The Team House - Special Forces Sergeant First Class | Nate Cornacchia | Ep. 227

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

My name is Nate and I am a recently retired green beret out of 1st SFG. A decade of experience in Army Special Forces with multiple deployments and extensive combat experience in Afghanistan. My military combat honors include the Army Commendation Medal w/ Valor, Army Commendation medal with C device, and AAM with C device, all from operations in Afghanistan.  Check out Nate's channel here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@ValhallaFirearmsTraining  Nate's IG is here, give him a follow:⬇️ https://instagram.com/valhallafirearmstraining?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA== --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's sponsors: The AARP Veteran Report⬇️ https://aarp.org/VETREPORT Free, Twice Monthly email newsletter that salutes military service & provides a mixture of inspirational human stories and practical info for vets. https://aarp.org/VETREPORT Vitamin 1 Water ⬇️ (VETERAN OWNED & OPERATED) Hydrate Your Health! https://www.amazon.com/stores/Vitamin1/page/EE9B1311-273B-4D86-B4D7-D8BD1CFE62F8?ref_=ast_bln ELECTROLYTE AND B-VITAMIN ENHANCED / SUGAR-FREE / CAFFEINE-FREE / DYE-FREE / GLUTEN-FREE / NUT-FREE / KOSHER / 4 DELICIOUS FLAVORS / JUST 5 CALORIES PER 8OZ. SERVING Buy Vitamin 1 here⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/stores/Vitamin1/page/EE9B1311-273B-4D86-B4D7-D8BD1CFE62F8?ref_=ast_bln --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #specialforces #greenberet #theteamhouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, Covert Ops, espionage, the Team House, with your hosts, Jack Murphy, and David Park Welcome to the team house episode 227. I'm Dave Park. Here's my co-host Jack Murphy.

Well, Jack's out. Tonight we have a very special guest. Nate Kornakia. Special forces, what rank did you get to, Nate? Start in first class. Okay. Special forces for about 10 years, 10 and a half years.

And And great, great stories tonight. So, uh, standby. So Nate, welcome and thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's an honor. You know, you guys have some really impressive, uh, operators on the show. So I'm just honored to be here.

Well, we're honored to have you. Um, so what's your origin story? How, what led you into the military? Like how did you get your superpowers? This is, this is a really easy one, right? So, uh, my family has very, uh, you know, kind of story military history. So my grandpa was in the 82nd.

He jumped into Normandy on D-Day. My dad was a Green Beret as well, 46 company. He was in the A-Tamps in Vietnam. So for me, that was sort of an easy decision, right? You know, it took me a little while to get there. I went to college first before I came in. But, you know, it was one of those things is I really just wanted to be, you know, like dad, right, and grandpa in a way because,

you know, sort of war heroes as, as your grandpa and your father and you kind of want to live up to, um, to that. I don't really necessarily think I did because those conflicts are just so crazy that they were in, but, you know, it's, uh, it's cool that we have such a lineage, um, that we have in our direct line for sure. Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting, isn't it? When you think about the trench warfare and World War I and then, you know, like Normandy and, you know, and the Pacific Islands and World War II and then the type of conflict that we had in Afghanistan, Iraq, it's very different. Yeah, and, and, you know, Vietnam as well, because, you know, having a dad and also so many of his, his teammates that he's still friends with in contact with. So guys like Riley

Lott, who was the NCOIC of Mike Forces for seven years, who just passed away recently. He just got inducted to the special sports hall of pain. Guys like that, Jim Day and Mac V. Sog, these are guys that, you know, and my dad that I grew up around listening to their stories, right? You know, I have some pretty wild combat stories. And then I listen to their stories. And I'm just like, good God, you know, like I've been through almost nothing, you know, comparatively in the combat room from the guys who came before us for sure. So did you always know you wanted to be a green beret then? So, you know, I mean, I was a green beret for Halloween when I was five years old. Uh-huh.

So, but I sort of lost, you know, I was an athlete all the way through college. So that was sort of my goal. I played baseball. So that was sort of my focus at the time. And then, you know, sort of through college, kind of found that, you know, I was completely lacking purpose. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And sort of kind of kind of a weird story. Just woke up randomly one day and was like, I'm going to join the military.

I'm going to follow in dad's footsteps. Luckily, having a dad that was special forces, he knew about, you know, an 18x-ray contract that could get me straight to selection. So that helped me a lot having sort of the pathway already known from, you know, having a group guy as a dad. But that's sort of how that sort of whole pathway started for me. It was sort of a lack of purpose that led me into, you know, going for this career, which thank God I did because,

you know, who knows where life would have taken me otherwise. Now, you know, we talked to a lot of, you know, guys in particular who are older and like 9-11 was a defining moment for them. Maybe they were already in the military or they went in shortly thereafter. But for you, because you went in in 2013, correct? Yep. So for you, there already. Go ahead. Well, yeah, I was going to say, you know, for me, 9-11 was,

I was in high school, so I was in a freshman high school. So I don't think I really registered, you know, obviously I knew, you know, what a terrible tragedy wasn't why not. But I don't think I had registered what it meant as if had I been a little bit older and already at the age to be able to join the military at the time. And I think sort of by the time, you know, I was 18, 19, I already planned on going to college and doing sports and whatnot. that sort of wasn't something I was even thinking about. So, yeah, a little bit different in that part, I guess. And what was your awareness of the war up into that point? Because we had been in Iraq for, you know, 10 years.

We'd been in Afghanistan for 12. Yeah. So, I mean, I definitely had friends from high school that joined, you know, and I had buddies that I went to, that actually went to college with that had been in Fallujah and whatnot. You know, they had gotten out of the service after that, and they were in college now. So obviously, you know, I had the awareness of that and still, you know, still followed the conflict quite a bit because of my dad. You know what I mean? We're still definitely in a military family and followed that very closely. And yeah, so I think it's, I don't know, it's one of those

weird things again for me more so of you know I've always been a huge patriot coming from the type of family come in but more so for me it was wanting to like live up to what my dad achieved and he didn't just achieve that my dad's insane achiever all around right he was a green beret he became a politician for 16 years the lawyer for 40 years so I mean he's

hit the whole gamut of life success but so for me really that was the big thing is falling in footsteps of dad more so. Now I found sort of patriotism and then everything, not more patriotism, but sort of the love of the military and all that as I went through the military. But up front, that's more of what it was than sort of love of country. You know, typically that type of thing.

Mine was more of a family tradition type of thing. Yeah. So you get the 18x Ray program. You go, did you go to Fort. Benning for like the one stage. Yeah. So the way so the way the at least when I went through, right, it's been 11 years now,

but the program basically sends you to basic training and to airborne school. And then now provided you, you know, make it through basic training, right? And then guarantees you to go to Special Forces selection. That's all it guarantees

is a chance to go to selection. So yeah, I went to Fort Benning. four months in basic training and then you go straight to airborne school from basic. So you go right down the street. You do your airborne school and then you drive up to North Carolina in process and get ready to go to selection. So four months. So did you go to the infantry basic after?

Yeah. It was the whole. So you got an A, uh, an MOS out of that. Well, so no. So we do. So you did the, your typical, um, 16 week infantry and then or basic. training and then infantry AIT. That's part of the 18 x-ray course.

And I think they do that because, you know, honestly, like 90% of those guys are going to wash out and go to the infantry. So that way they already have the infantry MOS. But you don't actually, you still carry the 18X MOS the entire time until you either wash out and become a 11 Bravo or you make it and you become an 18 series.

Oh, interesting. So that's how that works. Now, did you do anything to prep? Because obviously you don't get in shape, really, in basic training. So how did you prep for SFAS? You get actually in negative shape. You know, I came in as a college athlete in incredible shape. I was ready to go for sure.

And basic training was massive hindrance, right? It brought my physical fitness levels way down. But as the 18xray, you go to, before, you go to selection, there's a course called, I think it's soft, see, special operations, preparation and conditioning. So it's like a three-week course, all the 18 x-rays go to that basically is just three weeks of getting back in shape. You get to do some land navigation, learn stuff like that, sort of prep you to go to selection, which is actually a huge benefit to go to that course. So that sort of lets you get back into the condition you were.

And honestly, you know, the 18 x-rays, because of that course, kind of go into selection at a much higher fitness level on average than anybody else. Really? Yeah. So it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be more successful. But usually, you know, those guys, 18xrays are getting the, you know, best times on the runs and the rucks and all that type of stuff. Right. Dude, for the Sopsy, did, were they smart about the fitness and the conditioning or did they just kind of smoke your bags? no no no I said well when I went through it's an awesome course they had guys that like the whole course was designed um around actually functional fitness recovery you ate you know like four or five thousand calories a day I mean an awesome course to actually prep you it wasn't your typical military like we're just going to break you before you go to selection right um it was it's actually designed to um get you physically ready to go to selection so probably one of the better work

that are part, that's part of the entire two course. That's fantastic. It's not just a smoker. Yeah. And then do you go directly, did you go directly from that into SFS or was a wait period? I think, I think it was probably like a week. Okay. Between.

So, you know, I, you come out and then pretty much go right away, right after that. And what did you think of SFAS when you were there, selection? Oh, man, you know, at that point, you know, it's funny. I had, you know, I was fortunate and I had a Greenberry as a dad. So I knew what the Q-Force entailed, right? I knew the structure of it. I knew what FFAS entailed. I knew all the events.

But, you know, I only had four months in the military. And I was a little bit older. So I was 23 or 24 when I joined. So, but I mean, maturity-wise, when you're around guys from Ranger Battalion and, you know, E-5s, E-6 is from the 80-second. and you've been in the military for four months. You know, you really don't know anything. For me, I sort of just tried to carry as my dad getting advice to carry as much weight as you can. And, you know, sort of just be respectful to people and keep your mouth shut for the most part, you know.

Yeah. I was like, you know, I had college. So it was an E4. I came in as a E4. But, you know, I didn't know. I didn't know anything. So that was kind of my thing was be the guy. You know, I'm six foot two, 220 pounds, so big, strong, carry weight, not complain,

which, you know, can take you a long way in the eyes of your peers in a situation like SFAS, for sure. Yeah. And then, so you graduate SFES, and then which MOS did you choose or what's chosen for you? Well, so you get a wish list, that selection, right, where you rank from first or last for, you know medic communicator engineer weapon sergeant and so my wish list i put engineer first my dad was an engineer so i i want to do that and then communicator second which is what i ended up getting so i ended up getting the 18 echo um mOS which you know i'm not i was never a huge fan of radios the whole way um through my career but you know i was you know i i made sure i was good enough to

get my team comms at all times, but I was never a radio nerd. Everybody always thought I was an 18 Bravo, you know, group whenever they met me and didn't know what my MLS was. Yeah. So, so you, you made sure that they didn't drop the fill, but you weren't big on wave propagation theory and everything. Yeah, exactly, right? I could, I make sure you got comms on the 152. I knew how to set up the SDN, flawlessly, other than that, like, don't ask me, if you're the commander, don't ask me to do any wazoo stuff right we're not going down that yeah i'll get my i'll get my junior to do that you know that's sort of where i got to later my career yeah and then what uh so then what where did you get a sign what what team did you go to uh what group yeah so interesting um so i initially was

had russian as the language as and was supposed to go to tent group and then i ended up breaking um breaking my foot on a ruck a 12 mile ruck about three miles into the ruck I fell into a or stepped into a pothole that because it had been raining on the side of the roads in North Carolina, stepped into it and it was like three feet deep, fell in, broke my foot, ended up completing the ruck in time, which, I mean, I probably wouldn't have made it through the Qorset had I not done that. But because of that, it reset me and I had to redo that phase of the course and wait for my leg or my foot to heel, obviously. And then I got Chinese Mandarin as I got reset back into the system. and then first group. So that's how I ended up getting over to first group. And then, yeah, I got to first group with my group of guys.

And then, you know, you go into the Sergeant Major's office of Battalion, and then he sends you over to the company, and you go into another Sergeant Major's office, your first day. And me and my buddy, who went through the whole Q-Corpos together, both 18 Echoes, walked into the same company. He went in a Sergeant Major's office first, and he walked out and had a slot on the Halo team. And so I walked in second and sat down and Sart Major pointed at the board.

And he says, all right, we got one spot on a team for 18 Echo if you want to be on a team. And obviously, that's all I wanted. And he's like, all right, can you swim? And I'm like, oh, God. And he's like, well, you had to do the dive team. So that's how I started my career and ended up on a combat dive team for three and a half, four years. So yeah, that's where I ended up on my first team. So when you went to Mandarin, was it, was it there at Bragg or did they send you DLI?

How did that work for you? And how long was it? Yeah, so language school, at least when I went through, was right there at Bragg. Okay. And it's six months, eight hours a day. And we had like an instructor from North Carolina State that was from Taiwan. So, I mean, you definitely are immersed and learn the language pretty well. it's, you know, six months straight, eight hours a day of your target language.

Yeah. With Chinese Mandarin is just brutal to maintain. So, you know, I was pretty, I could speak pretty well. You know, first couple years out and then, you know, 10 years later, that OPI was, was pretty ugly. Yeah. I struggle through to get my one-one. Yeah. Yeah.

So what was it like getting to first group, which is. you know, focused on Asia, basically. You go to a dive team. Did you go, like, what was your setup for, were they still on rotations, you know, to Afghanistan, where you set up directly for like pre-Scova? Yeah, so interesting sort of how that works, right? Because at that time, that was 2015-16-ish.

And we were really in the height of that 18-month rotation, all the groups, right, where six months in Afghanistan, 12 months off, six months in Afghanistan, 12 months off. That's what all the teams were doing, because we were rotating in and out and replacing everybody. So that was the entire focus of the battalion and our company when I got there. So I got there, immediately went on a trip to the Philippines, which was cool. That's just a first trip, just a training partner force type of deployment. got back and then had a little bit of time to be able to try to go to dive school.

I was in pre-dive and ended up tearing my meniscus in my right knee. And so I wasn't able to finish dive school. And then by the time I had recovered, and then we were straight into PMT for the next rotation of Afghanistan, which for, you know, people who don't know, it's not just, you don't just deploy for six months to Afghanistan, right? you have that big train-up that's usually like nine months that incorporates multiple PMTs, safalic, all these different things you do as a team to get ready for that combat deployment. So it's really like a, you know, 12 to 14-month sort of total of train-up and deployment. So I wasn't able to go to dive school because of that, came back.

And when I came back from that trip, I had to have surgery on both my knees. So by the time I recovered from that, we had another different trip we were going on to. So I actually never ended up getting to go to dive school after even being on a team for three and a half, four years. And there's another couple guys on the team that were the same way. We just never got an opportunity to go because that wasn't the focus. So, you know, you're rotating out of combat, you know, the halo or the dive.

Not that they don't care about that, right? But like, there's no water in Afghanistan, right? So that wasn't big. So the focus was, you know, could you, you want to miss PMT and on all the train up for war? Right. You go to dive school with your team or do you want to be ready to go to war? Right. So it's kind of a situation that we're in.

What was that, what was that six-month period or, you know, whatever, a train-up like? Because obviously there was probably quite a bit of combat experience on your team at that point in time, right? A ton. A ton. So especially on that team for. that went on our 2018 Afghanistan rotation. It was

honestly, it was like an all-star team. Now, I had no experience at the time, so I can't say I was an all-star, but the senior level group of the team that had basically been hand-picked and put together, and we ended up having one of the highest-profile missions in country because of it. And yeah, I mean,

our senior, we had two 18 deltas who both had like seven years team time, right? The junior had like seven years team time. And the most senior 18 Delta, who I ended up being on a team with for like five, six years, really like one of my biggest mentors. He had like five combat rotations already. The team sergeant had three or four.

Everybody on the team other than a couple of the new guys had multiple rotations through already. So which was amazing for me on a first trip. Yeah. I basically just got to soak up so much knowledge. And by the time I had gone through a full PMT and my first combat rotation, I was so far beyond the average amount of experience for somebody at my point in career, combat experience-wise, because of those guys on my team.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. So with, you mentioned that your junior Delta had, you know, seven years, right? Yeah, I think at that point he had like six or seven years, and he was the junior because our senior had even more time than that. And I mean, obviously he probably could have gone somewhere to be a senior. Was it was a team just very tight? No. So he was the senior, right? And then he was the senior for like two. He had been the senior for like two or three years. And then our other older senior who used to be so a pullback. So when he was a junior, a new guy in the team. His senior, they're still the same two guys.

This was years before I got to the team. It was his senior, right? And then he went on a broadening assignment for three years, came back to the ODA. And so his old senior was now his senior again, even though he had been the senior Delta for like three years up to that point. So that's sort of the joke of like, you know, you're the new junior 18 Delta, even though you've been a senior for, he was like the most senior 18 Delta in the company other than his old senior who came back. So that's just how high a level of experience this specific ODA had with guys, multiple guys like that in, you know, MOSs like that, which is pretty rare to have that. That's amazing.

