The Team House - Inside the Fight with 5th Special Forces Group | Drew Estell | Ep. 380

Episode Date: November 15, 2025

Former 5th Group Green Beret Drew Estelle joins Jack to walk through his wild path from a chaotic Texas childhood to Iraq, Afghanistan, and covert work supporting the Syria mission. Drew breaks down Iranian influence in Iraq, the intelligence nightmare in Kunduz, building ALP who actually fought, and the political headaches behind training Syrian forces in Turkey. A raw, detailed look inside modern Special Forces operations — and the personal cost that comes with them.Check out Drew here:https://baersolutionsllc.com/https://www.instagram.com/baersolutionshttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UC18I4Yip4t76Pf9e6uGmoMwToday's Sponsors Perfect Jean ⬇️https://theperfectjean.nyc/house15for 15% offGhostBed⬇️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 — Start 01:00 — Texas Roots & Playing “Green Berets”03:20 — College Chaos & Getting Kicked Out06:35 — Enlisting & Fighting for an SF Contract10:55 — SFAS, Failing 18D & Becoming an 18B15:45 — Iraq: Firebase Brown & Early Combat22:40 — Iran’s Influence & The Arrest Revolving Door34:00 — Afghanistan: Kunduz, IMU, & ALP Who Fought52:55 — B-Team, Kabul LNO & Turkey/Syria Mission1:06:45 — CIF, Broken Neck & Building Bear SolutionsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

The Team House with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park. This is episode 380 of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy with our guest tonight, Drew Estelle. Drew served in Fifth Special Forces Group. The guys most of our viewers know, they fixate on the Middle East. That's their AOR. And Drew did a number of deployments all over that place. And today works on films.

works on training with law enforcement and number of other things. So we're going to get into all that with Drew here. Thank you for joining us tonight. Yeah, man, I appreciate it. So, yeah. It's great to have you on the show finally. So I'm going to hit you with the first question, which we pretty much ask everybody, is if you tell us a little bit about your origin story, like, how did you grow up, where did you grow up, and like how did that sort of eventually take you towards military service? I was waiting for that one. I've been a fan of your podcast for a while, man.

I think you do some phenomenal interviews. You've got some phenomenal people on here, by the way. So it's really cool to get to sit here. So thank you. So, yeah, man, I grew up in Texas, Houston, Texas, outside of it, a place called Spring. And if anybody's from Houston, the way you know the area is by what high school you went to, right? Like, oh, what high school? You know, so Klein Oak.

I grew up in that area right there on the northwest side. But, yeah, so it's kind of funny. My buddy, who is now. now also a green beret. Like we knew each other from kindergarten, playing T-ball and all that. And we're in elementary school. We used to go out in the woods and play green berets.

Like my uncle's, you know, field manual, like special forces, you know, field manual, all that stuff, survival manuals and shit. And like all those old gear from Vietnam, and we'd go to the Army's surplus store. It's kind of cool. We both grew up to be green berets like we were when we were kids.

So it was pretty neat, man. But yeah, he's a good dude. He played football at Texas A&M. And then he joined. that I joined after my third freshman year of college, we can call it. Sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, Drew. I had a great time. So the, yeah, man, I grew up in Texas, going to play football.

I also played lacrosse growing up. Just normal family, good family, all that, middle class, just your standard shit. And then, yeah, I went to a private school my senior year to, I got a scholarship, because that's just the way Texas high school football works. Otherwise, I probably wasn't going to college because I was an idiot. And then, yeah, it worked out really well. I went to a small D3 school called Marietta College, my first year. And I played football, and I went to play lacrosse there, too.

But they dropped the program from like, whatever. And I ended up leaving there, and I went to Texas State University. I used to go to Southwest Texas. Well known for being a party school, the biggest party school in state of Texas. So as I got kicked out of the state of Texas, so as I got kicked, out of there twice. I didn't have going to community college. And then I got kicked out of a community college. And then I was like, you know what? Maybe I'm going to join the army. You know, I think this is a good idea. So are any of those stories about how you got kicked out still classified or are you

permitted to tell some of those? Oh, yeah, dude. Oh, bro. Okay. So I was in a fraternity for a little bit and like I joined a fraternity because my dad's like hey you're not playing I went to play football at Texas state but I couldn't I had too many head injuries and injuries and then they changed coaches so I lost my transfer like little offer and scholarship and then uh so I joined a fraternity my dad's like yeah it's a good idea fraternors are good not at this school bud you know what I'm saying so I joined the fraternity that was literally all former military guys and former college athletes like my little dude grand big or whatever, he was a captain in the Marine Corps. He was, he was 28 years old, went to college to do like green to gold.

And so then he went on and all that, dude, just military guys everywhere. And nobody knows out of party better than them. And yeah, so I got, I got, uh, got my nose broke or got a fake tooth because I have a smart mouth. And, uh, so I got kicked out the first time I got in big trouble. Um, I thought some other dudes stole like my pledged. jersey, right? Like the shirts you wear. So I knock on his door. I'm like, yeah, man. Like, you got my jersey. And he's like, no, no, I don't. I didn't take your shit, you know? And for something,

I think I was still drunk when I did this. This is the next morning. And he was like, no, so I went in his room and tried to do all this. Well, he called his buddies and whatever and they showed up. And this dude is the biggest dude I've seen in a long time. He, uh, he set the record for like collegiate bench press, like power lifting in the state of Texas. His name is BJ, which I I was hilarious. And he did not. And he punched me pretty hard and basically turned my face inside out. You know, he broke my tooth and everything. So that was a fun conversation with the dean. And then I had another conversation too where he's like, what are you going to do with your life, you idiot? I think I'm going to join the army. He's like, son, that is a great idea. You need to go do that right now. But yeah, I worked on 6th Street in college. If you're familiar with it. All the bars. So it's like, Rockway Street, you know, in Nashville or like Beale Street, Memphis. It's like the bar club street of Austin. And I actually worked for MTV.

Oh, really? So, yeah, dude. So like that TV show, The Real World. Yeah. Like what they do, and at the time, it was a guy named Wes was on the show, Nehemiah, they were super cool. They were the dudes. I don't remember the chicks.

But when they go to the different bars on 6th Street, what they do is they kind of work out of deal with the bar owners and the club owners. And somehow I got picked up at 20 years old to be like the security manager for them when they were at our bars. And the only reason was because Wes, he and I looked a lot of like with like drunk girls would think I was Wes. And then I'd be like, I'm not. And he's like, yeah, ladies, this is. I'm like, oh, God, here we're getting. So it was kind of neat, man.

But yeah, I joined the Army. I was, I had a great time before the Army. And I learned some valuable lessons to say the least. So what year was it that you enlisted? 2005 I enlisted and I went to basic training in like January of 2006. Okay. And what MOS? 11 X-ray.

Oh, okay. So you were an X-ray? Yeah, I didn't, I didn't know what an X-R, I just thought it was infantry. I'm going to be an 11 Bravo. And I showed up and they're like, you're a mortarman. I was like, the hell is a mortarman. You know, like, I don't know. and they were like, you're going to like,

you know, thing. And I'm like, no, I'm not doing that. That's not what I signed up to do. Because they wouldn't let me have the SF contract coming in because I had shoulder surgery from college football. So I was like, no, I'm not going to do that. I mean, it wouldn't let me have the SF contracts. They're like, all right, well, they come in this. You'll just get it when you're in the Army.

So I was pretty pissed. I didn't know what a damn warderman was. So I called my recruiter and was like, you son of us just cussing him out. Don't ever get Joe Flores. phenomenal dude. I think he's a sergeant major in recruiting. He might have retired, but great dude, man. And he was like, calm down. You're fine. You can still go S-F. You know, so I ended up, it worked out fine, but I was pretty pissed off. I was like, you lied to me, you mother effort, you know, like going off. Like, I didn't know what a morterman

was. I just know I'm going to carry heavy shit. And I'm not going to be like the other infantry guys. Yeah, yeah. Well, to explain to some of the young folks out there within the Infantry, 11 Bravo, and every special forces guy has at least their secondary MOS is infantry. 11 Bravo split into, you know, riflemen and mortarmen. And that's what Drew's talking about. So I imagine that training, though, must have really come in handy down the line for you. It did because I ended up being an 18 Bravo. So I was like, oh, well, God has a plan.

That makes sense. And thank you. I know what to do with the little sticks and the, you know, turning thing. The whiz wheels and the big fire direction center board that confuses the hell out of me. Yeah. Yeah. So like I figured it out. I had a little leg up on the other guys.

So that helped, but definitely helped. So 2006, you go through basic training and then SFAS, the Q course, all of that. What was that experience like for you? Yeah, it was good, man. You meet so many different people, right? But when I actually got into SF, I was. supposed to go to Kelly, Kelly Hill or something like that for, I was supposed to stay on forbidding and third ID, right? And I was going to be 11 Charlie there. But I called the SF

recruiter like every chance I got during AIT, like the final however many weeks and just left messages. Because we were always at the mortar square. So when he'd come by, I didn't, you know, I never got to see him. And so I would just call him nonstop and leave a message. It's like, oh, excuse me, master sergeant. My name's private estal, you know, could I please? the SF. And he finally, I called it. It was like, he's supposed to be gone for the day. He goes, I just here, Sergeant, so-and-so. I'm like, uh, hi, Master Sergeant, uh, my name's So-and-so. He goes, he just goes, God dang, are you that little idiot that keeps calling me every day? I'm like, that's me, you know? So he's like, if you can get here in 20 minutes, man, I'll give you an

S-F contract. I was like, oh, shit. Okay. So I went over like the, one of the, uh, drill sergeants, who was this, you know, big old black dude from the city, you know, gold teeth and shit. And I was like, oh, Drusart. And I do this, lied to him. I was like, so-and-so said, you got to take me down there right now. He was like, what? He was like, yeah. Massard, I'm listening, not late.

