The Team House - Peshmerga and YPG international volunteer Erwin Stran: Ep. 68

Episode Date: November 14, 2020

After a stint in the U.S. Army Erwin embarked on the ultimate adventure, traveling to the Middle East and volunteering to serve with the Peshmerga in Iraq and the Kurdish YPG militia in Syria during the war against ISIS. Get access to bonus segments with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouse NEW! Team House merch: https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 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/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five,

with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Okay, everyone, this is episode 68 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy, here with co-host Dave Park. We are here with our guest. tonight. This is Irwin Strand. Erwin's an old friend who we met from other acquaintances. Long convoluted story there we'll get into. But Erwin served in the United States Army,

and then he essentially decided to partake in the ultimate adventure. He decided as a private citizen to travel to the Middle East and become an international volunteer. First with the Peshmerga in northern Iraq slash Kurdistan. then with the Kurdish YPG militia in northeast Syria slash Rajava, as it's known there. And we're going to get into all of that with Erwin tonight. So, Erwin, thanks for joining us, man. Yeah, thank you. And we want to make one public service announcement.

One of our neighbors is doing a bit of construction. There's nothing we can do about it. So if it comes over the airway, we really apologize. But thanks for joining us. Thank you. Oh, yeah. Sorry. We like to start every segment asking our hero's origin story.

Who were you growing up? And how did you find your way to this twisty, twisty path that you took? Well, mine's not very, I don't know. I guess a lot of folks, when they join the military from people that I've met and read about and everything. a lot of kids grow up having this, you know, I guess ideation of joining the military, being whatever Marines, Army, whatever. I grew up listening to punk rock, and I wanted to be a musician. So, you know, I went through high school and middle school, high school and everything.

Join the band when I was really young in middle school. I wanted to play this saxophone. because I had played a video game when I was younger called Final Fantasy 8. And I saw a sax part that, like, ended up being fucking awesome. I thought it sounded great. And I was like, shit, dude, I want to learn how to play that. That's fucking sexy. So I joined the band of middle school, and the band director was like,

okay, you can play the saxophone, but you got to play the clarinet for a year. I'm like, oh, that's lame, but I guess I'll do it. So I ended up learning the clarinet. jumped onto the saxophone a year later and played sax all through middle school and high school ended up getting on the marching band so we went to all the games and stuff and competitions so if you remember that Nick Cannon movie uh drumline ah shit what was that movie called drumline drumline yeah I'm with you drumline yeah so going all the competitions and stuff like that is it's it's about like that only you know there were the movie was the drum line I was in the

rest of the band. So I did that. Graduated high school. And I don't know, man. Like, I was thinking about college, but kind of not. I had a buddy that I ended up hanging out with. We didn't know each other for too long.

We started hanging out probably senior year of high school. And he approached me. He was like, hey, man, I'm going to go join the Army. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. I mean, I don't have a job right now. So I guess I'll join the Army too. So, before we went down the recruit. Oh, I'm sorry.

Oh, yeah, go ahead. I was just going to ask, before we get into the Army part, for any of our aspiring musicians out there, people are thinking about picking up an instrument, who gets more action? Saxophone players or clarinet players? Saxophone. right here definitely saxophone so you go to the recruiting station right yeah so i go to the

recruiting station and at this time i'm living in old dayton tennessee uh not originally from there i was from chattanooga that's where i was born but i was raised in dayton and uh dayton is the bible is the buckle of the bible belt there's like 17 and a half people who live in dayton And they all go to church. So during that time, while I was thinking about joining the Army, I was actually in the youth praise band for our youth group from some church and everything. So I ended up learning how to play guitar and all that good stuff. So I went to this Army recruiter, and my boy had already joined up.

So I walked in there and I was like, hey, man, I want to join the Army. And he's like, what do you want to do? I'm like, join the Army? What do you mean what I want to do? Because at this point, I didn't know what the hell, you know, Rangers, infantry. I didn't know any of this crap. And he's like, all right, I got the perfect job for you. 31 Bravo, MP.

It's like, whatever, dude, I'll do it. And for those of you who don't know, MP is military police. Right? Right, right. Yeah. So go through Basic and AIT. And in AIT, that's where, you know, you learn your specific job role. and I had joined the National Guard

so in AIT they're putting us in these squad cars and making it you know we're learning like criminal law and uh you know on the civilian side as well as like on military bases but I'm not going to use any of the shit because I'm not active

I'm just going to go to my fucking drill hall in Cleveland Tennessee and you know jerk off two days a month or whatever um yeah so that's what we did I got out of basic, I forget when, like 2008. Ended up getting activated to go to southern Iraq in 2009.

It was the Wasi province. It was about like two hours south of Baghdad and the city of Al-Qut. And basically our mission there, when we got there, the Sofia agreement had already been signed and all that good stuff that got pushed through. So there was no, like, active combat operations going on. There were still, like, some pop-ups here and there. Not as much down south as, you know, up near Kirkwood and everything at the time was. So basically, our job was to just follow or go to these different sectors of the city where the police stations were and just check up on police and make sure they weren't doing anything shady, which, even if they were, we're not going to fucking do anything.

Yeah, yeah. just make sure, you know, hey, is everybody drinking water? Has everybody got food? Okay, you're not stealing people's shit, are you? Okay. All right. No, of course not.

Of course not. We're not doing that. Yeah, okay. But, yeah, so that was basically our tour. We did that a little bit. Got the opportunity to work with EOD a little bit, just to go out, you know, pick up shit that they got told about

oh there's fucking UXO over here like okay so we'll go out there and you know pull security while they get that out of there and uh not too much action at all like I said the self agreement had been signed uh we had one IED blast

uh not my squad it was actually a squad from headquarters but they were a couple blocks down the road went and one off so we had the opportunity to go respond to that but fortunately it was more like and it was like it wasn't even like a a full it's kind of like a firecracker

everybody set a spot on top of it enough to do like you know auditory damage like fuck your ears up but fortunately you know no fucking destruction to the vehicles or anything like that and we were rocking those MRAPs at the time um but yeah we did that tour came back I wanted to reclass because after being in for a while now I started to understand

what the military was and different jobs and different opportunities So I went to my commander And all I got stuff is like hey man I want to reclass to fucking Cap Scout That sounds baller or shit And he's like well if you want to pay back your sign on bonus I suggest you don't reclass It's like oh

Like okay Yeah so did that Did five years got out and Then we can talk about what happened then Yeah man so like were you living out of your car I mean what was the deal So, yeah, before we deployed, I had just moved back down to Chattanooga where my mother was and lived with her for a while. Deployed, came back, and ended up just couch serving, basically.

Like, I did that for about a year or so, had, like, some BS security job for G4S. Ended up getting an apartment or a house, rather, for rent. lived there for about a year and then somewhere in 2013 I moved to Nashville because I had it in my head that I was going to go up there and be a rock star because I'm super talented and

and no bar can tell me no I will play for you but that didn't work out so in a 2014 yeah I lived up there probably like 2013 2014 or whatever um

ended up hearing about this guy this cat named Jordan Madsen Madison Madison Madsen, Mattson, yeah Um Madsen, yeah so he started gaining traction and we all started learning that there was this guy

from America and Syria with a bunch of Kurds and he's fighting ISIS. I'm like, what? Can you do that? Do what? I met him. in like 2014.

Oh, no shit. Is he a cool guy? I never met him. Yeah, he's a nice guy, man. He's living, I think he married a Kurdish girl. But I haven't even talked to him since 2014, so I was six years ago. I really don't know where he is or what he's up to. Right.

Last I heard, yeah, I heard that he married a Kurdish girl and ended up in Sweden. Something like that. And then they just kind of dropped. But it was because of him. I learned that he did this stuff. And at that time, there was a lot of groups going around on Facebook about, you know, a lot of these veterans who had been over there and obviously had like good intentions and were like, you know, hey man, you know, I did a tour over there. I did five tours over there. My buddies did tour.

I had a lost friends over there. We're pulling out. This is bullshit. The power vacuum created ISIS. This guy went over there. I want to go over there. So all these groups started popping up and

I ended up meeting a guy, I'm not going to say his name, but I ended up meeting this dude from Kentucky and somehow he put together this group of guys, including me, ended up calling frame. Don't ask me, it was an acronym, don't fucking ask me what it meant, I forgot. But he ended up getting a fixer inside

Iraqi Kurdistan and we were able to just buy plane tickets and end up over there. So you ended up over there by flying. Where did you fly into? Where did we fly into Jordan? We departed from Chicago and

ended up in Jordan and then from Jordan into Salamania. We already knew that we wanted to at least try to make it to Jordan because we're looking at all the routes and everything. And we already knew that we didn't want to go into Turkey just because of the history with

the Kurds and the Turks and everything. And it probably would have been problematic if I flew into Turkey. And I was like, hey, I'm going to Iraq to fight ISIS with the Kurds. I probably, you know, wouldn't have to end it well. Did you fly with your Merck starter set on commercial air? Like, how did that work? So when we got to Chicago, they, we called ahead, right?

We didn't surprise anybody. We didn't want to, you know, like, freak anybody out. Before we actually made it to Chicago, in Kentucky, I drove up to Kentucky where he was living to meet him, and then we were going to drive off Chicago together. And during that time, we let everybody know. So we actually got approached by Kentucky's, division of the FBI, I guess the Kentucky

Bureau of Investigations or whatever. So ended up getting grilled by this dude. State Bureau of Information, yeah. Yeah, yeah. FBI instead of FBI. So exactly, yeah. Ended up getting this grilled by this dude for

probably 45 minutes. And he was more or less interested in what we could learn while over there, obviously. You know, it's like, hey, man, if you grab some Intel, let us know. But the whole legality behind, like, you're not, you know, there is no legality. He was just kind of like, okay, well, if you get caught, we're not saving your ass. And I'm like, I didn't

expect you to, but thank you. And so you actually had a convo with law enforcement before you went over there. Yeah, correct. Yeah. Because we didn't, we didn't know. We actually ended up setting up like an LLC to try to make it legit. shit as possible. We're like, yeah, dude, we're just this security contracting company and we're looking for bids. So we're going to go to Iraq and because we didn't know. We didn't know the legalities and stuff.

I didn't know if I was going to get stopped there. I didn't know if I was going to get arrested at the airport. You know, I didn't know, like, even if I got to Jordan, I didn't know if I was going to put in handcuffs front. But it turns out, obviously, that it wasn't that big of a deal. So he you're this guy you were working with who put together, you know, five of you. And he found somebody, he found a local on the ground who had what connections to the Peshmerga, I take it. Yeah.

So the, we'll call him MK, MK Ultra. So, well, yeah, we met MK over there. And it turns out that he wasn't, it wasn't like a top officer in the Peshmerga. but he was a soldier. I'm not sure how their ranks. I still don't know to this day how that actually is set up, but he was affiliated with the Peshmerga. Now, at the time that you went and the other guys went,

did you know the different organizations within the Kurds? Were you aware of the political situation among them, or were you just going to fight ISIS? Yeah, no idea about the political situation. situation. I was a certified ISIS. But of course, you get over there and you're bombarded with a political mess that's over there. So you kind of got to, you have to learn it. So you guys, did you pack up like all your camo and your, you're like chest rig or whatever, I mean, your LCE from your time in the military, throw it in a duffel bag and just got on a commercial

flight and took off? Basically, a lot of dudes did. I didn't have. I didn't have. I didn't have shit from the army. I think I had like an ACH or like a CBC helmet that I used in the gunners hatch when I was deployed. And other than that, I didn't have uniforms or anything. I had to go to like a gun range and I got like tan 511 pants and like some button down. I did end up buying an AR 500

or shellback tactical, shell by tactical, a banshee. I guess their first gen at the time. I bought one of those and bought some plates. But of course, I got to the airport. And what they did was, first off, they tried to make us fucking unload all our shit in front of everybody. Like right there at the gate. And I'm like, come on, dude.

