The Team House - The Real Hurt Locker - US Army EOD Staff Sergeant | Aaron Hale | Ep. 228

Episode Date: August 17, 2023

Army Staff Sergeant Aaron Hale was severely injured in Afghanistan when an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated in his presence. Hale, of the 760th EOD (explosive ordinance disposal), served a tour in Iraq and two tours in Afghanistan. EOD technicians are the Army’s tactical and technical explosives experts, who are trained to destroy and disable unexploded ordnance, improvised explosive devices and weapons of mass destruction. SSG Hale’s unit completed 1,100 counter-IED missions, destroying more than 20,000 pounds of enemy explosives. SSG Hale estimates he disabled as many as 50 explosive devices during his last tour in Afghanistan. SSG Hale received the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, two Army Good Conduct Medals, Army Achievement Medal, two Navy Achievement Medals, Joint Meritorious Unit Award, Navy Unit Commendation, Navy Excellence, Navy Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, two Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medals, Naval Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, Navy Enlisted Surface Warfare Pin, NATO Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, and five NCO Non-Commissioned Officer Professional Development Ribbons. Check out Aaron here:⬇️ https://www.buildinghomesforheroes.org/ Follow Aaron here:⬇️ https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-hale-1861477 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's sponsors: Augusta Precious Metals⬇️ https://www.augustapreciousmetals.com/ Learn why thousands of Americans are getting gold IRAs as part of their retirement portfolios. You need to contact Augusta Precious Metals and get their free guide!  Text "TEAM" to 68592 or go to https://www.augustapreciousmetals.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -AD FREE AUDIO -AD FREE VIDEO -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse Team House merch: ⬇️ https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963 Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter:  https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️  https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️  https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [e-mail] #armyeod #theteamhouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, folks, I just want to take a minute to ask you to go in rate this podcast, let the Teamhouse know how you think we're doing, go and rate us on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's iTunes or Spotify or whatever else. Those ratings really help us out, and we really appreciate the feedback to let us know what you like and what you don't like. And if you do like the Team House and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our team house. the team house and you'd like to support us, go check out our Patreon page and you can actually support the stream and well as get access to our bonus segments and bonus episodes. Yeah, if you're going to give us a great review, please do. And if you're going to give us a not so good review, why don't you just send us an email and we'll talk about it. Special Operations, covert ops, espionage, the team house with your host, Jack Murphy,

and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 228 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with David Park. Our guest on tonight's show is Aaron Hale. Aaron served as an explosive ordinance technician in Afghanistan, severely, severely injured, but made an incredible recovery. There's a lot to talk about here.

And we're just really pleased, really happy to have you on the show tonight, Aaron. Bosses, Lowe's. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me on. Really, really pumped to be on the show. Thank you, man. Thank you. We appreciate having you here.

So, you know, I will ask you the first question that we ask all of our guests about your origin story. If you can tell us a little bit about your upbringing and that path that took you towards military service. Absolutely. In fact, you know, mine isn't one of the, you know, gun. whole kids that played soldier boy, but yeah, as a kid and just knew his direction. In fact, just the opposite. I was a Midwestern kid. Loved my childhood adolescence.

I had enough natural, elevated talent to just skate by. So I was really an all-American slacker. And, you know, bees, C's and the rest. BS. So when I got to college, everybody who knew how to work, you know, quickly passed me by. And I soon found myself out of my butt, a whole lot of tuition pissed away and really embarrassed and trying to figure out what to do with my life. So one thing that I can do and have been doing if my whole life is able, you know, have this ability to just make decisions and act and go. And I love cooking.

So, you know, ever since I could reach over the counter. I love the culinary arts. I decided, you know what, I'm going to go and hold another direction. I'm going to go to culinary school, except I need, before I go to another college and other university and try. Right. First, I need those internal, you know, the internal values, the core skills, work ethic, ambition, all that kind of stuff. And, you know, set some goals for myself and be productive. And also, I needed to earn some more tuition money. So that's what I decided, you know, the military was exactly what could answer all of that.

for me. I joined the Navy in 1999 as a cook and they gave me everything that I was looking for. The early mornings, the fitness, the work ethic, and a whole lot more. So that's what led me towards the military. It was kind of failing up. And I found that soon, right after basic and the Navy's A school, cooking school, I was on shore duty in Italy. And I worked my way up to cooking for the commander of the U.S. 6th Fleet, three star in charge of all the Navy troops in the Mediterranean and eastern Atlantic seaboard. and that was fantastic.

Got to cook real food, got to tour around the Mediterranean in the flagship, and that's not, you know, those six-month Westpac cruises. It's three months or less, maybe one or two months. You hit three ports in the Mediterranean,

run up the flag. You know, throw a reception and then scoot right back to Naples Italy. guy to Italy. But what was that like, Nathan, like some of the differences just as a Navy cook? I mean, it's working your way up. I mean, there must have been those times where you're cooking up slop for hundreds of sailors on the ship. And then it sounds like maybe you had this opportunity where you were cooking like restaurant-style food later on.

You know, the truth is, no, I never did that. Okay. I have spent four years in Italy. First duty station was actually barrack's duty. No kidding. They don't tell you this at A school. They don't tell, I think they switched the jobs around a little bit, but they used to look at it like hotel restaurant management on the civilian side.

So I get off the plane. They tell me I'm working shore duty instead of C duty on board of ship. And my sponsor met me. at the airfield and I for one of the first questions was where am I going to be cooking they're like oh no we don't cook on shorted it and what do we do you're going to be because you're the FNG you're going to be night watch at the beque be at the desk taking in trouble cold tickets yeah yeah I worked my way up to like the officer quarters front desk and then the maintenance department So I was taking trouble call tickets from the residents and walking them over to the public works, the local national Italians.

But cool thing about that was I was escorting these guys through the rooms. And everywhere I went, Coma City, Jay, Como City, Jay. How do you say this? How do you say that? And I was learning Italian and drinking a ton of espresso in their office all day long. But the funny thing was I was learning Napoliton Italian, which is about the furthest thing you can get from book Italian. Right, right. And I was learning it from these public works roughnecks, electricians, plumbers.

So anytime I traveled, even off-duty, they would do like MWR trips out to Rome, Milan, that kind of stuff. I would try speaking to lingo because I was actually enjoying. my time there. Yeah, but all the Italians would look at me, like, what are you doing? You must live in Naples.

That's hilarious. It was hilarious. I gave a quick shout out to Augustus, Augusta Precious Metals, the sponsor for tonight's show, text team to 68592, or go to Augusta Preciousmetals.com, and we'll talk about them in a few minutes.

Well, please continue, Aaron, sorry for the interruption. So you had to fight just to do your job in a sense. Like you had to work your way up to doing the job you wanted to do. Yeah. It's what I really wanted to do at the time, at least, was cook. Yeah.

And instead, I was wasted away at night at the night watch. And then I was having fun hanging out with the Italians, but it wasn't really, you know, what you were looking for. You know. So the base commander would sometimes throw parties, literally receptions, at his villa and ask for cooks from the barracks to help cater the thing. So I would do, I would volunteer in my off time.

And this was just to keep the skills sharp, do some cooking somewhere. and when it was time to PCS, it just so happens about 45 minutes away in Gaeta, Italy, there was a bullet open for flag duty. And it was a special position which required a letter of reference from, you know, somebody higher up. And because I had been working for the CEO and his wife, I got that letter and got my foot in the door to cook for the Admiral. And it's really cool about cooking for flagships

is that's often that rung between, you know, the big, big blue Navy and places like Camp David and the White House and even Air Force One. Aaron, can you, because you're the first, we've talked before about how hard cooks in the military work. but you know we've never actually had some money on can you tell us a little bit about the A school because the basic skills because one of the advantages that people don't know about in as a military especially in the Navy because of the different Mestex that you can go on to very advanced training in culinary arts but can you tell us a little bit about the A school how long was it and then

like what types of things did they cover over stuff you know in that school Navy A school there were two major areas of study and I think it's about 10 weeks, I think, total. And eight of them were sanitation. Don't kill the sailors. And the other two weeks was how to read and execute on the recipe cards. It's like a publication, like an army reg on army publication on how to make food. There's a recipe card for everything.

If there isn't a recipe card, then it doesn't exist and you shouldn't make it. And it was how to make it perfectly bland so everybody was pissed off. Right, right. That's amazing. So I almost got myself in trouble by making guacamole not taste like, well, making it taste like guacamole. Right. So sort of the opposite of like Hellas Kitchen or something. like that where everybody's tasting to be the most bland and unoffensive as you can possibly be

or inoffensive well you know it's it's the training school for the big navy and they want to make sure that like i said the cooks don't kill the crew right so it really was how to make sure that you know everything about those sanitation standards and cleaning and food cooking temperatures all that kind of stuff. And there is really quite a bit of it. And then the rest of it was just making sure you can follow instructions on a recipe card. Yeah. Then once you get out there, there really are a lot of opportunities for chefs to advance into some really incredible billets and take some really cool schools.

In fact, every year, I think there's a joint services cooking competition. And it's on the like food network and stuff like that. So it's pretty cool. So when you took this billet at the flag position, did they offer you advanced training before you went? Or did you just kind of go as you were? I went straight there. Okay. I did get some training during and I also, I was in Italy.

I got the OJT type of training and off-duty training just being in, being in one of the major centers of culinary arts, Italy. The funny thing was, though, that it's home ported there, forward home ported, in Guy to Italy. So everybody just, it's like a floating office most of the time when it's in port. And the admiral goes in for breakfast, lunch and close a business. Everybody hangs up the uniform and goes back out into the economy. I made breakfast and lunch. And then I was, I was, I was, I was done by like 2 o'clock, 1400.

I was gone to clean up the kitchen. And, but the one major rule was the admiral. I said absolutely no Italian food. My American cooks are not allowed to make Italian food while we're in port. Why would I have you guys cook that stuff when we're here? Right, right. So I couldn't practice what I've learned on him. Right.

But, you know, we get out to sea, of course, we got all three, actually four meals to practice on the guy and the rest of the step. So when you say four meals, are you including like midnight rats? Is that the fourth meal for people who aren't familiar with? Yeah. Yeah, we would do midrots. Because even, you know, everybody, the ship runs. And that was the difference between, it's kind of the difference in flagship. You've got the ship's company with the, you know, the skipper, the CEO.