I can't always take the life for me. And he goes, he said, you, by name, got to take me down there. He's like, he said my name? I was like, yeah. He goes, oh, oh, oh, shit. Oh, okay. Well, get your ass in the truck. So he drove me down, you know?

He's like, you need me to go in? I'm like, no, no, we're good. He said, just drop me off. But thank you very much. I'll let him know. He's like, yeah, you tell him. Tell them. I was like, yep, absolutely.

You know, so I got my ride down there. And I got my contract. It was really interesting because, like, I guess one of his friends was in town. Again, like massive dude, flame tattoos of his forearm wearing a Harley Davidson shirt. And they were third group guys. And he just sat and he said, and he's like, you really want to join us. And I'm like, yes, please, you know, mattress sergeant. And, of course, this other guy that's his buddy is just making fun of me the whole time.

I'm like, okay, this is, this seems cool. So. I know exactly. what you're talking about, the little one-story S-F recruiting station on Fort Benning? Yep. Yeah, yeah. I remember when I went in there, because I was with 375 at the time, and I went in there and said, hey, I'd like to do SFF, I want to go to SFAS.

And I just remember, like, well, a couple things. One of them was, he said, what MOS do you want? And I said, well, I'm pretty open-minded. And then he asked me what my GT score was. And I told him, and he said, well, let me narrow your mind a little bit. for you. You could be an 18 Bravo. And then the second thing was when I walked out of there, just a smile on that guy's face. He was like, he knew it. He's like, I got another one. Yeah. Yeah, dude. What year was that? That must have been 2000. That was probably 2006,

because I graduated the course in 2007. Oh, so I went to SFAS the last class of 2005. So, it would have been 05 that I went in there. Okay. Gotcha. Nice, dude. Yeah, I got, it's funny because I started out and I was an 18. I remember when you get your little sheet, Nick, you go through selection and you're like, I did it, you know, and you go to the room.

You know what I'm saying? So it's funny, man. You know that guy, Livelsberger that blew himself up in the Tesla? Yes. He and I went to selection together, and I knew him, and we went to the Q-course together. So like, you know, it's just not a random fact for you. But when you, uh, fuck, what was it? Yeah, you go through and they give you your MOSs and everything.

It was like, I remember taking the D lab and then being like, are you retarded? I was like, I think so, yes. There's a high chance of this. And they were like, okay. Well, then I guess they looked at my GT score and we got our MOSs and I'm like, you're going to be an 18 delta. I was like, I didn't get fucking wrong. There's no way I'm going to be an.

18 Delta. They were like, and Arabic. And I was like, no thank you. You know, like, so I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to die. You know, like mentally, my brain's going to explode trying to do this, but we'll figure it out. So I started out as an 18 Delta. And I remember the whole time in the Delta course. It was like me and like three former Marines. And they'd always call us the bravos. They'd like, hey, future brabos, you know, you're up, you know, for like T-T triple C and all this other crap, you know, and surgical skills. And they'd be like, like, why don't calls future bravos like because you idiots are all gonna fail and we're all gonna put you in the bravo course because you are retarded we're like oh okay cool sounds good you know and sure

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But again, it was good. You know, God has a plan. I did a lot of medical stuff overseas, man. And I think that really prepared me really well. And my team was a great team. So I got through the key course, did all that, and called the Long Bravo, right? I was so happy to be an 18 bravo, but not a Delta. However, I used a ton of medical, especially on the first and second trip to Iraq.

It was a lot. So, I mean, how much of the Delta course do you think you did, like eight weeks or something like that? There's A&P Patho, which is like the first six weeks. and then there's surgical skills, I think, is right after that. I got through surgical skills. Yeah, so I'm like,

with the hands on doing crikes, chest tubes, all that. I was great at that, but you couldn't get me to pass a written test. Like if you, this pisses me off, right? Because have you ever seen the written test with Delta Coralstra?

No, no, I haven't. Okay. It's like, here's a question, right? And they give it like a scenario, go, what's the best answer?

A only, A and C, B and D, B, B, D, E, or E, or like F all of the above. You're like, what? Like, what do you mean? And they're like, oh, you're right.

Your answer was right. But this other answer was a little bit more right. And you're like, that's the stupidest shit I've ever heard. You know, so like, that wasn't, I was not a Delta, obviously. So, yeah. That's awesome. But I mean, yeah, those skills came in handy later, the training that you did go through. That's cool.

So get the fifth group. Do you go right to an ODA or do you have to spend some time on the B team first or how's it work? No, I was really lucky I went right to an ODA. I went to 5-8-4 and then it was 5-3-2-4. Now it's 5-8-4 again because numbers are hard, evidently. So they changed it again like fucking commanders and their infinite wisdom in OER bullets. But they did that. I went to that team.

So 3rd Battalion and I showed up like, you know, every new guy does. like the only thing I can do is pass the eyeball test. I obviously don't know anything, so I'm going to show up in shape, you know, and whatever they throw out and be able to do. Have a great attitude. You know what I'm saying? Right mindset and do that. And I end up going to 2-4, the Halo team, or 8-4, and it was good. And I remember a guy named John Knaip, went up work for Magpull later. He was on the B-Team. He's like, what team are you going to? I was like, oh, Sergeant Major said 2-4, or 8-4. And he was mad. He was like, you're going to, because that's the best team in the battalion, guys worked so hard to get on that team,

all this stuff. And I was like, oh, shit, all right, I got a lot to work on. I got to really, you know, do the right thing here. And I got to, you know, step up. And I did. I got a really great team, very experienced team. There were three of us new guys that all got there pretty much within like a month of each other. And yeah, the rest of the team was really experienced. We lost the guy the trip before, Jason. So he was killed up there in Jula, Asadiah, the trip before. Jason Brown. And then so we were deployed in like two months by the time I got there.

So I got there just enough time to do some, some ranges. We did PMT at Fort Knox and then we were off. It was kind of like the attitude in the team was, hey, you're ready because we're going right back there and we're going to fuck some people on. You know what I mean? I was like, okay, all right. This is what we joined. Where did you get deployed?

Jolula acidia. Oh, so back to the same point. place for them. Yeah, back of the exact same. And they just kept going to that team house. You know, I mean, it would be us and then another team. And then us and then it was like a first group team and then so it was a fifth group team.

So like we were there every other time and they'd have another team kind of fill in between. So that was kind of bizarre place. So they call it Firebase Brown. What was the general like friendly enemy situation at that base? I don't think I've ever been in that area. It was a really interesting because we're right south at Canakin and very near. you're the Kurd Arab line. So the situation was,

was different. We absolutely had a lot of, you know, you had your, oh man, you had your, who the hell was? I'm getting all confused from Afghanistan and everybody else. But it was a JRTN was big up there. We had a lot of Iranian influence too. Oh, jam. And we had your typical, like, you know,

Al-Qaeda's or whatever the hell, you want to call it, you know. But it was very interesting because a lot of what we did, we had to do, we had to work with the curves, and we had to work with the air. So, and I don't know if you're familiar, they don't like each other. You know what I'm saying? So I mean, hell, we go on clearing ops with them with Arabs and curves on the second deployment there. And it was like, hey guys, here's what we're doing, brief on them, get ready, going out.

We pull into the city and we're like, turn around, look back down the road. And they both have their guns pointed at each other on the trucks. And we're like, oh, God dang it. You know, like, point your guns out, not at each other. And they're like, no, then first, you know, like, oh, God, dang it, you fucking children. You know, so. But it was cool, man. We did some hits, got up the door, got a few people.

There was a lot of infiltration into the police forces where we were at and the military. And usually, I feel like with other guys that would say, hey, the police are really where you see a lot of that. And yeah, we did. We'd go after targets, you know, like this one dude, Ann Mar, Mahomet used or whatever the hell, went after him. Well, I mean, he was a police officer that was doing stuff and we went and got his ass. and then the military though had a lot of stuff too with the iA and they were actually planning iEDs on the road into our base which we shared with them on the bigger base fob cobra and so they'd be putting out iEDs and no shit dude we'd go do like a sniper mission set up the jammers take over a little area

and like just lay in sniper overwatch and we'd watch these guys sneaking out there laying iEDs like where they do come from it's like dude came from base like oh shit you know so yeah man uh and they always try to blow us up and they got blowing each other up and we're like dude you're not even hitting us you know what i'm saying like you're just killing your buddies so i mean i i imagine that like you guys had to be cleared to snipe the iED teams but then there there is like inevitably there's going to be fallout from that if they're you know military people on a base right next to you yeah and yes and so we had to let them know what we were doing which we didn't necessarily want to do, right? We had to let the command know. And as we let the command know, sorry, I'm not close enough

to this loon. As we let the command know, we went out one time to do it. So we took over a little checkpoint. We got out there, did it. And then the IA came out to do their own little ambush. And I don't have you ever watched, you know, the Iraqi army under nods and thermals sitting in an ambush line. It's hilarious to say the least. But we're like, well, we're not getting shit done tonight. not going to shoot nobody. You know what I mean? So, and then we actually did have some movement off to one side. We saw some dudes and we're like, ooh, here it comes. Well, then they obviously spotted the Iraqi army and we were like, dude, because they're just smoking cigarettes and performing sexual favors on each other. You know what I'm saying? So you're like, oh, great.

