The Team House - "Special Projects" in Special Forces | Randy McElwee | Ep. 390

Episode Date: January 3, 2026

In this episode of The Team House, we sit down with a former U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Beret) combat medic who also spent time with the 75th Ranger Regiment, tracing his path from enlistment through the SF pipeline and into high-tempo operational assignments. He breaks down the realities of unconventional warfare, battlefield trauma care and medevac under pressure, and lessons learned from deployments and partner-force work (including the Gulf War and training alongside Pakistan’s SSG). We also get into building combatives and medical training programs, leadership on an ODA, and how 9/11 reshaped the mission and the generation that followed.Today's Sponsors:Qualia Life ⬇️Take control of your cellular health today. Go to https://qualialife.com/HOUSE to get 50% off and save an extra 15% with the code HOUSE.GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 25% off! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"09:15 — Choosing Combat Medic Over Comms33:50 — Q Course Graduation & Desert Team Assignment50:21 — Operation Salam: Mine Strike & Emergency Care54:43 — UW Reality Check: Tribal Politics & Taliban Ties1:02:20 — Gulf War Deployment: CAS Teams in Saudi Arabia1:07:34 — Friendly-Fire Risks, Lock-Ons & Breaching Minefields1:23:29 — Training with Pakistan SSG at Cherat1:40:44 — Building Ranger Downed-Pilot / Trauma Rotations1:46:38 — Life in Ranger Regiment Without a Tab2:04:52 — Taking Command of an ODA & Raising Standards2:13:01 — Combatives Program → Gracie Week → 9/11 Shock2:22:41 — Transition to UGA: Training the Post-9/11 GenerationBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

The Team House with your host, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, guys, this is episode 387 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with today's guest, Randy McAwee. Randy served in Fifth Special Forces Group. He is a veteran of Desert Storm. Also, some interesting special project missions that he did in the Afghanistan, Pakistan region. and a whole number of other things. Martial arts plays a big role in his life.

He was a part of bringing combatives to special forces. He did some cross-training with a third Ranger battalion after the Black Hawkdown or Operation Gothic Serpent. And he was also a team sergeant not once but twice, which is super rare and really cool. And today he runs a jiu-jitsu business, a number of different businesses. you know, around martial arts. So Randy, thank you for joining us on the show today. Thanks for having me. Randy, tell us a little bit.

You know, I always ask everyone this. They're, you know, the regular people who watch the show are probably sick of me. But the origin story, if you tell us a little bit about what your upbringing was like and how that took you towards military service. Okay. So I was a kid from a real small town in West Virginia, right in the center of the the state. The town had two stoplights and really didn't need either one of them, but they had two because the county seat five miles up the road only had one, so they had to just do better. I grew up

my entire life there, you know, a lot of outdoor stuff, hunting, fishing, camping, and, you know, played high school football, didn't really have a vision for what was going to happen after high school didn't see myself as academically, you know, smart enough to go on and do college. So when I got out of high school, I graduated and took a construction job. Quickly found out that did not love construction. You know, didn't get any sleep. I was getting up at like 3.30 in the morning getting home about 9 o'clock at night for the majority of the year and then come, you know, about December. through January, got laid off and, you know, kind of had to figure out the rest of it.

So at one point, I decided that it really wasn't working out for me. It was kind of, you know, it almost gave me a nervous breakdown. I lost like 20 pounds because it wasn't eaten. I was stressed out. A lot of times I would kind of wake up in the morning on the drive-in about staring the headlights of a tractor trailer because I was about to run into them. So I was, I didn't adjust too well to working that hard and didn't really connect with the people in the job. But when I was in high school, I had taken the ASVAB at one point to get out of class. It was a great way to kind of get out of class. I didn't take it too seriously, but I didn't take it.

And all the recruiters kind of had started coming by because I played sports and scored fairly well on the Asbab. So they were always trying to get me into the military. I kind of brushed him off. And then the Army recruiter kind of followed up later, but not to get me in the Army, but he was a deer hunter and he wasn't from the area. And so he was trying to find out about some spots to go deer hunting. So I hooked him up with a spot to go hunting. He, you know, didn't really see him again after that. I started working the construction. And then after a while, you know, he'd left a little booklet that had, you know, some guys going airborne, guys in the Ranger Battalion, you know, repelling out of the helicopters and walking through the swamps.

And then there was a section in there with SF guys like in scuba gear coming up out of some swampy water. You know, it was a lot of cool stuff that just kind of appealed to you at that age. And I kept looking back at that book and finally I decided that, you know, hey, I'm going to reach out to him and contact him, talk to him. And so when I did, he kind of told me that, nah, you know, you don't want to go in the army. And I was like, well, I'm interested.

He goes, no, you got a job. You're doing fine. You really don't need to do it. And I was like, well, I kept after him. And finally he, you know, talked to me about it. I sat down with that little marketing book that he gave me and started asking him about some of the things in there. And the first thing I asked him about was the airborne section.

He's like, oh, yeah, it's jumping out of it. of airplanes. And I was like, I don't think I could do that. I'm scared of heights. So I don't think it's for me. And he goes, okay. And he was a pretty cool guy. His name was Steve Huggins. I still remember him. And he had been, you know, he's a Vietnam veteran. He was a Ranger. And I'm not sure if he was Ranger qualified or he had been in one of the Ranger companies or if he was just, you know, been to Ranger school. But then I flipped over to the Ranger page. And I was like, yeah, this looks really cool, you know, the guys are outside. I'd like to be outside. And, you know, we talked a little bit about it. And he goes, yeah, you got to go to airborne first. I was like, man, that sounds like it's

out for me. So flip to the next page, the SF stuff. And I was like, wow, this looks really, you know, up my alley. I'd love to do it. He goes, up, airborne, you got to do it. And I was like, damn, that's not, not setting me up for success. And we, I talked to him a little bit about maybe being an MP and uh you know because I thought that might be interesting get some hand-to-hand combat training but I kept coming back to the the SF stuff and at the time they had just come out with uh the opportunity for guys to come off the street and go directly into special forces they were standing up first group at the time and um you know this was about uh 1983 Yeah, you guys were the first generation of SF babies after Eagle Claw happened, and they started, yeah, really spinning it up.

Yeah, that's exactly what happened. And it wasn't the 18 X-ray program back then. It was called Unassigned Special Forces. And so I went to the recruiter, you know, went to the MEP station, got the physical, did everything. I had scored. I had a 119 GT. So they were trying to give me all these administrative jobs. all these things I didn't want.

And my brother-in-law had been an infantryman in Vietnam. And he told me, he tried to talk me out of it, tried to talk me into going to the Air Force. And of course, I wouldn't listen to him. And I actually worked with him on the construction job. He's the one that got me the job. He was kind of one of the foreman. And so, you know, I told him, hey, I'm really sad.

I want to go into special forces. And he said, you know, did everything talk me out of it. Obviously, I wasn't listening. like most kids that age. And so he said, well, you know, there's a special forces National Guard group. Why don't you do that? You know, you'll be home, you'll go training, you'll get off. And of course, I didn't listen to that either.

So, you know, all that great advice from somebody who knew something. And I said, no, no, I want to be all in, all out, special forces, active duty. You know, I want the whole thing. And, you know, he also told me, well, if you're going to the three, recruiter, you know, make sure you get exactly what you want and it's in writing because they will lie to you. They will, you know, they're not going to give you what they say. They're used car salesmen. And when I got there, it was exactly like that. They, you know, tried to pawn me off on whatever these positions were that they needed to fill because my GT was high enough for them. But none of those were

what I was interested in. So I stood strong and I was like, no, I want to be, I want to go to special forces. And, you know, the guy would just like to use car salesman go away and talk to his manager. He'd come back and, well, I can get you airborne to Italy, you know, great assignment. And then you can volunteer for special forces. And I was like, no, it's got to be special forces in writing. And then he came back and said, well, you know, I can get you into, you know, the Ranger Battalion. And then you can volunteer from there and go to Special Forces. And I was like, no, no, I'm going, I want to go to Special Forces.

And so he finally said, yeah, okay, I got a couple options. And, you know, at the time I had learned just enough. And I really wanted to be a demo man and blow stuff up. And, you know, I thought that was the way to go for me. And so I asked about that. And he came back and he said, well, I can get you into communications. You know, you can be a commo sergeant. And I was like, no, I don't know about that.

And the only thing I really knew about it is there was a kid that. was a couple years older than high school that left, joined the army. And he was kind of a skinny little kid when he left. He came back a year or so later. And he was, he was huge, you know. We asked him like, well, man, what, what happened? How did you get so big? And he said, well, you know, I went to the Ranger Battalion and I'm a radio guy there and I carry all these radios that are really heavy. And I, you know, so that stuck in my head. I don't want to be a radio guy. The radios are really heavy. So I turned that down. And he came back and he said, well, you know, you could be a medic.

And I thought about it. You know, I'd seen a few episodes of MASH. So it looked like they were having a good time. In my mind, Band-Aids were light. I had that stupid young mentality that didn't realize 100 pounds of anything is still 100 pounds. And it had no idea that, you know, the medic carries as much or sometimes more than the combo guy. And so I signed up for that and said, okay, put me in as a medic. And then I went to basic training at Fort Leonardwood, Missouri,

and left there to go to Fort Sam Houston for the combat medic course. At the time, it was the 91 Bravo course. And, you know, I'd only been on a plane like I think I'd flown three times, maybe four, and then they bust us down to San Antonio, Texas. there in the winter in Fort Leonardwood, Missouri. Got my first case of like mild frostbite there on my nose. And when we were driving into San Antonio in the bus, you know, we drove all night. The sun was coming up over these palm trees. And there was a whole formation of female soldiers running in white t-shirts. And I was like, man, I picked the perfect job. I thought I was definitely where it

needed to be. And I went through the medic course. While I was there, towards the end of it, everybody got their orders for their first duty station. And there were a few of us there. I think there were probably five or six of us that were unassigned special forces and a couple guys that were unassigned Ranger. And a lot of us got these orders that said, you know, and I remember mine said that they were going to send me to Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. It said nothing about airborne school, nothing about any of the other stuff I was promised. And so we went to the Cadbury and said, hey, our orders aren't correct. I'm supposed to go, you know, to Fort Benning and go to Special Forces. And they're like, and initially they told us, well, you guys didn't get selected. And we're

like, well, we didn't even get a try out. So, you know, and I had said that, okay, if you don't have my orders, then, you know, I need to talk to somebody about, you know, getting out and going back home. Right. And so they said, wait a minute. They went back and, you know, rechecked and they got us another set of orders. So those came in like right before the class graduated, but they were wrong also for three of us. Everybody else, they got theirs. They actually, some of them accepted the Hawaii assignment. And then the other set came in and it said, airborne Italy. And so some of those guys, some of the other guys just took the airborne assignment to Italy. And they were told the same thing.

Well, you can volunteer once you get done with airborne school. But we never saw those guys again. And then so we said, hey, listen, you know, listen, we need our orders. They're not correct. So they held us over for an entire cycle at Fort Sam Houston, which wasn't a bad deal. You know, we were frocked as drill corporals and made like, additional cadre to supplement the cadre there, which meant we mainly did CQ charge of quarters duty at the desk a couple nights a week. And then we ran the PT for what they called school for soldiers.

Anytime people messed up during the week, they held them over on Saturday, and we ran PT for them. And so we got to, you know, push them pretty hard physically. And in the meantime, because we had completed our medic training, we had the, MOS, we taught, or excuse me, we worked at the troop medical clinic. So we were working in the TMC on the days we weren't doing CQ and, you know, working as medics. And then myself and one other guy, Joe Colp, who went to first group and was, you know, became an SF guy as well. We were working on Medevac in the afternoon. So we would get to fly Medevac, which was pretty cool. I'd never been on a helicopter before. So we were doing that with them. We didn't really see

anything as far as casualties or, you know, anything like that. But we got to, got to fly around. We're getting, you know, hands-on training in the TMC. And so it was pretty good. And then finally got our orders to go, like, towards the end of that cycle, to go to Fort Benning and start airborne school. Wow. So you get to Benning, you do airborne. And, you know, And then it's Bragg. And when you get to Bragg, did they do, I mean, SFAS, I don't think existed yet, right, until like 37? What was it like for you getting into SF and going through that process? Yeah.

So it was interesting because first and foremost, I had no clue about the military whatsoever. Because this, you know, going to Fort Bragg was really like going to be my first real duty station. And so, you know, I got my orders. I went to Fayetteville, and all my orders, it had it set up to where I could take 30 days leave. Well, I read that as I had to take 30 days leave. So, you know, I was over there. And at the time, I had cousins and uncles that lived in Fayetteville because they had been in the military. And so, you know, I spent some time with them, and I was looking at my orders after I'd been there a couple weeks because I was bored.

and, you know, I said, well, you know, I was talked to to one of my cousins and he said, well, you know, you could always just go by and check it out. So I went by to check things out to see, well, hey, what do I got to do? And they're like, okay, you sign an in? And I was like, what do you mean signing in? And they explained it to me like, well, you can sign in now or you can go ahead and take the rest of your leave, but you got to be here by this day. And I was like, well, I sign in now. So I signed in. And at the time they were running pre-phase.

is what they called it. And it was in the old COSCOM area on Fort Bragg in the World War II barracks. And so they put us in there and you had to wait for your class time to go out to Camp McCall. That was phase one, basic skills. And so you would sign in and then they would have

all of the kind of selection evaluations. We did the PT test, we did the swim test, we did the room test, we did the room test, the ruck. So everything was just kind of checking the block to make sure you met the minimum qualifications. And, you know, we did that. And basically we were doing it like all week and we did it for a couple weeks in a row. So I took a lot of swim tests. And it was always PT test, swim test, 12 mile ruck. So they would do it like back to back to back. And, you know, weed guys out. And then

you would wait for your class and while you're waiting in pre-phase they had this informal selection process that the cadres was running and the way it worked is they divided you up into elements and you went to these different training events and it would start on a you go on a monday and you'd either go to basic skills where you you know went over not tying uh repelling you know a few other things like that the other uh section was patrol So you go out, you learn patrolling. They would educate you on that. And then the other one was you would go over survival skills.

You know, it didn't really do anything formal, but you went through the classes, learned some of the things. And then they had a land nav portion where you would practice land nav. But it was on Fort Bragg. And, you know, they would start you off with just a basic, you know, compass course, make sure you understood how to operate things. But they would rotate you through these. You would start on Monday and then you would go for a week.

