The Team House - Navy DEVGRU Operator | Nelson Miller | Ep. 211

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Trident Grill was opened in August of 2001 by Nelson Miller, retired US Navy SEAL. Trident is named after the special warfare insignia that all Navy SEALs wear on their uniforms. Miller was still active duty while opening the original Trident Grill and was called to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a patriot of our country, he answered the call to duty. While serving his country he still had to remain involved in his newest venture. He fell in love with the Arizona desert and culture of the Southwest when doing special training ops in Tucson and nearby areas. Originally out of Maryland, Miller wanted to bring a touch of East Coast flavors and culture to the Southwest. As an avid sports fan, Miller wanted to bring energy and passion to entertain and serve the Tucson local community. The military presence in Tucson was a big factor in his decision and he wanted to have a special place for veterans to grab a beer, eat and laugh together. His trident concept was based on: why can't you go to a bar/pub/sports grill and not have something other than bad bar food!! The East Coast-inspired menu brought items such as Old Bay-dusted peel and eat shrimp, bacon-wrapped scallops, lump blue crab cakes and a special recipe from his grandmother for clam chowder. Adding to that with oversized sandwiches and grass-fed burgers proved to be a winning combination of variety and quality that the Tucson local community came to love. In appreciation of the support from the local community and military, the Trident Grill supports many military charities, local high schools, animal shelters and intramural sports. We believe in grass-roots support for the local community that frequents the Trident Grill, which is the foundation of our success. Today's Sponsors: The Lite Sleeper⬇️ (VETERAN OWNED, US MANUFACTURED) the perfect addition for the light backpacker, ground sleeper, or prepper/survivalist. https://THELITESLEEPER.com/discount/teamhouse click the link to get The Lite Sleeper and get 10% off your first order! https://THELITESLEEPER.com/discount/teamhouse  To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #devgru #sealteam6 #jsocBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, the team house, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 211 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park. And our guest on today's show is Nelson Miller.

Nelson served in the Navy as a seal, including with a development group. And today runs the Trident Grill out in Tucson. Four or five of them now? Five. Yeah. Five of them. So, you know, we're really happy to have. have you on the show today, Nelson. Thank you for joining us in the midst of your vacation.

Well, thanks for having me. And I really appreciate your patience. I know I agree to do this some time ago. And then the date came upon us and I had forgotten and I was overseas. And here I am now. Thank you for joining me in my little Vegas hotel room. And quite the motivational intro you guys have there. I hadn't seen that before. Yeah, it's kind of a signature at this point in time. Yeah, absolutely. It's so cheesy that people love it. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you guys for your patience again, and I look forward to the conversation. Yeah, thank you. So, Nelson, like, one of the things we always want to know is what's your origin story? How did you grow up? And what took you to the military to begin with? It's not complicated. I grew up in Maryland, a typical mother, father relationship, one younger brother outside of D.C.

And everything was pretty normal, middle class. My dad was a police officer. They got divorced when I was fairly young. She got remarried. My mom was, you know, she did a lot of jobs, but she mostly took care of my brother and I. But school wasn't my thing. So I didn't really play sports and I would skip school whenever possible. I just didn't find interesting.

I worked construction or fast food. and then graduated in 83. And in those years, the recruiters were very deliberate or engaging. So I was getting a lot of calls from them. They had quotas to meet. So I was the perfect candidate, you know, barely graduated high school, was not going to college. So the Navy recruiter caught my interest for some reason because I was always into aviation and bombs.

And he offered me this aviation ordnanceman job, loading bombs on airplanes that sounded pretty neat. So I told him I would consider it. And then he's like, come in and take a physical. It's good for two years. And it was a Friday. And literally next thing I knew, my hand was up and there was a big picture of Ronald Reagan behind me. And that Monday I left for boot camp. So Friday I joined, I left on Monday. While in boot camp, I got my welcome to delayed entry program, paperwork from the Navy. And I should have known right then that the Navy might not be the best choice in a the world. But it worked out wonderfully. So no complaints. So that's pretty much it as far as growing up. Like I said, zero to complain about it. It was a wonderful childhood. Yeah.

What was it? It was just because of recruiter, had you considered the military at that point in time? There was nothing I wasn't considering, you know, and I looked at the different branches. And I just didn't have much interest. I was enjoying not being in school anymore and just working in full-time construction. And like I said, at a fast food restaurant in the night. So I wasn't going anywhere. College was not on a radar. So they kept calling and calling and calling.

Again, it was a different time there in the mid-80s. And next thing I know, boot camp in Orlando. So how did you take to the weapons ordinance position and that the Navy had for you? That worked out super well. And again, back in the 80s, SEAL teams weren't nearly as known as they are in half. I mean, and that's not even doesn't do it any justice. They weren't. I was in the nation and I had never heard of Navy Seals.

So I finished boot camp, which was a complete waste of time. And then I went to AOA school in Millington, Tennessee. And somehow, and it's one of those remarkable stories when you look back and you think how many little tangents in life had it gone the other way, you ended up in a different position. But I think there was 36 of us in a class somewhere along there. And I finished, I don't know how I was number one in my class of AOA school. So you had your choice of orders. And they put all the orders out on the table and you go from the number one finisher to the last picking orders.

But there was one set of orders for, it was a helicopter squadron out of North Island doing anti-submarine warfare. And it was shore duty. And every other set of orders was for some carrier somewhere in the fleet. As an E3 carrier, I don't know which. you guys know about that, but as I've learned, it's not the best life in the world. So picking first, I took that shore duty in North Island. Subsequently, it was a great job. I mean, it was super easy work loading torpedoes every now and end. It was not much. So I was able to work out a lot, went to school a little bit at night, and at a bar locally, I met some

seals. And I couldn't believe they were in the Navy, but they were. And they're like, yeah, you should give it a shot. So I volunteered for Bud's and then off I went. But had it been a second or 27th in that class, I probably wouldn't be sitting in this hotel room in Vegas right now. Or I would, but it would be an entirely different story. What was it about the Seals when you met them that you're like, I can't believe they're in the Navy?

And then what was it about, you know, them or what they told you that made you think, yeah, I'm just going to go do this thing. They just seemed, you know, I liked what I was doing. at that time, but they just seemed, you know, they had the longer hair, they were in shape, they just had the attitude and the persona that I'm like, man, you know, I got to research this a little bit. Maybe this will be a direction I'd like to go. I mean, they're shooting guns and blowing things up and running on the beach and, you know, it sounded a lot better with them what I was doing, not that there was anything wrong with my job, but it definitely was life-changing

for me and meeting those two that night. You know, the rest is history, as they say. So these days, I think, because there is so much information out there about every special operations units, that kids get in their heads about going to selection, you know, whatever that selection is. Like, they agonized over it. They research what the best way to get in shape for it was. What was your process in the 80s? It was, you know, and everything you said is true, but has a graduation rate? increased because of all the knowledge, I don't think it has. So, you know, you cannot go to buds or any other selection course now with more information than it's out there. So, but people

still go and 70% of the people still wash out. So it's pretty amazing. My personal thought was, you know, they have a rollback program if you get hurt or if you fail in evolution. But to me, I started every day. I found buds actually quite simple. They told you where to be, what to bring, and what to do. So there was no real responsibility. You just suck it up every day. And the day ends, you start tomorrow. So my whole mantra at that time was just like,

I'm not getting rolled back and I'm certainly not quitting. So, and the next thing you know, you're there at graduation. So, yeah, there were moments where I'm like, man, this isn't super cool. But honestly, you know, I found it quite enjoyable. Just looking back, I don't know if you would ask me midstream. how I was doing. Right. But it was simply that you just can't quit and let everything fall as it will.

Yeah. As you got to know. Yeah. So, you know, I was working out a lot and running on the beach and trying to swim and getting, you know, trying to prep myself because those guys had remained friends. And they told me, yeah, you're going to get your ass kicked for a while. And they weren't wrong. But, you know, it's a volunteer program.

You don't have to be there. Yeah. Yeah. And you had a decent job. So you weren't like coming from the fleet. where you were miserable and like, oh, I cannot go back to the fleet. I can't know. I can't tell you how.

I hate to say easy, but it was pathetic that they were paying me for the job I was doing. It was really something. So, no, I had it made. And, you know, and I picked up some rank. By the time I went to Buds in 88, I was in E5, you know, still hadn't been on a Navy ship. I mean, things, things were looking pretty good for the old man. Yeah. No, I still accepted the orders of Buds and off I went.

Yeah. And so when you got out of Buds, what was the next phase for you? Right from Buds, you went to Airborne School in Fort Benning, and then you report to your SEAL team. On my wish list, I had asked for SEAL Team 2 just because of its history from, you know, back in the day in Vietnam, it was just SEAL Team 1 and SEAL Team 2. And Seal Team 2 was in Virginia Beach. and my mom and my stepdad still had some family in Maryland, which isn't far. So I thought, you know, I didn't really like, love the West Coast lifestyle. And I heard things about East Coast Seals versus West Coast Seals.

So I had asked for Sealed Team 2. You don't have a choice, but I got it. So went to Airborne School and then reported for duty at Seal Team 2. What for whether they were true or not, what were the things that you heard that were different between East Coast and West Coast Seals? You know, they probably say the same thing. about East Coast guys, but you know, the Hollywood thing with the sunglasses and calendars and, you know, beach bodies and being kind of shitty operators is what we would say on the East Coast, but I know if you get a West Coast guy in here tomorrow, they're going to make fun of us.

So that's just, you know, the competitive rivalry that you have. Sure. And the two coasts definitely share that within the SEAL teams. Maybe I'm assuming it's still ongoing today. If it's not, it should be. Yeah, yeah. all these units have this sort of healthy competition between one another, whether it's between the Ranger Battalion, or we've even had talked about the different Delta Squadron.

Yeah. Well, even in a Ranger Battalion, because I'm sure you had this, you know, on Steel Team 2, even amongst that you have the different teams, you know, and the rivalries that, or not the teams, but the different, you know, both teams or whatever, and the rivalry that goes there. Yeah, and the key word with all that is it's healthy. I mean, it makes you want to be better and to outwe. form those other platoons or those other color teams or your sister units. So, no, it's a good thing.

So what did your, like, your mom and your stepdad, like your family, your friends think? Here you were. First, you went into the Navy. And now you're doing this crazy thing that they probably haven't even heard of. I think you nailed it there. You know, they'd never heard of it. So, you know, I did what research you could do in the mid-80s. But, you know, I let them know, hey, I'm going to Bud's training.

