor. We're going to do the staff meeting. It was all business. And look, I'm a guy. I'm forced shaving in a haircuts. That's a marine thing. It's a good thing. It works for the Marine Corps. And ultimately, it worked for us. But it was just, you can shave after the meeting, dude. I'm glad you were able to get

an extra 20 minutes of sleep. Now go do your thing. And Pete would be sitting at his desk and like, who should we piss off today? And basically, We just kind of go through the Rolodex and pick a name that we're going to infuriate because we're going to ask for something or we're going to say we're not going to do something or we're going to say we are going to do something that somebody's not going to like. You know, that organization was built on one of Rumsfeld's snowflakes. And for, you know, watchers, listeners that don't know what that is, they used to call his memo snowflakes because they would just drift down from the office of the Secretary of Defense. we had his snowflake framed on the wall for years in the G3 at Marsock. And all it said was Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command is designated a special operations force, period.

Donald J. Donald Rumsfeld. And I don't think he's a J. I think the current Donald is a J. But anyway, that was that. Now we're soft. And neither General Brown nor General Hagey, I don't think we're particularly. enamored of Livia. And then there was a whole crew of there were a lot of SF guys who were not happy about it. There were a lot of Marine graybeards who were not at all happy about it. And so we were

fighting perceptions, which again for a guy who, you know, listen to punk rock and riding a skateboard in Athens, Georgia, being the guy that people don't like was, it was punk rock at the time. I mean, it's punk rock as the Marine Corps gets. Yeah. You know, because we were, we just figure out what we needed to do. And we were learning so much. That's another thing I love is a learning environment and a learning organization. Well, we were like, okay, I don't know what, I'm trying to.

Oh, perfect example. There's an SF colonel that I know. And we just grew up in towns close to one another. He's considerably older than me. But I grew up here in his name. So we're sitting in one of the 7 a.m. staff meetings. and we were talking about, you know, unconventional warfare.

Well, none of us has ever done unconventional warfare. This is not one of our missions. I was like, well, I know an SF guy over at Fort Bragg. He's a retired colonel. You want to, should we go talk to him? And he was like, yeah, go. So we jump in the truck and we drive to Fayetteville

and literally sat in this guy's basement going through pubs. And he's like, okay, take your notebook out. Buy with through. I'm like, okay, buy with through. Sounds good. And that was, you know, kind of how we were working through all this stuff. We, you know, DA, sure, SR, sure, all day long. That kind of stuff we were super strong on.

But I had Iraqis with me on exactly one mission. Yeah, one mission in Al-Qaim. And in my very, you know, again, I keep calling myself immature. I was like, we're not doing that again. It was unilateral Marines kicking indoors at 2 o'clock in the morning, M-4s and flashbangs, and I was living out my G.I. Joe fantasy. I now refer to that time as my ISIS recruiting tour. But it, there was a lot to learn, a lot to learn.

And during this time frame, because it sounds like Secretary of Defense didn't leave you guys with a lot of guidance, How did the idea itself of Marsok kind of develop? Like you mentioned DASR, that makes sense because you guys came from force recon. But then UW, I mean, was there's this idea that Marines are going to do unconventional warfare now? So I think some of it, we had a group of really smart guys. There was a guy that I deployed with in that second force deployment in 0405 named Jason Shalbel. Jason got shot up badly enough that he got retired as a captain. Silver Star recipient.

In fact, on his retirement day, he got a Bronze Star with a V, a Silver Star, and I think a Legion of Merit, you know, which for a captain is nuts. He became the GS-14 Deputy G3, which, if you know how GS-14s and 15s are hired, those are typically retired lieutenant colonels and colonels. So there were a lot of grumpy faces

when this pretty junior captain, who has an off-the-charts GT score, IQ score, is suddenly the Deputy G3. But so, I mean, we're tearing through, like, the OSS Manual's Assessment of Men. We're tearing through all those kind of pubs. And I'll be arrogant enough to say we had a hallway full of really smart men and women. And we had a lot of free thinkers. And we had a lot of people who were really excited to be in on the ground floor of building the Marine Corps' so-com component.

to get to do it. Like it was a really haughty time. Like I said, I didn't have a kid, so it probably wasn't that big a deal. But there were plenty of times where it was like, yeah, I slept four hours last night because I was here till all hours reading doctrine or writing this plan or writing this proposal. You know, and we're fighting, we're fighting Usa Sok to get them to accept us in some ways. We're fighting just old doctrine. We're fighting the Marine Corps.

Everybody's interested in what you're doing because you're the new. kid on the block. It was a fabulous experience. When you look back on that period of your career, what are like the lessons learned? Like if you were to give some advice to some guys that are standing up a new unit today, what would be some of the big considerations that you wish you had known beforehand going into it? No, know the reality, know the doctrine. People say doctrine is a starting point for your deviation. You cannot not you've got to be smarter than the guys who already, excuse me, you may not be smarter. That's a matter of genetics.

You've got to better educated. Oh, there's one of the dogs. Sorry. You've got to be better educated than the folks who may have been doing this for a long time, who may have gotten complacent. And so you walk into a room with folks and they're like, oh, here come the, the dumb Marines. And turns out that the dumb Marines had done a whole lot of research, done a whole lot of talking to people had done a whole lot of reading of history and actually did know some of the stuff

we were talking about or at least knew it well enough to ask questions. And so it's a lot of work to be well educated. And when you walk into, you know, a room with folks are like, hey, man, I've been doing this for 25 years. And you're 15 years into your career and you just got tasked to be me. Like, good luck with that sport. You know, that was sometimes the attitude. There were also guys who were very much like, hey, come on in more than marry or whatever. whatever you need. What do you want to learn? And so in that sense, the flip side of me saying, you need to be better educated than the experts is you also need to know you don't actually know anything. So you need to be real ready to walk in and listen and ask questions. And if you

lead with questions, the experts will often be willing then to listen and both of you get to a place where your preparation meets with their expertise in a way that is productive for everyone. So I think that's a main one. Yeah, I mean, I think people enjoy answering questions about a career field or a job field that they feel they're very good at. Absolutely. And, you know, if you have lived up to the charge to be as well or better educated, because you can't be as experienced, you need to keep that in your back pocket. You don't need to tell anybody about it. Again, lead with questions because if you let experts be experts, and this is something, as I said earlier, I'm not an expert on anything but expert.