And that's one whole command. And then you've got the fleet command with the Admiral and his staff. That's a separate command altogether. So it made for interesting rivalries sometimes being on the flag staff on board the ship underway. And they would be doing general quarters and stuff like that and running fire drills. And I just kind of can I get by? I got to get help to, you know, officer country. but we we it was it was a pretty incredible time and I learned quite a bit and also it was terrific having a

special machine on board yeah it must have been cool that I mean you were at that point exactly where you wanted to be doing exactly what you wanted to do actually once I'd reach that I guess it was I guess it would say it was the pinnacle of what Being a cook in the Navy was going to offer me, I became a little disenfranchised. I became a little restless. I'd gotten those skills, gotten those abilities, those core values that I'd come for. I'd earned the GI Bill, of course, now it's like five years. going to do the four now, and it's already five, six years later. And I'd love the Navy. I had salt

in my veins. I love being at sea. I just, and I also love cooking, but it was something about being a Navy cook that just wasn't testing the skills. It wasn't, I wasn't challenging me the way I wanted to be challenged. Plus, I actually only did 99, time of peace. By the time I had left the Admiral's command, we were in two wars. Right. And we've been, out doing our figure rates and, you know, in our box in the middle

of the Mediterranean and commanding, you know, the Navy. But I myself, yes, all of the jobs are important. Every role isn't,

you know, necessary in the effort. But I was watching the war in Iraq and Afghanistan on TV, on the ship. And I just,

I don't know. There was something telling me I was not where I needed to be. I wasn't where I was supposed to be. So when I got back to the United States, I volunteered to go as an individual augmentee to a provincial reconstruction team in Farah, Afghanistan. Of course, I'd still be cooking,

but now I would be right in the middle of it, right? almost. We were way out west in Farah, you know, south of Parat. It was so far in the middle of nowhere in the desert. Even the Taliban were like, you can have it. But it was actually so quiet. People were getting in trouble for being bored, that kind of thing. But I switched from cooking for the Admiral and 35 of his staff to like five, 600 ISAF troops, Americans, Portuguese, Spanish, even some Italian special forces down from Marat. So I got to practice some of the lingo and trade for some more espresso. It was fantastic. It was a great experience. And that's when I met some EOD tech missions. now were they uh american were the army were the navy who who were the eOD techs that you met when

you're out there we trained up actually in uh it was that was the funniest thing a bunch of navy and air force components from all around the fleet cooks admin you uh civil affairs all going to fort bragg for a bunch of a bunch of like slapped together basic training to teach us how to army. And that's when I met a few, a pair of Navy EOD technicians. And they helped us understand the UXO and IED threat that we'd be facing out there. Or potentially if we ever left the wire. and unfortunately these guys were awesome it was a chief miracle in a oh one poland that those guys were

really really cool dudes but they switched out by the time we made it in theater and there was a few air force techs assigned to the the farm and those guys rotated out I don't know every three or four months, but it was a little bit after, I mean, I'd already, already learned what EOD was about, but it wasn't until I've got to know these guys. And I remember one day, I was leaving the, the Chow Hall. I was heading back towards the barracks area. And these Air Force techs had, it just, like, dumped out all of their gear to do maintenance checks on their everything, bomb suits, the robots. all the other gear, dust and batteries, making sure everything was clean. And it was like a cool guy

yard sale. So I went out and struck up a conversation, you know, just chatting away and learning more about the job. You know, the tight-knit brotherhood, the technical aspect of the job, you know, the critical thinking skills you really need. And the fact that their first responders on the battlefield, they're running into the danger when everybody else is running away. Yeah. I mean, everything about it. It just clicked into place. And that's what I knew I needed to do.

So I put in a request with the Navy to go from Cook to Bomb Squad. And what year was that? It did. They didn't go very well. Yeah. No, they kicked it back, said no. Everything can be waived. Nobody wants to tell you.

But my rank in that job was undermanned. So not only did they not want me to leave cooking, I guess they like my cooking too much. But they also weren't going to promote me. Oh, wow. So when I returned from Afghanistan, my contract was about up. It was re-enlistment or walked.

and I took my service record and I walked and went over to the Army recruiter and told them what I wanted to do and they walked me right in. They did you a little dirty there. That's too bad. Yeah, I was a shame because I really loved being in the Navy. Right. It was cool. Yeah, and you fell in love with Navy EOD first and we're totally ready to go do that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, at the same time, not only was my job underband, but it was a, a transition period for Navy EOD as well.

Back in the day, EOD wasn't even its own rate, like its own MOS. Right. It was a qualification, especially of Suffix. So you had to come from different source jobs, source rates. And you know, Bosan's mate, mastered arms, you know, not cook. Yeah. Yeah. So I had a few things going against, right?

Aaron, let me, I'm going to do another ad read here real quick, and then we jump back into the interview. Again, I'm sorry for the interruption. Yeah, go forward. So our sponsor for tonight's show is Augusta Precious Metals. You guys know what helps me sleep well at night? It's physical gold. I know a lot of folks out there are concerned about, you know, where the economy is heading right now and that it might take a dip. So I decided to learn more about gold IRAs to help me diversify.

Did you know that you can buy gold for your IRA in your 401K? Gold can't be tracked like digital currency. No one has to know what you're buying, and there's no way to print more of it. The best resource for gold IRAs is Augusta Precious Metals. Their track record is no less than phenomenal. They have thousands of happy customers, and they're the absolute best. They're amazing at what they do. Learn why thousands of Americans are getting gold IRAs as part of their retirement portfolios.

You need to contact Augusta Precious Metals and get their free guide. So text team to 68592. Again, text T-E-A-M to 685-92, team to 6-8-5-92, or go to Augusta Preciousmetals.com. That's Augusta preciousmetals.com. So thank you guys for supporting one of the sponsors of tonight's show. So back to you, Aaron. So tell us about how you made that transition then from, I mean, you talked a little bit. You took your service record down to the Army recruiters, and they were like, to go? It wasn't it wasn't like a smooth transition. I took about half a year off and left

the service entirely. Moved to Brooklyn, New York. Really? And when we're at, went to work. What's that? We're in Brooklyn. I was looking for the most affordable. I was almost out by Corny Island by the time I could find a place I can afford. I think like Gravesend. Yeah. Graves in.

Yeah. I was right on Ocean Avenue and Kings Highway. Yep. Right about there. But I was teaching built in Lower Manhattan. So I'd take the subway in and it was working with a body of mind teaching computer applications to the corporate setting, like city group and stuff like that. and Aaron, you're just one of those

like, what do they say, like Thesbians, like the type of person and just like do anything. What's that? Like the type of person that can just like. Like a jack of all trades. Yeah, yeah. Or, you know, some people call that.

Yeah. Yeah. So how did you, like he taught you how to use the applications or you had been using those applications and then you turn around in like where do you? You know, I had a buddy. And it's not as hard. I was teaching Excel to all the, it was like,

I was teaching the city way of formatting stuff that, you know, their new hires, which are all like all 1,600 SAT scores in the entire room, you know. So I was just teaching them how to put that particular type of blue fade in the background stuff like that. But the truth is, well, when I was teaching these things, you know, you get Microsoft Project, Microsoft Office or anything like that. And they, somebody hires you to do level one. You buy the level one and the level two book, right? And you read it the day before. And it's pretty straightforward. And you just regurgitate level one. And by the end of the day,

when you have a couple minutes left over or somewhere in the middle of their day, you just throw out a couple pointers from level two. And they think you know everything. if they teach you if they hire you for level one or level two but you take a couple extra days and then you of course you buy level three and you do the same thing right so

I learned it all on the fly and it worked out pretty well the only thing was it wasn't for me and I knew what I wanted to do and I wanted to go with YOD but I was pretty pissed off about you know not doing it in the Navy

took that little time off just to not shave and stuff or not you know it grew out of nice beard but then I decided you know I was going to go go to that army recruiter and get back into the fight yeah so you hadn't been on like the delayed entry program or anything you were just taken like a personal break decompressing and teaching excel and whatnot. Yeah, my own personal and delayed entry program, I guess. And you're earning enough money to get by in New York. It was actually a pretty cool experience.

Yeah. Definitely a learning experience, but I quickly got claustrophobic. I was used to wide open seas, wide open deserts, wide open country of the, you know, the Midwest. and even going for a run in Brooklyn, you know, you got to get your goal block, stop, go block, stop. Right. Trip over a trash bag or a dog or something.

But, you know, I went to the owner recruiter, and they woke me in. I did do, it was, it was like, I didn't go to basic training or did this gentleman's course. It was like a, what was it? Like a pilot pro. program for prior service. It was so funny.

All these guys have been out for at least different service or out of the army for at least three years. And because it's all of the knowledge-based stuff, none of the indoctrination stuff, you know, the dogma. So I got the knowledge I needed to go soldier. and I got the uniform, but I still felt like a sailor at heart. I felt like an infiltrator. Then after transitioning uniforms, learning some of the lingo, I went to the EOD school. And that was pretty cool.

I mean, you train together with all the branches. So we all learn the same language. anyways and we're all you know it's every branch comes together to teach their EOD techs the exact same knowledge so that I can be paired up on the battlefield with an Air Force tech a Navy tech a Marine tech and we can all do the job together without skipping a beat there's no friction no no lag time in understanding each other we just know how to do the job and it also is great for actually when we have to do joint operations and there's there's no cross-branch rivalries or anything like that and it did no click

type things we're all in the same eOD family love it still large to get today yeah so can you tell us a little bit about the eOD school how long was it um you know i i i I think that for a lot of us who, you know, when we watch EOD stuff, you know, on TV and a movie, if there's an EOD person, they're always trying to defuse a bomb. But really a lot of times out in the field, you're not defusing like you're bipping them or whatever. But can you tell us, like, all the things you learn, how long it was, things like that? Yeah, I went through. I think each of the branches have their own individual phase one.

and the armies used to be at Redstone, Marcel Huntsville, Alabama. They moved it to Fort Lee, Virginia. But I went through Redstone, and that's about 10 weeks of really the kindergarten of EOD. And it's stuff like ordinance identification. What kind of, what does it tell you if it has fins or a pin or, you know, parachute, you know, different colors, what different colors are marking signify, that kind of thing.

Electronics, basic circuitry, physics, you know, the different forces at play, if a thing is dropped, fired, thrown, buried, and how the different forces engage and activate the fusing that's on there. And it's all actually very basic stuff to then dig deep into, you know, the hundreds of thousands of different types of munitions that have been made domestically and abroad. And that's, you know, when you get to the joint school run by the Navy on Eglin Air Force Base here in the Panhandle, You start right back from the beginning with electronics and basic physics, but you got a primer at your phase one school. And then we're all trained together, and you can't take any of the material out of the school. So you train, you study all day long.