What's Bud stand for? Basic underwater demolition seal. What the hell is that? And then, you know, so it was more of a, it was a learning experience for them as well as me. Of course, typical mom stuff, she doesn't want her son to get hurt or go to war or do anything like that. So, you know, I'm sure there were some consequences associated with. But it was very supportive. And, of course, you know, looking back, you know, very proud of me personally and the things accomplished

along the way. Yeah. And so what year did you get to Seal Team 2? It must have been the early 89. Okay. And what was it like for you as a sailor, like a season sailor? You know, you had done a tour, basically. And now you're in this new world.

It wasn't great. I would use the word shitty, actually. Like, I got to Seal Team 2 after stupid-ass airborne jump school. And back then, you didn't have a Trident yet. You know, Buds was just Buds. You had to go through something called STT back in the day, steel tactical training. Now it's all streamlined. Buds goes to SQT right after.

And when you show up at your seal team, you're a trident wearing steel and ready to go to work. But back then, you had to do whatever the steel team wanted you to do until the next STT class opened. And for me, it was like four months away. So you're just flat out slave labor. And hazing was a real thing back then. So at the end of the day, they'd be drinking beers and they want to beat up the new guy. So, you know, it wasn't looking back. It was not perfect.

But I was volunteering for anything from going to help a platoon doing boat ops or they even one morning at quarters, I remember, standing out front every morning at quarters at SEAL Team 2. And the XO said, hey, we've got two open as the Ranger school, starting like next week. And I'm like right here. get me the hell out of here and quarters ended and I got called to his office and got my assude for being a new guy to volunteering for ranger school and i'm like hey sir there wasn't one other hand it went right um they still didn't send me so waited for STT to kick off got through that got my trident and then started deploying with seal team too yeah yeah a lot of seals i mean you know they've done their training and I don't want to say it's a cushy life because like the water is the

great divider right uh is the great equalizer but not a lot of seals just like not a lot of sf guys roger up for ranger school it it's a suck-ass school yeah yeah yeah you know and i've i've got a ton of ranger friends out there like really close friends and i've got nothing but respect a lot of our officers seem to have gone to ranger school at some point in their careers because it just help some career-wise because I guess it's considered a leadership school. So I just didn't want to be at Steel Team 2 anymore and Ranger School sounded better. Yeah. I heard that you guys sent the officers to Ranger's school when they need an attitude adjustment.

I would send them all. I've never been a giant officer guy. So yeah, probably the wrong one to ask. So what was your STT like for you then? It wasn't as organized as it is today. Like I think when I went through STT, Steel Team 4 hosted it. So the next one would be Seal Team 2. And some point along those lines, Seal Team 8 was commissioned.

So somebody would host it and they would send people from their training department. It just was a continued kicking of nuts with a lot of land warfare. And, you know, it wasn't like buds. It was a lot more of a gentleman's course, but, you know, there were people that didn't make it through STT, so therefore never got their tridents. Really? That was more of a rarity than what PUDS was, of course. Out of curiosity, even if it wasn't a lot of guys, what was it that they would bolo in STT that would? Usually something stupid, like an accidental discharge.

Okay. That was a pretty big one. Probably the number one thing to get you thrown out would be something like that. Okay. Or just a completely shitty attitude not being able to work with everybody else and, you know, things like that. But we're also talking about one million moons ago. So for me to come up with any STT stories would be quite the stretch. Yeah.

Yeah. So it was a necessary evil. I think what they're doing now with the transition from Buds right to SQT to the winter warfare and military free fall and all the other things, get your try to show up, ready to go is a much. better program. Yeah. I hope it. So once you got your Trident and things really pick up at the, at your platoon, so we're talking probably like 89, 90 by this point.

I mean, what are you guys looking at Liberia, Philippines, Guam? I mean, what were, what was that deployment cycle like for you? Well, back then, SEAL teams were designated. SEAL Team 2 had Europe. The Mediterranean Mediterranean was shared with SEAL Team 8 when they came online. and Steel Team 4 out South America. So it was just, it was very geographically designed where you're going to deploy to. So we had a detachment full-time in McRanish, Scotland at the time.

Now I think it's in Germany, maybe Stugart, but at the time, we would keep a six-month deployment to McRanich. And then from there, you would go to the variety of countries in the region and train with them. As far as things picking up, you know, when I was in Steel Team 2, the Bosnia thing, there were some things going on in that region, but there really, really wasn't much. It was training, training with a side of training. Yeah.

And then 90, 91, the first goal for, right? Correct. Did deploy for that, sat on a ship. What was his name? Swartzcoff, I think it was the main thing at that time. Yeah, he didn't have a lot of love for Navy SEAL. I know some of my West Coast friends did get involved in some things, but I think it was pretty minimal and I can only personally say having deployed for it I didn't do shit but I sat on a ship

for a very long time and it was okay I wish we would have been used in some capacity but I can't do anything about that yeah and so so then after that what what what happened and what sort of where did your career take you with that well I knew some friends at that time that were in naval special Warfare Development Group, and I knew what it took to head that direction. But, you know, I was always the guy like, I didn't think I wasn't ready for it. It's just think, thought I owed SEAL Team 2 more. So I did three deployments, had two and a half deployments with SEAL Team 2 or something like that before I finally screen and got accepted to go to Green Team, which is another selection course for Naval Special Warfare Development Group. And that was in 95 when I made the transition

from SEAL Team 2 down that way. So you were, you had been in the SEAL teams for what about, about five years at that point in time? Yeah, I think it was six, six years. Six teams before I, yeah. Yep. Was that an average amount of time at that time to go to Green Team or was that kind of early? I think at that time it was pretty average. Okay.

They wanted to complete at least two six month deployments. You know, they pass your picture around their team room and, you know, you get a thumbs up or a thumbs down from guys that may have deployed with you. It was kind of like a brotherhood, like, you know the deal, like the Star Chamber would be like, Nelson Miller, a piece of shit, you know, we don't want them type of thing. Subsequently, since 9-11, I know their requirements, like, I don't think they require two full six-month deployments anymore before you're eligible to screen. I think it's, you just need to be a pipe hitting, hard charging dude, and they're going to bring you across the street down there. But for me, it was six years. and then went to Green Team and then stayed there for the last 10 years of my career.

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And like Dave was saying, I mean, this is great for like the ultra light backpackers out there. And I mean, I think it's cheap too. I mean, he's selling it for like, what, 70 bucks or something? 70 bucks and 10% off when you use the promo team house during your checkout. It's 2.1 pounds. It fits into this nice little, you know, snug pack. this is quite possibly one of the greatest inventions ever. So check out the light sleeper.com slash team house or you can just use the team house or use team house as the promo code.

You'll get 10% off your first order. Please, you know, it's a great. That's the and it's L-I-T-E light sleeper.com promo code team house. It's a great product and it's great to help out Dustin, who's a former ranger and now entrepreneur. Yes. So Nelson, I'd love to ask you, you know, about this time frame. I guess now we're sort of getting into the mid-90s. What it was like going through Green Team, going through the training and like, what was your perception of development group at that time? I mean, I mean, you might, well, you could fill in the blank. I mean, what your perception was of the unit and what they were doing at that time. Sure. One thing, that piece of kit you just showed looks super cool.

like that a lot and I wrote it down. The other thing, as far as military guys stealing from each other, the Rangers are the absolute worst when it comes to. I think I literally put a bag of feces next to the office one time just to see if the Rangers would steal it and they did. Oh, yeah. I have no doubt about it. Roaches, they're roaches. But I love it. As far as Dev Group, you know, I knew what I was getting into because I had a lot of friends that had made that transition in the years previously and it just sounded like where I wanted to be. Like I think if you play baseball, you want to play in the major leagues, right? And there's nothing wrong with the seal teams. And it sounds disparaging to say otherwise, but they were in my eyes the best of the best. So I wanted

to challenge myself and off the green team I went once they said, yeah, let's bring Nelson over. So the training itself was intense. Mostly close quarter battle type stuff, house, you know, runs and things like that, but it was physically intense and very mentally and emotionally draining as well. So there's some guys again that did not make it through a green team and they go back to the regular SEAL teams and have a great career and, you know, kudos to them. But the only thing I can say after spending 10 years at that specific command is I wish I had gone earlier. I mean, just the way it's funded in their operational capacity is just exactly what I was looking for and thoroughly enjoyed working there and the professionals that I worked with.

So it was a pretty good experience. Yeah, there were some times that I questioned it. I never questioned the men around me. Yeah. What was at the time the difference in, you know, without going into sort of offset, but sort of what was the difference between like a vanilla siltium or the seals and, and, you know, dev group? I just think we're the responsibility bestowed to the individual was much higher.

Okay. At Steel Team 2, there was just levels of bureaucracy and I'm assuming the other SEAL teams are like that. But a Dev group, you were given a lot of rope. And if you choose to hang yourself, then knock yourself, you know, you're free to do so. But they gave a lot of responsibility to young men with automatic rifles and the rest of it. So I really appreciated that. It was just a chance to, you know, push the limits for, on personal levels and then as a cohesive group.

So it was a wonderful place to be. And, yeah, if that answers that. Yeah. Well, in terms of like mission sets, because people, you know, tend to think of seals as, you know, and I think their mission has changed quite a bit over the years, but tend to think of them as these commandos and, you know, which they are, but what is different between like a vanilla seal or what a vanilla seal might be asked to do at the time and what dev group might be asked to do? Yeah, there's only a couple commands out there that literally work counterterrorism type stuff. And again, not getting into the obsequc side of it, Dev group is one of those commands. So it's a completely different, you know, structure as far as who you answer to and who cause you and tells you to go.

Like that in itself is pretty ginormous. So, you know, us and our sister unit, and I like the word sister there, our Army counterpoint. I mean, we talked about a healthy competitiveness, and there's nothing about those two units. That's not competitive. And, you know, back in that day, in the mid-90s, we didn't have a lot of seal admirals. So we were very low-hanging fruits. So when we're deployed to places like Afghanistan or Iraq and other things, both units are there at the same time.

And Mission X pops up, you know, the Joint Chiefs and the rest of those clowns, hey, send our army guys, you know. So we're sitting there, you know, with a thumbs up or butts. Like, you know, maybe one day they'll call us. But, you know, some things work out for the best. Like they're off chasing shadows in Western Iraq. And then they're like, oh shit, look at this Intel. We've got to act on it right now.