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Special Forces Legend and fugitive from the, well, not fugitive, but was responsible for getting ghosting out of Japan. That was a great episode. But, you know, Mike, you know, one of the things that, I don't know, you know, in your experience, too, Nate, is like a lot of the, you know, the drinks they have out there are just thick, they're syrupy,

they don't feel like they hydrate you. Yeah. And that was one of the things that, you know, that Mike thought, hey, I can do this better, and he did. So vitamin 1, you can get it on Amazon. It has no sugar, tons of vitamins, and all the electrolytes, the niacin, everything you need. They're super fresh. They're tasty.

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But they have a lot of different flavors. Great stuff. So back to you, Nate. So what was it like your first deployment? You know, you have this long history of family in combat and now you're deploying. Oh, yeah. Man, that's a good question. I don't think anybody's asking that question before.

So, you know, going into my first deployment, I actually felt, quite confident just because of the men that around me on that team, right? I mean, I had just guys that were honestly sort of legends in, you know, the sort of legends in the company in the battalion had already. And so that that gives you a lot more confident that, you know, I knew that this team had been put together sort of handpicked by the command team to do a really high-profile mission. but you know I also knew in the back of my head like oh shit I have no idea what I'm doing right and for example you know right out the gate our very first combat operation we had the 160th fly us in and we landed on the fucking X sorry my language no you're fine you can cut as much as

much as you want here okay we encourage you know we landed on the X right so I I jump out of that was 160th bird look up and the compound is boom right there and there's murder holes everywhere right so I'm like oh holy shit this is for real right but you know the way our team sergeant had set it up he sort of had put sort of each of the new guys with one of the really experienced seniors but then he also not the very first couple missions so we get her feet wet but then he also made us new guys the element leaders and sort of had the more experience guys there with us, you know, sort of as gatekeepers that keep us in line. But in doing that sort of, you know, like massively increased our experience so fast because

we were so integrated into the planning process and actually leading elements, doing all stuff typically senior guys would be doing. So we learned fast, right? And we also, we had a lot, we had a really high off tempo. We were doing missions about every five days, pretty much all period of darkness, nighttime raids, all. We have talked about it before the show, but I, so we were in the Kandahar area operating through that sort of heroin Silk Road for people who don't know from, you know,

a pack stand up through Kandahar into Helmand and then out towards Iran. There's a lot of Taliban activity in that area. So we were really targeting big facilities taking down, not really looking for drugs at all. We weren't doing any CID stuff, but, you know, taking out sort of big targets along that road because the Taliban, you know, typically wanted to hold those areas. So, yeah, for the first deployment, I mean, that was a pretty wild first deployment, right? It was super kinetic. We were in tons of gun fights, tons of missions. So, you know, it was feet to the fire real, real fast.

And, yeah, but awesome at the same time, you know, it was kind of that trip was kind of like two, three combat deployments in one when you, when you take the amount of stuff we did. What year was it that you landed in Afghanistan? So, 2018. So we, I tell people that, so basically, like, I think we were on 30-day pre-deployment leave when, Donald Trump, you know, made that famous statement that we are not here to nation build. We are here to kill terrorists. So that was like three weeks before we landed into Afghanistan. The ROE changed.

And we went after it. So we were there to basically take it to the Taliban. And then part of our, part of our battalion was also clearing out the Nangar Valley. And basically was that was the time we pretty much eliminated ISIS out of Afghan State. and up through the Nanggar Valley. That was all sort of that same timeline on that same trip. My ODA wasn't operating in that area, but some of our teams in the company were on those big ISIS clearing operations at the same time,

just to give it an idea of what time frame that was. So it's 2018. What was the SF mission at that time? Was it like Robin Sage? You said you were flying on the 160th going kinetic. So there wasn't a... a lot of the sort of unconventional warfare style, correct? No, not really.

So we, my ODA was working with the Third SOC commandos and the Third SOC, A&A Special Forces guys. And no, it was pretty much every mission we did was nighttime, right. I mean, over and over and over again. Everything, you know, there was really no nation building or there wasn't no partner force development. We barely ever trained with the guys. we pretty much just went on missions.

So sort of that U-dub type of thing, we didn't do any of that. It was all point-target. We are there to disrupt or disrupt and destroy as much of the Taliban capabilities as we can in our area. So that was the whole focus for that. And how was it working with the Afghan SOC? Yeah. Yeah. So the commandos were rough, right?

real rough. We ran into some definite sketchiness a lot of the time. But we had the actual A&A Special Forces guys, which those are the guys that go through a real Q-course with Special Forces instructors. Some of those guys have been doing it for 15 years. They've been fighting the Taliban for the entire conflict. And those guys, some of them, are legit. I mean, I wouldn't say that at the level of an American Special Forces guy,

but I mean they no bullshit some of these guys so when we had the the A and ASF guys we were able to really you know take it to the Taliban

in a lot of ways because they were willing to get their hands dirty whereas the commandos you know when the bullets started flying they were sort of like no we're not really

actually interested in this war thing right we're just going to lay down and sort of hide and let you guys take care of it so so how did that work for you guys you had uh i assume a 12 man oda and then you had your an indigenous partner

force that would go in with you would yep would they lead the assault would you lead the assault how did that all work out so um you know they uh the tactics we use have changed year by year by year by year and what we do so at that point it had gotten to basically single file movements everywhere so We obviously plan the missions. We led the missions. So I would, as an element leader, I would have, you know, the Afghan team leader next to me for that element. And I would be telling him what to do. And he would then tell his guys what to do, right?

I would say, hey, we're going to this compound. We're going to this compound. That sort of thing. But, but yeah. So, sorry, back back. What was the question? No, just about how, just about how the dynamic. was with you and them, how the assaults would work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we would have, again, we had our 12-man team, but we also would try to plus it up with a lot of different enablers, right? So we had an Air Force combat controller that did all of our fires type of stuff. We had Assad A, we had two EOD techs. We would bring out usually four or five uplift guys, so infantry guys that would be security for the commander and the CCTV. So we would have probably about 12.

20 Americans total on the ground. And then usually 50 to 60 Afghans. Because we were working with the SF guys most of the time, we didn't need as many Afghans to be able to get as much done. So that would usually be about the structure. And we worked pretty much in four elements so that we could clear large areas. Because the compounds, you know, it's not like Iraq and Afghanistan and everything. The compounds are so spread out between 120 meters, 100, 200, 200, 200, 200,

between each compound. So you'd work in four different elements with two or three Americans on each element. And that way you could work together as a big organism to clear large swaths of compounds that way. So that's sort of how that was set up for clearing operations, I guess you could call it, through big villages, I guess. Right. And if you're flying with the 160th, I mean, obviously you're doing operations similar

to what the Rangers are doing. or tier one elements are doing, when did SF sort of move into that? Do you know when SF moved into that role when they started flying 160th and doing those direct hits? So we didn't have 160th for every mission, right? That was like when we got lucky.

And really 160th, they picked the missions. So when they're like, oh, that's the cool one that they're going to do, we'll fly them. Most of the time, we had regular Army pilots. But yeah, so now, Everybody sort of had different mission sets, right? Like we had other SF teams that were doing, sort of the drug, CID type stuff. We had over in, like, Helm, or in Harat in areas like that.

We had teams doing the big ISIS battalion-sized clearing operations where you had a whole company of S-F teams moving through valleys. So everybody sort of had a different mission set in that regard. But I think that started more around like 2015-16, as we had. went away from VSO in 2013 and we went back to the big bases. Yeah. So that's because we would fly in from, we lived on Kandahar and we would fly in from Kandahar to hit these targets and fly back. So I think that's, that's kind of when we went away from VSO.

That's sort of when we transitioned to sort of that more conventional style point target rate type. Yeah. For the senior guys on your team, the guys who had. been back and forth. What was their opinion of SF doing like kinetic versus VSO and things like that? Yeah. So quite a few guys in my team, their prior trips were VSO trips.

So that's really when that transition sort of 2012, they were doing VSO and then the next trip they were doing what we were doing. You know, I mean, honestly, like living, living conditions, you know, it's sort of a lot better when you've got Wi-Fi and you're living on tap and there's surfing turf at the Chow Hall when you get back from doing your raid comparatively to live in six months in a mud hut. Yeah.

But I think they enjoyed VSO more, you know, because you got to do so much, you were so more immersed in the fight and in the mission and you were doing stuff during the day and you could actually drive around and do all kinds of different stuff. Whereas us, it was kind of like, we're on base and we do hits right and we come back that's there wasn't a whole lot of being immersed

out in the culture or or anything like that that's sort of the first 10 years of the war um what sf was doing yeah yeah we had we've had scott man on who was one of the guys i think who really pushed to get those vso operations going and then i think before before we saw any results we just kind of like the government just shut them down for the military well you know the thing is though is that with vSO up in the 2012 i mean we had pretty much taken over the country yeah it was super effective once we you know figured out how to do it and then we decided oh we're just going to draw down vso and give all this back to the talban for example in some of the areas and the missions i'm sure we'll get into talking about

we were going into areas that some of my buddies had taken in vs o and vs o three, four years before. Yeah. That we had already owned that now we're going back in to do target hit targets on. You know what I mean? So it didn't, in that regard, it didn't make any sense. It was like, what are we doing? Why did we just give this all back to them for no reason?

Yeah. Yeah. And for people who are watching or listening, VSO or village stability operations, which are similar to like what the A camps in Vietnam, the Marines, the close, I think the close action platoons, or, civil, I think close action, but basically creating those sort of domains of control by, you know, not taking over village, but inhabiting the village, helping the people out and creating the stability that way. Yeah. So the biggest way they would do that is, you know,

and Afghanistan is very rural and tribal, right? So a team would be in and they would be with a village elder and then they would develop, you know, a police force or a fighting force and they would be able to sort of secure their own territory against the Taliban. That was sort of the idea behind that. And then enable them to do that. Yeah. But obviously, even if VSOs are more effective, kinetic is sexier. A lot sexier.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. It briefs better, right? It briefs better. It does for sure, right? And it's a lot cooler to, you know, send in a tar. a team in the middle of the night with AC130s and A10s and, you know,

and ISR watching all of it. So, yeah. So you said your first stop, you guys landed on you, the X, which is right on the target. Was that, was that your first firefight or what was your first firefight? Oh, yeah, no. So, I mean, we got in a few, our very first operation, we did get in a little bit of a firefighter towards the end, but I mean, it's scuffled out pretty quick. Our first, and then so, and then our next couple operations we got in smaller ones,

ticks here and there. Nothing like too crazy to talk about. But the biggest, first biggest firefight that I got into was, or our team got into, was the mission I was telling you about earlier where we got near ambush twice and all the guys on my team have Valor Awards and upwards of our 18 Delta has a Silver Star

stuff like that so that's that was the huge like when you talk about real firefight when I think about now we got a few more after that later in the trip as well big ones but that was actually sort of towards the front of the deployment when it comes to major major gunfights so can you set it up and

walk us through these near ambushes. What was the mission profile? What did it look like? How did it all go down? Yeah, so I'll give just a backstory to what we were doing. So again, we were going into an area in Taryn Kot, which is maybe 40 minutes north of Kandahar, which again, this area had been completely controlled by us during BSO. And now we were going back in to try to sort of take that area again. We had done a few operations sort of through the valley in that area. And this one we had figured was probably more of a Taliban stronghold. We had a really good intelligence sergeant on my team at this deployment who was able to find all kinds of crazy stuff. But he had sort of figured out that this was most likely where a big stronghold was where a lot of potentially Taliban leadership

were at. So that's why we were going in to hit this stuff. target. And so with the way it worked, because of the terrain, we had to plan on infilling the helicopters about two kilometers west of the main compound we were going to try to hit. For whatever reason, I don't remember exactly why, but we had to do it that way. And we were going to infill both helicopters, CH47s, about 60 guys in two different elements, and then clear from west to east. to get to these compounds that we were trying to get to.

So the way I like to explain it, so anyway, I'll just say we land on the CH47s, my element does. We have two elements about two groups of 15 guys. And I'm main element leader of this mission. So I'm basically the head guy in charge of our element. And we land sort of offset of this big open field, which there's. There's a, on that Google imagery, kind of a big dilapidated compound about 100 meters away. And as I'm sure you know, in ISR, you can never really trust exactly what that imagery looks like, right? That might be a lot different than what it was.

But it looked like it was old and dead. And, you know, no Americans had been in this area for four or five years. So we figured there's no reason for the Taliban to, you know, be randomly posted up in this compound. You know, two kilometers away from their big hub. Right. So we land on the CH 47, sort of in this wooded area, and we're walking through the trees. And the best way I like to describe it so people can visually see it through their eyes as I walk you through how this all happens is imagine you're sort of walking through the forest and you're coming up to an open area, you know how that looks coming out of the forest. And think about you're basically on the 50-yard line of a football field.

and so you've got the big open football field in front of you and you look to your left and the end zone there's basically a compound that is the size of the entire end zone and it's night obviously and so we come out and we start walking towards that compound because in the plan we plan on just bypassing this compound because we had two kilometers ago we didn't have time to just clear all this random dilapidated stuff right so we're moving up towards that the compound. We're hitting probably the 30, 30 yard line, 20 yard line, 10 yard line. And then we turn to horizontally move alongside the compound to come around and bypass it. So we're paralleling the building now, right? So as you're walking, the building is to your left, about 10 meters. And we get most of my element out in front, you know, and we're in a big open field in front of this compound and all of a sudden as we're walking next to this compound all hell breaks loose just fucking gunshots machine gun fire it's just absolutely insane and so at first it's what you know what in the hell is going on um let me back up real quick so as i'm walking up to it

i'm talking to the uh predator drone and he tells me the slant is zero zero zero there's no one inside this compound you guys are good to go right right that's that's how we're feeling as we're going to move around. So anyway, all of a sudden, boom, you know, out of the movies, shit is going haywire, gunshots everywhere, machine gun fire. Turns out there wasn't zero. We find this out later, right? We don't know this in the moment, but we find out later,

there wasn't zero guys inside. There was 10 towel band insurgents inside, and this was a built-in defensive fighting position with a bunker, all kinds of shit. They had PKMs, RPGs. Wow. Everything. So we basically are now out in the open, and we've just been near ambushed, right?

And so I, and immediately all our Afghans lay down, right? And I'm the element leader, so I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on. And I see off right next to me to my front, to my right, my 18 Bravo's got the Mark 48 machine gun, and he's basically got it on full auto, spraying it into this compound, to get us fire suppression so we stopped getting shot at. Right. As my 18 Charlie runs up to the wall and he starts throwing grenades over the top of the wall just to try to get the fire suppression.

And I'm basically picking up the Afghan team leader and guys by the back of the collar because I'm as an element leader, I'm like, I got, we have to get out of this open field. Battle drill one alpha something. I don't know. Right. We can't just stand this open field. We're all going to get shredded. The guy, one of the guy's next to me, he goes down.

any good shot. So guys are getting shredded as this is happening. And so as this adult, and again, it's crazy to talk about this because, you know, how long this lasted, I still don't know. Was it two minutes? Was it 15 minutes? I don't know. But as I'm trying to get these, you know, and I'm firing, firing back, right, trying to grab guys,

we've got to move. They won't. They're just immediately dropping back down on the ground. And as I'm trying to do that, my senior 18 Delta, the senior senior. year I was talking about he had like five combat deployments um this dude was he absolutely crazy he would run he loved to run towards the bullets right he comes springing up past me full speed running straight at this this near ambush and yells at me as he comes by like hey we got to go man yeah and so we realized like that it's the afghans are going to do anything this is too crazy it's just four s f guys

that basically have to eliminate this threat. So my teammates, yeah, they're up front. They're throwing grenades. I see the guy right next to me here in the doorway. He gets shot and goes down. At first, I don't know if it's one of my buddies or not, because my teammate was right by him as well. And so I run over, grab him, drag him out of the way,

realize it's an Afghan. So sort of throw him off to the side, tell my ex-o, hey, put turnicates on him, which, funny story about that. out the company XO. He wasn't a special forces guy. We just brought him out so he could get a, you know, a combat operation. His

first ever time out on a mission and five minutes into the objective we're in a near ambush and, you know, he's getting bodies thrown out of and his eyes are that big, you know. But, so yeah, you know, my teammates

are still throwing grenades. The firing's going on. At some point, my 18 Bravo, he is now racking in. Another 200 round drum still on full auto and sprang in the doorway. That somehow, at some point, we'd killed enough guys through, you know, firing in the doorway, throwing grenades, all that type of different stuff, throwing grenades into the bunker that they were firing out of.

That's, I think we killed six that way, that the last four panicked, and they ran out the back of the compound. So it sort of started to die down. and then our CCT told us, hey, we have, you got four guys fleeing out the back. So we didn't know if they're trying to maneuver on us or whatnot. So the AC130 says, hey, we're going to strike these guys. Yeah. And so with 105 rounds, and they're 40 meters away from us, you know.