You learn all day long. There's about an hour or so mandatory study hall right after. and then you got to leave it all at the school until the next day. There's an exam or practical test on average every two to three days. Wow. And the nutrition rate in that school is pretty high, just knowledge-based. There's definitely a physical component to it. You've got to be physically fit enough to wear.

that bomb suit. And of course, you've got to go through the bomb suit test just to get into the school. And it's like a like a PT test in the bomb suit, of course. But then the real test comes when, you know, they start asking you basic cognition questions to see if while you're smoked, you can actually think. And you still maintain your basic critical thinking skills. And that's really what the test is about. Do you never quit? And you can keep your head on while you're huffing and puffing. And then it's about basic PT maintenance while you get your skull crammed full of knowledge

on everything that goes boom from bullets to weapons of mass destruction and nukes. That's amazing. Do you recall how much that bomb suit weighs? So do you recall how much the bomb suit weighs? There are different models. And the latest model, I think, is somewhere 90 pounds with the helmet. Yikes. Yeah.

That's something else because it's not just 90 pounds that like you're carrying like on your back in a focused place. Like you have to be able to lift your legs under the pressure of the suit. Right. Does it feel like you're trying to, you know, render safe bombs like while? you're underwater at that point? Kind of. I don't know. The first few times was definitely very, very alien, very foreign being in this thing.

And over time, though, practice, you just don't think about it. It's bums of time, right? You get on it and get, and the transition is pretty fast. when you consider that what's in front of you is, could possibly explode and kill you, you don't think much about the bomb suit at all. I just put it on and adapt. And at this phase when you went through EOD school, what stage were like the robotics at that point as far as using the robots and the Johnny 5 model to go out there and diffuse some of these things?

now I went through this is I went through an O.A. And this was just a few, I mean, Iraq, you're going to consider where we were in that timeline of Iraq and how slow, you know, the other training branches and, you know, the other training branches. and the military aren't to really catch up to the battlefield. And we weren't too bad about it, but all the same, member ordinances are bread and butter. It's in our name. And IEDs was actually still relatively new, though it was all over both battlefields,

mostly Iraq at the time. But, We didn't have, actually, IEDs was only about two weeks of the 43 we were at Eglan Air Force Base. And that's for everything. There's really not a whole lot to teach when it comes to IEDs if you already know basic circuitry from the early stages. Because the thing about, I mean, there's, of course, lots to know about IEDs. switches and, you know, fusing. But the thing is about IDs is that there's, it's made of anything and everything.

And the limits to how you can make an IED is the only limit is the bomb maker's creativity. So how do you really teach a class on that except, you know, basic, you know, the basics. So we learned a few of the most popular switches, that kind of thing. We do remote, you know, red or safe procedures or disruption procedures. We learn different tools to engage these different IDs. And robots wasn't really that important. In fact, everybody at the schoolhouse knew that they'd get plenty of robot time once they got to their units. So maybe a few days out of that week, they would play, you know, to get, let the,

the students go out there and play with the robots. And like you said, the course was, what, 43 weeks long, but that's to teach the basics. Yeah, yeah. The basic, like basic laws of science, physics, electronics, chemical analysis, that kind of thing. we would have a few weeks of because everything's broken up into different divisions from biochemical to weapons of mass destruction nuclear air is one of the most dreaded um the most dreaded divisions in the school and that's everything uh that's everything that could be inside or inside an aircraft or dropped from its wings or chaff flares, everything that

has an explosive on an aircraft. And that's, think about it, inside a cockpit, everything explodes. Even their, you know, the rockets under their seats, the canopy explodes before they even let the, you know, the pilot eject. even their harnesses have explosives and that activated by sea saltwater. For the ink that goes out to? Think about water wings to it, probably. We're just saying that when you're talking about as far as the explosives and the harness, Dave was saying, is that, does that deploy like an ink so that they can be spotted or is that for their water wings like the life preserver?

just to release them if they go unconscious. Yeah. Yeah. So, and even the ejection handle that, like, starts all of the other stuff, that's like a little shotgun shell. It's like a primer that sets it all off. So imagine your student maybe halfway through the east. EOD school and you face this thing that looks like a great big explosive cactus, you know,

that you're about to go hug. And everything has to do everything is remember your safeties, right? We have, I think it's 26 different safeties that we have to remember. And on a test, forgetting one of the safeties. At each one of these tests, the minimum passing grade is an 85 because you don't want to see a student in a bomb center. It's like a parachute reader. We're not sure if we're taking the C on this. Yeah.

And any safety infractions is it's an automatic 16 point hit. Wow. So when you come up to an aircraft and you've got to render safe, maybe the ejection seat because it had a quote-unquote hard landing, you've got to pass everything that's mounted under the wing of the aircraft and say, I'm recognizing heat shock friction, eject, laser, EMR, static, anything. that might set that thing off for every single piece of ordinance. And you can't miss any of them because each one of those, each one of those safeties on each one of those pieces of ordinance is a 16-point hit.

And sometimes to render safe, say the like the Gout 8 alpha, the gun on the 8-10, to render safe that thing, it's just sticking like a cutter pin in, you know, a piece of the the mechanics to just render the safe the weapon, right? But you've got to get past all that ordinance to get there. And it was, uh, uh, it's a pretty harrowing experience. It's pretty nerve-wracking. Did, uh, that's how you get? Did you also get some extra love in the mop four, uh, protective suit during that course?

Well, the, that's in the IEDs. get division, part of that is the bomb suit test. And other than that, though, you don't put on a bomb suit for a known hazard. If you know what the hazard is, and you probably don't need the bomb suit. Imagine any time you're on deployment and you're on like Dis Matter Patrol, you know, like EOD decks are going to carry that thing around until maybe they need it. Right. So bombsuits are a tool for certain situations, certain places and time.

But once you train how to use it and when to know when you need it, then you move on to the next division. Aaron, you know, you're talking a lot about render safe, which I think is, you know, it's what we normally think of when we think of EOD, right? finding something in a populated area or like you say with the aircraft. With, you know, with Afghanistan, Iraq, obviously we move on to this model of, you know,

disposable actually, like rendering, not rendering it, but like blowing it or whatever. Did you guys cover much about demolitions itself? Did you guys learn how to place charges, you know, a lot? Obviously, you were already covering an explosive theory, But were you getting the hands on practical like a demolitions, you know, training in that also? Absolutely, of course. Okay. In fact, part, I mean, the majority of our job is using explosives as a tool.

So, and I'm not just saying slap a couple blocks of C4, make something to go away. Bip, blowing place. Right. You know, making something go boom is sexy for the cameras. And of course, of course, we're like blowing stuff up. But we also have explosive tools that, I mean, no kidding. I have, we have tools. We can shoot a bomb with a bullet to make it safer.

And that blew my mind first time I heard about that. But we're using your specific charges to, shear or cut or impinge a piece of the fusing or to cause it to low order rather than high order, to blow small rather than big, or to burn instead of explode. And yeah, we're more like surgeons when it comes to explosives. And of course, plenty of times when we've had to dispose of just huge caches. of ordinance. And a lot of times they don't really have fusing,

so there's no reason to render them safe. They're already safe. They're just piles of explosives. We have to make them go away. And we have specific procedures for where and how to place the shots and tie it all in with debt cord and primate and all of that. And it's all essential to making sure that it's done safely. and you don't have to go back and do it a second time to clean up.

I have had to go back on botched shots to go pick up blocks of C4 that were punted into the battle space, just sitting there for the enemy to pick up or something went boom and like maybe somebody was trying to bring down a mud hut and instead all they did was brought down part of a mud hat on top of a whole bunch of unexploded blocks of C4 and then what do you do somebody else you know the army is not going to go sit around forever as you know pull brick by brick but guess who wouldn't mind digging through the you know

the mess to get at that explosive so yeah it's it's to be safe not just in the immediate future you know immediately like on the shot but it's to be safe to make sure we're not leaving anything behind for the enemy so it almost sounds as though you're saying 18 charlie's were the bane of your existence oh we're jump we're jumping a few a few steps here but i wasn't gonna say anything crabs over castles pee for plenty it doesn't always work is that what you're saying I wasn't going to talk about the sappers at all, but whoops. That's hilarious. So was there any part of, you know, this 43 week course that you were just like blown away by that, you know, you're like, this is the coolest thing ever.

So I want to say that again. Was there any part of the EOD course that you were just. absolutely blown away by where you're thinking like this is the coolest thing ever i never imagined i would see something like this i don't know i mean i was so amped i was so excited about the whole thing yeah i was having i was actually having a really good time it was hard it was a challenge and it was it was it was really what i was looking for you know uh and i was around all these other people that were like alpha type nerds that competitive, smart, wanted to take charge. And, yeah, I was, I was, I was, I was in this, it's just an amazing crowd of people to be, you know, these, these warriors learning this amazing skill.

So any one particular thing, I don't know. I get tired to pick one out. That's awesome. And so after you graduate from the course, tell us about, you know, landing in your unit and what that was like. And when, you know, you came down in deployment orders, sort of what the next stage was for you. After I graduated from EOD school, I went to Fort Drum, upstate New York. and it was immediately put in a company that was on the road of war. And 2009, 2010-ish is when my company went to Iraq.

I was a new EOD tech, but I kept my rank from the Navy. So I went from Petty Officer for second class to Sergeant. and that was tough because as an NCO, I was expected to get my team leader certification. And the team leader is the guy that actually gets in the bomb suit, makes that long walk. He's the most experienced, you know, the highest ranking guy on an EOD team. And some of these is, you know, privates had come up through EOD from the beginning. and had a far more badge experience than I did, you know, having been a cook for my entire military career.

So, you know, there was a little resentment, but everybody understood. I was, I had just had to work twice as hard to get up to speed. I was the, I was placed as a fourth man on a three-man team. when I went to Iraq and it's kind of like tits on a bar. I was a team sergeant

that didn't need a sergeant. But I was there. I was learning my team leader. The other sergeant on the team was teaching me as much as he could as fast as I could take it in. And I think my first sergeant recognized what was going on.