Like, you got rooms. Let's just, let's go to our room. Like, let's not do this. Let's not freak people out. You know what I mean? Let's go to a fucking room. So that's what we did. And I bought these fucking steel plates.

And they ended up taking, know is because I guess like that I tar bullshit or whatever and which I'm happy they did because now looking back on it now because I have ceramic plates now I'm so glad I didn't fucking bring steel with me because I would have just tossed that shit out

in the desert like the first day um but yeah so they laid all our gear out uh looked at everything like you you can bring that you can't bring that you can't bring this blah yada yada and uh check

her passboards, you know, made sure we didn't have any fucking felonies and all that good shit. And they were like, all right, uh, see ya. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging.

It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. I'm like, what? It's as easy as that? You're just going to let me get on this plane and just fucking go to the Middle East and fight bad guys. We interviewed John Cronin, and after the Vietnam War, he caught a flight to Rhodesia and joined up and joined

the Rhodesian Light Infantry. And I mean, I was like, John, I mean, it's wild back in the 1970s. You could just like hop on an airplane and go fighting somebody else's war. Yeah. Just for fun and profit, essentially. And but here we are. We're talking 2014, you know, six years ago, you and your band of merry men went, went and did pretty much the same damn thing Irwin

yeah and you would you would think after all that time you know from the 70s that they would have a bigger lockdown on that but I guess as far as the United States is concerned it's not really a problem um so to get into like the legalities a little bit

there there are laws on the books that say you could be stripped of your citizenship if you go and serve as a mercenary overseas. I'm familiar with basically that never being applied. I've never really heard of that actually happening. I have never heard in the United States of anyone being brought up on charges for going and serving with the Kurds. Now, of course, you go out and you join up with an organization that's on the FTO on the State Department's foreign terrorist organization list. You will be charged for that. Yes, you will go to jail. Now, here's the technicality, and maybe you can speak to this a little bit, Erwin.

The PKK is on the FTO. So the Kurdish guerrilla group known as the PKK is a designated terrorist organization in the United States. Rightly or wrongly, that's a whole other conversation, but they are on the FTO. Now, the Peshmerga and the YPG are different Kurdish organizations. they are not the PKK. But, however, I don't know, what was your experience? What are your thoughts on how all of that works or doesn't work? Hey, man. You know, as far as I'm concerned, like, so the YPG is, you know,

unofficially a branch of the PKK, but they're not the PKK. And they're not on any lists. So I was good. It was very shrewd of them, honestly, that when the YPG and YPJ was created, they created those entities because they did not want to send the PKK to Syria for that exact reason, because we have it as a designated terrorist organization. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. And, yeah, because of that, yeah, they, I guess, made their own little three-letter fucking organization so uh you know the a 10 strikes won it stop right no exactly so you get off the the plane in solomonos and then what goes down after that so we get off the plane and uh i'm already i'm already in a daze i just spent fucking what 20 hours on a fucking plane going around we're doing whatever and we land

and it was surreal man because I got off the plane and you get into the airport and you start looking around and you can see outside and you're like holy shit I am fucking in Iraq again on my own terms

like I just bought this plane ticket and now I'm in fucking Iraq it's wild so during this confusion in my head, just trying to like grasp what's going on. Some, I'm assuming they were Kurdish. Could have been Arab, could have been Kurdish, whatever.

These two guys approach us coming out of the gate. And we can't, we, first of all, the guy we're supposed to meet isn't fucking there. Of course. Yeah, we get off and we get to the gate and we're looking around like, this guy is. is not here. Did we just get duped? Are we going to fucking prison? Jesus Christ. Hey guys, they just working the vector and everything. We send our rucksacks through and

every fucking bag is popping off because somebody's got like, you know, a fucking K-pot in there. Like some fucking one jackass still had like steel casings or like, yeah, brass casings from like a fucking from the last shoot he did. So they stop us all. Line us. we fucking dump our bags, man. And one guy is like picking up my ACH and he's like, what the fuck is this? Who are you? This is early on.

You guys were amongst the first batch of Westerners, right? That came over there. As far as Iraq's concern, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because a lot of the guys that ended up going to Syria who joined up with the Lions of Rajaba, that little recruitment thing,

their guys met them at the airport and they ended up going to like a fucking shady ass you know safe house yeah because they're going to get transport you know through the fucking whatever we were going to the actual Peshmerga base I forget what the base is called but it was in Salamanea

Fire and dead but yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah they're grilling us and then our guy finally shows up and he shows up and he's like all right grab your shit we're going to the car we're going to go to the base and it it was like it was almost like a sigh of relief when I saw the vehicle he pulled up in it's one of those fucking Toyota hyluxes you know the same Toyota it's been on the Bolo list for

19 fucking years so we just and I'd never been inside one so there you just like you just pop in and And then you get out on the fucking, I would call an interstate. But it's not an inter, there's no states. So you have a freeway highway. And you're just looking around, man. And like, it was at night. So everything's closed. And we're coming out of downtown.

And this fucking place is huge. Like, it reminds me of Nashville. And we're coming out of downtown and going to the base. And it's, I don't know, man. Like, that whole night, I don't quite remember because I was too busy. like the lights felt super intense, you know, because I've been on this plane and then on top of that, I'm in this fucking country where I probably shouldn't even be in the first place,

but I'm here. And it was a wild night, man. It was a wild first night. They get us to the base and they get us a room with some bunk beds and we'd rack out and wake up the next morning. And that's it? I mean, is that how you join the Peshmerga? Oh.

So, yeah. What we ended up doing was it was kind of like a, it felt like a vetting process for them. They were trying to figure us out. They took up our passports, you know, and looked at all that, who's this guy, who's that guy?

I'm sure they checked social media and I'm sure they have like a way of pulling up our information and stuff like that. So for the first two or three weeks, that happened. And also during that time, this whole frame business that LLC I was talking about, we started answering emails

because we had actually set up like an application process to get people over here to come join the squad, bro. Oh, okay. Join the boys. So you guys were just the first to go, but you had planned on bringing others over. And you were doing recruiting. Yeah, yeah, basically. I'm not going to call it recruiting,

because I don't know the vagality behind that, but we were just, it was a camp. It was a barbecue, bro. Right. You know, 6,000 miles away. Yeah, but so we ended up doing that. And that was a really interesting experience because you get to, you know, coming out of the military, I've always been told when applying for jobs. Like, it's better to say less than more as far as your experience goes.

And I started seeing that with all these applicants that were coming through our emails. You see some guys that are like, all right, so what did you do in the Army? I was, you know, five years, fucking Ranger. Oh, okay, cool. This is the next guy. You know, fucking 10th Mountain for 10 years, five deployments, whatever. But then you got the guys that are like, dude, I went to fucking dive school. I'm a fucking Navy SEAL.

I'm a fucking certified Pathfinder, man. I shot a turkey in fucking Istanbul in 2012. You know, it's. And you start seeing like the two different types of people, the ones that, you know, know, know who they are, know what they can do. And then the other ones that wish they were who they thought they are. You know what I mean? So, yeah, we did that.

When we got there, ISIS had just overran Kirkuk. It wasn't, I mean, obviously they're not going to keep it as history shows. But when we got there, they initially attacked Kirkuk and they had a hold on it. So during that three weeks, we were telling the Pesh guys, we're like, all right, we're going to Kirk Cook. We've got to go to Kirkuk. That's where the action is. That's what's going down. We're going to Kirkuk.

It took about three weeks, but then we finally made it to Kirk Cook. And ended up at 9th Brigade. I forget the general's name of the post that commanded the post. It's in my book, but I forgot about it. It starts with a Jay. I'm sorry, I can't remember either. Yeah. I can't remember.

Cool ass dude, though. Out of all the people I met over there, that man was the most professional fucking officer I've ever seen in my life. And I think he was trying to, like, after the war was over and everything. I think he was trying to get into politics, and you could really tell that, you know, when you would ask him questions, he would think about it really bad,

like a long time. You could see the thought process going on in his eyes. Like super smart dude. Very careful, very cautious. You know, definitely a politician material. So you guys get down to Kirkuk. And what you are put up on a fire base or something like that. Is this someone they give you like Kalashnikovs and your ammunition and all that?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they give us all sorts of ammunition. So we get a Ks finally after asking for about two weeks And of course it's it's AKs that they were made in like 1960 But nothing wrong with them Nothing wrong with it, but it's a fucking AK I don't care when it was made you know it's got a fucking work

The problem though was ammunition When we first got there They give us like two mags And I'm like what the fuck am I supposed to do with this Yeah like 60 rounds like so we had to pressure him for quite a bit for quite a while until we actually got a proper

combat load but yeah all we really did there was we went when we first got there before everybody started filtering in just me and like the five dudes I went there we ended up going on an operation I don't think it had a name I don't remember but the whole deal was

there was about five villages just outside of Kirk Cook and we were going to go take them right it's fucking ICE is control we're going to go take the shit and we just got there I just fucking I don't know anybody I don't know what's going on

so yeah are we going to run drills what are we going to do do we have a fucking rock drill set up I don't how are we going to do this now we're just going to get in the truck and fucking go So you get out to this This this battlefield And it obviously it's it's something I've never experienced. You know you got guys lined up There's vehicles everywhere you got your fucking mortar guys in the back you know clock and shit in

We get up to the first village and you can see it in the distance is probably 800 meters away and so I guess like I can't speak the language I don't know what the hell's going on so I guess the plan is to just fucking rush the village I don't know so we start maneuvering up there and no formations really I guess if anything it was like a line formation you know spaced it out about three to five meters apart

and we get about 400 meters within the target and end up hitting it inside of this like a ditch. It's more like I guess a canal or something I can't I don't know. It was fairly large. I think we fit about like 12 people in there.

And at that point they were calling in air strikes to hit the Target Village you know to do their thing so it makes it easier for us to just fucking stroll in. And they ended up sending up the wrong coordinates I think.

because the village that was supposed to get hit, didn't get hit. And like some shack out to the fucking right of us, like 400 meters that way got hit. I'm like, oh, okay. I guess we don't have air support. But we go on this and we're sitting there. We're one of the guys on the radio. They're doing the communications back and forth. And then at one point, it was like, okay, we're going to retreat.

We're going to withdraw. I'm like, okay. I don't know why, but I guess we're going to do that. So, like, okay, whatever, you know, all right, so let's go through my fucking, the tactics that I learned. All right, we're going to withdraw, all right, guys, you know, we're going to fucking three to five second fucking rushes, bounding back, all right? We're going to get on our knees, you know, fucking hit the ground. All right, bro, I got you. All right, you go.

All right, cool, man. Oh, fucking, bro. Okay. The fucking Kurds are walking back, and we're taking fire at this point. and they're straight up just just fucking like they're back in the fucking block man just walking back and

I'm in the dirt. My face is in the dirt and I look up at these currants and I'm like, you guys are just scrolling back this is amazing. So at that point I get up and I'm like, maybe I should just stroll. No, I'm just going to keep bounding like we're doing.

And so we bound for about 400 meters or something because I think it was about 800 meters of target. We're taking fire at this point. And at that range, I guess you're not, you know, it's a slim chance you're going to get hit,

but it's not, you know, impossible. And thinking that, sure, shit, one of the guys that we were with that we met in country got hit with,

I'm assuming it was a PKM round from that distance. So 762 by 1. what, 51? 54. 54. Yeah, it's 7.6. He ends up taking around in the fucking...

Well, he ends up taking... And he's an American, too. He ends up taking a round in the ass. Which solidified the fact that, like, okay, yeah, we definitely need to bound and fucking retreat and not walk back. Because this guy literally got shot.