And then over the weekend, they would usually rotate you out. But they had kind of an interesting process where they did it sometimes is they would just call you in. And a lot of times in the middle of the night, they would have you grab all your stuff, line up in front of one of the buildings. And you'd come in and sit down in front of a desk. And the guy would pull out a folder and he'd look at it. I'm pretty sure now he would pull him off a stack. It was probably blank.

Yeah. And he would say, hey, McAwee, it doesn't look like you're doing very good. You know, I think you'd be better off to just go ahead and quit. We can get you a nice assignment. You don't necessarily have to leave for it, brag. Otherwise, you're probably going to wind up going, being sent to Korea or someplace like that. And they would basically try to talk you into quitting. And, you know, I would just say, well, no, I'm going to, I'm going to keep trying,

sart, you know, I'm good. And so they'd say, okay, go to building 20,000. 2756 or whatever, take all your stuff and report over there. So you grab your stuff and go to the building and then you'd start a new phase. Well, when you got there, you would look around and your group of guys were split up. They weren't there anymore. You didn't see them. And you're like, oh, man, I guess those guys quit. And so you would go through the week, do your stuff. A lot of it, you know, would be out in the field depending on which section you're working on. And then come Friday morning, you'd be back in getting breakfast at the mess hall. And then you'd be you'd be, you'd

you'd see the guys and you're like, hey, I thought you quit. And they're like, no, we were doing this phase, that phase. And so, you know, we would link back up there. Sometimes the guys did quit, but a lot of times it was, you know, all in your head that they didn't make it or whatever. And it was the classic thing. Every event was always, you know, with the deuce and a half behind you. And the instructors would always say, you know, okay, take your stuff, get on the truck. There's coffee and donuts at the White House, you know, all that. They were always giving you. you that same spiel trying to get you to quit. Today I want to tell you guys about qualia stem cell.

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Well, when they originally, they took my group and we went out to Camp McCall. And I got out there and I was out there maybe a day or so. We had really just in process. And they called out, you know, okay, let's have all the 18 Bravost. over here. Let's have all the 18 Charlie's over here. And actually, I don't think they'd even labeled the MOS yet. They were saying, hey, all the weapons guys here, all the engineers here. And everybody left. And I was kind of standing there by myself. And I asked one of the cadets, like, hey, Sergeant, what about the medics? He's like, medics, you're a medic? And I was like,

yes, Sergeant. And he goes, come here. And so he took me up to the headshed. He goes, wait out here. He went inside. I heard a little bit of yelling, this and that. And he goes, go get your stuff. and then, you know, I got my stuff, came back, he goes, get on the truck. And he didn't tell me anything, you know, and they sent me back to Fort Bragg. And so I was like, well, I had no idea what happened. I got back to the, you know, the staff office where the tax were on Fort Bragg in the Coscom area. They looked around and talked, and I guess somewhere on my paperwork, it had said that I was a weapons guy. And I was like, no, I'm a 91 problem.

I'm a medic. And so they're like, well, you're not supposed to be out there. They've, they've shifted the course. And now everybody's going to, all the medics are going to go to Fort Sam first to make sure they can pass before where they bother to send them to, you know, out to phase one. And I was like, okay. So I was kind of stuck waiting around. And in that time, they put us on different details. And, you know, we had some good ones. We had one to where we actually They had one of the other medics, a guy named Dan Rogers, had owned a martial arts school in Fayetteville and was a really accomplished martial arts instructor. So they didn't have anything to do with us for one week, so they kind of turned us over to him and let him train us a little bit.

So we got some training. Another time, they would send us, let us go to the hospital and work over there. And we even got set up to where on the weekends we could go to the emergency room at Womack and get signed off and, you know, do different things. You could get extra training in while you're waiting. And then one of the most interesting things for me is I got stuck on a detail because that was one of the guys that my security clearance had already come through. And so we had a guy come over, you know, older looking guy, long gray hair, big mustache, glasses, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans.

And, you know, they told us, I think there was like four or five of us. They're like, okay, you're going to go with him. And so we went with the guy. we went over to the other side of post and you know he had a little van that he put us in and he's like hold on wait here he got out came back and he handed out clipboards and said make sure you're reading sign these statements and so we were reading the statements and they were non-disclosure statements about how we wouldn't talk about anything we saw we wouldn't speculate about anything and then he took us out onto the range and we were doing range cleanup and it was kind of interesting

because, you know, he would tell us, hey, I want you to do this. And, like, one day he had a, there was a target training area that was a building. And he said, hey, you know, there's a front-in loader there. Any of you guys know how to operate a loader. And the guy who looked around, I said, why? I know a little bit because, you know, I've worked construction. And he goes, okay, jump on it and knock that building down. And I was like, you're sure?

He goes, yeah, just do it. He goes, I'll be back. And he would leave us. And we'd go knock the building down. We'd clean it up. He'd come back around lunchtime with some old sea rats and give us something to eat, give us the next thing to do. But we got to see a few cool things, do some good training.

But I found out later that this was Sergeant Major Walt Shoemate. He was like one of the plankholders for SFODA Delta. And we had no idea at the time, but super great guy. He took us over to Eden the Butner Road mess hall that used to be the old Delta Dining Facility. And, you know, so we worked for him for, I think, about a month and a half, maybe doing different things, cleaning up stuff. We saw a few, you know, cool training exercises here and there.

But really interesting to work with him and kind of be mentored with that free and easy style. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I picture the guy coming walking up wearing his cowboy. boots in his flannel shirt. That's him. Absolutely. Yeah. And we thought he was just some old retired guy, but, you know, he was still one of the main guys running all the training. And it was pretty cool. And Walt Chewmate, if I recall correctly, he was killed in Somalia in 93. I don't think he was. I think he, if I remember correctly, I believe he died later. He actually died of cancer. Did he? Who am I confusing him with then?

But we'll come back to that and I apologize if my facts are off. In fact, I think he had already, you know, passed before 93. Let me see since we're here and we can edit this a little bit if we need to. Let me look it up to make sure because I would feel bad if I got that wrong. Okay. And I'm certainly not sure, but I believe he died of cancer. The person I'm thinking of, it was a mine. He was an OGA guys and they were driving around and ran over a mine. That would be Deeks.

Okay, okay. Sergeant Deeks from Fifth Group. And that was in Somalia, yeah. Let's see here. Going down, going down. No, with this. Shoemate retired in 1982 and continued to serve in Delta as a civilian. until his death in 1993.

So it was that time frame, but it doesn't say what killed him. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure he died of cancer. Let's see here. Found something else on him. Yes, you're, yes. Okay, I got it here.

Yeah, he worked, okay. Yeah, so he worked as, from nine, retired in 1982, continue to work as a civilian safety officer on range 19. until his death in 1990. Range 19. That's where we worked.

Yeah, 1993, he passed away of cancer. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you for correcting me. So you spent almost 20 years in fifth group once you finished the Q-course, which is pretty cool in of itself. But tell us about kind of, you know, actually we haven't even really gotten into, talked about the Q-course at all.

Is there any funny stories about your time, like, when you get? got to the Q-course that you want to tell before we get to fifth group? I think maybe, I hope the statute of limitations on most of them has run out. But I'm trying to think if there's any that are, you know, obviously I don't have to worry about my political career, so those will be okay. But there, you know, it was kind of a unique experience, as I'm sure the Q-course is for everybody. I know being a medic, we were fortunate enough to be out at Fort Sam Houston. And, you know, I always hated it for the guys once they moved the medic course to brag,

because it's not the same. You know, you, in Fort Sam Houston, you're out there. You're going to party all night every night and then wander in just in time for PT. And we had some of the hardest PT I think I've had in SF was during the medic course. And, you know, we had a former scuba guy out there named Pat Mahoney that, you know, from 10th group, that pushed us pretty hard with the PT. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I know Mahoney. Yeah, yeah. He's still around. I see him on Facebook every once in a while. But, you know, he was one of the guys that kind of pushed us through there. And the PT was pretty rough.

The academic stuff was, you know, and I'm sure it still is, was really tough. But what made it interesting was the guys. And for me, it was the replacement for my college years. So I was, you know, running a month, going out with the guys. And I actually didn't drink until I got in the Army. And then got to San Antonio. That's where I started, you know, embracing my Irish heritage and kind of giving it a run. And so once we got there, I, I,

literally almost failed out because I partied too much. But the only thing that that kept me in is there are a lot of great guys that were there that, you know, I rode their coattails. And that was kind of my story through all of the Q courses. There were a couple guys from Ranger Battalion that helped me during phase one and kind of, you know, got me through the patrolling and those, those skills that obviously I had no experience as, you know, with because I had been a civilian in prior. And then while I was at Fort Sand, we had some guys that, one of them in particular, that was prior fifth group that was reclassifying and as a medic. And, you know, he was one of the guys that helped get me through that academic side of things. But I really wouldn't have made it

if it hadn't have been for those guys, for whatever reason, you know, kind of taking me under their wing like a mascot because I was this young kid that had no clue. And, you know, I evidently they thought I was entertaining, so they kind of kept me along for the ride until I got through the Q-course. And tell us about getting to Fifth Group and sort of what year that was and what it was like at that time. Yeah, so initially, and you and I talked about this just before the podcast, is I didn't want to go to Fifth Group. In fact, I don't know of anybody at the time back in the day that wanted to go to Fifth Group. Fifth Group was on Fort Bragg, and at the time I think about all they ever did was, post-clean-up detail. And so I actually had taken like three years of Spanish in high school.

And so, you know, I was this white kid that could speak a little bit of Spanish. I made some connections, like, toward the end of the acute course, and went over, had one of the guys take me over to one of the battalion sergeant majors of seventh group. Because at the time, seventh group was involved in Central America. They had all the cool stuff going on. They were the place to be. And so I went over there, talked to him, gave him my whole spiel in Spanish. You know, he was like, oh, this is great. You know, we actually got a white guy that speaks Spanish. We'd love to have you over here. Let me get your social security number. Got all my information. Said, yeah, we're going to try to get you some orders, get you to seventh group. And then, you know,

I'm standing out there when we all got our orders and 90% of us went to fifth group. Just, you know, that's just how it was. And fifth group was, I think, the last choice on my list at the time. But it actually turned out to be like probably the best experience ever for me. I went over to the other side of post. They were over there off of Butner Road in the old World War II barracks still. And initially I got assigned to First Battalion, Fifth Special Forces Group. I signed in. And, you know, the really cool thing about it is when I showed up like all of these guys that were sergeant majors and a lot of them that were team sergeants were these senior guys that had been.

to Vietnam. Some of the rest of them had been and done tours in Iran. And there even used to be stories about how some of them had second wives and families, you know, in Iran. I don't know if it's true, hard to say. But, you know, we had all these guys that had all this real world experience. And the interesting thing about it at the time is you really couldn't tell because you'd be out there mowing the grass with them and you'd see the Sard Major with the lawnmower, the weed eater. And I I remember a couple of times going over and saying, hey, Sarmajor, let me do that. And he was like, no, get out of here. You know, that's the privilege of being the Sarre Majors.

You get the weed eater. And, you know, so it was, it was interesting because we had all these guys that were real heroes that you really just couldn't tell because they were very normal guys. They were pulling their weight just like everybody else. But when you weren't doing post-cleanup and you were actually doing training or anything, you got that benefit of all that wisdom. And, you know, I didn't even realize how much of that was there until I went to PLDC. When I graduated the Q course, I was just a spec four. So I was a spec four with the Special Forces tab. I think I was like one of maybe 10 in the whole army like that.

So I went to PLDC so I could get promoted. And when I got there, you know, they were talking about all these things and procedures and stuff in the Army. And, you know, it was kind of a group discussion format. and they would ask questions about, you know, military things. And I knew the answers. And a lot of the guys were like, well, how do you know that? And I'm like, well, yeah, I hear about that all the time. And all I had, you know, I didn't know how to actually implement a lot of it.

I hadn't done it. But I'd heard these guys talk about it. I had heard their experience and everything that I was taught was on a different level. I just didn't really know how to apply it yet. And it kind of got me, you know, clued in that. that I need to take things a lot more seriously and start really figuring out what it means to be a professional. And so that kind of worked out for me. And at one point, I used to carry a list in my pocket, like when I first got there. And my list was why I'm not going to reenlist. It was all the

reasons about, you know, how I'm doing all this post cleanup. And part of it was I had come in expecting to do great things, you know, and I didn't realize that I hadn't put in my time, hadn't paid my debt, I didn't know what I was doing, I had no business getting to do the super cool stuff yet. And, but, you know, I wanted it like every other young kid that showed up. And I finally, you know, I had my list and the SAR major, it was getting close to time to relist, and the SAR major, you know, would pull you in and, you know, and even have the re-enlistment. talk with you. And I told him, no, I'm not re-enlisted. I'm not doing this. And, you know, he asked me one time, he's like, well, why not? And I pulled out my list. And so I'm sure he loved that.

Yeah, he loved it. All right. But maybe not the best move for Young Troop. But what he did was, you know, he was kind of smart is he said, okay, fine. And he sent me out to El Paso, Texas. We had a project out there called the B-500 team. And this B-500 team was, was responsible for developing desert tactics, desert equipment, and just kind of putting together the whole concept of how to operate and be more effective in the desert. And they were also out there as cadre to rotate teams through to do desert training.

And they did training on desert survival signaling. At the time, we were also working with how to use the autolites and how to navigate with vehicles like overland with using these sextant style pieces of equipment that they used to use for sailing because the desert's so wide open and using these books of star charts and everything. Well, I got out there as a medic,

and when I got out there, one of the things I saw is they had these vehicles. We had these FSVs at the time, the fast attack vehicles, Favs. And they were these dune buggies with Porsche engines that would just fly across the desert. And, but they broke down all the time. So spent a lot of time working on these dune buggies.

And then they also had motorcycles. Well, I remember specifically we were out doing some training. And one of the guys wrecked and ran one of the motorcycles into a cactus patch. And I mean, just got it like all over him. And as the medic, I wound up picking the stuff out of him, mostly out of his posterior area. And while I was doing it, of course, I was giving him a hard time. I was still kind of a young, smart aleck because I had made it through as an E4 with a tab.

And now I had my E5. And so I was doing that. And at the time, you know, I aggravated him enough. And he said, well, you know, I guess you think you could do better. And I said, well, actually, I'm pretty sure I can. And what he didn't know is that when I was in high school, I raced motorcross. So I had some experience with the bikes. And so they let me get on the bikes and run around.