So he pulled me from the team and he sent me, to keep victory or liberty, whatever. You know, went, you know, by Buyup and Baghdad. And I went to the higher level, the counter-explosives exploitation cell at Task Force Troy. And that's the joint IAD operation cell. That's where they take all of the evidence collected from the teams off the battlefield,

and they triage it and they examine it. But they put me right in the triage, the receiving area. And I would take these boxes of evidence kits, baggies and boxes of tape and pressure plates and batteries and debt cord and samples of all sorts of stuff. and I would better package it for the next steps. Triage is really like if you think of role one, two, three in the first aid on a battlefield,

we just cleaned up the evidence samples and then sent them off to the different departments like chemical analysis, biometrics, electronics, that kind of thing. thing. And from there, that and the storyboards would go to ATF, FBI, DEA, DIA, and so on. So I got to learn

exactly how you know, they wanted to see the evidence presented from the back, you know, from the front. So when I actually did get my team litter certification and had my own team, I knew how

I knew what the best way to present the evidence so that we could more quickly and more effectively get to the left of the bang. If you think you consider it, you know, the timeline, you know, from the explosion backwards, you've got the bomb placer, the bomb maker and the bond financier, all those guys. And that's really what it was all about. We wanted to get there before they get to bury it. So it was an incredible learning experience and really handy when I finally did get my own team in 2011. I'd earned my team without certification and was heading back to Afghanistan for my third deployment, second time as an EOD tech and second time in Afghanistan, but first as an EOD team later. And I went to

We were placed in support The four four Cav Scouts out of Riley And we just It was really busy We're a little west of Kandahar And a little town called See a Choi And he asked a turp

What that meant And he goes, I think it means cemetery And it really did It felt like I was in Tombstone. I mean it all There was just IEDs everywhere I remember hearing one guy say what we got there

was like around here every step is a is a decision and this is every step was this far was deliberate was this far enough along in the war

it's not just roadside IEDs but it's also like as you approach a target it's along trails it became like increasingly intense right absolutely yeah and we we had

we had all the the crew systems and the you know the armored trucks and of course we have to leave them all behind because everything's on dirt trails so we have

these metal detectors and those guys those you know the privates that get the metal detectors and go pulling I got a hand of those guys

they those guys have some balls they earn their chops and that was amazing what they did. They had some spidey sense sometimes. They were also, I would try my best to educate and inform these, this component that I was supporting. My team was supporting while we were inside the wire the best I could.

Any of those red sheets, with the new intel that come out for the area. I'd get that out. Anything we were seeing as a trend, maybe bomb makers migration type patterns, anything like that, I wanted to train them up the best I could and get all the information they could.

And even if it wasn't new information, I would just teach them some of the skills of what to do if we weren't around or how to have. or how to handle certain munitions in certain situations. I didn't want to give them license to do EOD procedures, but we can't be everywhere at once. And if there's a dire situation, I want to make sure they were prepared.

What were some of the ways that EOD, the text, were being used? Because I know that a lot of times you guys were doing route clearance, where you were ahead of an active patrol, you know, vehicular patrol. Were you also embedded in the line squads as they would go out? Like, what were the different ways you guys were being utilized? We did quite a few, quite a bit of each. We would go out. In fact, where we were most of that time, we were actually,

the Cascouts were building up command outposts all over the place, almost within visual distance of each other. just to deny the enemy any area, any terrain. So we would walk behind the, we had, that was hilarious. We had the, was it, Puerto Rican National Guard engineers, driving the D2 dozers, just cutting a road right through grape rows and poppy fields and marijuana fields just digging a road straight

through and we'd walk right behind them and then they would cut a 250 meter by 250 meter square and then we would set up our cuts or whatever we just lay out there and eventually

HESCO bearers will go up around us and the whole time we just in fact most of that time the dozers did half the work for us. They would just turn up the soil and then be

all, you know, conventional oil jugs just sitting there in the open. And usually they kicked them around so much that they were already separated. We just had to place a charge on them and detonate them. So that was great. But then, of course,

with all these dirt roads cut, there was a lot of soft soil left. And you know, that Afghan And dirt, it's got three different forms. It's got the hard packed concrete-like dirt. When it rains, it turns into that slick snot.

Just walking from your hooch to the chow hall, you get six inches taller. And then it's got that baby powder moon dust. It's so easy to just, all you have to do is drop an IED. and the dust cloud will settle right back down on it and bury it. So that was what was happening. And the route clears packages were losing a truck on average every other day. Wow. So the mechanics were busy.

We were busy doing post-blast analysis. Most of the time, it was just a post-blast analysis on a vehicle. Thankfully, sometimes it wasn't. So that's what we do. We were cleaning up all the IDs in the area. And if we didn't get to the IED left of the bang, we'd do our best to analyze right at the bank. So can you, for people who, you know, I mean, this is fascinating to me,

but for people who don't have any idea of like how EOD operates. Like, so you go out there and one of the guys on point, see something suspicious, how do you proceed from there? Well, of course, we'll come up on whomever is the closest on the scene. We'll make sure that everybody knows they keep good distance from any suspect item. And then we'll ask them all the information we can, whether it's some local or if it's somebody in our element, We'll ask him as much information we can.

We'll have him pointed out from where we're standing if it's not too close. And we'll get as much information as possible can. Then we'll make sure that everybody's in a safe standoff distance and setting a cordon around the area, making sure that we don't get any surprises while I'm focused in on the suspect item. And everybody else's eyes are facing up. and then my team and I will just get to work. If we do find that it's an IED, and here's the thing, if it's an unknown hazard,

our number one approach, our first approach, was always either a bomb suit or a robot. And since most of the time we're on foot patrols, dismounted patrols, a lot of our guys would be carrying one of the, those man-portable robots. So we send the robot down more often than not, you know, it would turn a little corner of one of those three-foot thick, you know, mud huts, and that'd be the other robot.

There's no signal whatsoever. But that technology got a lot better. But then it was a, a, It was me doing a IED, you know, me walking down on the IED and also rescuing a robot. But then it was doing whatever remote procedures I could possibly do. If it was separating almost everything. I mean, I'm talking about 98% of the stuff we ran, not deploying. It was an oil jug with homemade explosive, a 9-volt battery, pressure plate with your just

particle board or plywood. And then it all connected with Lamp Corp. Super simple, super low-tech, and really hard to detect except for the 9-volt battery because there was no metal there. And the Taliban, the insurgents, they didn't know this magic wand we swung, you know, what the magic was that found all of their IDs. But somehow they learned that we were finding the batteries. They didn't know why. But what they learned how to do was give, they did a little standoff.

They would fare lead the battery. So they'd get a little more lamp cord and run the battery around the corner. Or it just run it off the side of the trail. And right in the middle of the trail was the IED. There's almost no metal. And that was what was getting a lot of us. Thank goodness, maybe after, say, 24 hours, the dirt would start to settle. and it would start to get concave a little bit.

So it began to show telltale signs of something to be buried there. And then there'd be this little concave ant trail going off the side of the road. But sometimes it was just fresher than that. And it's really hard to find. I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they started doing that with their cell phone switches too. That once they learned about the chambers, they started experimenting to find out how far out.

of like the jammer's range the cell phone needed to be and then it would connect the circuit back into the explosive that was within the range. Yeah, well, in Iraq especially, they were far more sophisticated with their IDs. I think I think I might have run one electronically controlled device in Afghanistan, that whole deployment. Granted, I only got to spend eight months of the 12 months there.

But I wasn't, I wasn't going to find too many electronic devices. Yeah. Even in my last few months. Yeah. But I, some knuckleheads, because I told you, they don't know the magic we were using to find those batteries. So they would, they would connect the same kind of circuit to whatever they could, the explosives they would find. Most of the time, it was the oil job with homemade explosives. Sometimes it was a pair, one time, it was a pair of 80 millimeter Chinese.

these mortars, which are encased in iron. So it was buried right in the middle of the goat trail, the, you know, this dirt trail with the pressure plate right on top. But it was pinging off the metal detector like crazy. And like, what's going on here? And you can still see that trail leading off to the battery around the corner. I'm like, you guys, come on. Yeah.

So sometimes, um, We didn't find them. Find them until, you know, with our metal detectors. It's a lot of times. They found it with a feet. Find them with the what? Oh, with the feet. Yeah.

Like I did. Eight minutes into it. Yeah. Do you want to, you know, if it's okay with you telling us about that incident and how that went down? Of course. it was about eight and a half months into the deployment

and we were starting to see the end of the end of the road with this deployment most of the guys had gone on their you know that two weeks of R&R and I let my whole team and most of the company go before me I waited till the end one of the last guys in the company

to go do my two weeks of R&R because it was Thanksgiving and my firstborn's first birthday. I only had a few weeks with him before I deployed. And I got to go home, see him turn one, got to see the whole family for Thanksgiving, gather around the table. It was a pretty fantastic, I call it my last page in the photo album. And then I got back on the battlefield. My team picked me up in my armor truck.

from Kanahar and we jumped in a supply convoy to head back out to see a Choi and I wasn't we weren't on duty or anything I hadn't even reported back to the cop command outpost but we were there we were in the convoy and there was something found inside of the road so you know that we set up that cord on they asked me to get the word and of course I wait for QRF when I'm right here that be a dick of this ain't my A-O but I threw the luggage off of the robot the robot out of the truck they got to work it found a pressure plate with a jug and it pulled the pressure plate away and separated the components so it was essentially rendered safe but it couldn't get the jug out

of the hard-packed dirt and I wanted my evidence if I could do it safely then that's what I would So I grabbed my evidence kit and my bottle detector and I jumped out of the truck and I started making my way towards it. No bomb suit because it's a known hazard. It was rendered safe. There's no sense in getting in the bumper and I'm not going to suit up for every unknown hazard that might be out there. That would be silly. But about 20 or 30 meters from the. original device. There just happened to be a secondary device that hadn't been detected until my

metal detector was trying to tell me something really important. And that's when I got punted. The lights went out. I got kicked into the air, landed on my knees and elbows. I was still conscious. I couldn't see anything. It seriously rang my bell. I made like a gonged was going off my head. And I thought that my helmet had gotten pushed over my face. That's why I couldn't see. The first thing I did was wear all the fingers and toes and knees and elbows and make sure everything was where I left it. And well, it was more or less. I could taste like explosive and derved and maybe I was crunching on my own teeth. I don't know. It tastes like crap. But I was more or less intact

except I just got to you know move my helmet back in place and get back in the fight so and I went to grab my helmet to find that it was gone oh wow yeah it's when I thought

shit a first sergeant's going to kill me for losing that thing but stuff that goes through your hat right yeah yeah actually somebody asked me what's the first thing that went through your head when that explosion happened

I said over pressure but I did realize at that moment that something was really wrong I'd taken it taking some damage I knew that the first thing that's going to happen the training still kicked in I don't know how lucid I was, but I was thinking, okay, complex ambush, are they going to start taking pot shots?