Sometimes in my career, I played that up. I think back, I was a unit XO at year 20 in my career. I'd managed to avoid it all the way. And now I'm a 06's XO and I'm worried about things like truck maintenance. And I don't care about truck maintenance. I mean, not much, certainly not passionate about it. But there were Marines who did that kind of work and they were now, you know, the Marines that I'm dealing with. And so I would go to these meetings and I was ignorant, but I would absolutely play.

play up my ignorance in a staff meeting full like E3s, E4s, E5s. And I would, you know, really give, try to give them a chance to be the expert and to educate me. And sometimes I'd intentionally ask really dumb questions so that they could laugh at me. Because it just changed that dynamic a little bit. But, you know, when we had the Marine Corps, I don't know, there's all these inspections, right, that the Marine Corps does on logistics or admin or whatever. And I was like, what's in it? What's in, how do you get a hundred on this inspection?

You're like, well, sir, there's not a hundred. It's like, you know, I don't remember what the scoring system was. I was like, okay, but whatever on the scoring system is the closest thing to 100, that's what I want. How do we get it? And I let this master sergeant who's advising me be in charge of that. You tell me how we're going to get what I want. And then you tell me what you need me to do to assist you to make that happen because you're the expert.

I didn't even know a lot of the word. He would throw words out. I don't know what that means. And I would say it in front of the E3s, and they all got to get it. out of it, but they also see I'm willing to learn. And then like, it was kind of a joke, but I was like, hey, if you guys get a 95 or better on this exam, everybody's having a pizza party. And I realize a pizza party is like a meme now on LinkedIn, you know, and it should be, right? People do that instead of giving somebody a bonus. But one, you can't pay bonus. And two,

it was just a kind of a joke in those meetings all the time. But I will say about those Marines, six months later, we had a pizza party because they went to work. And that, that's another thing I would say is true if you're building an organization. You know, know what you don't know, figure out who does know it, and let that person be the expert. And after having this, it sounds like a pretty, you had a good time actually as a staff officer in Marsock. How did the J-Soc assignment come up? So my buddy Ivan Ingram, who I know you've had on here, Ivan actually had been approached about doing that job. and by the Marine that was in it then.

And he then got selected for Command of Staff College. And you don't turn down residential Command and Staff College. It's a top 10% assignment. It's a good sign for your career. So Ivan's off to Command and Staff. And the guy said, well, do you know anybody else who you would recommend to do it? And I was like, yep, you're sitting right next to me. And I wanted it for a couple reasons.

My wife was actually the, this is always funny. My wife was the lead attorney for the ACLU of North Carolina in Raleigh. And so we lived about 50 miles away from Bragg and like 112 miles away from Lajune. And then I had a little condo I crashed that during the week. And so I wanted to move back. I wanted to live with her. And so an assignment at Fort Bragg was really goal one because I could, you know, it was reasonable commute.

And then I really did. did want to go to J-Soc. I just wanted to see that, have that experience and learn those things. Because by now I feel like I had kind of turned as a professional when I finally acknowledged Marine Corps did not exist to feed my adventure sports habit or to give me something to write about someday. It exists to support the national security ends and means of the United States of America. And Worth Parker's particular feelings about actual assignments are completely immaterial within that construct. But I was blessed to make the J-Soc thing happen,

and I went over and interviewed over there and got selected for that. And I really did have a wonderful three years and make some really good friends who I'm still in contact with now. Any lessons learned from that experience that you brought with you back to the Marine Corps? Countless.

I got to watch the Ranger Regiment in action, and I am a, unabashed fan of the 75th Ranger Regiment and Rangers in general. And I worked with, you know, all of the, all of the folks in that constellation and got to watch a ton of people work. And I read somebody saying the other day, and I don't remember who it was, a friend of mine, but I just, my memory fails me these days, saying, you want to know the best military formation in the U.S. government or in the Department of War now?

It is the 75th Ranger Regiment. There is no question, hands down, that it is uniformly the finest. And for years, I've been a guy like, eight Marines, 75th Ranger Regiment. There's no difference. I mean, it's a Marine Infantry Regiments as good as, well, maybe it could be, maybe, if it were resourced that way. But a friend of mine who had come from J-Soc that I worked for in the G3 at Marsok, and him Chris Nailor, Chris posed that to me one day.

He's like, where do you think of Marine Infantry Regiments as good as the Rangers? And I was like, absolutely. Of course. And he's like, okay, if we go down to First Battalion, Eighth Marines right now, does every Marine have a set of nods? No, probably the fire team leaders and the squad leaders. Okay. They're not night capable.

Everybody in the 82nds got one, and certainly everybody in the 75th's got a pair. That alone. I mean, when you start pinging dollars to donuts and training capabilities, you learn that, you know, it's not the Civil War argument. One rabble can whip. 13 Yankees with a corn stalk. You know, I mean, that's the equivalent argument we would have.