And, you know, as it turned out, I could do it pretty well. And for the first time since I've been in the Army, I had a great time. I started enjoying what I was doing. And the guys out there were really serious about training. Training was, you know, it was we would go out on, you know, usually on Monday morning, stay out all week. We would train a lot of night training. You know, we were jumping all the time on Bigs Field. We were very active with a lot of stuff.

And then we would have the teams come through on rotation for, you know, survival training. And then we would monitor them while they move through, you know, these E&E lanes that were set up for them and did practice desert survival. So it finally was starting to look like SF that I had envisioned. And it got me just fired up enough that when I left there and I went back to Fort Bragg, they were asking my sergeant major, and he's kind of infamous, Sarm Major Sims, you know, I don't know how many people know him, but big, tall, black guy with a high-pitched voice that had been in Vietnam and, you know, was famous for the way he talked. And, you know, he had the formation out there one day. And he goes, I need some guys to go to language school, to Fasies and Hedu. And, you know, and I didn't know what that was. I had no idea what Farsi was.

but, you know, I volunteered because it was a year-long command language program at Fort Bragg, and my idea was I would take it, I would re-enlist, get the, at the time they had a $20,000 bonus for medics to re-enlist, and then I would go to night school, get some college, get some education, you know, start getting a little bit more serious about things. And then at that time during language school, I got married to my first wife as a true SF guy. And then so while I was in language school, I was taking night classes and had an English class at night. And I wound up being the distinguished honor graduate from the Persian Farsi class. Wow.

And which worked out real well later because, you know, it got me set up to be an interpreter for a class. classified mission overseas with Fifth Group. But once I got through language school, and that stabilized me long enough for them to go ahead and move First Battalion and, you know, start moving second battalion up to Fort Campbell. And so once I got out of language school, then they moved up to Fort Campbell,

and I went up there, which I was really excited about. I didn't like Fayetteville, didn't like Fort Bragg. I was really happy to be going up to Fort Campbell in Tennessee. And so that kind of, you know, started things off for me. I got a little different feel for what it might be like to actually be in special forces. This time of year, the pace doesn't slow down, but you still need to. The calendar's packed, the weather's changing, and your body's reminding you that it's time to rest and reset. That's where GhostBed can help.

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So you get the Fort Campbell around 1989. I think, and we were still in them when I was there, those World War II era buildings on the main post area. Yeah, they had the World War II barracks that were right beside our area, but then they had some newer ones that we had accepted. And the big controversy when we got there was there was an area off on one side of post that was the Cavs Scout area. everybody was really upset that we didn't take that area. It was kind of off by itself. It was out where Range Road started. It was a really nice setup, but for some reason they didn't take it.

We took these barracks that were like kind of right in the center post, same place they still are now. And the barracks weren't like old World War II, but they definitely weren't new. They were the three-story brick buildings there in the area. And so we got there. And I wasn't there very long before we got this deployment to go on a classified mission to do a six-month rotation in Peshawar, Pakistan. It was a mission under the UN called Operation Salam where we were teaching demining. And we were working with the Afghan Mujahideen.

And, you know, so it worked out well for me because I wound up being an interpreter to work with the guys there. And then also while I was there, I took some night classes through the embassy to learn the Dari dialect. And so I kind of improved my, you know, my Persian to where I was dialed in pretty good to working with the Afghans. So, I mean, but the time frame you're there, the Soviets are still in Afghanistan, right? Yeah. Yes, yeah, they were. And a lot of the things that were going on were kind of directed towards supporting the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviets and trying to continue to push them out. Were you guys part of helping the like train and field them with the weapons that we were

delivering to Pakistan? So that operation wasn't directly with that, but there were some other things going on that were coordinated through other government agencies that were focused primarily on that. And we definitely had some interesting. encounters while we were there. I know one of the things that happened while we were in Pakistan is, you know, we would go out to train and we had about an hour drive out to the training area where we were working with these Mujahideen. And it was, you know, further north. And so, you know, we would have this long bus ride every day in the morning and then also back

in the evening or afternoon. And then one day, you know, we would tend to fall asleep. on the way back. And to be honest, it's because we had a connection to the American club and we're able to go in there. And for me, I was still young and I was going out drinking every night and living it up. But, you know, I was on the, on the van. We had a big like 12 passenger van, 16 passenger van that was driven by a local. And so I was sitting there, you know, asleep. And all of a sudden I heard this slam into the side of the vehicle. And I woke up and we were surrounded by a crowd of people that were having a protest and a riot. And we were basically trapped because of the traffic.

And, you know, at the time, we weren't issued or allowed to have any actual weapons. But because of the way things were working, we were going to this town called Darra, which is like the weapons bazaar along the border. And they had all the weapons that they had recovered from the battles with the Soviets. A lot of the things that were being sold to them by, you know, aspects. of our government and we would go there and negotiate. And because I was one of the interpreters, I would help negotiate to purchase these mines. And they were live mines.

And then we would bring them back and make them inert to use as training aids. Well, when we would go there, because we didn't have any weapons, one of the things we did was some of the guys purchased, you know, their own black market weapons that we definitely weren't supposed to have. Some of us had Russian hand grenades. Some of us had, you know, a couple guys. had pistols, but, you know, hand grenades were only like $2 a piece, so, you know, guys were stocking up for to have something because the town itself was definitely the Wild Wild West

in Peshawar. And I remember I had, you know, a big knife in my backpack and a couple other things. And so I woke up with this riot going on and the rocks were bouncing off our van and everybody was scrambling. And so I took my backpack, placed it up against the window so the glass wouldn't shatter and get on me and started opening it up and pulling out my knife and getting ready for whatever was going to happen. And then, you know, we looked around a little bit and we found out that they weren't actually attacking us. They were across the road and they were throwing rocks and they were trying to reach across the road and hit the local law enforcement, which was out there in riot gear. But we didn't see them initially. We just saw the people throwing rocks. So we thought it was

directed at us that they'd figured out, you know, a band full of white guys. guys down there and they were going to overrun us. And, you know, truthfully, it's probably one of the more terrifying experiences I had in the military. But it worked out and the riot police actually moved across in front of us, hit them with some tear gas and, you know, some shields and gave them some wooden shampoo and kind of settled things down. And then we eventually got past the traffic jam and moved on out. But, you know, that was just one of the many things that happened while we were on that deployment. And during one incident while we were there, we were about, and it would happen on a Friday when we kind of had a day off, because that was the holy day. But myself, and I think one of the

other guys, we were actually in like a local car that belonged to one of the guys that worked for the consulate, the American Club. And, you know, we never found out, but we're pretty sure he was one of the other government agency individuals. And, you know, because we got to know him over time. And of course, he never said anything. But because he also spoke Farsi, you know, I talked to him a little bit. And I found out eventually through some other people that were there that he, he had been present whenever the Iranian embassy was taken over and, you know, was in the American embassy

when the, excuse me, when the Iranians took over the American embassy in Iran. And so, you know, he was this kind of. crazy character that, you know, that was bigger than life. And you would have swore he was, you know, just flaming crazy. And, but as it turned out, you know, if you talk to him very long, you kind of realize that he was a pretty smart guy and he had some connections and some things going on. But we would often, like, go down and steal his personal car because I spoke Persian and his driver did. So we would go down and tell the driver all the time that, hey, Mr. Mike says you take us a home you know it was a running joke for a while but we were riding along in his

car headed back to the house one afternoon and uh about a block in front of us a car bomb went off and cratered the road and it had it had been targeted against somebody there i think one of the generals or or you know one of the tribal leaders i don't remember who but it it killed them and it you know wiped out a big section of town uh our guy turned around headed us back towards the consulate. We were kind of just barely lucky to get out of it because it, you know, it was a mess. But it was, you know, one of the more elaborate experiences during that time. And then we also had one of the guys on the team that was in my team house, and we were staying in these civilian houses out on one side of the town in an area called Hayatabad. And it was a fairly

well-to-do civilian area with these big three-story houses. We had a cook and a houseboy, and then we had these guards that were local guards that always fell asleep, like every night when they were supposed to be gardenists. But we were in the house, and I remember it was coming up on Halloween, and the American Club was going to have a Halloween party. They threw some righteous parties. They were always, you know, having these theme parties all the time, There's nothing else to do over there. And we were lucky enough to have access to the American club. And since we were going to this Halloween party,

we had picked up some supplies and we were making some costumes. And I had actually had my medic bag opened up on my bed in the room and had some gauze laid out and stuff because we were making some costumes out of plaster casting because we can get that on the local economy. And it was easy to mold and make costumes with. And then all of a certain, I heard a big slam that sounded like somebody dropped a stack of lumber.

on a tile floor. And then it was followed by screaming. So I stepped out into the hallway and, you know, the guy came out of the room down the hall with his hand, what was left of it. And it was squirting blood about 10 feet, hit me in the chest. And, you know, so I stepped back in my room. I grabbed the gauze and put it on his hand and kind of wrapped it up. But what had happened is he had been on the first rotation of this and then came back into the second rotation on this. Operation Salam operation. So this was to be his second six-month rotation. And he was an engineer, and he had gotten used to defusing these mines and had gotten overly curious about one of the fuses for a landmine, or excuse me, a tank mine, anti-tank mine. And in the process, he had taken

a leatherman and scratched a piece of the igniter, and it exploded and tore his hand. off. And at the same time, it ripped a piece of the leatherman off, you know, the whole punch piece, which he was using to kind of dig into it. And it went through the neck of his roommate. And luckily his roommate, you know, wasn't seriously injured. We didn't know that at the time because, you know, there was blood and a lot of stuff everywhere. But, you know, the guy that lost his hand, Jeff Horton, you know, we treated him, packaged him up. And then I handed him off to the other medic who transported him to the hospital. And I started checking out the guy who had the neck injury, which turned out to be, you know, perfectly benign.

I mean, luckily for him, it was about an inch off to the outside and missed his carotid and his juggler vein. But, you know, so that was kind of another exciting moment in the Operation Salam tour. This is also kind of like for you, I guess, your real first taste of like the SF mission. Yeah. I had gone on one other like short mission to the Gulf in Bahrain as a medic and a Persian speaker. I'd gotten attached to like a group of seals. They were doing this mission at the time called Prime Chance where they were seizing Iranian boats that were cruising through. straight to Hormuz. I didn't really do much there, but, you know, it was cool to go along and be there for a few weeks,

hang out with the seals and, you know, ride the helicopters. But for the most part, it was not as SF a mission as this one in Peshawar, Pakistan. It was full on UW. Right, with an interesting twist. Yeah. And how, what was sort of your perception of how that UW campaign was going on at that time? did you have some inkling that the Soviets were on the brink of defeat or was it still very uncertain? I think it was it was not quite 50-50 at that point. I think everybody was fairly sure that they were on a downward spiral. I don't think anybody knew exactly, you know, to what degree. But I think everybody was fairly certain that the efforts that were being directed against the Soviets were having a pretty intense effect.

and that it was, you know, it was going to take its toll eventually. It was some unique insight into Afghanistan and the future. I realized when we were on that trip that we were going to have problems with Afghanistan and Pakistan down the road repeatedly on a serious level. We had a guy at one point who was probably our best student as one of the demining individuals. And then we had some other people in the same class come to us and say, hey this guy's um you know he's not muja hadine he's a communist sympathizer and we're like whoa so wait a second and and this guy was always getting with us we would have um you know extra training with him like on

all the breaks he had all these questions about tactics and stuff and you know and we had no reason to not talk to him and answer his questions and and kind of give him some information but he was a serious student but these guys came to us and with this uh you know rumor that He was communist supportive and he was one of the bad guys. And then, you know, it went back and forth and they finally decided that, hey, we can't prove that he's a bad guy. And there was a lot of consideration that it was just a political or tribal dispute because they were from one tribe. He was from another tribe. And that, and what we saw was it was the guys from the Pashtun, you know, click that was in the camp that came against him.

and he was a Farsi speaker, which is one of the reasons I had interaction with him. So they wound up kind of booting him out of the camp. They wouldn't let him continue because there was controversy around him. And the real interesting thing about it was years later, after 9-11, during some other operations, I was reviewing and looking at some footage,

and I saw this guy, plain as day, as one of the Taliban soldiers had been captured. So I don't know if that whole incident built up into kind of turning him because he seemed pretty pro-American when we were working with him. But obviously, when you're dealing with indigenous people and forces, you know, there's a huge level of deception, especially when you're working with Middle Easterners. And as Americans, people don't really understand that, that their whole purpose in life based on the religion and the Quran is to deceive to the utmost ability in order to kill

the enemy. And so, you know, it's one of those interesting things like, was he you know, one of the guys that was kind of against us just using us for our information or did some of that build up into kind of influencing him to become one of the Taliban later. And when you got home from this, you got put on a special projects team, right? Yeah. So when I got back, I actually interviewed and the one thing, I know all the groups have their own special projects sections, but when I was in fifth group, they had three main special projects teams and that was before the move up to Campbell. They had one that was known as Grizzly Hitch that did a particular mission.

Then there was another one that was a combined team that was in Second Battalion. And then there was an additional one that was also assigned to Second Battalion. and those three ODAs that were special projects moved up to Fort Campbell, and then the Grizzly Hitch guys stayed behind to form third group. And so when I got back from Pakistan, that team approached me and asked me, hey, would I be interested? And I was like, yeah, absolutely. They were especially interested in my Persian Farsi skills.

They needed a medic. And then also, I had just. had that rotation and working with the Afghans. And so it kind of aligned with some interests that they had. So they interviewed me and I got selected and then I was part of that special project team for a while. What, you know, as far as what you're able to say, I mean, what was a special projects ODA back in those days? So back in those days, it was an ODA that was, you know, it belonged on paper to fifth group. But it answered. for tactical control and operational control to another organization.

And it, you know, depending on which special project it was, it can vary on exactly who they came under. Some of them, I think, came under so calm. You know, it just depends on how they were aligned. Mm-hmm. And what did you guys end up doing? You said you were oriented towards the AFPAC region again. So the mission was to kind of supplement and work with some other government agencies to support that overall mission.

Was this part of like the Stinger missiles and training up those guys? Yes. Yes. Yes. As a matter of fact, one of the things I did once I got to that team is I went and became Stinger Missile qualified. We had Baz Basil on the show talking about that a whiz back. Did you know him? I think I know who he is.

I don't personally know him. He would have been a SAD guy, ground branch guy at the time. Right. Him and another guy, I believe. They were like, they set up a lot of the Stinger missile training in Pakistan. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it was an interesting thing.