Well, who can we send us? And it worked out favorably for us a lot. But we were the stepchildren of special operations for some time, at least at that level. But due to a lot of really good stuff that the boys have done over the years, I think that's come full circle. Oh, go ahead, Jack. Well, I was going to ask you, prior to 9-11, were you guys mostly focused on like the Bosnia, Herzegovania, that whole mission? It's been a lot of time over there where I think I'm. might have even bought property.

I mean, we were spent a ton of time in Bosnia. And again, it was good times. But there were, there were so many places you go to and things that you do that just don't make the new cycle. So, you know, we were very active during those times. Obviously, everything changed on 9-11, of course, and rightfully so. Are there, I mean, not to probe too much, but I am going to probe. Are there any things, any missions from that time frame that you're particularly,

um, proud to have been a part of that, like, maybe didn't make it. make the newspaper or not maybe so widely known. Because when I have these conversations with guys, it's always interesting to hear about, you know, like I talked to somebody just today. He was like, we did this successful embassy evacuation in like 95 or 96. But it was unlike, it didn't even make the paper because it was during the Rodney King riots. So I always like to talk to folks like you and ask if there's things like that that maybe went under the radar at the time.

Yeah. I mean, countless. And there's so many things like, luckily, I was part of the Jessica Lynch rescue mission, and obviously that made the news and the, you know, heralded and all that kind of stuff. And it was a pretty straightforward thing, and it went really well for, thank God.

I mean, it was quite the amazing night for us. But we get restaged. And the next night they sent us in for what was a pre-planned mission back when we were in the beach. And I'm arguing to my head said, look, man, we just had a pretty long night and it went pretty well. I think we could put this pre-stage thing off for another night or whatever, and they launched us.

And it turned into a bit of a shit storm. And nobody will ever hear about it, but I couldn't have been more proud at that time I was a troop chief, so I had a bunch of pipe hitters that worked for me and off we went. But it's just their level of professionalism is pretty badass. And you guys never heard about it.

I pretty much forgot about it. But like you said, Rodney King trumped an embassy evacuation and wherever that was. It's kind of a sad state of affairs, but there were so many more things we did than Jessica Lynch. But, you know, they're all worth something. And yeah, it was pretty remarkable stuff. Prior to 9-11, did you, when you were growing up in Dev Group, because, you know, because you have a career there too, did you find yourself drawn to different aspects? or operational, like, aspects of, I mean, did you like the low-vis stuff?

Did you like the sniper stuff? Did you like the assault or stuff? Like, what did you find yourself drawn to? I was able to go to sniper school while I was at SEAL Team 2. So I came over as a qualified sniper. So, but because at that time, I think I was an E6 when I got the damn neck, I was already getting a little, well, that's not senior, but I never got to deploy in the snipers. I was always just part of the assault team and then picked up a boat crew, which

becomes, you know, because the Army couldn't understand the difference between a boat crew and the team, we started calling ourselves teams within the scope team. It gets a little ridiculous, actually. But so I became a team chief and then a troop chief, so I never got to actually deploy as a sniper. But as far as, it's usually the needs of the assault team that you're on. So as a new guy, I'm carrying a sledgehammer and a holeigan tool. And, you know, quick you saw off the cost for that type of stuff and building breaching charges and I got heavily into breaching for a while. But air ops went also when I came from Silt Team 2, I was already a jump master and had some of those qualifications. So and I loved it. So I kind of fell into the air

operations if I had to pick one thing. And I did a lot of that, which led me again to Tucson, Arizona because I wasn't big into taking leave. So if there was a period where, you know, leave was authorized or guys were taking leave, but another assault team or somebody was out in Tucson training, I would just go out there and help, whether it's tandems or shooting video or instructing or whatever. Because I did enjoy the jump aspect. Like some of the best times, literally in my life is when it's like negative 40 degrees under canopy at 22,000 feet with like eight of your best friends like at two in the morning, you know, with the lights of Phoenix over there in Tucson. It's just wonderful, wonderful stuff. So I wasn't much into the Hollywood jumping,

although I've done a little bit of that. I like putting the stuff on and getting out in the middle of the night. So air ops, I guess I could have just said air ops and we could have moved on to the next question. No, because what you said was much richer. So did you become sort of like one of the sky gods for for DeGro? I did a lot of jumping for Deaf Group and, you know, got into the Hey-ho, the high-altitude, high-opening type stuff quite deep. And we rewrote the SOPs because we went out and practiced it. And what does it mean to jump a bundle with the assault team? How does that fall in relation to and doing a lot of that kind of stuff? And testing equipment. I mean, Naval Special Warfare Development Group is

a testing command. If you read their metal, I mean, that's what they do. So we did a lot of testing and I was dumb enough to do a lot of the jump experimental parachutists. Yeah. Yeah. We did a lot of that. But it was fun. It really was. So I you're doing all this stuff out in Tucson. And now prior to 9-11, we should probably touch upon your, how you became a business owner and what you started doing out there and talk about that a little bit. Yeah, that friend of mine was running the facility and because of the growth, they were going to need an assistant and he knew I was up for retirement in 2005. So we were good friends and he was going to wait to release that job until I retired if I did in 2005. And I was a big sports bar kind of guy.

Like I didn't cook in my hotel room. We were going out every night, you know, and obviously we were traveling extensively, domestically and internationally, but mostly domestically training and doing this and doing that. So I like sports. I've been known to have a beer or two every now and then, and I never really understood why at a sports bar you just had to eat, you know, deep fried food and deep fried jalapinos. So I started looking in Tucson, found a place and opened it. And when was it? August of 2001. I'm very excited. At that time, I was traveling to Tucson probably collectively three to four months a year, you know, two weeks here, three weeks there, one week there. One week And I thought that would be enough to keep my finger on the pulse of the business.

And a month later, 9-11 happened. So my Tucson trips got put on hold for a few years. But I kept writing checks for payroll and keeping it going until I could, you know, if I did retire in 2005, which I ended up doing for a long shitty story. But and then get out there and try to write that ship a little bit. So, yeah, I opened the first one in 2001. Subsequently, there's three other trite and grills. And a new thing we're trying, Trident Pizza Pub that's been open since, I think, 2019.

So five restaurants, four Trident Grills and a Trident Pizza Pub. That's amazing. So, yeah, I mean, you did this while you were an active duty operator. I mean, you were not the type of dude. I mean, your feet must have barely touched the ground for a few years there. We stayed pretty busy. Yeah, there were definitely some mistakes made, but you know, you can learn from them if you try to. So, no, I don't recommend that.

I don't recommend opening a business in Tucson when you're from Virginia Beach or you're overseas a lot. But if you want to, yeah, give me a call. I'll try to talk to. So, I mean, I find myself, I ask a lot of our guests this question because it's an inflection point for anyone whose career strode this. Where were you when 9-11 happened? What was it like for you at the command that day? Ironically, I was in Tucson. I had a tandem rig on my back and getting on.

on to the bus to drive over to the airplane when the first tower got hit. So we're like, you know, the word's starting to get out. We got off the bus, walked back in to see the second tower get hit. So obviously we knew, okay, you know, some shit's hit the fan. Let's see where this goes. And everything got grounded. My team chief was out there with us. He jumped, literally jumped in his rental car and started driving to Tampa, get down to, so calm down there. Literally from Tucson, he drove straight to Tampa like that day. So we were stuck for a few days. It was obviously early morning.

Trident wasn't open, but I had the keys. So me and the boys went to Trident, watch the news, and just waited for word from headquarters. So it took a few days until we could get on a flight to get back east. So that's where I was wearing a stupid tandem rig getting out of bus. And when you finally get back to Tampa, I mean, are you guys, or I'm sorry, when you get back to Damneck, are you guys jocking up to get out the door. They're like upwards coming down to you guys. Upwards, certainly, you know, your kits are always staged to be ready to go out the door and short notice. So that wasn't a big consideration, but some target folders and things already, you know, somehow started making their way to the team

room. And some general wanted to go over and I volunteered. So me and some other guys volunteered to do the first PSD over there with the general. I think, I don't know where we were in Afghanistan. So I got to go pretty early. I think the first time I was in Afghanistan was November of 01. And I think then I deployed in the beginning of 2002 under the whole advanced force operations, which I know you guys are familiar with, but it was like me and one other seal on a Toyota truck for four months. It wasn't the best. I don't recommend that.

I'd recommend opening a bar across the country there before doing four months of AFO for, special operations command. I definitely recommend that. Was that AFO for Iraq, I take it? No, that was Afghanistan. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. It was, you know, we had our big brothers, the assault team up the street. So I think our job was to drive around and get shot at.

And then we call in the big boys and they would take care of business. So, yeah, it's not recommended. But again, I learned a lot. And the guy who was with, we're still great friends. probably the best deal I ever worked with. So you guys were kind of the recon by fire element. Just go out there, see what happens. Yeah, they didn't want to call it that, but we certainly did. There were some nights we'd go to bed.

His name is Hans. I'd be Hans, man. Did we get shot out today? And he's like, I don't think we did. And we're like, maybe we'll start a street. It never lasted very long. Before, we don't look at the chat very much, but I just want to say that Steve Wolf,

WLFE shouted out to you, said long time. Yeah, man, I haven't heard that name in a minute or seven. Yeah, please send my love. I don't know. I'm guessing he's listening right now. You're sending it right now, yeah. Rockstar and miss his face. So, yeah, we should get together, if at all possible.

So, you know, with Afghanistan, first off, everybody's afraid. Is Wolf making fun of me on that chat room right now? He's trolling? Not that I've seen. I'll be very disappointed if he's not. I'm sure D will keep an eye out for it, though. Nothing yet. Just saying what's up to you.

That's it. But I'm sure you'll pick up right now. So, you know, first off, everybody's worried that Afghanistan is going to end in three months or three days. Everybody, I'm sure, is fighting for whatever raids there are, you know, especially in that environment at the time. Did you guys have to politic at all? Like were you guys trying to like find a mission? No.

We in our, again, our sister counterpoint deployed with people we were looking for, you know, the HVTs and that was pretty much the reason we were there. But as time progressed and that stupid ass war kept going and kept going, they started using us more like even conventional forces. And I never understood it. But even towards the end of my tenure, and again, I got out in 2005, I was pretty disillusioned in what they were using that command for while we were over there. Extortion 1-7 is a big story. I mean, that was, they were on a QRF bird, QRF for the Rangers.

