508: The Mission Continues Beyond Ramadi. With Major Scott Huesing

Summary

Jocko Podcast 508: The Mission Continues Beyond Ramadi, with Major Scott Huesing

Date: October 1, 2025
Host: Jocko Willink (A), with Echo Charles (B)
Guest: Major Scott Huesing (C), USMC (Ret.), author of Echo in Ramadi

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Episode Overview

This episode features a candid, deeply reflective conversation between retired Navy SEAL Jocko Willink and retired Marine Major Scott Huesing, author of Echo in Ramadi. Huesing shares the journey from his troubled youth through 24 years in the Marine Corps, leading Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines in Ramadi during some of the deadliest fighting of the Iraq War. The episode explores the reality of modern urban combat, leadership, loss, the transition home, and the ongoing mission of sharing veterans’ stories. The tone is raw, honest, and deeply human, filled with hard-earned lessons for anyone—military or civilian—interested in leadership, brotherhood, and overcoming adversity.

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Table of Contents

1. Scott Huesing’s Path to the Marines (03:00)
2. Career Progression: From Enlisted to Company Commander (06:51)
3. First Combat Experiences & Leadership Lessons (13:13)
4. 9/11–A Career Turns Toward War (16:42)
5. Baghdad, Blackwater, and the Reality of War (21:57)
6. Leadership Challenges in Iraq (29:45)
7. Deploying to Ramadi: Entering the “Super Bowl” of Combat (30:59)
8. Combat Realities: The Burden of Command (40:06)
9. Key Principles of Leadership Under Fire (43:31)
10. Urban Combat in Ramadi: Malab and Beyond (45:26)
11. Teamwork Across Branches; Aggressiveness as Survival (52:35)
12. Stories of Sacrifice: Libby, Espinosa, Sanchez, Matus (59:15, 133:13)
13. Cultural Friction and Civilian Casualties (116:10)
14. The Transition Home: Loss, Reflection, and Moving Forward (160:33)
15. Veteran Storytelling, Authorship, and Solid Copy Media (181:13)
16. Full Circle: Human Connection and Leadership Legacy (217:48)
17. Ramadi Reunion & Closing Thoughts (231:44)

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Detailed Summary

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Scott Huesing’s Path to the Marines (03:00)

• Huesing humorously confesses a troubled youth—“graduated ultimately with a smoking hot 1.24 GPA” ([03:00], C)—but found direction thanks to an impulsive visit to a Marine recruiting office.
• The Marine recruiters’ bravado, uniforms, and energy “sold” him immediately on enlistment.
• Early years were spent as a Hawk missile operator and Stinger gunner, then post-Desert Storm, a shift towards college and then the Reserves.

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Career Progression: From Enlisted to Company Commander (06:51)

• Transitioned from enlisted Marine to officer via the Platoon Leaders Course, thanks to a “catalyst” recruiter, Sergeant Connor.
• “Sergeant Connor, man, if you’re listening to this show, give me a shout, brother.” ([07:44], C)
• Commissioned in 1998 (same year as Jocko), assigned to infantry after “equal distribution of smartness and dumbness” at The Basic School.
• Detailed the unique Marine Corps’ assignment system and the “secret society” of the Infantry Officers Course.

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First Combat Experiences & Leadership Lessons (13:13)

• Assigned to 29 Palms—initially disappointed, but came to love constant “blowing stuff up and shooting all day long.”
• Describes initial leadership lessons: the most important thing he learned from being enlisted time was not “to waste [a Marine’s] time on ancillary tasks” ([09:42], C).
• “I just wanted them to be training, studying, chasing girls or PT, man. Like, that’s the important stuff.” ([09:42], C)
• Early experience of force reduction post-Desert Storm and the quirks of peacetime military life.

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9/11–A Career Turns Toward War (16:42)

• On Sep 11, 2001, stationed in Okinawa—vivid recollection of watching the attacks unfold on a “tiny TV.”
• The war’s onset led to rotations through FAST Company, anti-terror ops, and diplomatic security (including in Spain, Baghdad).
• “Any professional warrior, you guys understand… everybody wants their war.” ([18:25], C)
• September 11 marked a turning point, both personally and for the military.

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Baghdad, Blackwater, and the Reality of War (21:57)

• Describes life in Baghdad, 2004: “It was like the Star Wars cantina… civilians, contractors, USAID, Marines, Blackwater yahoos… it was madness.” ([25:03], C)
• Worked closely with Blackwater, survived routine rocket and mortar attacks.
• Tells the story of meeting Rich and Andy Devine—powerful examples of “the power of human connection” ([24:52], C).

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Leadership Challenges in Iraq (29:45)

• Sent to Expeditionary Warfare School, then suddenly ordered to take command in 2/4, living at work (“no point even getting an apartment or house because the training cycle is just so intense” [30:28], C).
• Training for deployment to the MEU; kept in operational secrecy until told en route they were going into Iraq as part of the major “Surge.”

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Deploying to Ramadi: Entering the “Super Bowl” of Combat (30:59)

• Arrival in Ramadi at height of Surge: “It really was a Super Bowl of combat, man… fighting every single day, four, five, six times a day on some days against a very well-trained insurgent force.” ([30:59], C)
• Commanded over 250 Marines under daily urban combat—intense leadership pressure: “It was survival… If you had to take a scoreboard… we were lighting up the scoreboard. But that was never really quantified to us.” ([30:59], C)
• Senior leadership never outlined what "winning" was; leadership at every level became critical.

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Combat Realities: The Burden of Command (40:06)

• Relays how he told his Marines before combat:

  “This is the first time you’re in combat... you will have to kill. I don’t expect that this will be easy… But know this. I am ordering you to kill...And when this is all over, it will be my burden to carry, because I am ordering you to do it… you will leave this place without regret.” ([40:06], C)

• Stressed the need to release the psychological burden from his young men, to give them space for the unnatural act of killing.

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Key Principles of Leadership Under Fire (43:31)

• Ultimate leadership lesson: caring about your people above all else. “If you don’t care about what you’re doing… get out… that’s what builds great teams.”
• “You can teach a Marine to fight better, to shoot straighter… the one thing you can't teach [him] is how to care.” ([44:22], C)
• Fundamental dichotomy: You’ll risk the lives of those you care for most, which is the “ultimate dichotomy.”