So it's everybody run up, dive behind the compound walls as they strike a couple different times. And so that all starts to die down. And we realize, okay, we've eliminated everything here. We call in medabacks. You know, we start medabacking our guys that had been shot. And, you know, that's, we're like, okay, we're 10 minutes into the operation. We still have to conduct this operation. We still have to hit this compound.

And there's still, you know, another even worse near ambush further on in this operation. So because we had been filled on two different elements, our second helicopter was supposed to land in that open field in front of that building. And for whatever reason, the pilot screwed up and over flew the airfield and landed 300 meters past it. Had he not, he would have landed that CH 47 10 meters in front of all of that, which would have been, you know, immediate catastrophe just by the stroke of God that we didn't have a CH 47 with 40 guys just immediately shot down. Yeah, I was wondering because when you described the field with the compound, but it was an old compound,

and it sort of led to, you know, to the stronghold, if almost that, if almost like the tactical leaders of the Taliban were like, if they sat down, they'll set down in this field and this is where you'll hit them. I mean, you know, they didn't have 10 guys in there for no reason. I hadn't built that into a giant DFP for no reason. So I think, you know, because they don't do that just everywhere, right? And we didn't expect that at all. So I think, you know, it kind of made sense because that was the only place that we could figure out where we could land based off of the terrain.

And then they had, you know, this huge defensive fighting force ready for us right there where, you know, we decided was the best place to land. So how was this? compound set up that because you mentioned the walls and then the doorways like the opening to the compound. Did they have elevated positions too or were they mostly shooting through the doorway?

So the way it worked, there's you know, your big like eight foot compound mud walls. Yeah. With big doorways in between. There was a few of those. Okay. They also had sort of a bunker built that was raised sort of out front of the walls and then and then

buildings sort of drop set about five feet back from the compound walls that they were back offset in those buildings basically taking shots out from the buildings through doorways through secondary doorways if that makes it. Wow, it was a good setup. Yeah, so they, yeah, they were ready for us for sure.

But then, yeah, and then I can go into you know further into the operation where the second year ambush happened absolutely please so so so so how do you guys consolidate does does the second team move to the compound or do you guys move to them so at this point now they're way because they overfle us about 300 meters they're towards the objective and they basically got off and they and they kept moving so right the front element now is probably like 7 800 meters ahead of us they're just trucking towards the objective so We, you know, we get our guys medevacked out. I get everybody back together.

We end up bipping the DFP, you know, blowing it up so they can't use it anymore. And then we pretty much just hightail it out into, you know, the open field. And now we're, you know, going full speed, bypassing everything to try to catch up to our front help. Right. So that's sort of how we're doing it. So we, so nothing much happens there other than us, you know, moving through the field about a thousand meters. And is your front element, are they moving because basically now the targets compromised, they know somebody's there. So are they just, are they're moving out trying to stay

ahead of the, trying to keep the like the tactical edge basically? Yeah, for sure. And you know, while this is happening, we're, there's all kinds of moving and activity in the compounds they're approaching. And we have our air striking targets nonstop out in front of them, right? So they're moving to basically bring the fight as our air is prepping the objective there for them. So kind of have two different things and two different places going on simultaneously. And, you know, once we also really, because of the way it had infilled, they couldn't really come back to help us anyway because they would have potentially been moving back towards us. Right. that way.

So they pretty much, you know, decided, made, the team started made the decision, hey, to keep going. We're going to keep going. You guys obviously are okay. And you guys will catch up with us once you get that situation figured out. Yeah. But yeah, so then, so we had basically moved through that open field and our front element had gotten to a compound probably about 50 meters away from the final.

objective and we had pretty much caught up to them and were basically a compound back from them that we got into a compound. We decided to sort of take a tactical pause. And then we started getting chatter on the, the TIRP phones and ISR that there was another compound right next to us, basically in between us and the front element, that there was chatter that they were going to, they were setting up another ambush for us to walk through in between. the compound. So me and the commander made the decision, hey, we're going to stand by for a second. We're going to have the Apaches level this compound with hellfire rockets so that we can move up and support the front element, right, so that we don't get ambushed again. Because at this point,

we've taken a bunch of casualties. We can't really afford for something like that to happen. So as we're prepping that strike for that to happen, all of a sudden, and I'm sitting in the compound sort of, we've been moving east this entire time. and I'm looking at the compound wall towards, you know, our lead element is, I know they're in front of me on the other side of this compound wall. And again, out of nowhere, boom, all hell breaks loose. Machine gun fire. I can see the tracers of machine gun fire flying over the top of the compound walls towards us. So we know we can't tell exactly what's happening, but we know, oh shit, our front element is right here where all this is going on.

And so I Again, I didn't see this with my own eyes because we couldn't get up to actually see over the top of the compound wall. So this comes from obviously my buddies and their Val Award citations and everything of what happens here. But so as we're waiting for the strike to come in, they were moving around a compound sort of into a hallway between two compounds. And then as they got into this hallway, they basically got ambushed again, except for them. they had the Taliban were ready and were throwing grenades over the top of the walls down into the hallway that they were hauling. So three of my teammates are in that hallway. One of the grenades lands between my 18 Charlie's feet.

I mean, literally between his feet, blows up, blows his pants off. I mean, completely fucks him up, the guy behind him. All three of them get blasted by grenades. The Afghans get blasted. and then at the end of the hallway after they did this they had a PKM set up wow so it was yeah it was just fatal funnel shreds machine gun grenades coming over the top of guys it's just about as worst situation as you can get to the two of the SEP guys were completely basically blown off the out of the hallway into this culvert ditch and a bunch of the afghans got

shredded and it was basically our 18 Delta and who had just been hit by the grenade, mind you. And the Afghan team leader who had been shot in the face were the only two guys coherent enough to keep fighting. And they somehow fought through this hallway and killed the dude at the end of the hallway with the PKM and eliminated that. And our 18 Delta then drug out. Obviously the two SF guys first got them behind cover, went back, drug out all the Afghans.

And then he ended up, obviously, treating all those dudes as we all then got back together. And at that point, we had taken so many casualties that we got forced off the X. I mean, we hit our brain fart, what you call it, when you take too many casualties. Anyway. Like the mission critical. Yeah. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. So much of your fighting force is now incapacitated that you have to move off the objective.

Yeah. And we had to emergency infill because we had taken so many, so many casualties. And that just turned into a big, uh, casavac, you know, up to an open field that we could get the helicopters in to, um, to get all our guys out that had been, you know, shot and blown up and all those. Now, when you guys are making this infill or this, when you guys are actually doing this ex-fill, um, like, are you still receiving fire or do you, is the air suppressing that pretty well. No, so yeah. So at this point, the error, and again, we had an AC130 on station.

We had two A10s, two F-15s, two Apaches. So at this point, you know, because you get everything sent to you when you're in this heinous of a firefight, you know how that works, right? So at this point, we had every asset available in the entire area above us. And yeah, they just air once, once they realized we had taken, and they're watching this happen as well, you know, that we had taken so much, so many casualties and so much damage, they just started leveling basically that entire compound in defensive friendlies, which allowed us to basically pull everybody off the X. And yeah, they basically had their heads completely suppressed down to where those guys, you know, they're not popping out to try to shoot us at that point because there's so much

air watching them. One of the things you mentioned earlier was that the rules of engagement had changed just before you guys went in. What had they been and how did they change for you guys? Yeah, so there was two different ROEs for us, depending on whether you were Taliban or ISIS, right? The way it had worked, it got worked for ISIS, it was kill on site, sort of that Fallujah-style military age male. If you're ISIS, you're getting shot in the face, even if you're on the toilet, unarmed, doesn't matter. For the Taliban, it was now basically imminent danger.

and hostile intent, right? Which, you know how that works, right? So basically you're out at night and you're doing sketchy stuff, even if you're not armed, if you're moving in the middle of the night to maybe go and place an IED or whatnot, you can be considered a threat. So that's what we, the ROE changed too. And, you know, before that, it was, you know,

especially in the Obama era, it had gotten to the point of basically you had to receive fire before you could even engage, a target. Even if you were watching Taliban maneuver on your position, you weren't allowed to engage until you actually received fire. So sort of went from that to, you know, taking the chains off the dog. Right. And, you know, if you're there doing dumb stuff in an area you shouldn't be, you're probably not going to make it out. Well, and, you know, because you had mentioned like the AC130 taking out the maneuver element that had, you know, flood the compound. And, and, you know, that was,

that was a discussion for a very long time. Are they squatters? Because you can't shoot squatters. You can't shoot somebody running away. But so many times these people were running to better positions. They were running to caches. Exactly. And they were manual.

Yeah. And that's how that was framed, framed is that they had just ambushed us. And now they were moving to a position of tactical advantage. Right. So the AC130 is allowed to strike in defensive friendlies because of that. Correct. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it gets complicated. And obviously, you know, when you go into a place like Afghanistan where you're fighting side by side with, you know, with the host nation force, you know, precautions need to be taken. Like you don't want to harm innocent people. For sure. But, you know, the Taliban was very good at using those rules against us. Yeah, you know, and we saw some gross things on our deployment, right? We had a, a, um, a young child killed that was strapped to the chest of a talban insurgent, right? Using them as body armor, right? So stuff like that is, you know, is a reality. So, you know, that's some of the harder stuff you see.

But you're right, you know. So what was your, you mentioned the M48 earlier that your Bravo had the M48, which I'm not, I've never used it. I assume it replaced the M60. Is that right? replace the saw. Mark 48, Mark 48 is basically a saw that shoots a 762 round.

Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. It's the SOCOM variant of the saw. It's sort of a, uh, 762 machine gun that you can one man carry. And it has a 200 round drum that you slide in like a saw.

Uh-huh. So that you don't need more cool people to shoot. So it gives you that extra firepower, um, that a saw doesn't have because it's shooting 556. Right. But still in a, in a one-man. carry. And then for you guys, for the guys who weren't the weapons guys, like, what were you

carrying? So I carried the Mark 48 a lot. Okay. When, um, not, so when I was an element leader, you know, your whole focus is running the elements and the team leader and all that. I would carry an M4 with maybe a 320, um, grenade launcher or something like that. We actually carried, we ended up by the end of the deployment switching our load out to carry just a ton of grenades. So I, we'd carry six, seven grenades per guy, just because, as we just talked about, that was the type of fighting we were getting into in these compounds, sort of that grenade battle type of stuff, or bunkers, all kinds of stuff like that. But when I, when my other teammate who we typically worked together, either I was element leader or he was, the other one of us who wasn't at the time

would carry the mark 48 so that we would have that firepower. And you usually have two, right? have one on each of the elements so that each element had a a 7-6-2 machine gun. So that's sort of how that would work. Now, were you guys carrying like standard grenades? Were you carrying the minis? Were you carrying thermobarics? Like, what? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, so we would care. I would usually carry, because we had, there were so much bunkers in, and we're doing in Arousgan and Canaan and I'm sure we'll get into another story that involve this is this massive bunker field type of stuff we got into. So we would carry a couple of thermobarics for sure because we could just collapse DFP's so easily in these tunnels that they were using. Yeah. So yeah, I would usually, I'd usually carry two thermobarics, maybe four or five regular grenades,

and then maybe one incendiary grenade if I needed to, you know, make it easy to burn all the drugs because we would find, even though we weren't doing specifically drug stuff, we would still find, you know, like three, 400 pounds of heroin in operation, you know, like 10, 20 bags of 20 pound heroin, you know, and it just makes easy to take all the K's. Yeah, yeah, the black tar. Yeah. But it just made it easy just to burn all that stuff really easily.

So, yeah, that's sort of how that, yeah, grenade load, out of a load. Yeah. Do you remember your first time using a thermovaric or somebody like, what was? I do. Yeah, I got a great story about that, Mike. Please. So my 18 Delta, who again, I worked with the longest as a team, a team guy. And then I ended up, he took a team sergeant slot in Okinawa. And I ended up going and traveling to be on his team as one of his team guys as he was a team sergeant.

So anyway, we were moving together doing some stuff. And again, we found this bunker system that we're going to collapse. First time I've been around a third of Berwick, right? and he's like, oh, I'm going to throw this in this bunker, right? So he throws it in the bunker, and he takes off running and I kind of look over my shoulder, like, what is he doing, you know? And it goes off, and I'm staying way too close. And it ends up my lip right here, it's been a little bit chapped, you know, in the center of your lip gets chapped.

And it blew my lip apart, ripped my whole lip apart from the overpressure of it, you know. And I was like, oh, my God, you know, you get your face blasted back. So that was my, that was my introduction into what a thermobare. grenade is. So after that, it was like throw it in and run as fast as possible. Yeah, they're, uh, yeah, they're, they're effective. Yeah.

They're heavy, but they're effective. Yeah, for sure. Um, so, okay, uh, yeah, so like, so after, so you guys ex-fill this target, you get back. Yeah. How are the guys on your team? Because it sounds like someone

got rode hard and put away wet. Yeah. So, um, are my 18 Charlie the one he took the brunt of it right so amazingly the grenade that hit him again it was like basically blew his pants off

you know it it's his whole face was um you know pressurized burned everything like that all the way of his body he took zero shrapnel which we still have no idea how because the guys behind him

ate all the shrapnel for some reason who know you know, the grenades are weird like that. Yeah. He was massive, massive TBI, massive concussion for a while. And he ended up having to go to the senior leader course, like three days later, he got pulled out of Afghanistan to go to,

for us, that's how you become an E7. It's more important than a combat operation, I guess. So he basically massive TBI trying to fly, go to this course. He basically told us he had no, idea what was going on. The instructors just gave him a pass because he was so messed up. And then my senior 18 Echo took a bunch of cratinal through his arms, but he ended up being okay. And then our 18 Delta who got the Silver Star, which honestly, I tell you that story,

he probably should have a medal of honor because all those dudes would be dead if he wasn't able to do what he did, which pretty much all the valor awards on that mission were downgraded, won, even his. So because the general decided NCOs shouldn't have that high valor awards. Right. And the XO that was with you didn't get one. So why should you guys? Yeah.

But, and then he took a bunch of shrapnel in his hands. And the worst part about him taking all the shrapnel in his hands is he would basically inside of the guts of these Afghans sewing them up and doing stuff with bare hands shredded apart, right? Oh, yeah. he had to deal with all the medications and all that stuff to make sure he was okay. But of all of that that happened, I think we took 14, 15 casualties, you know, guys being shot in the face and the stomach and the chest and blown up. No one died on that mission.

Even the end is? Now, they might have later, the Afghans, I don't know, right? Because that's a lot of nasty damage. But up front, yeah, nobody died. And I think we killed 58 Taliban on that mission. So that's, you know, we got pushed off the objective. So it wasn't a necessarily success. But the fact nobody died was, was good.

Yeah. I mean, you got pushed off the objective, but you still like killed 58. It was 50, you know, zero 58. Yeah. And that was, that was definite. And you could, you know, the fact that they were willing to fight us that crazy, that hard. Yeah. Let us know that that was, there was important, important people in that area.

So we definitely did a lot of damage. to a high profile area for sure. Do you know, was it Afghan SF or Afghan Commandos that were with you that night? Afghan SF, that was the thing is those guys typically, and I watched them do some crazy stuff later than deployments, but even they, and that's a situation, we're like, no way, man, we're not, we're not moving.

We're gonna lay down and shoot into the darkness. but uh but you know it's one of those things where um again had had you know for me had i not had you know my my senior delta just basically sprinting straight into a near ambush into gunfire i might not have realized what to do either right so because it was just such a heinous crazy thing out of nowhere that having a guy like that who had four or five combat appointments with Been in so many crazy things and Hellman and Musa Clay and all these insane stories that having him there was huge, right? For the rest of us on the team, the other SF guys to know, okay, we can do this, right?

We can eliminate the threat. All we got to do is move and do the things that we're trained to do. Yeah. Which that sort of gets into that how important that war experience is and why I'm a little bit worried about us going away from war and combat and what that's going to look like for the future generations because it's such a massive thing

and actual combat to have guys like that. Yeah. When you're a new guy, for sure. And the thing is, battle drills aren't fun to do. And I think a lot of guys, like it's just human nature, that when we're doing battle drills,

like we check out after a while, we just go through the motions. But like you're talking about, near ambush, getting off the X is it's a vital. it's vital and yet, you know, and, you know, to speak to what you were doing, you were trying to help out the Afghans. Like you were trying to get them off the X too.

Yeah. But yeah, and it's one of those, like you say, it's just one of those things that it always degrades. Like we went from Vietnam and it took a long time to relearn all the lessons that that guys like your dad like instinctively did. Yeah. And you know, it's, it's interesting you say that because I had the immediate response to do those things that we do through training, right?

My immediate response was, okay, we have to maneuver, right? You have to maneuver on this. We weren't able to, but it's interesting that you say that. Once that degraded, it was sort of what do we, what do I do, right? like these guys won't move. Right. And it's a guy with all this experience that, you know, is the one that kind of snaps into your head of like, oh, shit, okay, we got to do this.