And then I really wasn't on there too long before the Gulf War kicked off. And at the time, It was kind of interesting because all of those three teams were assigned to second battalion, a fifth group. And then, you know, First Battalion moved up there first. Second Battalion came. And then they had to form Third Battalion with all the, you know, all kinds of leftover guys, a lot of brand new guys. And so all that was really just kind of standing up when I got back from the Pakistan mission. And Second Battalion had all three had three ODAs that were actually,

assigned to them on paper but were operating as special projects. And so during that time, the one special project that I went to work for had worked with the command and they decided to move on paper over to 3rd Battalion so that they would have this other operational detachment. And then the Gulf War kicked off and we were, you know, there was a big discussion and everybody took a vote on, hey, you know, do we want to continue working on the project or do we want to go and deploy for the war? You know, at the time it was pretty certain right off the bat that there was going to be a war. There was the buildup was happening.

And everybody on the team voted to go to war. You know, that was the unanimous thing. The project was cool. A lot of cool stuff was happening and guys were doing things. But, you know, this was a straight up, all out war. Everybody wanted to do it. And so we deployed with 3rd Battalion, you know, as just one of the regular ODAs. But right before we deployed, they split up our team a little bit because we had all these senior guys that had a lot of experience.

And so they split up some guys. I was the newest guy, you know, assigned to the team. So I was one of the first guys that get plucked and sent to this brand new ODA where I didn't know anybody. and the majority of the guys were brand new. They had maybe less than six months team time for the most part. And then they had a few guys that had come from different areas. And you know how it is. Anytime you form a new group, they don't always send their best people.

So, you know, nobody wants to give up their greatest guys. So a couple of the guys, especially like the team sergeant I had at the time, was not impressive. and I had come from having some really great team sergeant, so it stood out pretty heavily. And so here I was going to war with this kind of new team and, you know, not very impressive team sergeant. It wasn't a good feeling. But you guys got deployed for nine months for the Gulf War, right?

Yeah, I was over there for nine months. I actually stayed. The team was there, I think, for eight. I stayed an extra month because they needed a volunteer to stay and do some stuff. And at the time, you know, I had nothing better to do. So I stayed. And you guys were working with the Saudis. And I recall there's a name for this.

I can't remember it. But it was the fifth group augmentation teams with the different Arab armies and the coalition. Do you recall? Yeah, they were called cast teams, close air support teams. Yeah, thank you. So can you tell us about that? We were attached to the Saudis. And we were at the tri-border area in an area called Hafer al-Batine, which was this big dry river or dry wadi bed that was considered to be a potential high avenue for a counter invasion or for an attack from the Iraqis with tanks.

And so what were you doing out there for that eight, nine months? So initially we were training the Saudis, which were less than highly motivated. they were not your dynamic soldiers at all. But, you know, we were trying to convince them and build rapport with them. It was a classic SF UW mission in that regard because we had to kind of win them over, train them to try to get them up to a standard where things would be okay. But at the time, we also received a couple of cross-border reconnaissance missions and a couple other taskings to do some things along the border.

a couple of things to serve as kind of a quick reaction and reinforcement force, especially, you know, during a couple of the battles, small battles that happened. So, you know, we were kind of just jacks of all trade for the most part. They're really trying to figure out what to do with this, I think, for the most part. But generally, we were just kind of keeping the Saudis company, trying to keep them comfortable and keep them involved in the, the, you know, the war so they didn't give up. And interesting enough, though, is, you know, we were up there with them. And then we packed up a couple times to go out and pull reconnaissance

at night on this, this Wadiabateen to make sure there wasn't an invasion or a counter invasion. And right before we received another order to do it, it was probably about the fourth time we had done this to load up and go observe. And it was just us, the team. And it was, was actually the night that the air war took off. And while we were loading our vehicle, you know, kind of middle of the night, we're listening to the BBC on, we had these little Toyota truck technical vehicles that we had welded, you know, stands in the back for 50 cows and Mark 19s, mainly 50 cows. And these were our vehicles.

We didn't really have the dumvies or GMVs then. And so we were loading up this makeshift. technical truck to head out and listening to the BBC on the radio. And then all of a sudden, we heard the announcement on the radio. And, you know, there was like a news break. And then we had the planes fly like right over slow real fast. Like, whoshosh. And right after that, the lady on the radio said,

and the invasion of Kuwait has begun. You know, we're like, holy crap. And then the whole sky lit up across the horizon. So we threw our stuff on there, headed up there to get ready to see what kind of counterattack was going to happen. And, you know, we were only back a little bit at our company headquarters. And so we started heading up that way. We couldn't get on the road because all of the Saudis had jumped in there, tracked vehicles, and were headed back towards, you know, back towards us running from the border.

And so we had to get off the road, drive across, get in position. And they had the highway blocked up, all the lights on. Some of them had these tents, you know, that attached to their track vehicles. And they just, like, jumped in the vehicle and drove off and drugged the tents off the back of them. And so we stayed up there all night waiting for a counterattack from the Iraqis, but nothing ever happened. And then the next day, we, you know, started heading back and we went across the lines to kind of a survey where the Saudi troops had been that we were working with, they were all gone. They had all fled back behind our company.

You know, we saw all their equipment left, you know, around through there. There was like one of them left like a whole supply, whatever their supply company was. So there was all this equipment there. We were up there, you know, Kmartin threw it, picking out some new gear. And eventually we saw one of their officers who had been sent up there to survey the area to find out, you know, kind of what was happening. We saw him, we're like, hey, what's going on? You know, and we're like, hey, the war started.

And he's, all he could do was shake his head. He was miserable. He's like, oh, no good, no good. We're like, no, this is good. We're going to be done. We're going to be out of here soon. He was distraught, you know, he was about to have a nervous breakdown. But those guys all fled to the rear and left us up there, you know, like nine guys to

defend the whole border. Were you ever able to rally those guys and get him back up? on position? They came back like right after that the next day. They, you know, we were able to convince them to come back up and, you know, set everything back up again. I think just because they weren't clued into the air attack and I think initially when it happened, they weren't sure they were our planes. We had a lot of issues with them the whole time we're along the border, especially once the air war started, like right after that, because, you know, they had anti-aircraft tracks that they were using

and sometimes they would lock on to the A10s with them and we were telling them hey don't do that because we own the air those are our guys don't point your guns at the A10s and lock onto them and at one point we had one of their tracks that locked onto one of the A10s

and that was flying along the border the A10 turned and lit them up and just like shredded that track the Saudi that was on the gun got like ripped in half. You know, there was nothing we could do to save him. He was tore up because he, and it was all because they had turned their gun and locked onto him after being repeatedly told several times that, hey, don't do that.

But, you know, they just didn't have a really good basic understanding of how it was all going to work. They were not motivated to be there. Their whole concept was, hey, you know, you guys will fight the war for us. Right. We're just up here getting paid. And so it was it was kind of sad, really, to try to get them motivated to, to, you know, joined in on all the things that needed to happen. So you guys were not able to like be one of the prongs going into Iraq with the Saudi National Guard?

Actually, actually we were. Really? Which is probably the worst part is this same group of folks. I mean, we nurtured them for months and finally got them to where they were. were feeling a little more motivated. And then whenever we launched the ground invasion, we headed out with these guys and went to breach the minefield. The interesting part about it is, and I got a great picture of this somewhere, is when it

came time to breach the minefield, it was in the early evening and it was prayer time. They actually stopped right before the minefield and got out their rugs and started praying. And then we got some mortar fire, luckily not too close, while these guys, guys were praying, but they were going to continue praying. We had to get out and actually round them up and say, hey, listen, you know, you can pray later. We need to keep moving through the minefield. And so once we moved through the minefield, we had an objective to attack a former, like, Kuwaiti base. I don't remember the name of it off the top of my head, but it had been overtaken by the Iraqis, and now it was held by Iraqi soldiers, and it was on the way to Kuwait City. So we arrived there with the

Saudis just before dark. And being the motivated guys that they were, they all stopped and said, hey, it's dark. We're not going to go in. Well, we had a battalion commander at the time and a couple of his staff guys that decided they were going to, you know, inspire the Saudis and show them how it's done. And so they went into the compound, the complex, and got pinned down. And then my team received the, you know, the request to go in and how. help them out. So we, by this time, we had traded our technical vehicles in, and we had M113 anti-personnel carriers. So we had armored vehicles, and we had three guys to a vehicle. We had like all the armament and tons of stuff. I mean, I remember having, I think we had three

Stinger missiles per vehicle. We had probably eight AT-4s, a couple boxes of grenades, all the ammo we could carry and that was for each vehicle. Two of them had 50 cows, one of them had a Mark 19 on it. So we were gunned up pretty good, but, you know, there was still only nine of us to go in there and, you know, try to try to free them out of being pinned down inside the city. So we rammed the gate with the 113, went in, you know, got to the area and got into a firefight with some folks that then ran into a mosque. And at the time, I was on the 50 Cal because I was one of the few guys that knew how to operate the 50 Cal. And each vehicle had a commo guy or somebody operating the radio that could call Cass, and then somebody that was driving it. And so, you know, I had a

combo guy in my vehicle. I was the gunner as the medic at the time. And then our 18 Bravo at the time had been in Ranger Battalion, and he was driving the M1-1-3. So that was kind of the setup for all three vehicles. And so we moved in and shot up this one building and kind of ripped through the walls with the 50-Cal. After a, you know, good exchange with them, we had a big number of guys surrender to us. They came out waving a bed sheet and a line. And, you know, more guys than nine guys could hand. There were hundreds of them. And so we got that figured out and turned them over to somebody else. And then from there, we received orders to move on in towards Kuwait City, stopped on the outskirts of Kuwait City for the night, and then rallying into the evasion and the operations

in the city after that. Wow. What was it like going into the city? Oh, it's madness, you know, because the road had been just annihilated with all the tanks, all the vehicles that were trying to flee the city, the A10s and the other aircraft had just wiped them out and they were, you know, clogged up and just, you know, like, just devastated. And we saw several of them along the way that we ran into tanks. And some of their tanks had been, like, buried into position. I'm not sure why they did that, but they decided to dig these trenches, put the tank in it. and then, you know, they were stuck inside these little positions.

And so we, you know, as we drove through, we called the A10s on them and a couple of fast movers and then lit them up with the guns as we went by them. And, I mean, just devastated them. So there was just like carnage with all the tanks and the, you know, a lot of the bodies and everything as we moved through, especially into the city. Yeah, I think with the burying of the equipment, I think that might have been some sort of of miscommunication or something with Army Psiops that they, it was supposed to be like lay down your arms, but the way it translated was like bury, bury your arms. It was something similar

to that. Yeah, I have a lot of the, I collected some of the little leaflets that they dropped, you know, as we went through. And I've got them in an album at home because there's some interesting keepsakes on. And we remember like watching them every evening, you know, for a while during the war, they would send the B-52s and they would bomb them every night at the same time and just light up the sky. To be honest, at one point for a while, we were feeling sorry for him because you can see it coming, you know, for minutes as they were streaming across just as the sun was going down. And you knew about the time the sun went down. They were going to get their daily bombing.

And, man, they just hammered them day after day after day. And we were having them, you know, while we were along the border, we were having them surrender, you know, fairly regularly in pretty big groups. And a lot of times when they surrendered, they would come up and try to hug us. And, you know, they weren't, they didn't understand, hey, we're at war, so we were having to throw them to the ground

and search them. And, you know, but they were, they felt like they were at a family reunion or something. I don't know what was going on. They were so excited to be out of there. But at the same time, you know, they hadn't received the memo that, look, we're still focused on you as the enemy.

Yeah, I mean, unless it's like the Republican Guard, they're not really interested in dying for Saddam, I don't think. Yeah, they really weren't. And it was kind of a, it was a pretty sad story for most of them because, you know, they were kind of stuck in the middle. They were basically told if you, if you run away, we'll shoot you. And then, you know, if you run too fast towards us, we might shoot them because, you know, it's hard to tell. It wasn't a real good win-win situation for them. And for your element, did you guys have like a phase line that you were supposed to move up to in Kuwait City?

We did. I want to say, I don't remember for sure, but I think it was like Six Ring Road, was our one limit of advance we were supposed to reach by the end of the morning of that first day. I guess it would be the morning of the next day. Because our first objective was to retake that military complex. And then after that, we got the follow-on mission to move on into Kuwait City. And I think it was to stop at Six-Ring Road. But I don't remember for sure. been a long time. So you guys didn't see the highway of death and all that kind of stuff?

We saw some of it because once we moved up into position, some of us were pulled out to, you know, to do different things. And then they started retasking us to work on missions. Some of the guys got moved over to the like the equestrian club. There were several other follow-on missions that we were kind of tasked to do to start to regroup. Once the city was retaken or the country was retaken, they just kind of held the coalition forces in place. They didn't really play much of a part then. So they started retasking a lot of the SF teams. And that's what happened to us. Like I think it was middle of

the second day, we started getting retasked and we were moving over to regroup. And so we did see some of that in the process by moving towards rally points in order to get tasked. out for the next thing. And what was the next thing for you? Like you mentioned, you had volunteered to stay an additional month. So I'm trying to remember exactly what we did after that. I mean, nothing exciting happened after that. It was a lot of like routine, boring, you know. Security. Moving stuff to the rear. Yeah, it was really mundane at that point. There was not much happening. We had a few folks that were working with like guys that had been part of the Kuwaiti resistance element. And part of it was like trying to bring them back in and get them to

stop like beating and brutalizing the Iraqis that were captured because they were they were on the verge of some war crimes. So there was a lot of guys trying to negotiate some of that and get that under control, you know, trying to get equipment back to the rear. And, you know, I think I pulled a little duty, you know, running like a battalion aid station or company aid station for a while to just kind of take care of guys as we're trying to rotate and start to pull guys out. Cool. And so, I mean, this is your big war experience after training for it for years and years. And what was it like coming back home from Desert Storm? It was, I mean, it was really interesting because, you know, we had the benefit of getting. all the praise that the Vietnam guys should have gotten. Yeah.

And everybody, you know, was finally aware of how the country had acted. And so there was a lot of guilt, I think. And as a result, people maybe overcompensated or tried to to some degree. So there was a lot of, you know, some of the guys were coming back. They had parties and parades and they were going to New York City. I didn't do any of that. I just came back. There was a big, you know, welcome thing at the airfield.

at Fort Campbell when we got back. And then I got back, turned in my weapon, and went on 30 days leave. That was the thing at the time is to take some leave. And it was, you know, like I said, I moved over there to like a brand new team. Didn't know a lot of the guys. Most of them are brand new. The initial leadership was not very impressive. We actually, during that time, got rid of the team sergeant that wasn't that great.

