The Team House - Some of the Most intense Fighting in the War on Terror | Joe Fontenot | Ep. 336

Episode Date: March 29, 2025

pre order the book here:https://www.amazon.com/Sons-Arghandab-Guns-Devils-Playground/dp/163624520XJoseph “Fonty” Fontenot is a combat veteran who served 20 years in the US Army and retired as a first sergeant, with combat deployments to Abu Ghraib, Iraq, and the Arghandab River Valley, Afghanistan. Before enlisting in the Army, he was a successful musician who gave up his career to serve during the Global War on Terror. After his year in Afghanistan, he won Soldier of the Year in 2015. He subsequently suffered multiple career-ending injuries and, despite several years in the Warrior Transition Unit, chose to return to the 101st. Fontenot has earned a bachelor's degree in forensic psychology and does guest speaking and helps veterans’ organizations.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:Ridge Wallet ⬇️https://ridge.com/HOUSEfor up to 40% off!!___________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"Want to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Joe wrote a book called Sons of Argyndab, which is coming out on June 15th. It is about the 101st Airborne in Afghanistan in serious combat. I read the book today. It's one of the most intense. I wouldn't call it really a memoir because it's not just about Joe. It's about the unit. But it's one of the most intense accounts of modern combat that I've read. And I've read a lot of these books I feel like.

Special Operations. covert ops, espionage, the team house, with your hopes, Jack Murphy, and David Park. Hey everyone, welcome to episode 336 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with tonight's guest, Joseph Fontano. Joe wrote a book called Sons of Argyndab, which is coming out on June 15th. It is about the 101st Airborne in Afghanistan in serious combat. I read the book today. It's one of the most intense. I wouldn't call it really a memoir because it's not just about Joe.

It's about the unit. But it's one of the most intense accounts of modern combat that I've read. And I've read a lot of these books, I feel like. I should also point out that this episode is sort of a sequel, a follow-up to our previous show, episode 318 with Andrew Bragg. So Andrew Bragg in the 82nd Airborne was in this same area, the Argon Dhab Valley, and then ripped out with Joe's unit here with 101st. So one comes after the other. And I just want to make our viewers and listeners aware of that in case they're interested in, you know, listening to both because they dovetail with one another.

So, Joe, thank you for coming on the show. Appreciate it, man. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about sort of your background and how you, you know, what kind of took you into the military? So prior to joining the military, I was a musician. I joined at 31 years old. The only reason I joined up was because I wanted to do something better for my kid.

Playing music, we were on tour, ran into a convoy. boy somewhere up in New York and just in a chance encounter and decided to go and talk to one of the soldiers to say thank you while saying thank you one of the soldiers said no need to do what no need to say thank you I do what I do from my family figured this this kid has more direction in his life than what I did at 30 years old so at that point I decided I was going to sign up no better time than the present so went to MEPs and told them, you know, put me on the first thing smoking. Next thing I knew, that was in November, January 6th, that was on a bird.

January 9th, I was in basic training. And the rest of history from there. And before we get into, you know, the deployment that your book is about, you also did some previous deployments like you were in Iraq too, right? I was. We were in Abu Ghraib. Abu Ghraib in 2007, 2009. We were at Camp Victory, Camp Liberty.

So that was a much tamer deployment for us. We patrolled Route Steelers. And it was a whole lot of boots on ground, but it was definitely more of a coin fight. It was nothing like Afghanistan. We were there definitely in Wayne Hearts and Mines at one point. We were helping, you know, farmers with sheep and cattle. So it was complete 180 of what we were doing in Afghanistan. There was no hearts and minds in Afghanistan.

We were there. At one point, we were there, we were supposed to be there to help people. But at the end, like, when you can't trust somebody face to face, it's hard to. to win horse and minds. Hey guys, I want to take a moment to tell you about tonight's sponsor for the show, which is Ridge Wallets. I've been using this for about six months now. Really enjoy it. This wallet is made out of carbon fiber, titanium and steel, and it really holds up and lasts.

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So please go and check out Ridge Wallets. And then the other thing I want to point out before we go into Afghanistan, this is the 101st Airborne. However, your specific outfit was your howitzers, right? They were artillery. Yes, we were first or 320th field artillery. Attached to it was a second brigade combat team? We were, so we were attached to second five-oduce. Okay.

And so that's very interesting, you know, Your guy's background, when you gear up for this deployment, I mean, tell us a little bit about, you know, when the unit's joccing up, doing your pre-mission training and sort of what your expectations are of where you're going and what you guys think you're going to get into on this deployment. So when we were ramping up for Afghanistan initially, we were 100% planning on going out there and shooting. We were, you know, in the back 40s of Fort Campbell, practicing tables, shooting our howitzers, typical artillery stuff. At some point or another, they came in and said, we're going to JRTC and everybody's going to be provisional infantry. So that everybody just kind of turned our mindsets off. At that point, they said that we were. we were going to be headed to the organ daub.

And they said that we were going to be just infantry. So everybody got on the computers and started trying to figure out what we're going to be walking into in the organ dob. Unfortunately, I'll be perfect glona. So fortunately, we looked at the organ job. And what we were looking at was completely wrong. Everything that we looked at was wrong. We looked at stuff related to artillery.

units and we didn't look at stuff pertaining to infantry stuff. At least my battery didn't. So we were very ill-prepared. So when we got there, it was definitely a shotgun blast their face. And I think you wrote in the book that your artillery pieces were like up in Bagram or Kandahar or something and they never left. Yeah, they stayed at Kandahar. They were banded up the whole year. Yep.