One Marine can whip five Rangers. Why? Could you went to boot camp for 13 months or 13 weeks? But when you start becoming a pro and you realize that your job is to do what the machine needs you to do and do it as well as humanly possible, then I think you're really where you need to be. And I went to J-Soc and I watched a place where, everyone does what they're supposed to do as well as humanly possible. And I really, really, really enjoyed my time there.

But the way I got there is because Ivan made it happen. Yeah, there's something to be said for that, that, you know, people love to make these comparisons between this unit and that unit. And like, Force Recon wasn't technically a special ops unit, but that's not a ding on the guys. Like, they're terrific Marines. It's just they weren't resourced the way you talk about. The priority was organized under special ops command.

If I'm 100% honest to you, I felt far more elite as a platoon commander at second Fortry Convaliscence company than I did in any of my SOCOM formations. Yeah. I think some of that is just, you know, size of the organization and maybe the, I don't know what the, I do know what the right word is, but TBI is stealing it from me right this minute. We'll call it cool factor and I'll be embarrassed later by saying it. But, you know, being a Force Recon, guy was cool. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was an apex kind of assignment.

And so that felt awesome. And when you walked into the Chow Hall at Al-Kine, everybody knew you were the force guys. Everybody knew you were the guys who were out hooking and jabbing every night. But again, if you're a pro, you also are able to look at that and go, yeah, we were hooking a jabbing every night. But you guys driving around in the broad daylight waiting to eat a 155 or a 152. Right. There's no distinction to my mind between who's got more heart, more mojo. more guts more honor I mean pick the thing you know we fought between about 11 o'clock at night and 5 a.m.

And we did that for a very specific reason. It's because the threat was lower. And because our targets were asleep in bed and it's easier to snatch them out of bed. But I just have so much love and appreciation for the 11 Bravo, the 0311 and associated MOS. Yeah. I think a lot of people also don't. appreciate the you know having a strategic global lift capability and having special ops aviation units makes a huge difference yeah i mean that's the thing i remember one of the generals when i was at joc was saying like you know it's it's one thing to be in the 173rd out in a fob on top of a hill and had to fight from that or a cop right it's another thing to be a formation in a in a task force where

you have A-864's overhead, and then there's F-18s overhead that, or AC-130s, and then there's B-1-B-1-B-1-B-N-B-N-B-N-Q-9s, and then, and then, and they're just stacked to the heavens in support of you. I went out as a force-recond platoon. I usually had either a section of, a HUE, and a mixed section of Hube and Cobra in support of me. Sometimes I had an F-18 or an AV-A-B section flying in support of me, and they were usually just like flickering with lightning pods to help give me ITG to targets and that sort of thing. But they were there. Again, second lieutenant, umpti frats and the squad that he happens to be rolling with that day in an Humvee. And in 2004, they were the same hummers. I mean, I've cried tears a number of times because when I got there,

there were these mobile assault platoons running around, and they really just were reorganized. counter armor assault team platoons in fiberglass backed humvees and those were the weapons we were going to fight in the fold of gap with with toes and you know the suspended fiberglass back and i can remember talking to one of those Marines after they'd gotten back from a mission they had rolled out in response a QRF response to another vehicle that had hit a landmine and a marine had lost his leg the QRF rolled out they hit a landmine

another Marine lost his leg I drove around in unarmored vehicles except for the fact that a guy and I call him a real life hero and he did get an award with a combat V on it who was our motor T chief at second force and I think that guy stayed up for like four straight

days cutting up that Mack kit armor with an assetling torch and welding it onto the underside of our Humvees which would the only armor we had and that guy cut armor until every tip burned out on those cutters. And then the guy who was the orthopedist in the mash unit that was right outside my doorway, got on the phone, he was a reservist. Got on the phone, called home to Oregon, woke somebody up and was like, hey, here's my credit card number. Go to the Ace Hardware and buy every cutting torch head you can get and FedEx it to me here now.

That guy is what made it happen. You know, that sort of stuff going back, kind of like to my showing up at Camp Lejeune and having no training, that kind of stuff is what I feel like those stories of Americans need to understand. Yeah, yeah. Because your tax dollars go to make sure that you don't have that problem or on a much softer note. I didn't have pillows for my Marines. Like, we're all just sleeping on these crappy Jordanian racks that somebody bought en masse and that bent within two nights of sleeping on them.

So you're like sleeping in a taco. and I hit my mom up and I was like mom I don't we don't have pillows so she went on a buying spree and boxes start showing up with a platoons pillows um yeah that kind of stuff yeah I guess lesson learned there is think through resourcing before you go yeah things come together because somebody cared enough to make it come together right yeah um and from there you went to a small office in the pentagon essentially com office. And I didn't know anything about this. I don't think until we spoke about it earlier. Could you tell us about that assignment? Yeah, I'm happy to you. There were intervening assignments. I came back from J-Soc and I was the G3X at Marsok and then I was the XO at, or I deployed after

that G3X tour. And I was the J-5 at C.JOSO to Afghanistan. That's right. Came back. I was the XO at the Marine Raider Training Center for two years, which actually was a blast. and then I went up to, excuse me, to D.C. And, you know, this is, again, a lesson learned, right? I had been called by some guys in Tampa in an office down there at Socom headquarters. And they said, hey, do you want to come work on this program with us down here? And I was like, absolutely, because I'm pretty sure this is going to be my last or my second to last job. I'm never going to get promoted past Lieutenant Colonel.

I was really lucky to be a Lieutenant Colonel. But with eight years break in service, I am never going to be a colonel. in the Marine Corps, so I need to start thinking about the next phase of life. So I was all about this gig down in Tampa. And then the deputy commander, who is a friend of mine to this day, calls me, he's like, hey, brother, come up by an office. So I go up there, and he's like, I know you want to go to that thing in Tampa. I was like, yeah, I really do.