And we got a guy that was actually. you know, a much more dynamic leader who was only an E7, that was the 18 Fox, but moved up and took the team and really ran it the way it was supposed to be. So, you know, I was a little disenchanted after my experience there, you know, because I'd been spoiled. I'd had some good experiences being in fifth group. I had my first couple of team sergeants were, like, really great,

very organized, very professional. And, you know, the one team sergeant I had when I was on, on the special projects team was a guy named Greg Daly that I think he actually designed the Halo badge and he had been part of the Blue Light teams and stuff like that. So really great, impressive guy. I learned a lot from him. So I'd had all this great leadership and then I got stuck with this guy that's so cool, Randy. I wrote about Greg Daly in my book. Yeah? Yeah, about his involvement in blue light. Now, I recently talked to his son a little bit. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Super cool guy. Very cool. And, you know, very laid back, you know, like kind of a cool

surfer dude and just really smart as far as SF and an inspiring leader to really kind of, you know, teach you a lot. I wish I'd have paid more attention and really understood. The same thing as kind of working with Walt Shoe Maid. I didn't know what I had. Right. But, uh, You know, once you go to the other side of it and you get somebody who's a weak leader after having some strong leaders, then you recognize all those traits and you really start to have a clue about, you know, the benefits you had earlier. So the next thing for you, you got put on a desert mobility team? Yeah, yeah. I was lucky enough that one of the guys who had been on the Pakistan trip with me,

had taken the desert mobility team in that company that I was in in third battalion. And so he knew who I was, and he had been there, you know, when the guy blew his handoff. And, you know, we were there the whole time for that six months. So he got me moved over to his team. He knew I had done the B-5-V-R stuff in the desert. And then I had some background with the motorcycles and the vehicles. And so he, you know, got me on that team and kind of really. turned things around for me. A guy named Dave Brace, great team sergeant. And, you know, we,

we had a probably one of the best teams I think I've ever been connected to or saw laws in special forces. We had a lot of, you know, great guys, highly motivated, very technical in their individual MOSs and a team that just really gelled well. And you guys had all this experience doing it from Desert Storm. Yeah, we did. And most of the guys, you know, we had like one or two guys that were new that had missed Desert Storm, but for the most part, you know, the guys all had solid backgrounds. And then the interesting part is not long after that, we actually got deployed to Pakistan again to do a joint training mission with the Pakistani Special Forces, which was another great trip. And since I'd had that time in Pakistan, you know, that kind of really set me up

well for success to do well with that. With the SSG? Yes, the SSG Special Service Group. Was Chris Miller with you guys? Chris Miller, I think maybe he was. He wasn't on my team. Okay. I'm trying to remember if he was there for sure.

I didn't work directly with him, so I don't remember if he was there or not. Yeah, it might have been like the team before or the team after or something like that. Could have been. We actually went twice, so I went on two of those. deployments with the SSG to do joint operations with them. What was that like working with them? It was really cool.

They have this unique compound that's on the top of this mountain called Chirot. And it's they were actually initially founded by some of our special forces from, I think it was from 10th group back in the 50s. And so they are, they very much treated us like they're founding. fathers, big brothers. There was a lot of respect there, a lot of, you know, like admiration. When we were going over there, they actually renovated a complete barracks complex for us to stay in, made sure we had sit down toilets, hot showers. Kind of unique because the hot showers were, you know, run by a wood-burning water heater. And they actually had a little kid that they kept out there, you know, a little teenager that had to feed the logs into the, the, you know,

the hot water heater. And I think one day, one of the guys, you know, inadvertently came out of there and the water was a little cold because it hadn't got fired up yet. And he, you know, shook and shivered and so, whew. And one of the Pakistani officers went around and grabbed the kid and started beating him with a riding crop. You know, we were like, hey, hey, it's okay. And he was, you know, tell him, hey, you know, these are I guess, whatever you do,

don't let the water be cold. And from then on, the water would, like, scald you because he, you know, know. He had gotten some serious discipline over it, but it was interesting because they have this whole cliff, sheer cliff wall that has all these carved symbols in it from all the British units that they had worked with. And then they have a giant, you know, insignia with a sword and lightning bolts that's, it's their version of our crossed arrows, you know. So it's their shoulder insignia and it's in this giant probably 12 15 foot model of it and I got a great team picture in front of it of that from that trip and then we did you know some joint mountain

training with them on one of those operations where we actually jumped into we did a night combat equipment jump I was the jump master for that in the foothills in the north and then did a movement across the mountains this in the snow and it actually snowed so much that we had to keep somebody awake and shoveling snow off the tent all night to keep it from collapsing. And then we moved to an area and we had to do a, they were insistent for some reason on doing a river crossing. And so, you know, with this glacier water. And, you know, we spent a lot of time trying to talk them into, there's a bridge right over there. We can see it. Let's do that. We'll use security and then hit the objective. But they were.

They were hell-bent on having that river crossing. For whatever reason, it was one of their things they were going to die on. So we did the river crossing with them, you know, revived some people from cold, and then went to hit the objective and then wrapped up the mission from there. So it was actually another really good SF training opportunity to do that with them. Yeah, I mean, that's pretty hardcore moving through the snow, jumping in, crossing the river, freezing water. Yeah. Yeah.

To this day, I don't like the cold. It gets too cold here in Georgia for me. I'm going to have to move south, I think, because I still have to fall out. No, I stopped running outdoors in like November. I'm like, nah. I'm not in ranger school anymore. I'm not doing this. So after this, you get promoted to team sergeant.

So before I get promoted, I actually came back from one of these trips. Oh, that's right. And I came down on orders for civil affairs, 96 civil affairs at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, because I'd been on a protected status from my time on the special project team. So I couldn't be moved or PCS. And so I got these orders because now I was off that team. My time was up. And they were going to send me to 96 civil affairs as a medic.

And I really didn't want to go. I was adamant, hey, you know, so I called up SF Branch. was like, hey, you know, what can I do? I really don't want to do this. I'd like to do something else. And the guy at the time, I don't remember his name, but he was like, you know, hell no, there's no way you're getting out of this. You're going to go, and you're just going to have to suck it up, Sergeant McWee, and do your time, pay your debt to society, and that's the end of that. And I was like, man, that's, and, and, you know, in classic SF tradition, the only, the only way to really get an SF guy to do anything is telling me it can't be done.

So I started, you know, trying to call in favors and find out, well, what could I do? And at one point, like, when I had auditioned for the special project team, I'd also run into some guys, and there was some talk about trying to do Delta support selection as a medic. And at the time, I was on that special project team. So I was like, well, you know, I'm good. You know, I'm loving this. I don't want to do it. I'm not interested. And so I contacted them back and said, hey, you know, I'd like to come try to. out do that and so they you know they asked me and I was a senior E7 they're like I'm sorry man we're really not interested in you and you know I don't know if it was

because I was senior because I had said no before but either way I'd kind of maybe burnt that bridge at least for the moment and so they didn't have any interest in me I tried to go to you know to the Sipartak or to even you know one of the be one of the medical instructors at Fort Bragg I tried everything I could think of and I was running out of options and I came across this assignment to go to the Ranger Battalion. At the time, right after the Gothic Serpent deployment and the incident with Black Hawk down, they had restructured, we're in the process of restructuring the SF medic course to front load all the

trauma medicines. So the Ranger medics, the SEALs, all the other special ops medics could get that training as part of their package. But in the interim, General Downing for Socom wanted to have four SF medics at every Ranger Battalion to do interim training and train up all the Ranger medics. And so they had a spot at Third Ranger Battalion. They had a guy that was there that had been working for School of Soldiers, or No, excuse me, School of Americas. and then he came over to 3rd Battalion

and he couldn't pass their PT test. And, you know, so he made a really great impression for me. I didn't know about any of this until I showed up. And so I found out about the position. I called about it and I said, hey, you know, I heard about this. You know, I'm interested. Is it something that we could work out? And the guy asked me, he goes, well, you know, can you do some,

can you do pull-ups? And I was like, well, how many? You know, he goes, can you do six? I was like, hell, I can do 10. You know, I can handle it. He goes, well, what about Ruckmarch? I was like, oh, yeah, I can Ruckmarch? He goes, well, can you, you know, can you run?

I was like, well, so, so. I'm like, how much we talk? And he's like, five miles and 40 minutes. I was like, yeah, I can do that. And so they set me up to go to to Rope, the Ranger orientation program. And basically it was selection for the position. So I went TDI to Fort Benning and went through. the rope selection and took the position and went down to third ranger battalion.

So you went to rope so you actually became a ranger? Oh, absolutely became a ranger. So the whole time we were there, we wore black berets because that was what the uniform was at the time, had high and tights every Monday, just like all the other rangers wore the rangers stroll. We were 100% assigned and part of the ranger battalion. And we did every, every, you know, qualification, every task that all the other Rangers had to do,

we had to do it and we had to do it better. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, it's not some TDY assignment that you went and go chill out somewhere. Yeah, that's the real thing. It was not a chill out assignment at all. What was that like going from, like, your whole career up until this point had been special forces, you know, long hair, slightly out of regulation, mustache, you know, all of that and working in an unconventional environment a lot of times and now going to

the super regimental regiment. Oh, yeah. So I was like a surfer kid in a Catholic school. You know, I was going down there, you know, everything's pretty laid back in SF. It's like, hey, how you're doing? Everything down there is Rangers lead away. And, you know, there used to be this walkway that went from the battalion headquarters up to the medical section, which, is where I worked. I was the NCOIC for Third Ranger Retainians Medical Section. And I would have to make that walk a couple times every day to go to all the meetings and everything. And we used to call it the walk of scowl because all the guys, you know,

the Ranger battalion, their jaw was all locked up tight, their face was all harsh and you know just looking miserable as could be. And you know, we would walk down through there. And for a while, you know, I was like, hey, how's it going and they're like, Rangers lead away. You know, everything was real super ultra serious the whole time. So it was a big adjustment, you know, for there. And the worst part was there had been two other guys in the position there before me. And one of them, the very first guy, had gotten in trouble. And I think he was out of third group. I don't remember for sure. I can't remember his name off the top of my head.

I only heard about him. I never met him. But he had actually gotten sent to military confinement because he had ammunition and demolition C-4 in his shed at the house. So he'd been stealing stuff from the Ranger Battalion and storing it in his shed for some reason. And then we had the guy after him who found out about the opening and came over and kind of slid in the position because he was already on post at Fort Benning for School of America's. And his whole reason for coming over is he wanted to get this special assignment and try to make E8. And he couldn't pass the PT test. He couldn't do the Ruck March.

He couldn't do the pull-ups. You know, because he was supposed to pass the fitness test and go to Ranger School. And then I showed up there and I got a one page continuity book from him. It was typed on line notebook paper. And the only thing it told me was, you know, like when the meetings were. So I had no idea about anything that was going on. And I went to like my first company training meeting and the company commander introduced me. Hey, this is Sergeant McAwee.

He's our new Special Forces medic running the med shed. And, you know, it's kind of a dog eat dog world there. And one of the guys, you know, like straight out said, well, what kind of criminal are you? And having come from, you know, the SF team area, you know, I said, well, I'm a murderer. I just haven't been caught yet. And, you know, so I had to give it back to them pretty good. And luckily, the thing that really kind of saved me there is I'd had some background in developing the combatives program at Fifth Group. And so we had a couple events that happened to where there was some combatives.

And so I actually had to, you know, put some throw down. on a couple guys to actually prove that I wasn't this guy who couldn't do pull-ups and I wasn't this criminal, you know, that was unprofessional. So the guys before me had left this really unprofessional taste in their mouth and they don't exactly love SF guys anyway. They don't, you know, they don't trust this. They think we're unprofessional and these guys did nothing but prove that. So the whole time I got there initially, I was busy trying to earn my reputation with them. They had no respect for me. They didn't think much of me. I was just a lot of another SF loser and the only thing that turned it around for me is is I went to another one of those

meetings and I kept seeing this thing on the schedule that said medX you know and I was like what's this medX? It's like oh that's the medical exercise that you guys are going to do. I was like oh okay cool and so you know I asked around a little bit and I said hey what's this medical exercise we're doing and they're like well it's whatever you make and I was like what and it's like yeah you're you're responsible for it's whatever you come up with to train the medics and this was the first heard of it. And we were now about a month out from this, you know, training exercise. So I started looking into it to find out, well, what assets do we have? What's the scenario? What's the plan? And there was nothing done. Nobody had initiated or started anything. And the one thing I found out

was they initially there had been a request to get some helicopter support from Task Force 160 to do this medical exercise. And so I went to the S3 air. At the time, it was Matt Eversman from from Black Hawk down awesome guy and i was talking to him and i was like hey certain ever'sman what's to deal with this medics and the helicopters and it's like well you know we sent your request up and the guys are doing this and that you're not going to get any helicopters so you know you got nothing and then i was like okay and then i asked him well okay your s3 training do we have a training area and he's like no nobody requested anything you guys don't have anything so the more i looked into this exercise the more i found out there there was nothing coordinated for it at all

This guy who had been there before me had done zero. So, you know, I started looking around. The first thing I did was I got in my pickup truck because, you know, I asked him about, well, what about other, you know, helicopter units on post? He said, well, there's a Madovac unit. There's a National Guard unit. And, you know, his assistant air called him up while I was sitting there and ask him about that. I said, hey, this is Third Ranger Battalion.

You know, we'd like to task and use some of your helicopter. And, you know, it was a real short conversation and you got off and he goes, yeah, they said no. And I was like, what do you mean they said no? And so I asked him, I was like, well, where's the unit at? What unit is it? So I got my pickup truck and I drove the other side of post. I went over there and talked to him in person, you know, met him and said, hey, you know, I'm Sergeant McAwee from 3rd Ranger Battalion. I know you guys got some helicopters. I was wondering, we'd really like to do some training with you, maybe train some of your guys on, you know, some of our stuff. We'd like to work with you, you know, what can we do? And the fact that I went there in person

talked to the guy, the guy was really open to it. And so, you know, I got this National Guard helicopter unit and I did the same thing with the Medevac unit that said, hey, you know, we're training the medics. We'd like to work with you guys. And so then the other piece was we didn't have a training area. And same thing happened. I asked, well, where can we do a training area? You know, what can we use? And they have an area there called McKenna Mount site, which is a really excellent training facility. And, you know, I came up with the concept that what we would do is kind of do a take on, you know, a follow up from the incident with Black Hawk down to where urban environment, you've got people trapped inside the city, and we've got casualties. Let's work on some scenarios

for the medics to run through their triage, you know, deal with casualties on the ground. And then we will evacuate those casualties. We'll roleplay the casualties. as downpilots or, you know, other members that are stuck in an urban environment, and then we'll evacuate them out by helicopter. And so I found out that one of the officer training schools on post had McKenna Mountside for the time we were trying to do. And so same thing. You know, we called up, asked for co-usage, and they're like, no, you know.