So when we unbanded them, I remember being in Kandahar with Staff Sergeant McCorkill, and when we unbanded them, we both looked at each other wondering if the equilibrium of springs were just going to pop in our face. Because they'd been compressed. I know nothing about artillery, but. Yeah, so if you can imagine a spring that's just been compressed for a whole year and just had just moon dust from Afghanistan just covering it and you just uncoil it slowly and you're just hoping and praying that this thing just doesn't come unglued and just shoot anybody that's in your side you know you figure when you take the the base plate off of a 50 cow imagine the tension that spring has now multiply that by a million for that spring on a palliser. So tell us about getting into the Argonob and sort of like how your unit was parsed out

throughout the valley. When we first got there, we went to Fob Jellewar, and that's kind of where we set up shop. We went to Jellawar earlier than we were supposed to, so Fob Jellowar wasn't even ready for us. They had to basically make shift tents for us and just kind of prepare what they could, when they could. Our guys got in the towers as soon as we got there. We could hear to Charlie and whoever was at, Cop Nolan at the time, we could hear them in firefights. But at the same time, like when you're saying,

so far away, nothing seems real. Like, you don't know exactly what's going on, so nothing seems real. We were only there for maybe a week, maybe not even that long. And then they gave us our marching orders, and Alpha Battery was going to cop Nolan, and Bravo Battery was going to cop times. So we pushed forward right off the rip, we pushed when we pushed forward, We in Bravo Battery were moving through Jellawar at the city, the village of Jellawar. The locals, you could tell the locals were not very pro-American.

We were getting pelted with rocks as we were driving through the town. It was like, I don't know, you could just tell. We were there to help people or so we thought. And this is not exactly what we expected. We expected more of a warm welcome. And what we got was not at all a warm welcome. And as I think the, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I mean, I just wanted to point out, I think that you write in the book that the Argon Dab was like one of the sort of like home territory of the Taliban.

Like some of their main leaders came from there. Yeah, Mullah Omar. He was from like the Shewans, which is, you know, maybe a mile or two down the road. And the Taliban, like, made their, that's kind of where they made their mark against the Russians was in the Orkindal River Valley. They were, they were at a school, like, right across the river. And that's where they made their mark was in the Argonautub. So from there, Alpha Battery went across the river and, or I see across the river.

They went across the first canal. And they set up shop at Cop Nolan. Cop Nolan was set up at pretty much one of the worst possible spots that they could have been set up at. They were in an orchard, like right in an orchard. They had pomegranate trees surrounding them. And I'm not sure who picked the spot for Cop Nolan, but it was obviously in a strategic night. there. So, yeah, they, they started setting up shop at Cop Nolan, and that was the only, like, only two spots that we were patrolling out of, and then our battalion had taken over Cop Terra Nova.

And that was, that was basically the three spots that we had going into. And lay out for us kind of like if you paint the picture a bit for the listeners or viewers, what these fobs are like, what life is like out of these fobs, because this is not some mega fob in Baghdad or Kandahar or Bagram. And also tell us a bit about the terrain and what made this valley, you know, so unique. So at Copteranova, Copterinova wasn't bad at all. They had a pretty nice setup. They had nice tents. So being at Cop Terranova was where you wanted to be at.

The headquarters, they had it pretty nice there. Cop Nolan, they were surrounded by pomegranate orchards, grape fields. When they came out of their front exit to their cop, they basically walked across an open area. and that open area was like they could get mowed, moed down if the Taliban had it set up. So they were going to walk into basically a kill zone just walking out of their front of their cop.

Their towers were basically, it was very ill-prepared. The towers weren't set up very good. So that's basically what they walked into. for where Bravo Battery was Bravo Battery was a long, right along

Route Red Dog we had standoff from the orchards. I would say we were about maybe a thousand meters from the first canal. Then we would go directly

into the grape furrows and then from the grape furrows, then we'd hit the pomegranate orchards. We had a open area to our south and to our west, and then we had the village of Drouia to our east, where Coptines was it backed up directly into the village of Drouia. So if somebody wanted to get into our cop, they could easily just go to. to the compound right next to us with an RPG and probably have shot right into the right into the cop when we first when we first got to cop times we had an incident where a young soldier

fell asleep in the tower at that point I was on SOG at the time sergeant of the guard at the time and we had a Afghan National Army soldier run over and he was just yelling Taliban, Taliban, Taliban. Of course, I figured he was probably full of crap. But, you know, whatever, I'm going to take him out his word. So I asked him where, and he said the front gate. So I ran up there and thinking, like, there's no way. I know we have a guy in the tower, so there's no way. Well, sure enough, I ran up to the tower.

and the first thing I saw was this soldier's helmet. I saw the glow from his MVGs on the HESCO barrier. So I knew he was asleep. So I ran up to where the cruiser of weapon was. And sure is shit, I saw this guy peek around the corner, Indiana RPG, an AK-47. Oh, man. So he was going to, he could have came around the corner and shot that RPG in our sleeping quarters, and that would have been game over.

From there it would have been chaos. So, needless to say that, that was a long night for him. But that was basically the setup when we initially set up in Afghanistan. We had the sleeping quarters that two Charlie had initially built. They had built some mud rooms. excuse me, some plywood rooms attached to like the mud structure that they had inherited when they first got there. And we inherited that from them.

And then we ended up, you know, adding on to what they had already built to try and, you know, make it better than what it was. You know, just position improvement on what we had gotten. But we, you know, that's what we initially walked into. but there was a lot of patrolling through the canals. So it was pretty consistent that if you wanted to be safe, you were going to patrol in the canals. If you were on hardball roads, which was nothing more than packed dirt,

if you were on those roads, there was a high probability that you were going to hit an IED. If you were anywhere, like in the vicinity of anything that resembled a hard road, we were going to probably hit an IED. So you, if you were in a patrol, the safest bet was going over grape furrows and picking the path of the most resistance. That was just the safest bet. That was basically the way the terrain was. I mean, what's so crazy about, you know, what you talk about in your book is the IED situation.

And, you know, I think all the, I could be wrong, but it seems like all of the soldiers that you lost during this deployment were lost, not to enemy gunfire, but to IEDs. And not the huge roadside bombs that most Americans are probably familiar with, but like, more like booby traps on trails and things. We lost a PFC King to a sniper. He was our first KIA, PFC Brandy King. And we lost Master Sergeant Pittman, who was ex-special forces, asymmetric warfare group. He got hit in his collarbone and hit him in his heart. He was hit by a sniper as well. everybody else was killed by iED but we had a lot of amputees that survived that are talked about

in the book i tried to i tried to do my best to not forget anybody who was a casualty in the book but obviously there was there was a lot more casualties that were in our book that probably didn't get mentioned that were injured in combat, but I'll be honest, like, I reached out to a lot of people with some people, you know, unfortunately didn't reach back, which, you know, I understand. Some people don't want to relive that year, and, you know, I have to respect that. So. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

No, I get it. So what's, let's talk about these, I mean, yes, thanks for reminding me, the first soldier you lost was a sniper shot in one of the guard towers. And then the AWG guy, unfortunately. Tell us a little bit about then going out on these patrols and sort of like what the IED situation was like out on patrol for you guys. So we, as far as the IED situation, we found out later in the deployment that the IEDs were, they were taken things like Barbie Dow clothes and they were hanging them in the trees. And that was like their markers as to where they were like putting the IEDs. So we were able to start finding that. And then they were basically burying it in the corners of like grape furrows. Like if they, they would set them up in places that they knew were easy avenues for us to cross through.