And, you know, my wife's cool with Tampa. I just, I think that'll be good. He says, all right, well, the thing is, I got a job that I have to fill in D.C. So, you know, when you hit I-95, turn right instead of left. and I need you to go to D.C. And at that point in my life, I used to call myself Marsox Mikey. And if you remember the old life checks commercials

where they give it to Mikey, he'll eat anything. I mean, I knew who I was at that point. I knew what my job was at that point. And I was mature enough to accept that reality and say, okay, you need a guy who will go up and do a good job on behalf of the command and make the command look at least adequate and competent. But you don't have to spend a guy who's going to be a battalion commander and the regimental commander and that sort of thing on this job.

I'm your utility player. Got it. No worries. Understood. And I said that without anger or rank. Like I knew who I was at that point. I've been through all the whatever, the six stages of grief and figured out. You also paid your dues, though. Yeah.

I mean, and look, I was really blessed. I got to do a ton of stuff I wanted to do. A lot of people went out of their way in my career to make it possible for me to have things I wanted and to do things that I wanted to do with the understanding that I had some limitation. that I had imposed on myself at 23 years old when I said, I'm not kidding what I want, so I'm going to reserves. And I don't regret that. I loved going to law school.

Living in Tallahassee, Florida, has opened avenues for me 20 years later as a writer. You know, so, I mean, I don't have any regrets in now in retirement. Certainly there were some wailing and gnashing of teeth when I was an active duty to lieutenant colonel, but it's the way it goes. So, yeah, I ended. up in D.C. and I checked in and they're like, hey, I thought I was going up there to do a liaison

job with the joint staff, J5, and the office director who was a retired guy. Like, hey, for the first year, you're going to be the executive officer to the vice commander of Socom. And that will teach you the lay of the land up here, teach you the Pentagon. You really do have to learn the building.

And that's a term of art. You've got to learn the physical building, but you've got to learn the denizens of the building. And so, Okay, Roger that. I'm Marine. I, I. So I was the XO for Tom Trask for the first year, Lieutenant General Tom Trask, great American Silver Star recipient. If you ever see the picture from Desert Storm of the PJ out the back of a 50, an MH 53, rescue in a downpilot, like, about to pull him in. Tom Trask is flying that bird, and there's a whole real, live, heroic story

behind that, you know, he gets the Silver Star for. But, um, Because there was a truckload of Iraqis inbound to snatch that dude. He put the bird between the pilot and the truck. And, you know, and they loaded him up and got him out of there while an 8 to 10 foot page to the truck. But I worked for him for a year. And then a guy named Lieutenant General Scott Howell, who later commanded J-Sach, came in. And another phenomenal human being. I call that three years my Air Force appreciation tour.

I'm, you know, I'm the savage marine working for these, you know, Air Force dudes. They were all AFSOC pilots. They were all 53 pilots. They had all served together in the same squadron. I just learned a whole lot about culture and people and appreciating other people. And Scott Howell was a good friend of mine to this day. I've called him for help, counsel, advice, or just, hey, how you doing? And it's certainly the only three-star that I engage with it.

that way. But then, so I loved working for him, and then he got selected for J-Soc and went on down and took command there. And I went to work for Lieutenant General Jim Slyfe, who until relatively recently was the vice chief of the Air Force. And that was another great experience. That was a guy, that's a guy who, you know, would pull you into his office and he was explaining why he's doing things, what he's doing, because he really felt like his

job was to develop the people under him to become him. And, you know, I had to kind of, the first time he did that with me, I was like, sure, you got to understand the reality. Like, I'm never going to be a colonel, much less a three-star. I'm just going to work super hard for you, and I'm going to do as good a job as I can do for you. But you don't need to waste any personal development credits on me, because it's not going to pay off. And to his great credit, he still did, because he's somebody that develops, you know, his subordinates. He also likes really good music,

bands I never would have expected the three star to be into. So that was super cool. Can you explain what that office does and how it works in conjunction with Socom and Tampa? Sure. So you have the four-star commander of So-com.

And then you have a deputy commander who's a three-star who sits in Tampa. And he's basically the guy who's over worldwide ops. And he reports obviously to the commander, but he kind of guides all the ops related stuff, operations, intel, you know, talking to subordinate units, etc. And then you have the vice commander in D.C. He lives in D.C. He sits in a small office in the Pentagon. And his job is to interface with all the personalities up in D.C. and within the building itself. And to also be the guide who oversees resourcing money,

acquisitions, you know, technology and logistics, the J8, in particular, and then like I say, soft AT&L, the developmental stuff within SOCOM. He's in charge of that, he or she. And so that was the developmental path for Trask who retired out of there. So Howell, who took J-Soc out of there, and then Slife, who took AFSOC before becoming by chief of staff of the Air Force. And this office is separate from ASD SOLIC. Yes, but very much interfaced with ASD SOLIT. When Owen West, who was a fellow Force Recon Marine, was ASD Solic, we would go, you know, sit with him once a week and have a standing meeting.

And I always had fun with that because we were both forced guys. And, you know, I was like, he's the ASD. But hey, Worth, what's up? Let's talk about running or something, you know? Just two force guys. It's cool. But before we move on from this timeframe, anything you want to say about, like, like working as the J5 at the Siege of Soda,

some of those other experiences you said were very positive? Once I grew up and matured and was able to open my eyes to, what can I learn here? You know, rather than I know everything, so let me just shut down my brain because these people are wasting my time until I can get what I want. I worked for a phenomenal commander named Chris Riga,

and I adored working for Chris Riga. You talk about a guy who empowered his subordinates to just run. I will never forget this guy, like right after he took command of the Cedicota, if we're having one of our morning stand-ups, he comes walking in. We do the whole stand-up. Everybody on the joc floor stands up and says their thing. And we get to the end. And Riga, who's got like this super kind of, you know, cool,

whole demeanor about him. But he's like, hey, so who here does something that they think is stupid? and everybody's kind of like, uh, me? He's like, okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to stop doing that thing. And if the next higher headquarters doesn't call you on it within the next seven days, never do that thing again. And I just was like, this guy was on his thing, his 13th rotation in Afghanistan.