And I tell you what, man, we were bounden dude. He said, fuck that, dude. He got... up and he ran all the way back, beat everybody, and he just took a fucking bullet in the ass. I'm like, how'd you even do that, dude? He's like, I don't know, man. I don't even feel it. And so

we're like, we get back to the fallback position, and we start rendering aid. And it's not that bad. We have one guy he's looking at, and he's like, dude, I can see the bullet. It's, I mean, yeah, you're shot, obviously, but it's not life-threatening. You know, you're not going to fucking bleed out or anything.

But we got to the hospital, the bullet had actually actually it hadn't fragmented. It was still intact. So that was pretty cool. I'm like, oh, shit, dude, lucky, good. But while we were at the hospital, we were there for also one of the guys that I went over there

with, his dumbass ran off in front of everybody with a squad of curds that he can't even fucking talk to. He doesn't know the fucking language. He runs off by himself. And after all, that ordeal, we back to the fall position

we're rendering a to dude that just got shot and then a Humvee pulls up and we're pulling this guy out and it's one of our guys he just got hit with a fucking mortar and like I feel bad for the guy yeah yeah like he got legit blown up

and I feel bad for the dude because you can see his leg it's just fucking bloody and just fucking mangled and I felt bad for him but I was just like well dude you shouldn't have like ran off like that

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Visit child and family resource network.org today. So he ended up going home, full recovery. He's doing just fine last I talked to him, but that was like four years ago. But yeah, dude, that was like day three of Kirkuk. You know, you get there and do it. Welcome to Kurdistan. Yeah, practically, because in my head,

I was thinking like when I got out onto the battlefield, I was thinking, all right, dude, there's like 600 Kurds here and there's only like five Americans. The probability of like us getting fucked up is slim, right? Sure shit that day.

We fucking two Americans get hit. I'm like, oh, this is going to be great. And I think that day as the Peshmerga actually lost, I think about 30 to 36 troops. So it was not the best day. And we didn't obviously complete the objective. With you guys, with nobody being able to talk to the person,

for like the two or three days that you were there before you went on the operation, did you guys interact with them at all? How did they treat you? As far as the attitude, it was fairly positive, about 90% of the time. no negativity, no one was like, you know, what the fuck you're doing here? And then as far as communication goes, hand and arm signals practically until you, you know, took some time to pick up on some key words and stuff. And then, of course, you had the guys that worked with American troops in the past that picked up some English words.

So you were kind of able to like, you know, Fisher Price kind of put together these conversations. and I don't know, we're not having, like, obviously, in-depth, like, conversations about, like, philosophy and, like, what did Katie Perry do last week? But, you know, enough conversation to figure out, like, okay, what's going over there is bad, what's going over here is good, let's go over here. And then, when you guys were bounding back and they were walking, did they look at you guys like you were dumbasses? Do they care what you were doing? Like, how did that go down? I don't know. I never asked them what they thought.

I remember looking at one guy who turned in. I remember looking at one guy who turned out to be Iranian militia. We got stuck in a hole with a squad of those guys. You didn't hear that from me. Yeah. But I remember looking at this one guy And it made me feel really bad Because he was he was he wasn't ready for it

And he was like he was one of the RPG guys He wasn't ready for it and he was super scared And he ended up running back not walking But a lot of the guys yeah They just kind of looked at us While we were doing our procedures that you know Work time and time again And they just looked at us like, what do you all do?

You guys are playing in the dirt. What are you doing? I'm like, we're getting shot at. What do you mean? What are we doing? That's okay. No dash, no dash, no dash. Yeah, there's that sort of like, I don't know, fatalism in that part of the world.

Like I remember in 2015 in a battle with the Peshmerga, you know, covering it, you know, as a journalist. and like right before I got there one of the Peshmerga dudes got cut in half by an IED and like they were like trying to like scoop up the two halves of his body and like a front end loader and like they were all making like videos

of it on their phone and it was just kind of like inshallah inshallah yep yeah I don't know what it is man I guess it's that that mentality right there you said it inshallah you know God willing so whatever happens

it's it's god's plan i guess even though you you know could have prevented it by bearing your head in the fucking dirt while taking fire so after that that kind of failed operation to take those five villages what happened you were still based out of that

that fire base out there in Kirkuk right so we were there for a little bit um after that operation uh the the command there at first we're all hooah, hooah about it, we're going to take these Americans

and we're going to go fight ISIS and we're going to be fucking heroes. Well, after that, they realized oh, we can't talk to these guys. We can't communicate. We can't organize actual battle plans and everything like that. And they probably thought too, because like I said,

this general was a smart guy, along with his LT, it probably would have not been good, politically and publicly, as far as like public relations is concerned, if an American died on their watch. Right.

So, yeah, so what ended up actually happening was we ended up kind of like pushing a PSD team for the general. So any fucking meetings he had or whatever, you know, jump in the back of a truck with a bunch of white guys with guns and, you know, fucking go to a meeting or, you know,

know, go to whatever area of operations they have, you know, and whatever he's going to do, figure out, you know, whatever fucking officers do, I don't know. I wasn't an officer. I don't know what the fuck they do. You know, they could drink fucking tea and jerk each other off. I don't know what's going on. Were they interested all in your TTPs? Did they want you working with the troops at all?

Or were they just happy with what they had and, you know, and that was it? Um Some of them Were Because yeah We did end up Pitching that That was part of the whole

Um Operation on our end Was to Hey Let's train these guys up You know I mean obviously I'm not a fucking super soldier

I know what I know Whatever But you know With combined experiences From different people coming in And you know All their Whatever

we can at least teach these guys basic tactics and maneuvers to keep them alive and not so much rely on American air support or America in general to do what they need to do to do what they need to do in their own country. And that was the biggest thing because we ended up turning to that. And some of them were good about it. Some were like, yeah, dude, let's set up these glass houses. with two by fours and we'll run some drills and all that you dry fire and all that gets up and then some of them were like no that's that's stupid we're not we're not going to do that so i think we ended up training the squad of curds for like a week and then they got bored but um yeah so we ended up yeah so that was kirkut uh in a nutshell a bunch of PSD stuff uh when they expand

the line when we ended up, or they ended up pushing ISIS back a little further out, they expanded the front line. There was a time or two we would end up at this place called, we called Milan Hill solely because they shot a Milan rocket off of the hill one day. So we're like, all right, it's Milan Hill now. That's what we're going to call it. And we would go out there, you know, spend the night every couple of nights or something. Just see what's. going on because it was the new line. ISIS was probably only about 300 meters away at that time.

Sit on the line, make sure nothing's stupid happening. You know, the grass had grown up at that point, so super easy for someone to just filter through at night. Ended up getting on some engagements there, but nothing crazy. Like I said, it was

like a 300 meter distance. So it was pretty much just like harassing each other for fucking all day. You know what I mean? Irwin, to go like back in time, like our news cycle, everything moves so quickly nowadays and so much has happened even in just in the last 12 months, everyone, the entire country's head is spinning. However, if we were to wind the tape back to 2014, 2015, the way ISIS was being reported at the time had people terrified, like horrified all over the world thinking that like ISIS is going to come to

their hometown and install Sharia law in like the Midwest or something. Like it was just total hysteria the way it was being reported. I'm just kind of interested. You had boots on the ground and not even with the American military and all of our military power, but with the indigenous force.

I mean, did you see ISIS as how did you view them? How did you view their tactics, their competency, and what they were doing over there? Dude, ISIS is just a bunch of fucking farmers, man. Yeah. It was fucking, you know, some of them are fucking these elite guys, whatever. I guess you got foreign powers coming in and like propping them up and you had like the Chechians and stuff coming in and training them like a sniper unit's particular. I think that's where they kind of focused on. But you're running the middle fucking grunt dude. He was just like the same thing we've seen for the last 19 years. Sure, he probably had like this jihadi fucking. message and thing in his head behind it, but

just a dude trying to feed his family, man. You know, and on top of that, they're not, I mean, obviously, they're dangerous. Anybody can be. But yeah, this whole shit about like, yeah, they're going to fly into a fucking middle America and take your watermelons and grow potatoes and, like, put you in cages. Like, that's not to say that, like I said, these guys weren't

dangerous. They were. You know, you obviously saw what they were doing to Kurdish people and the Arabs that they come in and they took over these towns and yeah, they were putting them in cages. They were setting them on fire, drowning them. Like, yeah, they were fucking bad dudes. But they weren't

as organized as the media made them out to be. And they certainly weren't going to come to America and kicking your fucking door at your coffee shop and, you know, arrest you. You know, hipster coffee shops. here in Brooklyn.

Yeah, they weren't super organized. They were slightly trained. I didn't deal with any of like the top guys, because I'm sure there were, you know, especially all the Chats. I think, well, that was in Syria, never mind, not in Iraq.

There was instances in Syria where the Chechians were stationed in the A.O. that we were in. but as far as Iraq goes like yeah yeah dude it wasn't like you said it wasn't like this fucking super terrorist organization that was going to

kill your dog and bomb your house it wasn't going to happen and so what happened from that point where you're kind of like you guys it sounds like you were sort of like in limbo and like the Kurds were at that point trying to just like keep you safe and make sure you didn't die on their watch Yeah, and I am grateful for that, for sure. I'm glad that the Kurds, like, were supportive, and they, you know, they were like, we don't want you guys dying here.

And it could happen, and it obviously has happened. There has been plenty of foreign fighters that gotten shot, gotten blown up. It is a dangerous place. They know that, we know that. I'm grateful for that. But at the same time, bro, fuck off, I came here to fight ISIS. So at that point, the whole Missoule thing, or Mosul, Mazzul, however you fucking pronounce it, I say Mizzul, that was going to kick off. And we knew like, all right, that's, that's, that's the one, that's the battle.

That's going to go down in the history books. That's where we need to be. So for the longest time, we try to get out there and they just, you know, Sibbe, Sibbe, tomorrow, tomorrow. Sibay, you know, but you got any information of Missou? Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. You know, it's always fucking tomorrow. So we stayed there for,

I don't know, a few, three months, maybe. And then out of the blue, I don't remember how we met this guy, but this German, American, maybe, it maybe had dual citizenship. I don't know. I think it was probably just German.

This German guy came out of fucking nowhere. onto the base. And we end up talking to him and we're like, what's, okay, so what's going on? He's like,

oh yeah, so I have this security outfit contracting agency and I've been living in our bill for like five years and you guys want to come up and, you know,

have some drinks, you know, do a barbecue, do whatever. And we're like, oh, okay. So we get up to this compound.

He owns this compound. He's renting it or owns it. I don't know. He's got like a fucking, it used to be like a fishery. So there's a couple of fishery pools and everything. He turned into like swimming pools. He's got fucking beer and booze out the ass and like fucking chicken nuggets, man.

Like salmon. And he's like, hell yeah, dude. You guys like this shit. Yeah? This is great. I'm your friend, huh? Well, I'm trying to sell weapons to the P.U.K. and Talibani. To help them with the ISIS thing.

You guys down? You guys ready to do this? I'm going to sell them fucking tanks. This guy was, like, trying to be a weapons dealer, like fucking Nicholas Cage. The ward of war. There's so much of that shit. So he was trying to... Yeah, no, it's wild. And again, like, me coming out fresh out of the military,

and like, I don't know this shit fucking happens. You know, I'm just, I'm just, whatever, dude. What? Where are you getting these weapons? And you're like, look at, he had brochures. He had legit brochures. And I'm like, looking through it, I'm like, bro, you can get them seasy scorpions?