So I went over in person again, got my little gray ranger pickup truck, drove over, said, hey, I'm Sergeant McAwee. You know, we'd like to work with you guys. Maybe we could exchange some training, train you guys, you know, on some tactics or something. You know, what can we do to work out co-usage on this McKinnemount site that you have? And they're like, oh, yeah, no problem. So they signed off for co-usage for us. And then about a week later, they actually fell out and just gave it to us.

I don't know what changed in their schedule, but they didn't need the area. So now I had a training area. I had aircraft. And so I got support from within the range of battalion for Op 4 and then a couple of platoons to serve as, you know, search to do mount clearing through the city to find the casualties with the medic attached to them to do the scenarios. And then I also found out that one of the guys I knew was an SF guy on a Halo team. They were coming down to Fort Benning to do some training.

So, you know, I asked him, hey, would you guys want to do a scenario with this? and they were coming in from seventh group, had some things set up, and I said, you know, I coordinated with them to do, to be another SAR team to look for the downpilot in the city. So what I had set up was they would, we would alternate teams, we would alternate a Ranger platoon with the SFODA. A team would fly in or a platoon on the National Guard helicopters. They'd put them down. They'd move through the city, get the medics to the casualties. The medics would treat the casualties. and then we would call in the MEDABEK birds,

and they would use the jungle penetrator or the Stokes litter, and they would evac them out. And then the teams would X-Fill. And I had it set up so that we would do these constant rotations between teams and medics. And then, you know, the other SF medics were there, were in charge of grading the trauma scenarios, just like we do in our 300F1

and do the moulage and set up the fake casualties and all that. So once I briefed this back to the commander, the battalion commander at the time, Colonel Kearney, great guy, very impressive commander. And, you know, he came out and watched it the first day we were doing it. We had a whole week of this training that was laid on to go through this rotation. And after he saw it the first day, he was impressed with it. So he ordered all the Ranger Company commander, all the officers to come out there and watch it and get like a walkthrough. So I spent my whole week doing the dog and pony show with the visitors folder walking them all through the scenarios.

But after that, I finally earned enough respect from the guys at the Ranger Battalion because of the way I organized the training event. And the bottom line is that the Ranger Medics did great. The other SF medics that were working with me made the whole thing come off seamlessly and, you know, executed the idea that I had, you know, done the drug deals to get everybody in position for. And it came off really well. And the commander was was pretty happy with it. And so after that, they treated me, you know, almost like one of their own a little bit. And then, you know, we did a couple of joint missions with some of the J-SOC units right after that. And then we had one that involved some chemical

casualty care. And so they needed a medical liaison to work with the J-Soc guys. And so I worked with them as the liaison and then after that for all the joint rotations and exercises they would request me to be the liaison you know i was i had the sf experience i was a little bit older than a lot of the guys that they might normally interface with and so they they kind of treated me pretty well and would request me to do that so it turned out to be a pretty good deal um you know during those things one thing i'd like to ask you and uh the sense i get from talking to guys particularly the 70s, into the 80s, and in your case in the 90s, that back in the day before SF became a branch, back before the Ranger Regiment got very formalized and SF got very

formalized and use of SOC and so common, everything, that back in the older days, it was a little bit more possible for someone to bounce between the Rangers and SF throughout their career. What do you think about that kind of exchange? Do you think that that's like a good, healthy thing to have during a... person's career progression. So you know what it's one of those things that's that's real experience, experience being what you get when you you get something you don't necessarily ask for. And I went there, you know, to be honest for the wrong reasons. I went there to get out of going civil affairs. But it turned out to be really great experience for me because the whole time I

had been an SF, I always got this, you know, push back and ridicule for being an SF baby. because I had no conventional experience. And people would, you know, shove that at me all the time. I never saw it as a problem. But, you know, the truth is, in the beginning it was because I didn't have the experience that I should have to kind of start things. But it also gives an interesting blend of perspective, right? Because I thought outside the box because I'd never been in the box.

So it adds something to the team to have these perspectives of guys that don't know the rules for doing what you do. And, you know, so sometimes you come up with some crazy concepts on how things should be executed, but it keeps your thinking unconventional, which I think is a really good thing. Now, the other side of it is I went to the Ranger Battalion, and man, you talk about being out of your element, because, you know, they are, at the time, were ultra conventional with the high and tight, spit-stein boots all the time, starched you. uniform, everything, you know, dress right dress.

And I was okay until we had formations or had to do drill and ceremony. And you know how that is with an SF guy. I did not shine. Those were not my great moments. Luckily, there were few and far between. But as far as going into a position and actually doing, getting some leadership experience and having a little different look as far as like, you know, what these young troops do, because, man, they're serious, highly motivated.

And so I really enjoyed it. I got some great leadership background out of it. I got some huge appreciation for how wonderful SF is. When I came back to SF after that, I realized, you know, what a good deal it was. And the pace at the Ranger Regiment is just nonstop. And it's even when you're, you know, you, it's different in SF because you're deploying, you're gone all the time. but a lot of times when you're home, you're kind of left alone.

Well, the Ranger Battalion, you're never left alone, especially if you're part of the leadership because you've got all these young kids to look after to take care of. You know, you're bailing them out of jail. You're getting them out of trouble. You're managing their whole lives. You're giving them marriage counseling. So it's a lot of demand for leadership. And it's really great experience.

It set me up well to be a team sergeant and to appreciate how good things are in SF. So, you know, I didn't see the bouncing back and forth because that happened like probably right before I got in. When I got in, like I said, I went to Port Sam. We had some guys that had come from the Ranger Battalion. And mainly when I was in the initial medic course for just combat medic, there was an SF guy from seventh group and a guy from the Ranger Battalion. I still remember the guy from Ranger Battalion. His name was Sergeant Welch. And, you know, so when I got to the medic course, I really looked up to those guys because I was like, man, that's what I want to do. And the, you know, it was nice later to be able to come, come full circle and check that block

and then go to, you know, go to SF training, be a special forces guy, and then go to Ranger Battalion, even though it's kind of back asswords, you know, which is maybe the way I do things anyway, but it set me up to go down there and, you know, get that unique experience. And what made it a little more challenging for me is I was an SF guy down there without a Ranger tab. So I was not Ranger qualified while I was there. Oh, that must have gone over well. Oh, they did not love that. And it was always interesting because, you know, they always did what we called sniffing. They were always trying to look at your shoulder to see what you had. And we used to even kind of tease them and always rotate away from them so they had to, you know, they had to look for it. And luckily, though,

I had an SF combat patch. So that gave me a little bit of respect. But, you know, inevitably, every now and then they would mention the fact that, hey, you know, hey, Sarmac, you don't have a Ranger tab. And I was like, I don't need a Ranger tab. I got SF tab. I got D tab. You know, so I had to give it back to them, but they had a valid point, you know. I was missing a key part of their identity. Did you end up having to go to ranger school? So the deal when I went down there was supposed to be for me to get to go to ranger school. And, you know, so when I showed up down there, it was all set up. I was supposed to go to ranger school. I had a slot that was coming up. And they came to me and said, hey, the doctor,

you know, he's been here longer than you. He hasn't got to go to ranger school yet. We want to send him. And I was like, well, and what can I say? I mean, he's been here longer than me. Yeah, I mean, it's fine. I'll go to the next class. And so he went and I think at the time it was kind of, it was toward the winter. And after my Pakistan experience, I was like, sure, let him go to the winter class. I'll wait.

But and then the next thing that happened, though, is right after that, I came down with orders to go to the SFA knock, which, you know, I needed for promotion to E8. And so I was like, well, I got to go to the. that. So I wound up choosing A-knock at Fort Bragg over going to Ranger School. And then by the time I got back, I didn't have enough time left to go. And so I didn't get to go. I never went. And it's one of those kind of, you know, bittersweet things. I wanted to go, but evidently I wasn't meant to go. And I probably would have got recycled a dozen times. You needed A-Noc so you could get promoted to E-8 and take a team. Right. Yeah, I had to have it. And then, You know, I came back from A-Nock, and then not long after that, the E-8 list came out,

and so I was on the list, and my time was up at the Ranger Battalion. And what was it like going back to Fifth Group? What was the team that you took? So I went back initially. One of the cool things about the Ranger Battalion is they live by the regulations. So if you can dive into the regulations and find out how to use them to your advantage, you are a master of that domain. And in true SF style, I figured out that one of the requirements they had because I was an SF guy and I was getting language pay because I was a two plus in Persian Farsi.

Well, I discovered that, hey, they have to send me to a set amount of language training every year. And I brought this up. And they're like, oh, and as soon as they found out, there was a scramble. Like, you got to go. You know, we got to get you signed off on this. You know, we don't want to get in trouble with SOCOM or whatever. And so they figured out that they didn't. didn't have a Persian language program on Fort Benning. So I couldn't go there. And so they actually

came back to me and said, well, where are we going to send you? You know, you're going to go to Monterey. I said, well, you know, there's training at Fifth Group and Fort Campbell. And so they sent me back to a language immersion training for a month at Fifth Group before I was about to head back to the, you know, to be reassigned to Fifth Group. And so when I went back there, I started scoping out for a job. I knew that, you know, I needed to find a team sergeant position in order to have a place in life when I got back. Well, as it turned out when I came back, the guy that had been my team sergeant for the mounted team, Dave Brace, was a company sergeant major. And, you know, as I was going around kind of letting everybody know I was there, letting them make fun of me with my Ranger

haircut after being on the long hair team and my black beret and give me, you know, a lot of crap about all that, I ran into him and he said, hey, you know, what's going on? And I said, well, you know, I'm just doing language training. I'm about due done with my time at Ranger Battan. I'm going to be coming back to fifth group. And he's like, oh, okay, really? You know, well, I'd like you to take a team in the company. And it was a company second battalion. And I was like, well, yeah, sure, what's the deal? And he goes, well, you know, I think you're perfect for it. And I was like, well, wait a minute, what are you mean? What are you not telling me? And so this team had gotten in trouble and had two major incidents, right?

Like international level of incidents. One of them was while they were in, while they were in Kuwait, they had decided that they were going to exercise their redneck roots and driving down the road in the Humvee. They were going to shoot road signs across the hood. Well, in doing that, they actually, you know, put around through the hood of the Humvee. and then they went back to KKMC, and as they're going through the gate, one of the MPs noticed the bullet hole in the hood

and asked him, well, hey, hey, what happened here? And one of the guys who was like a total dumbass said, oh, we took some fire up on the border. Well, that quickly went up the chain, and I think went all the way to the president, and there was a major incident, you know, that wound up getting a couple guys relieved and really messed up the team.

But also somewhere in there, they had another incident where they were in Ethiopia, and the team medic had died from an overdose of ketamine. And I don't know if it was a suicide or if he was using it as recreational drug and just overdosed or something. You were a medic. Isn't it really difficult to overdose on ketamine? It's the only time I've ever heard of it in. in my entire medical career.

It's not something that happens easily, but this was what I'd been told from coming back. And so I was like, man, this is, you know, I was talking to my former team sergeant, this our major, and I was like, I don't know about this. This is, you know, you're asking a lot. And I said, well, I'll do it, you know, because I want to work with you.

I think you're awesome. You know, I trust you, but you're going to have to back me up as the team sergeant. And it sounds like, you know, I don't know if all those guys are going to be able to stay. if I have a problem and I want to kick somebody out, will you back me up? And he's like, yeah, absolutely. You know, whatever you need, we'll do it.

I want you to come back and straighten the team out. And so I was like, okay, I'll do it. And when I came back initially, I came back and they put me on the B team and then deployed as the L&O for that team on a, you know, like a graded exercise. So that they were doing like a certification out to El Paso. but nobody knew that I was coming back to take over the team. They had another team sergeant that had been there during, you know, some of these things that happened.

And so I was kind of, you know, doing undercover boss thing and observing them, working through them while they're in isolation to fly out and deploy to El Paso and do these gut hunting missions, which, you know, I had some experience with, especially after, you know, at one point we had done some joint, you know, tactical development with the Cag guys on scud hunting with the mobility. So I had a good bit of background in that area. And mainly I was just kind of observing them from a leadership standpoint, an organizational standpoint, to see, you know, what's the problem with this team?

What can I do? What can I bring to the table to kind of fix them? And so they also got, at the time, they got another warrant officer in who had worked with me, you know, in the same company in Second Italian, in charge. company previously. So we knew each other as well. He had been a weapons guy. I was there when he came in and now he had gone through the warrant course and was a warrant officer, a guy named Larry Corrigan, great guy. And so, you know, we were excited to be working together. You know, he found out a little bit, you know, like right after that deployment that I was going to be coming to

the team. And then not long after they finished their evaluation and their deployment, they rotated the team sergeant out and put me in and I took over the team. So it was ODA 542. And so that was my first team as the team sergeant. And it turned out to be a really great team. I had some great guys. I was there probably about a week when I had to fire a guy. And interesting enough, it was the medic. You know, I came back and it was probably the wrong time to try to challenge me because I'd just come from the Ranger Battalion. I'd spent the last two years like buttonhead. with those guys trying to prove that I was professional. I knew what I was doing.

So I had to kind of learn a lot of this stuff by the book. And when I came back, I'd spent time while I was at the Ranger Retain. I'd been an instructor for one of their battalion-wide combatants courses. So I brought that back to the team. That was going to be part of what I did. And I came in with a real emphasis. One of the things that we had that was part of rope when we went through or the Ranger Inductionation program is,

we were all sent to watch the classified aerial video from Black Hawk Down, from the, you know, where the, uh, Sugar and Gordon actually took the crash site and, and where they were overrun and killed. And so having seen all that, it kind of put a new perspective on things for me as far as, hey, we need to be taking things really seriously as far as, you know, shooting, communicating, you know, unarmed combat because bullets, you know, magazines run out and some of Sometimes you don't have another option. So I was pretty gung-ho on all those kind of things, starting with fitness, you know, shooting, combatives.

Those were my directives for the team as I really came in wanting to make it the most professional I could. And so when I first came in and took over, one of the things I did was I made sure everybody had their D-bags packed, you know, packing lists. I went through all the basic stuff, right? Here's packing list. Make sure you have this. Okay.

