The Team House - The Untold Story of OSS Agent Steve Bizic | Jacek Waliszewski | Ep. 330

Episode Date: March 2, 2025

Jacek was three months old when he committed his first crime - sneaking Solidarity paperwork in his diaper to Polish resistance leaders. You see, His Dad cofounded Solidarity and spent a year in jail. He was then given an offer from the Commies: "Leave the country as political refugees, go back to jail, or be traded out to the Soviets." He chose America, and his parrents arrived with two suitcases, two toddlers (Jacek and his Sister), and no one spoke any English. They had a few dollars, his dad worked as a painter during the day and computer repairman at night, and his mom cleaned houses while the kids stayed home with friends. Years later, and despite the odds, they made it. Jacek (Yacht-sek) is now a Dad, a writer, and Green Beret US Army Special Forces Warrant Officer. He's travelled to over 40 countries, run with the Bulls in Pamplona, and had incredible adventures. His last Spcecial Forces Mission to Afghanistan was captured in the Award-winning National Geographic Documentary RETROGRADE, which was nominated for 6 Emmys and made it on the Oscar Short List, and Jacek is featured as "Chief Jack." Grab Jacek's book here:https://www.amazon.com/CODE-NAME-Americas-Special-Operations-ebook/dp/B0D56BXTRP?ref_=ast_author_dp_rw&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.JsmO9u-OUJyIXZDe4n2gCOueAuBiTnknN9F78Njv9CY5c5XC3qMKhSyXXAnxpL0-9Mll4m_WVP8ekB-PQEDxAg.rfpMGi1aPvGqJBBrBhioJBLZYDDnBJ2JBcssqAoLSdw&dib_tag=AUTHOR-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:LUCY⬇️https://lucy.co/HOUSEUse the code "House" for 20% off your first order!GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 50% OFF!!!____________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"Want to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#oss #specialoperationsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

CIA comes out in 1947 and says, hey, all OSS missions are secret top secret. Like, stop with your memoirs. But these guys had already written it. And so this physical book ends up in under the bed or in the closet for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years until I find it in 2017 in the archives. No one knows how it got to the archives. And so I'm starting reading it. I'm reading it in Afghanistan as the country's collapsing. and then I spent 21, 22, 23 finding the families, bringing them together,

asking for photos, asking for stories. What's freaking insane is that I ended up looking through the British National Archives and I found the Morse code messages that Spike was sending to OSS headquarters. So, like, you're reading this and you're like, oh, yeah, we blew up a bridge. And 200 Germans died when the train fell up into the gorge. and you're like, oh, that's a great whiskey campfire story. But then I find the actual Morse code message and say, hey, we blew up a bridge and 200 Germans died

and it was amazing. You're like, oh my God, this proves that the memoir is true down to like the event. If you sleep hot at night, you know just how disruptive it can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night or all the above. That's where Ghostbed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world,

ghost bed is your go-to for cooling mattresses. cooling pillows, and even cooling bedding. From their signature ghost ice fabric to patent a technology that adjusts with your body temperature, every ghost bed mattress is designed with cooling in mind. So whether you want a plush your mattress that cushions your shoulders and hips, or a firmer option with exceptional support, your ghost bed will keep you cool and comfortable all night long. When you purchase a ghost bed mattress, your comfort is guaranteed.

You can try out your mattress for a 101-night's risk-free and make sure it's the right fit for you. Plus, they offer free shipping and most items ship within 24 hours. If you're not sure which Ghost Bed is for you, check out their mattress quiz. You'll answer a few questions and get your personalized recommendation. Or reach out for their friendly team of sleep experts for all the help you need. Even better, Team House listeners can get 50% off site wide for a limited time. Just visit ghostbed.com slash house and use Codehouse at checkout.

Again, that's ghostbed.com slash house. with the code house at checkout to save a whopping 50% off site wide. And if you're not in the market for a mattress, check out their pillows, they're bedding. They have all kinds of great stuff there. So thanks to Ghostbbed and check them out. Special operations. Covert Ops. Espionage.

The Team House. With your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Episode 330 of the 330 of the team house. Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave and our guest on tonight's show. Yatsik Walshefsky. It's like two Polish words and one. You got it. I worked on that. So Yatsik is a retiring green beret on the tail end of your military career and also the author of code name Spike, which we will get into in depth, but long story short, he found a OSS memoir that was unpublished.

guys who jumped into Serbia during the war, and he then combined all this additional research and for the first time published the memoir. And it's incredible. We'll get into that in a moment. But thank you for joining us tonight on the show. Thanks for having me. Making the trek out here.

I mean, it doesn't take much to want to come to New York City. I've always loved New York City. It feels like the city I should have moved to for college. But, yeah, I'm not having a great time. Brought my boys out. And we are making the most of it. And they're tuckered out. They're just about done.

Yeah, one's passed out. The other is, you got a few minutes. On his way. So, we'll start at the beginning. You have an interesting sort of origin story growing up in Poland. Yeah. Talk to us about that. So this really kind of took a long time for me to realize the gravity of what I

experience as a kid, right? My dad co-founded the Solidarity Movement. He was the number three guy. And there's pictures, family pictures of him sitting next to Lechfoenso. I have a birth certificate from the Solidarity Revolution when my dad was arrested and they found out I was being born that my mom had gone into labor. And they're like, oh, you know, Leshechek's having a son. So they rip out this bed sheet and they, like, prison tattoo it. And

you know, it's got a huge solidarity. solidarity flag on it and eagle and they got the date March 16th on it because that's when my mom went with labor but I was born the next day right so you're like so it's a literal piece of history and uh yeah I was talking to my mom about it how was revolution for you she was like well when your dad got arrested because he was the number three guy in the entire he's a chairman of solidarity um the the communists stormed up into the apartment and she would hear them coming because you've got to go up the concrete stairs. And she's like, crap, because she's got propaganda paperwork.

She's still the wife of the number three guy. And so she's like, all right, I know they're going to raid everything and rip up everything. And so she's holding me a little swaddled yatig. I got a little diaper on. And she grabs all the papers. And she's like, please don't pee. She shoves them in my diaper, holds me. And the commies kick in the door.

They ransack everything. They don't find anything because it's in my diaper. And I become the solidarity mule there for a little bit, right? My dad doesn't see me until I'm six months old, right? He, that was a really interesting moment because for him, I was talking to him. All he had, he had two things that were occupying his time. He became really good at ping pong, right? Because that's all they had.

And then he was worried about what would happen. Because during that moment in time, the Polish government and the Soviet government were trying to figure things out. And the Soviet government was like, hey, we have a really good way to take care of all your dissidents that you have in jail. Just give them to us trade and we'll take care of it. We'll make the whole problem go away, which is we will execute every solidarity member you have. And the Polish government was like, well, if we execute our guys, the Polish citizenship will like literally revolt. We're going to have a bigger problem.

And so through happenstance, my mom applied for political refugee status. The Reagan administration was like, hell yeah, we'll take the number three. guy. And so we end up in short order being political refugees and landing in America with my mom tells me two suitcases and 40 bucks in cash. Wow. And two kids, apparently I had had a massive blowout in my diaper. And so she didn't have enough diapers to make the flight. And so it was a high stress moment for him. And but yeah, that's how I became to America. And both so your your father was a political prisoner for a spell there. Both of your parents were part of, you know, the resistance movement as the counties.

And then arriving as political refugees in the United States, I mean, I'm taking it probably either of them spoke English. Yeah, zero English. My mom still has an accent, even to the day. What's amazing is there's, because you kind of got to set the stage of the iron curtain was on. And no one knew who was who behind the walls, but all of a sudden my dad shows up. And so he won't admit it, but I've heard him allude to it,

that he got interviewed by the agency. Oh, sure. Told him exactly who was the good guys and who was the bad guys. And there's KGB Cables saying, we don't know how the agency has infiltrated the solidarity movement, but all our guys are saying everything's fine, but clearly they're getting agency support during the revolution. and I like to

know that my dad had an element of knowing or telling the agency who was the good guys and who you couldn't trust but there's pictures of my dad standing next to Reagan he gets a great job with General Motors right after works his way up he was an electrical engineer so he was originally, he's genuinely you guys settle in like one of those Polish towns

Yeah, what was we? I don't know how we ended up in Raleigh, North Carolina. Really? And, you know, I was like, not Chicago, not New York City. Like, Raleigh, North Carolina. Yeah. And so for a while there, I had a country accent. You know, it kicks in if I go visit friends in North Carolina.

And, you know, I've got my roots in North Carolina, riding bikes and just being a hooligan. Yeah. And just North Carolina, backwoods activities. But he started working for gentlemen. They got a divorce. So that made life really hard because you got to think two refugee or two political refugees as parents, now divorced, don't know the language. They're learning their own way. Now they have two kids. Extra baggage. It's insane, right? And so there's a lot of ping pong events between

my sister and I. We'd live with my mom, then we lived with my dad, and whoever was more stable at the time and could give stable childhood. And you're just like, and so for me, I became very used to chaos early. If I missed the bus to school, I wouldn't tell my mom I would just run off into the woods and find something to burn or something to chase or, you know. I'm still really good friends with my buddy Justin, who I met in second grade, right? We were hooligans in the entire neighborhood.

But, you know, it was, like to say that I had so much freedom in their blind spots that I grew up very early, very quickly. to my own detriment in some ways, right? I'm not good at math because I never went to school enough to go to math or to learn math, but making friends, you know, speaking multiple languages and just saying yes to every adventure that opens the door or the door opens to me.

Like, I'll jump through that door. So you moved to Raleigh and, you know, because I was thinking the same thing, Jack, was it, that, you know, you would be, that there would be a kind of a safety net of a Polish community here. But were there many like Poles around or Polish people around

Raleigh that your dad or mom was there any community for them? I remember people in the living rooms, right? I was still a kid, right? I came over when I was a year and a half old. Yeah. So, you know, whatever memories I had up until about five or six, just the

random Polish people didn't know how robust that was. Yeah. So yes, yes, to that answer, but definitely not Chicago or New York City-style community support. It's interesting. Then at a certain point, you basically shangha'd yourself to boarding school, it sounds like. Yeah, so, you know, everybody, every family has a family history, right? So dad remarried.

It was a very, he's a political term for a very unfriend. situation with the second stepmom right she was very frustrated at my dad and taking it out of my sister and i this works out for me and the benefit of sears school when i go into green you know become a green beret but like dad would go on business trips for general motors and stepmom would lock me in the bathroom for the weekend at a time not feed me and i had a drink out of the tap right jesus right and so because she was just so pissed off at my dad and as a seven eight year old you're like This doesn't make sense, but, you know, I'm defiant. I'm like, but this is a challenge and I'm going to figure this out, right?

And so I would read all, you know, I would squirrel away Stephen King books because there was a big box of books downstairs. I would, you know, learn to squirrel away food and things. So it's like a very abusive situation, but I took it as a positive challenge. And then it's kind of where I learned that humans are interesting humans because I started to learn how to manipulate her, right? because I knew her triggers. I knew her levers,

and I started levering those. But what was interesting is as I was about eight, and I learned that she was abusing my sister worse, because my sister was getting locked in the basement for the weekends. I was like, okay, now it's time to step up, right? And so for an eight-year-old to be sneaking out at night and putting nails in her tires and cutting her brake lines, not knowing which one was the brake line,

so I was cutting a lot of things. And her car not working, and then dad's like, what the hell is going on with the cars, right? And I'm like, I don't know, right? But he's spending thousands of dollars fixing the cars. You know, that changes a kid at eight years old when you've made that choice. And, you know, I look at my kids now, nine and twelve.

And I'm like, I could never imagine doing to you guys what I had to go through. Right. But I'm glad that I went through at first because now I get to protect you from those situations. Well, not only that, but you were already at a young age. honing the skills of asymmetric warfare. Right. Unconventional. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, through that situation, I finally turned to my dad and my mom. I was like, neither of you can take care of. Send me to boarding school or anywhere school, right? And let me figure the rest of this out on my own, right? Because I don't like being locked in the bathroom. I don't like, you know, being neglected at my mom's house because she's, you know, battling depression.