And again, nothing against the Rangers, but it wasn't TF-160. It was a Nebraska National Guard stripped out CH-47 with, you know, some of your nation's best operators on. And again, I'm not saying one life is worth more than another, but that wasn't our mission, you know, to be URF or another unit in the aircraft and a pilot that you have not trained with like we did with TF160 for so many years. Right. So that kept going that direction even from the early days. And, you know, you never know. Everybody, you know, back in the day, if you were hurt, you pretended you weren't because you never knew when your beeper was going to go off and you did not want to miss whatever that was, you know. now Afghanistan is going.

So we spent a, you know, I finished that AFO tour and then went back shortly thereafter with my squadron. And there was a propensity to jump on whatever you could. But of course, that's dictated from higher up. You don't really get a choice. You know, you can play the devil's advocate for this or for that. You got some idiot intel guy trying to insert us, like during the cover of nightness, they wanted my troop to insert in point X and move to point Y, which was only about 800 meters,

but the contour lines were literally on top of each other. And I'm sure you guys have been to Afghanistan. And I'm like, hey, you know this is a freaking cliff, right? There's no way we're going to get there by light. It's just not going to happen. So there are so many stupid things like that going on that you just look back and you're like, man, you know, the fact that we're still here is quite amazing, actually. Now, I don't know if I'm answering your question.

You absolutely are, and we appreciate it. Now, did you guys have to change your tactics at all during that time? Because, you know, here you are one of the preeminent counterterrorist forces. And now you're doing patrol, you know, activities. 100% true. And we learned that pretty quick. You know, we had our cool little cool guy, 10-inch barrel guns with the suppressors on it for house clearance and no real optics to speak of other than red dot type stuff in-house shooting.

And now you're patrolling whatever number of hundreds of meters trying to identify good versus bad. And yeah, we ended up having to put some acogs on our rifles. There was a big learning curve. It wasn't just, you know, clearing up a building anymore. And from call out, so what is the risk of force, you know? Is it safer to have Terps talk to him and call them out or bomb the place or go in and there was so much of a learning curve. And, you know, that's just the nature of combat, I guess. But we were trained pretty hard for things that were a lot different than what we saw when we got over there.

Some of it, you know, angles are angles and things are things. But, you know, when it comes down to, it's not some munition being shot at back at you, things get a little bit different, as you guys know. Yeah. Yeah. So were you, did you try to do most of the? that in-house? Did you reach out to? Because even like a conventional infantryman and the conventional side of the military has a decent grasp generally of like the patrol base activity

or patrol type activities. Did you guys have people helping you along with that stuff? If there were, they were, I never saw them. Yeah. It was all, you know, we would debrief from the other team or whatever we'd get back and we extensive after actions reports and lessons, learns and things like that. So the big. biggest thing I think we were great out before any ops obviously you have a plan but you know the plan's going to go to shit so you just what if the bejes is out of it and that was one of our you know what's the difference between the steel teams or an sf team or rangers or some of the other units out there and I would always say it's just our flexibility on target like I've been with other units before and they're like but we were told to do this sir and I'm like dude that's not going to work right now and it's pretty evident that it's not because that's places on fire. We're not doing that. We're going to do this. So flexibility on target, listening to people that have been there and what they learned, especially when they're brothers, and then, you know, implementing that and the next time we go. Now, you mentioned that you had a bit

disillusionment. What was, what was the general feeling of guys in the unit, you know, being trained to be the tip of the spear in this, you know, very dynamic counterterrorist rule? And now they're out doing patrols. Was there was there a lot of pushback? No, guys, no. That's another thing. Once, you know, the pushback would be before you jump on the helicopters or you get in the Humvees or the Bradley fighting vehicles or whatever the insertion method is, the pushback would be prior. But once you're actually the mission, you know, you're, you know, three bags full, Roger that, let's go. Now, you know, especially in Iraq, as a troop chief and we've been doing a lot of work over there at the point. We got some dumb shit that would come across and we'd get back

from this and because of things on that target would lead to another target pretty quickly sometimes like actionable intelligence and I'd be talking to the headshed and they're pushing for something way over here. My guys would never see it, but I'm arguing against actually going to do that because to me it didn't make sense tactically or for a lot of different reasons. I was kind of that guy sometimes. But then if they're like you're going anyway there, dude, I would go to the boys and you know, we'd get fired up, reload and go back out. So officers, I think it comes back to officers, they would spend two years at damn neck. So for their fitness reports, they needed to have something on it to separate it from somebody else. Right. So they're pushing for a lot more than the actual

dudes going through the door. That sounds kind of self-praising and I don't mean to be. But, you know, they got a two-year chance to make a mark to continue their officer career. And that's always bothered me on some level. Yeah. Yeah, we've talked about that just even in the range of Italians before where, you know, a PL, you know, has 18 months or whatever, whatever he has there. And he's going to, you know, ride you hard and put you away wet. So it looks good for him.

But he doesn't understand that as soon as he's gone, somebody else is coming in and do the exact same thing. And guys like you were there for 15 years or 10 years. or whatever, slogging it out every day. Yeah. And guys that get to dev group generally do not leave. I mean, they come from SIL Team 3 or Sill Team whatever, and they get to damn neck and they're there until they retire or they have to go. Yeah.

And sometimes they make rank and there's no room for them, so they'll go back to the other side or maybe go out to be a BUDs instructor, which sounds absolutely horrid to me. But for the most part, they're there until they can't stay there anymore. Because that's exactly right. but officers, they come and go. And I'm not saying they wouldn't go on target, and they would. But, you know, you clear that first room, stuff your officer in there with the EOD guys

and go clear the rest of the building, you know? So, again, it sounds kind of shitty for me to say that. But they're trying to do what they're trying to do. They just sometimes had different goals than like we had. Now, what was your relationship with the Vanilla Steelers? during this period of time. Were you guys competing for the same operations? No, if we were, it was transparent to us.

So there was very little, I can't, I can't speak of everything past my time in 2005 as far as if there was a working relationship. But while we were there, no, we didn't have any interaction, didn't even see them. So I know they were very busy as well. But no, no, sir, nothing with us. Do you want to, I'd like to ask you about around. rack. And when that starts, if you could tell us, you know, when does that start coming on your radar? At this point, what, you're a troop chief? Yes. When does, when does Iraq start coming up on

your radar? When do you start getting prepared for that? What's the mission going in? It happened pretty quick. I think we had just got back from Afghanistan when that was spinning up. And it happened to be luckily or not luckily. It was our assault team that got out the door, I think, first. And that was a whole different ballgame than Afghanistan. Afghanistan, it was a lot of what the hell are we trying to figure things out. I mean, it was Afghanistan. You know, Baghdad was a city and it kind of more what we thought we had been trained for because it was like direct action type stuff, looking for this guy, looking for that guy, trying to find a phone, trying to do this. It, you know, to call it more fun would be just because of my lack of vocabulary,

Larry, but I enjoyed it a lot more over there. It was some badass stuff. But with that was some of the same bureaucratic stupidity that we witnessed in Afghanistan just got carried on to Iraq. But very proud of what the guys did in Iraq and Afghanistan. So yeah, nothing really negative. I just, you know, if I was king for the day, I would have done things a little different. What did you guys have a role in the invasion of Iraq? We were in a little tent city early before any of the forces got up to Baghdad. In Saudi Arabia, a little tent city, and we started launching ops before that wave got up there. So that was interesting living and interesting operations when you start incorporating, you know, fast movers as well as 8-10s with helicopters and mid-air refueling.

and mop gear because, you know, it was chem bio and all that kind of stuff. It was something else. So we were doing cross-border ops before the invasion actually really had gotten started. Yeah. Or simultaneous width. But nobody was near Baghdad when we were going all around that area trying to find this guy or that thing or do this or do that. Oh, this is the deck of 52. You got it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So we were very active. And then somebody somewhere decided we needed to get the Baghdad really quick. So we took a pretty hellacious C-130 ride up there, dropped off at the airport. It was pretty special.

It was definitely special. I thought we were doing fine where we were at. We were launching ops pretty much nightly, but they had to have us there. So off we went. And it was fine. It was fine. But, you know, we had armored Humvees and we learned that they were pretty worthless in a situation like that. So we were able to get some Bradley fighting vehicles.

And I'd heard horrible things about them, but I fell in love with them. And M1 tank is a pretty formidable thing too. Yeah, we elicited a lot of help from other people while there. What was it like for the new guys coming on board? I had, you know, because you guys have already had time in Afghanistan. Now you're, it's like during the invasion of Iraq. they've been vanilla seals. I don't know if they've had combat time or if they wanted it.

Like, had Green Team changed or did they, did you guys have kind of slap some sense into them when they showed up? I'm wondering, that's a good question. I'm wondering if Green Team did change. I'm assuming it did on some level. Like, I left the assault team I was on in 99 and got forced to go teach Green Team for a couple of years. So that was still pretty status quo, I guess. And I'm sure there were definitely some changes implemented because of 9-11.

And the lessons learned, at least I hope so, it would be foolish to not. So, but as far as new guys coming in, they're just, you know, wide-eyed and ready to go. Yeah. And I never saw an issue with it. You know, we knew who was who. And, you know, but you never know who the first guy through the door is going to be. You can plan it. And I wouldn't plan it to be that new guy.

I just got from Green Team. But sometimes it ends up being that new guy from Green Team because this helicopter had this problem or that door, you're not getting to it. And if we're going to enter from this door, we're going to breach a wall or the circumstances go on and on. So at any time, somebody that gets off that helicopter could be put in a pretty premier role that you didn't plan. What to talk about the Jessica Lynch rescue? Like, when did that come up on your radar? And you guys got tapped for that. Well, obviously, when that motorcade got attacked, it came on a radar because there was dead Americans as well as some that were missing.

So we were briefed on it as much as we could be. We were still doing our ongoing missions and we'd get an Intel spike on her location or others. And we'd get spun up to go and it would fall through or whatever. But then that real intel came in when that doctor, whatever he was, brought that briefcase with the camera in it. And he actually had a proof of life and where she was. And we rolled out pretty quick that night, actually. Can you tell us about the op, how it went down? Yeah, it was ginormous.