Yeah. That you can't really train for those type of things. Yeah. You kind of just have to gain that experience through actual time. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting. You mentioned how the Afghan SF, like, you know, my experience with both Afghan,

Afghans and Iraqis is if you train. for CQB, they're good at doing CQB. But if a problem arises during that time, if it's something that they haven't necessarily trained for or have down, a lot of times they didn't have that sort of that lateral thinking. So they would vapor line. It's interesting you say that because, again, like I said earlier, I watched some of these guys do really impressive stuff on missions later.

But it makes sense because that is they were doing things that they were very proficient at when they did it. Whereas a situation like that is definitely not something that anyone really trains for. So the fact that they sort of just shut down kind of is exactly what we're talking about there. Yeah. Yeah. No, it just reminds me of, you know, the old idea that if you take the prone in a near ambush, you'll never get up. Oh, yeah, no, for sure. And we were not in a position of advantage, right? What are we going to do laying that field? and shoot in an open doorway. Like, we're going to all die eventually if we stay here and do this.

So how long did it take your team to sort of recuperate, you know, to be able to be operational again? Yeah. So two of our teammates, our 18 Delta was okay because he just, he had to get his hands stitched up. He got, you know, his hand shredded a little bit. But he was all right. So he was, uh, continued to be on the team in our operations, but our 18 Charlie and our 18

Echo were messed up to the point where they were out for a couple months, I think. Um, and then we actually plused up guys through the company, so the B team. Yeah. And from other teams that weren't doing as much. We were able to, you know, get SF guys from different ODAs in the company to come out on operations with us to help us sort of plus up those numbers while, while, um, our teammates were out from injuries. Now, you said your ex-o wasn't SF.

Did your ex-o go out on any more offs after that? No, he is now. Yeah. He is now. So he went to the Q-course, you know, after, you know, years later and he made it through, and he's a greener right now. But, yeah, I think he might have come out on a few more after that.

Oh, I got to tell you the funny, funny story about that. It brings me back. So, so the Afghan, the Afghan, the Afghan, I drag and throw in front of him and he had been shot through and through the bicep a couple times here and here. And our exo had thrown tourniquets on him, you know. And so I run back over after everything's calmed down to check on the guy real quick. And he's this Afghan is laying there on the ground on his back.

And he's got two of his buddies staring down on the ground. And I look at him and his turnicits are all off. And he's just bleeding out to death on their ground. And I'm like, what are you guys doing? Why are his turnicates off? And the Afghans are like, oh, they're hurting him too bad. So we took him off. You know, so we throw, you know, I grab the tourniquets and I throw him back on and I run over and grab my 18 Delta.

And I'm like, get over here and check on this guy. Make sure he's not dead. His buddies almost killed him, you know. But just, you know, as heinous as that whole thing was just, I remember even laughing in the moment of like, wow, you guys are. Yeah. that is dumb right you know but uh but anyway it's a testament to your exo though that he went out there and it was just a taste and like it let him on yeah oh yeah for sure yeah he was a good dude but again just the fact that uh you know that's your first yeah yeah your first operation just

immediately in the shit as you would say you know yeah so um so you guys get plused up like how long is it before you got your back out again your next mission i think uh after that one i think we waited a couple weeks um i think that definitely slowed us down a little bit as we uh sort of were making sure our guys were okay and and uh refiguring out that whole thing um but i think it was a couple weeks and then we were back at and back out on operations um so it wasn't that long but do you you might not have any like essay of this but this but But do you know if they sent a follow on after that compound knowing that it was probably something important or into that area? I don't.

So we continued to operate through there quite a bit for the rest of the rest of the trip. But, yeah, we didn't go back. We didn't go back in there exclusively. I think we kind of got our tail put between our legs a little bit. And it was just a nasty area again terrain-wise. Right. It just wasn't any good way to get in there. Right.

So it was one of those things where you had to infill, offset, and walk to there. And they were obviously ready. And they weren't going to give that up. So it kind of is one of those things of like, we don't really know what is in there. So is it really worth us continuing to go in there? Or can we have effects, you know, better effects further out in the area? Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of the, I mean, once they let you know, it's like put in a marine company and put them online and let them just like move through. Yeah. And again, we had such the bulk of our battalion doing the Nangahar Valley ISIS clearing operation during that time that we didn't really have anything like that for us to be able to get, you know, multiple ODAs in there to actually take that down.

Were you guys or other, you know, like sister teams, like were you guys, were you, you were operating in larger than ODAs at any point in time? So we, we didn't as a team, but yes, a lot of our teams were. So again, that Nangahar Valley was an entire company. I think they had four or five ODAs that were clearing the valley together. And then I think our team in Helmand and Perot worked together a little bit because that Musa Klee area was, Helman just the entire war was just such a nasty place. The Taliban just never were willing to give that up.

Yeah. You know, and it was such an integral part of that drug trafficking road there through Helmand that that was always a nasty place. So our ODA didn't do multi-team clearing operations, but our company did a lot of them. Out in Farah, there was, in Harat, we had a couple ODAs working together.

so yeah it's a normal thing but our team pretty much exosu is working by ourselves down south at the Kandahara

Roostone area so what was your next stop then out out the gate after that up oh man if you remember I know it all blends together

at some point too yeah it does you know there's there's so many that were sort of generic night time raids we get you know

small gun fights here and there the air would strike We kill 10, 20 guys, clear through, not really find anything. The next most memorable one is the one where our ODA found the largest cache of HME ever found in Afghanistan, which that's kind of a fun. There's no gun fights involved in this story, but it's kind of a cool story for the fact of what we accomplished and what we destroyed. So I could go through that one.

Yeah, please. not as long, but a tactical story. And again, we set the record for that. So, yeah, we had, again, this was, I think in the Arrhusgan area. So same sort of valley that I'm talking about, Terrancott, Arousgan, and all sort of runs in the same area. And that the prior mission took place in. And for whatever reason, I don't know how our intelligence sergeant figured this out. Again, he was incredible.

And super smart dude. but we decided to go in and hit this area because, you know, it looks like an area of interest and it's in the same area. And we get in, we infill or maybe like 300 meters off the first compound. And the very first building we get into, there's first compound. There's one Afghan there. Oh, let me backtrack. So this area actually, another ODA had been in a year. prior to this same compound, this is why we went in.

And they had gotten this massive blowout gunfight. The 160 had to come in, and they had to be emergency X filled off. So it was crazy area about a year ago. So we figured, hey, we're going to go in here too and test our luck. So that's actually how we ended up going into this spot. So we infill and works. So now we're expecting a fight because the prior ODA had gotten such a ship show. that, you know, and we had just come off of, you know, the one we had been in, that it was like, okay, we're going in and we're ready for a fight.

And the very first building we get to, you know, a young Afghan, maybe 16, 17 years old, comes out. He's like, yeah, there's Taliban here, and they have all their stuff right there in that building. And he's like, and they have some right here down next to the river. So we're like, all right, walk us over there to see it. And we walked down and next to the river, there's like 100 mortars buried in. And we're right off the helicopter and we're like, okay. So there's going to be, there's going to be some stuff in this area. If there's this big of a cachet just out in the middle of nowhere.

And so, you know, he basically points to the compound that we're planning on hitting, you know, the big one that we knew that the prior ODA was trying to get into and says, yeah, this is where all the Taliban keep their stuff. and so we start moving in and most of the talban fleed um early right they heard the aircraft coming which was a very typical thing if they're not willing to fight for what's there they'll just get on their most motorcycles and just bounce once they hear the the aircraft so we um we pretty quickly just walked straight up to the um the main compound my element again is the one we're split up but my element is the one that's um and i'm element leader again on this one. My element's the one that's going to this compound. And so we we pretty much freely get into

this compound, no resistance. And it's a big open compound, maybe 50 meters by 50 meters of open space with, you know, buildings around it. And, you know, there's cars and stuff in the middle of this compound. And I'm not thinking much of it. And we're like, ah, man, maybe there's really not that much in here. And then all of a sudden my EOD tech comes up on the radio and he was like, hey, you need to come look at this. And I'm like, okay, you know, what is it? He's like, come over here by this giant building. So I walk, I walk over and he's standing, you know, in just a normal doorway. And he's like, come and look at this. And I go and I look in the door and it's a warehouse. And it's from, you know, ground to 10 feet tall of HME as, you know, 100 feet wide. And it's like, and you're

standing next to it like, okay, if this goes off, I'm literally, all of us are going to to be vaporized instantly. So it's like, oh, I really hope this isn't rigged because all of us are going to die immediately if there's somebody with a clacker standing 100 meters away. And it's, you know, I had seen large amount, we had gone through, we found tons of really big caches, but I mean, nothing like this. This was absolutely insane. Again, it was the largest one ever found by any U.S. military in Afghanistan.

So, again, it was like a warehouse full of bags of HM.E. And it wasn't just HME. They had probably hundreds of mortars and rockets and ammunition. I mean, it was massive, massive stockpile. So we're like, okay, well, great. We're going to blow this up. So we call it up to the soda and tell them what we found. And as we're doing this, we start looking in the cars that are in here.

And we're looking at the cars flashlight and we're like, oh, that's a V bed. Oh, that's another V bed. These are all rigged. And we're like, holy shit. Like this compound is the most, like, this is the most depth-centered place we could be for explosives in Afghanistan. If something goes boom, you know, you got 50 dead soldiers instantly. So we call it up and we're going to, you know, we're going to first try to get, we first are like, well, they're going to strike it, right? There's no way that we're not, that we're going to leave this.

And so they're like, yeah, cordon off the area and make sure nobody comes in and out and then we'll strike it and we'll get rid of. of it. So that's what we do. We spend the next couple hours making sure we clear everything. There's no one inside these compounds. There's no one near it. We have the whole area of cordoned off. And then we wait and we wait and two a.m. rolls around, three a.m. rolls around, four a.m. rolls around. And we're again, we're in the valley and tarantot, which is like you don't stay there into daylight. Does we stay in there to the daylight? You start taking rockets and mortars from the hills. So we're like, are you going to strike or not? Like, what are we doing?

And then finally they tell us to like, oh, well, we're, we can't strike. So then we're like, well, we'll just dip it ourselves, right? We'll blow it up ourselves. And they're like, no, you can't do that. Maybe there was a mosque. I don't know. But we're like, what are you talking about? We can't do this.

We can't leave 13,000 pounds of HME on target for them to kill American soldiers with for the next 10 years. This is insane. Yeah. And they're like, well, um, standby and then eventually, you know, 5 a.m. rolls around and the helicopters show up and we get on the helicopters and we leave. And everybody's looking around at each other like, what the hell are we doing? I mean, we have, we had the whole area going on off. It's all taken

care of. So obviously we're confused. We're pit. We're pit. Right. Like for one, I didn't just walk around this area that was just guaranteed death for two hours for us to just leave it there. Right. And so we get back. Everybody's pissed. We, you know, and we, there's no gun fights, anything like that on this mission. And so, you know, we do our AARs. We go sleep. We wake up the next morning and we come to do our team meeting and our team sergeant's like, hey, uh, general call and got some news for you guys. Uh, we have to fly back in and hit this target again. So apparently what happens, and again, I don't know for sure. But the general who had the authorities to strike this target was asleep and his aides didn't want to wake him up.

So that's why we didn't strike the target. Well, when the general woke up the next morning and he saw the mission brief and said, why the fuck didn't you guys wake me up? We can't leave. Just like we said, we can't leave the enemy all of this. Go back and get it. Right. The general, the general takes the risk of sending us back into the largest cash they ever found that they could potentially rig to kill us all again. That was very brave of him to take that risk.

Yeah. That's the very first thing we said. We're like, oh, man, you are so brave. Because you guys leave. And, I mean, first off, you guys, so when we're talking about HME, you're talking about homemade explosive, right? Yep. Yep. What was the nature of the homemade explosives?

Because we're talking about, are we talking about IEDs or it's not a finished product? No, so it was more of the, now again, I'm not an engineer, but more of like the fertilizer-based explosive, right? Like it's an explosive, but it hasn't been turned into an IED yet. It's just the actual explosive material that they have bagged up in big 50-pound bags. I mean, and the fact that it wasn't rigged to the first. time against you guys and then you're going back in there after you've already told the Taliban that we know this is here and that it's not rigged again it's it's so lucky so the so diff did hold air assets above the target and they struck anyone who got anywhere near it

throughout the day okay throughout the the night so they did do that right because otherwise we would have been like no no that's just a guarantee guaranteed death. But still, you never know, right? You never know if it wasn't already rigged. Right. And then now they realize somebody, you know, who's in the area says, okay, now I get on my cell phone and wait from them to come back and boom. But, you know, to, like with everything, we got, we got a bunch of, I got, we all got our com with combat devices, right? So they gave us big flashy awards for our bravery on that one. that's they had to make up oh and they gave our they gave our team leader a valor award for that

mission which he tried to turn down because he was like i'm not accepting a valor award you know he was like 600 meters away from the whole thing the whole time it's like i'm not accepting a valor award for this and you know the the command was like oh yes you are because we're not we're not going to have this look like a mistake you know what i mean you're going to be grave. So when you guys went back in that that second night, did you have to re, did you just have to coordinate or did you have to go back to the White House and reconfirm? Well, so we went back in the same night and they still wouldn't strike it. They sent us back in and we had to internally bip it. It was like, that's the thing too. You guys had to blow it.

We had to blow it. Yeah. They wouldn't even strike it. So we didn't court on it or anything. So they sent us back in and they were like, well, we don't want to take the risk of striking it. You guys go do it. So yeah, our EOD techs and our charlies went in and they rigged, they rigged this warehouse with C4 and everything and put a massive delayed fuse on it, you know, and they popped it and everybody ran 500 meters. And, you know, it's crazy when this thing went off and, you know, it's too bad we can't show the video of it. When this thing went off, you know, it looks like a nuclear bomb going off in the NATO video. But I remember because we're in a valley, I was probably 700 meters away from this explosion. And I could feel it in my chest to like it was a door charge in CQB.

That's how big that explosion was, you know. So it was intense for sure. Dee, we have the video? Yeah, I sent it to you guys on Instagram. Yeah. If you can, uh... Oh, yeah, we'll throw it on the Patreon. Oh, the video of it?

Yeah. Yeah, but that's the... You guys have a video of the ISR after we bit that, but yeah, I mean... And it was kind of like, you know, after we saw that video, it was like, oh, that's, and you can see, you know, in that video, you'll see... You don't realize it's like, oh, these are tiny buildings, you know, and it's like engulfed by this atomic bomb cloud. And it's like, oh, that would have been us, those little ants next to that had this thing gone off. Yeah. Did it, did it also, did you guys also bit the, uh, the vehicles or did that charge take about, take about that?

No, that's, yeah, it blew the, I mean, it blew 400 meters of compound disintegrated. Everything inside of that thing was absolutely gone from that much explosive. That's wild. Yeah. That's, I mean, it's so wild that you guys were sent back in there instead of just, instead of just basically doing an air strike and saying it and calling it a day. well and you know super irresponsible you know and i can say that now that i'm out but i mean the fact that you would send us back into that yeah you know is for the fact that you made a whoopsie like just strike it man yeah like you've you've been watching it the whole night you know nobody's

come into the area we had it cordoned off right you know the iSR's been watching but you know they they'd rather you know send in a team full of ff guys than take the risk of you know somebody getting in trouble for something like that. So is what it is. Yeah. Now, what did you guys do about the mortars down by the river? Oh, we bit those. Yeah, we blew those up just as we went through. Yeah. Yeah. So there was, there was a few different little caches on the way as we got there that we just dipped in place. Yeah. But yeah, cash-wise, we would find stuff like that all over the place. We probably found like 100 different caches throughout all those different missions that we would just dip in place. And with that, I wanted to say this because I always forget to talk about it.

which always made, always pissed you off is all these caches were always American ammunitions. It was American mortars. It was American ammo still sealed, serialized in the green, in, you know,

the green boxes. And it's like, oh, cool. Wonder how the Taliban are getting all this, you know. So, but I mean,

they got plenty of it now, too, though. So I guess what's, yeah. That, that is interesting, though,

because, I mean, how do you think do you think that it was indige working on base like funnily now so well i can tell you i do know how it is right so what it is is that you know a lot of people don't realize in afghanistan you know the whole taliban a and a thing is not as like black and white as people think it is there's a lot of like i'm taliban one day and i'm a and a next right and whatever suits me best is where i'm at so for example tons of missions we would hit talism band villages and there would be multiple A&A police cars parked at the compound hanging out with their

Taliban buddies. So what I think more of what it was is, you know, we supplied the A&A with all this ammunition and all these mortars and all these rockets and then they would just turn around and sell it to the Taliban. I think that's more of how that whole thing played out. So in 2018, did you guys ever find any night vision, whether it was American or commercial? like did they have that? Yeah, so the Taliban Red Unit guys had it, which we found a few

of those. On the mission, the final mission I'll talk about was Taliban Red unit guys that we ended up getting in big fights with. But that was the only Taliban that had

night vision that we came across. And was it military, American military or was like storebought commercial? Yeah, so we didn't see any American military. But the big thing too is that the Taliban Red unit, unless they got trapped, which in this mission I'm talking about, we trapped them bad. They would not fight American forces, right? Because they didn't want to give up all the Gucci equipment.