That's awesome. What? It's like, dude, I'll buy one. Fuck it. So, yeah, that was the plan. And that, too, he was trying to, grab security contracts like legit

contracting contracts for like contracting contract for like a PST or all that good stuff and that was his whole purpose of being there and that's how he was supposed to be making money I don't know how many contracts

he actually got I know while I was there the two contracts that he was supposedly working fell through so it ended up being like a month and a half maybe two months of us just like staying drunk and swimming in a pool in Iraq I'm trying to think what German this might be there was one guy floating around who was claiming to be ex-German special forces up there and I had some friends look into him he had a license to be in armed security guard in a grocery store that was his credential that's hilarious in Germany yeah that's hilarious

I want to say I'm sorry, what? I was just going to ask, what was the military structure of the Peshmerger when you were there? Were you guys part of that? Could you just leave? Were you AWOL? How did that work out for you? So my time there, it was kind of like, we never got like ID cards and we weren't on the payroll.

We ended up getting paid, but it was like. you know, under the table, bullshit. Don't tell the IRS. They're going to ask for taxes. But I know eventually, because Jack, you can talk to Kurt, you know, he ended up staying for a while and actually ended up becoming a part of the organization

and getting IDs and all the good stuff. But while I was there, it was basically like I was in the Peshmerga, but not, and we're not going to talk about it. And because you were part of that frame group that you guys had established, were there more Americans filtering in behind you, you know, as time went on? Yeah.

Eventually, a lot of Americans showed up that we infilled. And, yeah, a few Americans, few Canadians. Actually, a lot of Canadians, which is weird. And then, as far as Aureen goes, and then people who, you know, made it over there by himself. You know, he had, you know, Irish, German, people from the UK, or, you know, Britain and stuff like that. Actually, a huge, diverse group of people from everywhere. Australians, you know, who ended up going to jail. It was really interesting.

All of these Westerners who showed up in Kurdistan and they all, like, depending on their own individual experiences and who, which political faction of the Kurds they made contact with first, kind of determined what their experience would be. So, like, some ended up with, like, KD.B. Peshmerga. Some ended up with Pugh-U-K Peshmerga. Some people ended up in the YPG. Some people ended up, all these different groups. A couple guys ended up with, like, P.A.K. Like, out on the Iranian border.

Like, it's just like crazy. Yeah, yeah. It's just, like, crazy. And so many of them, this is the other thing I thought was hilarious. They drank the Kool-Aid. Like, they were mainlining Kool-Aid right into their veins the second they got there, like totally believing everything that political faction of the Kurds told them like, we're the good guys, we are the greatest Kurds ever, those other Kurds over there, they're the bad

Kurds, they're up to no good, fuck those guys. And they were just like these Americans or Westerners, whoever they were, like on Facebook every day, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, fuck these guys. It's like, dude, you've been there 24 hours, calm down. You don't know what the hell you're talking about. Oh, yeah, and it's funny that you bring it up. Because, like, Jack, we've talked about this before. But, yeah, with the Kurdish population, everybody in America seems to think that it's like this monolithic, like, thing. Like America would be, right? Because it's the United States of America.

It doesn't matter if you're from Washington or New York. You're an American, right? And then we have a president and blah, blah, blah. but you get over to Kurdistan and yeah we're not even going to talk about like the Kurds in Turkey, Iran and Syria. We're talking about Iraqi Kurds. And you get over there and you start learning, oh shit, okay, not only am I in this imaginary country that doesn't actually exist, but these folks have put a fucking line through the middle of the imaginary country. So yeah, so you show up in the south and you're like, all right.

Peshmerga, got it. No, hold on, man. These are Talibani P.U.K. Peshmerga. Okay? If you go north, it's Barzani Peshmerga, and it's an entirely different animal. So, to put it in simple terms, I guess, like, you have a nation with a national military, but it's like, if it were here, the Republicans and the Democrats have taken the military and split it in two.

And that's fucking terrifying. And they're fighting each other too. They're kind of like, fuck that guy, fuck these. Exactly. Now, I heard it from Kurt, because I was in Syria at this time,

but he was still in Iraq dealing with it. And there was a guy that he knew that was talking about the political system because he had been there for a while. And it's like no joke. Like, if you're from the South, And you end up in like Urbil and you're like, hey man, like you go up there and you're like, hey, I vote it for Taliban. And they hear you?

Like, it could get messy. They're like, oh, you don't, you don't support Brazzani. Okay, okay. All right. We'll see if you can make it home tonight. Yeah, yeah. Like if you're cruising around town playing like, you know, PKK revolutionary music like that might not go over so well. And Urbill.

Yeah. yeah exactly now as an american that didn't affect us because Americans I don't know what it is about going to different places in the world but Americans kind of get a free pass wherever you at least in the Middle East yeah yeah pretty much

it's because you are American and they're kind of like he doesn't know any fucking better he's dumb and like also like you don't really have a stake in it the way they do either you don't have like those deep roots the way the people who live there have. Yeah. Yeah, they pretty much, yeah, you're right. Yeah, they kind of just let us be in our bubble and party.

So you're there for two weeks. You're partying it up, hanging out with this would-be German arms dealer. And then what goes on from there? So what ended up happening, Arras, General Arras, that's the guy's name, I believe. Anyway You guys Continue with your story We're just

For another Oh okay Um So what ended up happening Was We were up there at this guy's compound For a while Pretty much what we ended up doing

Was we fucked off from ninth grade We're like You guys aren't letting us fight You guys don't let us do anything We're gonna go up with this German guy Because he said he can get us jobs And we can actually get paid and at this point I was like, yeah,

I got evicted from my apartment in Nashville to save the money to go to Kurdistan, right? So I'm sitting at Kurdistan for like three months and I'm like, yeah, maybe a contract is the best thing because I need to make some money. Like, this is the dumbest thing I could have fucking done.

So we ended up staying there. And of course, this guy is like talking, oh man, we're going to fucking, we're going to make millions, bro. we're going to make fucking millions. It never fucking worked out. But at this time, too, Ninth Brigade, apparently,

now I don't know the whole details about it. We had one guy who spoke German, who was talking to the German guy, and I think there was some shady shit going on. I don't know. But apparently, Ninth Brigade called up, and they were like, hey, you guys aren't sponsored. Your visas have expired.

You can either come back to Ninth Brigade, or we're going to fucking deport you. And I'm like, how do you even know where we are? I don't know what's going on. And then we started

getting these weird, there was this one weird reporter like this female who was living in Iraq, but she was just some journalist and she started contacting us. And I don't know. It just like,

it got to a point where it was, we were feeling like something stupid was about to happen. I wonder who that was. Yeah, I don't know. Something Fontaine, Fontania

Fuck, no, I don't know Victoria Oh, okay No, no, I don't know Well, yeah, so this Well, this reporter shows up And she starts like regurgitating What we've already heard from the Peshmerga

She's like, yeah, man, They're gonna come find you And they're gonna arrest you And deport you Um, so I know a place you can go Where you get all the action And this is a special operations unit

yeah yeah and I'm looking at her like oh all right do what what kind of reporter is this like yeah I'll hook you up with the action bro I have no idea probably a reporter that's trying to get fucking pictures I met a lot of those

yeah I believe it um so but it worked uh we heard about this brigade down back south in solemnia because at this time we had been in our bill that's where he was located. So we got to experience southern and northern Iraqi Kurdistan,

which is really fascinating because up north in our bill, which is controlled by Brazani, it's kind of more liberal. Like if you walk down the street, you see females and high heels, maybe some leggings, you know, they're not wearing their burqa or shaw,

whatever you call it. And then when you go down south, it's a little more conservative. You know, it's not like Iraq where you better be a black headgear and I don't want to see anything but your eyes but at the same time it's like okay well I'm going to wear this long dress

with like a floral pattern you know so you got your liberals you got conservatives anyway so we started to make a way back down south to go to this different special operations brigade I forget the name of it but there we were

promised to get a squad of Kurds and we were going to train them like it would be in basic training. We're going to have a cycle of training, do about four to five weeks of training, get everything in and give everything out, get them good to go,

and then we'll do the next cycle. And they were talking about, we were actually going to get promised our own platoon of Kurds to train up, and then we could take this platoon under our orders, you know, and everything else to go on these missions if they should ever pop up. And we're like, okay.

How many... That sounds fat. Sorry about that. How many of you... I'm sorry, what? How many of you are there now? How many Americans in your group at this point in time? So at this time, we have...

I think about six or seven. The lineup has changed since then. Because when I came in, I came in with a different group. And then by the time we would back down south after this whole German arms dealing thing, the group had changed. Which is great, because I understood. up with these group of guys that actually turned it up

be fucking awesome. Couldn't ask for any better fucking group of guys to be a part of. My boy, Joey was with you too, right? Who's that? My boy, Joey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude, Joey's... I haven't talked to that guy

in so long. He's a wild man. Yeah, yeah, he is. Fucking, uh, what is it, Brian Reynolds? That's who he looks like. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, so I fucking ran into Joey and Kurt in the middle of that battle in 2015.

And I had been talking to Kurt online for a while. He had been hitting me up when he's thinking of going over there. And then it was the middle of this battle. And I was just walking down the road with the Pesh. And I see these two guys sitting on the side. And it's Kurt and Joey. I'm like, oh, hey, I knew you, bro. I'm like, whoa, what the fuck?

Yeah, it was funny. The whole, Kurt and Joey. Yeah, man. So, yeah, so, down south with this, this new unit,

whatever the hell. Right. Um, so we're down there. And, uh, all this, we're supposed to be gathering, we're supposed to be,

like, implementing this training modules and coming up with all this stuff. And basically what we're going to do is we're going to run a fucking BCT, which I'm cool with. It's whatever. You know, I heard I can get paid for it. Um,

we're going to teach these guys. how to fight a little bit. I'm not a fucking expert, whatever. But we're going to teach them out of stay alive as long as they possibly can do something, whatever. Cool. I'm down with that. Well, it turns out that we were actually

stepping on somebody else's toes because the guy that was actually training the Peshmerga was on vacation. And when he came back, it's this British guy and he sees these fucking five Americans, six Americans or whatever, and he's like, all right, who the fuck are you and get out of my

else. Yeah, the ex-Sargent major. That dude chewed my ass. Did he really? Yeah. Oh, yeah, he did. Because I went in there and I interviewed some people and he came in and like, you can't, listen, like, here's the deal. Like in the 20, this era, this modern era, like, you can't take a journalist and call them into your office and just like chew their ass like they're a private.

Like, that doesn't really work in this day and age. But I mean, he didn't, he didn't, he's a sergeant major from, from the U.S. He doesn't understand any of that shit. So, like, he calls me in there, and I feel like, I feel like I'm a corporal and Ranger Battalion again, getting my ass chewed by my squad leader. And I was like, and you know the deal when that happens. You were in the Army, Erwin, you just say a bunch of Roger Sergeant Majors until they go away, right?

I'm like, uh-huh. Yeah, exactly. Uh-huh. And, dude, he's telling me, like, you see the picture of that man up on the wall? And it's Talibani, who's in a coma, by the way, at that point. He's like, oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. That man will have you kicked out of this country.

You'll never be able to come back again if you report on what I'm doing here. Don't you dare report that I'm here or what I'm doing. Don't assume anything about it. I'm like, okay, dude. Like, I have no interest in your boring contracting mission here at all. But I don't know. He threw a whole shit fit in his office with me. And I was like, okay, cool story, bro.

And went on about my job. But yeah, man, he was a grumpy bastard. He really was. man i'm i'm sorry about that um i know kurt had great to do with him he ended up but yeah um but yeah no kurt had a had a good time with him ended up like getting an under skin and learning about him apparently it's cool dude um they did i didn't get to deal yeah i didn't get to deal him with that much i know i lied to him one night one of two of our guys decided to uh hit the town, hey, we're going to go drink.