I was working with him. I was working with a guy from third. He was a third group homeboy now in command of seventh group. And so the J3 was a really great dude who had lost one leg in a suicide bombing in Pakistan. And he was a real, live tough guy and deployed with one amputated leg and one messed up leg. And he trained so hard and ran so hard every day on the treadmill that he jacked up his other leg. And they had to take off that foot. Oh, shit.

So they sent him home. But, I mean, it was just a really impressive, hard, dedicated, brave dude. And so they brought in another guy. We had a third group guy named Dave Haskell, who had been one of Riga's ODA commanders when Riga was an AOB commander and was now chief of staff of the CIGISOD. We had a guy named Jason Johnson, who is the single finest military officer I've ever worked with in any. any service. Jason came over to be the J3. He had been one of Riga's AOV commanders when, or excuse me, ODA commanders when Riga was an AOB commander. And then he and Haskell were Aob commanders for Riga at First Battalion, Third Group. And then Jason ended up taking First Battalion

Third Group and then ultimately taking third group. But I've said it to Jason. I've said it a ton of people. The single best military officer of any service or capability I have ever worked with is Jason Johnston, who recently retired out of the Army. So phenomenal people, just phenomenal. It was a really, really special deployment. And the folks that I was working with in the J5, like and and a lot i you know i had one special forces officer i had a seal staff nCO and i and i had an eOD guy and i think those were my only socom homegrown folks probably the the most effective guy was my orsa who was a cab officer uh that's an operational research and systems analysis guy that the army gives you basically

designated smart guy he's a phd now um but the guy had done 48 months in back in Baghdad and Mosul, et cetera, as a cab guy. He had written a Medal of Honor citation, if that tells you the level of combat he had seen. So he was like a real legit, tough guy. It was just a really, really, really good team. So super deployment, you know, and I say all the time, I said to you before we started recording, you know, I got one combat deployment and two deployments to combat zones. And it's two very different things.

and I like to be very, very clear about that because there were plenty of young Marines who were out there, you know, I met them in intervening years who were putting tourniquets on their arms and legs before they went out on patrol because they just knew somebody was going to need these today. Meanwhile, I had plenty of coffee and cliff bars and, you know, whatever else, rippets. Rippets. Of the 13 months I spent at Bogram, you know, I was no kind of hero in Afghanistan. So 2021, you had already kind of figured out or determined for yourself. I'm not going to be a general.

But your retirement is kind of coming up. I mean, was there like trepidation about that? I mean, you were in the core for a long time. I was, but, you know, I bounced out. I bounced back in. I knew the reality of the situation. I say now to guys because I do a lot of talking to Marines at the 15 to 20 year mark. The worst thing a Marine does is get out too early or too late.

I did both. And, and I mean, I didn't get out with any bitterness. It was just well past time when, like, when guys you raised as captains are starting to get named as battalion commanders, it's time for you to go away. And I also believed in the organizational development of Marsock, you know, we were hodgepodge. In the early days of Marsok, you know, you were either a prior force guy or you weren't, right? You either had jump and dog, jump wings on dog bubble or you didn't. And there were a number of guys who came. So I know this isn't where we are, but I'm going to go back in time.

Sure. You know, when Marsok commenced, it was formed out of first and second force recon companies, which were the halves. And then the foreign military training unit, which was a Marine Corps stood up organization that my buddy Pete Petronzio, the second force commander and the G3, was the CO of. And the way that thing got filled was, hey, everybody that speaks of language is coming to Camp Lejeune. That's also an 03X infantry guy, and they're now trainers. I mean, it was much like an S-FAB, probably, realistically.

And a lot of it got pulled out of Fourth Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was an ad hoc unit that got started again. Like, hey, everybody kick up some Marines, we're making a MEP, which then turned into everybody kickups, Marines, we're making an FMTU. And so there were some really amazing Marines with some amazing capabilities, and stories, but there also were some guys where it was like, oh, yeah, you're going to go be soft now. Yeah.

Go ahead. And so there, you know, the, I think a critical thing going back to the question about how do you stand up a new unit, you all need to have a common bloodline. And, you know, I was a force guy, but I didn't go to ITC. Maybe this guy went to selection, but he didn't go to ITC. This guy went to selection and ITC. This guy never went to any of it because he was grandfathered in in 2000 and whatever. The best thing that happened, no matter the quality and performance,

and look, some of the dudes that came in in the initial draft did unbelievable things in combat in Afghanistan, in Africa, in any number of places. They burnished the unit's legacy with honor, no question. But the best thing is that guys like me retired out. So that now you see a Marsac lieutenant colonel, you know exactly what you. it came from and how he got there. And that matters. Right, right, right. So you retire and what within a month or two, Afghanistan is collapsing. Yeah, I retired on June 30th of 2021. And I jumped in an RV with my 10-year-old daughter. And I got that idea from Pat McCauley,

who was the CSM of SOCOM. And I was talking to him one day about what are you going to do when you retire CSM? I'm going to drive around this country that I've been defending. with various units for the last 30 years. He was a Marine who jumped to the Army. And I'm going to go see this countryside. And I said, that sounds like an amazing way to kind of wash all this out of your system. So I rent this little C-class RV. I don't know how to drive an RV.