We're going to do all the layouts for the equipment. Wittmet. I didn't need to see the medical gear, all that stuff. And, you know, I kind of got a little pushback initially. And so I used an old trick that I learned and I set it up for Friday. And so, you know, a couple of the guys got it together. And so what I did is I checked their gear. Everything looked good. It was Friday morning right after PT. I dismissed him for the weekend. I was like, okay, take off. I got to, you know, I had two other guys. I got to one who was the medic and he, you know, kind of blew me off. And I'd already given my introductory spiel that, hey, look, you know, I know it's a new

environment, new change. This is what we're going to be doing. This is what I expect. If it doesn't fit for you, let me know, come see me. I'll find you another place in SF. And so when I started looking at the medical stuff, it was just, it was a mess. The guy was as unprofessional as he could be. and he basically told me, you know, like, well, hey, you don't think this is going to work out.

And I was like, okay, grab your stuff. And I took him down the hall right away to see the Sarre Major. And I said, hey, Sergeant Major, I want this guy off my team. And, you know, true to his word, Dave Brace backed me up. He was gone by the end of the day. And, you know, that was it. And you, we mentioned earlier talking about the guy who had gotten blown up in Somalia in the vehicle with the landmine. well this guy I believe was in the vehicle with him when that happened so you know I I really hated to kind of kick him off the team but his attitude was just he was done he was burnt out he didn't he didn't want to do anything challenging

uh he was part of the problem I'd like to ask you what were sort of the leadership problems or the organizational problems that you identified on that team obviously firing that guy was kind of the first step of laying down the law but what did you kind of have to do over the months to get that team turned around. So the biggest thing when I win is because these guys had gone through these incidents, they had some guys that were brand new, and then they had a few guys with a little bit of experience. So overall, they were a pretty young team. But the guys that had been there, you know, their, you know, ego was crushed. They just felt like losers because they'd been part of this team,

and they'd been labeled because of these incidents that they were just a bunch of losers. So they had no pride in themselves, you know. And so we started with just the basics. You know, we came in, we started doing, you know, intense PT and started building the guys up. And I kind of let them know, you know, I tried to use a very incentive-based program. I put out, you know, a school's OML, order merit list right away so that they knew, hey, these are the things you're working for. And some of them were new. And, you know, I did all the basic things of just, you know, counseling.

So I came in, sat down with all the guys within the. that 30 days initially did initial counseling. I was real clear coming from the Ranger Battalion about like, hey, this is what I expect. You know, I handed out all the items of, hey, this is what the team's going to be about. And I really just kind of started off by telling them this is going to be the best damn team in fifth group. And, you know, that was my approach. I wanted to do that. And I also kind of let them know that, look, I understand you guys had it tough before. You know, I've been in fifth group a long time. I got a lot of experience here. it's a great place to be. You just haven't seen it yet. And I understand because when I first got the

fifth group, I didn't think it was great either. But it took some time for somebody to show me that. And then I just kind of started making sure that we went through all the basic steps to make sure the guys were dialed in and they were brilliant at the basics. That's really what we focused on. And after probably about three months, they started to really kind of dial in and get like a sense of pride. And part of that came initially from the fact that every Tuesday and Thursday, I had them doing combatives. We were doing military combatives. And initially, it didn't go over well the first couple times because the first time, you know, I went through a real quick lesson of what we call the punching drill. You know, you trade punches.

And I did this drill called offense versus defense. And for the first minute, if you're offense, you can punch and the other guy can't punch you back. all he can do is block and invade and defend. And then you switch. The other guy gets to be offense and punch. And then the last minute, it's both ways. So you guys get to go at it pretty hard. Well, I used a card system to where you could draw cards.

And I kind of stacked the deck. And another part of it is they had a real young team leader. He had just gotten there. And, you know, his young captain. And I think it was his first deployment when one of these things happened. So they didn't relieve him because, you know, he really hadn't been there that long. But I think it hurt his ego as well. He didn't really know his place in it.

And so I stacked the cards for sparring and I made sure that I went up against the captain. And to be honest, I nailed him. And I videoed all the training. I still have the videos. And, you know, so I kicked him in the head. You know, I made it a pretty rugged experience for the guys that, hey, you know, we're serious. And then after that, you know, I took him aside and I let him know, listen, you know, you and I are a team, we're going to make these guys really, you know, professional.

We're going to, you know, we're going to be warriors, not just guys that sit around the team room. And so once I kind of convinced him that that was going to be the new attitude of the team, a lot of the guys started to buy into it. They got their pride back. They started really digging into their job. And we got a couple of brand new guys as that was happening, and it kind of turned the team around. And I had a lot of support from, you know, the other guy that was the warrant officer, Larry Corrigan. He and I knew each other really well and, you know, worked together really well as far as establishing some strong leadership.

Because he came in like just before I did. So we had a new leadership component. We kind of got the captain on board with us. And then the team started to gel after that. That's pretty cool. And did you get to take that team abroad at all? Yeah. we actually got to go.

We got several pretty good missions. We did one trip that was pretty cool to Jordan, where we actually did some, we did some live fire, call for fire with a B1 bomber. And, you know, we did a complete navigation through Wadi Rum with the Jordanian forces and then hit a live fire target and called the B1 Kassan on it. We went, let's see, we went. to Cutter together.

We did a six-month rotation in Kuwait as well. So we got to do quite a bit of stuff. And that all kind of fed into the team developing as well because we earned a couple of missions. Like after that, you know, we had to brief back for a couple things and actually got awarded the mission. And the guys started getting some real pride in what they were capable of. And I guess because you did a pretty good job turning the team around, they gave you a second one.

Well, it worked out really well. So after that, we changed sergeant majors, and I was blessed to get another awesome sergeant major, a guy by the name of Kip Hopkimer, who's just, you know, like another stellar at the time. He was another legend in fifth group that had been there forever. and the whole time I had been working on convincing the group to really get behind this combatives program. And so I had, you know, been taking a couple guys from my team and we were going and training with the graces, you know, that created the UFC and stuff like that. And then we would come back. I was training my team. And then we would also invite and train other teams with that.

and, you know, I convinced the Sard Major to support me on that. And then because I had that background, you know, I had expressed some interest. They were asking me, well, hey, what do you want to do next? You know, and they tried to talk me into taking support company and doing a lot of other things because they were trying to track me for Sard Major. And I was like, well, you know, I really love being a team sergeant. I wish I could do it longer. And it just came up that one of those special projects teams, it's the job.

joint team that is actually two ODAs combined. And that was going to be a vacant position. And because I had the special projects experience before, I also had all that interface and interaction with the guys from CAG from both my time at Ranger Battalion and, you know, the joint training we had done for this, the mobility development. The, to go with that, the team that was in question had actually been in the Kenyan embassy when it was bombed.

Oh, sure. And so, you know, these guys were going to a lot of places and winding up in some pretty, you know, hazardous environments. And most of the time, they didn't have the benefit of weapons. So this kind of fed into the idea of me working with all the unarmed and knife combat stuff. And so the SAR major, you know, talked to me. asked me, you know, how I felt about that. And I said, man, that would be an honor. I'd love to do it. You know, I can't think of anything better. If you consider me, I would definitely, you know,

I'd really appreciate it. I'd be up for that. And so I got put on the short list and considered for it. And they selected me to go run that other special projects team, which was a joint team of two ODAs. That's pretty cool. And so that, it sounds like your job was kind of like getting the rest of the group trained up on these skills? So I had made it my personal endeavor, you know, as far as the combatives, because at the time, it wasn't a popular concept for the whole group. In fact, there was a lot of resistance to it. Initially, we didn't even have like a room to train in. We started out, I would take my guys to the squash court at one of the gyms, and we would sign it out and use it to do the combative's

training. So we had a hardwood floor. We weren't doing much ground stuff yet. And then, the guy that was a warrant officer, Larry Corrigan, his daughter was heavily into gymnastics. And so he was an assistant coach for his daughter's gymnastics place. And he got it worked out for us to be able to use the gymnastics place at six in the morning on Tuesday and Thursday, this place called Tumbletown. So that's where we were going. What's funny about it is now Larry is in Clarksville and owns probably one of the biggest gymnastics gyms in the United States. He's huge in the gymnastics world.

But so he set us up to go take the guys and train in the gymnastics area with the padded floor. And then we kind of worked out a side deal to where we signed out a room in the Isofact and we laid down some foam, went to DRMO, the defense reutilization complex, and got a big sheet of canvas and then duct tape. it over that and we were doing this makeshift Matt was our training area for combatives into our isolation facility that that room in the iso fact was still there when I that room that combatives room and the iso fact was still there at least when I showed up around like 2007 yeah so so we did the makeshift room and we kind of laid it out so that one day we had a visiting general

I think it was from Yusufiq. And he was taking, he was doing a tour with the group commander. And we weren't supposed to be there, but we made sure we had a few guys in there training. And we had a guy standing outside. And when the generals started walking by, we opened, kind of opened up the door and went through a little, like, you know, pre-rehearsed routine we were doing to make it look good. And so the general came in, saw what we were doing. And he asked the group commander, he's like, you know, he was talking to us.

He goes, oh, how come you guys are training on this? this canvas was saying, well, hey, that's all we got, sir. And so he put the group commander on the spot and say, hey, these guys needed a training room. You know, I'll pay half, but you're going to have to fund the other half. The group commander was pissed. He was super pissed because we committed him for this money. He wasn't so happy about it.

But we wound up from that getting a dedicated combatives room, which is probably the one you saw with the green wrestling mats and the fifth group logo or like writing on it. I want to say, I had set that up. red mats on the walls maybe if i remember no that was the second one in the uh that was in the the medical therapeutic center because it couldn't be called a combative's room or something shit real is it damn maybe you're right well you'd know better than i would well my memory's not

not always that good anymore but initially we had these dark green uh wrestling mats that you know i worked a deal to get them wholesale and they're they're brand new but we put them in there and we had like a rope along one edge, you know, so it looked kind of like a ring. And then we had the padded walls and everything. So we finally got a combatant's room that we were able to train in. And so, you know, I kept taking my team there, even with the special project guys, I would take them there on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And we would invite other teams to train with us. And by this time, I had put the program I developed into an actual training manual. So I had it laid out. That's how I convinced the command to let me, to pay for me to go

train with the Gracies. And then we actually brought, you know, Hori and Gracie in for a week of training to teach the guys and do an instructor course in June of 2001, so right before 9-11 kicked off. And then so, and we were actually in the training room. I was in that room teaching combatives and working with my guys on 9-11 when the plane struck the towers in the Pentagon and went down in Pennsylvania. And I mean, that kicked things off for fifth group in a big way, obviously. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So up until then, I was kind of on the downhill cycle of finishing up my team sergeant time. I think I might have had maybe six months, nine months left at the most with the special projects team starting job. And they had worked it out. I was going to become the

ISAFAC manager, the hotel manager is what they used to always call it. And then I would do the training for all the teams in the group. And there was some discussion even that, hey, you know, we'd even like to turn this into a civilian position for you afterwards, you know, after you retire, because I was getting close to retirement. And they, you know, that was kind of the plan. I had my life all figured out. And then the planes crashed.

And then that day, everything spun up. Everybody started, you know, like pack it up, low, out and getting ready to figure out what we're going to do next to resolve that issue. And where did that take you and your team? So our team right away, we locked down the first day and started getting, you know, doing teleconference calls with SOCOM. And then the leadership like immediately deployed to McDill to do some command planning with them and figure out like how that was going to work for us.

And then we kept some missions that were still involved as part of the rotation. We went, the interesting part about it is we were actually in Peshawar, Pakistan, along the Afghan border in June of 2001, so right before the incident. And at the time we were working with the, you know, we had some things working with the State Department, then the embassy there that were related to trying to figure out, to figure out where Osama bin Laden was. But, you know, we had a pretty minor role overall, but we were in there as part of that mission anyway.

And then we spun up, went to McDill, and then we went on a couple other deployments that were in, that were located in surrounding countries, mostly north of Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and then also Turkmen. Minnesota. So we were in several of those areas there throughout that time. I mean, and that's kind of a, I mean, it still is a bit of a wild west in some of those places. Yeah, it's a really interesting part of the world. I mean, you got the extremes. You got Kazakhstan, which is like New York

city with everybody speaking Russian. You know, the capital there is a major city. And it's kind of like the twilight zone because everybody's there speaking Russian, but it looks like a major. I was in, I was in Almadi last year. Yes. Yeah, it feels like, yeah, you could be like in a coffee shop in Brooklyn. Yeah, exactly. And then you've got, you know, Turkmenistan where it's very wild west and, you know, extremely strange, but very unique. And they, they speak their own, like, Persian dialect there that's pretty close. So I was able to communicate with them while we're there. It was some pretty cool experience to get to go to those countries. It's probably the best part of the fifth group area.

Were you guys mostly kind of like working on setting up the logistics for everything going down into Afghanistan? So we were still completely involved in a Joint Chief of Staff directed mission. And a lot of it, like we were working through the embassies in those different countries. So we really didn't have anything to do, directly with fifth group interesting are you are can you can you talk about what you were doing at that time so um so we were we were uh indirectly supporting a j sock endeavor got you um and so you were traveling around that part of the world under basically working for socom um and how How long did that go on for?

So let's see, I think I had that team sergeant gig for, we were doing that part, like after 9-11. I was with them until, let's see, for about a year. Okay. For, you know, the first part of that. And then, you know, my team starting time was up. And for me, there was a lot of pressure to take like a group operations job or, one of the other, you know, things like that. But for me, at that time, you know, we'd had the incident with the guys that were killed in the friendly fire incident.