I think we were Baghdad, and that guy I spent the time with on AFO, again, his name was Hans. They loaded us, Hans was running our sniper cell, and I was running the assault side. They sent us up to Nazaria, and just him and I, the helicopter took us up there, and we met. It was a one-star general who sees us, and now he's ready to take the bridge and go hit every. I mean, he was a motivated young one star, and it was it was quite cool. The Marines had gotten their ass kicked a little bit there. I think they lost a number of people in that Nazaria area. And he was ready to go light it up.

And we're like, sir, you know, we're here, you know, for the Lynch thing and the plans of. So the planning had already started. And that was one of dev groups downfalls. I think they were always, not always, but sometimes just late to the game on the initial planning. have to be, especially when you're doing it with conventional forces, which I think there were 1,400 people involved in that Jessica Lynch. Wow. You know, my troop had 23 guys, and we were the hospital clearance.

But there was like 1,400 people. One, she's a hot blonde from West Virginia. So, you know, there was a lot of public outcry and motivation to go get her. So I think if I had been in one in the hospital, I think I'd still be there. But it wasn't me. It wasn't me. It was Jessica. So the planning was already ongoing when it was the night before the op when Hans and I got there.

I mean, they had the table built and they had the schematics from the hospital. I think that was built by the Japanese. It's amazing their ability to pull up stuff like that sometimes. So we're looking at that. But our quick reaction force were Rangers. And their insertion point was something like 800 meters away. And I'm looking at the maps. And I'm thinking, you know, we could probably get them a little closer.

800 meters can be a long way, especially in the bad area. So I'm thinking along those lines. And then they had the breach point. There was a big wall on the outside of the hospital. And the rangers are going to breach here and then clear these auxiliary buildings. But anything downrange of those buildings with the hospital where we're going to be. So I finally spoke up. I'm like, hey, you know, I don't really like the insertion point for the QRF.

And if we breach this wall instead of that wall, anything, you know, your field of fire is not going to have us down range of. And that one star is like, hold what you got. We went and had a cup of coffee, started yelling at me about where the commanding officer was. And I'm like, sir, I don't know where my commanding officer is. Just me and Hans. He's like, your points are valid. But, you know, this has already been planned and that's what we're going with.

And I'm like, okay. So the next morning our boys got there, we drew it out the best we could. And then we initiated it. some little birds, some 60s. There was talk as to whether to keep a 60. Well, one, you know, we had ISR, so we're trying to, a lot of vehicles are moving in and out. But I went in on the little bird to see if the front door was going to be a breach point or not. It wasn't.

Whether we kept a 60 spinning on the deck right out front, I think the hospital was seven stories. She was on the second floor. Again, there's so many details, and I don't want to bore you or whoever's listening. No, I love hearing. No. But it went as well as it could go. A good friend of mine who I had worked for another agency who had worked with me in Afghanistan speaks a language.

I put him on one of our back helicopters to come with us. And his name's Dan, I'm like, Dan, as soon as you see somebody that looks in charge, snatch him up and find out where Jessica is. We knew where she was, but I'm like, just in case. And if she's not there, have that dude at the top of the stairs, second floor again. So sure enough, we got to her room, locked.

shotgunned our way in and she's not there. So that was one of the worst radio calls you ever can make. It's like a dry hole for something like that. So I put that out, worked a way back to the staircase. And there was Dan and this dude and a security guy. And he's like, no, she's down here in this room. And sure enough, there she was. Wow.

So, you know, you had to think, got a dock in. He assessed her. A pararescue guy was with me. And I think we had her from finding her to having her on that 60. like nine minutes on time on target. And there's a lot of things that happened that I would have liked to have cleared the rest of the hospital because the last one we wanted is a carrier out and somebody from a top floor having an angle down on that 60 or on her or on us.

But decision was made to move as fast as possible and we did. So we did spend the rest of the night there. Our quick reaction force didn't get there in a very timely fashion. Again, nothing against the Rangers, but it took a little while. a not very quick QRF. Yeah, well, yeah, it wasn't great. But those guys were amazing. They got there and that same doctor,

people in the hospital had pointed out where remains were buried out for fun. And they literally dug them up with their hands. And it pretty moving, amazing stuff. So, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it gives me like. It was an incredible night, obviously. We went and got the little hop line. We got out of there.

Things went super good. spent a night hanging out there with some good friends. And then the next night they launched us on some bullshit back to what we talked about earlier that nobody will ever know about. But it was something I'll always remember. And I think I sent you a picture. Again, I was one of the guys that carrying her down the stairs. And she was a mess.

She wasn't saying anything that made any sense. But she said something going down the stairs. And I'm not going to quote it, but it was English. And I'm like, thank God, man. and maybe this chick's going to be okay. And I told myself that one day I'd like to have a beer with her. And through some other program that had her on, the guy knew me, put us in contact.

She was out in Phoenix for her friend Pesthua. And I hope I'm not mispronouncing a name that got killed in her vehicle with her and her good friend in the Army. There was something going on for private Pestua in Phoenix. And she was going to be out there in contact me. So I drove up and I had a beer with him. And it was super cool. And I thoroughly enjoy that beer.

She's a good young lady. Now, it's interesting because this goes back to what your primary mission was the counterterrorism and hostage rescue. And this was the first successful hostage rescue since World War II, right? I've heard that. I'm not a historian. Well, there was Kurt Mews is the other one that comes up in my mind that gives me goosebumps where, you know, American troops coming in. And I mean, that's got to be a good feeling.

Yeah, where was that one? Panama. Panama. Okay. Yeah. That's right. I don't know if there could be a better feeling. Like, and like I said, we drew it out as best we could. Like, there's the stairs, there's the front door, the stairs inside.

We had a video of it all. That guy that got us that intel, I mean, I don't know where he is today, but God bless him. So we had as much as we could ask for. And then I'm with my men. And, you know, we knew we might get our ass kick and flying in, you know, I'm on the outside of one of the little birds. And it's like a, it's like a movie scene, except for a lot of nights were. But that night, I mean, it was the, they were doing distraction fires. And by distraction fires, I mean, they were lighting the hell out of the places around there.

And it was just amazing to sit outside of a little bird going in to do something like that. Yeah. And, you know, as we were loading up, the guys could not have. have been more fired up. I think we got word that day. I think it was April Fool's Day that night that we went in to get her. But that day, like at 1,300, we got word that she was killed.

And you want to talk about being demoralized. Like the guys were ready to go. Like we didn't care of it with daylight or like less launch, even though that would be stupid. And quickly, that changed, obviously. And off we went. But the guys were very super motivated. And Hashi rescue is a whole different animal.

Yeah. There's no barricade of flow or anything like that. It's get to your principle, period, whether it's stepping over friends or whatever. You cannot slow down the assault on a hostage rescue. Obviously, we could talk more as more of those things happen as those wars progressed and some more lessons learned from different places all over the world. But that particular night, it was go find the little blonde chick. And we did. Well, that

She's listening. I apologize to her. I caught her a little blonde chick or hot a couple few times. Sorry, Jessica. So I'll buy you another beer. You're a seal. Everybody will forgive it.

And tip of the hat to the guy, that guy, Dan, that you mentioned. Yeah. Oh, what a rock star. We still stay in touch. It's not very frequent. I think he lives in Prague with his family now. But an absolute rock star and where he came from and what he did for us, it can't be overstated.

I mean, in Afghanistan, there was a lot of SIGA. So he wore his, I mean, when we're trying to get rest, he's listening to whatever the hell those nutbags listen to, just trying to figure stuff out so we can do our job. And nothing but love. Nothing but. What did you guys make of the controversy shortly after the, because I still remember this, after the Jessica Lynch rescue about it being pre-planned or pre, like, basically acted out and everybody had blank firing adapters.

I just think it's exactly that. It's just, you know, I was outside the Littlebird that night and I didn't see any of that. So I know the guys I was with, we were expecting quite the fight. Supposedly the Fedien had used the basement of that hospital for planning. And they had. We ended up clearing the basement, even though we were expecting our Ranger friends to do that. But they weren't there yet. So we went to head down there.

And they had giant sand tables and friendly positions. And it had been a base of some sort, but they weren't there anymore. So I did hear all those. reports and the BFA's and the rest of it. I just get a kick out of stuff like that. So I also like the way the media portrayed. And neither did she as a hero and her gun went dry. She was knocked unconscious and she woke up, you know, as a prisoner of war.

And she's the first one to admit it, you know. So yeah, I don't know, media and even the military just tried to spin it off to more than it was. And it was good enough as it was. Yeah. Yeah. it's fascinating. Do you know how many bodies they were able to exhume?

I want to say two, but I think it was more than that. I don't. I think it was, I think it may have been closer, and I don't know off the top of my head, but I think it was closer to like a dozen that they pulled out at the pit.

Yeah, I think the right out front, I think there were just two. But yeah, I really don't know, and I probably should. I apologize for that. But amazing what those guys did. to respect the dead there. It was something else.

There's a vignette in Marty's book behind you there, violence of action that talks about the Ranger point of view and exhuming the remains. And it was pretty gnarly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because they, yeah, because they were, I don't want to say fresh, that's horrible.

But they were recently deceased. They were decomposing and the Rangers were having to exhumed them with their hands and guys vomiting. But you and the other guys out there, I mean, they did it to repatriate Americans. I mean, it was an honorable mission that you guys did. 100%. And nothing but kudos. Again, I feel like a bad mouth of Rangers a little bit when some of my best friends are.

And no, nothing but love, as I said before. So, yeah, that was something else. So you guys get back to the team house, so to speak. D kidding. Everyone's high-fiving. And they spin you back up on another one. A complete bullshit op that we literally had a model of in our team room. And it was a long flight in refueling.

And we got the shit hammered out of us. And it was basically to leave pamphlets. Like, because of. For real? Yeah, it was so. I thought you were going to say you were going after the WMDs or something. Oh, that's a whole other story. I'll have to say for another time.

but we went after the number one chem biot target in Iraq while we were still in Saudi Arabia, the number one target. And it was anything but. And that was like, okay, what are we doing in this country? Like, before the big wave hit Baghdad or any of that, like the number one chemo target, we hit it very early on. And it was basically an Iraqi 4-H club. It was shit.

So freaking demoralized. So you guys go in like, like the J-list suits and everything, expecting World War III. Full-Mot. Yeah. Full-mop gear. Yep. And it's a country club.