So if they thought that we would cross in an easy avenue, that that's exactly where they would put it. And then they started setting a. up like tripwires. So if they thought we were going to jump over a wall, they would set up a trip war like six inches from the from the wall and that way our gear would get caught on this trip war and it would set it off. I don't think I talk about it in the book, but they also started setting them up in in like dirt walls itself. there was one incident where certain Cox and myself

we went in and we found this bed down site where they were like taking their wounded and they were, you know, bandaging them up or doing whatever they had to do with them. And like I went to like pull the rug and see if there was anything under the rug. And when I went to grab it, So Cox noticed that there was a wire running to the wall.

And what they had did is they ran like a wire to the wall that was connected to the rug. And as soon as I would have lifted the rug, it would have pulled, I guess, some kind of mech that was on the IED. And he would have blown the IED and hit me in the face. So they had those. A lot of the IEDs were simply just pressure plates. They were taken, they were taken, they were taken, um, like two boxes, two pieces of MRE boxes. They were taking two pieces of cans from Coke cans,

flattening them, and then just taking two pieces of wire with a nine-volt battery. Wow. And that's it. There were a few where you talk about how they use styrofoam, so you step on it, the styrofoam breaks and the contact leads connect. Yeah, they were getting a styrofoam from inside of like ammo cans. Oh shit. Like the Mart 9 Tambo cans?

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. They were using that. So they were just basically any trash that they could find. Some were remote thatinated too, though. Yes.

So the one that Specialist Moon was killed with was the R-C-I-ED. But they went away from R-C-I-EDs with us. because of jammers. With more with just pressure plates. Is that because I think you said it was the Thor system, like the mobile jammers? Yeah, we had the Thor 3 system the whole year. Oh, so I mean, I almost like part of me,

I hesitate to ask you some of these questions because, you know, you guys were really in the shit in this deployment. But I'll ask you to share, you know, to the extent you're comfortable with, if you want to tell us about some of the more significant operations that you guys were on, some clearing missions and other stuff that went on during this year, where you guys were really in the thick of it. Yeah.

So I know that there was a mission that Alpha Battery was in, and it was supposed to be going down, looking for an HVT. and I only know of the mission. I wasn't actually on it. Sergeant Zavala told me about it. They went down and initially it was kind of just like a low-key mission. It wasn't going to be like high stakes. They went down there and it almost turned into the Mogadishu Mao.

They went into this compound. They found out that they had like, high value targets that were in this compound that they ended up like running out the back of the compound when they first got there then they ended up with this massive weapons cachet the guys basically took everything that they could fit in their assault packs they put it in their assault packs and as soon as they like started filling their their assault packs they started getting mortared while they were still in the compound because obviously, you know, the Taliban knew like this was the compound that their high value targets were in.

So Alpha tried to exfiel out of there, but they were about a mile and a half away from where Cop Nolan was. So they're trying to run through the orchards and the grape furrows with all this ammunition and stuff inside of their assault packs. And like Ivan told me, he said, I was probably like, the closest we all came to death in that whole deployment because it was literally a run for their lives. And it's worth mentioning too. Like you talk about one of the first missions you guys went on where, you know, it sounded like a handful of guys and almost you became heat casualties.

Yes. Because it's so hot out. You're carrying all this gear. Guys start running out of water. Yep. So that was the last mission with two chimes. shortly. And that mission was, that mission was rough. I think that mission was probably one of the worst missions for us that whole deployment. There were so many things that we learned on that

mission simply because first off, our guys weren't acclimated. We, our guys were only atop times for like 24 hours. So they had no idea what the terrain was like. And the call was made for us to go out and do this, this operation that was going to take us probably. I think we're supposed to be out there for 72 hours, something like that. We got off to a rocky start first thing because we had to roll. fill in our radios.

So that set us back. And then when we first stepped off, we were already behind the eight ball because we're about to lose, we're about to lose light. And so we stepped off by the time we got to the first canal, I want to say we were almost at a point where we had lost, we had lost the cover of darkness. So I don't remember who it was, but they made the cover to just say, fuck it, let's go. Let's go without MBGs. We continued going. And I want to say it was, we were pretty certain that we were going to probably hit

an IED before we even got to the compound that we were going to. But thankfully, we made it through. We had the, we had the bomb dog with us. And I don't know if it was the bomb dog. that helped us or if it was just we had God on our side, I don't know, one way or another, we made it to the compound. We got inside. Once we got inside, we started making a plan, trying to figure out what was going to come next.

We started setting up security and maybe, hell, maybe seven in the morning. Maybe. I don't even know if it was that late. But all I know is it didn't take very long before the Taliban knew where we were and it wasn't long before we started with our first gunfight. When that gunfight started, it was an ongoing process for probably the next 16 hours. The decision was made from Captain Ward to push us off as a movement to contact patrol. we pushed out initially the order was to push us out 150 meters it's not what happened we moved out probably about 300 meters and then we moved out into a grape furrow

we were in the middle of this great furrow and our guys the hundred first guys were sucking we were without a doubt we were just we're in a bad way Like I, in the book, I don't sugarcoat it. Like, I call a spade a spade. And I tried to do that throughout the whole book. Like, you know, if it was, it was the twizzlers that got you back up on your feet. It was. Absolutely.

100%. I actually wrote Twizzlers. When I got home, believe it or not, I wrote Twizzlers the message. And I told them, like, hey, no shit you guys saved my life. I don't know if you believe it or not, but you did. And they never replied. Like, I have a feeling they think of it's full of shit. but like it happened.