And two of my good friends died in that, you know, Dan Pettatory and Jenny Davis. So I was kind of at a point to where I'm not sure how familiar you are with the incident, but it was really some officer mix up. Yeah, when they called in an airstrike. Yeah, they called in an airstrike that wiped out the team, ODA 574. And those guys, you know, were really good friends of mine. So at the time, I really wasn't too big on continuing to work with the way things were. We were also getting a lot of flack from our battalion commander because we didn't answer to him as part of the special project team. And he was constantly, you know, like on me as the team, sorry.

telling me that, you know, I need to tell the general that we're not going to do the special project. And I was like, you expect me as an E8 to tell a three-star general that we're not going to do what he wants done. I think maybe you need to do some, you know, officer math and go talk to him yourself or maybe have somebody higher because I don't have that kind of clout. That's not my position to tell him what to do. He tells me what to do. And he really wasn't in favor of us as the special project from the beginning, which is kind of sad because all my guys ever did was make him look good. You know, they came back with letters of accommodation from the ambassadors and, you know, guys from, you know, from the Department of State. And even a couple times I'd go in and give an

after action, you know, a post-trip report to them, let them know, hey, this is, you know, things, we went here, we did this, this is good. Here are the accommodations from the ambassador and, you know, from Socom, you know, be really great, sir, if you went down and kind of said, tell the guys who did a great job. And he just wouldn't do it. He had no, like, respect for us and didn't care for the mission at all. He was really down on us. So working for him was at that time. And he couldn't, once the war kicked off, he didn't have us, you know, for tactical control to task to do some of the missions. The commanders, and put him at a disadvantage. The commanders, I think the battalion commanders get kind of irritated.

when they have like a special projects team. The SIF was another element that was in this category because they're mostly working for J-Soc. And who were, oh, back in the old days, also the Greenlight team. That was another thing that just like sucked up all these resources. And when you're assigned to another element like that, it means that like the commander cannot task out his teams to do things. And so they hate these kinds of special projects.

Oh yeah, this guy hated us like severely. He, you know, and all we ever did was make him look good, but he did not like that at all. And so it was a constant battle. And then after that happened, you know, I was kind of disheartened as far as sticking with fifth group. And, you know, I'd always been taught by all these guys that I'd learned from all the years that, you know, if you've got a problem, you need to have a solution. And so I started looking at it and I was like, you know, my problem. here is leadership, officer leadership. What can I do about it? You know, I'm an NCO. What can I, how can I impact this in any way possible? And the answer I came up with is,

you know what, I can go teach future officers at ROTC. And so I got my choice of assignment after Afghanistan. And we were, you know, the project was closely connected to the SIF. you know it was the it was labeled the RST or the regional survey team oh yeah so so that was kind of the responsibility there and like I said I got my choice of assignment so I checked out a couple things and the one I ended up with probably because I'd been at Fort Benning in Georgia before is I went to the University of Georgia actually went and came here and checked it out right before I went on my last mission. So I showed up with long hair, you know, facial hair looking like a street or street person and toured the campus. The guy who was in the position already was a former

support medic from Delta. He and I had gone to medic training together. So I knew him. And he kind of, you know, showed me around. The job looked interesting enough. And so, you know, I decided, you know what? I'll take this. I went back and put in for it and then did my life. last, you know, overseas deployment with the team. And then shortly after that, I came back and moved down to Athens, Georgia, been here ever since. Oh, great. So you were able to, yeah, find a good position to kind of ride out your last year or so in the military. Yeah, you know, and it's the, it's really the big lie because they make it sound like, oh, you'll be home, you know, you got all this free time and everything. And I guess you could do it that way, but

When I got here, one of the things I saw was the kids were really motivated. You know, they, most of them had signed up because of 9-11, so they were anxious to go out there and make a difference. They were different from a lot of the youth that, you know, that you were seeing everywhere else. And, you know, so the key there was to take the job seriously and really try to train them and make good leaders out of them. So it takes up like a lot of your weekends, which they don't tell you about, you know,

you're doing a lot of training thing with them on the weekend. You're in every morning at 6 a.m. running PT forum. You're there a lot of times late at night. And then they were just like my Rangers, you know. They were calling me 24-7. I couldn't go to the bathroom without one of them following me in there. You know, I'd have to order them out so I could actually use the bathroom for five minutes. But, you know, they're like your own kids.

So it was a good experience overall to work with them and to see folks that wanted to be motivated leaders and to impart to them while they're still listening about what a difference they can make and how they need to be a strong leader and work with their NCOs. And for the last 20 years, I mean, we've kind of touched upon it throughout this interview, but martial arts is obviously a big part of your life, you know, your black belt certification behind you there, jujitsu, army combatives developing all of that. And you've kind of flipped that into a business after your military career. Yeah, so one of the things I found is I was on my second marriage and we waited 10 years to have my son.

And, you know, he was born in 2000. So the plan was I was winding down. I had my son. I had two kids from the first marriage and, you know, completely detached from them. That didn't work out too well. So, you know, I didn't want to mess it up again. So I wanted to have that time with my son. and he was, you know, less than a year old.

He was born in October 2000. So when it came to 9-11, he wasn't even a year old yet. I thought I was kind of winding down and then I was going to do that family thing and work with, you know, grow up, have him grow up with me. And then all of a sudden, you know, I was gone a lot. A lot of things were crazy. So I decided once I got out or started to get out that I was going to make sure I was home and I was going to have that time with him. So I started looking at options and a lot of the

things I was offered were all contract jobs that would keep me doing what I'd been doing in special projects or other things like that. And, you know, big numbers as far as salary and money and all that. But I really had a priority to have that time with him and be there, you know, as he grew up. So I finally settled on the fact that, hey, I was going to open up a Jiu-Jitsu Academy. At the time, it was a karate academy. And that allowed me to... to bring him to work with me every day, to spend all that time with him. I took a huge pay cut. So, you know, first one to go from SF to ROTC and then, you know, another one to retire and then not.

And then to start your own business. And that definitely that government contracting money as the GWAT was picking up was very tempting for a lot of people. Yeah, absolutely. I like almost said yes a few times. Yeah. It was really tough. And so you're down in Georgia, you said. Yes, sir.

Karate Gym becomes a Jiu-Jitsu gym. I mean, how does it go? What are some of like the road bumps and hurdles that you have starting a small business? Because I know there always are. Oh, absolutely. So the first problem is I'd worked for the government for over 20 years. So I didn't know how to make a profit. All I knew how to do was spend other people's money.

And so I had no clue about running a business. But luckily, you know, all that time in special forces, you learn how to come up with things that nobody knows how to do and you don't know how to do yourself. So I started figuring it out. And I had done, you know, in my spare time at Fort Campbell, I had been a karate instructor. I already had my black belt. I did that as, you know, my part-time recreation when I wasn't gone all the time. And so I started off with that and I had developed this relationship with the Gracie. and actually got my blue belt, you know, which is the first major thing. And at the time, there weren't many blue belts in America, especially American ones. So it was kind of like having a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

And I'd gotten mine from Hoysgracy, which was, you know, the guy won the first few UFCs, you know, knew his brother pretty well, that had started all of it. So I started working, you know, having jiu-jitsu and karate at my academy. And I also did the logical SF thing. I started going, okay, there's got to be a school for this. And, you know, the answer was there's an MBA program. And I was like, no, that's not what I'm looking for. I want an actual school that teaches me how to run a martial arts school.

So I started looking around and I found training opportunities for that. I started reading all the books I could about business. But the main thing I did was just like I did in SF is I started putting everything into a training curriculum, first one that I already had for training combatants. So that was my outline to do the training. And then I started building a business curriculum because I figured out pretty quick that it doesn't matter how good you are at martial arts or the technical side of anything. You've got to know the business piece in order to, you know, one, be able to eat, two, be able to keep it open. And, you know, three, to keep it going. And so I started learning that.

And as I did, I kind of built it all into my own business manual. And one of the things I figured out fairly early on is, man, I'm not a businessman. I tried initially, I was like, you know, I tried to be a businessman. And it didn't take long before I figured out, I'm not a businessman. I'm an SF guy. So I had to reorient my thinking to the idea that I'm an SF guy on a mission to run a martial arts business. And once I made that switch and I started doing everything the same way I did, did to run a team and to do SF missions, then it started to click for me and things started to

progress. So I started building it into my own version of running a business. And it's developed into this program I have now called Going Commando. And it's all about taking these SF principles and military concepts and applying them to business and using some of those things that we're really you know, good at that we don't we take for granted because it's just built into everything we do. You know, the planning, the, you know, the technical side of developing that and having all these specialties through the different MOSs and all the mission preparation, it's easily converted into business concepts that make it work really well. What was it like, I got to ask, like your whole career, you've been training soldiers

in hand-to-hand combat. And now I imagine you have everything from, you know, a teenage kid that comes in wants you to teach him how to be a killer to a parent coming in saying can you teach my six-year-old daughter how to do karate. Yeah. So the nice thing is actually ROTC kind of worked as like a prisoner-release halfway house for me. So I had to kind of, you know, change my language a little bit, my demeanor, and I had to learn to do that SF thing and work with the indigenous people, which were academics at the university and mainly civilian. So I had to kind of adopt and adapt that persona a little bit. The other part of it, though, is I was still really focused on having very serious hard training. And as a result, for the majority of the time, our, and even still

today, our Jiu-Jitsu Academy is primarily adults. You know, like most martial arts programs are like 80% kids. We've always been like 75 to 80% adults. So we've had this like unusual niche of adult training, you know, training military and law enforcement, especially a lot of the local law enforcement. And then along the way, while I was in ROTC, I had one of, you know, I was teaching the military cadets, combatives. And then one Monday morning, I had one of my students, one of my female students come up to me and say, hey, Sarnock, over the weekend, I was attacked, and the stuff you taught has helped me escape an assault, you know? And so when that happened, I was like, man, that's pretty serious, you know, and I kind of observed some of the just

lax security and the mistakes that a lot of the college kids were making on campus anyway. And I got together with one of the cadets who was in a sorority, and she was actually the first cadet I met when I came down here, you know, still in civilian clothes on relaxed screaming standards to check out the job. And, you know, it was kind of interesting because I went out to observe their training. They were out in this, you know, this area that's kind of like our matamol at Fort Bragg, but it's a, you know, it's an intramural fields and they've got these paths they run on. And this girl had ran into like a low hanging limb and split her head open and she wouldn't come out. She finished the run and then came back and then, you know,

myself and the other staff at ROTC, who was a medic, we took her to the clinic on the, on campus. So this was like my first interaction with one of the cadets. So this girl's tough as nails, right? So she got partnered up with me and we created this program called Safe, which is sexual assault fundamental escapes that we were, we first taught it to the military cadets, then we taught it to, you know, a lot of the staff people on campus, and then we started teaching it to all the sororities on the, on campus. And so I've been doing it for like over 20 years now, and it's such a popular program that we've actually traveled like two years ago. My son and I went to London, England to teach a version of it there. Last year, we went out to near Los Angeles, California,

taught a version of it. You know, in the last couple years, I went to Detroit, Pennsylvania, and I go every year to UNC Chapel Hill to teach a version of it there, and have been doing that for like the last 12 years. And we do this in our own community. And then last year as well, we had an incident that was highly publicized on the news that an illegal immigrant killed a student on campus,

a young lady by the name of Lake and Riley. And so when that happened, day we got 52 calls for these courses that we do. Obviously we couldn't fill them all, but we did as many as we could. So all these types of specialty programs that I developed these curriculums for you know kind of paid off because they had that SF flavor to them and there was that realistic component. And even for a good while, a lot of people actually came in to train because of my SF background. So it actually served me pretty well. Yeah. Where can people find your dojo? What's it? What's a name of it? Where can they find it? And where can they find going commando? Like if they want to find some of these services and safe, these things you're talking about. Absolutely. So the best way to connect with us, if there's any interest in our Jiujitsu Academy, it's Gracie Jiujitsu, Athens, you know, or Athensjujitsu.com. That's the easiest way to find that. And as far as going commando, if somebody wants to, you know, connect.

with those concepts for business. I'm at, you know, commandosuccess.com. And the safe program? And you can always find me, excuse me, you can always find me, Randy McAwee on LinkedIn. Oh, cool. Okay. And so that's probably the best way to find you personally. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Okay. You know, I know we talked about a lot through this interview, Randy, but I want to just kind of backtrack just to say, you know, is there anything that I haven't asked during this interview that you'd really like to talk about. You know, at this point, I think, you know, working off of a 40-year-old memory, I definitely don't think we didn't cover everything. We didn't talk about anything. Unfortunately, I didn't get to talk

to you about your background and experience. So, you know, that's really the one thing I would ask is tell me real quick about your time. It was, I got, I wrote a book about it if people are really interested. But yeah, I was, I started off in Ranger Battalion. I was in 375. Those are my guys. Yeah, man. Got there in 2000, right after the invasion of Iraq in 03. I got there. And then I went to SF. I went to the Q course in 2007, 2008. I got the fifth group. And then I was there for a few years and got out in 2010. Excellent. Yeah. So I'm, I love my time in Ranger Battalion. I mean, it was a kind of a rough experience at the time, but I still remember all the, all the things there. And I especially remember this one guy, you know, that was

the first sergeant. His name was First Sergeant Nielsen. And he recently passed away a few years ago. But the cool thing about it was I used to go to, you know, he was my company first sergeant. So I had to go to the meeting, you know, the training meeting once a week. And we used to call him the gun because you never knew when you go off, right? So I would. come in, I would sit, get ready to sit down in front of his desk, I would maybe turn around, grab my notebook, and by the time I turned back around, he would be like just red as could be and yelling and screaming at me for no reason, you know, like you damn SF guys. And I never knew what to expect. So, you know, it was always just a blast to be with the guys at 375.

Yeah, I can't imagine what it's like doing like 12 years in SF and then going to Ranger Regiment. That's hilarious. Yeah, it's definitely a hoot, you know. But like I said, great experience and set me up well to be a team sergeant. So if you guys are looking for Randy McAwee, you can find all the links down in the description to the things we talked about here going Commando, his jiu-jitsu dojo, all that good stuff. LinkedIn will all be down there for those of you who are watching this on YouTube or listening to the podcast.

You can check down in the description. Randy, thanks for taking all this time tonight to talk to us and walk us through your career and your story. It's a really, like, unique experience. Yeah, I appreciate it. You know, the one thing that I noticed over the years is there's a lot of guys like me that I call C students that have been in SF and, you know, all these things happen. And you don't notice it until, like, you go back to, like, the fifth group reunion. I went to a couple of those. And you talk to some of the guys and you realize that, you know, a lot of the new guys,

they don't realize like what a crazy wild world it was back before things you know back before the money flowed and we were having to kind of oh yeah oh yeah talk to get talk to some of the old guys about bad tolls or fort gulick and panama and you will hear some stories you will hear some real stories absolutely thanks for having me i really appreciate it was a good time yeah thank you randy and thanks to everyone who joined us today um we'll see you guys next time And Randy, thanks a lot. My pleasure. I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House podcast, the Aiz On podcast, and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor.

The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Aizon and the Team House and whatever's topical or current on the high. side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it will have, you know, the greatest hits of that week. It's really good, man. I'm checking it out. The website for it is teamhousepodcast.com slash join. Teamhousepodcast.

Dot.com slash join. Go there and you enter into your email list or you enter your email into the little thing on the website and you're good to go and that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support and hope you'll consider signing up. Where's the link?

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