Because we had that freedom. We were able to go off the base and go into town and drink or go get food, go get groceries and stuff like that. I ended up lying to the guy because my boys were like, hey, man, can you drop us off down at the end of the base? Because it's a huge base. There's a driveway.

You got to get off the post to go to the freeway to get picked up with a cab. So we took his truck and I dropped them off at the end of the road and they're like, why don't you just drive us in town? You know, we're already in a car. And I'm like, yeah, that makes sense.

Why don't we just do that? So I get back and I return the truck and the guy's like, you're gone quite a bit. You know, a little too long. You know, it's only like two miles down the road. And I was like, because it was a standard transmission. I'm like, oh, yeah, bro, sorry. I haven't drove a manual in a while.

It took me a lot of figures. it out. But yeah, even then he was like, I know you fucking went downtown, motherfucker. So how to things shake out with that guy or with that whole experience when you went back down there?

Man, it was good. The guy wasn't mean or like, he didn't try to kick us out. He was actually fairly understanding. And he let us like, a boy. up in some empty rooms and like the training center had a kitchen

we were allowed to use that or whatever so when he got back we ended up kind of collaborating with him in training but at this point a lot of the guys including myself are like dude

I don't I don't want to train I want to fight so a lot of us or yeah a lot of us except for the two Kurt and Joey um nothing else

them that, you know, they were going to do their own thing. That's great. We were like, okay, we're not getting anything in Iraq, so let's go to Syria. So when it ended up happening there is we got back in touch with that German guy. So

he had a compound, but he also had like a townhouse inside of her bill. Super nice. Like the fucking like marble counters and glass tables and there was like three bedrooms like holy shit this

like how much does this cost you? Like this is shit that fucking like rich white people who don't want to stay downtown in a hotel would stay in. It was a fucking legit townhouse. So we ended up staying there for about a week trying to get in contact with some Pesh guys or some you know guys from the YPG

try to get over there. Now, during this whole, like, the start of the thing, I know a lot of guys, they took, like, the super awesome, like, covert fucking, you know, all right, we're, we're going to fly to Turkey and we're going to get in this fucking black truck and we're going to drive down to fucking the Syrian border and then we're going to jump on a fucking boat and, and travel over into Syria. and we're going to hide from the regime, the Syrian regime, and we've got to hide from the Turks, and it's like super secret. Yeah, well, we ended up getting drunk one night in this townhouse, and there was a guy that happened to be,

like, a Peshmerga major, and one of the guys started talking to him, and we were all hampered, and then we were like, hey, man, we want to go to the, uh, Ypegay, we want to go to YPG.

And he's like, oh, my friend, no problem. He literally got on the phone that night. Pings the phone up in five minutes. He's like, be ready in two days. There's going to be a fucking forerunner here to pick you up. Holy shit.

We drive in air conditioning over the Syrian border to a Yebyshe, YBS base, and then that's where they picked us up to go to fucking Kobani inside of Syria. So I think it's super funny. Everyone did this exhausting, like, exhausting. Jack, didn't you, like, go through the boat thing? Yeah. Through the whole underground rat lock. Yeah.

And the G-bases and taking the little inflatable raft across the river in the middle of the night. Yeah. Yeah, no, we just, we just knew a guy. So we hopped in a forerunner with air conditioning for four hours and drove over the fucking board. You were so, yeah, by the time you got to Syria, it was after, it was a ways after I had left. Was it 2015 by the time you got to Syria? Yeah, it was still 2015. Yeah.

Okay. So you get to, a rather uneventful border crossing in Syria, thank God. Because there are other international volunteers who got shot, like trying to walk over land across the border. There's like crazy shit that happened. Yeah, dude. Thankfully, uneventful for you guys. You get over there and they take you right to Kobani, which, I mean, how hot and heavy was Kobani at that time? so not not nothing nothing was going on

kabani um because i think by the time we got there they had already pushed back the second surge that was that happened yeah because they got invaded they pushed them back towards the river

euphrates they got hit again and then they were able to push it back because i did yeah because while i was there i don't remember kabani ever getting run it uh overrun again so it had to been in like after the second surge. Okay. So what were you doing now? Um, so we get to Kobani and, uh, this is where we start

meeting all the, the Syrian volunteers. Because you know, you got your Iraq volunteers, then you have your like Syrian guys, which are, you know, completely different. It's like, you know, apples and oranges or whatever. How so? Um, we end up in Kobani. Uh, it's just like, uh, I don't know, man. It's just like this mentality. Because when Syria popped off and like when Jordan Madsen was there and everything, Syria was considered like the fucking wild west, right?

While Iraq was kind of like New York and the 1800s, like whatever, a bunch of fucking city slickers. I'm not going out west. So fuck your gold. You know, like we're comfortable here. But the Syrian guys were out there and fucking, you know, Idaho,

dirty as shit. Like, I'm going to find that gold. It's kind of like that, right? But yeah, so we get to Gopani and we end up in this like, I think it was a hospital. And that's where they were filtering all the volunteers.

So we stayed there for a little bit. I can't necessarily, I can't really remember this day. I'm trying to think of like some people I met. The initial stay, I can't really remember anything. But we ended up getting posted up

on the river right near right near the Turkish border and there was a city that was occupied I can't remember the name do you remember anybody on the Turkish side or you're talking on the Syrian side on the Syrian side but we were close to the border

and it was right there right off the I know exactly the corridor you're talking about and I'll try to look it up right now but continue I'm sorry, I'm drawing a blank also. Yeah, so we ended up there, and it was basically just this outpost. Where we were, there was a bridge that was connecting the two sides between the river. So it was like, you know, Kurd side and then the Issa side. The bridge got blown out at some point.

I don't know who did it. I don't know if it was the Kurds. I don't know if it was ISIS. But it became painfully clear that we were not going to cross the bridge at all. Yeah. It's Gerobulus.

The Gerobulus Corps. Yeah. Yeah. Jerobulus. So, Jerobulus was an interesting city. Because with Jerobulus, it was right in a... through the border, and while

you were out doing your fire guard and shit during the night, something super strange was happening. You kept seeing headlights of vehicles traveling around, right? Now, you know, me

looking at it under the impression that, okay, it's ICE is occupied. I doubt they're letting people fucking drive their cars, especially at 2 o'clock in the morning. I'm sure there's a curve view. So where are these cars fucking coming and going from. And you start noticing that they're crossing

the fucking Turkish border. Right. And this isn't, yeah, and this is. Yeah, it was all facilitated by Turkish special forces, we're training some of those guys up and letting them cross the border in the middle of the night. And there's a code word they would transmit to the border guards. Oh, no shit. I didn't know about that.

Yeah, yeah. The code word was, it was like blue light or green light or something like that. And they were just let them pass through. Jesus Christ. Yeah, that was definitely going on. And you could look through the Bino's too. If you look towards the border, you could see a couple tanks, like Turkish tanks spread out across the border. And you start noticing where their barrels are pointed.

It's definitely that pointed at Drobolis. It's pointed at us on the other side of the river. You're like, oh, okay, great. A NATO ally is pointing their fucking tank at me. Dude, there is a whole, like, I've written a little bit about it, but I mean, I think the full story is yet to be written about how, like, you had almost had American special forces in Turkey and American special forces in Syria who went to war with each other because their partner forces were going to war. Like, there's just, there's crazy stuff that happened. The whole thing, the whole Euphrates River Crossing operation with a Delta, a D squadron from Delta Force and some special force. versus guys also.

Like, there's a whole, there's like crazy ass stories there that just have not been written yet. Yeah, they need to be. But I guess we kind of forgot about it, huh, since ISIS has gone? Yeah,

man. But what was, what were you doing there? I mean, after, you know, pulling fire guard on the, you know,

pulling security out on that area. Man, I was doing nothing but fucking starving. That's all. Yeah, man, because in those pictures you posted on the internet, man, up back then like Rambo 2 cut up

you know. Yeah, because I was fucking hungry. Yeah. I wasn't working out. Body by me. Yeah, so the thing with the yeah, so the thing with the cartish supply line is

nothing is important unless you run out of sugar for chai. So I remember there was one month, man. We literally had nothing but fucking non- and tomatoes. And we couldn't get a supply. It was like close to winter.

And it made sense for a minute. It made sense. They were like, well, winter's coming in. You know, our supply chain comes through the Turkish passes because the PKK, you know, that's where all the supply comes from, blah, blah, blah. You know, so if you want anything, it's going to take a minute because we can't get trucks over the fucking mountain. Okay.

Okay. I get it. All right. I'll eat the fucking bread and the fucking tomatoes. But I swear to God, one day we run out of fucking shit. sugar for this goddamn chai, I swear, I swear to God. Five hours later, there was a fucking truck with two goddamn 50-pound bags of fucking sugar. I haven't had meat in fucking months, but at least I can have some chai.

So, yeah, man, you were really enjoying that socialist war out there on the front lines. Oh yeah, dude, it was great. Socialism's awesome, dude. with that should totally like them. So when you buy a can of tuna and you hide it, you know, because you know somebody's going to steal it,

but then someone fucking finds it anyway. And you're like, great. I spent $2 on this tuna and I can't fucking eat it. We stole it. Well, I mean, we're being a little bit sarcastic here. But I did want to ask you a question because this is, their perceptions being what they are.

This was just a comment that I saw the other day when I was kind of like teasing out this episode in your appearance here. So someone said, they made a comment here and they said, Love our troops over there fighting ISIS, but doing it as a civilian volunteer on behalf of communists and Antifa, no thanks. And I don't understand this last part. More than content letting them fight each other, I guess, is what you're saying. I don't know what what do you think about that like this is something that has come up like the Kurds are a bunch of like Marxists and Antifas and I mean I don't know you were actually there Irwin like what are your thoughts on this

that's funny I actually had a so I was trying to promote this show earlier so I like all these fucking groups and shit that I'm in and there's a like a uh what would you call this group? Like it. Excuse me. Like a satire group for spiritist systems. Yeah, yeah. You know, because

yeah, yeah, they put together. So anyway, so I, I dropped this link and one guy was like, oh, yeah, no thanks. I don't support socialism. And like, I told the guy, I was like, I was like, come on, dude,

let me hold $20. So, Um, it's So in Syria The YPG follows the You know, the fucking Abdullah O'Shalan doctrine, right? Which, you know, don't, don't quote me on anything.

I'm not a fucking history guy. I'm not a political guy. I don't fucking research this shit. I fucking watch skateboard videos and how to fucking cook spaghetti. You know, that's what I watch. But it seems to me that while I was over there, all of Apo, Adula O'Shalon's teachings, his like shit from the 70s and 80s,

they're more upheld by the older generation. But once he got caught and imprisoned, and then he developed this, like, Democratic socialism. And while he was in prison, he started learning about, you know, like, okay, well, maybe I should have said this, maybe I should do this, blah, blah, blah. The younger generation seems to back up the new oppo where the leaders and the guys calling the shots, the old guys appreciate the older generation of oppo.