Send me to boarding school. So there's a boarding school in Knoxville, Tennessee. King's Academy I was there for six months to a year The irony is that neither parents sent me with enough clothes for the semester So I found myself stealing clothes out of the dryer Like polos and whatever else

And then Because there was a tuition issue They were like, hey, but you also have to work as a dishwasher In between classes. And I'm just like, I am 10 years old Stealing my clothes, working as a dishwasher in a boarding school, and I finally look around, I'm like, I don't like this. Like, I don't like the way my life is trending. And it's a Christian academy, right?

So I remember this very specifically, trying to read the Bible and trying to figure things out. And I'm like, this is all irony. This is all just hypocrisy. So I'm standing in football field, and I'm like, you know what? If I'm at a Christian academy, I can talk to God more directly, right? So I started yelling at the sky. I'm like, a 10-year-old kid standing in the middle of football field at midnight, and I'm yelling.

I'm like, I have done with your plan. I'm not doing it your way. I believe in the essence of what you're saying, but I don't believe in the people around me. So I'm going to be a free agent from here on out. I'm going to do it my way. If you need me, let me know, put me in a situation. I'll figure it out, right?

I'll try to do the best I can. And then I didn't get struck by lightning. So I'm walking back up, up to the boys dorm. This was 1991-2-ish. And this was still when they had pay phones. So it was an international school, a bunch of, so you would call,

or families would call the payphones outside. They would ring. Protocol was, if you ever heard it ring, you'd answer it, and they'd tell you who it was, what room number, and then you'd go find the kid and bring them down to talk to their parents. Well, I was walking by the pay phones after I just cursed God for however long, and it rings. Hey, who are you calling for?

He's like, hey, I'm looking for Yatzik. I'm like, dad? I was like, yeah. What's up? I was like, okay, this is weird. He's like, well, I'm going back to Poland. The Curtain Feld General Motors is sending me back to Europe. And they want me to set up a bunch of factories out there for GM.

I'm like, okay. I haven't seen him in a year. And so it's really detached kind of conversation. And he's like, when are you going? He's like, I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm like, okay. He's like, I'm taking your sister. She's in Juvie.

right she's dealing with you know problems her own way part of the plea deal is that i take her with me to Poland and i'm like okay so i guess i'm not seeing my sister or you for x amount of years and he's like well do you want to come i'm like okay i got nothing else to do right this is not the boarding field where i want to be and so i just kind of look out and i look up at god i'm like oh okay this is step one of the adventure so i'm like yeah pick me up in the morning he picks me up at six in the morning and we're flying to Europe by noon. Yo, what's up guys? Today's episode sponsored by Lucy nicotine.

It's 100% pure nicotine, always tobacco-free. Lucy breakers are nicotine patches with an extra little surprise. Each pouch holds a capsule that can't be broken and open to release extra flavor and hydration. Set yourself up with a subscription and have Lucy delivered straight to your door. I've been rocking these for the last couple weeks. They sent us a bunch and it's pretty dope. My they I was screwing around with the mango, but now I've gone to the espresso.

So I've been dabbling in a bunch of different flavors. So right now I'm super hot on the espresso one. It's really tasty and delicious. I'm a lightweight. I use 2%. You can get hardcore. They have a ton of, ton of different levels of nicotine. If you're a more hardcore person, you can go for the higher ones.

I'm a, I have a sensitive system. My mom always used to tell me that. So I go 2%. And I rock it, you know, whenever I'm, feeling a little stressed out or whatever after a meal or something like that i'll throw in a little pouch and it's uh it's freaking awesome i love lucy you would love lucy too do us a favor go to lucy dot co slash house and use the promo code house to get 20% off your first order lucy has a 30 day refund policy if you change your mind so you can send it back no sweat again that's lucy dot co use the

code house to get 20% off and here comes to find print lucy products are only for adults of age and every order is age verified warning this product contains nicotine nicotine and is an addictive chemical thanks guys um and that is a whole different adventure because 1992 93 for a 10 year old kid who's learned early that he can you know plan his own life and be his own maker of adventure all of a sudden europe just opened up a pocket full of dollars takes you through the whole weekend my dad was hyper-focused on success because that's what he wanted to do. So, I mean, my son's 12 years old. When I was 12 years old, I was bribing my way into clubs and partying.

And I would go out on a, I would go to school on a Friday, go to the downtown Warsaw, because we were living in Warsaw. And I would not come home until Sunday evening. And I would still have money in my pocket. And my dad would be like, where have you been all weekend, right? Because this was pre-cell phone. I was like, Dad, I'm fine. I'll take money for a cab.

I'm usually with friends. I'm not dumb, and I'm pretty savvy with, you know, what's going on. And that was 1992-ish all the way to 2000 until I graduated high school. I was the guy that was throwing the biggest parties. I was a guy renting out bars to throw parties for the American school kids, making thousands of bucks, like in the night. And this was 1990s money for a high school. Yeah. Right.

And then turning around. So, you know, where do we want to go, you know, for whatever this weekend? We would just jump on a train and go for a weekend of snowboarding or just the people. Because the people I was hanging out with. You have to imagine in 1990s. One of my buddies, his dad was basically one of the lead mafia guys. Because everybody that had money went to the American school, Warsaw. he would show up with a shaved head wearing a suit

he was 16 years old. Buddy next to him, his dad worked for the, it was the FBI lead for the embassy. And then they would joke that his dad was investigating his dad, his dad was in the mafia, and his dad worked for the FBI. And we'd go out and we'd all go out. And kid would be like, oh, yeah, my dad is building that building. Oh, my dad built, just bought that downtown square.

Warsaw and I had a couple girlfriends their dads were ambassadors my first time going to Tokyo was because my girlfriend at the time was the daughter to the Swedish ambassador and they'd just come from Tokyo so I got to spend two weeks living in Swedish housing in Tokyo and I'm just like I'm 16 years old like this is amazing yeah life is effing amazing and all I have to do is just keep walking through open doors and And so that was my formative years. Yeah. And it's wild too, because even, you know, when you're talking about, like, being locked in the bathroom and stocking up on books and food, it's interesting how kids, I think, when raised in a certain type of environment, not necessarily abusive or whatever, but just a certain type of environment, how they turn anything into an invention.

right how how how the world just seems like limitless yes and some know right some onboarded sure sure sure sure sure and i have very different right and that's that's why i said it's not it's not necessarily um you know i'm not at saying that if they grow up in an abuse environment i'm just saying that maybe it's the type of maybe it's the personality of the person too and how how they see the world that I'm just, yeah, why not go to Tokyo for a weekend? Right, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I say that with full acceptance that sometimes I'm falling and walked through the wrong doors. Sure. Now to crawl back out. That's another adventure, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So it's a character building moment. Yeah. And then how did you, after high school, how do you make your way back to the United States? Um, so literally. I mean, this was high school for me. I showed up to school one day, American School of Warsaw,

and my buddies were like, hey, you're ready for the ACTs, SATs? And I'm just like, what are those? And I'm like, well, you know, you have to use it to get in college. I was like, when are they? They're like, this afternoon. I'm like, oh, you have to register this afternoon. I'm like, okay, I just register.

Then what? And they're like, well, then you go take the test. And so I took the ACTs, I scored fine. And then I was like, what do I do now with my ACT? scores and like, now you apply to a college. And so I turned to my dad. I was like, what college should I go to? And he's like, I don't know. You grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee for a little bit.

Well, why don't you go to University of Tennessee, Knoxville? I'm like, yeah, sure, whatever. So I apply. I mean, I just, I apply to one school. I get in. And I miss orientation. And I mean, I literally show up on day one of school. I walk in. I was like, hey, where's my dorms? Where's school? And they're like, did you

go to orientation? I was like, no. I mean, the positive end is I'm always in the adventure mode, but the negative side is that I was rarely in planning mode. Right. So I had to learn that the very hard way. Yeah, right. And so showed up to college, went to University of Tennessee, Knoxville for three years. First year was engineering, not my lifestyle. I mean, great engineering school.

Engineers are real smart. A couple of my buddies were engineers. That is not my brain. switch over to business. I hate a way too structured of a course. But I was also, at this time, I was also, I just joined ROTC Army. And I was really good at ROTC Army. And I was top of the class.

I was the first kid that ROTC student that got to go to Mountain Warfare in 2003. So up in Vermont came back. I mean, I aced the course. I was, you know, one of the top. you know, with a bunch of other army guys. And I was like, wait a thing. This part's fun. Right.

Like a bunch of dudes who, you know, speak their mind. It's hard, right? You're running around. You're, as long as you're right and confident and doing the right thing, like, people value that. I was like, but in business and engineering, I was like, that's too nerdy. Like, I want to be in, like, in the thick of it. So that tailed into Army ROTC. But at the same time, my buddies in Army,

Army ROTC got to know a guy by the name of Danny. He was a Green Beret. He was getting out of the Army. He was going to University of Tennessee Knoxville. So we start talking a couple days later. We're at a barbecue at his house, a bunch of beers. There's a bonfire in the middle of the yard. A couple of his army buddies show up.

And they just start drinking and telling stories. This is 2003 height of Afghanistan. And these stories are insane. And I'm like, what do you mean that these things are happening right now? And he's like, yeah, like, his body like lifts up his shirt. He's got shot like a couple times by an AK. And he didn't kill him. He's got raw bullet holes or like, you know, or wounds.

I'm like, oh my God, this guy should be dead. Talking to Danny and Danny starts talking about this hilarious story where they were on the infill team to Afghanistan. they needed to get a warlord to work with the American coalition, but the warlord didn't want to. So the SF team, the special wars team is saying, what do we do to convince him to give us his dudes and work in this territory? They don't have an answer, but then they find out that the warlord's son is going from one village to another. And they were like, okay, like, would you mind if we escort your son?

He was like, yeah, sure, escort my son. So they start going, and they're escorting this guy's son. all of a sudden there's an ambush. The sun takes a round to the leg, a back of the leg. And they call it an evac. They vac him out, drop him off at a hospital. They then get the warlord fly him in. Warlord comes in.

The son's all bandaged up. He's got nurses and he's eating ice cream. Yeah. The warlords are, this is amazing. Like, I love America. You know, the team gets their way with the warlord. And Danny starts laughing. is he's telling me this story.

He was like, yeah, but what we didn't tell the warlord is that it was a fake ambush, which started shooting, and that Danny was in a sniper hide behind the sun and shot him with the 22. Oh, my God. And then the agency may or may not have facilitated part of that hospital aspect.

And I'm looking at Danny. Everybody else is laughing. They start telling their other stories. I'm like, the radiance. I was like, this is what I want to do. I want to be a greener. and I want to work in the real world like this. Yeah.

And at the time, you know, with ROTC doing the thing, and I went to my, the colonel, I was like, hey, I want to be a green beret. And he's like, no, you have to be an officer. No, but I want to be a green beret, like, Danny. And he's like, you know, so there are conflict there. I had a girlfriend who was like, well, if you go be a green beret, we're going to break up. And I'm like, oh, I'm in love, right? I can't do this.