We're just watching that in their knowledge. It's like, oh, that's cool. Like, bleh. So another day in the life. They don't teach you that part in the Q course, do they? No, I don't. They don't teach you that they have one dude for company named Hamza, and they're like, what does Hamza mean? Hamza, like, is a number. It's a little circle. It stands for a butthole. You know, that's their dude. And you're like, oh, okay.

I got it. You know, like, they don't teach any of that in the key course. And so as that deployment went on, you guys rolled up some bad guys and dealing with IEDs. I mean, how did things kind of progress as you got deeper into that deployment? So the first deployment, I think it was pretty staining. I think for me as a new guy, I was just trying to learn as much as I could. You know, I was the junior bravo, I had a senior and just trying to pick up as much as I could from him. So I was learning, you know, base defense and operations and convoy ops and, you know, trying to stay on top of it as best I could.

So for me, it was just a really good learning experience. Yeah, we went after some people, but there was always, for everybody we went after, you know, they went warrants. And it became like we're a SWAT team more than anything else. And now we got to deal with the Iraqi judicial system, which is not exactly stellar. You know what I mean? And corrupt as hell. So it's like they wouldn't even like really fight back a lot of times because they just need to be like, hey, what's up? I'll be out tomorrow.

Like who cares? You know, and it was like, well, that sucks. It's like, you know, at the point I was like, can we just shoot him? They're like, no, you can just shoot him. You know, it's like, yeah, but can we like shoot a guy? Can we just shoot the guy? They're like, no, he's not armed. You have to actually take him in.

We're like, oh, this is stupid. So we did all that. But that was frustrating. That really was. However, it was good experience. We did some clearing ops. We did get some dudes and we did get some, you know, we found out some very interesting networks and things that were going on that opened up

to see some of the connections, especially. The one thing that we kind of couldn't cross that line was a lot of the Iranian stuff going on, which I know you're very familiar with. but one thing that was interesting was on that trip and then the second trip uh the second trip was operation new dawn i believe oh okay and yeah what they would do is they'd have these like you know those buses like greyhound buses so they would actually black out all the windows or put little things up but you think there's people in there but inside it's just a giant sigan bus and like they were driving those things around and we were like our i remember our head uh human guy was

telling us about it and our fox who was going over all that and was like wait a second what like yeah they're they're just hacking everything we have and just listen whatever they can you see the same bus parked out here then sure enough the iraqi's pulled over like oh crap they saw going they're go let that go you know because they don't want anything to do with that um and then we so it's like we know the iranians are driving sighing buses around us and we know all this other stuff's going on like and there was you go into a meeting and then the iranians would be they'd have their agency going to talk to somebody right after you and just all kinds of crap, man. It was just, it was a very interesting seeing that.

I think that was my first introduction into, I don't know, maybe the politics of it or a larger scale, strategic, you know, kind of looking stuff, you know, instead of just what you see in front of you. And the ROE at that time prevented you guys from really actioning the Iranian targets. Yeah, because when we'd send that up, it was always, hey, don't mess with that. That's not for us. And I'm like, okay, cool. You know, that worked out well.

Yeah. So I was like, well, can we just like put an IED out, you know, because these guys are good at blowing themselves up. Maybe just put one in front of this bus and call it a day. You know what I mean? So, but now there's nothing. I like, I like your thinking, Drew, good initiative. But they shut you down. That sucks. Yeah. So afterwards you get deployed, redeployed back home, back to Fort Campbell. And now you're going through the whole training cycle with your team. And I imagine they're sending you to MFF. and all that stuff too.

Yeah, so went to MFF, went to SOTC at Fifth Group. And as you know, Fifth Group, my personal opinion, like, I know some guys, some other groups, they do great stuff. I think Fifth Group, really, with our Sodic and Safawik, they run a phenomenal course. Like, I've seen some of the other courses out there and talk to people, and it's like, I feel that Fifth Group does a really good job with stuff like that. So I went to SOTIC, like, a week after I got back,

SOTIC II at Campbell. did that. That was good. Went to MFF. As we got, right as we got a new captain, me and like, we sent four guys to HALO school all at the same time. And we weren't supposed to get all of us in.

But like one of our old teammates, what was his damn name, Al, he was at the Halo committee as an instructor. And he was like, just send him to get him in. And shirt up. He walked by some dude and was like, up, up, up. He goes, oh, you're fat.

Get out. And then he's like, Drew, you're in. I was like, yeah, dude. You know, like, and then some guy didn't have something. And he was like, all right, out of here. Shipbag, you know, and then we all got in the course, which was super cool. But we had our new captain, phenomenal officer, phenomenal team leader. He ended up being a battalion commander later on, did really good stuff.

He's a company commander, a battalion commander, a guy called friend, have a lot of respect for his name is Bill Heffron. He's out now. But, yeah, I remember we go to Halo school, and our team sergeant was old school team serge and uh redneck as hell and he's like hey man you break that captain in right we're like okay sounds good dude you know so cat and bought drinks we'd go out and hang out and do stuff and it was a great time man we got real close the four of us so three new guys and our new captain so that's cool yeah you're right that's very rare for like you know almost half a team to go to the school at the same

time oh yeah yeah we were very fortunate to be able to do that so but yeah man did that um i had some other stuff in there. And then not too long after that, we went back again. So we went right back to the same place and we had our second deployment there, which I kind of already touched on was different because it's new dawn. It's supposed to be the drawdown. And we're doing less. We're letting them take the lead. So it was a lot more advisory missions. When we did go out, it wasn't a whole lot, but we did get out the door some, you know, not as much as we liked, but you probably never get out the door as much as you want to in any job. So it was, it was good. That was much more seeing the effect of how you train your guys and then going out with them. You know what I mean? And seeing how that works.

Like, yes, they're different. You know, we're not working with ISOP, Iraqi special operations. We're working with Iraqi Army. And you got to, you just, you know, set your expectations. And, you know, can I get him to do this? Did they complete the mission? Did they go out the door? Did they do what we told them to do? Well, they did. And that was good. You know what I mean? I got yeah I ate a charge on that one pretty good on that deployment I got knocked out pretty good but it was fun it was a good time you got too close to the breach well I didn't know the breach was going off because my junior brava didn't fucking say shit so he got so excited we we pulled up to this house you know and outside the courtyard and I'm in the truck and I'm the gunner and I'm covering the second story as they, you know, line up with the dudes. And so I remember two of our guys are standing there at the, and they're going to breach the gate.

So I'm covering, you know, the 50 cow and the saw, night vision. I'm like, okay, we're good. I'm like, what's going on, man? Like, what's taking so long? So I look down and all I see is them stacked up. And I see Logan like this. And he goes, and I see that quarter turn. And I was like, oh, I mean, we're like, I can't be.

I'm not even 15. 10, 15 yards from this thing. I'm right in front of the, like, the gate, just because of how the street was and everything else. And I was like, oh, crap. So I, like, started to go down right as the breach went off. And he's a Bravo. And, you know, when a Bravo makes a charge,

they do their math is P for plenty. And I'm pretty sure he just stuck a whole, you know, block. Yeah, block, you know, C4 on there. When it breached and it went off. And I just remember going, boom. And, like, my head whacked off the turret. And the gun.

flipped and came down. It hit me in the face. My nods all messed up and I was out. And I just remember hearing that, we, you know, and I kind of like oh crap, so I got back up. And I just remember that it didn't just pop the gate open. It like, it took the gate and blew it completely out of the like the courtyard, you know, walls. And it

blew it all the way to the house. And then it blew the glass out of the house, like off all the windows. And so there was nothing to clear. All these Iraqis are just coming out with their hands up coughing. You know, like, we're sorry. And like the Iraqi army's coughing. And they're just like, oh, it's okay. Please come over here. Have a seat. Let me get you some water. It was like, it was like a casualty event at that point. And I'm just, you know, they're like, hey, Drew, you okay? And I'm like, yellow seven. They're like, what? The fuck are you saying? You know, I don't know. I was out. But then our team's

I was pissed because he didn't call breach. So he thought an IED went off and we were all messed up. And I just remember to be like, I was just so excited to breach a gate. And I don't, I don't know. you know what I mean yeah I have control yeah pretty much but he said all that in his head not out loud on the radius so thanks a lot jerk so I and you I think you mentioned that you got to use some of your medical training on these first couple deployments I mean was it mostly on you or on Homsa or how did that work out so we uh we had a lot of guys on our team that had we had several guys that started out in the 18 Delta course and we had two medics. At one point, we had lost two of our medics.

So I became the medic on the team. I carried the med bag. And by lost, I mean, like they had to go back to this base to cover something with like finance and something popped up. So I filled in for them. But a lot of times it was just medical stuff. They'd get blown up and they'd call us and we'd rush over there, you know, and like do what we could.

Usually they're putting out IEDs on each other or whatever. But so, I mean, I mean, with that, like for instance, one time we had a guy is pretty messed up. So I had to amputate his leg. And I remember the CF medics were there, the conventional dudes. He was from a mitt team. And, you know, he was a little overwhelmed. And he's like, hey, guys, we got to, here's what we got to do.