Are they going to start attacking with small arms? Is everybody in that security cordon now looking directly inside at me? And in my team, they know what they're supposed to do when a team later gets injured. They're going to clear a safe path for the medics to come get me out. And I decided I didn't want my team in a potentially hazardous situation. So I started making my way back towards the truck. The only problem is I couldn't see. I had no idea where that damn truck was anymore.

So I'm just doing this as zombie walk across the battlefield. I'm probably making it worse for my team to get me. But they grabbed me, dragged me back to safety. And the medic starts, comes running up, huffing and puffing, because he's coming from like 300 meters away. The first thing he does is complain about making him run. I'm like, sorry to ruin your day, dude. But, you know, that's, you know, warriors, you know, joking with each other.

At the same time, I asked my team, I house my face. And somebody said, well, you're not going to do any modeling when you get out. But, you know, the Medevac chapter, remember we are just out of Kandahar so medevac came in 14 minutes and within 48 hours I was in Walter Reed Bethesda Maryland um to the hospital but and was that about the time that you realized you know what the extent of your injuries were no it's kind of a whirlwind you know I was I was of course I received TBI I actually would have made it back to the state's even faster, but they held me for 24 hours in Landstool just to let the swelling

go down so I could do the cross-Atlantic flight. But it was, it was, you know, hoses and tubes and nurses, doctors, admin staff and paperwork. And thankfully, I was glad to have an excuse not to write anything because I couldn't see. People coming. and going of course around the beltway and there's like elected officials and dignitaries all you know veteran service organization people coming and going and also i learned uh something new that when when you have 100 percent blindness you get the added bonus of a sleep disorder because you can't reset your circadian rhythm to sunlight so i was wide awake every night trying to figure out why i wasn't sleeping and zombie during the day

day just hoping somebody would like lock my door and leave me alone so I could fall asleep. Yeah. But eventually, you know, I started thinking about in my situation. And the fact that, you know, the doctors tried to save one of my eyes. The blast had completely taken one of my eyes, my right eye, and actually fused my eyelids together. So I had this like permanent rink and a gun thing going on. But the blast, there was a piece of frag that cut right across the bridge of my nose and gashed the other eyeball. They tried to save it, but it was a no-go. So the blasted also blown up both my eardrums, though I could still hear. It was just

less. And the blast had also cracked my skull. So it was leaking spinal fluid right through my sinus is not my nose. They did what they could for the burns and the scrapes and my eyes. They took a piece of my septum and patched the cracks in my skull. So we'd find out a couple years later that it was never completely patched. That's all they could really do. I would have to learn how to be a blind guy for the rest of my life. So that's what I did.

Yeah. After, after, you know, checking out of Walter Reed, I mean, four or five weeks later, the same way to Tampa, to the VA hospital there just for some scans and TBI, had mild, moderate TBI. But then it was to the VA hospital in Augusta, Georgia, where they've got one of the blind rehabilitation units in the VA. The VA's got, I think, 14 of them around the country. And that's where I'd spend about six months

learning how to use my accessibility tools, like talking computer and text of speech software on my phone and barcode scanner for the, you know, anything in the pantry. And of course, that white cane, the long cane for navigating. and he'd be surprised. Things like learning how to pair your socks and how much, how to gauge how much toothpaste to put on your brush. The thing was when I was still sitting at the hospital bed in Walter Reed, and I was pissed.

And these low-tech cave, man, I was so mad. that they got me with that thing. You know, we've been so highly trained. It were the best fighting force on the planet in history. And this. I was mad at my, my, my thought was mad at the army for some reason. I was mad at the president. I was, I was mad at everybody.

I was, I don't know why. I was mad at some people, but they deserved it. I don't know why. Right. It's natural, though. Yeah, it was mostly mad at myself. Right. Yeah. But it was always asking those questions, right?

The why me's, the what if, what ifs? What if I'd done a different, like taking a different route approaching the ID. What if I set the robot out again? What if I, what if, and why me? Why did this happen on the, well, I wasn't even supposed to run that incident. Right. I supposed to just had, you know, all these questions. What is this happening to me?

Right. You know, why my eyes? Why didn't, why didn't they, like, just take a leg or something? I mean, it was buried on the ground. Why didn't you? I was virtually untouched from my neck down. Almost not a scrape. I don't even know how that happened.

But why? And, like, I couldn't, nobody can answer. I couldn't answer any of those questions. It's, it's there impossible to answer. And it just leads to that downward spiral. So I had to change my questions. And it was thank goodness my family, the military training, you know, all that resilience training, the welcome to the suck in Afghanistan, embrace the suck type of mentality.

You're here. So you better do your best at it, right? Right. And I'm there in Walter Reed. And I'm not the only one in that hospital. that's injured, there are a whole bunch of Joe's and James in there that we're all fighting their own battles. These warriors weren't quitting. Was I to say that I had my, you know, monopoly on pain or shitty days, right? So do I really have a good excuse to quit? And what am I

going to do other than just sit here? I better get to work and get busy doing something. if I'm not going to allow myself to just piss and moan all day. So I decided if I was going to be blind, I was going to be the best damn blind guy I could be. Was there, I'm sorry, I'm just curious, was this all, you know, with the anger and the, and the, the non-beneficial questions that you were asking yourself, was there a particular moment or reason that you sort of, turn around? I'd say it was incremental, but there was definitely, yeah, it was definitely a one moment. I'd love to really paints a great picture. And I didn't mention this, but when I was home on R&R, just two weeks before, you know, I was visiting family in the D.C. area. And I'd gotten word that another team leader in my company, a friend of mine, Kyle Vickers, had gotten injured.

We were right there. So I hurried over to Walter Reed. We got right to the unit and we get to the nurse station, found out that he hadn't even gotten out of ICU yet. So we're the first ones there that knew him. And of course, I wouldn't tell us anything about his injuries, confidentiality. But they said, one of the nurses said, well, you can go wait in his room. He should be out any minute now. So I went to his room. And so his bed was just waiting for him.

And right beside his bed was a pile of clothes. And, you know, one of those veterans organizations, their nonprofits come with, you know, shorts, sweats, t-shirts. I didn't on top of this neatly folded pile was one true. Okay. Yeah, it don't have to be a rocket scientist, right? So then kind of gets wheeled in and there he is in the gurney. Under the sheet, you can definitely tell there's only one leg. And he sees me and he's got a terrific personality, but I think it was assisted by the anesthesia.

He you see this huge smile as he goes, hey, oh dude. what are you doing here? It must have been a surprise because the last time he saw me, I was in Afghanistan with him. He kind of looks at me conspiratorially and whispers like, man, I think I kicked myself in the face.

And the worst thing you could say about it that day was that it ruined a terrible calf tattoo. Too, two weeks later, I'm right down the hallway from him. Jeez. And I'm in a really, really bad mood. Yeah. Kyle comes wheeling into my room one of a one day, maybe two or three days after I've been there, I arrive.

And he goes, hey, man, give me your hand. You got to feel this. I'm like, okay, I don't know playing that game. You know, I don't know what's going on. I am way too suspicious. Right. Next comes the homo joke, right? Touch this, right?

So he grabs my wrist, he puts it up under his chin, and I feel this stubble. He's like two weeks of growth, my man, apparently. And it's another one of those conspiratorial things, right? And I can hear him smiling as he's like, you know, the Marine EOD techs, they've got this liaison guy here at Walter Reed. So when they get out of surgery, the first thing the guy asks is, how are you feeling? If the Marine says he's feeling fine, which every Marine is supposed to, the guy, the liaison guy, hands him a razor and says, great, get back into rigs. We don't have that liaison in the army.

So grow your beard out. It's driving the Marine tech's crazy. And I couldn't help it. You know, I had to crack a smile. You know, I'm sitting there going, going that downward, you know, spiral of defeat. And it was me beating myself down. And thankfully, Kyle pulled me out of him. But, you know, he's here.

He's going to have one leg for the rest of his life. He's going to have to deal with that. And I learned about his incident later. That's a whole other story. But he was here cracking jokes and playing games with the marine EOD techs. And he was making the best of it. And I had to snap out of it. I had to get on his level or at least come close

I had to get, I had to get busy instead of just sitting there moping. Thank goodness for him and those other warriors, because that was definitely a tough time. Yeah. What form did that take for you as far as getting busy, you know, throwing yourself at something and, of course, learning to, you know, live with these injuries or live around them in a sense, right? How did that sort of, how did that progress take place for you? Well, you know, frankly, there wasn't really much for me to do at Walter Reed, except, you know, sitting in the hospital bed and get healthier. Eventually, like I said, I was just hit in the head.

And thankfully, you know, we hail boys are really thick Scott. perfect place to hit me. But I was perfectly ambulatory. I could get up, I could walk around. They gave me a cane. No, I really didn't know how to use it. It was mostly just a sign for other people to let them know I wasn't getting out of their way. Right. But, you know, I had my family in town, my mom from Ohio, my dad from California. My aunt actually is in the D.C. area. So we kind of I would check out in the afternoon from the hospital when the regular doctor staff left. And I would go have dinner at my aunt's house with my family. We go out to eat, stuff like that.

Oh, man, I went to a Dave and Busters. That was a mistake. Oh, man, blind and right off the battlefield and all those, you know, arcade sounds. It's like, I have to leave. But other than that, it was just about, they really couldn't do much for me. They were leading the way in prosthetics, but I didn't need any. So as soon as I was healthy enough to leave the hospital, I went to Augusto and I started learning what I could learn. And that was, I just threw myself into this whole learning how to be blind.

and as soon as I got my iPhone with a voiceover, the text to speech software, and I learned how to search things on the internet, man, I was pumping blind keyword in plus outdoors, plus hiking, climbing, running, whatever. And trying to figure out how, because I'm not the first blind guy in the world, how do people live, how do people do things? And, you know, there was a couple names that kept popping up. One was Eric Weinmare.

He is the first blind person to climb Mount Everest. I thought, damn, if he can do that, I can climb a mountain. So I looked him up. And I went mountain climbing with him. And there was a guy named Lonnie Bedwell, another Navy guy. So he didn't go blind in the service. He was turkey hunting and says his buddy Dick Cheney to him. But Lonnie, Lonnie's the first blind person to kayak the entire Grand Canyon.

So I looked him up and I went kayaking with him. We did sections of Yellowstone. It was amazing. And you know what? I mean, I was fighting. It was the Army Ranger Ivan Castro. It was right at Bragg's Special Operations Recruing branch. He stayed on active duty.