But like we, I gave Cheatham all my water to make sure that he would, you know, somehow get on the plane. And he did. I've told Dale Nalinger, I've told a lot of the guys from the 82nd, thank you from that day because, you know, that day was pretty bad for us. But we learned a lot that day. We learned a lot. And, you know, all I can say is that day was a shit show for us.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's to the guy's credit, too. I mean, you guys were an artie unit and you're having to improvise, adapt and overcome in the field and learn to be infantrymen. Not an easy thing to do in combat. Yes, I agree. And it's not an easy thing to do in the Argonob River Valley. Yeah, yeah. The organ dob

Organdab has chewed up and spit out a lot of guys. And I think we were up to bat. As you, if you want to tell us a bit about, you know, as you get further into this deployment, there is some leadership change out. And it was Lieutenant Weaver comes in, right? Yes. So Lieutenant Weaver comes into HHB.

into havoc. So when he came in into havoc, he takes over one hotel and he is with our first class Lions platoon

from talking to the guys in one hotel during the interviews for the book. Those guys seem like they loved him to death. He was an infantryman So having him in the ranks was very beneficial.

He came in and he was very, very much into, I don't care what your MOS is. I'm going to turn you into infantrymen. We're on an infantry deployment and you're going to be infantryman. And he did his best. He, like, from talking to everybody, He loved his guys and he changed the culture in the in the platoon to basically he had he had an infantry platoon. He made those guys hardcore infantrymen.

And from from speaking to sardin lions, he told me that the day prior to the day prior to the, the day that they were going to be going out, there was a whole lot of planning leading up to the patrol where Lieutenant Weaver got hit. And unfortunately, you know, sometimes the best plans in the world just kind of can't prepare you for something like what happened on the day that he got hit, you know? you know and and talking with sartin casey certain casey having known sarned casey since he was a private

uh certain casey was very sick the day that oh the dissent weaver yeah the day lieutenant weaver got hit and you know like it says in the book casey was sitting on the wall right next to Lieutenant Weaver when Lieutenant Weaver got hit. And Casey said that like when Lieutenant Weaver initiated the IED, like he doesn't doesn't really remember the IED going off. He just remember he remembers waking up and like he thought all his teeth and his mouth were gone. And his face hurts so bad. But to his surprise, all of his teeth were still there. And when he went back, like Lieutenant Weaver was just completely gone.

So everything that I've heard about Lieutenant Weaver, his love for his guys, his drive to make his platoon better, you know, his guys. his guys took it really hard after you know he passed um but they were able to you know once once they got their new pl came in uh it was you know they were able to find the right man for the right job it was somebody who's actually friends with uh weaver right they knew each other yeah yeah he he knew him um from before I guess they knew each other from up at brigade. Okay. Yeah, I mean, he sounds like an amazing guy. And it's, it,

the stuff in the book is, is really heartbreaking. And, you know, I realized, you know, about a quarter of the way into reading your book that when you start really describing a person, a soldier, and who they are and their background and everything, I realized that, oh, you're taking some time to talk about this gentleman because he didn't make it. And it's just, it's heart-wrenching. And I mean, I mean that, you know, with all due of respect to your guys and to you writing this book, it's an important work. But it's, I mean, just as a reader, I'm saying it was kind of tough to read, right?

So I can tell you his chapter, when I got to his chapter, it was the hardest chapter in the book for me. to write. I got to his chapter and I sat on it and sat on it and sat on it and I just couldn't write it. Procrastinating. I couldn't write it because I knew his wife was still out there. I knew his daughter was still out there and I just couldn't write it. And I reached out to Sergeant Casey and I said, what do you think I should do? And Casey said, reach out to Emma and you know, see what she says. So I, I did. I sent her a message and I asked, basically I asked her permission and she said, I promise you, there's nothing that you can say that I didn't have to read when he came home. So I, you know, I told her, listen, before I, before I do anything with

the chapter, I'm going to send it to you for you to read, which is exactly what I did. And her and I, started talking on a regular basis, which led to me doing probably something I don't think anybody's done before, which I asked her to write my forward for the book. You know, I felt like having a Gold Star family member write the forward of the book and, you know, be able to contribute and say this is, this was the impact to me as a Gold Star family member, would be a good way to start the book. That way it doesn't only impact us as service members, but it impacts like the families.

And I wanted to show how, you know, there's so much to this dynamic of soldiers because, you know, it's not just us that, you know, that gets affected. You know, it's family members too. And, you know, you think about, you know, we're 15 years from that deployment. now. So Todd's daughter is now 15 years older. So, you know, if you think about it like that,

you know, his daughter is now a teenager. You know, she's, you know, close to graduating high school. And, you know, his wife has moved on. And so life continues. But there's always that black cloud, you know, that they have to carry with them while they try to move on. So I just thought it would be respectful to her and to her daughter to ask for their permission. You did a great job with it. I mean, that chapter was a great tribute to Lieutenant Weaver. And then some of the other incidents that you talk about through the book, I mean, are also pretty rough and things that I didn't know or wouldn't have thought of.

Most people probably wouldn't. I mean, you talk, there are some incredible stories, including somewhere guys survive, where they step on a pressure plate IED and they actually get blown into the air and then come down and land in the crater created by the IED. And sadly, you know, missing limbs, some KIAs. But you read about one soldier

even got thrown into the trees and he was okay apparently. Yes. That was Penn, I think his name. I think that's the name. It's terrible. I can't remember everybody's named anymore. But yeah, he was in third platoon.

He was in Bravo Battery, third platoon. But yeah, he actually, that happened to him twice. He stepped on two separate IEDs, got blown into the trees twice. So, yeah, he's got two purple hearts from getting blown in the trees twice. There was some gallows humor as happens in these units. What was the soldier? Was it Bricks or Bricksby, the guy who lost his foot? He loses his foot and then one of the guys brings his foot to him on the helicopter and he's like, oh, thanks, Sergeant.

I might need that later. I think I know who you're talking about, but I don't want to say his name wrong. Okay, yeah, yeah, no worries. People who read the book, it'll jump out at them. Yeah, I want to say it's a havoc soldier. Bricksley? Bricksley? That sounds correct.