And it took about 10 seconds. And I remember one of our medics was like, get out of the way. Like, we're in charge. And I think he was very, like, appreciative of that. And so he was like, two 18 deltas are working up top and they're criking this dude. He's trying to get an IV, the conventional force medic. And I was amputating a leg, right? And so cut off his leg, you know, set it down.

And this guy couldn't get his stick on the, get the IV started because he was, you know, I think this is new for him, you know, like it's probably a little bit less experienced dude. And, you know, that's understandable, especially when a guy is you're having to hold his arm down because he's still alive kicking and we're cracking this dude, right? So he's fighting the whole time. So finally I had to grab it and I just stuck him real quick, did it, you know, flash and we're up. And that guy was just like, oh, my God. I'm like, I'm not an 18 Delta, dude.

I'm just the Bravo. I'm the gun guy. And he was just like mind blown, you know. But I think that's a testament too. It's just our team was very, very good at training each other up. Right. And for example, I hate radios. I don't want a damn thing to do with the radio.

I don't want to fill the radio. I don't like radios. I think they're stupid. Right. Very, very important part of the job, though. And like, if I was ever like, hey, Echo, how do I get this? He'd be like, you're going to do this. You will learn.

be like a child just like, you know, I don't want to. And then I'd do it, you know, so we were very good about teaching each other how to do stuff. Like you had to be very, very self-sufficient. And that's something I was very grateful for our team sergeants on that team between Lee and Doug that they really made sure of that. And the teammates too, you know, so everybody got to do their own radios. Everybody could do medical. Everybody knew how to build a charge, right? I mean, everybody could, you know, petspace and time with 50 cows. And when the, you know, grenade launcher went down. You know, we knew Mark 47s went down.

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Please support our show and tell them we sent you. So fuck your khakis and get the perfect gene. So it was very, very, very, very. good about that on our team. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, there's only 12 of you. You're not getting anyone else. Yeah, I think we only ever had on that team, maybe 10 or 11. We were never full with 12 that I can think of, maybe at one time, but one time we had eight guys on the team when we went to Afghanistan. Wow. And so after that, rotating back home and what was kind of like the next sequence of events getting jocked up to go again, I imagine? Yeah, we did a, I had a jay sit in there,

to Jordan. Cool. Was that after the second appointment? That was in 2010. I went to Jordan, I think. That was a phenomenal time. Like, I really, really appreciated going to Jordan and doing that J-Sah. We worked with a company of their special forces, guys,

and it was Amir Hasham. So the King's youngest brother, Prince Hashim, Amir Hashim, Amir Stans for Prince. It was his company. So we got to work with him very closely. And he was a phenomenal guy. And he had two ODAs that we were working with, one that was younger guys and less experienced, one that was older guys and more experienced.

And it was really cool seeing how they did stuff. And just, you know, they're Jordanians. You know, they're Jordanian special forces. They don't do things the way we do. You know, they don't have the resources. They don't have this and that. However, we learned a lot from them. It was really great getting to work with them.

And then on top of that, you're in Jordan, we went and saw Petra. We saw Bethany Beyond Jordan. We went down to the Dead Sea. we, we really, our team sergeant Doug at the time was very, and our captain Bill when he took over on that, at that time was real big on like, these might be the only times you ever get to do this. We're not just going to be going to get drunk at some Russian hooker bar. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. We're going down and we're going to go see sites.

Like, you're going to learn some shit. Like, this is stuff that 10 years from now you're really going to appreciate. And they were absolutely right. Like, it was phenomenal. And we did a lot of stuff together. So I loved that trip. We stayed at Cosotic. if you've heard of that.

That's what they do like. Yeah, it's a huge facility. Yeah, it was like brand new. They just built the barracks. So we stayed there during the week. And then we stayed at a ridiculously nice hotel in downtown. I'm on on the weekends. I don't know how we got that approved.

But there's always a warrant somewhere. You know what I mean? He knows how to do that crap. But yeah, man, it was a really good experience. And I had a lot of fun there. And then let's see. We did two trips to Iraq. bit of Jay said, I think in 2010, which was, I think it was between the first and second trip.

Shit, I can't remember. Yeah, it was between the first and second trip. Because I met my wife when I was in Halo school on the weekend out in San Diego. So, yeah, man. Out at the Trident Bar? Absolutely not. Fuck, no. The one that, what is it, Miller owns?

Oh, yeah. Oh, I don't know. Yeah, Dev Group guy owns the Trident Bar out there. Oh, does it? Yeah, yeah. Everyone met their wife at Trident. What's what's up, Drew? No.

Oh, did you? No, no, I did. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah, no, we met it on Halloween of all things. So she was a very respectable lady. And I didn't know what that meant. I was like, what do you mean?

We're not like, you know, she's like, no, dumbass. Like, no. So I had to keep, you know, calling everything and it worked up. We went up getting married, man. That's great. But yeah, that was. So, yeah, that happened between the first and second trip. was Jordan. And then after the second trip, yeah, we went to Afghanistan. There was some other

stuff in there. There was some J-sets. I missed one because I went off to a school. I went to Afghanistan in 2012, which was a really good trip for me because I was the Fox on that trip. Okay. So I was not. Do you want to tell the listeners what the Fox is on the team? Yeah, so the fox on the team is your Intel Sergeant, right? And if you look at kind of like the hierarchy on the team, you have your captain, and then sometimes you have a warrant officer, whatever that means, and then you have your team sergeant, right? And so below that is your Fox. And it's generally a more experienced guy that's been on the team before. And it is a position where not on every team, but for a lot of teams, if you're the Fox, you're going to be the team sergeant next, right?

I was in E6 and I was the fox. So the reason I was is because ours had a terrible taste in women. And he had a shitty personal life. And she stole all his shit and sold it. And so like he couldn't go. And I think she was in jail or something. I don't know, dude. We're like, bro.

It happens. So he's like, I can't go on the trip. So, yeah. But we're in Afghanistan. Did you guys go? Couldn't do. Oh, okay. I mean, that place got very hot at one point. It did. And we were the first team to be in Archie and Amam Sahib. So we had a team before us. They built the team house. And they situated themselves right in between these two districts called Archie and Amam Sahib. Archie was to the east and Amam Sahib was to the west. Just north of that was the border. Right. So for us, the biggest thing going in, it was a black hole. And actually, you know, a lot of

of people were trying to tell us, oh, this is how it is up there. And I remember thinking, no, it's not because you don't fucking know, dude. Like, nobody knows anything what's going on. This team that's been up there has been very concerned about building the base up, and they've only been in a mom's a heat. They haven't even gone over to Archie yet. Right. So we're going to be the team that pushes to Archie and then potentially from there, right? And then kind of towards Badakshan province, I think it is, up that way. So for us, there was a lot of unknowns. And right before we got there, there was like a YouTube video of them like stoning a chick. There was like, you know, reports in Archie, the Taliban killed all the police and then stole their vehicles and had a parade down the main road and like made everybody come out.

And if you didn't, they cut their heads off. And I was like, okay, cool. So this was going to be a good time, you know. So that was very interesting, though, being the Fox. I was not a school trained Fox, by any means. I got given the Fox job, I think, three weeks to four weeks before we deployed and had to brief the commander. I got that on Friday and had to brief the group commander on Monday or like Tuesday. So that was unique.

But yeah, man, it was interesting figuring out the area and then trying to get through everything. And kind of what we found was this is kind of a financial hub. And by that, I mean, they would harvest everything and they'd smuggle up through Tajikistan, I think it was. right there and Uzbekistan and that's it. Yep. And they would smuggle through there. So our goal was to help disrupt some of those routes, identify the money and then try and negate that or, you know, cross that out and create a block for it. But when you don't have any information, you have to do a lot of fact finding when you get there. So we just had our inkblot strategy. We're going to start here. We're going to go visit this. We're going to get to know this tribe and these people, you know,

and like these guys or whatever their names were and how they're all related. whatever. And then we're going to go down here to this part, right? And there was a lot of Taliban influence, right? But there's a lot of other stuff too. You know, who, who's the Uzbek guy, but like was also the terrorist organization working in there? It was, um, all the names. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, they were fairly dangerous, uh, as I recall. Yeah, they were kind of like the big hitters, smaller organization. Yeah. Serious stuff. Um, they, we had a lot of them in the area, too. So that was interesting. interesting. And we got some firefights, you know, we got some dudes. We had some suicide bombers at

the gate, you know, things like that. So it was a very formative time. And I think mainly because my team sergeant Doug at the time, someone I respect almost more than anybody I've ever met, phenomenal guy, a very reserved, kind of soft-spoken dude, but very squared away. And he was kind of, he was the fox before me, and he picked me to be the fox. And he's a lot. And he's a lot of, he was a fox. He's like, hey, man, I know you're not going to do it the exact same way I did, but I hope it's set a good example. The thing is, I want you to do what feels right and basically, you know, do your best. I was like, okay, you know, and he's like, you're going to mess up. You're going to get things wrong.

But just remember, as the Fox, your goal is to make sure when this team leaves this base. Every time we leave, they're 100% prepared for everything coming at them. Because if you missed anything, that could be someone, you know, that could be their life for injury for the rest of their lives. And I was like, okay, no pressure. thanks. So, you know, but that was, Drew, I'm sorry, I'm sorry to interrupt, but the group I think is Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, I am you. No. Maybe there was somebody else. It was like something network maybe. Not was it Haqqani network. Haqqani was in Pakistan. That was South. Yeah. God, what was the name of that? Maybe that is a man. Man, I honestly if you said it, I probably wouldn't remember now because it's been so long.