And I throw my daughter in it and we start driving. And we drive 12,000 miles. And my wife met us in Bozeman and came the rest of the way home to Wilmington, North Carolina, where I live. but I was very studiously avoiding Afghanistan because, you know, I was obsessed with it for years. For whatever reason, I'm way more passionate about Afghanistan than Iraq. But I would pick up little bits of data. You know, my daughter's sleeping and I'm reading the news or whatever in the RV.

And it was like, hey, Lashkar-Ga fell to the Taliban. No shit. Again, you know, ninth commando Kandak will go down there and sort that out. And then it'll happen again next year, whatever. And by the time I got home on, I think, August 5th or August, August 10th or 12th, I don't know what it was. I got home and the Taliban were at the gates of Kabul. And it had already gotten my attention when they took Mizari Sharif. I was like, they took Mez? What?

And so I started paying attention. But now I'm starting this new life. And I had started writing before I retired. So I kind of had a good glide path as a writer. And I was going on my very first real live go somewhere and write something assignment. And my job was I was going to go out to Western North Carolina and I was going to do some fly fishing in the tuck of C.G and some other stuff, you know. And anyway, go out there and write about it. Okay, cool.

Well, we were having a hurricane off the coast of North Carolina. The outer bands are out there. Mountains are collapsing. Like entire sides of mountains are falling into the river. bodies are floating down the river. It feels like the apocalypse. I'm staying with a buddy of mine who's an author and magazine writer who lives in a cabin on top of a mountain in the boondocks of North Carolina. He has no phone service and he can text when he has internet. And I got a message the day before I left from this Lance Corporal in the Reserves who had been an Afghan interpreter for seven years before he

migrated over here and got citizenship and joined the Marine Corps. And he's like, sir, my dad is with the special mission wing in Kabul. And my brother is an interpreter with them. My mom and little brother are living there with them. And I'm afraid they're going to get killed. Can you help me? And I'm like, dude, I'm a middle manager, bro. What do you? You know, and I'm retired. But okay, let me see what I can do. When I Lance Corporal asks Lieutenant Colonel to do something, you, you figure it out. So I'm thinking on this. I started reaching out.

My buddy was the Mew Commander at the airport. And I knew a couple of folks on his staff as well and I knew some other people. And so I was just kind of paying attention. But I also was watching this guy, Tom Schumann, who runs patrol base of Bate. He's a Marine lieutenant colonel now who'd been trying to get his turf out for really 10 years. But he got real aggressive during the Evac. ends up above the fold in the New York Times. And, you know, Tom's really, really capable, really, really thoughtful, organized human being. He's also tall and good looking, so that helps.

But there he is, and he's running this amazing guerrilla campaign in the media to try and get his guy out. So I call him on Facebook Messenger phone from the top of a mountain in the middle of a hurricane. I've never talked to him in my life. And I'm like, hey, dude, I think I got a way to get your boy out. and a few weeks later we well a few months later we inked a deal to write the book about him and his turf and then we got the family out of the marine lance corporal as well so that started it I drove back across north Carolina from the far western end to where I live on the far eastern end I had my daughter with me and I started calling guys like Mick Mulroy and hey man what are we going to do how are we going to help affect this situation?

My 10-year-old learned a whole lot of new ways to say the F-word because they were formed a day on the speaker in the car. And by the time I got back, we had organized a group to try and do some evact. But the truth of the matter is we were ineffective because it was a bunch of old dudes. It was like a bunch of colonels and ambassadors and, you know, from the agency. People say there's a certain age where you get too old and you forget how to do work. I don't think that's true.

We were willing to work. You just forget, you don't know how mechanisms and systems work anymore below you because you're so used to tasking the systems to do things. And so eventually a guy named Jim Webb, who's, you know, Senator Webb's kid and a journalist hooked me up with a guy named Joe Zabo, who's, you know, at this point, he's probably 40 now. And Joe was actually being effective. He was a recently separated captain who was working in tech. And he had a bunch of dudes just like him.

And they were making it happen on the ground. And I talked to him. And I was, again, let's talk about ego. You know, I call him up, ready to blow him away with my resume and that of all my friends. And how important we are and how many connections we have. And I did just that thing. And he handled me like a pro. He was like, that's amazing.

I never thought I'd be talking to guys like you with these amazing resumes. I was like, all right, now, who are you? You know? And he's like, well, we've got 80 volunteers. And you hear like a voice off to the side. He's like, sorry, 100 volunteers. And, you know, we're organizing training. And we've got a virtual jock set up.

And we're organizing sticks on the ground so that we can get people onto airplanes. And I was like, what do you need? I was like, we need somebody to bust roadblocks administratively. I was like, well, okay, that's the way. that's the one thing we can do for you. And so that way, you know, I and my fellow, what they started calling graybeards, because that was the last time I had this beard. We were like, okay, got it.

Yeah, we know the deputy unders and the assistants and the, you know, vice commanders and whatever on the ground, we can help with that. And so that was our utility in cobble. How long did that process go on with you guys, the evacuation effort? about two weeks that felt like two years. Yeah, yeah. I was just awake. Round the clock.

Yeah, it was really hard. I say this now. I did, before I retired, I went to the Intrepid Spirit Clinic for five weeks for TBI, along with a bunch of other guys. And I had over the course of my career, you know,

sent many Marines to see the psych. And I was like, yeah, go, man, it's totally cool. It's just like seeing a physical therapist or whatever else. In my head, I was like, for you. Yeah, not for me. And then a buddy of mine I respect very, very much from a very elite military formation made it okay.

And then I went to that program, I still didn't do it. And then I went to that program where it was just part of the game and you got to do it. And so I've kept seeing the same psych ever since. And the Cobblee Act was the only time in my life where I called the clinic. It was like, I got some shit I'm going to need to get ahead of because I had people calling me 24-7, you know, my brother's getting murdered or texting me pictures of, you know, this is my father, he's dead. Can you get my uncle out, you know, whatever? And it was just like, I got to where when the little ding from the WhatsApp would go off, I would flinch.