Captain Scott Smiley, active duty blind guys, they were working more administrative roles, but they kept the uniform on. I gave Ivan a call one day, and that was hilarious. He is a way of turning all conversations into the Ivan show,

but this great guy, he said he made, we did a point every year to run the Air Force Marathon, the Army 10-mile, and the Marine Corps Marathon. And I thought, oh, that sounds like a great idea. So I'd registered for all three of those.

And then I got talked into, by this time, I'd move to Anglin Air Force Base. They asked me if I would, where I wanted to retire. And I said, I don't. And I asked them to send me to the EOD school. I'd start instructing. So as I was learning, I was instructing, I registered for those three races. I registered for the Pensacola Marathon, something local. And I got talked into the San Antonio Marathon.

I don't even know how. But before, I registered four marathons and the Army 10-mile all within the span of four months. And I'd never run anything longer than 10-K in my life. So more learning I'd have to do. I ran them. And the three of those races qualified me for Boston. Wow.

I ask, what is the process for running 100 yards, let alone a marathon when you're blind and you can't see the route? Oh, yeah. You got to listen really hard for the traffic. No, at a marathon, I would just start yelling Marco. Let's see what happens. actually the truth is there's a couple different methods but what I started using was just a simple short tether I would hold one end and my guide would hold another in fact my very first tether was a dog tug of war rope

you know I'd hold a fat knot and my my guide would hold a knot and I almost wouldn't have to talk I would get all my cues from wherever that rope went Yeah. And there was a couple different signals for like high stepping it or if we had to go a single file. And then of course it was incumbent upon my guide to just work around any like open manhole covers or something. But that's that's how I ran for nine years. I've been running marathons and then ultra-marathons with a sighted guide or guides side by side. That's hardcore, man.

Actually, it was just a side effect of trying to get ready for the mountains. It's really hard to find a decent mountain to train on in Florida. I would pack, you know, one of those expedition packs and go find the tallest condo building and go up and down the stairs. And then I'd find a guide and go for run and train for these marathons. And that's how like, you know, besides kettlebells and stuff like that, it turned my garage in a pretty decent gym. It was running just happened to be a lot easier than getting to the condos

or getting to an actual mountain. and it was a great way to socialize. I mean, everything nowadays is a team sport. So I love getting out and running with locals. And a lot of times I run with first time guides. They're like, how do you, how do you do the sighted guide thing? Yeah, that we can, you know, hold this.

Yeah. And then, you know, I've got a, you know, I've got somebody trekked. as I can talk to them. But it sounds like you were probably dragging the guide after a little while. Well, you know, that is one of the challenges and beyond, of course, the obvious is also finding somebody that was wanted to, you know, could do the same distance or pace that I was doing and our schedules match up. Right. So it's somewhat of complexity. I would love to mention here that one of my friends, a blind marine runner who started a site, a website called United in Stride.org. And that's where interested people, sighted people, couldn't go and find blind runners around the country, I think even around the world. and, you know, they might be in their neighborhood and go running with them.

So I actually, at the time, reached out to Team RWB and found the local chapter, went running with them. This was really cool. They started a Sunday marathon training run specifically to help me get ready for my first marathons. And they invited everybody who wanted to come. come out of all ability levels. And they had like a pace vehicle loaded with the refreshments and stuff. And more and more people every week, every Sunday will come out and will come and run. And before long, it wasn't Aaron's marathon training day.

It was just training day. And as far as I know, it's still going. and it was it was great to be a part of something that grew beyond yourself, you know, grew beyond me. It was helping others. Somebody, you know, I know more than one person in that group was just getting ready for their first 5K. And that's the coolest thing ever. Yeah.

Yeah. So that was really special. I also want to touch on, you mentioned that you were allowed to. stay in the Army and instruct, which is really cool. And I'm really glad that they're doing, that the Army has gotten better about that over the years. You talk a little bit more about what that was like? Well, this was, I started, they asked me at first right at Walter Reed, where do you want to retire? And I learned in that time that there's something called a continuation of active duty service or coad for short. And you see,

still have to go through the Med Board process, and that's nine months, a year long as they go through. I mean, there's a huge review process. But once the Department of Army, Department of Defense, we have their findings, that's what they send over to the Department of Veterans Affairs as a recommendation for retirement and like a transfer from one department to the other. And that's when you can put in your request for a co-ad. So in the meantime, I can't just stay inpatient at Augusta, you know, a graduated blind school. And then as soon as you're, as soon as you get to the health point where the military,

You're like the military can't do anything to improve your situation. I guess it is. That's when the med board process begins. So I asked him to send me to the EOD school. Now, of course, you know, the military does have these warrior transition units. The army at least did this. And it's like full units comprised of wounded, wounded service. members that wounded soldiers that their full-time occupation, their full-time job, it becomes

getting well completing that med board process. So if they have ongoing treatments, that's the first priority. If they, then it's, you know, completing everything they can for the med board process. And if they're, you know, everything other than that ends, then it's, then they're actually order to get an education while they're waiting for, you know, the board findings to be completed. Well, I asked to go to work and go to the EOD school, and it was funny. I didn't realize what kind of red tape it would take to, they would send me to a war, the closest warrior transition unit, and then my place of duty and place of work is, the red tape in all of that being sent to a Navy base or a Navy school on an Air Force base

in the Army Warrior Transition Unit. And so it got so confusing that nobody knew who I belonged to, which is also cool. But yeah, I went to the schoolhouse. I started teaching. I actually went to the IEDs. What I did was I helped build up an out-of-cycle training course. In a lot of military schools, you know, there's cycles, you know, the classes and a pace that the classes go through.

And if somebody, you know, fails a test or has some kind of a medical thing and they miss too much of their class, they can't control. continue on with that class, they can't miss that material. Or they maybe because they failed it, they have to retake that material. They have to go out of cycle and wait till there's a spot opening in another class behind them to retake that particular part of the course and continue on. Sometimes, that's days, maybe it's weeks or even months, but when they're out of cycle, our EOD,

detachment, the Army detachment there at the EARD school didn't have a whole lot for them to do. They would put them on these working parties, you know, filling sandbags or doing base cleanup or something. I've ever read Trident, decent Redmond when he's at Ranger School and one day he's picking up cigarette butts. and you know you got EOD techs with nothing to do right so back of the detachment in the backyard we built this huge sandbox a training pet and started training the outer cycle guys wherever they'd wherever they were supposed to jump back into the class that's what we teach them and keep them sharp on the material that they're about to go back into And I kept up sharp on the IED stuff.

And I did that for about a year and a half or so. Wow. And until my, you know, the med board came back. Of course, findings that, I guess, blindness means I'm allowed to leave the military. In fact, I would, you're not even allowed to be colorblind and do EOT work. So, uh, At that same time, I was taking time off. I was running these marathons, those climbing mountains.

I was being asked to speak around with the country. And I was actually finding, you know, enjoyment in sharing the story and doing these, finding these other accomplishments, these other challenges. And, wow, what I was sitting at the, you know, the hospital bedwell to read? I might have been in, definitely wasn't a bit of denial. Like, I didn't want to let go. I could still do this. I could still do something.

I could still serve. I don't have to let go on the, the uniform. By the time the Medborg came back at the findings, the decision, I had nothing left to prove, especially not to myself. So I retired. It's truly fascinating. in your relations and sort of in the blind community, what are some of the biggest difference you find between like, you know,

men such as yourself, you know, especially the veterans who as adults, you know, became blind and then people who have been blind either since early childhood or their whole lives. Like what are some of the differences there that you found? Some of the different understandings? Yeah, yeah, I guess. Because there are sort of really two different sets of the subsets of the blind community, correct? Like people who have, who were cited for a long time and then became blind. Oh, those misconceptions?

Yeah. Well, the first thing is we don't touch other people's faces. That's gross. I don't want to touch your face. And you have no idea where my hands have been. These are my eyes, remember. Right. If you ever see a blind guy at a like a buffet, just walk out.

Just go. I'm going to be, it will be me at the buffet and I'll be just sticking my finger in there. Yeah. But, yeah, there are so many misconceptions, so many things. I didn't realize blind people could do. For example, while in Augusta and learning how to be blind, there was this, I actually never knew this was even existed, but there was a recreational therapist on staff.

And this guy, his old job was to have fun, basically, recreation. He would come into my room and say, hey, Aaron, you want to go golfing. I'm like, come on, Derek. Like it's messing with you, yeah. You know what's a funny thing is? Like, even when after you go blind, golfers are serious golf, like about golfing.

You don't have to get. Really? Right. Even after we go blind. I mean, there's, there are two national associations, the U.S. Blind Golf Association and the American Blind Golf Association.

Apparently, one faction split off from the other because of difference in like the rules like an argument in the rules. That's that, these are blind guys that take golf seriously. And so then this, the rec therapist came in the room another day and he goes, hey, Aaron,

do you want to go for a bike ride? I'm like, come on, put messing with you, Derek. That's nuts. Bike ride. And apparently, yeah, like, yeah, blind tandem cycling is a serious sport. That's a Paralympic sport. I mean, it was a real,

athletes, you know, that are blind and do cycling. When I, when I got to the blind school in Augusta, I was just a few months behind Brad Snyder. He was a Navy Iori tech who had lost his eyesight. And he's, he's this amazing dude. But being a Navy guy, he's a swimmer, he's a diver. And when he got to Augusta, he would train in the pool nearby. And every time I saw him, he's like, hey, Aaron, you wouldn't go swimming with me?

And I'm not, I haven't been much of a swimmer in a long time. And I'm like, oh, blown out of your drums. I have to wear cotton balls into the shower. I can't. I'm sorry. I'm like, shoot. But. after

he graduated from blind school he went to the London Paralympics and won three medals then he's been to the next two summer Paralympics and won more medals. I mean, the guy's a heck of a swimmer. Yeah. And now he's doing triathlons.

So it was there was just this, definitely this misconception about what we're capable of. And it was just, for me, it totally broke through this glass ceiling. And then I was just thinking, okay, it's not that I can't do anything. I just got to figure out a new way to do it. And my whole philosophy was, you got to figure out, it's not that I can't. It's just how can't I?

Right. It wasn't why is this happening to me. It's why is this happening for me? What can I learn from? And that's what I did. I started running marathons and I started climbing these mountains. I joined Eric Weinmer on the 10th anniversary of his Ever Summit. He took a whole team of wounded veterans because his dad's a Marine.