It's okay. I'm sorry to interrupt. No, no, you're good. Yeah. The, but yeah, Doug, I remember him saying that. And I always took that to like, okay, my goal is not just sit here and bore you with data and tell you where everything's at is to give you, obviously, you're most likely, our most dangerous and then make sure we're all prepared as we go out. Right. So it was, it was good, man. It was very good, very, very good experience. And I feel like that's the trip where for me personally, I grew a lot. I was still just a staff surgeon. So it was, uh, sorry, I'm. I getting all weird feedback? I think we got you okay. Okay. It's just my computer then. So that was, it was really good for me. And so it sounds like it was, or it became primarily like a counter-narco mission.

Kind of, we didn't encounter the drugs where we were at, per se. It was all the, again, the financial aspect of it. But we also had a lot of pockets of IED makers. And there was this one guy, we called it, his name was like Dr. Z or something. You know, he was a, and we were very unsure about him. And I remember, you know, the B team and one of the sergeant majors, be like, I don't worry about that guy. He's probably just a little T Taliban.

I was like, no, man, I don't, I don't know that's the case. The things aren't lining up that says he's that. And he's very hard to pinpoint. So we know he travels from here. He goes to some of the other provinces. He does this. And he also spends time in the South. And if he was just Little T Taliban, he would.

So the listeners, by little T, think of that as like a gang member, right? Like a guy who has nothing else to do. so they, hey, it's something to do. I'll join up with these dudes, whatever, right? They're not necessarily true believers. They might just be bored more than anything else are adventure seekers, kind of like a gang member. And then your big T Taliban, how we looked at it was

these are your true believers, right? This is a real mission for them and this is a purpose. So much more formal, okay? And from what I'd seen, it kind of pushed him into that big T, you know, kind of classification. And we really wanted to stay on him. And I remember just being real dismissive about it. Nope, that's not it.

Nope, it's fine, whatever. And I gave a lot of pushback on that. Well, I kind of find out, you know, I was right. You know, as we went on, he was a very big player in the north for the Taliban, right? And then also, you know, everything that was associated with the Taliban and the other people, too. He had a lot of the money. He also organized the different IED cells. They were making the command wire and remote-initiated IEDs as well as pressure plate IEDs.

And so that trip, we had multiple IEDs that I found out that we did our signal back, you know, and talk to people. And they're like, hey, man, listen to this. And it was the ICOMs chatter and the deeds talking from all the numbers we give them. And it was literally being like, hey, I can see these guys right now. Okay, go ahead, do it. And it's like, it's not working. The IED is not working. They're like, how is it not working?

They're standing right on top of it. And it's like, they're like, oh, it's this truck, the second truck or the third truck and the convoy, because we got. like when something got like we had to stop we got out and did some stuff we were parked on top of an iED and it never went off and the thing is it's like oh jammers right this was a command wire iED it wasn't a jammer wow so we couldn't figure out why their stuff wasn't working that happened seven times that we found out we were on top or drove over an id and it didn't go off so i think we encountered iEDs at one point in the trip about every three days you know what i mean um and we very lucky we spotted them we got out we we set out you know did all of our stuff in our sweeps um a lot of

times it was our charlie uh Aaron Aaron is a super interesting guy right like he was a marine and he was a cowboy before that like an actual cowboy like Yellowstone you know he drove cattle like in Montana and Kansas and then he is out now and now he's a smoke jumper in like Montana right like you're like what the he raises horses right he's the best dad ever like him and his wife are just phenomenal parents too like incredible you like what how they make people like you you know but uh he and i would actually go up and get the iEDs and be like you know like old school like yeah with the stick and the knife you know kind of deal um but yeah man it was it was good um we had a lot of iads a lot of man my computer just froze on like the worst picture ever it looks like we got you can you

you guys hear me yeah yeah we got you fine back now yeah yeah we We never lost you. Yeah, I saw the computer freeze, like the worst moment in time. But, yeah, man, it was really good. He was a phenomenal guy, and we'd go clear these IDs and everything and all that. We got a few firefights on that trip. Pretty good. We had a suicide bomber.

I remember it came to our gate, you know, as we're trying to get in our guys that were training up to handle some of this. I guess something happened. We heard it outside, and we saw this dude running, and our alp, Afghani local police, ALP commander, end up shooting this dude. And he's like running away. So I just grabbed my sniper rifle

and ran up in the towers. And I think I got maybe the record for like the shortest sniper kill in Afghanistan. So which is funny. I think it was like 20 yards away. I was like, okay. But yeah, that's my big sniper claim to fame. But anything over 30 yards,

I'm not worth the shit. But as long as it's been 30. But yeah, man, did that. it was good. It was, like I said, it was, I think when I look at that deployment, when everybody hears what SF does and they look at all these different things, I think that really embodied that a lot. You know what I mean? Like you are going out. You have to be self-sufficient. There's only, you know, there was eight of us and we had 10 third ID kids, like five infantry and five tankers and like a medic, you know, attached to us and like an extra intel person to help me out. We also had

a CST team with us. So, but that is your, and it was just us, you know, like, someone will get in fire fights, the Germans would come up and help us if they were in the area, but it's going to take people, you're looking at people get on the ground, you're looking at a couple hours to get to you. You know what I mean? So that was, that was awesome. I loved that trip. I loved everything about it. It was basically go do the right thing and let us know how it's going. I'm like, all right, perfect. We can do this. You're having to develop all of your own intelligence. And I think, yeah, you're right. A lot of people don't realize that they think, like, oh, SF, the CIA must come with a big binder full of intel and just like, here you go, Drew.

You know, it doesn't work like that. You guys hit the ground. It sounds like in this case, you had very little in terms of intelligence and situational awareness and all of that had to be built out. It did. We had a guy on our team who was, who kind of took over that human role, that level three, right? So the guy who goes out, he builds the networks and his sources and everything. He and I never really got along that well. However, I have immense respect for the guy. He did a phenomenal job, right? Like, he was that, that was his thing that he really got good at. And he's gone on to do better things and bigger and better things in that world. And again, we never really got along, but I have an immense amount of respect for him.

It's so funny how that works, Drew. And it's because the Fox and the Humitors, they do have a different job. Like the Fox is more of an analyst. Whereas, The hum mentors are talking to people. And I've seen that dynamic before where they don't necessarily get along with each other. Yeah. And we, well, it started before that. You know what I mean? Like when I was just a bravo and he was an echo, like we're just very different personalities.

Right. Like I'm not your average 18 Fox. Like I have gone to the SIF and I was an assaulter and that's my mentality. Right. Like later on I went over there. I am an assater. I'm not a sniper dude. I think that's boring.

I don't have the patience for it. Like, I don't like talking to people, you know, like as sources and be like, oh, you have many children. Oh, you are very strong and doing all that bull crap. Let's get to the point, dude. You know what I mean? Like, what are we doing here? So, but he was, he was really good at that, you know? And he got to the point where he got us access to some very interesting networks and people that we would follow with ISR.

And they would do exactly what he asked him to do and mark places for us. and it actually got us onto a named objective for, you know, some of the higher level dudes at J-Soc and we actually got to pass that off. And they were like, we're going to go hit it. It's like, we could just call him and he'll come in. You know what I mean? Like he's one of our sources now, you know, like, I think that's a pretty big deal for a dude like that.

Again, he killed it, man, you know. But again, I didn't help the situation. I was probably just a, you know, a meathead, you know what I'm saying, the whole time. But he was really good at that. So it was cool looking back at it, seeing that dynamic and how we built that out. So if it wasn't for him and then how we took it as a team and the things that we did, like everything works together. It's a big environment and a lot of working pieces and that when we left, like I can

honestly say when we left Afghanistan after that trip, it was better off for what we did. We were value added to that area and you could see noticeable differences in the area. Because before people couldn't come out of their homes, you know, Like there's people getting their heads chopped off and put on pikes, you know, and sticks out on the roads. And we drive by and see them, you know? When we left, there's kids playing outside with their families, you know? And it was like, all right, man, we did something good here. And we had people actually come up to our gauge just to give us stuff and be like, hey, thank you.

Like, and it wasn't like the typical, it was genuine. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. There was always going to be little kids, you're going to throw rocks of your trucks because little kids like to throw rocks of trucks. You know what I mean? But like, generally speaking, I think we did a good job. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, it sounds like reminiscent of, you know, what you hear about those SFOBs in Vietnam, you know, where they really ingratiated themselves with the local villagers and become a part of that kind of community.

It did, man. We were, we had some very close relationships and alliances with the people there to the point where if we were with some of our ALP and there was a firefight, they weren't running away. they were staying there with us and they were looking out for us, which I thought was very, it's like, ooh, that's not everybody's experience. You know, like they were bought in. They were with us. So that was really good. And so after this deployment, you're going back to the mothership at Fort Campbell.

Is this when it starts coming into your mind, you're thinking you want to make the jump over to the A15? Yes. I knew I wanted to. I still did two more small deployments before that. I wanted to do something different and go on to try something else. And I always knew A1-5, like, I just thought that was cool, man. That's very much what appeals to me. But I went to the B-team after that.