And so I eventually quit college, move to DC become a bartender up there. So this is about 2005 time frame. And I love bartending because every 15 minutes, somebody comes up to your bar. They want to drink. And then they want to tell you their story. All you have to do is ask, right? And so my motivation was I want to be entertained because I'm not just here to bartend. I tell me your story. Let's talk about it. And it became like bartender therapy. And so it was great for me because I got to know the person and then they would tip more, right? And was also phenomenal about it was that it was right down the road from the Pentagon. So guys would come in and tell me their war stories. And I could

tell if they were like a ranger or a Navy just by the way they talked, like Air Force, whoever. One guy shows up and he sits down, the bar's basically closed. And he's like, I want a steak and I want a bottle of wine of your best. I'm like, well, you know, can you trust me on this he's like yeah I was like okay because the steak's gonna have to come from the steakhouse next door because our stakes suck and our best bottle of wine isn't the most expensive let me pick it out for you he's looking at me like we figured out he eats it he loves it and then he leaves my house interesting uh six months later I'm bartending still and I'm like I'm done being a bartender I could feel it right time for a new new adventure guy comes in he's

as dark as this chair, the darkest leather, like sand is almost falling out of, like, off him. And he's got this huge beard. He's just angry. He sits down and toned from his vibe. And I go, this guy's going to be trouble. And he sits down. Like, hey, what can I get you, sir? He's like, the same damn steak and the same bottle of wine you got me six months ago. Look at him. I'm like, doing one of these. I'm like, because he's my first bearded guy, right? I'm like, I know you. And he was like, yeah. And so it turns out he was a colonel in special forces and over the course of the next couple weeks his demeanor he finally shaved he finally put a uniform on he finally filled out a little bit but he would start telling me his stories of what he

was doing in afghanistan i was like oh my god this is another like sign that this is an adventure waiting to happen i was like okay cool how do i become a green beret right i don't have my girlfriend anymore we broke up i regret that how do i become a green beret he tells me about the 18 x-ray program i'm like sweet right so i just go in there talk to the recruiter and i was like yeah So the next day I go to the recruiter. I'm like, hey, I want an 18 X-ray contract. The recruiter, like, rolls his eyes. He's like, I'm tired of this.

I'm like, what do you mean? It's like, I've sent seven. I was like, oh, okay, how many have made it? He's like, none. Oh, go send me. I'll be your eighth. I'll make it. He just rolls his eyes.

And I'm just like, why? Why are you rolling your eyes of my plan? Right? This is my adventure. That's not his. And, yeah, signed on the dotted line, 2006. and just sold all my stuff, put my truck in storage,

and then joined the Army. That's a whole different chapter. Yeah. So me, you went through the Q course probably within a year of each other. Oh, really? Okay. Probably. Is that only in 2006? I was graduated in 2007.

I went through selection in summer, fall of 2006. Okay. Fall. So, yeah, there was, A degree of overlap. A little bit, yeah. Now, here's something, this is, this is a great, I think this is a great point to bring up because a lot of young people

who want to be in special operations, really overthinking. They really, really overthink it. And they will, they'll be like, I'm not in good enough shape yet, I need to do this. Like, they want to know, you know, they want to know, like, what's the best workout, what's, that, you know, all this stuff. And not that, you know, being fit isn't important or whatever else.

But it sounds like you just kind of made a decision. That that's what you were going to do. Did you take six months off to, like, get in phenomenal shape? No. I was a bartender. I was fluffy, right? Yeah, thank God I had my ROTC, like, train up, right? For a couple, you know, but that was like two years prior.

Right. I was 24, trending 25. A little old, not necessarily for SFAS, but... Right, yeah. Hold on, like, you know, the physical sense, right? And I wasn't a collegiate athlete. Yeah. But I remember what was really...

Then this matters, right? Because you go to Ranger's School, they have their metrics. You go to Bugs, they have their metrics, right? But I remember being in selection. And some of the fittest guys, you'd ask me, like, what'd you do? I was a collegiate athlete, this, this, this. But the instant, they had to, like you mentioned, the degree of self-doubt, they would quit.

Even though they didn't have any blisters, they were just hot, uncomfortable, and unhappy. And a moment of doubt, something they'd never experience. Whereas me, I got a blister four miles into the opening rock. By the end of it, like literally about 30% of my foot was missing, right? I'm walking on the sides and blood in my boot. And I'm glad this happened. And I got to hear the radio because at the very end,

remember the huge rock march, right? Yeah. So unknown distance, undetermined amount of time, but everybody knows it's at least 24 months. So you go and you go and you go and took me X amount of hours, right? You start at night, build daylight by the time I finished. And I'm hobbling and I get over and I'm like, oh, I think I made it. But the bell rings, or the timer rings,

and you hear on the instructor's radio, the cadre radios, hey, round up everybody that hasn't made it, right? Because it's a loop or a big loop. Truck heads out, and you're hearing this on the radio. Hey, candidate number, whoever is he's at the one mile marker. Like, he's been rocking for eight hours, and he's only at the one mile marker? What's wrong with him?

Everybody's hearing this through the tents on the casualry radio. having this conversation. He's like, yeah, he's probably got like two shin splints or are fresh fractures. He's not moving. He's literally taking his rucks. He's not, for the reference, his rucks not even on his back. He's taking his rucksack. He's throwing it three feet.

He's hobbling up to it, picking it up, throwing it three feet, hobbling up to it. He's making the 24-mile trek three feet at a time. You can't fail with that. Like two broken or stress fractured shins. Yeah. Right? And trust me, it's a couple hundred miles with 50 pounds on your back. Everybody's going to have some stress fractures, right? And so you're hearing this conversation with Cadre, and they're like, okay, leave candidate whoever at mile marker 1.1.

Go pick up the other guys. And so he drives around, picks everybody up. They're like, okay, go find the other candidate. Where is he? Is he still shuffling? They're like, yeah, all right. Well, tell him that he failed. Get him in the back of the truck. And so they do, he comes, the Cadger comes back on the radio. He's like, he just told me to go F myself that he's got, you know, 24 more miles to go. And Cadbury think about it. They're going, go 100 more meters.

Stop, the mile marker 1.3. And tell us when he gets to. So an hour later, all right, he's here. Dunk, dunk. He gets there. It's right. Tom has failed. I'm going to get in the truck.

He does. The guy doesn't quit, and he refuses to get in the truck. Finally, the cadre moves like 10 feet forward. They're right. Tell him he selected. And so the guy crawls up to the truck, past the truck. The cadre is like, get in the truck. Students like, no.

He's like, God bless it. He's like, you've been selected. Now we have to take you to the hospital. The cadre picks up the ruck, throws it in the truck, picks the kid up, puts him in the truck, and goes. And this whole time, we've been listening to the radio communicator, like the chatter through the tense. We're like, yeah, candidate, you know, whatever, got it. At least one of us out of, you know, a couple hundred made it, right?

And his story is the one we're going to remember. And I was like, sweet. I was like, at least somebody made it, right? Because exactly what you said. If guy's in perfectly physical condition, right, he's a Ferrari. But the instant he gets like a flat tire, the car's out of commission, you got to spend $10,000 putting them back together. Is it really good car, right? But if you can do a Toyota Highlux type person and, you know, the tire blows out and the engine gets shot up, but he still refuses to die.

That's who you want. Right. Right. Because bones can heal. Right. The brain is. I think there's also not always, but often a different mentality in that some people look at selections as I hope I can make it. And they look at selection as the big deal.

Right. Whereas other guys go, well, this is. the job I want. And this is just the thing I need to do for the next 30 days in order to do that job. Yeah. And, you know, if you break, you break. But the idea of quitting or whatever, it never, like, it never even occurs to them. It's like, no, I want to be this. This is the job I want. Right. And there has to be like, but insane hunger. Right. Right. Right. Right. You're going to, yeah, I think I came into the army at 165 pounds by the end. of, I was like, by the end of basic, I was like up to 180 and then, you know, you just fluctuate

back and forth and injuries. And you see your friends make it. You see families and, you know, the dynamics. So you have to be single-minded focus. Like, this is the thing I want. And it's a two-year process. And everything will get in line for me to achieve what I want. And, you know, you see guys, they get derailed for the simplest things.

And you're just like, why did you take your eye off the prize, man? Right. Like, that was a temptation. You made the wrong choice. So when you went to boot camp, you were a little fluffy. I mean, yeah. I mean, you were, yeah. I'm not going to say I was very fluffy.

Yeah. Yeah. You hadn't been like, you know, ruck and 12 miles three days a week. No, no, I was a horrible runner because I was a flat footer. I was a foot slapper, right? 2006, no one really talked about running style. Right. So I was prone to shin splints.

You know, I had stress fractures halfway through the Q-course because I went running in boots because I thought I was a hard ass and slapping boots, you know, but the Q-course is designed to one first evaluate you on your mental commitment because what they've learned after you know 20 30 40 50 60 years now of pushing guys through selection is if the person has the right mentality their body can catch up but if the body doesn't have the right mentality, then it's a done deal. It's the Ferrari with a flat tire. So there's a beautiful,

it was almost like a yoga camp because there's like a train-up prior to selection for these guys that wanted where you get shipped out on Monday. You do physical fitness, you do stretching in the afternoon, or physical fitness in the morning, big breakfast.

big, you know, stretching kind of like yoga slash making sure all your other secondary body aspects are healthy, and then another second workout at night, and then a big meal, and then you go to sleep. You do that for five days straight for almost a month, and by the time you're done with it, I mean, I went from 180 pounds to close to 200 pounds, right, but it was just solid sheer muscle at this point, because your body's going to kick into gear, you're going to do the work, and you're surrounded by like-minded guys who are just motivating each other, hey, good job on an extra pushup, good job on this, good job on that. And so I went, I mean, I came into the Army, 40 push-ups, 16-minute two-miler with, you know, 40-50 sit-ups.

By the time I went into the selection or into selection, I scored a 340 on my extended PT test because I'd done like 90 push-ups in a row. I could do 90 sit-ups, and I could run an 11-minute two-mile. Right? Like, you're not supposed to show up perfect. You're supposed to be able to be trained to be really good. And you'll get there because you have months to do it. So you graduate the Q course and get assigned 10th group, right? Yeah, yeah, 10th group.

That's a medic. Yeah, I'm on 18 Delta on special course is medic. Did you choose that or was that chosen for you? I chose it because my GT score was really high. And I went by my old policy of what's the hardest thing to do. And they're like, well, being a special force is medic is the hardest thing to do. It's like, great, I'll start there. And if I make it, I'll be in Charlie or Bravo or an Aureneka.

Okay, cool. So, you know, became an 18 Delta. First unit was 110 out in Sudkirk. First team, they had just come back from Afghanistan. they lost a guy, so they were very angry, so it was very hard to integrate into a new team that's very angry, that had just lost a brother. So that was an uphill challenge.

But two technical, two deployments to Afghanistan from one time, bunch of J sets, J-Pats, I was married at the time, and now my ex-wife, she put it out on a calendar, she's like, out of the three, or three years you've been in Germany, you've only been home less than six months. Right? And those six months are occupied with training

or you just being in a mood. She called it just being in a mood. And it's like, yeah. She's like, when is us time? And I have to own the fact that I failed as a husband. I almost failed as a dad. So I've done backflips to try to hyper-prioritize the kids now. That's why they're here at the interview.

That's why we're spending a weekend in New York City, right? Because I'm like, no, no, I haven't been around for half of your literal life. I'm going to pay a couple hundred extra bucks and we're going to tour New York City right. We got the Hilo tour tomorrow. We got the Empire State Building tomorrow night. So I'm trying to make up for literal loss time. But to know that within three years, I was gone two and a half of them. And I was happy because I was so excited because I was doing my job.

Right, right. The lifestyle is, you know, if people can say, thank you for your service and this and that. But especially for soft, the lifestyle is a, it is a selfish decision. When you have a family, you're making, like you're living your best life. Yeah, because you're high on adrenaline. You're high on purpose. you are, I mean, you got the boys.

You got the boys with you, right? If someone disagrees, you get to punch them in the face. Yeah. And, I mean, to talk about that mentality, we were talking about a minute ago, I remember in the Delta course, we're doing surgery, my buddy, Isaac and I, and my wife, it was neighbors with Isaac's wife. My wife calls me, Angela, she calls me. She's like, hey,

Did Isaac know that he's got a moving van by his house? And so I'm doing surgery. I'm turning to Isaac. I was like, hey, Isaac, how's your family? He was like, I'm sure she's fine. I'm like, no, I heard a moving van shut up. He's like, oh, she said she was going to get furniture. I was like, when was the last time you talked to her?

It's like, I don't know, a month ago? It's like, we're in the Q-course, right? I'm like, I think you should talk to your wife. And then Angela calls me the next day. She's like, yeah, all the boxes are going into the moving truck. And she talked to the wife, and she's moving back to Missouri. or Tennessee or wherever. I'm like, it turned to Isaac.