He took a whole team of wounded veterans up of 19,000 foot peak in the proving even Andes called it Soldiers to Summits. And I was on that team. The funny thing was we started off towards our, towards the summit on that, you know, that day at three, four in the morning. And it's so dark, everybody's complaining that they can't see you where they're putting their feet. I'm like, welcome to my world.

People are there. And it was an amazing experience. But then it was just, okay, nothing is off limits, except maybe helicopter pilot. But almost nothing is off limits for me. I just got to figure out how to do it. And then it was the whole, my heart. whole life became an adventure all over again. It's, I mean, it's truly fascinating.

It's incredible. It's a testament to you and all, and everybody else, you know, every other service member, but everybody else who is blind, like, yeah, I think, I would never even think about. It's so hard to imagine of all the senses, of all the things. it feels as though for you know yeah just it's so hard to imagine what that would be I saw or I listened to I'm sorry that don't see much anymore but I listened to another podcast and somebody was talking about a blind guy that was a a food chemist and I was talking about how

most people, most humans get about 96% of their information through their eyes. That's not because, it's mostly because we've stopped, you know, we come too reliant on our eyes and we don't pay as much attention to other senses. And that's, that's what, it's funny when people ask if the other senses have gotten stronger. well, I'm deaf. And, you know, the blast cut right across my nose. I kind of have a diminished sense of smell, which is linked to my taste. Don't ask me. But I tell people, you know, if I need to navigate, I've got to go down on the, you know,

hands and knees and lick the concrete. But it's true that we don't pay attention to other. senses and every once in a while it really is a good thing to close our eyes and just take a deep breath and listen really hard beyond that point of boredom because that's when we really start paying attention but I think everything was going really well I had done all these these ventures, I was speaking, I was teaching for a while. I was running these marathons. In summer, spring and early summer of 2015 were epic. I went to Colorado and climbed three 14ers in a day. I went hunting in Texas. I don't know if you guys can see above.

over there. That dude went to Yellowstone in Montana with my buddy Lawnie, went kayaking, skydiving, which I don't know, that was okay, but it's kind of like sticking your head out of fast car for me. And I was two weeks

away from heading out to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro when I got knocked down to the mat again. I contracted bacterial meningitis. And I was sent right back to the hospital. Man, the cracks in my skull that hadn't been fully patched. Four years later, a path out is also a path in.

And bacteria crept right into my brain and was trying to kill me. And in the process, I survived, but it had also stolen what was left of my hearing. It left me completely deaf. So, you know, the, when the doctor was breaking the news to me, it actually felt like I was underwater. It was so congested. And I had my mom in the room. my girlfriend in the room and talk to this doctor.

I'm saying, dog, what you're telling me is I'm going to be completely 100% blind and 100% deaf. You mean I'm never going to have to pretend to pay attention ever again? Silver line and everything. Of course, I blame the meningitis. But I didn't hear my mom or my girlfriend left. But even though I really do like using humor to diffuse the situation, yeah, that was awful news. Yeah, kick in the balls.

Yeah. Man, I was just hitting my stride. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just, I was on my way to mastering this blind thing. and there I was. And also, just like the blindness had an added bonus gift, because I lost those inner ear, little hair follicles in their cochlea,

that also, I also lost my vestibular balance, the inner ear gyro. So I lost my sense of balance. It was like vertigo, but weirder. because it was like always. So, and we thank goodness for those handicapped rails in the, in the bathrooms,

because that would fall right off the toilet. I came home in a wheelchair, and, man, I was past. Again, is the same calling my demons, the what ifs, the Y, me's? I'm like, when has this guy paid his fair share? When is enough? Enough.

You know, when has, this soldier sacrificed, right? You know, when can you just give it to another guy, you know? Yeah, one more thing taken from you. So I'm sitting there like at the counter in my kitchen, right? Holding on to the counter to not fall off the stool. And there would be a chance I could regain some of my hearing with the cochlear implant, which is not a hearing aid. Like my ears are turned off permanently, but I'd have to wait

till the meningitis, like the infection cleared up. Then they would do surgery on my right side, the more damaged ear. And for anybody watching, I'm not wearing one right now because after getting the surgery, waiting weeks for it to heal up, then getting the process, external processes are tuned in, found out that it didn't work. It was just too much inner ear scarring for the implant to work. Then I have to start the process all over with the left ear. And it was over six months from, you know, infection to the first sound, whatever you want to call it. It's a digital signal sent right to my auditory nerve. My brain had to learn how to hear again a different way,

how to interpret this different sound. And it's nothing like the real thing. It's kind of like calling a friend at a restaurant, and he just puts it on speaker and puts in the middle of the table. You just hear every imperfection on the table, around the table, clinking, other conversations. It all kind of mixes into a wall of sound.

Yeah, but it's way better than the alternative. Right. For six months, I was locked inside my body. It was just trapped. Silent, dark, could not get a message in. I was thinking, damn, I should have learned Braille at blind school. But all that tech is just, it made me lazy. It's hardest.

It's funny to say. Right. But, you know, you know, The only thing I can even think the liking it to is it's like you're in a submarine by yourself with no sonar. Like just isolated. And for a social guy like me, that sucked. And so, I mean, how frustrating and lonely it is. And, you know, people, we went through the whole COVID quarantine era, you know, that period.

People were complaining about the isolation. Like, that's nothing. Right. But sit in there again, pissed off. And this ironic thought came into my mind. It was like, for four years, I've been talking about triumph over tragedy and success through struggle and all this kind of stuff. And God was telling me to put my money where my mouth was. Like, jerk.

It was like, okay, well, prove it. And I just remembered all the stuff that I went through the first time. And I just, like I told myself, like, this isn't your first rodeo. You've already done it. You know how to do this. And I remember, just as an EOD team, we get this like a trial. icon or quadcons and shipping container full of tools from the bombsuits of robots and hazmat kits and all sorts of things.

Then you get it on deployment and you get that armored truck. And it's just not as big as the shipping container and you can't fit at all of your tools. So this one three-person team has to do the prioritize what is most likely to be used in this battle space and then leave some of the tools behind. And then, of course, we're going on these dismounted missions, you know, walking on foot on these dirt trails. And you only, you can only bring what you can, you can hump on your back. So you got to leave a lot of tools behind. And I love how, uh, was it general Jim Mattis, put it in calls on chaos, said it, at least in Marines, things being hard were never a good excuse for mission failure.

And, you know, I've got a family, I've got a son, this amazing girlfriend. I've got my fellow warriors to think of, you know, my life doesn't belong to just me. And I'm responsible to them and for them. and I got to figure this out. So I left some tools behind. The mission continues. So I did what anybody in my situation would do. Started a fudge company.

What? Besides getting on the treadmill and holding on for dear life because I just hit the vertigo to hit the quick start button just walked half a mile an hour. I was also taking my trekking poles that I was using in the mountains

and I did this weird daddy long leg crab walk thing out to my mailbox and back and I'd be exhausted but I would do it every single day a couple times a day. Then we'll go a little bit

further, go a little bit faster on my treadmill. And at the holidays, we're coming. Thanksgiving is around the corner. And I decided to stop worrying about myself. So I stopped thinking about my situation. And I was just going to throw a huge Thanksgiving feast. So I started cooking weeks in advance. I started making the cakes and the pies and cookies, just throwing over the freezer until the day. And I start making batch after batch of fudge, one flavor after another. The combinations were infinite. And I was going to explore them all.

And I just, I just kept doing it. I was to throw nuts and spices in. I got to the liquor cabinet and dump a little there and double in the mouth. And, and, uh, Michaela, uh, my now wife said, she noticed two things. One was I had a smile on my face for the first time in six months. And two, the fudge was piling up. So she snuck it out the front door like you got to be a real stelding around a blind deaf guy. But she was giving her away to friends and family, friends and neighbors and whoever.

A couple people came back and said, yeah, hey, this is pretty good. Can we buy some for birthday or something? party, office party. And the capitalist in me said, well, of course you may. And all of a sudden we had this business. And it was so funny. And for it, like, just months into it.

I, you know, that home gym in my garage, I had, you know, in line, I had the treadmill, the rower, the stationary bike. And then the conveyor belt shrink wrap machine. But it was something to do.

It was a project. It was a challenge. And we threw an awesome Thanksgiving. I was happy. We had even some of the stranded EUD students that didn't have enough leave days

or everybody saved up for Thanksgiving or saved it for Christmas or New Year's. And And during the holidays, the base is shut down. So we invite a few students over, share our table. And it was great. It was fun.

I didn't worry about not hearing. And the Fudge Business started taking off. I started running again. And a year after the meningitis, I ran my hometown marathon in Akron, Ohio. Wow. The same week of my 20th high school reunion. and got my first sub four marathon. That's pretty cool.

That was an awesome. Unreal. And Aaron, I would like to take just a moment to put a pin or point out that I think you mentioned a little bit before we started recording, actually. Had you been a World War II veteran or a Vietnam veteran, you'd be in a very different place

because medical science has advanced so much over the decades. I'm just interested to hear kind of your thoughts of, you know, I mean, in some sense, when we start talking about ocular implants and all of these, it almost is like a miracle, right? Absolutely. I mean, the technology, science, medicine, it's absolutely amazing. This cochlear implant is literally implanted in my head, and it's an electrode that goes into the cochlebone and the inner ear.

And there's an electrode that connects to the branch that basically there's a bundle of nerves. That's the auditory nerve. And if you can imagine like a big trunk that goes into smaller and finer roots until it goes into the cochlear and becomes a really fine hair cells that are the actual things that pick up the sound and then bring it, of course, into the brain. Well, the cochlear implant is the electrode that attaches a little higher up on the trunk, the roots. And the way I imagine it is it's just not as sophisticated as sound.

It's getting better all the time. And the processor is actually pretty. smart has different types of modes. But it's more like, in fact, it's like when they first turn it on, they only, they can only give you the primary colors of sound. It's a very limited amount of data. So your brain can start learning. And then every few weeks, you go back into audiology, they tune it in with like the soundboard and the computer, give you a little more data. and you learn a little bit more, and they keep tweaking it until you get something that resembles

sound, but like I said, it's kind of like, you know, trying to listen to the whole world through a drive-through speaker. But it's amazing. 40, 50 years ago, I would have been pulling the full Helen Keller. Instead, I'm, you know, connected via Bluetooth to my phone, my computer, we're talking to each other via the internet. It's absolutely amazing. Of course, it's also 101 ways I could screw something up. But definitely way better than the alternative. Yeah.