Right. So they would really only fight the A&A. So we really didn't come across them that much for that reason. that's it's it's you know it's crazy because it makes all the difference like if the the guys who ambushed you from that compound if they would have had night vision it would be dead it'd be different like it yeah i'd be dead we don't we don't be dead everybody in that field would be dead they would hit you when you're in the field not when you were like 10 meters away yeah absolutely yeah that's the only reason we're alive is they didn't have night yeah and that and that you you can't be in an open field and get ambushed from a compound. If that was us with night vision and off in the compound, we'd kill everyone. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, so then after, you know, after this and your team leader gets his valor award. Um, and, and, you know, mad respect to him for wanting to decline it. Oh, he's a, uh, awesome dude. One of the highest ranked officers

in, uh, the special forces regiment rank. Great, great dude. Great commander. And, and And, yeah, that was his thing. And especially because, you know, the entire team had gotten Valor Awards for everything that had happened. And that was his thing was like, for one, he didn't care, right? Right. And for him, it was like, what, you know, he was pissed too. Because it was like, why are you sending my guys back in to do this? And now you're trying to like make it all kosher by giving me a Valor award.

Definitely didn't sit right with him. So do Arkoms have V devices now? Yeah, so that's what we all ended up getting, right? So we were all put in for, besides my 18 Delta, we got the Silver Star. We were all put in for Bronze Stars with Valor. And the way the Valor Award system works is you get put in for the Valor Award. And then it goes to your local chain of command, your company. They have to agree.

The citation goes through. It goes to your battalion command. They agree. It goes up to the SOTIF command. They agree. Then it goes to a board. of sergeant majors who look it over and they can agree or downgrade, right? And then it goes to the one-star general.

So each general can sign off on a certain level of valor awards. So the one-star can sign off on a RCOM V, the two-star, bronze star with V, a silver star. I think it's the fourth star. Middle of honor goes to the president, right? So what had happened was our BSMVs, and this is my whole team, all went through all the way up, past the Board of Stard majors. Everybody agrees, Bronstar or Valor. Gets to the one-star general who has the authority to either pass the Bronze Star up to the two-star,

or he, by himself, with no other person, can say, no, I'm just going to downgrade these to R-com-V at my level. Boom, sign them. Here's your R-com-V. So that's what he did to R-O-D-A, is he, said, no, I'm not going to send them further. I'm just going to downgrade them right here at my level sign. Here you go.

So, you know, it was kind of a shitty thing to do to us. But at the same time, for me, you know, the important thing for me was more of, like, one, it's just an honor that I was with my teammates to be a part of that. And, you know, some of the things I watched my teammates do were, in my opinion, so much more heroic than what I did that, like, Again, it was just, it just meant a lot to me that I was a part of that. And then also the recognition sort of for my family and like my kids, when they grow up, they'll be able to, you know, see something like that.

So, you know, the level of that award never really mattered to me. I don't really care. But it's still kind of one of those shitty things that an officer just decides on his own, that a bunch of NCOs like, no, I'm just going to downgrade your stuff and sign it. I honestly did not know that, that the armcom had a V device, but I guess it's been around for a while. But yeah,

it is very shitty. I mean, it's, like, why, why, like it's, like,

it's not money out of his pocket. It doesn't cost him anything to sign off on that. He just randomly, like, reads it and goes, nah, nah, not these guys.

Yeah, you know, we said the same thing. And what's funny is, you know, you would read, you would read, like Bronstar with Valor

citations from the 10th group team before us. Yeah. You know, I mean, read those citations. And no knock on those guys, right? They had an awesome stuff. But you'd read those citations and be like, well, these near ambushes were 10 times crazier than those awards. Yeah. And yet ours are,

and, you know, the worst part was we had the Soda commander come and see us afterwards. And he was like, you guys only got put in for Broadstars with Valor for that. Yeah. he's like that you guys should all have silver stars yeah but but then they turn around and and knock us all down but you know whatever yeah but you know i mean even you know like in your dad can probably speak to this and you know we've had a lot of guys from s f and mac v sog on the show from vietnam and it's in those small units when the whole unit is doing something very valorous you know that it just is not looked at in the same way as an individual in a line company,

you know, doing that, you know, one person standing out, uh, will get recognized and not always, not always recognized like they, they,

they get their metals down, downgraded a lot too. Um, but it's weird how the military looks at small units who are under duress and, and doing these, uncommon acts of valor basically. Yeah.

You know, and we would always get told, you know, and there's a big thing. Soft operators, typically, you know, what you get a valor word for might be a bronze star. And that same thing for someone in the infantry is the middle of honor. And that's the reality of it because the way that the military says is, you know, you're just doing your job. Your job is to do extraordinary things. Right. You did your job. Why would we give you, you know, anything above and beyond?

that. Right. So. Right. And, you know, and for your Delta to be wounded to charge a machine gun nest, like that is the definition, I think, of what, you know. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You know, you get, you get injured, you save lives, you eliminate the threat in a machine gun nest in that situation. It's, it's all of those things. You know what I mean? Yeah. But he's a, you know, he's an 18 Delta green beret. So that's a silver star. It's not a valuable. Or that's not a Melvinor, I guess. You know, I don't agree with that. Chances are, though, when he's 90, they'll turn around and upgrade it.

They just don't want to, you know, they just don't want to pay the kids for college and do. Yeah, for sure. So, so you guys have now bipped this, you, you ex-fill, like, what's next on the agenda for you guys? Yeah, so again, we have, you know, some, I don't want to say normal missions because we had a lot of wild stuff that happened, but I just like to, you know, hit the big ones that are, that are exciting and fun to talk about. So the last one, or the third biggest, kind of coolest mission that we had was a mission where a Taliban compound was being overrun, or not, excuse me, an A&A compound was being

overrun by the Taliban in a place called Camp Anaconda in Kuzgo. in Cause Arousgan. And what made this sort of a really high-profile mission is that Cause Arousgan, which was north-east of Arousgan, was outside of the med rings of anything that we could go to. So for people who don't know, you have your golden hour of medical coverage that we don't really operate outside of in the event that somebody gets injured. So cause the roos gone, no S-F, no American military had ever been in here.

ever. So that's how far out it was and austere it was. And so this camp, Camp Anaconda, the A&A had been basically getting overrun. They couldn't get any supplies in. They had all these dead soldiers. They couldn't get them out. And our partner force basically asked us if we'd be willing to go in and help this compound. And we were able to, which we were like, yeah this is awesome we get to go outside the med ring we get a um you know this compound's under attack we know we're going to get into some nasty stuff um and the general you know he's i guess he you know he's into blessing off on risk so he was willing to take the risk to send us way outside the med ring and we had to you know we had to set up with the 160th of having we had surgeons um sort of

forward place on um on ch 47's inside like you know within the med ring. So we had to build that hold apparatus for us to be able to do it. But yeah, so we get blessed off to come in and basically hit this. Well, the way it worked is so there was a compound that A&A had, which on one side of it, there was a big mountain on the backside of it. And then, you know, let's say the north side of it was a big mountain range. And then it was right at the base of the mountain range.

and then the south side was sort of grass shrubbery lands. And so the A&A guys were stuck in the compound up next to that mountain range. And the Taliban had built a bunch of bunkers and DFPs and basically were assaulting through this area to attack the compound. And there was nowhere for the A&A to go. They were completely stuck. So, you know, we got brief from the A&A guys about where the compound was and where the Taliban were. So we got some pretty good intel on it. And so we decided, okay, well, what we're going to do is we're going to infill behind where the Taliban are.

And we're just going to insert the Taliban in between Champ Anaconda and us. And there's going to be nowhere for them to go. They're just going to have to fight us. So that was the plan as we went in. And so I'll just kind of go through, walk through the mission. Which we got a lot of, go ahead, if you need to stop me. Yeah, so was it all open terrain? Was it wooded?

Like outside of that kind of open area where they had built their fighting positions, what was the terrain behind them like? So, Cozaru's gone more vegetative than you would think in Afghanistan, much higher elevation as well. So think of it as like high grasslands, sort of grass up to your waist with intermittent pretty large trees, and then sort of open areas in between that, right? It's sort of kind of like Washington, Oregon's type of vegetation.

Not your typical, you know, canned a hard desert dirt, more of a vegetative, large forested sort of type of environment. Okay. So, yeah, so we fly in and we offset quite a bit because we don't want them to know that it's Americans, right? because we know no Americans have ever been in there. But we do know that they have been basically trying to shoot down any A&A helicopter that comes in. So they've been used to the A&A trying to fly in and not be able to get in. So we want to basically make them think that, hey, this is A&A helicopters trying to get in. So we have the helicopters first fly in and then fly over the top, have them get shot at, not us, but our patches, and then fly off.

and then we sort of kind of like a false infill. Yeah. And then we fly in right after that to make the Taliban think, oh, that was just A&A helicopters. And so we fly in, we hit the ground. And immediately, I mean, within the first couple minutes, we start getting the chatter on the TIRP phones, you know, and the ISR of the Taliban going, oh, that, you know,

the A&A are here. They're trying to get their friends out. Let's go get them. Let's go get them. So we're like, oh, man, these guys have no idea. You know, we've got our full ODA, we've got 60 Afghans. We've got, and again, there's a mountain range right here on the wall. So we're able to hold our AC130 and all our air assets right on the other side of that mountain range.

So they can't hear the typical big brother in the sky. Right. The law and know. Yeah. Yeah, they don't know that we, because they know the sound of that. So they don't know that we got that because of the train. So we get to our very first compound. and our CTT, who's talking to the pilots, is like, hey, the pilots just said that there's 30 guys in rank and file columns walking through the open towards us, right?

So they're basically an infantry line, 30 Taliban, hut in their way to take down these A&A soldiers they think that just flew in. And so our commander and our CCT are like, all right, bring in the AC130. And so, you know, we're five, ten minutes into the operation and right up over the top of the mountain range, the AC130 hits, hits orbit and just, you know, smokes all 30 of them. And immediately you hear over the turp phones of screaming, oh, God, it's the Americans, it's the Americans, it's the Americans. So that's how that operation starts, right? But now, you know, they're like, oh, God, this Americans are here. So now they're not out in the open. Now they're bunkering down.

So they had built all these bunkers and defensive fighting positions so that they could fight out of towards the Taliban camp. So we had to still clear from where we were all the way to the A&A camp because we were also going to exfil all the dead bodies of our A&A partner force. So it was like 10 guys that were dead that they couldn't get out. That was part of what we were trying to help them do. So we had to get all the way there and eliminate everybody in between. So the very first situation we get into, the first big compound we're about to try to get into, the AC130 had struck a bunker, maybe 30 meters offset from this giant compound.

And so we were trying to get access to this compound walking around. Finally, we found the gate to get in. And we're all standing on the side of the compound as we're waiting to get in. I think I'm element leader on this one too. I get my guys inside and I send out a BDA search, so battle damage assessment search with one of one of my ODA guys, two of my ODA guys and some Afghans. I'm like, hey, can you guys go clear that bunker real quick

that the AC130 struck just to make sure we know what we got? They're like, cool. They go walking out to go do it and then out of nowhere. Boom, machine gun fire, PKK fire everywhere. So apparently, you know, there was four or five guys in this bunker. The AC130 killed the guys on the outside of it, but they're still bunkered in. So our two teammates, you're grabbing grenades and throwing them inside these bunkers, World War II style, end up killing those guys. But that was sort of the first realization of like, oh, shit.

These guys are in these bunkers. Like they are no shit, World War II style bunkered in towards the objective. So that was sort of the realization of like, oh, shit, we can't just walk, like, out in the open at these bunkers. Yeah. There's people inside. So, again, we have to, we're continuing to clear towards the compound. And we get to the second big compound. And, again, we're going through maybe like 100 meters of open area.

Again, with, like, waste-high grass as we get from compound to compound. And so we're maybe halfway there to the Camp Anaconda. nothing really too bad has happened at this point other than you know doing bda's on bunkers and my team started like hey i need you to get to the final the final compound that's sort of the last compound in between um the compound and the camp anaconda so i'm like all right well we got to clear through this this open area to get there so get my guys my afghans ready to go and they go walking outside the compound we get ready to move and as i get to the wall they all comes running back at me and run back inside the compound.

And I'm like, whoa, what are you guys doing? We got to clear this area. And they're like, no way. My Afghans are like, no way. We are not moving through that. And I'm like, what do you mean? Why? And they're like, you look.

And so I go and I look my head out and I look at this big open area. And I mean, it is, they built the bunkers out of dirt and mud, but it's, it's waste high grass, right, with giant bunker. bunker, bunker, every 10 feet, a huge bunker, right? So you're looking at this and you're like, there could be people anywhere in the side grass. Yeah. There's bunkers everywhere.

We know there's people in these bunkers. So the Afghans are like, no way, we're not walking through that. You're crazy. And I'm like, I don't want to walk through that either. But we've got to clear through it. So, you know, I go to my team start and I'm like, I don't know what to do. The Afghans, and we have the Afghan A,

the ANASF guys and they're like, no, wait, this is crazy. And so my team starts like, and the funny thing in SF, anytime there's like a problem that's unsolvable, people always tell you, you're a green beret, figure it out. So this was like the ultimate moment in my career of like, you're a green beret, figure it out, right? So my team starts like, well, I don't know, man, figure it out. And I'm like, oh, okay, how do I, how do I do this? right so I look at my imagery and I'm looking out and now I've got on a second story of a compound

and I'm looking out at these bunkers and I'm like how do I how do I do this but I realize as I'm looking at the bunkers all the doorways and their shooting holes they have set up or face towards the camp so I realize well we can clear this east to west and basically walk through this bunker field without them having any eyesight or access to us as we walk up to the bunkers And so I, you know, I guess I think it's a good plan. So I briefed my Afghans and I'm like, hey, what do we do this? There's no way we're going to get shot if we do this. And the Afghans are like, all right, we'll do it.

And so I'm like, okay, here we go. So me and my teammate and, you know, 10 Afghans, we come walking out the compound from the backside now. And I walk around the corner. And again, it's like Vietnam grass up to your chest with these bunkers. And I'm like, this is the, this is the sketchiest thing I've ever seen in my life, right? I know there's people everywhere. At any moment, anybody could pop up and start shooting. And we breathed, we get the whole element out into the grass.

And once, as soon as we get out into the grass, machine gun fire from across the way blast out of nowhere. And then our team, our other element to our left is firing back at machine guns. Machine gun fire crazy. It actually, they actually aren't shooting at us, but we don't know that, right? So because we had just come out to the open, it's actually the Taliban shooting at our other element and them shooting back. So we go running back around the corner.

You know, like, oh, shit, we're not running out into that bunker field yet. Right. But, you know, kind of like cowards with our tails between our legs just because this is so, you know, it's like World War II, for real. It's like, this is so sketchy. I would say more prudent than cowardice, you know. Yeah, yeah.

But you're like, okay, so, you know, we compose ourselves, and we're like, all right, okay, we can do this. They're not shooting at us. And so we walk out again and, you know, I have two A&A SF guys that are with me out in front. And one of them who, I mean, this guy, when I talked earlier about some of these A&ASF guys who were crazy, this dude, his story basically, he had been fighting in the A&ASF for 15 years. Taliban came to his village when he was six or seven years old and murdered his entire family in front of him. so all he cared about was killing Talbot.

And he was our point, he was our point man for this movement. And so he would walk, you know, we're walking out, we get to the first bunker, and I may be 10 feet away, and he just walked straight up to the bunker, because again, you know, with the way the holes are, they can't see us, he walks up to the bunker.

He looks in, jumps his head out, and looks back at me, and he goes, there's people in here. And I'm like, well, okay, kill him, I guess. And so, you know, he grabs his grenades and he throws them in and blows up the bunker. And we end up clearing through probably like five, six, seven more bunkers that way of these A&AF guys just walking up to the bunkers looking inside. Oh, God, grenades and throwing them in. And eventually clearing through, you know, this whole area that way, which was, again, you know, combat is sketchy in general.

But that was definitely the sketchiest thing. I'd ever done. But anyway, so we we get through this bunker field and we finally make it to our last compound. And then our other element, you know, they have to make the same track. They have to do it through on their side.

And we eventually, you know, clear all the way through. And at this point, we've just eliminated all these talban. And anyway, so I was getting with that, they were Talban Red Unit guys. So we found a bunch of NVGs. And also, we knew they were Talban Red Unit because they Gucci their guns. So they're AKs,

they flare them out with all kinds of crazy ribbons. And like, you know, like they have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like one of those things are like sort of that Arab, like, you know, you go into an Arab convenience store, how flashy it is. Yeah.