I was like, Isaac, you need to call your wife. He's like, no, no, I got to do the surgery and I got to do the stuff. And, you know, a week goes by and he finally shows up in my front door. He's like, she left me. I was like, it's not a surprise, man. But yeah, guys can get so hyper-focused

because it is. You are, I think, there's less than 10,000 green berets, right, in an army of a million. And the things you get to do and the things the army and the nation asks you to do that will never make the news are i mean we'll talk about it later but like you cover it in in your book right and um there are people that you know that you become those people and then you're asked to do those things you're like the first time you actually had an aha moment right that happened to me uh several times um where i'm having

you know beer and meatballs with this guy who founded his version of special forces in his country. I'm just shooting the crap. We're talking about a problem that he's having with his military or that he's trying to solve. I give him an idea and he's like, oh, that's a great idea.

And then the next morning he wakes me up. He's like, hey, are you ready for your brief? I was like, my brief. He's like, yeah, the thing we talked about last night, that was so good. The general of this country that I can't name is flying in to get your brief from you about what you're going to do for the country.

And I'm like, you know, I look at him, I was like, we were just shooting the shit. He was like, no, but the plan was so good. Yeah. And I'm like, and so in an hour, like, the general flies in, the defense at that she got wind of this meeting. And I accidentally moved national policy forward by the, I find out, by like five years, right?

Because we're just doing beer and meatballs, right? And so to do that and to have that influence on the real world, right, becomes addictive because we're actually changing things that may or may never make history, but it's going to change policy. Yeah. And it's insanely amazing. What was your first trip to Afghanistan? It was amusing because...

So not but maybe three months earlier. I had a pole in my parachute. Couldn't steer. I was too proud to pull my reserve. So I ate the runway at over 30 knots. with wind, gus, and everything else, blew out my left leg. ACL tear, rupture, meniscus, everything was gone. But the deployment was on the schedule.

So I turned to the dock and he's like, yeah, it's massive surgery with like a one-year recovery. I'm like, okay, what's option two? It's like, what do you mean? What's option two? I was like, no, no, this is like 2010. So I'm like, it's option. He's like, knee brace. I was like, okay, put the knee brace on underneath the uniform.

Right? And so it's a full leg knee brace, right? Like two braces up here, two braces on the bottom. Thank God I blew out the nerve so I can't feel the pain and I just like the tin man. And you could hear me coming around the corner because I Right, but I refuse to give up on my first deployment and It was that embraces the mentality right because my knee was not me. My knee was just like placing a tie- on a car. I was like, no, I'll get this fix later. But as a special forces medic, I'm responsible for taking care of the dudes. I'm the insurance policy. If I'm not physically there, I can't protect the dudes. And if I can't, I mean, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a,

fair statement, I'll say, that if a special forces medic is working on you and you die, there was no way you were going to survive that injury, right? Because, I mean, It was a one-year course. You get years of med school and traumas and everything else shoved into your brain. That's why high-aptitude guys have to go because it's an insane amount of knowledge and capability.

And so my first deployment, I was already broken, but I refused to not go. So, yeah. And then through happenstance, started working. The mission was over. I didn't feel that I got my fill. And so I volunteered in Bogram at the Craig Army Medical Theater in Bogram.

I was like, I'm in 18 Delta. These are well-trained Army hands. I want to do more. And so I would start getting attached to teams as they rotate through, through supply runs, everything else. Then I started working at the hospital. Was that at Bogram? Yeah, Bogram Hospital.

and right there on Disney. And I laugh about it because the administrator knew what a SF medic was, right? SF Special Forces. But it was an Air Force base. So when I showed up to the charge nurse and I was like, hey, I'm an SF medic. I'm here to work. And she was like, oh. She's like, did one of these.

Like, ugh, you're annoying. I'm like, why am I annoyed? I'm ready to do work. And she's like, yeah, go change bed sheets. Go change bed pants. Go change IVs. go over there, go to the ICU. And I'm like, thinking, I'm like, am I getting hazed?

Okay, you know, I've spent a career getting hazed. I can get hazed. I'll work my way up, right? And so I'm changing bed sheets, I'm changing bedpans. And I had every reason to be frustrated had I not taken the adventure mindset. And a couple days in, I walk in, and there's a Taliban guy, or there's an Afghan, handcuffed to the bed. I'm like, huh. that's a story.

So I walk up to the, there's an MP guarding, I'm a nurse. I'm like, hey, why is this guy handcuffed to the bed and why he's covered in bandages, head to toe? And she's like, oh, he's a Taliban. I was like, oh my God, a Taliban, and he's handcuffed to the bed. And he can't run from me. I'm going to talk to him. And he didn't want to talk to him.

And so finally I got the story out of him after a couple days, right? Because I'm the only one, like, trying to talk to him. He's just pissed off. He's burnt out. He literally burnt. second-degree burns. So I start talking, I get the story out of him through a interpreter that he was,

his wife was sick, he couldn't get the meds because he didn't have the money. He's just a villager dude. And so the Taliban finally come to him and said, hey, if you take this job bearing IDs, we will pay you. He's like, I don't want to bury IDs.

They're like, okay, if you drive the motorcycle for the guy that's going to bury IDs, we'll pay you money and then you can buy your medicine. It's like, fine, I drive the motorcycle. So he drives the motorcycle guys, hopping off, burying IEDs, patrol comes through to Apaches come up, and they see them bearing IDs, they smoke them off the motorcycle,

they smoke the body off the motorcycle, hit the gas sink, rubs, that's why he's covered in flames and burns. He ends up in, you know, the hospital because the patrol came through and put him out and evacked. And so now this guy is handcuffed. to the bed. I'm just like, huh. And I find myself, I'm like, no, no, no, you're the Taliban. This is just a bullshit story you've told me because you're just manipulating it. You know, but at the same time, this guy's, I mean, it's helpless. I don't know if you've

ever been taking care of a truly helpless person. And he's shitting himself, right? There's a collat, like a modified bag that catches the poop, right? But at the same time, he's covered in wounds. So now it's a medical complication because he's pooping on his open So he's got to get cleaned like every two, three hours. I'm the guy cleaning him every two, three hours, right? The guy that I have been sworn to kill, I'm now taking care of as a special force is medic. And so I kind of get to know him. And then all of a sudden, a couple days later, the village elder shows up.

And he's like, hey, where's my dude? And I'm like, hold up. Don't talk to him just yet. Why is he here? And he tells me through the interpreter. I grab the interpreter. I'm like, tell me why he's here in the bed. before they can collude, right?

So I'm still suspicious. And he says, he's there because he got shot off the motorcycle because he was doing a job for the Taliban because he needed money for his sick wife. I'm like, oh, this story's true. I'm like, why are you here? He's like, well, I'm here to tell him

that his wife died because she never got the medicine. And I'm like, ah, you know, I'm supposed to be killing people. I'm not supposed to be having feelings about this. And now all of a sudden I'm having feelings about this and I'm like confused. And so he tells the guy, the Taliban, not a Taliban guy, that, you know, hey, sorry, your wife died.

And the guy just sort of, he's healing, right? His wounds are healing. He's, you know, have a normal bowel movement and so everything else. And he said something poetic because he says it in like the scene song way and I had to grab the interpreter to reinterpret it. I was like, what do you say? He said something along the lines of a bird without a voice cannot sing or has no purpose. I'm like, okay. So then I finish my shift.

I go back, I come back the next day, the bed's empty. I turned to the nurse. I was like, what happened to the dude? She's like, oh, he died overnight. I'm just like, oh, this guy died for love because his wife meant that much. And that was what I wasn't ready for, right? Is when you have this single mindset job that you've been told to do and all of a sudden life and humanity are coming on. Because a Greenberry medic, medics in general, have a very interesting dynamic.

I'm as lethal and capable as everybody else on the team. It's a 12-man team. Everybody carries a rifle and can kill very specifically. But I'm also the unique guy that the person doesn't die, gets injured. Then I get to heal them and carry them through the healing process. And the person without a gun isn't in combat with you anymore. And all of a sudden the humanity starts rising to the surface. So that was such a beautiful complication that I'm glad happened on

my first rotation because that set the tone for what I would be doing for the rest of my career. You know, I tell this story to my kids. Like, you know, there was a time on that rotation, I pulled the curtain in the ICU section. And there was a little kid, a little Afghan kid sitting there. And he had a burn wound on his stomach. It turns out a flare had been shot and ricocheted into his stomach. and burned a hole straight through. So he got and ended up at Bogram,

the Air Force doctors knew that if they gave him to the Afghan hospital, this kid would die, right? Because of his injuries. So his name was Mohammed. He was about nine years old, maybe 10. And he had a bunch of watches. He had like four watches, but they were all dead. I was like, well, that's weird.

Why do you have four dead watches? He was like, well, I had the alarms going off at 1155 in the morning, 1155. at night to get me to hype up. I was like, hype up for what? And he's like, the doctors have to come in and clean out my wound because he's pooping out of his intestines. He's got a hole in his intestines that can't close.

So I can't take morphine. So five minutes before the change, I get hyped up, but he's like, my watches are dead. I'm just like, this is the level of humanity I'm not comfortable. I was never prepared to work with. And so I had a brand new Sonto watch. It's like, fuck. Right? So I set the alarms.

and I give it to him. I was like, I took his four watches off, casios, whatever. I gave him this $1,000 son to him. I'm like, hey, like, I can't do anything for you. Other than give you this better watch to let you be better, more hyped up for something I've never going to have to deal with.

And there were so many little stories like that that finally, that just set the tone of, you know, you don't have to kill everybody run into. You can work with them. You talk to them. You can see the humanity behind the uniform. Things are one much more interesting, two, much more real. Anyway, so that really set the tone as a special force as medic because I was like, yeah, I'm hyper-lethal, but now I'm confused with all this hyper-humanity.

Right. But I'm glad those events happened to me when they did because the next, you know, plus almost, you know, two decades worth of experiences were set in stone off those experiences. Yeah. What was the point where you started thinking about going more? Ten-year mark, ten-year-plus mark. I was a split-team leader. I was an E-7 at this point. Split-team leader, so somewhat medical,

but more in the junior team sergeant position. It was one of those decision points. Like, hey, do you want to be a team sergeant or what do you want to do? I was like, well, I don't want to do PA school. I don't want to do med school. being a team sergeant is a lot of work and a lot of effort, right? But the way my brain worked, I was always ethereal. I was wanting to connect.

I was wanting to find opportunity and strategies. And I was like, you know, the best teams I've ever been on in special forces have always been ones with the ward officer. He's like the uncle that shows up at Thanksgiving, right? He knows everybody in the room. He's got a story about everybody. And he knows how to talk to everybody and move the team dynamics towards the mission, right? The captain's always going to be three years in. Team sergeant's always going to be, you know, 15 years in.

But you need somebody to talk to them and manage Thanksgiving, so to speak, every day. I was like, I want to be a warrant officer because I see what they do. And so about the 10, 11-year mark I asked to go. They asked me for one more deployment. Eastern Europe, something had happened there, the my dog. just happened and we're I led one of the first split teams

into Ukraine that I mean I spoke Russian, Polish and Ukrainian right? So I was naturally the guy to go. Surprise the army didn't send you to first group I mean Right right I was just because the army normally Yeah but yeah no

That opened my eyes to what Ukraine had been And then after that I was like yep I'm ready to be a ward officer in totality and I never look back. That was phenomenal experience. I think I've spent plus or minus in the neighborhood of about 15 years

on a special courses team, right? So my ability to navigate humans, not just at a strategic level, but like, hey, what do you got going on here? hey, like, would you mind doing this for something else? Or just stepping back and letting the team run. The warrant officer's job, if everything's great, it's like putting CLP in your rifle.