And it's just like this weird, I don't know, man, when I was in compartment, I'm sorry. I was just going to say, can you spell that out for us? And you sort of tell us what the old was, what the new is and how they interact? honestly I have no idea we had an indoctrination class in Derek before going to Kobani because they had to train us

you know we had to you know qualify our weapons like take like these indoctrine there was one class I slept through it to be honest because I didn't want to fucking hear it but apparently according to the Syrian Kurds

America lost the Civil War somehow or I don't know something about the Civil War and America losing it I slept through it

I don't know what's going on they had this like weird philosophy and like studies about America and I can't like I said I can't speak on it I literally slept through

I was on my desk asleep so I can't fucking recall any of the shit they're talking about other podcast in of itself. I mean, it's really complicated to unpack, and I am also not necessarily qualified to do that. But the old doctrine, generally speaking, was along Marxist-Leninist lines. And then the party, the PKK, felt around in the 1990s evolved out of that. And that was when they started to develop democratic confederalism. And some of, there's other things blended in there, like social ecology, all these very kind of like avant-garde. concepts that are blended into it, which is what they believe now. And so democratic

confederalism is sort of like the acceptance or understanding that there will probably never be a country called Kurdistan that incorporates all of the places that Kurds live across Syria, Iraq, and Iran. And understanding that instead you can create a federated system, which, yes, they're not a country, but there are these like cantons that cooperate with one another and that you can have other ways of cooperation and social cooperation without necessarily having a state. So it's very interesting. It's this idea that the Kurds can have a community but not have a nation state. And again, that's a very kind of avant-garde concept that, you know, I don't think we would ever accept here in the Western world in all of our

ideas about the state derived from Max Weber. But again, this is a huge, huge, huge. political conversation that is like honestly it's just beyond the scope of our one team house episode with Irwin and no disrespect to you Irwin it's just it's just a huge subject no yeah no totally and I am not the person

to fucking get into it I am I'm a moron as far as political shit goes and actually it's funny you started talking about it I just remember they gave me like a booklet called a mountain river has many bends and apparently it talks about all this crap did Appa?

And then excerpt from a small key can open a large door the Rojava Revolution Yeah, I've bought that I don't know So here's your Yeah

And just to like You know I'll let you take the floor again Irwin But I just want to explain like how serious this shit is for the Kurds over there I bumped one night with a Kurdish YPG gorilla and he

was probably 18 This guy's worldly possessions He had like a little knapsack Like a kid's backpack He'd take to school And when you open it up Like he had like All he had in there really

Was Apo doctrine books And it was Apo's writing And like he'd read it and like he had a picture of Apo that he actually kissed like in front of me like kissed it

Apo and kissed it and showed it to me and bro that that was like that kid's worldly possessions inside his backpack and I gave him my folding knife and my sweater and I was like kid like you need this shit more than I was on my way out of Syria I was like you need this stuff more than I do

but like that stuff is no fucking joke over there like the ideological component is very serious. Yeah kind of kind of reminds me of this election going on right now. Is it not? Or is it just me? Yeah.

We're becoming extremists. Oh, Jesus Christ, man. Fucking daddy Trump's going to save us all. You know? Oh, no, Biden won. There's voter fraud. Stop to steal or whatever. So continue with your monologue here.

You know, from, you know, the time where you're at Jerobulus, I mean, what happened from this point? So, we just kind of sat there for a while. There was nothing going on. There was talk of Raqa, liberating Raqa, the de facto capitalist city of fucking ices or whatever. That was going to go down. It didn't go down while I was there, but there was talks about it. While we were on the river, like I said, we were just sitting there fucking pulling

fire guard. Fucking radio checks, man. Fucking radio checks. I have never been so fucking frustrated when I hear people talk on the radio. These fucking Kurds, man. They're all on one single fucking channel. And everybody on the fucking river from fucking 200 miles fucking south to me. Everybody.

Fucking, you know, fucking Charlie 1, radio check. Charlie 2, radio check, loud and clear. Charlie 3, radio check. let me jarly go on for a fucking hour and every radio check is fucking an hour right? So you got to call in every fucking hour but during the radio checks it takes

an hour so by the time you fucking call in it's time for a new radio check um but it was fun we just sat around drank chai uh there was this

he wasn't a curt he was an Arab but he was fighting with the YPG this motherfucker looked exactly like Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance if you if you guys know that band you're a little bit younger

this dude looked exactly fucking millennial oh I'm sorry what you're a little bit younger than I am whatever dude yeah my chemical romance is a good band man you need to watch that video where they uh they did the

the WW2 video where they uh jump off at Normandy it's actually a really good video. It's really well shot. I like it. We just sat around, man. Had some reporters come in. There was this one guy who

I'm not going to say his name, but he did a fucking Netflix series or like a documentary on the history channel about like the volunteers and he tried to get a hold of us while we were on the river and we were like, hey man, you know, there's probably nothing to shoot here, nothing really going on.

He asked some stupid like, oh, well, you can shoot over the river, right? Just shoot your guns so I can get fucking footage for this history. Yeah, Vice was doing stuff like that too from what I was told. Yeah, we actually ran into a vice guy in Kobani, and that's what we told him. He was like, hey, man, he was offering money too. He's like, yeah, man, I'll give you like 200 bucks for an interview. And I'm like, no, dude. shit is unethical as

like that a report is trying to get you to like shoot bullets so he can take pictures of it like dude that guy should never work again honestly should not yeah but you know he he's obviously going to because no one's going to fucking talk about

yeah yeah of course he's probably fucking you know got some hundred thousand dollar job at a major news network right now I mean good for him I guess yeah this same guy I'm talking about that that reporter I don't much like him because he jumped my ass one day in Iraq.

We went to this restaurant and they served this bowl of Carpanara, this Italian pasta dish that was super good with chicken. I'm like, hell yeah, dude.

And we brought him out one day because we were supposed to do this documentary but we ended up backing out I think only one guy ended up actually following him. but we brought him to this restaurant and I was like

dude you gotta try the Carbinar the shit's fucking tits man it's so good with the Alfredo and the chicken and then they bring it out and this guy is so fucking pretentious he's like

that's not a Carbinar those are the wrong noodles and I just looked I'm like dude you're in fucking Iraq man you're not fucking Italy what are you serious so

it was that point that I knew I instantly didn't like this man. He's gonna bitch about fucking Carbonara. Man, I could go off on tangent and just totally steal this whole thing, dominate this whole episode on like multiple rants about this whole subject. But there were a lot of very young journalists who went to Iraq and Syria at this point in time. And it was their first war. Like they had never seen a war ever in their life.

And it's reflected in the reporting. I'll put it that way. oh okay I guess I get that maybe I'm not a journalist so I don't understand explain if you want to Jack we're just talking I'm talking about you know

a young person that goes there and they are caught up in the moment as much as anyone and they think this war is the end all be war or the end all be all cataclysmic war of our century and they've reported on it from that context so there's a lot of hyperbole

a lot of exaggeration and a lot of the stuff that was reported about ISIS, about the Kurds, about everything over there is just sort of exaggerated bullshit. It's not objective or even close to objective. They weren't even trying. Right. I get that. Wasn't there a reporter or a journalist that like literally did an airborne operation in Vietnam? Oh yeah, there's a female journalist. I can't remember her name either. But yeah, there were journalists that jumped in with, with infantry, yeah. Okay, exactly. So I don't want to hear

fucking shit about this is the wrong noodles for Carbonara. Precisely. Precisely. Exactly. So I'll save that rant for another time. So yeah.

Continue, please. Yeah, it's fine. So yeah, that went on for a while. It started to turn into what it was in Iraq a lot of press were coming around

a lot of Kurdish press like look at these Americans or helping us out, blah, blah, blah. But we weren't doing anything. So we spent a while there, but finally there was a legit operation that took down or

happened and it was in accordance in collaboration with the rojava or excuse me the Raqa operation so we ended up

taking the Tishran Dam you were there I don't know why I wasn't there at the dam but I was part of the operation as far as like outskirts of like

taking villages and everything yeah yeah yeah so I was there were some dudes that were actually at the dam. One guy that I knew that was actually in our squad, and I'm very jealous of that. He was actually at the dam.

But I got fucking put on detail at these fucking villages, you know, clearing those out. So how did that go? A funny story. Yeah. So I got a good story about that. We ended up at one village that was supposed to be, you know, ISIS held, ISIS controlled.

And they were telling us like, dude, we got this fucking Dosh gun nest up here, man. And they're active. They're there. We can't go into this village until we get rid of that fucking gun nest like that. I'm telling you, man, they got fucking, they got a PKM up there, dude. They got a fucking Moodoo's for some reason. They got everything, bro. Like, we got to take this gun nest out.

So I'm like, okay, whatever. So we're sitting in the adjacent village or whatever. I can't remember the distance. We had a mortar guy and his team set up, so he was lobbing the small, one of the small

mortars, but the Russian ones. What size of those? 60 millimeter. So, he was lobbing those at this target building that was supposed to be the nest. And in Syria, and I'm sure Iraq, too.

So the deal with air support coalition ran, right? So you had fucking U.S., you had the U.K., you had France, you had all this crap. But it was the Kurds calling these fucking airstrikes. So practically

what it was is they had a tablet and they had a map of the AO that would mark their coordinates and they would get sent up to, I guess, J-Soc or whoever the, you know, whoever was in Urbill running these fucking air support.

in Kurdistan to deconflict all of that. Right. Yeah. So it would get sent to them, and then the information would get passed to the, you know, the appropriate parties and the pilots and stuff. So we ended up calling this fucking stray front on this Dosh gun nest.

And we see it too, man. It was fucking incredible, man. I've never, I never saw an A10 do what it does. And it was beautiful. It was a cloudy day. Yeah. And I look at this. I'm just looking in the sky, and this A10 just breaks the fucking clouds.

It looks like a fucking angel. It was beautiful. And it just comes down. And it just flies back up and they're like, fuck, yeah. Dude, that was awesome. So it made your little peevee. And we're like, Arwen. Do what?

It made your little pee pee hard. Oh, yeah, dude. It was beautiful. I've never seen anything so majestic. But. So we get to this. this Dosh gunnest that we called this airstrike in

and we get up there and we're looking around and it's fucking it's fucking splattered obviously right fucking ground the building everything's fucking splattered and we're looking around and we go into the building

because it's still standing and we're looking around and we're like where's where's this gun nest at I don't see anything. Oh, fuck, dude.

Oh, shit. So we're walking around the fucking area. And we find a bunch of goats that the A-10 slaughtered. So we're looking at it. And a couple of them are alive. One was like a tiny one that had been born. I don't know. too long ago and I think it was

like it's fucking there was another one alive I think it was like its mom or something it like crawled up against the fucking adult goat and it was like it knew it was gonna die so it's just like you're looking at and like fuck man I feel so bad there's no dash here there's no ISIS

there's just a bunch of goats but roll that big one up because we're gonna eat it tonight and at this point, dude, I was, I get up there and there's one building off to the side that was actually like occupied by somebody. And you could tell when you walk in the buildings like the occupation happens so quick, people left all their shit behind. There's clothes here. There's fucking food. There's everything.

And I walk into this one building of this home and there's a fridge in there and I opened the fridge. And I see that there's three eggs, eggs there. And at this point, I'm so fucking mad and frustrated that I'm not, and I'm hungry too. I haven't eaten protein in like two, three months. And I'm fucking mad. I take one of the eggs that are in the fridge and I just chuck it against the wall. I'm watching it as it dribs down. And then it hits me. I'm like, oh, fuck, wait. Oh, God damn it we can eat these eggs shit but uh

yeah so that's that's my story of how we wasted a hell of a lot of taxpayer money to kill some sheep and eat it war is hell erwin war is hell how much do those runs cost do you guys know

bro probably each one of those bullets probably costs like 25 bucks i bet if not more a year's salary more than any of us can ever afford it. There you go, America. If anybody burned through your tax dollars, it was definitely me. So, yeah, we did the Tishran Dam, and we went further south into Syria towards Raqa.

did a couple operations here here and there nothing big we got into one brief firefight that actually was pretty intimidating for me we were on a technical and we pulled up on this line

we went up some mountain it was snowing we ended up driving up some fucking mountain and we ended up pulling up on this fucking burn and we set up all the technicals to push into this

village that was in front of us and uh I ended up we ended up taking fire what we thought was enemy fire I'm still assuming it was because I can't prove it but we started taking rounds

and it smacked it smacked the the uh the the shield that we had on the uh the I do remember that. But for whatever reason, we ducked down

during the volley and we're like, oh shit, dude, oh, fuck, we got shot out. Oh, you know, fucking laughing about it. But I look over and all the fluid in our truck is leaking out. And I'm like, holy shit,

did they hit the fucking engine bay? How the fuck did that happen? and I'm sure you guys know there was some volunteers over there that did their own thing and they published their own books and they had their own little experiences and blah blah blah there was this one guy who was a fucking dentist out of New York now granted this guy was a smart dude he had been there for a while he learned he legit learned the Kurdish language as far as a the dialect uh... kermonji as far as serious concerned he did his homework smart dude and uh... he ended up working his way up the ranks and was able to get like his own fucking squad of people and was able to run

operations um that was the same guy that ran the operation that got fucking john uh john galliger killed uh... which i think you know he ended up getting killed because this fucking dumb fuck didn't know what the fuck he was doing. But regardless, we can get into that later.