Yeah. I apologize. I should have written it down. I'm just going off of memory. And there are some other significant operations where like the Kandak commandos came in with the ODAs and cleared through some areas and you guys would have to hold that ground. You talk about some of those missions? That was during when we went in to do Operation Bakersfield 2. So initially they came in and when they came in to clear the opera they were supposed to come in and be able to clear um taracolace and if you look up taracalache on youtube you will see all kind of crazy stuff um

and i don't remember what they what they're called like the angry turks or i don't know something something crazy like that anyways they um they talk pretty bad about about us. But anyways, they, the SF went in before us and they were supposed to go in and clear the town. Well, before they went in and clear the town,

they found out that basically, it was, it was basically like they had, they had basically made the whole town H-bits, so they made home-born eyes. So they made homeborn eyes. And a couple of the guys ended up amputees, and I want to say one of them was KIA.

So they had let Colonel Flynn know that the mission was like it was a no-go and that he should drop ordinance on the town. So that's exactly what he did. He made the call to drop ordinance on the town. and he dropped a lot of ordinance on the town. I would have liked to have had the picture in the book of the before and after, but I wasn't allowed to put that picture in there. So I put it on our Facebook page for Sondra Argonaut book, and if people want to see it, they can see it on that page.

but after all the ordinance was dropped on taracolace the next day we had our mission for bakersfield two to go down into taracalache and we went in with the engineers they were shooting mick clicks for us mclicks and apops and in line charges in the process of going to going down, we were still hitting IEDs. We found a total of, I believe it was 33 IEDs on the way down there. One of them, Lieutenant Panaleo found with his feet, which is talked about in the book. That was a pretty hair raising experience for both he and I. So that one I'll leave for the readers to read in the book. but that was pretty

pretty hair-raising experience but we we set up we had a whole lot that we found and then once we got down to Taracalachia there was another unit I want to say one to two that was pushing

west to set up cop stout and they found like 15 more iEDs and cop stout would have been south of cop Nolan so we based once we went into taracolacce we had basically covered we had we had flooded the whole area

with American troops at that point so at that point the Taliban had nowhere to go like anywhere that they would have gone in the in the argendab they were to ran into either a strong point or a cop yeah and i'd like to ask you a little bit more in depth about you know as the deployment went on you know how did things change did you see that improvement as you kind of occupied and held this ground um and i recall that uh towards the end of the deployment your guys also uncovered some pretty sizable cash site locations you know, the one in the

Palma Granite Orchid with the 55-gallon drums and another in a building. Yeah, we found next to Strong Point Stansbury, we found this massive drum that had like all these weapons that were buried in it. What they were doing were,

they were burying these iron drums. No, excuse me, these plastic drums. And they would have all these weapons and ammunition inside of these drums. And the reason they were plastic was because they knew we wouldn't be able to pick them up with our mind detectors. And in the compounds,

what they were doing is they were burying weapons and ammunition in the walls of the compounds. So, like, they figured we'd go in and talk to people, but we'd never check the walls. I think that wasn't something we would do. So they just bury. buried everything in the walls. And we would go there, talk to them, and never think about it.

And we found a massive cachet in the shoe-ins. One Bravo found a massive cache in the shoe-ins. We found in Jellewar, havoc uncovered in the grapefields, havoc uncovered another cachet. So it was just, it was consistent. like there was just weapons caches and ammunition caches just being uncovered everywhere because once they were once they were basically shut out of the argondial there was like there was no threat level for them to come in and be able to find stuff so it was a lot easier for us to just move freely around the area and we were just finding stuff left and right and at that point the threat level was

lower i'm not going to say it was gone it was lower but what was happening is now that the threat level in the argendab was lower now we were being told to push further south so as we had cleared to the river it was like okay now keep going so now we're being asked to push across. How far south do you think you guys got? So it was it was havoc that was pushing across. So havoc, they went into a village like right across. Right across the river.

And that's kind of where things got hairy for havoc. Because they went into a village that apparently, Apparently, I think it was the Rangers had going into. I don't want to misstate, but somebody had went in and they had taken some HVTs not long before one hotel went in there. And they had stirred up the Hornets Nest in that place. And one hotel had no knowledge of them going in there because they were going in to get that same person. and that led to the effects of Sergeant Casey getting hit. And then ultimately, Sergeant True Blood and Specialist Deathridge.

Do you want to take us through a little bit of that? So Sergeant Casey, he got hit when they were ex-filling back. They went in at night to try and get this HVT. and when they were coming back across the river, they were using IR Kimlights, and they had ran out of IR Kim lights. So, Sergeant Casey sent the rest of his guys through, and he was waiting for his PL.

And so he decided to take a knee. When he took a knee, he kneeled down on a pressure plate. So he said that he remembers like flying through the air. And he was, he said that he was just kind of like, well, this isn't good. And then he hit the ground. And he remembers looking at, I want to say it's his left leg, looked at his left calf. And he saw that his calf was like blown out. and he was like, well, I'm going to lose that leg.

And then he put a tourniquet on his left leg. And then he looked down and he realized that his right leg was amputated. And then by that point, I think that's when the other guys had got to him. And they started putting turniquets on them. And starting Casey, even at that point, still had the wits about him to, continued to help put his guys in security. So he was telling his guys like where to pull security and what to do. And he was still leading his guys even at that point with him like missing his legs.

So that was his deal. But they ended up having to medevac him out straight out of the middle of the Argonaut River. So his situation would have been one of those Hollywood moments where you you see somebody having to get picked up out of the middle of a river. Not that Hollywood when it's real, you know. Yeah. But to his credit, the guy is, he's an amazing person to this day, still killing the game, still pushing forward.

I can't say enough about him. Can't say enough about his character. Yeah. Casey's an amazing person. And like he deserves a mountain of credit for everything that won Bravo, like all the success one Bravo had because he was, he was an IED finding machine while he was on the ground. And like his guys, his guys loved him. But the next day, the EOD team went out to exploit the site where Casey got hit.

And from talking to his PL, what the information that I got was that he got hit the night before. And the Taliban guys must have come in in the middle of the night at some point. And they must have just like laced that, that whole area with IEDs because they figured they would come back, the Americans would come back. So when EOD came in the next day, Sergeant True Blood hit a catastrophic IED that was just, it was massive. And he ended up being amputated pretty severe. I won't go in details, but he was amputated pretty severely. Sergeant Lyon and his team were on the ground. They tried to assist as much as possible.