And while I was on the B-team, I don't think I spent more than a week actually on the B-team. So when I got there, the first thing I did was I deployed to Afghanistan again. and I was on a I was the LNO for a general Nagata was his name. And I was in Kabul at integrity over there. So my goal was basically to report back to him what's going on and also to my group commander and everything else. But the side mission was I had another job, which was a surveillance-type job. And it was anyway, I'll kind of leave at that.

But driving around one or two guys in a truck, jam's undercover vehicles and we're setting up locations, right? Places for people to meet and things like that. So I got to do that for a little bit, which is cool because I got to go to England as one of the schools I went to before then. I went to the CTR class run by former British Special Reconnaissance Regiment. So the close target reconnaissance. So basically following people, surveillance mobile in a vehicle and foot mobile, right?

Then breaking into buildings and collecting evidence. And that was kind of neat. So there was a little bit of that. I got to apply to that job, you know, with vehicles and everything else. So it was neat, man. That's super cool. It was. Right after I left, that's when they attacked the base and McKenna got killed.

So that happened, like, I think within like weeks after I flew out. And we've been saying the whole time, like, hey, man, security here's not good, dude. But that integrity is literally, over half of that base is ranked major or higher. So it's all, it's generals, colonels, lieutenant colonel. I didn't know there's that many damn colonels in the army, first of all, and in Afghanistan. And then there's a bunch of majors who are all trying to be colonels. You know what I'm saying? And then there's the foreign guys, right?

Like in there, you know, the Polish and everybody, Polish are hilarious, by the way. And then those dudes, you know what I'm saying? And then there's like some random enlisted people. And like, I never wore a uniform. I just wore civilian clothes the whole time. And I was told, like, don't tell anybody to rank. Like, whatever you do, don't tell them. Because they'll never respect you.

They're listening to you. I was like, okay, cool. So, like, the only person that knew was, like, the base commander and a couple of the colonels. Everybody else was like, oh, Drew, what do we, how do we address you? I'm like, Drew's fine, you know? Like, so they were like, play it off. I got a beard. That's all you need to know.

Say that again. Sorry, man. Yeah. You just say, I have a beard. That's all you need to know. Something like that. But I told them, I'd be like, oh, I'm in the Coast Guard. And they were like, what?

Coast Guard. I'm like, yeah, Coast Guard Special Operations. You know, like. And we got like, there were a couple of people that actually believed it, but it was like, you're such an idiot. No one's going to believe that. You know, so it was good, man. And then, so I did that for a little bit.

And that was interesting because it's just, it's writing reports. But then in my off time, I'm going and doing these kind of things, you know, in a vehicle with maybe two other guys driving around the city. And then, yeah, man, did that. I came home for a few weeks. And then I immediately went, that's when Syria was kicking off. Yeah. So I went to turrets.

and I was task force Turkey. So it was pretty much just me. So from fifth group, there was another guy there before me, but he was kind of, it wasn't really his job, but they sent me over as, because they were like, hey, just did this for Nagata. Now you're going to do it for our battalion commander and group commander. So you're going to report back in Turkey,

and you're going to set up all the training bases in Turkey for our guys. You're going to help understand the people that were bringing in from Syria. You're going to do this and you're going to work closely with some agency people and also JSOK. And I was like, okay. So I was at an annex from the embassy wearing a suit every day. And I worked at the agency office. And that was eye-opening. I briefed a lot of politicians. I briefed colonels, generals, senators. And I had to know what was going on. And I'm really actually, there was a female agency lady there. And I'm very grateful for her. She was very good at her job. And she always helped steer me in the right direction. But I was like, like, I don't know if I trust you. Right. So you gotta go back and they're like, no, that sounds right. Whereas like other people were trying, she'd be like, hey,

you know how to look into that a little bit more. Like, okay, cool. Yeah, she's trying to help you. She genuinely was. And I really appreciate her. She might have been pulling one over on me the whole time. I don't know. But I feel like it was just with everything going on. I felt like she truly was

a team player with everybody and wanted to do the best. And she helped me a lot. And so were Were you mostly just kind of like briefing these visitors coming through on like the situation in Syria at that time? Or was it getting more intense than that? It was a little bit of both, but mainly what our unit was preparing for. So here are the training sites we've identified. Here's how we're going to bring them in.

Here's how many we're going to train at a time. Once that kicks off, you'll see as many ODAs. Here's how we're going with recruitment, everything else and who we're identifying. And here's how we feel about this. Right. So we narrowed down the training sites. We identified equipment. Part of that was coordinating with customs, right, through Turkey,

which may be the worst thing you could ever do in your life because Turkey uses their customs as basically like they hold everything hostage to get what they want from the United States. Yeah. So for example, I'd be sitting in meetings. And again, I don't know why the hell I'm in this meeting. But I was sitting with the minister of foreign affairs and the minister of interior affairs. and they're asking me questions and giving me information. I'm like, yeah, in my head, I'm like, I'm going to have to Google that later. I don't know what the hell that means.

But like, I'm going to put this in a report and let's say back, but they're trying to get us to sign a treaty, which is what we were absolutely trying not to do. And when I would ask questions, they would actually go out in the hall and they would call Erdogan. Is he the prime minister or president? Depends on what years is because he just goes back and forth, right? Because he's a dictator-ish. So like, as he does all that, they'd be calling him. They'd be like, here's what we think.

I'm like, did you just call Erdogan? on, you know what I mean? Like, what am I doing here? I shouldn't be talking to you. I'm an E7, dude. Like, I'm a sergeant first class. But it was really interesting. So I would be taught, I'd have to coordinate with them and also Turkish soft a little bit. And then a lot of what, to get back to your question, sorry, a lot of what I would do with the, the congressmen and women and the senators was we just have to be available for their questions. And I really only have to. had one that showed up ready with questions that genuinely wanted to know what was going on and had a clue. Other than that, I couldn't, I can't say enough negative things about

congressmen and women that showed up over there. It was very disheartening. You know what I mean? It was very like, oh, wow. And actually, so an example for it, we're in a meeting. You might if I tell a story, but this one day. Okay. So we go in and do this brief. right and all these some of the names out of it for people and all this you could probably infer what's going on so we go in and we're giving our briefs and everything I do my part and I'm in there with the commander of a special operations unit he is there he flew in just for this I'm in there with an agency lady and then his sergeant major that's there also that's been there with me right and he's talking

giving the brief and he's like outlining the map here's what we have here's what we need everything and I never forget this Congressman's like, he's like, well, what do you mean you need this and that? He's like, sir, we got this. And he's like, why can't you just see him and shoot him? He's like, because there's clouds, sir, like they can't see through clouds, you know? And like everything was like talking to a child, you know, and he goes, I need so many ISR birds with this capability, right? And this guy's the head of like that thing in Congress. And I'm just sitting there the whole time. Like, and that, and that the commander guy's getting mad, veins running out of his neck, right?

And he's just like, you can tell he's frustrated. And he's like, well, I don't know what ISR means, but I got some, I got some drones. You want some drones? He goes, I got some with missiles on them. You want that? And the guy's like, yes, I would very much like this. Like, he's like, how many you need? You know, like, I'll get you something, son.

How many a need? And he's like, for the third time, like 26 of them because I did to put him here, here and here. And he's like, can we do that? And some guys like, oh, yes, Congressman, we can do that. He's like, all right, I'm going to get him for you, right? Well, then he makes this joke. He got real serious real quick, because he made a joke. And he's like, here, we're in this part of Africa. We're partnered with the French, this and that. And he goes, oh, the French, huh? He goes, oh, they're too busy being cowards and running away. I bet they suck. And starts ragging on the French. And this dude, like, stopped what he was doing, turned around and, like, slammed his

fist on the table and goes, the French are the greatest partner we could ever ask for. They're out actioning targets and killing bad guys. We're waiting for bureaucratic approval. And you just saw this Congress. Damn. Melt into his seat. He's a big old fat boy, too. And he just melted.

Like, he couldn't get small enough. He's like, okay, thank you. But, like, we walked out of there. And this dude, like, grabs me by the arm, you know? He's a big dude. He, like, grabs me. I'm like, oh, shit. I do something wrong?

And he's like, listen up. That man makes decisions. that affect people's lives. And I was like, I don't know if I'm supposed to say anything. I'm just like, he just goes, huh, just walks out. I was like, okay. Like, sounds good, man. So, but yeah, like, it was, was very interesting seeing that.

And then all the behind the stuff, too, then going to the embassy and having to interact with them between Department of State, you know, the poll mill officers, the people running USAID. Like, that was a big issue back then. You know what I mean? Like, and obviously that's popped up in the news. we had a lot of issues with USAID and what was going on. It was obvious they were just shoveling money straight towards, you know, all these terrorist groups in Syria.

They were just giving them free money and supplies and everything else. It was crazy. So it was very interesting. I determined politics probably weren't for me. You know what I mean? Yeah, man. The massive disconnect between the people who are making these decisions and what's going on on the ground. Yeah, they live in a different.

world. Like they don't, they literally live in the high tower looking down on everybody else. You know, like, I mean, you could have stories for days on this stuff, but it's like, that guy's not the right. That's not good. And they're like, well, you need to understand how they feel. Like, just like raped, like killed everybody in this village and raped everybody and enslaved a bunch of others. Like, what? You know what I mean? Like, you're throwing gays off a roof. Like, and I said, that's not good. And you're telling me, I need to think about how this person feel. like, no, dude, no, I don't. You know what I mean?