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Urban Combat in Ramadi: Malab and Beyond (45:26)

• Describes the Malab district as “South Central”—urban combat so intense “you could start your stopwatch [when] you went on patrol… you were going to get contacted.”
• Adopted aggressive tactics: walking, not riding, through the city to avoid IEDs. “We’re going to walk… We’re going to clear systematically. If a bad guy sticks his head around a corner, he will run into us and get fucked up.” ([46:13], C)

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Teamwork Across Branches; Aggressiveness as Survival (52:35)

• Worked with outnumbered, exhausted Army companies: arrived at full strength (approx. 200 Marines) and absorbed “enablers” (EOD, interpreters, etc.)—“if you wanted to fight, you rolled with us.”
• Aggressiveness as safety: “Being more aggressive is the safest thing to do.” ([52:35], A)

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Stories of Sacrifice: Libby, Espinosa, Sanchez, Matus (59:15, 133:13)

• The episode contains several vivid accounts of casualties—most notably, the deaths of Libby, Espinosa, Sanchez, and Matus.

• Stresses both the burden and the beauty of command: relationships with Gold Star families, and carrying on the memory and legacy of fallen Marines.

  “I don’t know where Gold Star families come from… They breed these young warriors, then you lose them in combat… I only have one word to describe them: extraordinary.” ([64:37], C)

• Also told: miraculous stories of Marines surviving, returning from hospitals to the front without command even knowing.

• Explains the “insurance policy” of aggressive action: accepting the unacceptable reality that casualties will absolutely occur, trying to minimize them.

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Cultural Friction and Civilian Casualties (116:10)

• Describes heart-rending incidents of civilian casualties: “collateral damage” isn’t a statistic—it’s people, and these stories had to be included.
• Example: Marines, despite extensive warnings, opened fire on a car carrying a family to the hospital, as the information didn’t pass in turnover: “It was nothing… Hindsight’s always 20/20 in combat.” ([117:36], C)
• Highlights the impossibility of American cultural “imposition” on ancient societies: “American hubris. To think we can impose our piss-ant 250-year existence and culture on a culture that’s been around almost 4000 years.” ([117:36], C)
• Lessons for post-war planners: training on culture matters as much (or more) than military prowess.

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The Transition Home: Loss, Reflection, and Moving Forward (160:33)

• The return voyage on ship gave time for decompression, “no liberty incidents” en route home.

• Easier transitions for leaders with life experience; harder for some Marines, especially those who lost comrades.

• The need for connection, support systems, and purpose after return—finding new “friction” or missions to fill the void.

  “It was like the absence of that friction… For me, it was the absence of that friction. How do you replace that type of adrenaline?” ([167:13], C)

• Scott describes his own post-war struggles: pain, panic attacks, and ultimately a brush with disaster in a post-retirement drunk driving crash—his "rock bottom" before moving forward.

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Veteran Storytelling, Authorship, and Solid Copy Media (181:13)

• The healing (and challenge) of writing: “It wasn’t some big cathartic moment… For me, writing is a job. It’s work. It’s a kick in the balls most days.”
• Importance of accuracy and humility in military writing: “If your ego doesn’t hurt when you’re putting pen to paper, you’re not doing the right thing.” ([97:54], A)
• Huesing’s post-military mission: mentoring veterans to write and share their stories through SolidCopyMedia.com—a platform to guide, filter, and connect aspiring vet authors, with contributions from accomplished editors and writers.
• “You have to invest in yourself… I’ve created the world’s best bullshit filter.” ([193:25], C)
• Developed a robust network, connecting best-selling vet authors, publicists, and editors to help bring important stories to the world.

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Full Circle: Human Connection and Leadership Legacy (217:48)

• Huesing’s story comes full circle: first military book he read in Desert Storm was Guns Up by Johnnie M. Clark—years later, became friends, exchanged books, and reflected on the lasting power of human connections in war.
• Jocko and Scott reflect on the importance of capturing veteran oral histories while they’re still alive—vital for future generations’ understanding, and for honoring true sacrifice.

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Ramadi Reunion & Closing Thoughts (231:44)

Ramadi Reunion 20

• Event for anyone who served with or alongside the Ready First Brigade in Ramadi, or Gold Star families:
  January 16-17, 2026, El Paso, TX
  RamadiReunion20.com

Additional Resources and Connections

• Scott Huesing: scotthuesing.com, Instagram @echo_in_ramadi, solidcopymedia.com
• Book: Echo in Ramadi
• Other recommended books: Forged in Chaos by Tyler Grey, A Few Bad Men by Fred Galvin, Where Cowards Go to Die by Ben Sledge, Guns, Girls & Greed by Morgan Lerette, Guns Up by Johnnie M. Clark

Final Thoughts

• Importance of reunions and continuous connection for veterans: “It’s important to reunite… We have to make time to do that.” ([237:04], C)
• Jocko’s parting charge: “Honor their sacrifices by the way you live your life—and that should be to the fullest.” ([237:55], A)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

On the Burden of Command:

“I spoke in forceful, confident tone… ‘You will kill. And when this is all over, it will be my responsibility… you will leave this place without regret. And we will win. Is that understood?’” ([40:06], C)

On Leadership:

“If you don’t care about what you’re doing, get out… that’s what builds great teams is having those leaders… that really understand that you have to care.” ([44:22], C)

On Writing Honestly:

“If your ego doesn’t hurt when you’re putting your pen to paper, you’re not doing the right thing.” ([97:54], A)
“Talking about the failures, man, is what real leaders do.” ([101:53], C)

On Lessons in Urban Combat:

“We’re light infantry. We’re gonna walk… If a bad guy sticks his head around a corner, they’re going to run into one of my squads and they’re going to get fucked up.” ([46:13], C)

On Legacy and Remembrance:

“You may not realize you’re doing it, but everything you do is leaving an impression and impact on those you lead, good, bad, or otherwise.” ([97:07], C)

On Cultural Friction:

“American hubris. To think we can impose our piss-ant 250-year existence and culture on a culture that’s been around almost 4000 years.” ([117:36], C)