They do that with their AKs and everything. So all the guns we were finding were, you know, goochied out and crazy. But something, we've never talked about the red unit on this show. And I think it was something that happened later. on in the war. Can you, can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah. So basically, Taliban Red unit were, um, sort of you could think of the Taliban, Taliban special forces, right? And they were guys that were being equipped. Well, we don't know for sure, but, um, equipped from Iran, most likely and then potentially Pakistan. But they were pretty much exclusively through the

southern part of Afghanistan, at least while we were there. And again, they, they, used them primarily to really hit the A&A hard, right? So they would use their sort of their Taliban soft guys to nail A&A checkpoints and like really cause sort of you know you'd have havoc on the A&A through the south. So that was really their purpose and they were far better equipped. They had body armor. They had night vision. They had all the Gucci equipment. far so. You know, they weren't just regular Taliban villagers that were, you know, fighting at the lowest levels.

These guys were organized. They were equipped. They were funded. And again, they didn't want to fight the United States and they didn't want to fight U.S. soft. They were there to, you know, really cause damage and havoc to the A&A who had, you know, no chance at fighting guys like that. Yeah.

It's funny that, you know, you mentioned how they sort of like Gucci out there, gear because when you think of like US soft if I'm going to get you my gear like you have a 416 upper you do the camo paint on it like you do that yeah yeah for them it's like bedazzling it putting ribbons and flowers yeah yeah it's yeah it's it's it's a very it's a strange sort of comparison or dichotum you know how what they consider um like gold like if they could afford they gold plate it. Exactly. That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Yeah. So we thought a little bit of that, but yeah, the big, like the ribbons, the fancy color, like, you know, peacock type of stuff coming off their A-Ks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's how they, that's how you could tell that you had, you know, higher level tier guys. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's funny because even their personal photos, and I don't mean the red, the red unit, I mean, like, Afghan or, like, their personal photos are generally in a field of flowers or they're like that soft light old like um you know family portrait style you know it's it's interesting it's it's an interesting contrast yeah yeah for sure you know and it's funny because when you when you talk about like this waist high grass these bunkers i think back you know obviously like your dad was venom i think back it's like boy it's too bad we stopped using napalm because that's a perfect like environment for for napal right just burn that grass out and we actually talked about that because that was one of the things before uh again this wasn't like a three-minute

thing where i figured out a plan to yeah to move to this bunker this was like a 30 minute thing of me trying to figure out how to get these guys to agree with that and part of that was you know hey can we get air to basically just blow this bunker field out and strike it yeah um The problem was at that we could have technically, but at that time, both our A10s and our Apaches had to go off station to refuel. So all we had was F-15s. And the F-15s were like, dude, we're not going to, we don't, we're not going to strike an area, you know, 20 meters away from you guys. Like everything's danger close at that point for them. Yeah.

Yeah. So we did, we did have them do a show of force. The only time I ever had F-15s do it, a show of force over the top of us. right before we went out to move, which was, I mean, that was actually insane if anybody hasn't had that done, where they come down about 100 feet off the ground, the F-15s, and then they punch their mock right as they go over the top of you. And I mean, it's like the shockwave blows out and almost blows your eardrums out if you're not ready.

But that was the best we could get, you know, before we move. Because all our other, our actual assets that could strike close like that were off station. So, yeah. So at any point in time when you, or, you know, the other element, when you guys were moving forward clearing these bunkers, you know, with grenades,

did they ever glean on? Did they ever catch on to what was going on? Not really. I think that they were so, you know, having like 30 other dudes immediately smoked right out the gate. I think, you know, I think that it was just chaos for them.

I think it was basically hide in the bunkers. And it was panic big time, right? because they thought, you know, they had controlled this area and they were just kicking the shit out of the A&A for the last month. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, you know, and then so they're coming out to, oh, we're going to we're going to march on out and mess these guys up. And then all of a sudden, you know, it's like, oh, shit, the full might of the American military and soft is here. And what is left of who we have is now in these bunkers. Probably communications gone at that point.

Yeah. So I think that they were just completely disheased. shovel to the point of trying to hide and just survive at that point because of that. The other thing is, you know, once that AC, once that AC 130, like, comes in, you know, comes over the mountain, they can hear just like that lawnmower in the sky. Like, they know what that means, right? Everybody, yeah, every, the A&A knows, the Taliban, everybody knows. They call Big Brother, right?

Everybody knows who Big Brother is as soon as, soon as, and that's why we, that Mountain Range was so awesome. that we were able to keep our aircraft, you know, within strike distance, but just right on the other side of that mount range to where they just have to come right up over the top. They're in orbit and boom. Yeah. That's amazing. So once you guys clear this and you move forward to the A&A compound, like what happens? They're obviously relieved, right?

Yeah. So, oh, man. Yeah, for sure. So we cleared through that. We get to the compound. and then, you know, we go in, we meet all the guys, and we get all their wounded out, and then all they're dead, which we then had to basically carry out and ex-fill out, which I think they had like nine or ten, nine or ten bodies, which had been there a long, long time.

But, yeah, so we got those on helicopters and got all those guys out of there. And, you know, that camp was fine after that because the Taliban, you know, they bailed out of that area. They were like, oh, God, the Americans are willing to fight. But it gained such massive appreciation with our partner force, more so than anything else that we did. That was a huge deal for that relationship between us and our third sock commandos that we did that for them, which was cool to be able to do that too, you know, because you can imagine from those guys in that camp's perspective that are just trying to survive, you know, your buddies are dead everywhere around you. There's nothing left for you to do.

You're struggling to hang on. And then, you know, we show up and kill everybody that's been, you know, smoking your unit for the last month and get your guys out. So that was definitely a really cool thing to be a part of. Was it sketchy when you guys were approaching the A&A combat? How did you de-conflict so if they didn't fire you up? Not really because they had our A&A guys had comms with their guys in the compound. from pretty much the time we hit the ground.

So, yeah, they knew. So we had cleared through. We didn't clear straight up to the compound. We cleared to the final sort of compound, the Talban had control, which was like another 100 meters away from the compound. And then basically Radio had them, the team leaders. And we had the Afghans, obviously, lead and go get the dead bodies and whatnot.

Yeah. We didn't go with them into the compound. But, yeah, they had comms with their own guys. So that wasn't really any problem at all. Now, do you guys, like, did ISR pick up, did anybody exhal from that area near the Taliban? Do you know that you got all the bunkers? So we definitely, yeah, we definitely had dudes after the AC 130 struck that initial engagement. Yeah, there was guys leaving that area.

Like, peace out. Oh, yeah, all over. It was the, you know, from the fringes. Yeah. They were gone. But all those guys who were basically bunkered in that were attacking the. A&A compound, there was nowhere for them to go. Yeah.

I mean, it was. Yeah. There was nowhere to run to. But the guys on the fringes, yeah, they bailed. And they got on their motorcycles and everybody was gone. Once as soon as they heard the AC 130 and the big 105s come in, it was like, if you can get out, get out. Yeah. For sure.

So how did that, you know, so your Afghans go in, they recover the bodies. How did that operation end for you guys? Yeah. So, well, interesting. way that ended. So yeah, we brought all the bodies out. There was a big, big open field that sort of,

we had to move through as we went through the compounds, but it was a good place to bring our helicopters in. And interesting with that. So we had two Chinooks and I think three Blackhawks. We had an extra Blackhawk come in to be able to help bring the bodies out. And we, they all came in sort of at the same time. and my element

where we were posted up we watched all the helicopters come in and land and then no CH47 lands in front of us and so you know I'm looking around like okay we're kind of missing one you know what I mean

and uh watching and you know we do these things quick right the helicopters hit the ground and get on the helicopter and you leave and so I'm watching that and then up they go up they go up they go and all of a sudden all the helicopters in the air and my element is just standing on the ground and we're in enemy territory, right? This is a, again,

this is a place where we're way outside the Medrink. So it's like this is not a place we want to get left. But apparently, whatever this last Chinook, you know, he was like a kilometer away in an open field by himself for whatever reason. But so luckily I was able to still talk to my commander on my radio of like, hey, man, nobody has picked us up. So all the other helicopters loitered,

and we're able to talk on the final helicopter to come by and actually pick our element up, like 10 minutes later. But it was like, okay, this is super sketchy, you know, this is a dangerous area, which we know Talban are in the area. But, you know, I think they, again, we just talked about, they had all bailed out of the area. So it was that dangerous, but it still kind of like, okay, we really don't want to get left.

Yeah. You know, two hours outside of the bed ring. Yeah. But that pilot maybe was the student driver or whatever. Yeah, I don't know. We had some. You know, the 160th is one thing. But those guys are amazing.

But some of our regular Army pilots, some of the stuff we saw was like, man. Just an aside, this is from a just talking about Chinook pilots. from a mission that really didn't have much happen to it at all, but at the very end when we were getting picked up, we got one of the crazier things that happened on our deployment. Same thing. So all our elements are, we're getting ready to X-Fill. We're in our line of 20 guys standing in line.

CCT is IR, roping in the CH-47s out of the ground. We're watching, we've got two PH-47s coming in right at us, two elements side-by-side. The first, C-H-47, you know, it comes in, lands 50 meters, in front of the element, just perfect. And then we're watching RCH-47, and we're like, man, he's still really, really high up in the air. Like, why is he not coming in?

And then it's getting closer and closer and closer to us. And we start to realize, like, okay, he's going to fly. And it looks like almost right on top of us. And by the time we realized it, we're like, oh, God, he's going to land on us. And so everybody takes off running, in different directions. And this CH47 pilot comes in. He realizes he's basically going to land on top of us.

And he yanks his pitch to not land to the point. And so we're kind of at the bottom of a hill like this right here, right? So we're sitting down here. And so he yanks his pitch to not land now. And so his back rotors smack off the ground where we are all, we're just standing, breaks the ground, which would have killed everybody, how they ever not always jumped out of the way. And then his rotor hitting it

launches him upright, and he almost teacels the entire THH-47 up on top of itself. And then barely to get it back up to get around to come and get us. But just an aside for some of the crazier thing, you see some of those pilots. Do you think that was

mostly an experience? Was there a brownout because the other bird had already been in? Yeah. So we, you know, in the Kandahar area and Helmin area, like brownouts are like every single. landing just because it's it's the the way the the terrain is yeah so that the inexperienced pilots really really struggle yeah um with the brownouts the experienced pilots are so used to it they just let their instrument tell them what to do they land they don't really care yeah but the but the

inexperienced pilots for sure those brownouts can cause a lot of yeah a lot of trouble yeah it's funny because i remember i flew with the marines like a marine force recon team once and we're on the marine birds. And as they were landing, I was like, it, like, the rear seems really, it seems like it's down. Like, we're not landing level. And I was thinking, maybe this is,

maybe this is just how these birds land. I don't know. But I look around all like the Marines and their eyes are all like this big. And I'm like, oh, this isn't how they land at all. No, I think, you know, in the brown outset, it's really common too. see that where like it'll start to tilt and the ramp will be like more and more

like they're trying to get the butt of the ramp to touch so they feel better about it. But you're looking out the back like okay this is yeah, this is not good. Yeah. I mean and to be fair to helicopter pilots like it it's a very challenging environment to fly in. Oh for

sure. For sure. And it's not just you know it's night they're under night vision. We're dealing with instruments. It's a brownout. Yep. They're worried about getting shot down by an RPG from who knows where. Yeah. So they got all that going on at the same time. And

you know, a lot of those guys, I'm sure it's, you know, probably their first combat rotation. Yeah. They're actually flying for real, you know, so the stress of that on top of it. Yeah. And for people who might not know, I know a lot of you do, but for people might not know, Brown, uh, simply when a, when a helicopter's coming in, obviously is kicking up a lot of air, a lot of dust and in places like Afghanistan, where the dust is just,

It's like silt sometimes. It's like talcum powder in some places. And it just, it creates a brownout where they can't see anything. And they're on pure instruments. I mean, it's almost like, it's almost like moon dust.

Exactly. It's like. And you're right. I mean, there's no vision at all. You know, sometimes we'll jump off the back and it's like, I'm going to run 20 feet in front of me and face out my knee.

Yeah. And just wait and just wait because you can see anything. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, moon dust is really, you know, it's like you step in it. It's like, like, like, like, talcum powder, just like puffs everywhere. Yeah, for sure. So were there any, like, significant operations for you guys?

Any fun operations for you guys after that one? Oh, I mean, those are, you know, again, there's, there's, most of the other operations have, like, little bits or pieces that are cool or fun. You know, but those are three of the, uh, the biggest ones. Again, we had, um, another operation just for, uh, talking about it wasn't that cool because we didn't really get any gun fights, but we found the number nine most wanted, um, Taliban on the jupitalists at the time. Um, objective ice pick, I think his name was at the time. So for people who don't know, you know, we rack, and the U.S. government racks and stacks,

you know, the most wanted terrorists, um, in areas. So that was, that, that mission really didn't, we didn't have any, it was kind of a, we infilled, nobody wanted to fight and it just happened that we found the guy that we were looking for. So nothing exciting there. The result was cool. But, uh, but yeah, I could talk, um, I could talk briefly about my very first combat operation and some of the ridiculousness that, uh, that happened that's kind of funny um please do if you wanted to hear that yeah so my very first combat operation right um so again my very first one we fly in on the 160th and we land on the target and we're in um an area in arousgan that looks like jesus christ lived there i mean it is mud huts 2000 bc rural type of um environment right there is no green anywhere you look. It's 10 foot tall,

you know, dried out mud walls, sort of like the face of the moon type of things. Every compound wall has murder holes in it as far as you can look. So we hit the X, we jump off. I'm not an element later at this point. It's my first mission. My buddy is. And then so there's some really funny, this has really got really funny stuff that goes with it. We got in a gunfight at the end, but more funny stuff.

So right out the gate are, We're riding in the 160th. And so these guys don't mess around. They fly nap of the earth, which for those who don't know, it's right off the top of the surface of the earth. They fly it the whole way. They fly in fast. They drop. You jump off the aircraft, and they're gone.

There's no messing around. So we hit the X. We jump off. They take off. I look up. There's a compound right in front of us. And immediately we have our, my team leaders with me, our commander. and no, no, he's not.

He's not with us. He's in the other element. And yeah, he's in the other element. And we have our CCTV with us. And so for everybody who knows, the combat controller and the team leader, the ground force commander are always side by side because they work together for any stripes. So our CCP is with us and our commander is 1,000 meters away. And our CCT is looking around and he was like,

Where am I? What happened? So I guess what happened is the other aircraft that he was supposed to be on with the team leader when they landed. He was like trying to get unclipped from, you know, the radio in the aircraft. He didn't do it in time. And by the time he got unclipped and looked, the 160th pilots took back off. And then they were dumping the other half of the element over with us because we sort of did a split infill. And so he gets dropped off with us. And so immediately, first operation, he's like, oh, God, what happened?

I don't know where the commander is. And so our, my senior medic, same guy I talked about earlier, he's like the one with so many combat deployments. He's like, okay, I'll take you, and I'm going to walk you across all these murder holes, first mission back to the team leader, right? So that's how that mission starts, which is just ridiculous. And so we start moving our way through these first compounds. And I mean, it's like everything out of your worst nightmare when it comes to IEDs. There is, there are wires everywhere. You're walking through, wires are getting tangled up in your legs.

Everything looks like an IED nightmare, right? So very first operation. I'm carrying, because in the plan, we're going to knock down this defensive fighting position, I'm carrying the Carl Gustav on my back with rockets, right? So, which I never, ever did again, right? This was a one-time thing that I did. And so I've got the Carl Gustav on my back. You know, for those who don't know, it's this big rocket launcher,

and I'm carrying it around, getting tripped up in wires. And we move up, and it's maybe, you know, we're maybe 30 minutes in. We get to this first compound that I'm supposed to knock down with my Carl Gustav. So that way, because it's a defensive fighting position. We can tell from the imagery, this is a no BS. You can see it built up. We're going to knock down a hole in the wall.

that way we can come in the side of it. We don't have to, you know, stand out and try to breach it and deal with getting grenades throwing on us or anything like that. So my senior 18 Delta, again, he, he's my AG, and we run out into the open. And he's like, all right, man, let's shoot. Let's knock this wall down. So I run out. And, you know, again, my first combat operation ever. And I'm like, okay.

And I'm wind up. And I'm like, where's the wall, you know? And go, God, you know. I don't know. I'm like, I'm so mixed up now. I don't know what's going on. And so he grabs me and he was like, dude, it's over here. He turns me 180 degrees, you know, lines me up onto the wall. And he's like, okay, okay, let's shoot it. And I'm looking at the wall. I'm like, aren't we too close to this? You know, we still laugh about this. We're like, we're like 30 meters away from this wall with Carl Gustav. And he's like, and again, same guy who sprinted towards the bullets in the near ambush. She's like, no, we're fine. We're fine. Don't worry about it. I'm like, okay. And so, you know, he puts the rocket in. And, and he puts the rocket in. I lined it up and, you know, I clack it off, boom. And, of course, the concussion basically knocks us both down because we're so close. And, you know, dust everywhere. I get up.