The rifle's designed to fire. You just need to be a little more CLP. And it's been phenomenal ever since. What was it like being in Ukraine early on? It sounded like that 2014 time frame? I can't tell you what a year, but it was after 14. But yes, walking into a room and shaking hands with a Spetsnaz unit,

Ukrainian Spetsnaz that has never met a Westerner before. Your languages are they have Soviet tactics, you have NATO tactics. They don't know what's going on with your country, and you're just giving them the opportunities, right? and I'd seen it I'd seen introductions and rapport happen across the world right I've I myself personally and professionally I met over 40 plus countries on four different continents right and the best technique I've ever seen a green beret use walking into a room with a colonel who's never worked with a westerner who doesn't know what's what

propositions about to be offered to him is hey nice to meet you my name's Jiazik gives his name. And I'm like, all right, this is my split team. The other half of the team is another part of the country. These are our capabilities, right? We all speak Russian. We're here to work. How can you use us? How best can we serve you? What would you want to see us accomplish in the next six months? And he looks at me. It's like, the Russians do it different. They come in, they kick you in the chest, and they tell you what they're going to do. It's like, this is the first time I've ever had Special Forces team say, hey, we're going to work with you. And I was like, great. Let's keep going with this.

And I was like, what are your top 10 priorities? And he laid them out. I was like, okay, we can't touch those. We can satisfy these four. And if you give us a year timeline, we can help you satisfy those other two. Can we work on that? And he's like, he whips out a bottle of vodka. He was like, this is going to work out just fine.

And it was phenomenal because, I was able to, I was the first guy to brief their military war college on NATO technical combat casualty care. It's like, no, no, you actually want to use a tourniquet because the soldier doesn't have to die. They're like, no, in Soviet doctrine, the soldier gets a shot and he died. It's like, yeah, but if you give them a one-hour class, he can learn how to use a tourniquet and save himself. And they're like, huh, we've never considered that. And you're like, okay, this is going to be interesting. And then they open up a bottle of vodka and you talk over vodka.

But then the next day, there's 10 doctors showing up to the T-R-C class that you don't remember talking about because you were blitzed on vodka. And that's how negotiations happen. And you're like, okay, now we're going to change national policy by teaching these doctors and these doctors are then going to go to the front line and they're going to teach the soldiers how to use an improvised tourniquet and the $10,000 in cat tourniquets I just ordered, right? And then you show up and they're like, oh my God, medical supplies.

Yeah, this is how you use them based off the training we just did. And it was great because their rotation, the Spetsanese rotation, the Ukrainian Spetsanese rotation, train them for a month, and then they go to the Donbos region for three months, and then they come back. So you would get to see your guys come back. You would also get to see them come back if they died. Right. Right.

And a couple guys finally came back. and I, you know, lead 18 Delta instructor, I felt failed them because a couple guys were dying. But then they came back, they're like, oh, my God, this was great. The shooting training was great, because we had some of the best 18 Bravo's training them. They were like, the explosive training was great. And then they're like, and the medical training, like, yeah, like five guys died,

but like 10 guys lived. Right. Because you taught them to put on a tourniquet and keep shooting, and their buddy grabbed them and pulled them back while they're covering for their guys. And they're like, it all worked. And it was great because we had some young guys on the split team. They were like, oh, this is it.

I was like, yeah, this is it. This is what the Green Berets do. Like, we make real influence. And, you know, seeing light bulbs turn on in the Green Berets mines and then seeing a plethora of floodlights turn on in the Spetsnaz unit that had never met a Westerner before. It's humbling, but back to what we were talking about, addicting and just use that as fuel.

to wake up the next day, work out, and learn more and better methods to then complete the rest of the mission. So, you know, you were there at a very interesting time, through the span of a very interesting time, because during the GWOD, I would say, you know, around 2005, 2008 timeframe, I had talked to some SF guys who were like, we don't do FID, we do DA. Like, everybody wanted to do DA. Nobody wanted to do FID. And then you have these young guys come in on the tail end of the G-WR

who, I don't know if they got rotations into like Iraq and Afghanistan, but now they are doing FID. Did they feel cheated? You know, everybody wants the deployment patch, right? Because you don't go into special operations hoping that you don't get tested. Right. You don't buy even a gun.

They're like, oh, this is a beautiful gun. I'm never going to shoot it. Right. And so, I mean, I remember, I deployed with a busted knee because I wanted to prove, I wanted not even prove myself. I'll rephrase this. I wanted to prove myself to myself. I hadn't just spent two and a half years in the Q-course and, you know, basic and airborne,

did not find out what I was worth. So, yeah, there's that allure of, I want to go to combat, I want to do the sexy stuff, right? And I had it too, and so I completely understand it, right? It's also a matter of pride. You're like, oh, that guy's deployed. He knows what he's talking about. And then, oh, this guy's never deployed. And you're like, eh.

But now at the tail end of my career having, I think I'm at plus 20 deployments now, like operational, tactical, J-PAT, J-Sad, like, across the same. plethora and I've known guys that have been in serious combat and I've also known guys that have never that didn't come back from combat right I wouldn't ever be too eager to chase a combat deployment anymore right if one came up and was proposed to me right now after all the things I've done and experienced like I'm exhausted sure right but you know I'm I got my kids here because I'm trying to make up for 20 years of time.

Yeah. So get what you want, but there's guys that are, I've know guys that all have always said, hey, I'm just going to do one more and I'm going to retire. I'm going to do one more and I'm going to come back. And they never come back. So, you know, take your blessings,

be in the rotation, you know, do the job. But there's a point where doing too much can hinder. It's kind of, it's kind of challenging, though, too, isn't it? because, you know, we all got an opportunity. And I started in a peacetime army.

So, you know, when I thought there would never be a war. And so, you know, we all got the opportunity to do exactly what we wanted to do. And then, but if there would have been some, you know, Cressee McVe-Saw, Vietnam guy. Sure. Going, hey, like, you know, like, you probably, you probably, don't chase what you're chasing. You'd be like, oh, man, no, I'm gonna chase.

Oh, you totally ignore that. And that guy's burnt out. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, so it's, and it's funny because, you know, I have a lot of vet buddies who are like telling, like, the young guys, like, you know, don't be so excited for war. But it's like, yeah, you say that because you've been to war. Yeah, it's a double-sided coin.

Yeah. But a bit of somebody were telling you that. Yeah. And you hadn't been, you'd be like, no, like, this is why I joined. Right. So you're polar opposites, right? And it's a process. You go through, I mean, and maybe that's kind of the beauty of real deployment.

As you get to see reality for what reality is. You're not naive and ambitious. You go to reality and you're ambitious and now you're real. And then you come back and you get to train and teach the new guys, hey, like, you know, hey, it is hard. It is serious. You actually have to be good at what you're doing. And take it seriously.

This isn't fun in games because you know the cost. Right. So maybe that's, I mean, maybe that's a fair balance. Yeah. So I want to ask you, I have to ask you, about your last pump over to Afghanistan and your worst nightmare becoming a Hollywood green beret. We got to hear that story. So we're doing mountain training somewhere in Colorado.

We get back and they're like, hey, National Geographic wants to interview you guys. And the entire battalion, actually all of the 10th group, what we didn't know is that while we were gone at training, National Geographic come in, done a town hall. Like, hey, we need to follow a special forces team. We have this big proposition. And every team said no. But they're like, oh, but there is one team that could do it. You got voluntled? We got voluntled.

And I'm glad we got volunteered because it changed my life and changed the SF and in a positive. sort of way. But so we pick up this National Geographic team led by Caitlin McNally, the producer, phenomenal producer, Tim Gruchka, and Olivier Starbill and Matt Heindman, the director. And, you know, they show up, they start talking to us and like, hey, we want to film you. We want to film your families. We want to film your kids. We want to film you go to work. I'm feeling you during training. We're going to film you for six months. And then when you deploy, we're going to film you for six months. And we all just. stop them. We're like, what the F are you talking about?

Like, who are you talking? First, who do you think you're talking to? They're like, the command said you were the team. And we're like, oh, we still get a vote. And right now our vote is a no. And they were like, what do you mean? We just got voluntold. And we're like, no, we're green berets. We don't get voluntold very willingly. All right. And so, you know, thank God for Caitlin McNally's persistence. Because she, I mean, she feels like, yeah, I get it. Right. She'd filmed a lot of Greenberry's gotten to know us as a community. And she's like, oh, we've got to earn their trust.

For the next four months, they would film us at home, right? They would come to the ranges with us during PMT because we're going into Afghanistan, right? So they're like, we need to see what you do. We want to know how you do it. And they earned our trust, really by being there at 4 a.m. when we showed up and leaving at midnight when we left. and then going filming and we had guns and mission planning. They had cameras and their mission plan. So we got to know each other as a very kind of interesting cohesive team.

And then we ended up deploying to Afghanistan and the team followed us. Tim Gruchka ended up following us into Afghanistan because COVID had happened and they're like, hey, once they're in, they're in. And so Tim became the 13th man in, in Helmand Afghanistan, and we were the only special forces team in the area. We had a tiny camp,

and we were working with General Sadat, the last Afghan commander of the 215th, and they're like, hey, we don't know which way this is going to go. You're either going to be the Alamo when the Taliban realizes we're not leaving, or you're going to be running and gunning, and we'll send a burden to fly you out

when the Taliban realizes we are leaving. Like, those are your options. be prepared for both. They said, bring everything but pack light. We're like, that's contrary guidance, but we'll figure it up. And, you know, to all their credit, they got some phenomenal never before seen footage. Some of the stuff didn't make the movie, but like Josh, his wife was pregnant.

And so he was in Afghanistan. Tim's with him. He flies back to Colorado. She gives birth. A week later, he flies back. National Geographic was in labor and delivery, catching the birth. Of Josh, who's bearded, right? But then flies back, and like a week later,

he's doing real world politics behind the scenes. And, you know, they filmed a couple of the new guys. And like, hey, and like talking to their wives. Like, hey, I don't know what the F we're going to do, and I'm nervous. And, you know, like, true, true considerations, right? They filmed me talking to the boys. I got in Afghanistan.

the helicopters are flying by, the sun's rising, and they're in Colorado, and the sun is just set, and they're doing their homework, right? And so you have to congratulate what this Natchewa film did for following Green Berets for nearly a year. They caught us in our humanity, right? Because throw the uniform on, you go to work, you are, you know, you're a robust ego. But they spent so much time with us, they got to know who we were. And then during the deployment, they're literally the last or the only, what should we call it?

Film crew. Yeah, film crew. They're the only media film crew in Afghanistan as Afghanistan is being negotiated. And so when President Biden makes his announcement that we're leaving, right, the film crew is there filming us, hearing about it for the first time.

And we're like, yeah. Like when you, when you guys, deployed when the team deployed, you didn't think at that time that you, like, we're the team that's going to shut to turn the lights off and come home. No, we were, yeah, that's correct. We thought we were going, we were quite sure we were going to be the team that was going to get overrun.

Because the generals would fly in every week. Like, hey, what's your plan? Do you, have you called your wives? We're like, stop that. We know what that means. We know what the mission is. Like, we have an extra, you know, everybody's got extra, like, mags and, backup grenade and they're in there.

Does anybody have any letters that like you give me? Right. Yeah, yeah. When the general's asking you're like, okay, we get it, you know, we get it. And that's where we thought, because we were only 30 miles away from Musaqal, Taliban HQ. You know, we were a couple, we're on the main thoroughway to Iran and we're on the main thoroughway to Pakistan. And we were in, we're less than, say, five miles from all the primary poppy heroin farms that the Taliban used. We were the annoying cork that could call in airstrikes and lead missions and do whatever else. And we're like, yeah, we will be the first and most aggressively hit.

And so we were surprised about the withdrawal. And we're like, oh, I guess we're leaving now. Plan B, blow everything up, burn everything, hand it over, and packing boxes and go. And we did that and close down an entire base in 10 days. And what was really interesting was that Gio was there to film it all, right? And it was interesting for me, right, in a duality sort of perspective, because when you're in deployment mode, that's all you know. And so now when I've watched film, you know, got a big beard and I remember making the decisions I made, but I don't recognize a different version of myself, right? I'm dad mode now, dad mode retirement.

mode now. Over there, I'm war mode. And I remember making the decisions. I was like, oh, that's a cold-hearted decision. Or like, yeah, and you're just like, huh, right? Like, I can see how I'm hard to get along with sometimes when I'm in that mode. But yeah, what happened was the team, that special forces team left, National Geographic stayed. And then they linked up with General Sadat, who we'd been working with. And they followed him while the country was collapsing, you get to watch a phenomenal way the collapse of a country that we've been in for 20 years when all coalition efforts have left. And this isn't a movie, this is real life. And the things General Sadat had to work with and deal with, that was complex to watch, right?