Yep. It was, well, I'll tell the brief part of the story. There's a big hospital that had a lot of air handling units on top. And then this building that had a telescoping pathway that connect them to. So the big minds thought they were taking prisoners and poisoning them, getting them to a level or whatever, and then moving them into the hospital with all. this extra air handling gear and seeing how their chem bio stuff was working. And it just spun out of control. I think some of the intel types just read way too many like Tom Clancy or Stephen King novels or

something. Like I looked at this hospital outside of Baghdad and I'd be like, it doesn't it get like 120 degrees there in the summer, you know, on an average day? Like couldn't that be it? You know, and no, this was it. So we had all the chem stuff. you know, to take swabs and the doors are going to be this and, you know, full, full kit, the mop gear, which is kind of hard to fight with. We didn't have permission to take out the transformers of that town to blacken it for us. Luckily, there was a field really close to our entry point, but there was apartment buildings and we really did get shot up really bad.

Our helicopters specifically, they all got shut up, but the one I was in, you know, And you just remember the bullets going through and you don't know if you should kneel or stand or, you know, where do you move, which is safer than what. And gas mask on and you're two minutes out when the 810s got permission to take out the transformers, which are close, which made a big fireball, which perfectly silhouetted the helicopters. And then, you know, all the ineffective fire became effective. And the first door we went through was a hollow core wood door. And literally before we loaded, I'm on a phone with some. big head in nevado wherever telling me what to look for where to take samples from all that stuff once again helicopters are turning i'm like roger that off we go and it was just a four h

iraqi four h club like agriculture and et cetera et cetera those four h kids though they can they can uh they can uh be pretty devious the threat is real the threat is real guys they can uh you know some of those science projects that they that they put together uh hope they're good at do it yourself projects because we kind of made a mess of their little schoolhouse. Yeah. Unfortunately. But that was about as demoralized about as Iraq as I could be. And that was literally one of our first targets.

And, you know, you just start questioning. Now, all we heard is Kambio, Kambio, the number one. Like, we had it to scale model of the place. Like we planted as best we could. Got there and got the shit hammered out of us and thinking, okay, they're trying to protect this shit and once inside we're like nope not what we expect so it's and I probably shouldn't be talking about that because I don't know the whole chem bio thing uh yeah I'm I'm glad you did though Nelson because I mean it's so fascinating I mean Iraq is what it is we all know now but it's so

fascinating to hear it from the operator perspective from literally at the the point of the spear you don't necessarily get to hear that kind of perspective about you know the impact on U.S. foreign policy and the decisions that are made. Yeah. Yeah. Can you, for people who haven't been in the military and had the joy and pleasure of even putting on mop gear, can you describe it to, can you tell us what mock gear? You don't have to give us the military acronym for mop because I, but, but can you tell us

what it is and why it's such a joy to try to operate in? I don't even know what the acronym stands for. I don't need that. It's mission-oriented protective posture. There you go. Nice. Get the brains on Brad. I know.

The big brain on Brad. This is what I do 24-7, so I have to know all this crazy stuff. It's just like this. I think there's charcoal lined in it. It's just like a giant, heavy smock with pants and you put overboots on. So you wear your regular stuff. Then you put this on. Then you put your body armor and all your gear.

And then, of course, it's accompanied by a really comfortable gas mask that always fogs up. And then you run around and pretending to be able to do the stuff that you can do without it. So we did train with it, but not enough. But, you know, like I said, we got through that first door. And it didn't take long for me to be like, take the freaking gas mask off. And let's figure out what's going on. The same is. Right.

And then we're not going to be number one chem biotardar. Right. Uh, a hollow core door is basically what you'd find on somebody's bathroom. Right. Right. Yeah. It is. Yeah.

Yeah, like an angry eight-year-old could kick it in. Right. Don't even waste a hat and round on it. It just pushed the door open. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Right.

So that was that. So that was always, I think it was always in the back of my mind for the rest of my time in Iraq, like, you know, questioning what we're doing here. But you can't let that, you know, you still got a mission that night that you got to execute. And if you're not on your A game, you know, things could go sideways. So we were able to still maintain that focus. but, you know, I won't not argue that in the back of my mind, the whole premise of being there was the chem bio thing. At least I thought it was. And the number one chem bio target was not that. Right. And there were a lot of people hurt and civilians as well that, you know, I think if it was my neighborhood and we started attacking, there would probably be some fight back from me too. And there was just a lot of things like that that I don't have a hard time with because I don't dwell on it. But it's just what it was. We put our helmets back on and went back to work the next night.

So the mission after the Jessica Lynch mission, the Flyers, do you know why they were pushing so hard for that? It was one of Saddam's, I think it was Lake Tar-Tar was the name of it. And it was like a peninsula with three tall. guard houses and then one of his palaces. Right. But because of fuel considerations, we literally had like something like 18 minutes time on target. It was a large palace that ISR told

us it was abandoned. So we went in, I went in on the first 60 with the Rangers actually because they were going to be, we don't have enough people to cover three guard towers and then clear a big palace. So they'd given us hundreds of these flyers that I think

when translated it said something like, we can see you, something stupid and cheesy like that. So we're supposed to spread them all over this palace. So I made a mistake with the Rangers. Like the three guard, it was a, it was a spit of land with the big palace and the three guard towers and we're landing in the middle of it. And ISR said, we're good, but, you know, taking the low ground and bringing a helicopter in there sounded kind of shitty. So we employed Rangers as our blocking force. And the helicopter, I was in, I'm like, hey, I'm going to go in with them and just get an assessment from the ground before we bring the assault team in, like, be close.

And it worked like that. But we landed. I think it was guard tower number three that my helicopter was to cover guard tower number three. We get off the helicopter and they shot every bullet they had brought and then some. Like, they just opened up on this. So I'm talking to the other helicopters telling them to come in that everything's good. like what the freak is all the firing about? And I'm like, I really don't know.

But I don't think we're receiving any. So we spent our time on target, spread the stupid pamphlets around and extract. And then I'm with the Ranger guys. I'm like, hey, man, what, what were you shooting at? And they're like, sir, you said to cover guard tower number three. And some, you know, verbiage, I guess is a little different. I just wanted them to have guns on it in case something did happen there. I didn't mean to expand or shoot every single bullet you had.

But it was some good times like that learning, you know, to work with others. But lessons learned. They shot the shit out of guard tower number three. I will tell you that. So the next couple years, before you retired in 2005, I am in and out of Iraq. a little bit, not really, not so much. Like I got back from Iraq and I don't think it's a sad story, but our command master chief at the time was with us in Iraq

and was actually on target with us with the ground assault force at the hospital for Jessica. And I don't mean to bad mouth them. I got nothing bad to say about him, but I got called to his office after that deployment to Iraq. And I was in E8 and coming up for E9, and he asked me what I thought my future was with it, command. And I'm like, I'm going to make E9 and take over one of the squadrons. And he's like,

I think you did your, you were great at war, but you don't get along with the third deck. The third deck was our admin deck. And, you know, one thing I think I can honestly say I pride myself, man, is if you worked for our assault team and me in some fashion, whether you were a calm guy or a rigor or anything else, I treated you just like you were a seal. Like I just expected professionalism and you know and if if you weren't good at your job you were going to know same thing with the assaulters like i i treated them as equal but his feeling is like i was hard on the support people which i completely to this day disagree with and i and i asked him like what are you talking about is like yeah i was there and you're yelling a lot and i'm like you know master chief

i'm i yell a lot anyway i was yelling at everybody you know if they needed to be yelled at Anyway, he thought the best thing for my career would go back to go back to the white side and give back to the community. So he did not want me picking up E9 and staying at the command. And he was the command master chief. So I'm like, I think that was 2004. So I'm like, hey, I appreciate your honesty. I shook his hand. I walked across the hall and dropped my papers to retire in 2005.

So I think almost the better part of my last year at that command, I was literally in air operations, which worked out good for me, transitioning to take that job out at Panau Air Park outside of Tucson. And that was it. So if I have some regrets, that would have been it. I still don't understand how you're a troop chief at that command and you were told you're very good at the combat stuff, but administratively, you're not doing as well as you should. Right. It didn't really set well with me. And obviously, I don't think it does today. But that is what happened. I wish him nothing but the best, but I also hope I never see him again. Correct me if I'm wrong.

That sounds like maybe it was one of those things where you just like pushed back too much on certain things. Probably. I mentioned, I think, early in this podcast, that, you know, I had nothing against officers, but I do believe you have to know your role. And when I first got to Damnneck, I was in an assault team and I wish I would have appreciated it more because it had the strongest enlisted leadership I'd seen ever. and I just thought that was the way they all were. But now I was just super lucky our team chief and our boat crew leaders and our, at that time they were called element leaders, became troop chiefs again when we had to change because the Army couldn't understand all that.

They were just rock stars. And we would do a house run and they'd debrief it. And I'd be in awe. Like, how in the hell are they seeing and knowing what was good? I mean, they were just really good at what they did. And if an officer had something at the debrief, they would just be eaten up a lot. Like that was just what it was. And it started evolving the wrong way.

Rank never really made a difference. Like I was an LPO, a leading petty officer at Steel Team 2 as an E5 deployed. Maybe it was partially because of performance or luck or just timing. But, you know, rank is more overlooked within the SEAL teams than I think other organizations. You could work as an E8, 4, and E7. And that slowly started going away. As guys made rank maybe because their ratings were more open, you know, they became chief maybe before I did and took a boat crew.

And the guy operationally wasn't super strong. And then officers started speaking at debriefs. And, you know, I remember the old times and I would push back, not my position to push back, but that's kind of who I was. And it became, you know, a bit of a pissing contest, I guess. So I think that went into the command master chiefs. positioned to be like, you know, I'm not going to give you a squadron. I think it's time for you to get out of here.

So now was the was the third deck, though, also like the support element? Like was it like personnel and stuff like that? Absolutely. Because I know that, you know, things might be a lot different now. And I have nothing but love for support personnel. Like they're in the military. Just like anybody else just like an operator. They're doing their job.

But it's also a place where. people who want to slide can slide you know they can skate and and and like pay is different now than it was then right yeah everything's automate like everything is i'm sure was automated then to a degree too but there were times when you'd have to go fight for a soldier's pay because it had been dropped and you can tell somebody was being a lazy ass yep yep you know you're spot on but you know I still, I don't have a lot of good friends from those days, but I still have some, like that I still talk to you fairly regularly. And a couple of them were in support roles, but they're not in support roles.