On Loss Beyond the Battlefield:

“A lot of guys in my company have killed themselves. I don’t ever sugarcoat it. They took their own life by suicide. The numbers are just astronomical…” ([56:47], C)

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Key Timestamps

• 03:00 — Huesing’s youth and enlistment
• 06:51 — Officer commissioning pathway
• 16:42 — September 11 and FAST Company
• 21:57 — Baghdad deployment, Blackwater
• 29:45 — Taking command, deployment prep
• 30:59 — Going to Ramadi for the Surge
• 40:06 — Huesing’s pre-combat speech to Marines
• 43:31 — Core leadership lessons
• 45:26 — Malab fights, aggressive tactics
• 52:35 — Aggressiveness as defense, enabling teams
• 59:15; 133:13 — Espinosa, Libby, Sanchez, Matus—sacrifice and Gold Star families
• 116:10 — Civilian casualties, complexities of urban operations
• 160:33 — Returning home, decompression
• 181:13 — Struggles after war, storytelling mission
• 217:48 — Connection with Johnnie Clark, “Guns Up”
• 231:44 — Ramadi reunion, calls to reconnect
• 237:55 — Jocko’s closing charge to honor the fallen

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

A deeply authentic snapshot of war and its aftermath told with humility, humor, and pain. Scott Huesing’s candor—about leadership, mistakes, trauma, and recovery—offers lessons in authentic leadership under fire and the importance of human connection in and after combat. The obligation to remember, record, and honor these stories extends far beyond the battlefield—and, as Jocko says, “honor their sacrifices by the way you live your life.”

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For more:

• Echo in Ramadi by Scott Huesing
• SolidCopyMedia.com for aspiring writers
• RamadiReunion20.com for 2005-2007 Ramadi veterans and Gold Star families

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“Semper Fi to the magnificent bastards of 2nd Battalion 4th Marines. Thank you for carrying on the proud tradition of the Marine Corps.” ([237:55], A)

Transcript

[A]

This is Jocko, podcast number 508 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willinka. Good evening, Echo.

[B]

Good evening.

[A]

I used to think about the medals and ribbons and parades when I was a young Marine and how they were a measure of one's success. 10 deployments and multiple combat tours later, I no longer did in Ramadi. None of that meant shit to me. I was in command of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines deployed to Ramadi, Iraq. It was the third year of operation Iraqi Freedom and my command was assigned to the US Army's Ready 1st Brigade Combat Team, which consisted of the largest armor and infantry alignment in modern warfare. I worked directly FOR Task Force 19 Infantry Battalion Manchu under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Ferry, US Army. During this nearly nine month deployment. Our mission, kill or capture anti Iraqi forces. Echo Company stood in the line of fire daily in Ramadi, the most dangerous and most densely populated area of insurgent activity in 2006. It would test us and would take the best of us. This story is about and for the warriors of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines and their families, it is their voices that tell of the battles we fought, the relationships we shared, and the pain we still bear today. It is a tribute to them, to those that are gone, those who served, and those who continue to fight today. During our time in Iraq, we didn't think about war movies, parades and shiny medals. All I thought about was bringing my Marines home alive. Now right there is an excerpt from the prologue to a book called Echo in Ramadi. It was written by Scott Husing. Scott is a retired Marine with 24 years of service who rose through the ranks from enlisted Marine to infantry officer. During his career, he completed 10 deployments around the globe, including the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq. And Iraq is the subject of this book. It's an incredible read. It gives a detailed insight of what it was like to serve in and lead a Marine Corps infantry unit. And it's an honor to have Scott with us here tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned. Scott, thanks for joining us.

[C]

Thanks for having me. It's an honor.

[A]

I, I, I'm sad to report we already had like about a one hour discussion about all kinds of things before we hit record. So I'm sure we'll get into some of that before we jump into the book, you know, how'd you end up in the Marine Corps?

[C]

Well, this is not a true confession. I've said it before, but I was a horrible high school student, you know, just barely got by, you know, I Graduated ultimately with a smoking hot 1.24 GPA. And no one's ever been able to beat that. But I get a ph. Phone call from a friend of mine and I. I can remember just picking up that receiver off, you know, when phones used to be on a wall at 662-3427. I can still remember the number in Waukegan, Illinois. He says, hey man, you'll never guess what I did today. This is. Well, I'm thinking like he crashed his car again. It's like he's going through him like socks. And he says, no, I'm down at the Marine recruiter's office. He goes, I'm joining the Marines. I go, you're full of. So I go down there and you know when you go into the recruiting office, especially when you're young enlisted guys like, man, especially Marine recruiters, they are the best salesmen in the world and they got the ribbons. Their office at that recruiting substation was all camouflage. Like they painted the walls, there's cami nets and man, they talk a good game. And up until that point, I was like I said I was horrible student, barely got by just to play sports and.

[A]

What year is it that you enlist?

[C]

88 is when I signed the contract. But, you know, I was, you know, drinking underage, you know, riding my motorcycle, running from the cops, getting caught by the cops, fighting, more fighting, and, and you know, so I led a very high risk lifestyle as a young teenager. And when I met the Marines, I was like, man, I've never met a bigger group of risk takers than what these guys are trying to sell me. And right there I signed up and, you know, it was probably the best decision I ever made in my life because through that, you know, my first four years and you know, going to Desert Shield and Desert Storm, which I write about a little bit in the book.

[A]

You. You write about it in literally two pages. It's two pages of desert.

[C]

And I don't, man, you know, I've gotten. So. I have gotten some shit from guys I serve with because. But in comparison to other deployments, that's the point. People don't. It's. In comparison to other deployments, like, it seemed pale because it was such a short war, but it was very important and it shaped me. And then, you know, pushed me into, into college, you know, and then, you.

[A]

Know, what was your job in the Marine Corps? You infantry out of the gate?

[C]

No, I was, I must have scored pretty decent on tests. So I was a Hawk missile operator and Stinger and then I transitioned.

[A]

Did you go to, did you go to school in Fort Hood for Stinger?

[C]

El Paso.

[A]

I went to that school.

[C]

El Paso, Yeah.

[A]

I was a Stinger Missile qualified homie over here.