I won't get into politics or policy, but, like, yeah, like, that was an impossible situation to be in. And then it's sort of like watching the Titanic movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. Everybody knows how Afghanistan ended. But then when you start watching the humans that were dealing with it ending, I remember coming home, all Special Forces missions, right? You can be home within 24 hours. But you didn't leave the rules of engagement. They're still in you, right?

And so I came home. I'm in Colorado Springs. I go to a cafe. And I'm like, my phone's blowing up. I was getting about a thousand messages of texts today from Afghan partners. They're like, hey, need help, need money. What do we do? Where do we go? And I'm just like, oh, bing, bing, bing, you have to put it on a mute.

And I go talk to the barista. I'm like, hey, double espresso. He's like, okay, cool, how's your day going? I'm like, I'm looking at the phone. I'm looking at the pictures. A couple of people have been executed that I know. Like, yeah, you know, I just left Afghanistan. It sucks.

He's like, oh, we're still in Afghanistan? I'm like, not technically. It's kind of collapsing right now. He's like, okay. Well, your order's going to be up in a little bit. Just like, what the f's going on? Like, I still feel like my skin is still gritty from, you know, how man do you sand.

I still feel like I'm in Afghanistan. I'm still connected with this phone. And here I am with, you know, this barista who doesn't give too, you know, doesn't care because it doesn't affect his life. An entire country in 20 years of war is collapsing. And so it was a very complex emotional situation. for me. And then Retrograde, the National Geographic movie, is coming out. And now all of a sudden, it was nominated for six Emmys at won three, shortlisted for the Oscars, won a bunch of international

awards. And then the Army's like, oh, yeah, by the way, go to Zurich. I'm like, why am I going to Zurich? I'm like, well, there's a film festival, the Zurich Film Festival, and Retrograde is being premiered there. You need to go be there. I'm just like, you do know I'm in the middle of a deployment right now, right? Eastern Europe has just reopened. They're like, yeah, leave your deployment and go to Zurich for this film festival, then go back to your deployment.

And I'm just like, I don't, I was like, how is this working for my career? Right. Like, you were putting me, literally, it's a green carpet, it's not a red carpet. Like, you're putting me on the green carpet in the suit, standing next to General Siddhar. And this is going to be interesting.

I'm not going to say no. And they're like, yeah, that's your new mission. Be, you know, like the hype man, the face man for retrograde. grade, right? And I'm just like, I'm conflicted, but you're telling me that's my new mission, okay. And so I'm there, and it's kind of surreal, right? You're in Zurich, Switzerland. The movies are just coming out. They've watched the movie. And then I'm standing in the lobby, because I don't know what the hell to do. I'm in a suit. And Swiss people are coming up to me.

They're like, thank you for your service. I'm just like, but you're Swiss. You're neutral. Like, why are you thanking me for my service? And they're like, well, when they told this one a Swiss person was like, we didn't see the combat, we saw the humanity. We saw how difficult it was. We see what you did because it was work, but we also see how you struggled with it. And I looked at them and I was like,

that's hitting me deep somewhere in the ego right now, and I don't know how to deal with that. But, I mean, the movie was phenomenal. It tells, it tells the collapse of a 20-year war in a way that no documentary ever had. because you have special operations access and you see it from Arlands

and then you have the collapse of Afghanistan happening before any news crew got into Afghanistan to see it happening right and so you see the Titanic seeing the iceberg scraping the iceberg and then like you see all of that but in reality on this film and I mean there's no it's not surprising

it won three Emmys and almost an Oscar what's kind of frustrating from a historic perspective I love history is that due to security concerns the film was pulled and so you can see the trailer and the teaser online but like so it's been pulled pulled yeah

will it be released like in 10 years or oh I don't know that's the Disney because Disney owns National Geographic that Disney has to But Disney, like, I mean, they can't take, like, the government can't give them marching orders, but the government can ask. So apparently the government asked. I don't know. I don't know the backside politics or conversations.

Okay. I just, from a historic perspective, imagine if, it's hard to say, it's hard to quantify. Sure. How you, it's hard to quantify how you justify pulling a historic, piece of history that 20 years of veterans and people and humanity can find answers to. But I don't understand how in like retrospect, because the Army obviously saw it. Yeah, the Army approved it. The Army approved it.

Right. So when you say security considerations. Yeah, there's a real, right, because some of the guys we were working with, you know, their faces were on the show. Okay. Which they could blur. Right. That's really the only... You know, any 16-year-old editor

could throw some blurs on and re-release the movie in probably three hours. Right. Whether, you know... So from my perspective, literally everybody's perspective, it's an easy fix. Right. To receive such a historic, like, token back.

Right. Because you don't even have to blur the Green Beret's faces. we're all bearded and I'm outed. Right. You know, and, but if you just blur some Afghan's faces and say, hey, like, we took the extra step to make sure you guys are safe or safer. You know, America could get a beautiful piece of history back. And I know because veterans have reached out to me and said,

hey, this movie was phenomenal. It just made me realize and I'm crying and I'm loving it. thank you for you guys and allowing National Geographic to follow you for a year. I mean, they had like over 10,000 hours footage, right? They could have been multiple different series off that footage, right? You could have had the Green Berets and their families,

you could have had Afghanistan and the collapse, you could have the Sam and Sadat. They had to make it an hour and a half movie, right? So the aspects in the middle, but. So I have to ask this then. I'll see if I can answer it. Did it show the disarray of the withdrawal? Yeah, the movie showed the disarray of the withdrawal.

I'm not going to ask your opinion. I wonder if, because like you say, if it's security considerations with easy fixes, I wonder if it was done for political reasons. No, it has nothing to do with that. Well, I mean, nobody knows that, though, right? it had nothing to do with the United States government. So you know why it was, yes. Okay.

All right, we'll talk about either. Ha, fair. Now, while you're going through all of this, there's also this other, like, interesting, I don't know if it started off as, like, a hobby or a personal interest to you, but going into history. And I also, I mean, I want to talk about sort of the lead-up to your book, but also, like, is there some sort of backstory where you, like, working on, like, a thesis paper for grad school, what was the deal there?

No. I will never claim to be smart enough to go to grad school. So, yeah, there were multiple different parallels happening at the exact same time. So as I'm going through the warrant course, we do a rotation through the Army Heritage National Archives. I'm down there. I found this leather-bound book, big brass tabs, and I open it, and the pages are wafer thin. What is this, right? mind you, Donovan's letters are like one file over.

I started to start reading. I was like, this is a true story of a secret OSS mission that happened in 1944. I'm like, you know, the history that I know is the OSS is the precursor to the CIA in Army Special Forces. And none of their records were releaseable until the 1980s. So all of a sudden I was really confused why I was holding a memoir written in 1946. I came to find out. So I started reading it. And I realized that a guy by the name of Stephen Bissick and OSS agent

is recounting his word-for-word experience when he jumped into the Balkans in 1944. So I started reading it, and by the time I know what's going on, the curator's kind of tugging on my elbow, he's like, hey, it's been four hours. It's time to go. I'm like, no, I'm only on page 100. And he's like, well, you know, you can come back.

I was like, no, I'm leaving tomorrow. I can't come back. So I turned to him and I'm running through my greenbrae options. I'm like, do I take it? Do I steal it? Do I beg borrow? Like, what do I do? And so finally he and I come to a conclusion.

He's like, hey, you can get a photocopied, you know, figure it out. We'll figure it out. I'm like, okay. So got a copied, sent to me. I start reading this book in full, right? And it is amazing. Because it is, the opening scene is basically this guy, getting told that, hey, we've sent two special operations teams in. None have made it.

Your guys are going to be the third good luck. Like infiltrated never to be heard from. Right. Yeah. I mean, they're landing amongst Nazis and fascists and Bulgarians and they're hunted men. And Steve's writing is like, yeah, so I'm standing in the doorway and I'm seeing a gunfight happen 10,000 feet below me at midnight over there. And I jump out and I'm piss-ass scared. And I like, you know, parachute, I can't see it. And I land and I, you know, break, I'm like, oh my God, I know what this guy's going through because I've felt or been trade to do the same. And then he's like, yeah, then we link up with the partisans and he's got pictures. You're right? That's what's insane about this memoir is that he was taking

pictures and then he stole the secret photos from OSS headquarters and put him in his memoir that I find in 2017. And so, I don't, I don't finish reading it until, ironically, 2021, roughly early spring when Afghanistan's falling apart around me. And so Afghanistan's falling apart around me in reality. And then I'm reading this book about mission 80 years ago about World War II falling apart in Steve's life. And I'm just sitting there like, this is the reality. I was like, this is a mirror. All wars end the same. So to what you mentioned, like, does the chaos represent? I would push it a generation forward or back. to World War II and say, I think all wars ended the same. So Steve, the way they captured, he captured it, right?

And for, it's, especially as a Green Beret, who can tie my legacy directly to the OSS, right? Anybody in special operations can tie their legacy back to the OSS, right? CIA or, what I'm going to call it, special operations. And so to have found this book that is paper thin, right, And I'm just like, this has to get published. I don't know the first thing about publishing, but I'm going to figure it out, right? Because I'm a green beret. I'll figure it out, right?

It might take me 10 times as long. But I started researching the families. I started finding the family. Steve's daughter lives in Florida. She's in her 60s. Steve's buddy, Ken, or Steve's buddy, Joe Koski, who co-wrote the book with him. His son lives in New York. I met them in Florida.

to give them an advanced copy of the book. Right? But as I talked to them, they started giving me more and more information about who their dads were. It was like, well, these guys were the originals, right? You want to talk about the originals? These guys were them, right? Steve did the mission.

Joe wrote the book, and the irony is that they wrote it in 1946. CIA comes out in 1947 and says, hey, all OSS missions are secret, top secret. Like, stop with your memoirs. But these guys had already written them. it. So this physical book ends up in under the bed or in the closet for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years until I find it in 2017 in the archives. No one knows how it got to the archives. And so I'm starting reading it. I'm reading it in Afghanistan as the country's collapsing. And then I spend 21, 22, 23, finding the families, bringing them together, asking for photos, asking for stories.

What's freaking insane is that I ended up looking through the British National Archives, and I found the Morse code messages that Spike was sending to OSS headquarters. So, like, you're reading this, and you're like, oh, yeah, we blew up a bridge, and 200 Germans died when the train fell up into the gorge. And you're like, oh, that's a great whiskey campfire story. But then I find the actual Morse code message that say, hey, we blew up a bridge and 200 Germans died, and it was amazing. You're like, oh, my God, this proves that the memoir is true. down to like the event.

Right. And so the, I like to say that, you know, Band of Brothers is to the infantry, right? Then code name Spike and the memoir is to special forces or special operations. Because the way that he wrote it, he didn't write it in a bravado way. He didn't write it in a, like reading an old crusty AAR.

He was like, yeah, like we're going down and like, We had to procure some horses and call her grandma. Grandma shows up and she's like, hey, like, don't take my Miska away because that's the name of her horse. You're right? And you're like, oh, this is a great, nice story. But then Steve takes a picture of Miska and the grandmother, right? And he's flirting with the grandmother. And she's blushing and she loves him.