I'm looking at the wall. You know, it starts to settle, settle, settle. And I look over at him, I'm like, what? Did I miss? What happened? And he's like, no, you hit the wall. But these walls were like two, three feet big of just sun-dried mud. This is all of Gustav round did nothing.

just knocked the dust off of the wall. And so we're like, oh, God, what do we do? And then we look over in our Afghans had been watching us, and they just rolled their eyes, and they just walked in the front gate of this DFP. So we're like, okay, well, all right, we feel pretty silly right now. So we, you know, we run over and just walk in. We get inside this, this compound. And immediately, everything I have been told in the train up,

the last nine months is we use our our uh we had special um afghan guys can't get into the sensitivity of it but they would basically be mine sweeping guys for us so we don't walk anywhere that those guys have they walk in front of us everywhere where we walk that's all i've been taught for the last nine months we get inside the compound some stuff starts happening my same 18 delta well you know wild while this can be is like oh we need to get over there and he's like he's like let's go let's go and so he just pinks off running through an area that hasn't been cleared yet with no mine detector guys. And in an area that looks like there's an IED in every step you could take. And so I'm like, okay, so we take off.

We're going and doing this and that. We get to this sort of half wall on a compound. And again, it's all this dirt mud walls. And everybody's jumping over it to get to the next thing. Again, I got this giant Carl Gustav on my back. I go to step over the wall like this, you know, the walls like this. I go to step over it like this, and the ground beneath me falls out. And so now I'm being held up on my nuts, and I'm stuck with Carl Gustav on the wall.

And I have to have these Afghans come over and basically lift and drag me up over the top of this wall to get me out of there. So it's getting more and more ridiculous, right, as I'm carrying the stupid thing. We get a little bit further in the objective. and we had an EOD tech on our team who had like five or six combat deployments and was one of the craziest dudes I have ever seen. He, I don't know how he was alive anymore. And I'll tell you an example of why. So we roll up and this was in between this and this part was when my buddy threw the

thermobaric and the collapse, one of the things that blew my lips open, right? So all this stuff is happening, right? Um, so it's just, I'm like, this is what combat is. This is ridiculous, right? I'm, I'm, I'm struggling. I'm trying to, I've also got this giant rocket on my back. I'm trying to get through the doorways of these buildings. And you know, the Afghans are small.

So these buildings, they're like four foot tall, uh, doorways by three feet. So I'm, you know, and I'm six foot two with this giant rocket launch on my back, uh, struggling to get through. And then we finally are getting towards the end of the objective. And we find a. a cache down in a basement that's just massively filled with explosives.

Not massively, but quite a bit of explosives down this sort of basement. And my 18 Delta, he's like, I'm going to move on and keep clearing towards the end of the objective here. You guys go ahead, you and the EOD tech, go ahead and bib that. And so I'm like, okay.

So I look down in it, and again, the basement is like, that's the most ID-looking thing I've ever seen. scene. No way I'm, you know, no way I'm going down there. My EOD tech is like, no, it's no big deal. I'll go throw some C4 on that. He runs down the stairs, goes and sets these C4s on all the C4 blocks on all this. Rigs the charge, comes back up. And so we're standing next to the mud wall with the basement that's sort of beneath us to the left. And he hands me the, the, the, the, like the clacker. Yeah, he has me to.

clacker and he's like you want to blow it up and i'm like all right man i guess right so he's like all right go for it you know and we got we got our shoulders to the wall you know we're hunker down and i do you know i'm like push quarter turn pull nothing happens and he's like uh do it again i'm like push quarter turn pull nothing happens it's like it's and now it's failed and i'm like oh god right and so he then we just had a failed failed explosive on this he runs back down onto the charge after this has just failed, which anybody who's been around explosives, and I was like, this is the last thing you would ever do.

Right, right. Especially without disconnecting at all. Yeah, exactly. Insane. And again, this is my first combat operation. All this is happening. I'm watching this. Like, I'm watching these guys that have done, you know,

multiple deployments. This is crazy shit. Like, this is what we're, so this is what we do. We just do insane shit like this. So he runs down, rigs it up. And he rigs. way longer a way longer charge on it this time. So we're able to like back up like 15 more feet and get behind a different wall.

And I'm like, okay, this seems a little bit more safe. And so we get behind the wall and this time push quarter turn, let it off. Boom, right? The explosion is so big that it's basically raining mud clods like across the entire objective. There's Afghans running around, try to get under cover. and I look up in the building with the basement that we just had our shoulders next to, right, is gone. It's a giant crater in the ground. And I look at him and I'm like, we were standing next to that when we tried to clack that off the first time, you know?

And he was like, oh, whoops, no, it worked out. So, yeah, that's, and then, okay, so, and then the final part of that person, sort of funny thing in first common operation. So we get through that. We get to the sort of the line of advance, which was these two-story compounds that ended up

in a big vegetative field. And so we basically got up on top of these buildings and there was actually Taliban that were maneuvering out in the grass. And sort of a gunfight sort of kicked off as me and another guy were up on top of the roof. And

you know, bolts start flying. So we just start wheying rounds out into the fore crazy. Basically, you know, you're not really shooting at anything. Like panicking, you know, like backing up, getting down behind cover. And, you know, the same 18 Delta, I was just talking about so many combat deployments. He, like, looks up over the ladder and is watching us and just starts laughing at us. And he's like, what are you guys even shooting at? You know what I mean?

And we're like, is that worth the CIB? And he's like, no, no, no, no. No chance. But, but yeah, yeah, so that was sort of, uh, my first my first time on a on a combat mission with just ridiculous stuff happening around me. And it's funny too because like there's there are best practices, right? They're the things that like this is how we do it. But then there's the reality and the practicality of yeah,

we're not waiting for our Iraqi like mine sweepers like to go ahead of us before every step we take. Exactly. Yeah, so that right out the gate on that mission was me realizing like, oh, you know, and then later, you know, later in combat missions and later in my career, you know, you don't even think about stuff like that. But when you're a brand new guy and you've been training. Yeah. To standard. And then you're watching all these older guys just like not do any of the things that, you know, you said were the most important things to do. Yeah.

It's funny. Yeah. And combat is one of those things, right? where because of the it's ludicrous. Like combat is just ludicrous. And the worst things happen and the funniest things happen. Like,

yes. Right. And everything's like heightened and elevated. Yeah. And you know, it's funny because you say that is because some of the funniest stories, for example, you know,

that right after that near ambush, me laughing at Afghans taking turnip kits off their buddies. Right. heinous things with hilarious things. Right. And it's like people that haven't ever experienced it, they can't really understand. You know, I've had people say before when I'm telling those stories, you know, you're laughing at things in the story and they're like, they can't figure out. They're like, this is intense and horrible.

How could you be laughing at that? And it's like, well, you have to really understand sort of the morbid reality of what's going on. Yeah. And have that, that has to be part of your sense of humor. otherwise I don't think you could really function. Yeah. You know, in that reality because it is so dark.

Right. And humor is that like pressure released a lot of times. Like, you know, when a guy's clearing a building under fire and he steps in like, like a toilet hole and comes out, comes out to the knee coated in human, you know, like in shit.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's like, it's like, yeah, you're still under fire, but this is absolutely hilarious. Yeah.

Yeah. And there's, there's a lot of that. Yeah. And I hope people don't You know, I tell the stories I hope people don't think that I'm a cavalier About some of this stuff

You know, because I can laugh about some of it In reality, you know, I've gone through a ton of behavior health Yeah To deal with things I've been through. Yeah. You know, years of work with therapists But you have to be able to laugh about stuff like that Because I think, you know, you have to compartmentalize it.

Yeah. somehow if you want to, you know, continue to lead a decent mental stability in your life. Yeah. But I think that you see the same type of behavior in like ER doctors and nurses. Like, you know, you have to find that, that, that lining, right? Yeah, I think, I think that's a good example for sure. People that, you know, see a lot of death and tragedy, for sure. You have to be able to departmentalize that.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, so that was, that was all, like, one, that was a super active deployment. And, yeah. And again, those were just three of the, like, the big ones. Every mission we had, you know, I think we killed close to 600 confirmed, you know, so those three missions was probably 150 to 200. So, you know, you still got 10 more missions where sporadic, 1020 guys, 10, 20 Taliban.

here, there, you know, small gun fights here, there, quick snippets, you know, things like that. But, yeah, it was, it definitely was a huge, hugely kinetic deployment overall, for sure. You know, you spoke to something earlier, you know, a little bit that, you know, when you were in the bunkers or when you're taking out, like, one of the things that people don't understand in combat, especially when it's at night under night vision, it's very confusing, right? Like a lot of times you don't even, like one of your buddies might be in a gunfight and you have no idea where the fire's coming from. Like it's just very confusing. For sure. For example, you know, the guy who got shot next to me, part of that being under night vision is I can't see what type of uniform he has on. I don't know.

I can't tell. I can see his face. I can't see really much about him. Right. Of me being worried is that my teammate, right? Right. You know, and I don't want to sound morbid about it, but had I known right away that that wasn't my teammate, I wouldn't have been concerned whatever at all

than Afghan just got shot. I've been more focused on the gunfight. But, you know, that's sort of an example of what you're talking about. Of sort of that fog of war, especially in her night vision, is a real thing for sure. Yeah. So you guys finish up your 2018 deployment

and then you're back on the shoot basically starting a training cycle for another deployment. So, yeah. What had happened, so we come back from the 2018 deployment, and that team had been together for almost three years, almost every guy in that team. So it was sort of that time in everybody's career were broadening assignments were happening. Some of the higher-ranking guys were moving into the E8 room to take their own teams. So the team, I had to have surgery on both my knees, and some other guys had injuries they had to deal with. So that team sort of broke apart for the most part.

And then I did, I had recovery on my knees. And I ended up going to a mountain team after that because by the time I had recovered, the dive team I was on had replaced the 18 echoes. And my start major asked me if I wanted to go ahead and be on a mountain team, which, you know, I thought cool. That's a new experience, which that one, you know, no combat on that one. We did a cool trip to Mongolia,

which that was an interesting one. Not many guys have been to Mongolia, which was a fun trip. But I was only on a mountain team for about a year and a half until 2020-ish when the 18-Delta, my senior 18-Delta, I've been talking about this whole time. He had taken a Halo team out in Okinawa, and there was another Afghanistan rotation,

getting ready to be spun up for the pre-trained up. And he had one of the only teams from Okinawa that was going to be going to Afghanistan, because most teams from Okinawa hadn't been to combat in years. And so I reached out to him and was like, hey, you need an 18 Echo. This was also going to get me out of being a SWIC instructor. So I was able to stay on a team by bypassing that. So he was able to hold 18 Echo Slot for me. I was able to PCS out to Okinawa get on his team.

And then we started another train up for the next Afghanistan rotation that we were going to do in 2021, which I could talk a little bit about that because that is going to lend into obviously what everybody saw with what happened in Afghanistan. I don't know if we'd want to talk about things that are that politically charged on the show, but I could if you want. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's history. Let's not avoid it. I mean, it is what it is. But I'm going to assume that at this point in time, you're the older, wiser man who foist the Carl Gustavs off to the bravos.

Yeah, you know, at this point, I'm five years on a team, right? So, you know, I'm a senior E7 at this point, Elmant leader, you know, I'm getting brought to the team to be sort of that guy that, you know, my 18 Delta, who was that senior guy for me with that experience as a team guy. He sort of is bringing me to the team to sort of be that guy for his team, sort of that right underneath him, senior leader at this point going into the next time. So how does that, so tell us about that. You go to, you go to Okinawa, you go to the first group team out there? Yeah, so he was in, so I go, see, he's got a Halo team out in Okinawa. And again, most, Okinawa hadn't been to Afghanistan in almost a decade, just because for whatever reason.

But I don't know why we just all of a sudden decided we wanted two teams from Okinawa to go on the next Afghanistan deployment. I guess because of the highest levels, command was upset that Okinawa wasn't holding their weight in the combat realm. I don't know, whatever. But of course, you know, my wild old 18 Delta Senior, he was the one that managed, of course, to find his way to be team sergeant to be the team that was going to go back to combat because that's what he did. So I wanted to be a part of that. So he saved me a slot on the team. My PCS out there. I get to the team.

And, I mean, they're in trainups for Afghanistan when I get to the team. So they are currently in Safawak, which is our Special Forces Urban Assulter course. So usually as an ODA before combat, you do that together for about a month, which really trains tons of urban combat, CQB, all that different stuff, as an ODA. So they're in the middle of that course when I get out to Okinawa and then moving straight into the pre-mission training cycles of PMT one, two, and then a battalion validation. So sort of three different PMT events that we do, sort of that six-month build-up to a combat deployment. So that's how I get out there. But yeah, so we do our, which is funny because we get out to Okinawa and then all our PMT stuff is in America. So I PCS out to Japan and immediately spend the next year back in America training.

And so we, and the team on one is very good. So we, but again, we're the one Okinawa team that's going to deploy with one of the battalions from Group Main. So nobody really was that happy about us being there, you know? We were sort of like stepchild that was sort of us and a one of the teams from Seco, the Criff, was also with us. That was going to be a part of it. But we ended up being one of the highest ranked teams at the validation. which sort of made sense because we had, our team sergeant was the 18 Delta was talking about

insane amount of combat experience, amazing leader. You had me as one of the element leaders. And then the second Elman leader on our team was one of the senior guys from that 2018, that 2018 trip on our sister team that was in Helmand. So we had a huge senior core of guys. Our 18 Bravo had multiple combat appointments. So again, we had a, a, ODA with a lot.

lot of combat experience again ready to go so we were looking at having a pretty good mission going into that trip which would have been into 2021 and then yeah so we got to we finished our both our PMTs our validation and we got back to Okinawa we went on our 30 days free deployment leave which is a pretty standard thing after your PMTs you know you spend your time with your family you grow out your beer you get ready to leave, right? And so we had shipped all of our equipment in the ISUs to, I think it is going through Dubai into Afghanistan. I mean, we are that close to deploying to Afghanistan, right?

Like we are three weeks into, we got like a week left. I got my beard grown out. We're ready to go. We're supposed to go to Bogram. Basically, ideally, most likely going to be facilitating an entire soda. So upwards of 18. 21 ODAs were going to be at Bogram to basically facilitate the next probably six months of leaving Afghanistan. That was sort of the idea at the time.

I'm not an officer. I don't know the exact battle plan, but that sort of was the idea, which made sense because, you know, for what people don't realize is that we would have one SOTIF that same amount of ODAs that held control over the entire country of Afghanistan at a time, right? So you're going to have that level of firepower just up in Bogram to be able to facilitate that. And then we get the announcement, basically right before we're going to leave, of trips canceled. You guys aren't going. We're shipping your gear back, and we end up basically getting told we're going to Australia and said next week. So you can imagine we are not happy. Nobody's happy. And it's not our team. It's the entire SOTF guys will now be going into Afghanistan. So we just pulled out the guys who were there, all the teams, and our SOTIF was supposed to be the ones that backfilled that. And, you know, the powers that V decided we don't need that. And then here's the reality of what we saw happen right after that in the catastrophe of the fall of Kabul and Boggham and Afghanistan.

Again, I hate to get to political, but the reality is I know that that didn't have to happen the way it happened. Because we were literally supposed to be there. And so people understand the Taliban will not fight a soda from Green Berets. They won't fight an ODA of Green Berets. Right. All you would need us is just to be there. Right. And the whole thing would have never happened because they wouldn't have fought us.

They wouldn't have tried. They would have just waited, right? But as soon as they found out, oh, there's no more bearded ones. Oh, okay. Now, we'll just take the country over. So that's the sad reality of, you know, what has happened. And I've watched, you know, podcasts of some of the guys that have lost legs and arms that were a part of that and the guys that were killed. And it was all needless.

None of it had to happen. So it's sad for sure. And obviously, you know, I haven't really wanted to talk about that before, but it just pisses me off so much. you know I've lost you know best friends and teammates to that to that war the hardest part about it is is that is the guys have lost to that and the time I spent there and it was to watch that happen so now it's to me that's a point where it's like I don't care I'm just going to be honest and tell the truth of what happened and what we had available and the decisions that you know the government made

Yeah. People should know that, I think. They should know that a better, a better plan was in place, and we actively decided, screw it. We don't care. We're going to do it this way instead. Right. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting how you're speaking about this, because we, and we've talked about it on the show a couple of times, but, you know, people talk about post-traumatic stress a lot, but something that doesn't come up in popular conversation yet is the idea of moral injury. you know, and this idea that, and obviously, you know, guys from Vietnam definitely had this too, especially guys who worked closely with the indigenous peoples. It is this idea that you look at an event like that and you say, it's not even withdrawing from Afghanistan because I think that all, like, veterans and all, like, military people were like, yes, there needs to be a plan in place for withdrawing. Like we don't know what we're doing there.