Like, I think that's pretty cut and drop. So it's just, it was fucking crazy. So I get to see behind the curtain a little bit. Yeah, yeah, the fat man behind the curtain. Yeah. And how do you, like, what year was that when you kind of like left Turkey and kind of like, what kind of state did you feel like it was in as you were leaving out of there? I think that was 20.

2014. It was either 2013 into 14 or 14 into 15. That makes sense. Because I saw Christmas over there. I think it was 13. I mean, I don't know. I'm sorry. It was one of those years. It was Christmas because I remember I flew home for like three days for Christmas and flew right back. Right.

I was got arrested coming home too, which was crazy. But it was what it is. I had a bullet in my bag. Got it all the way from America through Germany and into Turkey. And somehow there was a green tip 5, five, six in my backpack. I don't know where it came from because we weren't shooting guns over there as an office job and like I came back through and they were like ready to arrest me for this round. I was like, oh God, crap, you know, so whatever.

But man, it was different. So a different deployment. But after that is when I went to A15. I went to Sephardic, did all that and everything else. Yeah, yeah. So tell us about that. So farthestic is a school. It's considered like a Salter school.

It's about eight or nine weeks. You spend the first two weeks on the flat range shooting. We shoot about 150,000 rounds between 50 guys and 10 days, right? And we'll start with 50. And in my class, we've bumped down to about 35 by the end of that first two weeks. And then after that, you're doing CB all day, every day, you know, minus Sundays. And if you suck at it, you got to go in on Saturdays, right? So, I mean, it's 12, 14, sometimes 16 hour days just doing assault or stuff,

clearing buildings, vehicle interdictions, repelling out the side of buildings, air inserts, you know, hafs, all that crap. I mean, you're just nonstop CQB from hostage rescue to just regular going after a target, whatever it may be. You're working on breaching. You know, you're doing breaching charges, mechanical breaching. You're using quickie saws. You're doing broco torches.

We're going elsewhere to like old run-down prisons. and stuff like that. So it's a very, very intensive school. I'd say it's probably the best school in the entire military, but I don't think you can top it. It's everything the commercials make the military out to be. It's that, you know what I mean? And it's awesome.

So to be in the SIF, you have to go to that school and you have to pass. So I went over to the SIF without the school. They let me come over and they said, hey man, we'll get you the course when you get here. So I went the first time and I actually broke my neck. So yeah. So we're doing combatives and the dude like neck control, this guy who's an idiot.

I never forget him this dumbass. He just grabbed my neck. Instead of doing what we all had done, he just dropped to his knees and cranked my neck down. Well, when he did, he cracked or broke two of the vertebrae and then herniated three of the discs over. So it's pushing on my spinal cord. So when it came time, and that was in the first couple weeks. So when I got to the shooting the stress test on the flat range portion on week two, when I bring the rifle up, I couldn't see my sights because my head wouldn't move from like right here.

So they would always joking like, hey, Batman, you know, because it was like, what? You got to turn like this. I couldn't do anything. So I went home, rehab did as best I could. And then I went back a second time and I passed. But after I went back the second time, I was like, man, I'm having some problems. I went back to the doctor and they were like, holy crap, it'd been a year. And they were like, your neck's broken.

It's been broken the whole time. Why did you go to Sephardica a second time? I was like, because I wanted to go to the school and pass. You know what I mean? And like, I remember I was at Jiu-Jitsu that morning, rolling. And they were like, get in here right now. And so the original MRI clearly showed it was there. But one of the, it was a PA.

He had asked me, he goes, well, who told you your neck was fine? And I was like, oh, that guy right there. Yeah, that moron. And he was like, oh, shit. So I had to get like emergency surgery because they were afraid my arm was going to atrophy. Because I had really bad, like, my life. left arm wasn't working right. I couldn't really grab things very well. So I went up to Walter Reed and had my neck fused. And then actually, I was high as hell and I started bare solutions in the

thing. But yeah, man, it was good. I did a deployment before that and then we figured all that out. So after the fact. But I went the second time I passed and then I did a deployment and then that's when we figured out what happened. So, wow. Where did you go with the SIF? Baghdad. Okay, cool. And I mean, again, didn't they used to call A15 like Baghdad SWAT? Yeah. Yeah, dude.

Like back in the day, Task Force Raptor, you remember those days? Yeah. When we were in group, like those guys, they were going out every night hitting two, three, four buildings. You know, that there's a video on YouTube with like the Team America song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do the mini guns and everything. That's them. But when I was there, it was, you know, we were just mostly doing training stuff.

I rack a dot down. tried to get out the door a little bit, you know. Not a whole lot happened. I did a lot of training and just kind of hung out and doing standby for the crisis response force. Okay, so anything happened. We got to be wheels up in three hours ready to go to an embassy to evacuate it or whatever.

Our guys did go to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and help and reinforce them when there were the riots and everything going on around it. But really not a whole lot of that trip. It was just really good being with the dudes and seeing how that works. and then just getting really good at what you do. Like, you know this man in fifth group.

Like we're not like other people. If you got downtime, you better be in the gym or be training. You know what I mean? Like you better be improving yourself somehow. And I'd always heard things about A15, like, oh, they think they're cooler, this or that. Like, not really, man. They just, when you have more people to do, like, to schedule the ranges and do everything, you get to set yourself up for success a lot better.

Right. And you give yourself more opportunities. And I was really impressed. The guys there, they work really hard and trained all the time. Their mission is, like, I don't mean to shortchange it at all. But, like, it is a little bit more focused than an ODA that's like all over the place. Yeah, it's very narrow, right? You have the ability to specialize.

And I think that's super cool. Like, you specialize in CQB. You know what I mean? Personnel recovery is part of that, you know, evacuating embassies. But you are assaulters and heavy hitters and hard and fast. You know what I mean? And you're doing hostage rescue and everything else. On a regular ODA, you've got to understand your networks, right?

You got to do that. You've got to develop all your own intel. We do that in SIF 2, but not to the same, you know? And then you've got to be able to do, you know, maybe one season, two missions and split up. You got to do the normal FID thing. You've got to do all this different stuff. Whereas, you know, if there's like five pillars to the missions you have, when you're in A1-5, you're only doing like one or two of them, you know, compared to all five or six or eight

or however many there are, you know what I mean? Yeah. And after that was when they really, you know, realized how jacked up your neck was. And did you have to be medically retired because of that? I did. They gave me the opportunity. So at that point, I had had quite a few injuries.

I've had shoulder reconstruction. I had both my knees done. I've had left ankle reconstruction. I have a broken neck that they fused. And also my L4 and L5 is broken, which I'm not letting them fuse my lower back. Like the doctor who infused my neck was like, don't do your back. Whatever you do, don't let them touch your shit. I was like, okay, cool.

I got a lot of TBIs too. Head injuries from combatives. I used to do a lot of combatives, a lot of fighting, you know, here and there and rolling, eating some charges, you know what I mean? Just stuff like that. It adds up. But it does, man.

And it kind of came time for me. I remember talking to my battalion, Sergeant Major, Sergeant Lylez, phenomenal guy. He came down and goes, hey, man, whatever you're just, you go, I want, you know, talk to the doctors. He goes, I will do whatever. I'll put you wherever you want.

I will go out of your way to do everything. But it sounds like your time being a soldier is probably done. You know? And I was like, I think you might be right. I think it's time to do something different. So my option was I could stay in a program called co-ed, called continuing on active duty. But I would be non-deployable.

And if I stayed in, then I would, you know, go be a Sapphoa constructor or a Sephardic constructor. But then I might have to go work in Socom in Tampa, right? or some of those things, which is cool, but I actually wanted to go to the Army marksmanship unit is really where I wanted to go. And if I can just finish my time out at the AMU, because I love shooting. Like, that would be awesome. But they didn't allow me to come over because I was at E7. They liked it to come over younger.

So at the time, whoever was running said no. And I just decided, hey, man, if I'm going to stay in the military, like, I'm not staying in the military if I can't deploy. You know, so I wanted to get out. That's the whole reason I'm in the military. So we decided to get out. And that conversation, I kind of jumped around a little bit. That conversation happened before I got surgery. And then also kind of, you know, whenever.

So when I started Bear Solutions, it was the morning after I was had my surgery in Walter Reed Hospital. I was laid in the bed and I was making a website on Squarespace. I'm like, oh, and I'm like applying for an FEI in, you know. And I'm like, what is this? And that's because you're already having to like kind of come to terms like, I'm not going to be a soldier anymore. what am I going to do?

Yeah, I don't like knowing, I don't like not knowing what I'm doing, right? I figured, I think that's something the military teaches you well. If you just wait, you know, like the army will tell you what you're doing and you're probably not going to like it. But if you're proactive about it, you can kind of control where you go and what you do. So I've always wanted to, you know, I always thought it was cool to have a training company, everything else and I had some good buddies that I knew in the industry and they were like, hey, man, you should do this.

You should, you should absolutely start a company and get out and train. I think you do okay, you do well. He was like, all right. So I remember I was sitting in the bed, you know, just high as hell, dude, just misspelling everything. Danny came in. He was like my escort. And he's like, what do you do it? Because he hadn't even seen me at.

I think he saw me like when I came out of surgery. And then he was like, okay. He went and got breakfast and came back. And he's come in ready to make fun of me. And he's like, what are you doing? I'm like, oh, I'm starting a company. He's like, no, no, you're not, you know? Like, what are you talking about?