They're doing their job that just happens to be in support of the assault team. Right. But if I get back and, you know, I got one radio and one ear for the assault frequency and the other ears command and control and it's not working, I'm not going to be nice to my com guy. You know, we're going to have some freaking words. But they're also, our support personnel at Damnack, we're the best of the best. They get scrimmeled like everybody else, whether they're boat mechanics or, you know, calm guys, or they're really good at what they do.

But that's what you're supposed to be. You're supposed to be that Major League Baseball team, right? Right. Now, there's a few times I can become very emotional, and I may have a few times, but talk to any steel that I've worked with. They know it goes that way as well. Right. So that's just who I've always been. I may have calmed down now that I'm really, really old.

But I don't think I've calmed down that much. Yeah. Yeah. In the Army, they call it like the field soldier versus the garrison soldier. And there are soldiers that are great in garrison, boots are always polished, always looking sharp, know all the right answers, know all the rigs. And then those aren't always the guys who are best in the field. Right. And those guys, even as long ago as it was in Damneck, were the guys that seemed to be the yes men kind of. Right. They always said what needed, they would say what needed to be heard, not with the ground truth.

Right. Like even after actions reports in combat, after actions reports that I would write as a troop chief, by the time it went up the chain of command, it would be other than who was there and the date, it would be an entirely different. That's why I don't really believe a lot of history because it's like, wait a second, you know, I was on this. Right. That's not what took place. Right. Well, that's not what they want to hear up in Warcom or so whatever come. And I'm like, who cares if you want to hear? Yeah.

How can they make real decisions? Right. Right. Right. And, you know, it's interesting because you left in 2005 and you saw that and it became even more problematic and more endemic. I mean, to the point where I don't think that our politicians at the executive level could make real decisions because they weren't being fed the truth. I could not agree more. And, you know, usually getting out like cold turkey is kind of hard on guys because they go from that to civilian sector very quickly.

But I took a job working at the drop zone where I'd see the guys. The same guys I deployed with at that time. Obviously now, you know, we got a lot of. of years between them, but I'd see them. And they'd work there and train, and we'd go out and grab a beer, grab something to eat, and they would say, man, you should have been on this mission, you would have loved this, but you wouldn't believe the politics that are happening at the command. And it was just continuing down that slide.

And again, I still think it's definitely one of the top commands in the world, and I'm nothing but proud of serving there. But I think I probably got out at the best time where I would have retired as an E6. Right. Talk to us a little bit about that transition. I mean, you did just lay it out a little bit. So you got a job working at Yuma at the Halo Committee, I take it? No, absolutely not. We've got a, it's called parachute training and testing facility. It's just outside of Tucson. Okay. And only a couple of units use it. It's strictly for them. And it's a big facility, state-of-the-art jump. jumping. So we'll teach Green Team out there. Squadron will come out for proficiency training, tandem. I mean, there's nothing that doesn't happen out there. And it's in the middle of the desert. So, you know, we can get the 25,000 feet pretty much whenever we want. Yeah, I left there. I worked there for 14 years and then I hung that hat up for honestly some political bullshit that was

happening there too. But it was good because I didn't just go from with the boys to completely, clearly alienated from. I mean, I'd see them. And it was, it was kind of sad sometimes, so they tell me about, they did this. And I'd be like, son of a bitch, you know, I'd have, I'd have slept with three men to be on that off type of stuff. But it kind of hurt my heart, but, you know, my finger was still close to the pulse of not on it.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. My transition was easier than others. Yeah. And at the same time, you're building up these business endeavors that you have going on. True, but that job at the parachute training and testing facility was, it wasn't 40 hours. It was a lot more than that a week.

And going in, we would do our night jumps pre-dawn. So getting up at 2 o'clock to go to work was pretty much a regular occurrence. And this week, it might be this unit. Next week's another one. So it became Brownhog Day, and I took it quite seriously. And I still applaud what they do out there. But after 14 years, it was enough. And in the background, I had the businesses that we, you know, we decided to expand and keep going there.

So, yeah, it was a little bit much. But, yeah, here we are. That, honestly, to me, it's incredible. You must have found the right staff, the right managers to keep those businesses going while you were deploying and so deep in other things. You missed the point where I was writing checks every month to keep the place open. Yeah. No, I heard that. Yeah.

There was a lot of poor management decisions being made early on, but some friends were closing another local restaurant. I had known their front of the house and their back of the house managers. I think I had had Trident for 11 years or so at that time. And they were going to be on the market looking for jobs. And they were highly recommended to me. So I brought them in. And I think the Trident Grill was a ship that had like barnacles all over it.

It wasn't going the wrong way, but it just wasn't cut through the water very good type of thing. So I brought them in, and they righted the ship very quickly. And then we ended up opening Trident 2, and I offered and gave them ownership percentages. So I'm still the majority owner of the restaurants, but they are owner operators. And they're the ones that do it day to day, and they're doing a great job. So, you know, kudos out to them. Yeah. And that was necessary.

Or I would have just had to be there or more. Yeah. No way I'd work the hours I was working and the restaurant. Yeah. There's just. And you mentioned that you have more recently gotten involved in the not-for-profit space. Yeah, it's kind of hard to believe, you know, from Troop Chief and that command back in the day. But there's a giant nonprofit called Greater Goods Charity.

And I beg you guys to look into it a little bit. It's all over the place, but it's big. And I've known their headshed for some time. their friends socially and I'd hear about what they're doing and what they're not doing. And it was very appealing. Like, appealing is not the, it was, it was eye-opening as to what's out there. So the earthquakes happen. I'm even wearing a greater good charity shirt, but the earthquake happened in southern Turkey and they were going over there for humanitarian aid and I volunteered to go for a week. So I spent a week over there, got back. We talked about basically in after actions of what I

saw on what I would do different. They offered me a job and field operations. So I took that job in April and a couple weeks ago I was in Ukraine doing an assessment for spaying and neutering of dogs and cats. I mean, the group they sent me with was a little sketch. And I only say that because I think they may be listening right now. But no, they were wonderful, completely professional. And we did the assessment and we're going to go back to do that. But with the that. We've got ongoing humanitarian aid, but everybody does that. That's the easy part. But the spay and neuter dogs and cats in Ukraine and a giant B program over there. I could talk about it for another hour, but I won't waste your time. While in Ukraine, we even got tattoos. It's in

Ukrainian, but it says, Amplify the Good, which is the hashtag for Greater Good Charity. So thank you for letting me plug that a little bit. But go from Troop Chief to a dude in Ukraine two weeks ago, looking assessing the need of spaying and neutering cats when air raid sirens are going off and shit i mean you really can't make it up but i tell you what for an old man is pretty good for my heart that's amazing that's amazing i'm very i hope they don't fire me anytime soon we'll see so let's do a real quick call to action anybody listening to this now or a later greater good dot org go there and drop in five bucks it's a coffee right just drop in five bucks Like help a brother out.

If you don't do it, the terrorist. Could not appreciate that more. Just go to the website and see everything that greater good is into. I mean, it's an aspect of life I've never thought about. I've never been much of a humanitarian, but pets have an unbelievable soft spot in my heart, animals in general. And it's pretty good. And also. Thank you both for bringing that up.

I do appreciate it. And also, when you're in Tucson or maybe go to Tucson as a day. destination, uh, check out Trident Grill. Like one of five locations, one of five, three, four, five. Go check them out. So he's doing. That applies to you two as well. Absolutely. I'd love to. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. So, Nelson, I mean, uh, I mean, this has been a super cool interview and I mean, it's like breadth of experience. I mean, it's been really fun. Um, anything that I, that we failed to cover, failed to ask any pearls of wisdom to

drop on people out there? Honestly, looking back, I feel like it's just been a big run-on sentence out of my face. So I hope some of it made some sense. Yeah. And I didn't bore you guys too much. No. No, you know, the biggest thing that I tried to

and we talked about it earlier, it's like everything in life, you've got to pretend that that could be the thing in life. Like, it's just so easy to just get stuck up stuck in the minutia of daily crap that, you know, next thing you know, you're 57 years old and you're wondering, you know, how much longer we got here. And it's just, it's a pretty special

thing. Like, nobody is luckier than I am. And I'm just happy I realize that. And I wish others did and treated this country and just treated each other better than we do. That's awesome, man. I know this has been really cool, man. I'm so happy to hear your story. well thank you for letting me share it and I'm glad you guys aren't asleep right now it's it's fantastic it's fascinating it's like I just can't believe honestly when you think of what Joe's what what soldiers and sailors and Marines do in their off time especially when they have a high stress job job I can't believe that you were running a business like halfway across the country it's amazing you're forgetting the

falling part you're writing the only reason the only reason that place is still open because just like buds you just refuse to quit like anybody with any sense would have been like hey this is a bad and pulled chocks but i'm like nope i mean it's named trident which is the insignia we wore in a uniform. I mean, it means a lot to me. You know, I think if you talk to the customers, most that go in have no idea. Right. I just think you have some seafood or something, but, and they don't need to know. I don't, I don't give a shit. Like, uh, but I'm not going to let that fail. And it, and it didn't. And we have five of them now. So, you know, hire the right people, I guess is the, the, the right way to go there. That's incredible. Uh, so we have some questions real quick. Um, Jackson,

Thank you very much. How different are the cultures between gold, red, blue squadron, and the difference between assault and recchi? Also, are the rivalries with HRT and Kag? H.R.T. and Kagan, let's get back to that one. As far as the rivalry between the colored teams, of course, that's there. And as we spoke earlier, that's the healthy thing. But, you know, when I was on red, it was the best assault team in that building, right?

But after teaching green team for my penance down there and I went up to gold, gold was the best assault thing out there. Right, right. And no matter what, I mean, that's just the fact. And I'm speaking the truth. Everybody also argue with me. And if you don't have that mindset, then you're doing something wrong. So there was something else, not the HRT thing, something in between there.

But he mentioned the colors and then what else? The difference between assault and Racki? A Rekke is just our sniper. So we'll have a. in my day we had three assault teams underneath the squadron and then you had a recie team assigned they're part of your squadron too but when we're going to do house runs they might be going to the no distance ranges or doing you know those freak sniper things so that's that's what we called reci i can't speak of other units did you ever go and like pull up your udt's go i used to be a

sniper or i was a sniper all the time team two i i i've i miss those UDTs. I tell you what. Those are classic. As far as the HRT and what did he say? Cag. Cag. Like, yeah, what were the rivalry also were there? But you kind of touched on that. But what was your relationship or did you have a relationship with HRT? A little bit. They got into the jump stuff a little bit. So we didn't work with them. obviously entirely different mission sets, but also quite the same. So, you know, the relation between HRT, we're talking about the hostage rescue team, I'm assuming. Yeah.