We're not like we, it's like you talked about the VSO. We took this ground and then we give it up. You know, our government at no point in time ever had a cohesive idea of what victory meant there. But then to just turn around and and leave the way we left was psychologically, first off, it was harmful to the troops that were there. It was harmful to the Afghans or Afghan allies. And then it was also harmful to the veterans, you know, and, you know, in the people involved in that war. That, well, that was shitty. Yeah.

Yeah. And you know, and you're right. Even when I was there, it was kind of like, what, you know, what exactly are we doing here? Right. So once we had eliminated ISIS, al-Qaeda's gone. I mean, I'm not an idiot. The Taliban didn't care about global politics and everything. They just wanted everybody out so that they could, you know, have the country the way they wanted it, right?

Was the Taliban, you know, conducting terrorism across the world? No. Right. Like, you know, they're assholes. They're horrible. Like, it's horrible. They're horrible the way they treat women, the way they, you know, treat people. But is it our job to go everywhere and get rid of all.

horrible people all over the world. Exactly. And that's what I mean is that, like, I'm, I think we were all, we were all aware. The only reason we were fighting was for the guys next of us when I was there, you know what I mean? But at the same time, you know, especially

you know, our guys, like our Hazarin guys that were basically been keeping SF guys alive and keeping our legs on our bodies for 15 years. Those guys, I mean, so many times I would go to step somewhere and they would stop me, grab me, and they would make sure they stepped in front of me

as that they would take that ID before I took it. Those were some of the people that we decided that, and those were the ones that got slaughtered by the Taliban because the Taliban knew that they had been working with U.S. soft for so long, you know, so. Yeah. You're right. I think, you know, I talk, and I get to talk to my dad about that one a lot, having, you know, him being an ACAM guy in Vietnam and dealing with Indage. And we talked. sort of that same thing of, you know, we did the same thing to, to the, uh, the mutton yards and the Vietnamese, um, when we left, um, Vietnam. Yeah, we left them to get slaughtered, too. So, yeah, it's a, it, it is tough. And, uh, you know, it's, it's again, one of those things where I,

you know, sort of just kept my mouth shut about it for a long time, but I just am, and kind of tired of doing that because, um, it just angers me so much in a lot of ways. Just being a guy who knew, that, you know, like, and again, one of the frustrating things is like, guys like me, SF guys with at the time, I would have had seven years team time, combat experience, all these things. I would have been there on the ground in charge of ODAs facilitating that. And instead, we sent a bunch of kids from the 82nd that were 18, 19 years old to do that. You know what I mean?

That's what really drives me crazy is that, you know, we had guys like me and my teammates that, you know, what have you trained? trained us for for this whole time. Like, you had everything you needed. You know, you had, you had Delta. You had a whole soda. Like, everything was there. So it wasn't like we didn't have a better option.

And I think that's what anger somebody, angers us so much in that regard. Yeah, it was an administrative failure. And whether it was with, you know, the administration with Biden or with the military or the state department, like, I don't know how it all broke down. but it was a failure, a complete failure. Yeah, and again, I have no idea where the order for us not to go came from. No clue. Right.

It was just, hey, you're not going. Right. Diverr. Right. So. Let me see if we have any questions. Dee, do you mind checking Patreon? Let me see if we have any questions for you.

What are you doing now? Where can people find you? Yeah, so I retired last month. And I am currently a firearms instructor, so start my own business. So my YouTube is Volhala firearms training. So sort of, you know, Viking ball haulet, firearms training. Same thing on Instagram. And just a subset of what I do.

So I kind of think of what I do is sort of being a green beret and poor civilians, right? So I teach all kinds of different stuff, conceal kids. carry courses to trauma medicine, teach basic to pistol to rifle courses, but also more advanced stuff in advanced carbine courses, CQB, things like that. I'm just getting started. I'm going to be relocating down in Oregon here in a couple weeks. But yeah, that's going pretty well. looking to hopefully get into working with, you know, the SWAT teams and the sheriff's department, things like that down there, really transferring all that knowledge that I have not only to that, but also to sort of the civilian community so that they can, you know, defend,

protect, you know, their families as well, because I think there's so much that that we learn and we get trained into that is applicable to civilians as well. So like I tell people, you know, I'm insanely well-versed in CQB. It's the thing I took to the most in my career. I love it more than anything. But that's transferable to everyone because if you're a gun owner and you have a home, what is your home? Your home is a CQB situation.

You know what I mean? Do you know how to fight off a home invader? Right. Things like that. So, yeah, that's what I'm doing right now is ideally, you know, I work for the government for so long. Hopefully I can, you know, build my own business, which is going really well so far. I already have that all started.

But, you know, hopefully doing the part of my military career as a green beret that I love. And then, you know, transitioning that into the civilian world as well. Because I think I have a lot of beneficial stuff to impart on people that are interested in. That's fantastic. So could people come to you for their Carl Gustav training needs also? Yeah, no, I don't. have a, I don't have a Carl Gustav. And I also don't shoot him anymore.

I've had my brain rattled one too many times. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You only need to be, the Carl Gustav is one of those things like, when they're like, hey, we have ex-roundts. Who wants to shoot him? I'm like, no.

I'm good. No, I'm good. I'm good. For sure. So, Joe's got you. Thank you very much. I know you're not sought A. But in the time frame you were in Afghanistan.

Did you see the Taliban adapting, changing? and to our SIGAN capabilities. Ooh, that's a good one. So we always had Saudez with us on mission. But I really, I hate to try to talk on things that I'm not an expert on. And that's really, you know, the Saaday realm is really their own separate thing. So I don't have a good answer on that. I actually don't know on that one.

Yeah. Now, as an echo, you didn't have any, like, big draw to the, Sardais, you're like how you guys do your thing? Yeah, surprisingly. So not really. I mean, as an 18 Echo, I didn't really get into a whole lot of that because we usually had two soddies attached. Yeah.

And again, we're so split up on four different elements. Like, your MOS is sort of a very, very secondary thing. Yeah. You know, whether you're an 18 Echo or a Charlie or Bravo, like in combat, you are an operator on an element. you know, for my specific MLF, that pretty much was over, you know, once we left the team room. Once everybody's radios are filled and, you know, everything's good. Everybody's got comms, you know, other than me being dual-combed and listening in on, you know, also the aircraft and things like that, like that side of it was pretty much over.

The rest of it was, you know, focused on clearing operations and that side of it. Yeah. You know, you mentioned, you know, that you had these combat enablers and your CCTV guy and you guys had a lot of air. Like we've talked about on the show before, like the JT, the TACs, like how professional, like how good those guys are at their jobs. Yeah. So, I mean, I am a SOTAC. I am a TAC. So I can talk on that. But, you know, for us, as an SF guy, I have so many sort of hats and jobs that I'm wearing, especially as you get into senior levels of it where you might be a main element leader.

So for example, if I'm a main. element leader and I'm in control of moving 30 you know 30 guys I can't also be the guy who's battle tracking everyone around me who's who's controlling aircraft who's telling in strikes there's no way that that I could ever do both of those things so typically you know I do know a few sF guys so tax that that did do it in combat yeah were their were their teams main guys but for the most part, we usually had Air Force CCTs or JTACs attached. Yeah. Just because our workload's way too high to be able to handle stuff like that.

Yeah. And that's a full-time job. I mean, it's hard to do that and anything else. No, it's an MOS by itself. And, you know, it's the most, it's the most important MOS or job on the ground as well. And it's the most dangerous one because if you messed up, you're going to kill your own guys. Yeah. So there's no room for air on that. at all. So you don't want a guy who's like controlling aircraft as his third job.

Yeah. That's, that's yeah. It's not ideal. Yeah. Jackson, thank you very much. Did you ever work with the SIF, C-TAC or CAG and SF? What were your thoughts? So how often do you see guys want to go either route? So, I mean, I heard Cag, but what was the other one? The SIF, but I think they got rid of the SIF, didn't they? Oh, Kriff. Oh, is it Chris now? Yeah, Krip. I'm sure they're talking about Krif. So the Krip is in Okinawa. Yeah, so they got rid of the Krip. Right. They don't call them the Krips anymore, but SICO is still the Krip. They're still doing the same functions. So I was looking at going to SICO, but Siko's mission said didn't really lend to combat, really at all.

So a lot of guys that sort of gone away from SICO to the line ODAs. For example, in my last ODA, two or three guys that were from the KRIFF originally, which was great for me because I've been trained by the KRIF guys for so long in my career in CQB and stuff like that, which they are absolutely insanely good at. I mean, that is,

when you talk about CQB and stuff like that, the Krip and Delta, those guys, that's the ultimate level, highest level in the world, both those organizations. So yeah, I worked with a ton of KRIF guys because I had them on my team, which has been great for me because I've stolen

so much of what I know from those guys. And then for Delta, yeah, I worked with quite a few Delta guys on different types of things. So on that 2018 trip, we had a contracted advisor that was a 20-year tag sergeant major, who was one of the most – I'm not going to give any names, but he's one of the most awarded soldiers in American history. And he was with us and out on every operation. So working with him was was pretty wild on a one, just the stories, but just that level of professionalism. You know, there's levels of professionalism. Even in the soft world, you have forces very high, and then you get to Delta Force, and it's just insanely, insanely professional.

And then also I did a, not an operation, but a training event with Ag surveillance unit a few years ago. And that was really cool. I was basically, I played a North Korean security guard so their guys could surveil us through, I'm not going to say areas or anything like that because, you know, it's sensitive. But I got to be a part of watching them do that side of things, which was pretty awesome. Those guys are, you know, I've got quite a few close friends and old teammates who are over in Kagan now. So, you know, I get a little bit of knowledge here and there about what they're doing. but yeah, definitely those guys are incredible for sure.

Fantastic. I got a idea. If there's one thing you could take away from the U.S. Army Special Forces, or if there's one thing you could add or take away from SF, what would it be? Add or takeaway. So it already happened for takeaway, which was when SVAB was created, right? So the ESVAB, for those who don't know, sort of came in and took the place of training the host nation armies, regular army forces, which Special Forces was dealing with for a long time, which just became such a huge pain for us in trying to deal with that and then also running operations. So I actually do like that that happens, something I can, that we can, that we can.

could add to special forces. Oh. So I think, you know, making SF a tier one unit so that we had the funding that, you know, things like Ranger Battalion have. I think it's, you know, kind of BS that, you know, Ranger Battalion and no knock on Ranger Battalion, like those guys are awesome. I mean, a third of the SF guys I know are from Ranger Battalion, but, you know, it's kind of, pisses us off that, you know, there's the 18-year-old Ranger guys running around that are Tier 1. you know, a 40-year-old S-F guy with 10 years experiencing him with Tier 2 operator. But, yeah, I would say that. Has it changed?

Because Rangers used to be Tier 2 and then S-F, I thought was Tier 3. Did that change? Yeah, so that's changed. So Rangers of Tier, as far as it used to be, Rangers of Tier 1, because they do a lot of stuff with Kag. And then S-F is Tier 2. Okay. Now, that could have changed recently or whatnot, but from the last time I remember that's not.

I mean, I'm just, like, going back to, like, when I was in which age is. ago. So, yeah. So, yeah, definitely, because I do remember because it was when we were in Afghanistan, it was always Cag and Ranger Battalion that we're getting 160th and so our ODA. So, and that was white, right?

And you guys got the tail landing, the rotor strikes. Yeah, well, I mean, we got the 160th sometimes, but then you'd also get the Hawaiian National Guard, you know, air aircraft sometimes for like high profile missions, which

just seemed kind of wild but yeah um and then scott thanks any tips for a 29 year old trying to actually learn a second language for the first time japanese man japanese yeah so foreign language is rough um chinese was really really rough i would say do you have to really just get immersed in it you know we in language school you do six months straight at eight hours a day with an instructor who is from that country and you pretty much much exclusively speak it. The best way of seeing guys learn it is through what's called a let or they actually go live in, you know, if you're Japanese, you actually go live in Japan with a Japanese family and guys

can learn it way faster that way. But if you don't have access to that, then however you can immerse yourself into it, the better, you know, it's, foreign language isn't really, there's no secret to it. I think it's just the more you speak it. and the more you immerse yourself in it, the faster you're going to pick it up for sure. Yeah. And when you consider that any five-year-old

in any country can speak their language, like it points to what you're saying is that it's immersion. Yeah. It's that repetition of, yeah, for sure. So everybody check out Nate at Firearms or Valhalla Firearms Training on YouTube, like subscribe right now. and also Valhalla Firearms Training on Instagram. What were you saying, Dee?

In the description. Huh? In the description. Yeah, it's in the description. But also, if you're listening on the podcast, check them out, subscribe, follow, join. Nate, thank you very much. Yeah, this was fun for sure. I really appreciate it. Yeah.

So. I like, you know, I like, you know, It's my second podcast I've done, and it's definitely, you know, so much of this stuff I haven't really talked about before, other than, you know, with my teammates. So it's kind of therapeutic in a way, I think. Yeah. To sit down with, you know, another soft guy like you and who understands and have a free, you know, sort of safe space to talk about this type of stuff. So definitely a cool experience. I appreciate it.

We appreciate you, man. Like, we appreciate you coming on. We, you know, like our goal here is just record. history on the personal level and you know and there there are things that like if we could go back and and listen to podcasts with the guys who were on omaha beach or you know you know like you know it's amazing and and we have a unique way of capturing history these days that they didn't have in the past where you know hopefully one of these days you know your kids your grandkids you know your great-parent grandkids will be able to to find this and see who you were yeah

And, you know, that's a cool way you put it. And, you know, you think about it. You know, all the stuff, you know, it's not just me. It's just what my ODA has done and all the guys have done. You know, I mean, that's something like this. That's going to disappear someday. Nobody but us is going to know. And you're right.

I think, you know, as I've gotten older and gotten away from it, and just all the things I know so many guys that I've worked with have done to not let the American public. public know what our soft operators have done over the last 20 years, I think is a is a grave injustice to not only us, but also to the American people. I think they need to know that's sort of the heroism and the things that they have no idea were happening. Oh, absolutely. And I would go so far to say not even not not even just a soft operator. It's like, you know, like anybody who were was involved in in the conflicts, anybody who was, you know, like there are, there

There's so much history there from, you know. You know, you mentioned that and you're absolutely right. I shouldn't say just soft operators. For example, I was watching Cody Alford's podcast with Sean Ryan talking about Fallujah. And you know, I've got buddies that were in Fallujah. They haven't really talked to me about the stories, but listening to his story about that is absolutely, even for me, it was like, God, I was in some heinous stuff, but I cannot even. imagine being in that, which, which is while I actually know that he talked about a Delta Force operator that killed Uday Hussein in his podcast. Actually, you know, we know the guy. Yeah.

He's talking about. But yeah, you know, you listen to that and you're like, this is a 19-year-old kid that that type of thing that I couldn't, I couldn't even fathom as a, you know, at my level of what that was like, you know, insane. Yeah. I mean, you know, we, you know, we, You mentioned Gucci earlier. And Soft had a very Gucci war in these wars. And it's not that, you know, Soft didn't like undergo stuff. But there were,

there were like people out at these fobs, you know, conventional that we're out there for 12, 14 months. Like, hook and jab every single day. For sure. Without the AC 130, without the A10s,

you know, without all that stuff, you know, and, you know, it's like, I said, I've talked about this before, but like some of the people I have the most respect for, the Arkansas National Guards, like they're, they're, I don't know, their Cav or Bradley, like,

whatever, like those guys were hooking and jabbing all day long in Iraq. Yeah, and, you know, you bring up a great point. And, and what I mentioned earlier talking to, you know, about my dad and some of those guys in their stories, you know, that's sort of the realization for me of like, yeah, I was a nasty, fire fights and things like that. But I flew back to the pub and went back and called my wife and had chow after that.

You know what I mean? So when you talk about sort of the level of comfort and the back half of the last 10 years of the war, when I fought I'm not naive to think that I was in any of the nastiest stuff

compared to what you're talking about there for sure or in Fire Wars. I definitely I definitely got to do the you know the Gucci side of war where we flew in and we had the advantage well me too yeah Jack

we took a fight we had all the air you got the air stacked again we got nasty situations and we got fucked up in a lot of ways but you know there's which you can't really compare those you can't

I try not to compare myself to anyone else I think you can't you can't do that because I think we're all all of us that have been war fighters and we've all gone through different. Absolutely. Absolutely. But there's still that, yeah. There's still that common, that common thread that binds us all together that

have been through that type of thing as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we deeply, deeply appreciate you. Thanks for spending a Friday night with us. Yeah. Everybody, check out Valhoa Firearms Training. Check out our sponsors, AARP Veteran Report and Vitamin 1.

and we will see you. Is it next Friday, D? Monday. Monday, the 14th, I think we have Aaron Hale on. He's a former EOD, got injured, now he runs ultra-marathons. I don't know how anybody in EOD hasn't, like how there's somebody in EOD that hasn't been injured.

It's like the most stressful job, I think, in the military. For sure. So we'll see you guys Monday. Jack will be back, hopefully. And Nate, we will see you soon, man. All right. You can hang out for a second. We'll say goodbye to everybody else.

Thanks, everybody.