Specialist Death Ridge was on QRF, and when QRF got on ground, he tried to run up to where Sergeant Lyon and then were at, and Sergeant Lyon told him to turn around and go the other way because where they were at was basically a minefield. So Deathridge turned around and tried to run back the other way. And when he did, he initiated another IED. So he became the third amputee. So that's kind of where that whole thing played out.

And they were all right next to the Argonob River, all three of them. which like I can tell you that two Bravo patroled that area right there like so many times because we were patrolling out of Strongpoint Stansbury and we would patrol that area every day and we never hit anything we would patrol it all the time and we never hit anything so for for them to be targeted it had to be because of that HVT and it had to be just sorry, Casey said that he believes that it was because

they figured that the Ranger unit or whatever the special operator unit was that they were going to come back in and they were going to try and hit them when they came back in but unfortunately it wasn't them that came back in it was us so.

Talk walk us a little bit through sort of the tail end of this deployment. Where are you guys, I mean, you mentioned that you guys pretty much pacified the valley, occupied all these key locations. How did the deployment sort of wind down and come to a close for you guys? So it came to a close with us. We expanded each of our outposts as much as we could.

Coptines, when we initially got there, was very small. Two Charlie had expanded it from what they initially got because what they initially got was hardly nothing. By the time we left, we had an LZ in the front and rear of Coptines. So it was pretty substantial. We had a motor pool in Coptines by the time we left.

We had a motor pool. We had two shower trailers. Coptines, was pretty nice. And then we had Cop Babber, which wasn't there at all when we first got there. Cop Babber was pretty nice. It was set up. However, you know, it wasn't, I'm not going to paint it out to be the Hilton.

Those guys built it from scratch. So it was nice for what it was. Strongpoint-Sandsbury was a lot like Cop Nolan. It was encircled by pomegranate orchards. And we had the second canal that ran right alongside of it, which meant that as soon as rainy season started, we were basically on an island. And there's pictures that's in the book that shows like us patrolling and we're in water up to our knees. So at that point, yeah, we were patrolling up to our knees by the end of their deployment. Copteranova was still copteranova. It was massive.

Cop Nolan was still exactly the way it was when they got there. The only difference was they had actually fortified their towers after Cop King got, or excuse me, after branding got killed. they, you know, fortified their towers. Their towers were a lot better. They had, you know, done position improvement around the cop, but for the most part, Cop Nolan was still Cop Nolan. And Jellawar was Jellawar, but they set up Cop Durham south of Cop Nolan, and they also set up Strongpoint Lugo and Strongpoint Manly.

were also set up as well. So there was just, there was people spread out everywhere throughout the Oregon Dom. So we had soldiers that were just positioned everywhere to where we could react. Anything significant action happened, we could react pretty, pretty quickly. And you guys ended up ripping out with 10th Mountain, right? We did. What was that like? Because I remember in your book you talk about how there's this sort of like you guys had obviously fought extremely hard for this valley.

And your impression when the 10th Mountain guys come in is their thing is like, hey, we're wrapping this up and collapsing and giving it up. So when we got there from the 82nd, so when we got there and we were ripping with the 80 second, I think we got this sense from the 82nd that they did not want to see us lose and they didn't want to see us die that was the two things that we got from them it was like watching your little brother go into a fight that he just wasn't ready for

and that's kind of the feeling that we got from them and because of that like we went in there and we were you know holding our head up high and we were like, you know what, we need to we need to come into this fight and do it right. We need to, you know, bust our ass and just do it right. Unfortunately, when 10th Mountain got there,

like I brought the squad leader that I was ripping with. I brought them in to my room and I was like, hey, man, this is a map of our AO. This is, you know, where every IED that we hit is marked with a red pin every yellow pin was a close call you know i basically broke it down to him like i had everything marked routes that were burned routes that were still good like i had everything marked in my chew to where he could like it was paint by numbers at that point like here you go and he was like i'm not going to need any of this we're not we're not going to patrol on foot we're just going to stay in our

our strikers or whatever. And I was just like, it's a bad idea, man. Do you have any idea of what happened to that unit after you left? I know that the only

thing that I know that happened is not long after we left. One of their staff sergeants went rogue and like, shot up all the ANP. Holy shit. Yeah.

He like, the only person that lived was like the, like the key leader of the ANP. Everybody, everybody else, you shot him up. Like, that dude's like, he's in. Leavenworth? Yeah, he's in Leavenworth. Holy shit, man. Yeah. So the, um, sort of the epilogue to your book, there's a couple things that go on.

I mean, sadly, there are a lot of your teammates, it sounded like, made it home from that deployment, but the deployment still sort of killed them over a longer time period. If you could tell us a bit about that and also your own personal experience in your recovery with a soldier resiliency program. So when we first got home, we lost. Sarton McCork Hill, not long after we were home, conveniently he died on my wedding anniversary, which was pretty terrible. And not long after Sergeant McCorkill, well, let me go back to Sergeant McCorkill. So, Sergeant McCorkill, he was super excited about getting out of the Army.

He had signed a deck statement, and he wanted to get him. out and spend time with his son. So his, his passing was very tragic. And I think his passing was more accidental than anything. But nonetheless, we lost him May 22nd. Then Sergeant Junkin, Sergeant Junkin, his, he was, he was,

the next one we lost and his passing was like he he had actually finaled out of the army so he was getting out of the army but his his story was tragic because he should have never been on our deployment right um like he had an h4 profile he had it like he couldn't hear so he should have never been on our deployment and you and him were pretty good friends right from way back yeah yeah we're yeah we were really good friends um and uh when i got the phone call that like he had killed himself i got the phone call in the middle of the night and i was just like i couldn't believe it like i was so angry uh driving into work that i man i can't even put it in words uh like i was probably the most angry i had been in in a really long time like um

Colonel Wiseman gave me, well, Colonel Wiseman and Junkin gave me the nickname Big Angry. And like I had definitely lived up to my name that night. But so that was the second one. The third one was Michael Lovely, PFC Michael Lovely. Great kid. He was like another suicide. I found him hanging from a tree. You found him.

I found him. Oh, my God. He, like, I went to his house. Like, I got a call from his squad leader or his section chief at the time, Sergeant Boudre, and said, hey, man, can you go over to Lovely's house? Nobody's seen him for, like, over 24 hours. So I went over to his house, and his wife and a couple of his friends or sitting on the front porch.