I learned to turn that thing off. I've never turned it back on. But it was rough, man. It was a rough time. But people did amazing things, none more so than the Afghans. And the book that you worked on that came out of that is called Always Faithful. People get, and that's out now, right? Oh, yeah, it's been out since 22. I had to write 110,000 words in four months. And get that out. It came out for Harper.

Somebody optioned the movie writes before we even wrote the book. I mean, I don't think anything's ever come of that. But it's a good book. It's a good amount of parochial. obviously, but it's a really good story. How about that? Without evaluating the merits of the writing, it's a great story. And with the writing, you today do a couple writing workshops with veterans, one in North Carolina and another at a TBI clinic. Yeah, I do. So I got asked by a therapist in Asheville, North Carolina, to start an Eastern Carolina version of a program that

the North Carolina Veterans Writing Alliance, which also operates as brothers and sisters like these, a bunch of Vietnam vets, had started doing a writing therapy program at the VA in Asheville. They asked me to start it in eastern Carolina. I could not get anybody to sign up for an in-person writing thing. And I went on a tour. I hit the VA. I hit every veteran organization. Like, this is free.

Just want 10 of you, whatever. Nobody's biting. So I went on my Instagram account. and was like, hey, here's what I'm going to do. If anybody wants to come on Zoom and be part of it, you can. And so we're starting our fourth iteration of that on October 1st. It's eight weeks. It's Wednesday nights.

It's free from, I think we're doing it 7 to 8.30, I think, this time around. I've got a number of repeat players. I got a number of new folks. And that one is a wide array of people. But it is wide open to anybody with a DD-214 or an active-duty person. And by active duty, I mean serving guards, person, whatever. And then I do one at the TBI Clinic from whence I came. And that is a four-week version of the eight-week group that I do.

And that is an all-active-duty crowd. That's the cohorts going through the TBI Clinic program. And both of them are deeply rewarding for similar and different reasons. Is the kind of intent to just help these people with whatever their project is, or like are you like trying to use writing as sort of um i know there's a term that va does when they have you like write about your experiences some sort of therapy yeah we we call it writing therapy i tell them all the time i'm not here to make right make you writers i'm here to make veterans right because there's people that just need to unload stuff and i've had uh like again

i think of one of my active duty groups i had and it was a room full of real live tough guys like actually the battalion that Tom Schumann about whom I wrote the book one of the two people that wrote the book uh it was third battalion fifth Marines dark horse in 2010 and sang and dark horse had the most injuries of any infantry battalion in the Afghan war they had I think 25 or 26 Marines killed they had north of 110 120 single double and triple amputees so they had massive stuff I had a guy who'd been a squad leader in that now he's a start major. He's done multiple deployments to include that one. And I remember him, you know, just crying while he was reading. And it's an environment in which you're sitting around a table with

raiders and Seals and Recon Marines and amphibious Recon Corman and whatever. And nobody's looking at that guy weird because he's crying because they know exactly where he's coming from. Yeah, yeah. And would never, ever deign to question it. Right. And then the guy who's cab and I was in that night on top of that mountain and barely able to communicate while trying to coordinate the evacuation evacuation of a family from Kabul. That guy's a six foot five, two hundred forty pound country boy. No military history, the exact opposite probably. But one thing he said to me about writing, he's like, if you want to be a writer,

you've got to be fearless and vulnerable. And I now think about that all the time. And I think about that in leadership. I think about that in writing. I think the success I've had, what success I've had as a writer, as because I took that to heart, you know, two years ago. I never would have said on a podcast, yeah, I go see a psych every four to six weeks. But I say that now because I hope somebody else will.

And, you know, it's like having a paid best friend. I don't actually have a whole lot of stuff to talk about, but, you know, whatever. We chat. And so I think fearlessness and vulnerability are critical to authentic leading, to authentic writing, to authentic much of anything. And that all came out of that time. I think we have a viewer question for you, Worth. Do you got that one up, Dee?

Give me one sec. You mentioned your Instagram. Where can people find you on social media? Yeah, so I've got my personal one, which, unless you want to see pictures of my dog, you probably don't want to follow that one. And it's at worth. dot Parker at W-O-R-T-H dot P-A-R-K-E-R.

But I started one about books, primarily about conflict books and war books, certainly ones I think that don't get enough attention, but it's at book war, so it's B-0-0-0-K-W-A-R. And I do a lot of book reviews there. I do a lot of just talking every now and then I'll, you know, I'll be like, oh, some young Marines need to hear this. And then I'll get on there and, you know, rip for three minutes. but it's good. I mean, I get some nice feedback on it.

And whatever, there it is. People can reach out to me there. I've had folks hit me up with, you know, literature questions, but also just, gosh, you were a Marine for a long time. What do you think about this? That's awesome. All right. We got a question from Easy.

Is there anything he would like to see change in today's military in training, structure, or ethically? I think an ethical. military is the distinction between us and savagery. I think that when you give up that aspect of your military force, you are giving up yourself. And moreover, you're giving up the future of those service members. That's a great question. And I'm going to dig deeper into it than the person may have thought, you know, they were asking for. You have an obligation as a leader to prepare your Marine Sailor Service members, what have you, for the rest of their lives. And if you, if you

allow them to do things in a time in their life when their bodies and minds will allow them to that are outside the pale of humanity they're going to contend with that stuff for the rest of their lives i've had one marine from my platoon kill himself in the intervening years since we got back from iraq um that wasn't entirely surprising to me tom schumann about whom i wrote the book got deep into this which is how patrol base abate came to exist And what he figured out is that the two things that are really contributing to vet suicide after his rifle company had, I think, three Marines killed themselves in one week, is loss of connection, number one, when you get out. And then number two, something that I think is incredibly pernicious and is the I was just aification of veterans. Well, I was only a heavy equipment operator.