She's like, you know, basically adopts him as a son. And then she's like bringing him. She's a Balkans 8. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but you're like, he's talking about the humans in it, right? And that hyper resonated with me. I spent, you know, X amount of decades of my life working with humans and wanting

know their stories. And down to he's taking pictures of the targets. Like one of the first night fighter missions is in there, right? They chase down a night fighter that's shooting bombers down. And kind of like this, they're like, hey, there's a night fighter over there. Let's just finish dinner, grab some C4 and, you know, blow it up. And they just scamper off. They assassinate two of the guards. They throw 10 pounds of C4 into the engine. They blow it up. And then they have the audacity to take a picture of it. Right. And then

he includes it in there. So like the first night fighter mission, sabotage mission that, you know, is hilariously led, is in there. And you're like, Steve, like, why did you do this? And, you know, obviously he died a couple of years ago. But, you know, you just feel the resonance of like, because the story had to be told because it was amazing. It's, uh, it's really. interesting, I think, that, you know, I think the history has kind of caught up a little bit with some books in the last few years about the French partisans and rewriting, or at least readjusting maybe the lens on, you know, the way we think about the partisan movement. Like most Americans anyway, think about it as a unified monolithic force.

And the reality was, it was kind of the communists fighting all the non-communist partisans just as much as the Nazis in that case. But in this memoir, Or we stood up to the point that I'm at. I mean, it's similar that there's so much factional infighting amongst the partisans. Yeah. If you like, I mean, and it gets more intense, right?

Because the, the communist partisans realize that they've won and that they're using American supplied weapons to kill off the Western-friendly partisans. And they've killed them off successfully. And the latter half is Steve realizing that he's surrounded by communism. and that they are and there's an occasion there where they try to kill him because he is at a rally and he's like no you know what about the west what about these guys what about you little people right like communism is communism but you little people matter too and then that night the communists go to the

house to try to kill him right and Steve's like I got to get out of here like he's alone behind enemy lines realizing that political landscape has changed completely yeah and so ironically everybody's like, yeah, Cold War started in like the 48, 4950s. It's like, no, it started in 1944. Yeah. Before World War II was even over.

Yeah. And yeah, so it's a beautifully complex Genesis Bible of special operations because they're improvising missions that I got trained in Robin Sage to do. Right. I'm like, oh my God, this is why I meet with, you know,

partisan leaders. This is why I have to find the human behind the uniform, right? Because there's humans behind the uniforms in World War II. It also, you know, it's funny because it also, you know, people will criticize when our government, like, goes into Syria and arms these people or the, you know, or goes someplace and arms people and like, oh, those people were bad. And it's like, this is the same thing in the sense of our allies at one point in time, like,

are the enemies of our enemies are our friends, but they're temporary. They can be. Because they, yeah, right, it can be. But often in like these little, not these little wars, but in these sort of partisan efforts, they all have

their political goals too. And often it's not, let's not just like overthrow and freedom for everybody. We have our own political or religious ideology that we want to supplant it with. there are so many nuances to reality

that don't make for an easy banner and so yeah it's Steve experiences that's why I love his memoir so much because he talks about that he talks about loving what he's doing conflicts of what he's doing

wanting to do it different but he's 500 miles behind enemy lines right and so Yeah, he captures it much more eloquently than I ever will. The memoir, I mean, it's awesome the way he starts off. You know, you talked about how the book starts. But you don't totally, or at least unless I missed it, understand Steve's background. I mean, he speaks fluent Serbo-Croat.

He's an immigrant, presumably grew up there until immigrated to the United States. In your research, do you kind of find out a little bit more of his family history? Yeah, so that's the gist of it. He was a medium-high-level society guy. He emigrates out in, I think, the early 30s because they can feel that war is brewing in Europe and realizes that he can give back to the country and his own country. So he jumps back in in 44 to be the translator for a spike team.

And thank God he did because there's other teams that didn't have a translator like him. And they either couldn't fulfill their mission or they were killed. off by the partisans. I mean, it's, it's an insane blood, thirsty, blood. Like, everybody's got blood on their hands. Yeah. But then they just wash it off and just keep going like, like they don't even care. So it's interesting. Just something I want to ask about. And I know that you grew up, you know, in your early years in the States and then went back, you know, went back to Poland. but, you know, we had a robust, like, recruiting program from, like, Europe and Eastern Europe and, you know, things like that. Like, during Vietnam, after World War II, obviously, you know, you had multiple languages, you know, he, his background helped him.

Do you feel the U.S. is kind of, like, are we missing the boat, especially in special forces, are we missing the boat on that foreign, you know, that. sort of bringing in, you know, foreign-born individuals? I'm going to have to respectfully not be able to answer that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to have to pass on that. It's a great question. Okay.

But because it's going to touch on policy and opinion. Okay, not a problem. I'm going to have to professionally decline. Oh, that's right. You're still acting. Yeah, I need to retire. Yeah, I got a couple months. Yeah, yeah.

I'm sorry about that. Yeah. Yeah. What were some of the big surprises in the memoir during your research? You mentioned in the beginning that some of this stuff sort of rewrites parts of history. Oh, absolutely rewrites parts of history. I mean, General Cleveland, the commander of U.S. Socom, or U.S. Talk, sorry, wrote the forward for this. I got it in front of his hands. I was like, hey, sir, could you give me an opinion on this, right? just 10th grouper reaching out, you know, and he reads it and he's like, I'm writing the

forward for this. Like, yes, please. And because I was still in denial to like the gravity of this book, right? Like if you found, it's a dramatic comparison, but if you found an original Bible written a thousand years ago, you're going to be in denial about it, right? So when I found the first technically OSS memoir ever written, I was an absolute denial about. But that's why I went so robust in the research phase. And that's why, I mean, I'm a couple thousand bucks in research costs.

On both sides of the ocean, I went through a bunch of special operation executive documents to verify that this mission even happened. And so writing it and discovering it for me was cathartic because I was discovering the genesis of everything I had done for nearly 20 years. If you could say, hey, this is why I was trained. this is why I think this way. This is why I interact with people this way. This is why I'm so lethal. But then pulling from that, like talking to the families, right? I got to meet, uh, let's see, um, I got to meet Steve's daughter. Um, I got to meet the co-author's son. I got to meet the widow of the second in command, Dick Rayner. And I'm just like, these people exist. And then to talk to these family members, and you're like, hey, like, I found this memoir in the archives.

And they're like, we didn't know he did any of this or we didn't know anyone cared. And to see grown people cry that someone cares about their fathers, which they love, the fathers and husbands, which they love, but passed, you know, 20 years ago. But you're giving them a version of them that they never knew. Right. Right. And, you know, they tell me thank you. And I'm like, why me thank you? no, you thank you.

And they're like, no, you're a green beret. You've found value in this and you brought it out into the open. I'm like, no, I'm irrelevant to this. Like, I'm the pen. It's like thinking the pen that, you know, wrote the letter, right? It's like, no, no, thank you to you. Thank you to your fathers. What's kind of insane about this, and this is where it's sort of, you know, mind-blowing.

So there's two guys, there's four guys. There's Steve Bizzik. there's Dick, there's Stan, and there's Major Scott. So Dick and Stan, the second in command of the radio man, halfway through the book, they go on their own mission. It's one of the first documented split teams. They go off, and it's kind of frustrating because you're like, you never really hear about them again.

But after I'd finish this, it was kind of insane as I was going through the CIA Archives, and I found their after-action mission report, declassified in 2007. FOIA in the reading room? Yeah, it was somehow, because it was an OSS mission and that the CIA records,

where some records ended up in the archives or some ended up in England. So I'm, the fact that I'm throwing a net out there and pulling something back every time, so Dick and Stan go lead a second mission, I find that after action report.

And then code name Spike publishes just this, or last summer, 24, 24. I get a call from a guy out in Australia. He was like, hey, my name's James. I'm the great

grand cousin or nephew of a partisan commander out in Italy in World War II. I'm like, I don't know where this is going, but I'm all ears. He's like, well, apparently, my great uncle led a resistance movement on the Hill of Mortarolo against three

thousand fascists and it blocked Mussolini's escape and allowed the partisans to capture and kill Mussolini and end World War II in Italy. I'm like, okay, this is interesting. He's like, well, turns out there was an OSS team guiding them because there were a couple OSS guys on that hill with them that had rallied 200 partisans to fight off 3,000 fascists for a month that allowed Mussolini to get captured. I'm like, okay, where's this going? He's like, there's a guy by the name of Major Dick who led the mission. I'm like, I know of a Captain Dick who was in Spike and Abbeville. He's like, yeah, I think it might be the same guy.

So I talked to the family, the Rainers. I'm like, hey, did you know this? And they're like, we never knew that he was in Italy. I was like, oh, my God, this is another golden thread I have to pull. So I hire a bunch of archivists. They go through the National Archives. They finally give me a report. They're like, hey, we think this is the report you want.

I was like, great, because I've read through like a thousand pages of reports I didn't need. And so I started reading it. I'm like, oh my God. Captain Rainer and the radio man, Stan, after they did Spike and then did Abbeville, they get dropped in behind enemy lines in Italy to lead a joint U.S., joint British special operations, joint partisan attempt to block off this major escape route through Italy, right near Milan. And they do it. And I found the report. And by, like, I mean, it's to the point where I know Dick and stands so well. And now I know their families in real life.

And the families are telling me these deathbed confessions that Dick had finally told them. It's like, oh, this one time, you know, we thought it was a joke. But, like, Dick is standing in the city, like, and like, OK Corral. He's got his Marlon Submachine Den. He's sitting there. He's got 3,000 Germans, tanks, panzers, flak infantry. the German major pulls up in a cougal wagon. It was like, hey, we need to get through Italy, get to Austria and Germany.

Dick is standing there, man of a few words. He takes out a piece of gum, choose it, looks at him. No. And he just walks back into town and they set up the Alamo. And they go and there's a battle like that afternoon. And so like Dick led the mission that allowed the partisans to stop 3,000 fascists to end the war. because they caught Mussolini at the end of it. And like, I'm reading these reports.

I'm like, oh, my God, all these rumors are coming true. Much the way Spike came true. And so the book's called code name Trifecta, because there's three missions to it that fall in play. It's with the Pentagon right now getting reviewed for security. Because I had to go through secret, top secret. I was digging through Italian archives. I was practicing Italian.

I got to know the curator of the Italian museums out there and she's giving me reports. So now I have reports from Italy in Italian. These OSS reports that were never supposed to get published, CIA documentation and Spike, all saying that this mission, these three missions actually happened beyond what Dickens stand did in Spike. And you're just like history to what we're talking about. Like these guys rewrote history by ending World War II because they chose as individuals to jump in behind enemy. lines and say, yeah, we don't know what the solution is.

But we're going to land in a, you know, six feet of snow, we're going to talk to the partisans, and we're going to get to know them. And we're going to say, hey, we should build some defenses here. We're going to call in some air supply, get some machine guns up here. And, oh, shit, there's 3,000 fascists coming up this way. And for the next month, they are under constant barrage, constant, like, small unit tactics, full-on assaults. And by the end of it, I think by the end of the month, their numbers were that 200 partisans

had killed or captured a thousand fascists and 3,000 of them were stuck. Oh, yeah, and by the way, no big deal, but Mussolini couldn't get out and they captured and executed him and ended the war because these guys chose to do so. And there was what two other sort of spinoffs from code name Spike? Yeah. Or based on more documentation that you found. Yeah, so Koski, who's also an OSS guy, helped Steve Wright Spike. Koski went to the University of Michigan, got a master's in English.

So he wrote his mission when he was behind enemy lines in Italy, behind the Gothic line. And so, you know, I published Spike and the Koski family came to me like, we love what you did with Spike. Oh, by the way, there's another unpublished memoir that Dad did. Would you like to take a look at it? And I'm like, oh my God, I'm still writing high on Spike. And you're telling me there's another unpublished memoir. memoir. That's why I take it and I read it. And yeah, it was maybe 50% complete, right? He's got like chapters. You can see he's got like some, some efforts. And I'm reading it. I was like, I know Koski

so well because I've spent five years reading what he wrote. I was like, I can write this. And so you know, I was like, but there's major missing chunks. So I can also help write this as a green beret that ties my legacy to everything Koski did in the 40s. Like, I have the responsibility to do this right, but I also have the responsibility to do this excitingly. And so, Kovsky's second book, and my second OSS book is called Code Name Devil, right? Because he has to jump in behind the Mee lines,

behind the Gothic line, and true story, he jumps behind that gothic line, works with the partisans to set the conditions, to destroy everything Nazi related so that the Fifth Army can punch through in April. And he does it, right? those chunks are missing and there's no records of it. And so, I mean, this is a, Spike is a great history book with a lot of fun and knowledge in it. Devil, I really leaned into, I was like,

all right. And glorious bastards meets Indiana Jones meets true story. And it was a book that was so fun to write. And people, I mean, you're talking about gunfights, blowing up bridges. There's There's a couple love scenes in there. And, I mean, Koski didn't pull any punches. Like, when he wrote it, Chapter 2 is him in a whorehouse in Italy falling in love with the prostitute. And I was like, but you could tell from his writing, one, that it probably really happened. And two, that this guy was a natural writer. He's writing it in a way that's poetic.