And I said, have anybody going inside? And they said, no. And I said, open the door. So they opened the door. And when they did, like, the house was just like a house of horrors. Like, he had trashed the house. There was blood everywhere. He took a knife and just, like, slashed up all their pictures and everything.

And I asked, where does he go whenever he gets real mad? And they said to the tree line. And I told his best friend. supposedly best friend, I said, let's go to the treeline. So he drove me out there. And I said, is that his truck? And he said, yeah. So I said, stop the truck. And I walked towards his truck. And I saw him next to his truck. And I thought he was standing there.

And I didn't want to walk up behind him because I didn't know if he had a gun. I didn't know what his mental state was. So I started talking to him as I was walking up to him. him because I didn't want to surprise him. And I walked around his truck to go up to him face to face. And I wasn't saying Sergeant Fontaineau or nothing. I said, amen is Joseph. And I was looking down when I came around the truck.

And then whenever I made the corner of the truck, I picked up my head and I looked at him. And like he had used a nylon rope and his neck was stretched out like twice to lift. And I was just like, unbelievable. unbelievable. And, you know, that's just three out of a whole bunch. You know, unfortunately, we suffered a tremendous amount of loss in our, in our battalion, in our battery, you know, throughout these last 15 years, we, you know, we suffered a tremendous amount of loss. And I wanted to make sure that I highlighted those guys because, you know, like, there's a quote in me, quote from me in the book that says you can outrun, you can outrun the enemy,

but you'll never outrun the war. Yep. And, you know, I believe that's true. You know, like, we, we did a good job. People shooting at us. We did a good job outrunning them. But when you close your eyes at night. night. You know, sometimes you can't outrun that. How did that call that's for you, Joe,

as far as I recall in the book, you had some, you know, professional mentors that came to you and said, hey, we want you to get some help. So it wasn't necessarily professional mentors. So during the writing of the book, during the writing of the book, I went down a dark, dark, dark path. I believe it. Yeah. It took me in a place where like it was

like it's hard it's hard to even explain. I get it and so will anyone else who reads the book. So it it brought me to a place where I it got to a point where I

could not find my way out. You know and I tried, to be honest, the chapter in the book was never supposed to be in the book. That was added to the book because during the writing of the book, my command team in my battalion told me I had to go and get help. So I did. and I went down to Mission Resiliency in San Antonio, along with, you know, a lot of other senior NGOs and officers that were getting help.

And, you know, I'm thankful I did because I might have been the next person that was their name in that book. I reached out to Sergeant Nakeh, who was one of my better friends. I loved the guy to death. And I reached out to him. And all I said was, hey, I need you to make sure that this book gets published. That's all I said. And he said, you'll be here to publish it. And I said, yeah, I know.

But I need you to make sure it gets published. Because I had filled out some paperwork that said in the event that anything happens to me, who is the person that we need to turn to to to make sure that the book gets. published and I listed him. So like I had I put everything in place to make sure to this book saw it a lot of today no matter what. But I you know I don't I don't try and sensationalize suicide at all. It's not something that I wanted to do. It's not something that I meant to do. It's not something that was supposed to happen. It was something that happened. And I learned a lot from it.

And in the meantime, I was able to help people from it. Like since I went through what I, you know, what I went through, I was able to help a young man here at Fort, at Fort Seil because, you know, our counselor team here said, hey, there's a young man. He's a start first class. He's kind of in the same boat as you. He doesn't want to reach out to anybody.

Would you please reach out to him? and talk to him and see if he'll go get help. So I did. I reached out to him and I'll be perfectly honest. I've been here for three and a half years. That's probably the best thing that I've done in the last three and a half years. Because he went to Mission Resiliency. He's back.

He's sober. And, you know, he's doing better. So before he was headed down at Dark Road and he was on a one-way street to the same place as a lot of people in the book. And I've kind of asked you, you're in, you know, I've kind of pushed you in this interview a bit into some dark places too. But I would like to, you know, if I can change direction a little bit, what about the rest of the guys in the platoon? Like, there's some success stories too. There's got to be.

Yeah, there are. So probably my favorite success story in the book is, Doc Stagghouse. So when we started, if anybody who reads the book will know, especially if they read Bragg's book, they'll see, you know, Doc Staghouse mentioned during the event with Chris Moon. Because Doc Stagghouse tries to help Moon as best he can, but he's not painted in a very good light. and the devil's playground. Then you turn around and then you read my book.

And then I paint him in the light that I saw him, and the light in which, you know, Doc Staghouse was seen and from his point of view as well. So I don't paint him as a hero. I just paint him as it is. So Doc Staghouse, throughout the deployment, he had to do a lot of growing up. He was a young man when we went into the deployment, just like a lot of our medics, where they were, you know, some of them were kids.

But, you know, there's no excuse when you go into combat. You have to just grow up, and that's just the way it is. Doc Staghouse, when we came home, Doc Staghouse was, he told me that he wanted to actually go to college and become doctor stag house so he needed me to write him like a character statement or whatever and i was like sure man i'll write you a statement um so he he actually you know he went to college and now he is uh he is no shit full-fledged doctor stag house no shit um and i was like you know i'll never call you fucking doctor stag house you're always going to be doc stag house so i don't give you shit how high you climb you're always going to be doc stag house so

Yeah, I'm super proud of him. A huge success to me. You know, and I'm really proud of him. He's done well. You know, we've had our XO, Major Raymond at the time. He is now Brigadier General Raymond. I went over to the Rockasans at one point, and he was my battalion commander when I was in the Rockasans. So that was an interesting twist for us, and now he's a Brigadier General, so that's a pretty great success for him.

We've had several sergeant majors. My old platoon sergeant, Sergeant Sturgeon, became a sergeant major. We had Smoke Kravinoff. He became a sergeant major. He actually was my sergeant major when I was in First Brigade, Balls of Eagle. But it was proud American there. I won soldiery the year in 2015.