Let me tell the story. The engine bay was losing a lot of fluid. And I knew that we had got contact from ISIS in that village, just from the fucking the rounds coming off the fucking shield that was in front of the Dushka. But I feel like this motherfucker, because they were walking past us,

because he was in like this sniper, fucking regiment and they were like all this high speed who we'll take our SVDs out here and snipe people and he had this one Canadian guy walking by who was apparently fucking famous too

I feel like those motherfuckers shot the goddamn truck that we're on I don't know I can't prove it but it's weird that the engine bay was leaking all its fluids when we're taking contact from the rear you know what I mean

So I don't know. It's weird. Irwin, another thing. No, go ahead. Finish, please. No, no, no. Ask your question. Well, I was just curious about this dynamic that I sort of observed.

I was wondering what your thoughts are, if this is true or not. It seemed that early on in the conflict, the Westerners, the foreign volunteers that came over, for the most part, were these like red-blooded Republicans who wanted to like kick ISIS in the ass and like get some guns and go and fight the war. And as the war went on, it became increasingly ideological. And instead of having those like red-blooded Americans, you had a lot of far leftists coming over. Not just from the United States, but also from Europe, Western Europe, people who were anarchists, people who were Marxist-Leninists, that the tone of the type of volunteers kind of changed as the war went on. Yeah, you're right.

I don't know about the American side. I don't know about these. I didn't, as far as the Americans go, everyone that I met, I didn't ask their fucking ideologies. I didn't ask you political statements and everything. But when you bring that up, it's funny. As the ideology is concerned, a lot of German dudes,

took up the Marxist Apo kind of a thing Which is weird Who came over from the German Marxist-Leninist party And came over So they were into it before they got there Right yeah

So okay yeah So they were already expecting They already did what they were getting into Um The Antifa shit I didn't see any of that I think, because it seemed like that didn't start happening until after I left. So, 2017, 2018, all these fucking Antifa gang dudes started showing up in Syria, and they weren't doing anything.

Like, I'll tell you right now, they were standing in a fucking blown out fucking wall. Isis wasn't even there, man. Like, we took Raka and what, 2017? Yeah, yeah. Getting pictures for anything. So, yeah, to support the fucking cause and everything, whatever. fucking political bullshit but when I was there

I mean the only ideology that was like being spread was the the Kurdish ideology but at the same time you didn't know what fucking you don't know if it was the old oppo or the new opo and frankly it didn't fucking matter

to me because I was just there to fight ISIS right and I think it's also important to point out that like when people talk about how like they make it sound like this force over there is some sort of Antifa force or whatever. It's very interesting because the reality is not that the Kurds have any sort of relation to Antifa in the West. What's happening is that Antifa and these anarchists in the West are trying to attach themselves to the Kurds because the Kurds have chalked up battlefield successes, whereas these Marxist-Leninists and anarchists in the West have no successes to speak of whatsoever.

Right. So they're trying to like piggyback off of the legitimacy of what the Kurds have accomplished in Syria. But at the same time, the Kurds have also adopted some of that language in some of their press releases. They have talked about like anti-fascism in regards to like fighting Erdogan

and the Turkish government. Right. And that it's super funny too because of what I saw and no disrespect to the Kurdish military. They're good fighters. You know, they do what they

needs to be done. BKK fighters are fucking monstrous. They're fucking billy goats out there on the goddamn mountain, just fucking skipping around. But I, you know, I hate to burst a bubble, man,

but the victory in Raqa, the victory in Mosul, the victory, and all, it was because those capitalist A10s were dropping fucking shit on them, man. No, that's accurate. It's accurate. But, you know, the Kurds also were the ones who paid the price, unfortunately.

And it's something that breaks my heart to this day, how many people died over there. No, it is. It's terrible. You know, yeah, there's people that were lost that I knew personally. and it sucks but it was just a weird situation you know

yeah I mean it's an incredibly complicated political situation over there again that we could be we could go on and on for hours about but you know I'd like to continue talking about your own personal experiences over there actually real quick Irwin we have a couple

questions for you let me just get to these if you don't mind um there's questions yeah we just have and if any of you out there have questions for irwin get them in now

yeah please hit us up um uh so voltage blue thank you very much he asks uh he says that's a slick beanie erwin dare I ask who makes that

and thanks for doing all that you've done dude that must be Kurt chiming in here go ahead give us give us the plug Irwin so uh all right guys So if you're looking for a slick beanie, all right, what I'm wearing on top of my head right now, we call our gorilla beanie. We also have a command of beanie in black and white.

You can find these at Wayfararms.com. This is a business. It's a company that we just put up. We're putting some apparel out there. We got some funny T-shirts. We got some serious T-shirts. we believe in psilocybin we believe in LSD

for PTSD treatment there you go that's our fallout boy right there I don't know about the copyright that hoodie I was wearing with the grenade I guess from you guys also right the RG oh by the way those fucking Russian

grenades dude like it's been a while since I've thrown an M what's it a 67 67 fermentation grenade Yeah. Yeah. It's been a while since I've thrown those,

but I don't remember M67's making an audible pop when the fuse ignites. Russian grenades do. And it's scared the fuck of me. Yeah. But anyway, Wayfarerarms.com. It's their startup.

We're trying to push more positive, you know, have fun, artful type of tactical I don't know. It's, it's trying to be cool, man.

We're trying to make some cool. The light side of that, bro. The sunny side. Now, it's not even vet, but it's just fun stuff. Yeah,

no, I'll try and stay clear of the vet pro mentality. I don't want to make shirts that look like a fucking, like a shirt you get out of, like, the Talladega race, you know, where it's like 17 fucking words and like a picture of a track or something.

Anyway, I'm not here to shit on people. All right. So continue with... One more questions. Sorry about that. And thank you, Alex. Any holiday memories from your time overseas and did you learn any cool skills with Peshmerga or with any of the courage for that matter? Um, skills, I learned how to travel.

And it wasn't necessarily from the Kurds and everything, but traveling incognito and abroad. Way for our arms. We're actually thinking about starting up this podcast, which is why I had this microphone and I look professional. There's this guy that Kurt actually found a while ago. This guy goes to different countries, and he has like a challenge where he lives, or excuse me, travels in this country for like 30 or 31 days. And he tries to spend the least amount of money as possible. And while I'm watching this guy, this guy, he's going into like, say, France.

and going to the different cities and different communities and stuff and whatever. And it's really cool. When he starts off his videos, or if he goes to a different city, he, like, establishes troop leader procedures number one, like a rest plan. He'll get to a new city, and he's like, all right,

I got to know where I'm going to fucking sleep tonight. So it goes to a spot. He sets up his 360 security, his fives and 25s, you know, are the people, 25 minutes away from me gonna bother my shit, whatever. Because he sleeps in parks and different cities or

do whatever, you know, and occasionally if he knows somebody in the city, he'll get like a freebie and sleep in their apartment or everything. But this guy's like, oh, man, drunk. What was the question?

The skills that you want. Skillsets. Any skills you learn with Peshmerg? Skill sets. How to negotiate through foreign countries and not get arrested or fucking picked up and kidnapped and everything like that. Being with the courage, learning how to negotiate their area of operations, how to talk to people, how to present. yourself. I definitely learned a lot about that. Because when you go to France or if you're taking a vacation abroad, you know, you can't act like an American. You know, whether you want to believe it or not, Americans have a distinct way of acting in front of other people, especially different

cultures and different countries. Or different people, you know what I mean? So, if you can figure out the lingo, figure out the way you need to present yourself, figure out how you go about it. You know, that's what I did learn about the Kurds, how to act, how I need to act in a Kurdish society. Yeah. That's one of the biggest skills, I think. Yeah. So, I hope that answers the question.

No, that's awesome. Yeah. And then what happens from that point from the dam operation and, you know, clearing out those villages at that time? So after that whole debacle They ended up taking the dam Which is great We got to control of that And ended up taking control of several

The villages south of the dam In order to prepare for Raqa At that point fuck what was it like January I think at this point I was sleeping in the high licks it's cold as

fuck every fucking night I was sleeping in the fucking passenger seat cranking over the engine every hour or so to keep the heat in the car at that point man I was fucking done I was done I'm not eating.

It's cold as fuck. There is snow in Syria. Guys, did you know it snows in Syria? Because it does. And it gets fucking cold in the winter. Fuck, yeah, man. So at that point, I had had enough. Rocka was going to go off.

I didn't know when. I didn't care to know when. It could have been next week. It could have been a year for now. I was at the point where I was like, okay, rock is going to happen like a fucking two years from now.

I'm not doing anything. We're not getting anywhere. So let's just go home. So I just went home. In February, I think. How long had you been there? The total amount of time that you had been out of the United States

at that point in time? 11 months I spent outside the United States. So, five in Iraq and no excuse me six in Iraq and five in Syria and with Syria and the YPG

so many volunteers were coming over that they actually set up like this contract contractual agreement where if you wanted to leave that's fine the YPG would pay for your ticket and pay for all your expenses, but you had to do at least six months in country before the YPG paid for your shit. I only did five, and I was sick of the shit. So we ended up getting back

into Irb Bill under the YPG and the guy that ran the recruiting shit or whatever. Like, I ended up just talking him down. Like, because he, the YPG didn't want to buy my plane ticket, to go home. And then on top of that, we had the penalties to pay for our expired visas. Right? So if you want to go home, but your visas expired, you have to pay a fucking penalty to fix that. So I ended up going to the

fucking immigration office, and I just raised hell. I was like, fuck you, fuck this, I'm never coming back. They're like, we'll have to deport you, sir. I'm like, fucking to pour me, I don't give a shit because the penalty was like $200 but once I like showed my ass a little bit it jumped down like $2. They're like, just give us two bucks.

And we can't like rents, say your visa. I'm like, good. And then the YPG guy was like, we're not going to pay for your ticket home. And I was like, the fuck you are. Like you're definitely going to pay my ticket home. Fuck you.

It's a thing. So I was able to to swindle my way out of that contractual agreement well while you were with the Peshmerger you didn't get paid at all correct or they gave you money afterwards

so so before we went to Syria we were given oh man I don't know does the IRS hear your shit do they do they I don't think so bro

I don't think they care about this but the CIA watches this shit and so it was the military. Oh, fuck it, whatever. I'm more worried about the IRS. IRS don't give a fucking IRS. It doesn't matter. Don't tell us what they paid you.

Just tell us what you saw them pay somebody else. No, it's not like they gave him a fucking W-2, man. Yeah. You're good. You're safe. Fuck, fucking, man. I'll be honest. Fuck it, whatever.

It wasn't that much to get taxed. So before leaving for Syria, for that training, shit that I was supposed to do at a third brigade. That's what it was. Third Brigade, Special Operations. They gave me $500 for training. And then the YPG gave me $200 to exit and get back home. So in 11 months, I made $700.