Do we have any questions for Aaron? We do. Let's see here. Let me switch over real quick. Aaron, where can people like find you right now if they're, you know, any of your products, any of your social media, anything like that? Absolutely. I have a podcast, Point of Impact with Aaron Hale, and you can find that at point of impact pod.com or on any of the major podcast outlets and on YouTube. And you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, I think, I don't know, Instagram. I'm not very good of ticket photos, but that's at A Clay Hale. And, of course, the main thing is the podcast.

And then you're also, in your bio, didn't I read some, you're also involved or you started a charity for building homes for veterans? Absolutely. Well, I am an ambassador and advocate for a terrific organization called Building Homes for Heroes. And that's Building Homesforheroes.org. They're the ones that build or adapt, especially adapted homes for severely wounded, service members, veterans, first responders, and Gold Star families like this house I'm in right now. And that's the organization I ran to raise money, I ran Badwater, 135 this last, this July, to raise money, to raise money for building those three years. So already please check that out building homes for heroes.org. Look, if you got a few bucks, it doesn't take a lot to help out.

You know, a couple of coffee here. We'll have a link down the description for you guys if you're looking for. Can you, can you tell sort of like how your house is set up for you in particular that helps you? You're blind. You're effectively deaf except for the cochlear implant. Like what are the things that people might not know of or that help? you know that help you well could others help me no no i'm sorry in your home like what are the sort of accessibility uh that was it's actually funny because it was right they found me right after i

left blind school and they asked how do we we i don't think we've ever adapted a home for the blind how do we do that what kind of special adaptations could use i'm like i don't know I've been blind for like 10 minutes. And this was also almost 12, 10, 11 years ago. And there wasn't a whole lot of the smart stuff. It wasn't as prolific as it is now. So they put in a talking thermostat, but you still had to go to it and press the buttons and stuff.

And it just told you what, you know, they, did put different flooring in every room. So as I crossed the threshold from one room to another, I could feel it in my shoes, my feet. One special

adaptation really had nothing to do with blindness or not a whole lot, but I asked him to put one of those pot fillers over the stove. Yeah. The cook guy always wanted one of those. Right. So there wasn't really a whole lot of adaptation for me.

I was just extremely grateful that it was just an incredible home in the Florida Panhandle, mortgage-free. And it was a wonderful gift. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, everybody, please check that out, building homes for heroes, right? Building Homes for Heroes.org. So, Louis Vasquez, thank you very much for your donation. Here's this question. what is your favorite Italian dish to cook and what's the recipe?

Well, do you want pastry? You're talking dinner, talking breakfast. This could fill an entire episode itself. I think one of my favorite go-toes is spaghetti carbonara. Very simple and very delicious. Essentially, you can use pancetta. or another type of Italian, you know, cured ham, bacon. The bacon.

But really any kind of bacon will work for. Spaghetti, little oil, garlic, salt and pepper, one egg, and essentially got it. And you can customize it all you want. I've had some fantastic wild boar and truffle carbonar. So it's definitely open to customization, but it's really simple and always delicious. Sean Walter, thank you very much. Great chat.

Aaron, just mentioning creating out-of-cycle training courses for EOD techs, why wasn't that institutionalized cost personnel, cost question mark, personnel, question mark, like why wasn't that institutionalized from the beginning? Last question is what? The out-of-cycle training that you helped create, why wasn't that institutionalized from the beginning? Well, I'm not sure why it hadn't begun until I was there. I wasn't the one who dreamed it up. I just hadn't been there when it was,

when it started and helped build it up. But, you know, as in, life, the service happened, even over a couple hundred years, we haven't gotten all perfect. And it takes, you know, just one person to say, you know, what? We can do you something a little bit better. And so a few Joe's, a few students that we weren't serving and we were just sitting around getting a paycheck, but actually not getting better, probably getting worse by sitting around doing nothing.

and say, you know what we can do? Let's help him out. And let's make sure they're earning their paycheck. But there's always a way to improve the situation if we just look around. Thanks. A dog point. Thank you very much. Did your EOD unit have its own culture?

Did you guys complete or compete to diffuse the most bonds? or have bomb jokes, what kind of stuff is in the team room? Of course we're done. There's always competition. There was always practical jokes. The practical joke was one of the big things. You know, in an electronics class, we would get, we would build a circuit using the capacitor from a, you know, one of those. disposable cameras, if you can even find those anymore.

But you charge up the flash and then we do like those little gator clips on each of the anode cathode of the capacitor. And it takes basically, you know, you either hook it to a circuit or you just complete the circuit with somebody's skin and turn it into a taser. So what we would do is we would conceal this little flash, you know, disposable camera, taser thing all over the place, especially under people's chair arms. So, you know, they grab each arm and there's a lead on either underside of the arm chair. and zap, they just complained of the circuit.

So every once in a while, you'd see somebody jump and everybody started cracking on it. It's pranks, but then we're always, it was, it's like that mentality where you always always trying to find a way to kill each other and think of new ways to build our own ideas, so that we're better at building them and dismantling them than the enemy. Plus, shocking, your body is hilarious.

And also, Dr. Point, thank you very much. Could you describe your experience diffusing your first few bombs? How did your reactions before you're after and during change as you became more experienced? Yeah, there's definitely that nervousness, excitement of being a novice, though we're just, we train so hard. And I'd spent time in Iraq, and then it spent time stateside working, state-side response. You know, just things and old things of T&T from, you know, the farmer's, you know, barn to something grandpa brought back from, you know, the old war as a souvenir. And I'd had practice on some of these things before getting out to Afghanistan and, you know, hit the prime time.

But, yeah, that first time, it was pretty nervous. It's good that we do that right seat, left seat thing and get to be right there. next to somebody's been doing it for a while. And then the watch of your shoulder as you do it. And then, you know, the last handshake, high five, whatever, fist bump, and it's your A-O. And by then, pretty comfortable in the role. And before you knew it, we were really, you know,

running and gotten and doing, doing tons of these things every day. So it never gets boring and never really you shouldn't ever get complacent or anything like that. They're explosives, right? Who knows if the next one just goes wrong? So you're always alert. You get more comfortable in your own skills, right?

you become, you trust yourself a little bit more to be able to handle the situation ahead. And it also is all about trusting your team and their abilities and your other resources, the other team, you know, the key players on the battlefield and battle space. And there's a lot going on there and there are a lot of resources at your disposal. You just got to remember that all of that is part of your situational awareness. And, Aaron, this question is for me, how horrible is the hurt locker and why? I don't get a story. I don't even call it that.

I call it that out of closet or pain cabinet or something. It was so funny. I was at the FBI, anti-terrorist office in Manhattan, you know, that joint operations center there. And somehow that movie came up. And I'm like, I was just complaining about how stupid it made us look. And the guy is like, have you ever watched a movie with an FBI agent in it? They make it make it all of us look stupid all the time. So welcome.

You know, it's so funny. I'm like, yeah, you're right. You guys look awful. Yeah, I was introduced. I'm sorry, go ahead. Please. No, no, no. It's just that, you know, who picks up.

It was like five one, five, five, all Daisy chain together with Deadcourt. Who just picks him up? By the way, you can't do that with one. Yeah, he's throwing smoke between him and his security forces. Like, I just, I had a couple civilian friends, like, introduced me that movie. They're like, oh, you got to watch this. It's so amazing. And I was, like, so angry during the entire movie, like, you guys think this is good?

There is one scene in that movie that I, I, liked that I could relate to. There's the scene where he comes back from Iraq and he's in Walmart. The grocery store. And he's just completely overwhelmed by all the lights and all the the like super abundance of it. Right.

Like, and I had that exact same experience like standing there for like 45 minutes. Like I don't know what to do. Yeah. Like what am I doing? And just left. It was the only the only piece of truth or yeah. Yeah. What I didn't understand. It was it like I don't Even if you put aside all of the artistic license with the operations of EOD,

it was a terrible story. It was so disjointed. I didn't know what was going on. It just went from one stupid act to another. There was no plot at all. Who is he fighting? What was the meaning of any of it? He just did this, did that, said something stupid.

if I'm going to die, I'm going to die comfortable. And then he's staring at some guy holding a battery or a cell phone or something. They have a meaningful moment as they look broody at each other. And then he's standing in a grocery store and then he goes back on the planet. Yeah. This doesn't make any sense to me. It was a terrible, terrible story. Aaron, as we wrap up here tonight, is there any questions that we failed to ask?

or any final thoughts that you want to throw out there? Anything you think we missed? No, you guys have let me talk far too long. I really do appreciate you having me on and have your ear and your audience here for a little while telling my story. I hope it was worthwhile. I hope everybody enjoyed it.

I know I am. Sometimes it's not the best day, but most of the time I love my life. all the time. I love my life. Most of the time, I'm having a great day. And I'm just doing it because I love my fellow, you know, my service members of the veterans, my family. I love getting out there running, doing adventures, talking on my podcast or you making fudge or investing in real estate. All of it is a really cool challenge. Every day is a new opportunity. And I'm glad I got to share a little bit it with you guys. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing it with us. I mean,

it's a great story. I mean, it's a great life. And I really appreciate you kind of like, giving us a sort of like very personal insights into it. We deeply appreciate it for sure. I didn't even mention that my wife and I had identical twins, so I wouldn't be the only one that's confused. I mean, there are a couple of things that have passed by in the sense of you went on your first hunting trick and you or you went on a hunting trip you have the trophy behind you and you didn't dick cheney anybody so dick cheney really has no excuse nobody's gonna know about that in a few years is that gonna be funny what are you talking about what the hell is dick cheney maybe they'll google it after they listen to this podcast oh he's been oh that's cool yeah and then i think

that you know with you know you're running your mountain climbing you're kayaking everything you're doing, the only, with Jack and I both being comic book geeks, the only question is, when are you going to don a mask and start fighting crime? It sounds like you're ready for it. So, after bad water? I don't know. I'm just taking a little time off, let my toenails grow back. Daredevil did it, man.

My wife and I really love doing the fixer up her house, turning them into rentals and building the portfolio. So I really think I'm just going to focus on business a little bit more. Fair enough. Do the maintenance miles and, you know, stay fit. I'm definitely not going to be able to stay off the road for very long. I'm not going to find a pretty cool ultramarathon out there fairly soon. Awesome, man.

Amazing. Yeah, please stay in touch. And, you know, we're happy to promote some of these things. and put them out there as they come about. And again, just thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Thanks for having me on, guys. Absolutely. And for everyone out there, we'll see you guys on Friday with Tommy Shook,

inductee into the Ranger Hall of Fame, had a very long career. We're excited to talk to him this Friday. And Aaron, you can hang on for a second and everybody else.