I'm going to retire as the first sergeant. So hooray for that. And then we have Sergeant Peltier. currently I think he's done with his first sergeant time, but he's a master sergeant, but he'll, you know, you'll always be a first sergeant. And then, you know, we have other success stories that guys have done well, Sergeant Zavala and other guys. So you're, you're still in getting ready for retirement, it sounds like. I am. April 1st, I have my first appointment with my, my doctor to kind of start the ball rolling towards fast-tracking to retirement.

And, you know, I'll tell you something, Joe, and I've told this to other people, too, that we've had on this show. It's great that you have this other thing that you're writing and you're already embarking on something that's connected, but outside the military, and that'll help you transition out in a big way. Thank you. So I guess to start to wrap up here.

We touched on it briefly about. you know, how the book kind of took you to some difficult places, understandably. But tell us about the book project, like big picture, like how it came about. I mean, you're still a soldier. You're actively serving. But this deployment really resonated with you, apparently. You wanted to tell the story of these men. So the whole writing thing came to be because of Chris Moon.

That's where it all started. I wrote this I wrote this long thing about Specialist Moon and I did a lot of research on him specifically because I think his story I wanted his story to be told I like I've always felt passionate about telling his story like he's a Navajo

Andean he's a sniper gave up a baseball contract gave up a scholarship join the army to serve his country he did all of these things and like i wrote this long-ass story for it to be told and i couldn't get anybody to tell it i reached out to the army times even after i won like soldier at a year reached out to the army times i said listen i don't need anybody to write the story like i just need somebody to publish it like you could put your name on it i don't give it just publish it like this this is the kind of story that soldiers need to hear like this is the

of stuff that motivates people to do better still couldn't get anybody to publish it um so i said through it i'm just going to start posting it i'm going to start posting it on everything i can think of and conveniently i posted it year after year after year and then i posted it i think last year on LinkedIn. And one of the guys from 2 Charlie, I can't remember his name right now, sorry about that. But anyways, one of the guys from

2 Charlie saw it and sent me a message on LinkedIn that said, man, that's a really awesome piece that you wrote about Moon. Thank you for doing that and remembering them. And I said, man, I've been doing that every year since 2010, believe it or not. And he put me in contact with Nalinger, who put me in contact with Bragg.

And then Bragg was like, man, you should consider writing a book. And I was like, man, I've never considered writing a book. Like, it just seems like a lot of work. And he was, he was like, man, he was like, man, it is a lot of work. take a long time, but he was like, you know, somebody needs to tell y'all story. He was like, don't let your story end with me. And I read, he sent me, you know, our chapter in his book. And then I was like, man, I can't let our story end with him.

So at that point, I, you know, I kind of wrote, I started writing our story and I sent it to him. And I said, you know, can I get your feedback? and he just said, man, it sounds really good. You should continue. And that was it. Well, you did a great job with it, Joe. It's an incredible book. And so June 15th for release, is the book up for pre-order right now?

It is. You can pre-order it up on Amazon. You could also pre-order it through casemate. All you have to do is search under Sons of the Argonobb. And it will come up. And for our podcast, listeners, viewers, we'll have some links down in the description where you can go directly and pre-order that book. And I really encourage you guys to go do that. Joe's book, Andrew's book, it's a really important piece of history.

Anything else that you want to talk about, Joe, before we get going tonight? Is there anything that I failed to ask that you'd really like to talk about? The only thing I would say is if you're currently serving in the military or if you are out of the military but you were once in uniform, reach out to your buddies. We often forget to check up. We always check down because that's what we've been trained to do throughout our careers. So a lot of times people never check up because that's not what we're taught to do. But it gets pretty lonely at the top.

So check up every once in a while just to make sure that guy above you's doing well. You might be the one who saves their life. That's the guy who saved mine. So that would be my suggestion. You never know. Sometimes you need to check your 12 instead of checking your 6. and, you know, it's very important to look out for your brothers and your sisters who were in combat or even in garrison with you. Being a soldier is probably the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life.

I loved it, you know, 20 years ago. I still love it today. Even when I walk away from the uniform, it's still going to be one of the biggest blessings I've ever had in my life. And writing this book and getting to carry this legacy with me has been a blessing. Check out, Damn the Valley, check out the Devil's Playground, and then check out Sons that are Argonob. All three books tie in to each other, as well as Second Platoon. It's a great series. And it's going to tell the story about the Argonob.

Hopefully one day somebody will pick it up, make a movie about it, and you'll get to see it, big picture. I hope so. And so you said that, so casemates website, Amazon to pre-order the book, you had mentioned that you also have a Facebook page for the book. Where can people go and find you? You also mentioned LinkedIn. Like, where can people go to find you and find out more about the book? I'm on Facebook.

I'm on Instagram. I'm not too much into like X or any of that other stuff. if I pretty much just stay low-key, just old-school Facebook and Instagram type stuff. Well, what's your Instagram and your Facebook handle? At Joseph Fontno, 1974. And Facebook is, I think, at Joseph Fontno, at Joseph and Stephanie Fontno, something like that. Sorry, I don't ever look that stuff up.

That's okay. They search for it. they should be able to find it, right? Yeah. Just look for my ugly, you'll see it. Well, Joe, thank you so much for writing this book. I know it was a difficult process for you, but it's worthwhile and it's worth remembering people.

And, you know, I told the previous guest we had on earlier this week, like it's sort of, it's on me, it's on you, it's on all of us to sort of keep telling these stories and to remember these guys, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. I would say if you get a chance to look up first and three-twentieth in the Organdau River Valley 2010, just Google it and look at some of the images. It'll be eye-opening to see what you will see as far as the pictures. There's a bunch of stuff on like divids.

No, it's just like the different reporters. We had several different reporters that were. we're embedded with us and there is an unbelievable amount of pictures like there's one specific that is has been on every website that you can ever imagine where there's a a mat V that's on fire our lieutenant is standing in front of it there's another one where the Matt V's on fire and there's two soldiers carrying another guy that one's been on every website that you can ever imagine. There's shirts made with it.

Unreal. Yeah, so that's from our deployment. Well, so the book is Sons of the Argonobb. Releases on June 15th, available for pre-order now on Amazon, and also the casemate website, if you go and check that out. Joe, thank you for doing this interview. Really appreciate it, man. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks for sharing your story and the story of your unit. Of course, thank you for having me. And for the rest of you, we'll see you out there next time. Thank you for joining us. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it. But you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon.

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