The IRS doesn't care. So I'm a minimum wage. You're a regular minimum wage mark. Jesus Christ. Ballin. making it rain over there and stand. That's that good mercenary money. Yeah, dude. And that's the thing.

Like that the romanticized version of the mercenary is that like you get balled ass rich. Like it never works like that. Never. Oh, real. Yeah, I made fucking dick, dude. And yeah, I do read about that.

Like, uh, um... Dude, I know people who own security companies are like, they break even. Like, it's crazy. And then what about... Yeah, $700, dude. And then what about when you got to the YPG, did they pay you and how'd they pay you in cash?

Yes, so they... It was cash. And they paid me $200. And they figured $200 was enough to get a plane ticket, pay my visa penalties, and get back. home. So they were paying you a salary while you were there? Or any...

No, no. You were getting a paycheck or... There was supposed to be... So what I learned, there was supposed to be a monthly salary for the volunteers. But nobody ever saw that money. And I can't confirm or deny. I can't. I don't have the evidence. I don't have the evidence. I don't have the paperwork. But from what

I saw and what seemed to be happening was the YPG was actually pocketing the money that was designated for the foreign volunteers. I can confirm from my own reporting

that there was... Oh, I didn't hear his real name. Alex. I don't remember that. Five years ago, man. remember any of this shit. So, Erwin, just so you can sleep tonight, soundly, with no worries.

One, I assure you the IRS does not care about $900. And two, you were out of country for 330 days out of 365, so it's tax exempt anyway. And furthermore, you were doing, oh, no shit. Yeah. If you're out of, if you are out of the country for 330 days out of three hundred and 30 days out of 365 contiguous days your money is tax free. Or

is that just in a combat zone? I think it's just... It might be when you're working for the U.S. government. I don't remember, but it's something like that. Yeah, but I wasn't working for the U.S. government. No one gives a shit. Believe me. Yeah.

So you got back to the United States after having like the ultimate adventure. what's it been like settling back in a civilian life since then? It's been tough, man. You know, when I got out of the military, I went to the VA. I ended up getting a rating. And from what I have learned about psychology and like mental health and everything, I ended up getting

rain because I had pre-diagnosed or undiagnosed PTSD which now being older and looking back on it led me to going back over them in the first place

and it's been tough man I tried a lot of different jobs I tried like a forklifting job and yada yada like retail blah blah and I couldn't fucking do it. But fortunately there's a job that I wasn't aware of until I was made aware of it called loss prevention where I work for a company to try to keep revenue inside their pockets as much as possible and catch shoplifters. And that company is Walmart.

So I'm the guy who walks around his street clothes and bust you when you fucking put airheads inside your pocket. Irwin's a dick. Do what? You're a dick. Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah. Why are you snitching on? I try not to be... feeling fucking warheads and gun I try I try not to be I've met because I've been doing there

for about three years and I've met some fucking assholes that like to just put people in the corner because it makes them feel good um

you're like shaking I deal with roles because they forgot to pay for a York peppermint patty yeah I don't go after that I go after that I go after like legit fucking

like dude there's no there's no reason you need this $500 TV come on man but I've met people that like to stop people on like bullshit like

this guy stole our fucking Twix bar and now I'm going to send him to jail over Twixbar come on bro like and I actually stop a lot of veterans.

There's one vet that I stopped. She was a female, and she was active duty. She was a private. I had fun with her because she was stealing stupid shit. She was stealing, like, fucking makeup and, like, condoms and fucking, like, what's your first start's name? I'm going to call him up tomorrow. Fuck you, you know?

But I have stopped vets that are legitimate, like, They got into a bad place. The VA didn't help them. The VA fucked over. They're suffering from whatever happened to them on the tour. And this guy that I stopped is literally he stole a fucking sandwich and some ketchup and like a water. And with those guys, I'm obviously a little more lenient. I talk to them.

I figure out their history. I figure out the past. Oh, okay, you're on heroin. Why are you on heroin? Because of the PTSD. Okay, I get it, man. You can't steal food. That's against the law, but I'm not going to fucking bust.

I can't do it. What is it about these other jobs? What is the forklift or the other stuff? Like, is it that you get bored? Is it that you don't like? I mean, obviously, you're good with dealing with people if you can if you can handle this situation so how does your post-traumatic stress affect you sort of in the job market it's bad um because with my job um and i actually told the VA this um

about a year ago because i i'm dealing with uh PTSD unfortunately or by the grocery door tried to keep them alive as long as I possibly could before AMS showed up. Unfortunately, we couldn't do that. This is a job that satisfies my adrenaline and able to you know, yeah, satisfies my adrenaline because I need that.

I need to feel that sense of I might die today. I might do this. I might do that. But at the same time, not all interactions require that type of mentality. Yet I still produce that mentality. I don't know, man. It's weird. I don't know. Is there any satisfaction or any sort of satisfaction for you having that feeling,

dealing with somebody not knowing how it's going to be, but then arriving at a peaceful resolution where you feel like you're helping somebody? It depends on the outcome. Because in the end, I'm the victim. Walmart is the victim. But it's up to the police to determine whether or not it's worth enough time for the prosecutor.

Right. Right. A lot of people don't understand when you get arrested by the police, it's not the police that are putting these charges on you. They can suggest it. Oh, criminal intent, fucking burglary, fucking blah, blah, yada, yada. But it's up to the prosecutor to actually determine whether or not it's worth fighting. You know what I mean? I've dealt with some people that definitely deserve it. there's people out there that are fucking coked out of their mind on heroin stealing shit to fucking support their heroin addiction blah blah blah I've definitely dealt with that

but I've also dealt with people that just fuck up they just fucked up right right I stole this mattress cover because my wife and baby this is actually something that I went through I stole this fucking

mattress cover. I stole this fucking blanket. I stole this food because my wife and baby are going to be sleeping under our bridge in the rain tonight and I wanted to make sure they're safe and warm and comfortable.

And it's shit like that that yeah, dude, I'm not going to prosecute you. I'm not going to file charges. I'm not going to. I get it. You know? Now, depending on the amount that you stole, if you stole

like $1,000 from me, yeah, I have no choice but to process you, that's a thousand fucking dollars. But if you stole like fucking $100 worth of the fucking shit just to get you through the night, you know, I'm understandable. Like, I don't charge

people for that, and you know, I try to be as sympathetic as I possibly can because I know people go through shit and people are it's just bad luck man you know

and I try not to get them involved in the fucking legal system as much as I can right now Irwin having grown up in America where even

you know where we have a certain level of comfort and obviously you've pointed out examples where people don't but even with that I hate to say

because I'm leading into something but even with that they have a place where they can steal things you know whatever then you go to the military, you go to Iraq, you see, you know, how people have it in Iraq. Then you go to, uh, to the, to the, to Kurdistan, right? Or, or to fight with the Kurds and you see people living

in completely different conditions. Has that influenced your view of the world at all? Did, did you change through that process and how you see things? Yeah, maybe a little. Um, did we, do we lose her one? I think we lost you just a little bit. We heard, we heard maybe a little, and then I think you froze up. Your any connection is unstable. Can you guys hear me? Yeah, we hear you now. Okay.

Yeah, maybe a little man. The Kurds and people overseas and people that deal with their host nation governments and everything, I guess folks don't understand how fucking lucky we are to be in America. and, you know, I see, I'm in LP groups, and a lot of these folks love, love taking people down. In fact, in Renton, my last, before, I had a boss, she did some shit, she got to let go.

nothing, nothing crazy, nothing whatever. You know, it's, you know, it's fucking Walmart politics. That's why she got Leto. And then I got our new boss, who absolutely loves sending people to jail. And it doesn't matter what it is. You know, fucking, oh, he ate a Milky Way bar in Isle 3. I'm going to, I'm going to take him to jail because he ate a fucking Milky Way bar. people don't

in our country don't understand how human beings how bad they have you know we're lucky we're lucky that I can get on this podcast

and say Donald Trump is a loser or Joe Biden sniffs kids and I don't appreciate that. I'm lucky that I can get on here and say that and not fucking go to jail. Right.

But there's, there's, there's a lot of countries out there, man. There's a lot of human beings that have to watch what they say. And it's just, I don't know, man. I think people take this country for granted.

I think so, too. You know, yeah. But you can get on Facebook and call Donald Trump, a fucking fuck boy and nothing's gonna... Your door's not gonna get kicked in. You're not gonna go to jail.

Right. Because you have the, you know, the First Amendment. He's essentially the worst dictator ever. The dictator, yeah. He's the worst dictator ever, you know? He can't even keep him from talking shit about him.

Erwin, Brad asks, have you ever seen someone successfully ride a bike out of Walmart that they've not paid for? Just like stealing it by riding it out the front door. That's going to be a no. The last bike pushout I had, I actually had a broom.

And I threw the broom through the spokes of the wheel. So he didn't make it out the vestibule. That's hardcore, dude. Was he riding it or pushing it? It was riding it. Nice. That's fucking gangster, man. That's good imagery.

Well, brother, we're like two and a half hours. man, I think we've got to start winding down here. Tell us about your book that you wrote about all of your experiences. Tell us about this apparel company that you're running and where people can go to find all this good stuff. Yeah, no problem. So I did run a book. It's called Cab Hunter, like Taxi Cab C-A-B, Hunter. It's just about to make experiences in the Army

for the first chapter, but the rest of it is Iraq and Syria. You can find that on Amazon. You can buy the digital copy. You can buy the physical paperback. I'll post a link right here, right now. Post the link in the chat. We'll put it.

Yeah. And then, yeah, me and my buddy, Kurt, have started a business. We started a business called Wayfarer Arms. Wayfarer, as in the old folk song, Traveling Stranger. We're doing some apparel. We hope to get a podcast going soon as you guys are. And we're just chill, man.

we're trying to come up with some cool shirts to wear as Jack is wearing right now we're not necessarily you know gun ho yada yada yada I'm sure you've seen the training videos and all these other

YouTube personalities man we're just we're just here to have fun man talk about some good shit talk about some bad shit you know I don't know man we should have fun yeah well when you guys do start that podcast let us know so we can plug it for you yeah i i've been pushing kurt on my end telling him like some suggestions

yeah i've heard them just start it i mean this is it just start it and let it evolve over time yeah don't don't worry about having a master plan or anything like that yeah absolutely go go back and watch the past episodes of this podcast and be like, what the fuck are these two idiots doing? Yeah. Yeah. So, Erwin, man,

thank you so much for coming on the show tonight. Everyone, thanks for joining us live tonight. Please make sure that you like, share, and subscribe to the channel. We really appreciate it. If you like these videos,

share it with your friends. And down in the description of this video, you can find a link to our Patreon page. If you want to subscribe. to us and see the bonus content that we offer. And there's also a link to the merch shop where you can get coffee mugs and t-shirts and other cool stuff that we have. We would recommend maybe holding off on the t-shirts right now because the print came out

kind of faded and we want you guys to be happy with the stuff. We're working on it. This is how the hoodie comes out. It looks a little vintage. Let's see here. Where is that at? Yeah, there you go. It's just a little faded.

So it's a little faded. So, you know, we call it pre-washed, vintage. Erwin, thank you so much for your time tonight. Yeah, man. You really appreciate it. And next week, next Friday, we will have Justin Lassick on the show, 10th Special Forces Group Soldier. He's a double amputee, lost both of his legs.

So we're going to have him on the show next week. So thanks, man. And Erwin, if I get you to stand by for a moment so we can do the bonus segment, is that cool? Oh yeah, I'm here, man I'm here for you, Jack I appreciate it, bro So thank you everyone for showing up tonight

And we will see you next Friday Thanks guys