Yeah. I've got some friends within that organization. I think I may have even considered going that route at one time because it just sounds cool, but I didn't, and I don't even think they asked me to, so I don't know that it would have gone very far anyway. but I think any training that you can help them out or they can possibly help you out should be looked at. There's some legal issues regarding that type of stuff, and we used to do realistic urban training and work with local SWAT teams in L.A. or Boston or New Orleans and things like that. But it can get a little dicey on the legal side of the house, but that wasn't our business.

So, no, we didn't work with HRT a lot. Most of the work we did, I guess we did some shooting with them, but nothing to hang your hat on. Some jumping too. So they ended up coming, they ended up wanting to get a jump team together and we helped them with that. Did you ever consider going to the leapfrogs? No, I make fun of them all the time. Okay. And we had a guy, it's funny, a friend of mine was just at Arlington yesterday and she was sending pictures and she's asked,

She asked, is there anybody there that, you know, friends of yours or whatever? And of course, there's many of them. But his name is Lou Langless. And he came to Green Team when I was teaching Green Team from the Leapfrogs. And to me, if you want to be a leapfrog or a Buzz instructor, you've got no reason to go to Damnack. I just don't. So I didn't have any room in my heart for him. And he was a tremendous operator.

I mean, and just a good man and a badass. But I put him through hell during Green Team because he came from the Leaport. frogs. That's just one of my little quirks, but no, I never considered it. No, sir. Louis Vasquez, thank you very much. I've seen a pattern of seals and entrepreneurial ventures. What transferable skills from the military did you find to be useful in your business ventures? Just simply put, just don't quit. And I think because you have a background like we all have, you know, things aren't as hard as people that don't have the background think they are. You know what I mean?

Like the expectations need to be minimized when it comes to restaurants and stuff like that. But is it really that hard? You know, wage percentage should be this. It's not. Well, fix it. Liquor percentage should be this. But people get all wrapped up because they've never really had adversity. We've all experienced things that really mattered and, you know, had much greater consequences than my wage costs.

You know, so I just think it's, you know, just go at it and don't let things fail. It's really quite simple. I wish I had a deeper, more philosophic way to describe that. But there's really, that's it. Have you ever told an employee to unfuck themselves? You have no idea. Nowadays, it's a little different, but I'm a big, Redskins fan or commanders or whatever they're caught.

And they haven't been a good football team since I was a young man. I don't know if you guys follow football, but they haven't been good. But I watch every Redskins home game at the original Trident. And I had longer hair back then. And if they were losing in the fourth quarter, which they generally were, I would put my hair in a side ponytail, like a rally ponytail. So like off the side of your head. And all my staff, predominantly the servers and the girls.

that were there that would be mandated and I had one girl that refused and so I asked her to clock out and she's like why I'm like it's because you're fired and I literally fired her that day for not putting her hair in a side ponytail so it became quite the scene you can't do that anymore I'm not advocating for that or telling somebody to unfuck themselves or anything like that it's a different world these days but that did happen six months later she wanted to come back and I led her. So we're friends today. But, yeah, I fired a female for not putting her hair in the side ponytail when I told her, too. Not proud of it, but it did happen.

Sportmer here. Thanks, Clint. We appreciate Clint's a friend of ours. Another great episode. Keep them coming. You guys rock. Joe's got you. Thank you very much. Do you ever foresee Dan that being more like Kagan? again, opening up their selection pipeline to other branches of the military? I hope not because Damneck doesn't have. I mean, we teach Green Team, but we teach Green Team to do those that have been through Buzz and they've spent time in the SEAL teams.

That whole thing about CAG and Damneck doesn't really run a selection course. It's all bullshit. I mean, I almost got in a fist fight with a CAG officer at a friend's retirement because we were both drunk and he's giving me shit about the lack of a selection course. And I'm like, none of it makes sense. Damnneck does not need to recruit from outside. If you want to go to Damneck, get in the Navy, go to Buds, earn the right to be screened, get screened, get except to go to Green Team. And then there you go.

It sounds lengthy, but they're, I mean, again, correct me if I'm wrong, but their philosophy is the selection course is Buds being successful on a SEAL team and then Green Team, right? Sounds pretty good to me. Yeah, that's it, exactly. You know, if you want to go to CAG, you just got to volunteer. So they start, it could be a cook in the army or something in the Marine Corps, and then you're going through selection. So they got to teach them the lowest common denominator. You know, all our guys have a commonality of graduating from Bud's training.

Cat Chaser, thank you very much for the donation and the sticker. And Cat Chaser, thank you again for saying Super Chat. Mike Montgomery, thank you. Did you know Tom Regan or Reagan? Seal for 30 years, 82 to 12, passed away in Jordan in 2016, knew him and his brother. I did not. The name I know a Regan, but he was in Cag. No, don't recognize the name at all. But there's more seals than people think, too. Like every time I bump into somebody, you know, I must have known, I'm 57 now. So it's been a long time since I put on the kit. But it is still a small community. So sometimes the name will flash, but no, I don't recognize that one. Delta Zulu, thank you very much. Ask Nellie if he will ever

bring back karaoke to the OG Trident. No. The answer is no. I don't know who that is. We did do karaoke for a while, and it brought in people. There's nothing worse in my world than having karaoke in a bar that you own. And the OG is the original Trident. So somebody there is, I hope they're having a good day right now. I do want to say that he finished that with ha, ha, ha. Okay, perfect. As well, he should. So I think he knew. And one last question from, oh, actually, too. Lewis, thank you very much. I don't understand sometimes, is the OPSEC stuff legally allowed to speak about to family or friends? And you admit some stuff that's hard to admit, do you worry about being seen as the bad guy?

I guess I got lost some more in there. I heard OPSEC. So the first question is, can you talk about OPSEC with your family and friends? Can you talk about like the OPSEC stuff? Yeah, I guess you could. I just honestly chose not to because there's no reason to do. Yeah. You know, I openly spoke about the Jessica Lynchop and some things that I thought were wrong or that, that target that was the number one, chem bio. So some of that I don't even know if I should. I actually feel a little uncomfortable talking about it. But there's nothing. I don't think dudes are going to kick in my daughter to arrest me right now. Right. But no, I try to, you know, I tried to stay away from all conversations like that, just as a generality because, you know, it was a prior life. If I'm with the right dudes that I was with that night, You know, we might reminisce over a beer and it might get a little bit into the weed.

Right. But in general, there's just no reason to share it at all. Right. You know, and I don't have anything against the movies and the TV shows. I guess if I had my choice, they would kind of go away. I'm not writing a book because I don't think I would even read it. So, you know, it's just not my thing. But for those that choose to go that route, you know, kudos to you, I guess.

Yeah. And, you know, and Jack and I have talked about this, you know, both. on the show and kind of between ourselves. And there are definitely different levels of obsec, right? There are things that you're going to share with your family that really your family has to know sometimes. They might. Yeah.

Honestly, I've got an adult son. I've never been married. My mom and my stepdad live in Florida. So my family was my dog. So, and he passed away last week. So, you know, he probably heard a lot of stories. Yeah. He's my dog and my boy.

So I don't really have the traditional family. Yeah. I've got a lot really super close friends. But still, you know, sitting around my fire pit drinking beers, that stuff just doesn't come up. Yeah. I mean, there might be questions every now and then. But I've seen no reason to go down that road. Yeah.

Cat Chaser, thank you again. Cheers. And Dave Vincent, thank you very much. What makes a good seal? Oh, God. I mean, I think we talked about most of it. It's just, they say Buds is mostly mental and not that physical. I don't know if that's true because it's pretty physical as well, but Buzz doesn't make a seal either. That's just kind of a six-month glimpse of how bad things can be, you know, and I'll tell you what, since Buds, I've been colder than I ever was in Buds. I've been more tired, been more scared. I've been, you know, all those, it's just do you want to be here and is this what you want to do? So I think, you know, if you line up 10 dudes that were seals, I think six of them you would have never guessed. Because now I'm 57 years old. I'm falling apart.

I'm fat. You know, but you look at it and there's no body type that's like, oh, that guys, they're not all Greek gods. They're just dudes that will not quit and they're going to get the job done. Right. So again, I just keep doing these run on tangents, run on sentences. but yeah there's no simple answer to that at all and you know and i i don't remember if it was mich i don't remember who it was we spoke to about the rrrrc selection but it is basically that thing anytime like buds or anytime you're going to a selection it's like that's the bare minimum

a day at work will be worse than that and you can't quit like if you're doing a shipboarding or you're doing something out in the cold water on an op, you don't get to quit. So a selection is the bare minimum. Well said. And I completely agree with everything you just said right there. So that's, do you want to, are you sure you want to be here? If not, there's a bell you can go ring it and go on your merry navy way.

But if you do and you tough it out, then, you know, the hills you're going to have to climb afterwards are legitimate and that you cannot the option of ringing the bell on target or even in training just doesn't exist right you're going to get somebody else right you know you talked about some of the terrain in afghanistan and seals don't have that sort of uh overland movements selection they you know their selection is based around water but when you're three clicks off a target and two of those clicks are straight up and down right right you don't get to quit then Absolutely. And, you know, there were years that we went without putting a kind of Drager, which is, I know you guys know, are rebreather and diving and doing traditional steel salt. But after 9-11, you know, there wasn't a whole ton of water in Afghanistan or Iraq. And we were very, dude, do we have any questions on Patreon? No, not what I've seen. Okay. So again, Nelson, thank you for spending some of your evening with us, man, on your vacation.

really appreciate it. For the folks watching, on Friday, we'll have Ward Carroll on, who is a former F-14. He's an F-14 guy? Okay. So Ward was an F-14 dude. We're going to have him on the show on Friday. And we'll take it from there. So, yeah, Nelson, have a great rest of your vacation, man.

Heading back to Tucson tomorrow. Again, thank you guys for your patience. I appreciate the conversation. I've really enjoyed it. Yeah, you're the man. Thank you so much. Greater good.org, drop them five bucks. It's nothing for you, right?

And the link will be in the description. Yeah, link will be down below. Take a look. Take a look. Thank you, guys. All right. Thank you, Nelson, and we'll see everyone on Friday.