You could tell that he actually probably loved this woman. And sort of like really opening that scene up, right? Because the family was like, yeah, please do. Make it right. And I was like, beautiful. And then what's kind of insane about it is that Koski is working in Italy out of OSSHQ, and there's a mole that's leaking coordinates and drop zones. And so OSS teams are dying behind enemy lies.

What's insane? So that happens in code name Devil. Code name Trifecta, I found out that Dick and Stan, their second mission, got compromised because of that same mole six months later. And so Dick and Stan, they come back because they couldn't jump through the weather. They come back. There's a guy tied up in the lobby

has had the absolute living dog ship beat out of it. And the OSS are given 24 hours to retribute against him before he gets turned in over to MI, military intelligence. And to know that Koski wrote about it in his mission six months before Stan and Dick experienced it six months later and they got to see the end of it like you want to talk about the genesis of like the special operations universe like yeah yeah the code name series like this has kept me up more hours past midnight than i'm ever going to be able to count for but like the amount of history and fun that i've had writing

I mean, and connecting real living humans to their fathers and their husbands. And like, it's so multi-layered. Like, it's exciting and I'm glad that whatever caused me to open up that book in the archives in 2017 has led me on such a wild chase. So trifect is the one that's with DoD Review. Right now, yep. Yeah, Devils out. Spike came out earlier in the summer. Do you see that being the conclusion of the series or where is it taking you?

So not but three days ago, a family member from his name is Dracolich, Sam Drac in Trifecta, he's a lieutenant. I found his daughter. She's in her 50s. She also worked for the CIA. I was like, hey, did you know that your dad led or was part of this mission, Trifecta? that killed captured Mussolini. She was like, no, I heard about it, but I never knew about it. I was like, okay, here you go.

Here's an advance copy. She's like, oh, well, my dad wrote a memoir about his time hunting Nazi gold in Austria. And I'm like, I thought I was done riding. I want to go on, go camping with my kids and ride bicycles, you know. I want to read the book about hunting for Nazi gold. And so I'm talking to her. And she's like, okay, I literally, she's like, emailing.

She's like, yeah, I'll send you the. the draft. And I was like, I'm going to say yes if you asked me to finish it. But yeah, that's somewhere in the mail, like literally right now. That's awesome. That's amazing. It's a lot right now. I wonder, you know, you said that, like the CIA said, no more OSS memoirs. I wonder if a lot of guys just kept writing. I'm like, I'll just give it to my kids.

Yeah. You know, because these guys were, you're not going to tell a special operator no. Right. Right. You're like, okay, no. Right. But then I'm going to do it. Right.

I'm just not going to get caught doing it. Right. There's still some bits and pieces that are still classified, right? From the OSS? I don't know. Everything I've found, I mean, I've gone through, I submit it to... I could be wrong. Yeah, short of it as I don't know.

Okay. But I make sure to get security clearance from the DOD, because it is secret and top secret stuff. Sure. Some stuff's never been published before. Like, I reached out to the British National Archives. I was like, hey, I've got documentation of your secret guys working behind enemy lines. Can I request their dossiers?

And they're like, yeah, you can request them. And so I get, you know, an email with a couple attachments. And, like, you open up the digital attachment. And there's, like, his entry date into the military. Then there's nothing else. And you're like, oh, this guy worked for MI6. And, you know, you, but there's a sticker on the front says, do not declassify until 2016.

You're like, okay. Like, this guy went top secret secret, right? And so you got to, or I will intentionally make sure to respect the dynamics. If there's any of it that's still kept secret, and this is purely me speculating, I always thought that it probably had something to do with intelligence agents, the OSS recruited that got handed off to the CIA. Oh, yeah. And there were probably like some heads of state and some people that would cause waves even today.

Yeah. If that came out. I'm sure those guys got, like, whole. and burned, you know. That's speculation. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it's been kind of an eye-opening experience

because of the multi-layers that you're talking about. Yeah. Those, yeah, but what's insane is that they write about it. It captured the layers. And they did it in such a way that you can follow along. Yeah. They're like, oh, I know history now, all the better. Yeah.

Where can people go and find the books? Amazon, Audible. So, you know, it's... Did you do the audio? Did you do the audio? Yep, I did the audio. How was that for you? This is, like, this is meaty.

So that is 120,000 words. The original memoir was 160,000 words, right? Because I didn't mention this. It was a memoir printed or typed out on typewriter. It doesn't magically go into Word. Right. And because it was so old, 80 years old, it had bled. The papers were too thin.

So AI and scanning to transfer didn't work. So a year. Roughly a year of that book was the memoir and just typing it out word for effing word right 160,000 words and So yeah like it it was a lot of effort, but it was one of those you know like we were talking originally like When you put your mind to something that you want to do you do it right if you don't put your mind to something that you don't want to do then you're never going to do it, right? So there's a note in the book, right, where you say you cut something like 300 pages or something like that of them wandering around this rural Serbia? Yeah, I mean, there's it's it really paints a thick picture, but like there's a little, it's 540-ish pages, right?

Amazon won't print books over 550. And so I had this, yeah, I'd spent a year transcribing this book and font management and everything else. And I was like, it was still a 600 page book. So I was like, I'm having to, which chunk do I chunk out? Right. But then I had to do the right thing, and I put all those pages into the, I've made a website, codenamessecret.com. They're accessible to all who want to, like, read those aspects of history.

So, but that's the best part about code name trifecta. is I was able to re-insert some of those chapters. Because now you're getting the version from Dick's perspective and Stan's perspective. So you've got, you know, there's three books, but they're all telling versions of the same story within a one-year special operations time frame. Well, once try effect is approved, we eagerly look forward to the 1800-page omnibus. That is all, it's chronological. The whole thing? This chronological jumping back and forth.

That'd be like reading Lord of the Rings in one go. Yeah, that'd be amazing. Yeah, no, it's... And you know what's kind of... What is... Not kind of, but what is absolutely amazing is that I'll walk the hallways at work. And guys will be like, hey, you wrote a book.

And they accuse me of it. Like, I'm like, yeah, I wrote a book. And they're like, yeah, my buddy in Florida, and I don't know him. It's like, he just read a book. He took a picture of it. He said, I have to read this book called Code Name Spike. and I see the cover on it and your name's on it. It's like, so you wrote a book.

And I was like, well, it was written 80 years ago. I helped to bring the book out. And they're just like, well, I'm reading the book now, so you have to sign it. I'm like, all right, Sergeant Major, I'll sign the book. You get the knife hand. Yeah, I got the knife hand. But guys love it because, I mean, you want to know why you do what you do in Robin's stage, why you do what you do in Special Operations Now,

tie it back and discover how World War II ended and how the Cold War started. And you're just like... And then to just get to know some really amazing World War II heroes that didn't ever want to be heroes... Yeah. And you're just like, guys, I would love to go back in time and have a whiskey with you.

Like, you know, they died in late 90s. I was like, oh, man. I was like 14. I could have maybe had a whiskey with them, you know? But yeah, like, and then to tie it back to the families and it's like such a generational book, right? And anybody in special operations, there's essences of them in there. Even the CIA reviewed it in December.

And they wrote it in their December intelligence. They were like, hey, you have to read this. This is a baseline explanation to why special operators do what they do and need to know what they should be able to do. You're like, oh, that's a big praise from the CIA. Okay. They don't not like the book. What is coming up next for you? So you're on the end of your military career, winding down.

What are you winding up? If I could have my way, get an email or phone call tomorrow saying, hey, can you convert these to like a TV script? Yeah, yeah. Because and then just figure out, I mean, retrograde was amazing, right? See the power of telling a good story. well. Writing a book is a version of telling a story. You could write it in a poem, you could turn it into a song, right? But like the world that we live in now, like that story, like I would, I did run a go fund me page. I was like, hey, who wants to help me turn this into a TV series or movie?

Raised a couple thousand bucks, but like it wasn't enough. I don't know how to make a movie or a TV series. But then other people were like, hey, this has to be. a TV show. Yeah, but I need the people who know how to do TV shows to help me make it a TV show. And I'm, oh yeah, by the way, I'm like stumbling into more OSS memoirs that are like insane. And they're like, so what are you doing? I was like, I'm just one step at a time. One door and I'll walk into it. One door and I'll walk into it. I would love that to be my return to special operations as a gift of like, hey, you guys have a legacy and this is it. But on a more practical side, I just graduated from Oxford. I got a graduate diploma in strategy and innovation.

That was an amazing experience. That's a potential door opener. And then, you know, I mean, honestly, I need to give back to these kids. You know, I got to take them camping. I got to go bike riding. I got to, like, you know, get burgers on Sundays type thing. Hell yeah. Like, you know, it's been two decades of missing out.

I'm trying to give back. Yeah. So I'm trying to be the dad that they deserve. So we will have links down the description to the books and to the website and all that good stuff. People can go and check that out. Do we have any questions? From M. Corbyn. Who's your favorite singleton from World War II?

Me? Oh, Steve Bizzik. Obviously. Yeah, it seems pretty straight. From V, how would agents behind enemy lines communicate back to headquarters? So they were using Morse code messages. And I mean, thank God for Stan because he's a genius with the machines. And then, you know, to find the Morse code actual messages and tie them into the story that's going on.

And then in Abbeville, which is in Trifecta, they get a bum radio. don't discover it until they're a weekend. And so to really feel stands pressure, because you know that the partisans are going to kill them if they don't start getting supplies soon, because the partisans moved 500 miles into enemy lines or behind further enemy lines on the premise that they would get resupplied with ammunition when they got there.

And so the partisans are now having to go on raids against the enemy, I guess the Nazis and the, to get ammo to survive the next battle. You're just like, oh, my God. And so Stan is literally sweating bullets because he doesn't know if it's his codebook. He doesn't know if it's the radio, the battery, whatever else. And so they're morse coding, do-d-d-da-da-da-d-d-d...

And, like, dead silence. Or they're morse coding than they're hearing transmission, but they won't perceive it. And so for, like, two weeks, Dick and Stan are like, they're probably going to kill us if we don't start getting resupplies in here shortly. Or the Bulgarians are just going to overwhelm us and execute us. because we have failed our mission, which was to supply the partisans.

And so, yeah, like, I don't know how to Morse code, but, like, I would not want that job. Yeah. So. Yeah. Cool. Anything else you want to tease out there before we get going tonight? Thanks for having me, man. This has been great.

Thanks for coming out. It's amazing, yeah. There's, yeah, so much to talk about. And, yeah, maybe when this other book comes out, have you swim back through the city. again and dive back into the history. That would be amazing, right? Yeah, totally. Cool, man.

Well, thank you. And we will see all you guys out there soon. Thank you for joining us. And check out our Patreon. There's a link down the description. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show. If you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved

and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com slash the Team House. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of the Team House ad-free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast, Eyes On, with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, Mick Mulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free. And you support the channel and the show, and we really appreciate it. The Patreon members are literally what has helped this company, this small business survive, especially during our early.

early years and you are what continues to help this thing going even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page and there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers and we also have patches. And I should mention if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail you this patch as well. So we really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the merch shop. And additionally, they got T-shirts up there, water bottles, a tote bag, coffee mugs, all that good stuff. So please go and check them out and support the show. We really appreciate it,

guys. Thank you.