I wasn't a SEAL Team six door kicker. So clearly I can't have problems. Yeah, you do, buddy. and it's okay, and there's things that exist there for you. But to go back to the question they were asking, you have to keep guys within the left and right limits of morality and just war. And I've studied just war a lot in law school and sense. Because while, you know, there's plenty of people who are like,

it's war, man, you do anything you want. Take a time off to a guy's face. In moments of exigency, sure. You know, if you and I are fighting for our lives at the moment, I got zero problems smashing your head in with a rock. Right. once you are secured and the fight is over, I have all the problems in the world with anybody even contemplating that rock. And I think, so I do think ethics and morality training absolutely matter because there's a real difference between a soldier.

And I use that term with a small S in a very generic sense between being a soldier and being a savage. And while I realize there's a really dumb t-shirt culture out there that thinks, you know, savagery is badass. Most of those people have probably never truly whipped it on. And they certainly probably never seen somebody's lower jaw slide off their face after you shot them a bunch. Yeah. I mean, maybe there's... Given the rate of veteran suicides we have, I think it's good to have a little bit of humility. Like, maybe we're going to sideline the vet bro t-shirts for a moment.

We might not be so badass if we're having all these problems, and we should address those problems. Well, and what even is badass? What does it mean? Yeah. I say to people all the time, especially when I do these therapy groups, you take me in slices, I'm anybody you need me to be stereotype-wise. And I wrote about this earlier.

I'm doing StoryCorps for NPR tomorrow, and they ask me how I identify. And I am, let's see, I'm a straight. white male with a southern accent. I have more guns in my gun cabinet than I actually know how many I have. I write about hunting and fishing for a living. I drive a four-wheel drive pickup truck and my main hangout partner is a Labrador retriever. So that's one dude. My wife is an ACLU, former ACLU lawyer and longtime civil libertarian. I'm pretty strongly engaged in civil libertarians. Most of the bands I listen to are just definitively left of center. I am a former, or at least I'm a licensed attorney myself. You know, like how I'm anti-death penalty. Like, how do you characterize someone? And we're in this place in America where we characterize someone by their,

whatever their optic is. Right. You know, and so my only point there is you can't. And so when we start talking about what's a badass. Well, the most badass Marine that I've ever served with, And I, you know, as a redneck from the south is a Manhattanite, uh, half Jewish guy whose dad was liberated out of Auschwitz. And the guy's a straight dynamo in combat. He's a straight student of the game.

There is literally no one I would prefer to have by my side in front of me or behind me in a gunfight. He's also absolutely a left-wing Democrat. Um, and he's a straight killer in a gunfight. but there are people who maybe would think to be badass you can't be but one or the other you know what I mean yeah it makes us uncomfortable that to have these multiple identities right in you yeah and and I think in America we're failing right now to understand and I don't know the why of that um I don't know what social ill to ascribe it to and it's probably you know 50 or 60 social ills but uh it just the real point is people are complex and you know as a culture we've got to address that but

within our veterans culture, when we try to simplify everything, well, he's worth partner. He's a forced recon guy and a raider. Okay, cool. He's worth partner. He's a freelance writer, you know, who occasionally breaks into tears when he looks at his daughter. Like, who is that guy? He's all of those guys. Right.

And so when we try to define ourselves as one or the other, we're, A, incredibly self-limiting and B, putting a whole lot of constraints on other people that are not. effective or helpful. Yeah. No, absolutely. Worth, I really appreciate you sharing your experiences with us. Is there any final thoughts, anything that we didn't cover that you'd like to get into tonight? You know, like I say, anybody who's interested in writing therapy can reach out to me at that bookworm Instagram. I just need an email address and I'll get folks on it. But I think, you know, as I said in one of my random email or Instagram rants the other day, like, you're enough. Like, whatever your deal is, you're enough.

If you threw your hand in the air and showed up to MEPs and you served three years and you never left Fort Irwin, you're enough. Yeah. You did more than 99.5% of the country. And if you got shot at in the process, you did more than 99.99,999% of the country as far as, was serving her nation and her interests. And I think the more we recognize that and the more we reach out and go,

that's the unifying factor that we have, I probably have more in common with somebody with whom I'm diametrically politically opposed who also served than I do with somebody who's working on control in the narrative and didn't. But that sounds like. conspiracy theorist than I mean to. We will have some links down the description to these different things in your social media

that you mentioned, Worth. We'll stick all that down there in the description for folks that want to check it out. Everyone, thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you, Worth, for sharing some of your evening with us. I know the dog is getting, the dog's getting questions. I'm kind of blown away about that fact. What questions? No, there were people out there asking questions in real time kind of blows me away. So thank you to those people. Yeah. I appreciate whoever wrote that question into us. And worth stay in touch. And we'll talk next time. Okay. I'll look forward to it. All right. We'll see you guys. We'll see you guys. I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House podcast, the

Eyes On podcast and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Aizon and the Team House and whatever's topical or current on the high side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it will have, you know, the greatest hits of that week.

It's really good, man. Checking it out. The website for it is teamhousepodcast.kit.com slash join. Teamhousepodcast.com slash join. You go there and you enter into your email list or you enter your email into the little thing on the website and you're good to go. And that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support and hope you'll consider signing up. Where's the link?

The link will also be down in the description if you're looking for it there. And that's teamhousepodcast.com.kitt, kiloindiatango.com backslash join.