[C]

Yeah. So that was, you know, Marines are Marines. Like, it doesn't matter what job you have. It was great. And then when I was in college, I, I still loved and missed the Marines.

[A]

Did you, did you get out of the Marine Corps to go to college?

[C]

I did. There was. After Desert Storm, there was the big force reduction, which happens, as, you know, after war. They. They whittle us down and they says, well, we got three jobs for you. You can lat move and go to a different job. And I was like, no, no, and hell no. Like, I don't want any of those jobs. So I hung up my rifle and went to college, Illinois State. And I don't say that to brag because they only let us like 50,000 in every year or something. But I was just happy to get into college, man. And then I joined the reserves as a machine gunner. And because I was also 0331, hell yeah. And it was right in my hometown, Waukegan, Illinois. So I was, I was doing that for a couple years in. Just became kind of a pain in the butt. And reserve units are, in my opinion, only really, really good or they're really, really screwed up. Yeah. So it. And they, it's just basic leadership function because they rotate guys in and out all the time. So. But that's, that's how I got roped into the Marine Corps, you know, to answer your question, it's not short answer, but.

[A]

So then did you have to do ROTC or something to get your commission? How'd you end up getting your commission?

[C]

No. So I. This, I'm going to use this show. Hopefully he's listening. I was approached by another recruiter on campus to do the platoon leaders course, which is you do two summers, like your junior and senior year. But I only went to college for three years because I was going to night school, day school, preschool. Like, I just went in and out because I was a little older than the average Bear and Sergeant Connor. I've been meaning to go back through my paperwork because, like, what is this guy's first name? But he's the guy that called me and he says, hey, sir, you know, if you can come down and take a physical fitness test, he goes, I can get you up to Great Lakes and do your physical because I can get you boat space at OCS in January. And Right then I was like, this is this fate. And this young sergeant, God bless him, they make stuff happen. And I always want, like, I want to thank that guy.

[A]

Yeah, it's legit.

[C]

He. He really was like that. The catalyst like that that got me back in because I had planned on working for US Federal Marshals, and there was some hiring freeze in the government going on. I was like, man, I cannot wait tables or bartend for another year at age 26 or 27, you know, so. But Sergeant Connor, man, if you're listening to this show, give me a shout, brother.

[A]

That just reminded me I was. When I was just getting done with a basic SEAL training, my class officer who was a Naval Academy guy told, you know, he kind of pulled me aside and he's like, listen, you should go to the Naval Academy. You can, you know, if you put a package together, you can go to the Naval Academy, be an officer. And I was just like, I didn't have the same reaction to you. I was like, hell, no, I'm not going. I'm gonna go to the freaking teams, bro. Like, I don't want to be an officer. I want to be. I want to be a machine gunner in the teams. So I denied his. His request. I ended up doing it later. But, yeah, you don't always take advice from people. So you. What years that you could get commissioned then?

[C]

So I got commissioned in. Oh, man. I want to say it was 97. 98.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

And because. Yeah, and then I was. My first duty station was at 29 palms in 99. So back it up a year. 98.

[A]

Yeah. So 1998, that's actually the same year I got commissioned.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Interesting.

[C]

Yeah. We always kind of similar trajectories.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I did eight years enlisted and then. Then got picked up for some officer program. I did the weirdest officer program where I didn't even go to college. I went straight from being an E5 at Seal Team 1. 13 weeks of OCS, and then I was 01@ Seal Team 2. It was. And I had to go to college.

[C]

Later, but my program was occ, Officer Candidate Class. Like, I graduated college and then went straight to ocs.

[A]

Were you thinking, like, when that guy. When that sergeant said, hey, I can get a slot for you, were you just kind of like, oh, I'm going to be in the Marine Corps for the rest of my life at that point?

[C]

I think so. I don't know the rest of my life, But I thought, you know, when you transition, too, and you really don't know what it's all about. Because you see officers through a different lens when you're enlisted and people ask me this question, I've gotten called on, and I might change my opinion. Like, did being enlisted make you a better officer? My answer is usually no. I just tell people from a leadership perspective, it gave me an absolute appreciation for how valuable that young Marine time is. And I never, ever wanted it being wasted on ancillary tasks or mundane, you know, stupid wall locker inspections and, you know, just they needed to be training for. For war. Studying, chasing girls or pt, man. Like, that's the important stuff.

[A]

Productive things.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think the culture of the Marine Corps, in the absence of war, they find ways to fill time. And I realize that too, is like, want to be that guy. Because as you write about too is like, even bad leaders are great examples of who you don't want to be. And you, You. You drill down on that a lot. And, and how you and Leif write about that to teach them blocking and tackling leadership.

[A]

Yeah. I get asked sometimes, you know, are the prior enlisted. How are the prior enlisted officers? And in the SEAL teams, the prior enlisted officers are some of the best officers and some of the worst officers. It kind of reminds me, I had a kid ask me, you know, I'm. I'm trying to become an Eagle Scout. Will that be helpful? And I said, it might be. Because if you take the skills and the things that you learn from becoming an Eagle Scout and you apply those to being a good leader, they might be helpful. But if somewhere in your mind, you think you're better than other people because you're an Eagle Scout, it's the road to disaster. So that's a good.

[C]

That's a good reminder is, yeah, I experienced same thing. Like, I've been there, done that. I don't have, like, that was just not me. You're right there. And you do get a little bit of street cred from the boys, you know, being a Mustang. But I never. I really kind of downplayed it a lot. Yeah, I never advertise it, that's for sure.

[A]

The SEAL community is so small that almost everyone you would know, like, when I went to the East Coast, I went to SEAL team, too. After was like, a couple people that took them, like, three days to figure out that I was a prime listed guy. One of them was a senior chief that called me out about something, and all the other guys was like, hey, dude, that guy's been in the teams longer than you yeah, but it's all good. Like, you know, what are you going to do? So you. What's your first. What's your job? Are you an infantry or infantry officer?