But yeah, that's Bear Solutions, and that's what I do now. Fentanyl kicking that ass. Oh, yeah, dude. So tell us about Bear Solutions, what that company is, what it's sort of evolved into, what you're doing with it today. Yeah, man, so Bear has been great. I've been very fortunate, very blessed about a lot of people in the industry. You say, hey, man, you're doing good stuff. Let me help promote you, right?

Let me do this. We've grown very well. So one of the things that the number one thing we do is we do training. We do firearms training. We teach you how to shoot. I teach you how to shoot fast and accurate, right? It's got to be a balance. Okay, like accuracy. Accuracy without speed is kind of worthless.

You know what I mean? So we got to be fast while we do it. And then so we teach pistol one, pistol two, rifle one, rifle two. But we also do a lot of courses from law enforcement. We do CQB courses. We've done hostage rescue courses for people. We've done a lot of CQB courses. where I keep it just two-man CQB,

especially for those patrol officers. You know what I mean? Getting in and going and knocking it out and doing what they got to do. We do consulting. Man, we've done a lot of people. We've tried some really cool people. Got to know some awesome people.

But number one, what we do is training. After that, we also make products. We just came out with our first belt, which is a tactical style belt called the Votech belt. It's spelled Wojhtek, but it's pronounced Vojtek. It's a Polish word. Have you ever heard of it? of Voitek the bear jack?

No. World War II bear. He's the one that carried the artillery shells. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Dude, drank beer, killed Nazis. Like, dude, how do you not love that bear? You know what I mean? So we named it after that.

So, but yeah, that's our first product. We have some building off of that. We have some others coming out too. We do the YouTube thing and everything else, which brings us to Bear Sinha. So Barrisina is our video production. My business partner with that is Thomas Chi. Phenomenal guy, man. He's been to film school.

He does camera work for, he's been on Netflix. He's worked on Netflix project. He's done music videos. He's done all kinds of stuff, man. He is an incredibly talented guy. So everything that we do with our YouTube goes under Bersenna. And then our other video production, like we did a short film, right? So Tom has, in Nashville, there's a company called Action.

design services. They are a stunt team and stunt coordinators and fight choreographers in Nashville. And they've done some great work. Phenomenal people. One of them is working on, she's incredible. She's like this tiny little former gymnast. She's working on some Netflix shows. She's like, she's insane, dude. She's such a badass, right? They have so, and Jaron's great, they have so many cool people in this stunt team. So we wrote a script and we made a short film, highlighting a lot of the stuff they can do, along with like our weapon stuff and everything else. And, and, and tactics and things like that. So we're almost done with that.

We're just getting the special effects done and then we're going to submit it to film festivals. So yeah. So it's like an actual short film with a plot, but it's sort of showing the tactics that you guys teach? Yes. It's about 18 minutes long. Cool. So it does have a plot, right? And we filmed it over about a week at a private school in around the Nashville area.

And then also some other locations, right? We actually went into like a, it's a studio and it's got these giant screens behind it. So we could like dolly in the truck for the driving scenes and then mount the camera on the hood. And then we filmed where it called plates. And it's just the video you get. And then they put it up on this big screen behind the vehicle. So it looks like he's driving. But we can control all the environmental factors.

So that was super cool. We used that. We did, I mean, tons of stuff, dude. We make up artists, you know, for the blood and the gunshot wounds. blanks and gun. I mean, dude, it was sick. So it was a very big learning experience, I'll tell you that much. Yeah, well, I mean, I was going to say, man, look at all this new stuff that you're learning.

Not exactly just a big, dumb 18 Bravo here. Putting some things together. Trying to, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I have a lot of really awesome people around me, which is great. That's taught me a ton of stuff. You know, Tom, I don't know what Tom works with me because sometimes he'll be like, oh, you know, he's just like, oh, you idiot. you know, like, think about this, you know? And he's like, explained to me like, oh, okay, I get it. So it's been really neat, man. And that's worked into some writing, you know, doing some stuff and everything else. But so, yeah, so we do that with Bear Solutions and Bear Suna. Then I have another company called Agonic. And with that, we make concealed carry belts. So we make a flexible kind of, you know, one size fits most concealed carry belt, but it doesn't look super tactical. And then it helps to hide your clips. So that's called Agonic. We have that over there.

Super cool. So we'll have some links down the description for the viewers or listeners. You can go and check out Bear Solutions and some of these products that Drew's talking about. Is there anything else you want to talk about, I don't know, service, military service or post-service what you're doing today? Anything that I didn't mention? Yeah, so I think the thing is that you never know where life's going to take you, man. I mean, look where you're at, dude. You're sitting in a big leather chair. You know what I mean? You probably didn't think you'd be sitting in that sucker.

and you're in the fifth group. You know what I mean? Running a podcast and all the incredible like stores you've done. You're a journalist, man. Like you've done incredible things, right? They're probably not what you were thinking about. You're in the military. No,

but for me, if you were like, hey man, someday you're going to be on a movie set. You know, like I was just up in Utah and I'm working on this movie right now. And I got to be in the movie, which was super cool.

It was also terrifying because like there's real actors. And they're like, oh, you're so-and-so's buddy, aren't you? I'm like, oh, God, I know what that means. You're not expected. So I was, like, rehearsing and practicing. And I was with this guy, Jeff, and Jeff is, he does a lot of the casting for Clint Eastwood's movies. And he, his name's phenomenal guy, right? And so we do these video calls where he's like, coaching me. I'm like, okay. And he's like, oh, that's not bad. I'm like,

just say it sucked, Jeff. Just tell me it sucks, you know. And so, but, you know, it went well, you know, they told me I did a good job. I was like, oh, thank God. You know, so I'm actually in it doing that. I'm not trying to be a big action per, you know, movie star by any means, but it was a neat experience. I recently consult there too. I tech advised on a film over the summer

and just because they needed a body essentially to do it, I ended up having like a very small role, microscopic rule, but I have one line where I tell someone to shut the fuck up or I'll blow their head off. This is a Vietnam War documentary film.

So there's not a lot of acting, like to be like the disgruntled army guy chewing out a subordinate. Like there isn't a whole lot of acting that I felt like, you know, I wasn't outside my comfort zone with that. It was kind of the same in this thing. It was, they were like, hey, you're going to play Kenny the gunstore guy. And I was like, okay. I can do that.

Yeah, all right, fair enough. Yeah, you typecast me for that, you know, so. But I got to call somebody a stupid, stupid moron or something, dumb motherfucker or something like that. I was like, oh, cool, I can pull this off. You get to have your mug of coffee and be like, well, actually, if you knew anything about 45 ACP, you'd know. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. You know, red shirt.

Just be like, slow down and get your hits, you know? But, oh, man. Yeah, it was fun, dude. That's really cool. Yeah, yeah. The funny thing about these, I'm sure you saw it too. Like, I was just kind of blown away, like being on set, like all the moving pieces. It's like a large military operation.

Exactly, yeah. It was like everybody has their roles and doing this. And I'm like, oh, that's S4. That's S3. You know, like that's S2. You know, there's this. You know, like it's they all have their pieces and they're all working together. And you have these guys in the top.

They're just making sure everything's doing what they need to do. And it's very interesting. I was like, this is just like a military. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it requires, the other commonalities, like it requires everyone doing their job. Like everything has to line up to get that shot. Yes. Right? Yes. It's a lot and it's a lot of people and a lot of technology working together to get that like one moment. And I found that, yeah, it's very similar to what you experience in the military. It is. It's kind of like that, but just add an HR element and then you have a movie. You know what I mean? Like you can't. What do you mean I can't call that person retarded? And they're like, you can't talk like that. That's mean. You're like, oh, okay. The unions are a different thing. We don't have that in the military. I don't. either. I think we have a question for you, Drew. Sure. From our Patreon folks.

Yep. This is Dan Bash. Ask him who his second favorite Border Patrol firearms instructor is from the Casa Grande station. That's a very specific question. Dan, it's either, it's probably Durling because I know who my number one is. Dude, Durling's my boy, dude. He's, uh, dude, those guys down there at Casa Grande. Dan, Durling, all those guys, phenomenal dudes. I've gotten to know a lot of Border Patrol guys. I really, really, really enjoy the Border Patrol guys. Like, they are hilarious.

So they're really good dudes. Very professional. They do a really good job. Drew, anything else before we get going? Anything that I failed to ask you? I don't think so. I kind of just started going with it. So I hope I gave you what you were looking for.

So, no, man. Other than that, dude, yeah, I'm just kind of a husband and a dad first, and I try and do all this other stuff. I got a daughter, and one thing you may not know, if anybody's listening, if you ever go to dance competitions, you might see me there, okay, because I, my daughter's in dance, and I'm a dance dad. So I will say hi if you're ever there, which is awkward as shit for a guy like me,

but I love it. That's awesome. Well, Drew, thank you for doing this man, taking some time out of your day. Really appreciate it. And thank you, everyone who joined us tonight for the show. And we'll see all of you next time. And make sure you check out Bear Solutions. Again, there will be links down in the description for you guys.

Awesome. Thank you very much, Jack. Thanks, guys. I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Teamhouse 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 the greatest hits of that week. It's really good. I'm checking it out. The website for it is Teamhousepodcast.kitt.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 the description if you're looking for it there. And that's teamhousepodcast. Dot K-I-T-K-K-L-O-India Tango.com backslash join.