[C]

Infantry. That was. That was my main goal we were talking about before the show, you know, is, you know, you got to have a passion for what you do. And we were discussing about becoming a pilot, and we both know Dave Burke because he's an F18 guy, and I did time in Yuma, but I don't know if you know how this works at the basic school when you get commissioned in Quantico, then you go across the street at the base school, you're not guaranteed a job. You go into this profession as a Marine officer with one goal, to lead Marines no matter what job they do. Marines are all the same flavor. They're all great. They all, you know, talk a good game, and they're all a handful. But being in charge of Marines is the best job, and you have to be good with that. Now you get your rankings, so you pick your, you know, your. Your dream list of job one through 26 Alpha, or whatever the fuck it is, and hopefully you get it. And the Marine Corps is interesting because I call it the equal distribution of smartness and dumbness. It's kind of a. The way they break it up. So if there's like 300 people, the top 100, middle 100, and the bottom 100, based off scoring, and the top three guys get their pick. So if there's only 10 infantry jobs available and you're the number four guy at the top, three of those jobs are going to the middle third, and then, you know, three, four, the last four are going to the bottom third or whatever it is for what the needs of the Marine Corps are. So I just happened to fall at the top of the bottom third. So now. Okay, so let me just. Just. I saved my own ass because this is not like high school anymore. The difference. The difference between the. The top third and bomb third is probably like 95.1 and then 100. So, like, it's a. Like they're a bunch of smart, tight grouping. Yeah, it's a tight. It's a tight group out of those 300 people at TBS, but I got infantry. And then you just go right across the street again to the infantry officers course, which is, you know, probably one of the last bastions of. Of secrecy in the military. They don't advertise it on the Marine Corps training website. I don't know if it's a good thing Like, I think the special force community has gotten better because they recruit more guys, but we don't really advertise it. It's still kind of a little secret society. When you go over to infantry officers.

[A]

Course, I had James Webb on the podcast and he went from, you know, did the pipeline, humanity academy, whatever, TBS and then infantry officer course, got on a plane, went to Vietnam. Like took. Got put in a jeep. They drove him out there. They put in a ridgeline, like, your platoon is up there. There's no officer to relieve because the officer was wounded and gone. So and he went up there that night and they like gotten a big, big gunfight and he had to call for fire and everything. And he's kind of talking through it. And I said, did you feel like you were ready? Like, that's a lot to handle on your first night? He goes, oh, absolutely. Which is pretty damn impressive to be rolling into combined arms combat on your first six hours in command in country. It's pretty impressive. So they do an outstanding job.

[C]

They do, yeah.

[A]

And then your first duty station is what, 29 palms, you said.

[C]

Beautiful 29 palms, California again, you know, be careful what you ask for. You just might get it, you know, you get your dream sheet. And I was like, I want West Coast. And all I'm thinking is Pendleton, Camp Pendleton right here across the street. And then the assignments come out, 29 palms. And I was like, oh, that's cool. Or no, I was three, four. They're like, oh, you're going 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines. Like, awesome. Camp Pendleton. And then the company Gunny, who's E7, he. I remember his name is. It was Peterson. He goes, acer, I got some bad news for you. Just shitty. And grin on his face goes, three, four. Just moved to 29 palms. I'm like, you're kidding me. So it's the high desert, but you know, as a young, well, not so young second lieutenant, being in the combat center is where you want to be as an infantry guy because everything is live fire. I mean, you're just, you know, blowing stuff up and shooting all day long. Because the whole base is a impact area, basically. But not great for young Marines.

[A]

It's libo, but so where are you on September 11th?

[C]

So I checked into 34 in January of 99, and two years later, I was a first lieutenant. I was kind of like the senior lieutenant in the battalion at the time. And we were in Okinawa. And I was just telling this, obviously, because it's just a couple days after 911 as we're doing the show. But I remember watching the TV and I was on the phone and I said that, I said something just hit the World Trade center. And then I look and says, this is a terrorist attack. Second plane hit. And I ran down the hall. Camp Schwab in Okinawa. And it started banging all the doors, getting all the lieutenants up. I said, you guys got to come see this. And I remember huddling in our dorm room and in the barracks and we're all just watching this little tiny, like 14 inch TV that we had and watching these events unfold. And it was the madness that ensued, obviously, you know, knee jerk reaction. They've got Marines on the perimeter with saws and, you know, machine guns. I'm like, yeah.

[A]

Were you guys on deployment in Okinawa at that time?

[C]

We were, yeah. We were doing six month, six month rotation on the unit deployment program.

[A]

And did you guys get to go anywhere from Okinawa?

[C]

No. Yeah, we were stuck. Some units had it worse. Like, like 2 7, I think they were stuck there for like 18 months or something. It was crazy.

[A]

But yeah, you pray to the war gods and it doesn't always go your way. We're on deployment. No, we're gonna send some guys that are in the freaking States right now over there.

[C]

Yeah, any professional war you guys understand is like, everybody wants their war. And it's funny, I was just telling Mike Sager this this morning over coffee is about how that transition, like you come back. And then I was the senior lieutenant and then I got selected to go to FAST Company, which is a fleet anti terrorism security team, which is run by the Navy. The CNO owns all the fast guys and we go out, we do anti terrorism ops. And you know, my first deployment was in the med and it was a cool gig because you're always condition one. They're hand selected Marines, no disciplinary problems. They've all got something to lose, so they want to be there. They don't screw up their varsity. I was one of five captains in the entire Marine Corps that got selected to, you know, lead. And you're still in command, which is, you know, it's cool.

[A]

And so now this is like what, 2000, 2003, 2001.

[C]

It was like right after September 11th or. Yeah, it might have just been. Oh, two, I just picked up captain. And because all the platoon commanders are captains and fast and we work with the Navy, you know, work with the squadrons over there and Rota and Sigonella. And that's where I met a lot of the seals on that deployment who's still lifelong friends of mine, so. But it was, it was a good gig. But September 11th was, it was such a, such a turning point, you know, in history that lit the fuse for where we are today, you know, and today we're recording this show today, which is again, I think it's like the day we signed the Constitution, among other things. But this is the battle of Antietam. This is the bloodiest day in American history. I mean, where we lost 5,000 people. You know, people in modern times, they think 911 is the bloodiest day, but it's not. We were killing ourselves on the bloodiest day in America. We don't like to talk about that world a lot, but definitely a turning point for sure.

[A]

So then how long are you with Fast Company for?

[C]

It's a three year gig. I was with second Fast Company in Yorktown, Virginia and we did deployment to Baghdad. That one lasted or. No, the first one was second Fast was to Rota, Spain. So we're out of rota for like 10 months doing straits to Gibraltar transits. You know, we're, we're riding frigates and destroyers and we're cross decking and we're doing, you know, strong transits with seals and they're shuttling us over to boats and we do security on all these ships going over to the Persian Gulf when the war kicked off. And you know, again we're like, oh, we're just guarding, you know, these big container ships full of paper and, and MREs for the guys doing the real fighting. We all want to get in the fight. You know, we wanted our war and so we came back and then we get the call that General Hagee, who was the commandant and the CNO wanted a third Fast Company, so I was a plank owner to help build that in Williamsburg, Virginia. So we had this shitty little Navy base. It was like a Navy supply annex. And we didn't have a pot to piss in, but we were doing what we could do until we got all of our gear and stuff and we started fielding Marines and then we went over to Baghdad to provide security at the embassy there at Saddam's Palace. And it. That place, man, I don't know if you rolled through there.

[A]

What year was that?

[C]

That was 2004.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I was there in 03 04. So. And I was in Baghdad. So.

[C]

Yeah, who knows? Interestingly, we were there for, for 10 months and it was prior to that when I was married. I have a buddy who's in the Navy and he's a, this is a Cool. I like this story because you probably know the guys too, but he's flying to my wedding. He's sitting next to this guy, says, hey, what are you doing? He's like, oh, I'm in the Navy. And so he was a team guy. And so Bob White and his nephew, by the way, is the one that called me from the recruiter's office. So the White family is like, they've been. I've known him since high school. Anyway, he says, yeah, you should call this guy. He's also in Virginia beach or he's a dam neck or something. And so it was Rich Devini. And so Rich and I became like pen pals in Virginia. And we're emailing each other, like sharing the gas chamber or range, like at Fort Useless or something, but we'd never met face to face. And so I'm in Baghdad in 04, and I see these convoy rolls in and I'm in the chow hall and I see all these guys with a bunch of Velcro on their can. He's in pocket sewing all the seals. And so I walk up to my says, hey, man, is Rich Rich around or a carp? And he says, yeah, they're out in the circle drive. And now this is a huge circle. It's a palace. So I walk out and sure enough, there's Rich face to face. And of all the places we meet, they just come back down from doing da hits up north. And so we met face to face. Now I got to finish this story. Fast forward. I'm going over to Ramadi and we're on the USS Boxer and it's like one in the morning. Come to the chow hall and I'm sitting at this table and there's this pilot sitting across from me, and he's. I'm looking at his name tape. I says, divini, I says, you got any family in the military? He goes, oh yeah, I got a brother, Twin brother. I says, you're kidding me. So I tell. I tell Andy his call signs count. I tell counter about that story about meeting his. But you said, you got to be kidding me. And so you fast forward like another, I don't know, 10 or 15 years and counts retiring from the Marine Corps in Yuma. And I go to the retirement ceremony and we took a picture. Is the first time of me, Rich and Andy in one picture all together. But throughout our whole military careers, you know, and you know, Rich and Andy have both gone on to, you know, do great things. Rich has got a great book that came out Called attributes. And so that's. That's how I met those guys. But again, like this right here, man, this power of human connection. You know, I walk in, he sees me in the alley out back. Like, he's like, hey, what's up? And we're trying to piece together how we all met for the first time. And the. The. The Vinnie. The Vinnie boys truck. Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Rich has been on this podcast a couple times, um, and I know him one more, by the way. So what are you. What you're. What are you guys doing in Baghdad? Was a good deployment. You're there for 10 months.

[C]

Yeah, it was right at the. It was a really interesting time because you know how the tactics change. You know, we weren't doing a lot of direct fighting. We were more in a defensive posture because we couldn't have achieved the diplomatic mission over there without some semblance of security. So we did a lot of VIP security convoys to and from the airport. We were actually working with the Blackwater guys. When Blackwater got stood up out of LZ Washington in. In Baghdad, we used to fly around with those guys on their sexy helicopters. You know, those guys are all 160 sore dudes that are flying for Blackwater now. And we can talk about a little bit too. Like, one of the books that I helped publish is called. It used to be called welcome to Blackwater, but now it's called Guns, Girls and Greed. But I used to it. That book too is like, I hope they serve beer in hell. Like, we'll talk about Morgan's book too. But he was a Blackwater mercenary and. But we. We work with those guys. And there were rocket attacks. You know, they would shoot RPGs from across the river, you know, try and lob them over all the concrete, you know, walls, and. Was a grind. I. I will say that. I mean, it was hot. Hot. Everybody always thinks Iraq's so hot all the time. But that deployment was when I was in Ramadi. Those, like freezing cold. But in Baghdad in 04, it was like the Star wars cantina. That's what the palace was like. I mean, you had everything from business casual. I mean, Dave Petraeus was running the. Running the place. You know, four star generals bouncing around, civilians, contractors, USAID Marines guarding the place. But we were day on, stay on. And all the Blackwater yahoos and, you know, Department of State guys were out in the pool, you know, getting on the piss at night and, you know, create more problems for. For themselves and need be. But it was. It was surreal, man. It really was like a Star wars cantina. It was just madness.

[A]

The war is very different depending on where you are and what you're doing, man.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. Going into the Green Zone, and you'd see, like, people that look like humans. You'd be going, wait a second. What's going on? And I had it pretty good. We were staying out in Baghdad, but we'd roll out to some, you know, some outstation somewhere, and there'd be, like, some SF ODA team living in the shit and, like, living off one MRE or two MREs a day and buying foods from the locals. And half the guys are, you know, got diarrhea and it's freaking gnarly. And they live like that for whatever it was, however long they're going to be there. And. And then you go to the, you know, Buy app, had a big, giant chow hall with Pizza Hut and all that stuff. And then the Green Zone was just, like, a freaking luxury.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Scenario it was.

[C]

And I think people. I'm not making it out to be more than it was, but, like, it Green Zone, people thought it was Safe Zone, but it wasn't. There's, you know, there was.

[A]

They were taking hits, for sure.

[C]

There was a big ID threat. You know, they're blowing up cars all over the place. You know, there's sporadic machine gun fire. They were just, you know, randomly lob rockets and, you know, mortar fire in the city, and we used to try and chase them down. It was this futile attempt, man. You know, in that environment, like, the Blackwater guys be flying, like, yeah, we're gonna go target these guys. Like, that's not planning, man. This is not how we lead, and this is how the Marines do it. So we ultimately separated ourselves from Team Blackwater, but, you know, they had their purpose.

[A]

So then you get done with that deployment. What's next?

[C]

School? School. I had gotten selected to go to the resident course in Quantico at the Expeditionary Warfare School, which is six months. And so I'm. And after that, it's a captain's prep course.

[A]

So it's like, for company command.

[C]

Yeah. You're a captain going through there, and then you've got a whole slew of majors that are your faculty at, advisors that guide you along the way, because they've already been company commanders, and so they're prepping you for that. But it's a lot of detailed planning, you know, mission prep. There's not. Not really a whole lot of pt. You kind of do it on your own. So it's very Academic environment. But it's. It's an important stepping stone, too, to prepare you for that next level of leadership. And that's when I got the call that I would not. This is interesting too, because the Marine Corps did have a great sense of humor. But they. They called like five of us in. They go, you. And we go into the office of the director, who's a full colonel at the time, says, you guys aren't graduating with your class. And we're like, what did we do? They said, you got orders to report in early. So we were like, you didn't get to walk across the stage or anything in the formal graduation. So I got orders to 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines. And they're like, you need to check in now. It was like they're getting ready for a big dump of Marines, all the new guys, and then you're start your training cycle. So I literally packed up all my stuff, drove across the country, towed my jeep out, parked in the parking lot. It was like a. Like a Thursday night or something. I roll in with all my stuff and then took command on Friday. And then the next week we're back in Twin and Palms. Training it was. And then I. Then I was living out of my office. And Marines hated it. They hated me for it. Like, oh, man, that guy's crazy.

[A]

You're just on 24 hours a day.

[C]

Yeah, we just. There was no point even getting an apartment or a house because the training cycle is just so intense. Everybody knows, like, that's been in the military, like you just want to go on deployment because the training is so relentless. Like, the way we prepare our guys is merciless. And the fact that I live in my office. The Marines knew they were never going to break. I wasn't a tyrant, you know, but it was just. It was convenient for me.

[A]

So, yeah, work to do. And so you guys finished workup. Do you know where you're going on deployment?

[C]

We didn't. We knew we were going with the. With the 15th MU. Like, we knew we were doing a MU deployment. And there's always three Muse that are that are that are running across the globe is the, you know, the planets 9114, 2500 Marines, soldiers and sailors in the amphibious ready group that carries us out there. But we didn't find out about our deployment until then. Colonel Boudreau, now retired Major General Boudreaux, got us on the flight deck of the USS Boxer and announced that we were going into country. Because for the listeners who remember, that was the surge that President Bush and General Abizaid and others, they ordered this surge. And I, you know, I always explain it as up until that point and you were in it at the time because we were two ships passing in the night. In 06, the insurgency had become what I call this giant game of whack a mole where we were just hammer them down in one city like Fallujah and we'd crush our asses into fine powder and they'd go to ground and then they'd seep away, they'd pop a somewhere else. And the surge allowed us to flood the battle space with what additional 15, 20,000 troops. And it was a tough decision to commit the theater reserve in the Middle east. And that's what the MEW was. But they did that and it allowed to really for us to put pressure on all those pockets of resistance simultaneously. And as you know, in 06, that's just where all the bad guys chose to fight. They pick Ramadi and they were going to make a stand. And you know, like we were saying, it really was a Super bowl of combat. Man you write about that is like there's to be a company commander, infantry company commander, in charge of over 250 Marine soldiers and sailors. In that environment where you're fighting every single day, four, five, six times a day on some days against a very well trained insurgent force, it doesn't get any more intense. And you know, we could talk leadership all day long, man, but you know, the leadership at every level was the thing that probably allowed us to survive. And it was survival. As you know, it wasn't winning or losing. We didn't have real metric. It was survival. I mean, if you had to take, you know, a scoreboard, I mean the amount of people my guys were lighting up and killing was. We were lighting up the scoreboard. I mean, but that, that was never really quantified to us. Like the administration or the senior level never really told us what winning was. A lot of guys have a problem with that. A lot of guys, you know, you have to know what that end state is. We never did. Killing bad guys is one metric. Mine was always bringing as many home alive as I could, just taking care of my boys and making sure that they knew what their mission was every single day. At the lowest level. Tough.

[A]

Yeah. You mentioned finding out, you know, the Marine Corps birthday. I'm go to the book here you say on, on the 231st birthday of the Marine Corps, the 15th MU commander, Colonel Brian. How do you say his name?

[C]

Boudreaux.

[A]

Boudreau stood on the Boxer's flight deck and announced that to the hundreds of Marines and sailors gathered that we'd be going into Iraq. They responded to the news exuberantly. I sensed an excitement from the new Marines, the ones who had never been in combat before. Many, I suppose, still harbored romantic notions of how combat is going to be, running into the blaze of battle, firing their M16s and annihilating an untrained, inferior enemy. If that's what they were thinking, they'd know better soon enough. They were about to experience the intensity of combat and see death on a scale like they'd never imagined. You guys knew or did you know? As a company commander, are you reading the intel reports every day of what's happening Ramadi? Because I know I got. I was supposed to deploy to Baghdad, and then two weeks before we left for deployment, they told us, we're going to Ramadi. But I had been following Ramadi the whole time. I knew what was going on there. You see the sit reps, you see how many people are getting killed there. We knew. We knew we were going into the belly of the beast. Did you have that same information?

[C]

We, we do a fly ahead to the. The RCT at the time and got a really good intel dump. We were getting some. Some indications and warnings on ship, but again, opsec on ship, they really didn't want us talking about it. We were in River City, which is complete communication shutdown for about two weeks. So can't call the family, can't hop on the Internet, none of that.

[A]

Are you guys tracking, like, when three eight there? Because I was there when three eight was there. Three eight lost, like 17 guys on that deployment. They lost, I think nine before I showed up, but that's a significant amount of guys to lose. Are you guys tracking that? You see another battalion in Ramadi, you know what's happening? You see those casualty reports?

[C]

Yeah, we. We were. We were getting all of that once John Smith and I. John Smith had Fox Company. He's still on active duty. He's a colonel now, but he and I were assigned to Ramadi. That. That was the thing too, is. So we rewind. They commit the theater reserve, which again is. The MEW is 2500 Marines, soldiers and sailors, and we disembark amphibious shipping from the three ships. But they send us out in piecemeal. So Echo and Fox, we got sent to Ramadi to work under 1:1 BCT. Now, I didn't even see John Smith for a while. Because they were farming us out like scab labor. And the other part of the MEW went up to Haditha, and then we had the MU command element over in camp. Korean village in Rupa.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Which we ultimately wound up closing our deployment out in Rupa, clearing that. That truck stop of a city out.

[A]

You roll in and it's the 101 AD. There's an army unit in charge. You end up with chuck ferry, the lieutenant colonel chuck fairly, from one. They had taken over from the first of the 506. My guys were really embedded with the first, the 506. I always try and explain to people at Inter, it was like, we're on the same team, bro, and like, let's go do this. Is that the feeling you got from working with one nine immediately?

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Combat Chuck, man, he was. He was a Green Beret too, you know, so having an SF dude, he, He. He didn't. The way he did business was cool. And we still keep in touch occasionally. But he had his. He had his finger on the pulse of the tribal leaders. He took care of them. I remember one of the first days rolling into the talk at Corregidor. You guys were Shark Base, but similar setup. We had unmanned aerial vehicles with feeds. We walk in one of the days, they're conducting a QRF raid. One of the local sheikhs, there were insurgents crossing the Euphrates, and they were attacking his house. And he. You see this real time happening, just like a Tom Clancy movie, man. It was intense. And, you know, Lt. Col. Ferry, he sends out his QRF and just smashes these guys in the face at the same time, wins over the sheik and allowed him to barter deals. And even later on during that deployment, you know, with the awakening nights and having all of these locals on our side basically telling the insurgents, look, man, if you keep dropping mortars on these positions, we're just going to like, they're gonna cut their throats in the middle of the night. And that was their, you know, Iraqi on Iraqi. This is not US forces doing that.

[A]

Yep, you're. You're. The rest, you know, you show up. And again, guys, I'm reading tiny excerpts of the book. The book has all kinds of awesome detail in there. Great writing, brings you into the situation. I'm gonna hit some highlights of it. So get the book. It's Echo and Ramadi. You say here, this is like a photo op that you guys do. You get done with this photo op. And you say, as my Marines fought now on Bar Province, I Wanted the physical movement associated with killing to be instinctual. I never wanted them to hesitate when it mattered most or to have them feel remorse for their duty to do so. They needed to know that in the end, I would bear the burden, the inescapable burden of command. I spoke in forceful, confident tone and encompasses much of the advice I'd accumulated over the years from my mentors. Quote, this is the first time you in combat. For most of you, you will have to fire your weapon at the enemy. You will have to kill. I don't expect that this will be easy for anyone. It shouldn't be. But know this. I am ordering you to kill. You will kill. And when this is all over, it will be my responsibility. It will be my burden to carry, because I am ordering you to do it. We are marines. We follow orders. You'll kill the enemy, but you will leave this place without regret. And we will win. Is that understood? Putting out the word to the boys. It's like a little nice, little pre combat post traumatic stress release, you know, like, hey guys, you guys do what you got to do. This is on me.

[C]

Yeah, again, I had a lot of great examples of leaders that prepared me for that. So I. It's not like it's original thought I'm probably not the only guy that ever said something like that. But I think it was very important that they hear from the boss. And you know, people got to remember when you're leading a large group of marines or soldiers like that, most of them are 18, 19 year old kids. I mean, you rewind like six months before that speech on the side of this hill with all these kids with their heads shaved. They're probably playing high school football, man. And now I'm ordering them to do some of the most unimaginable things that humans have to do and to see and, you know, witness some of the worst things humanity has to offer. And what we're dealing with in Ramadi, man, it was, it was, it was insane. But I never ever wanted those guys to hesitate when it came down to taking another human life. Because that, you as you know that that is an unnatural event for a human to kill another human. It's just unless you're a psychopath or sociopath or whatever. I never wanted those guys to hesitate when they put the stock of that shoulder, a stock of that rifle on their shoulder and look through the sights and had to make that one life changing decision to squeeze that trigger and take another human life. I didn't want them to hesitate because their Survival depended on it, minded everybody around it. And that's a tough thing to do, man. But Marines are great at a lot of things, as, you know, like, they can run fast, they're, you know, smart asses, they, they talk sharp. But you know what, they also, they also follow orders. They're really good at following orders. And we breed that into them, we train that into Marines. And you know, they never let me down, man. I wouldn't be sitting here today if, if that leadership at every level and those young guys who, man, and they took care of each other and me better than anything I'd ever, ever experienced. You write about that as the boss too, is like how you, you built this love, man, for these guys. And you know, when I go talk to big loot groups like you do in the corporate and private arenas, they want me to talk about leadership. And I do. And I share that part of the story, as a matter of fact, is an important part. But, you know, the Marines are great at, you know, training for all these things. And you know, in our locker rooms and commands, we've got these billboards with, you know, all of our leadership traits and principles. Justice, judgment, discipline and, you know, integrity. And like, those are important, man. But in a deployment like this, with the stakes so high, what I saw and what I've seen really through my career is there's a lot of other words that don't make it into the textbooks that professional warriors attend. And they're important. They're words like love and compassion and understanding and patience, man. Those are tested daily, as you know, and those aren't words guys like me and you, you know, big, tough door kickers, you know, they, those are words that are assimilated with weakness. And I now, through a little bit of age and wisdom and experience, you understand those words are very important, especially young leaders. And I think that being able to share that with them in any setting and even in, in private sector or universities or whoever it is, I'm talking to a first responders. Like those are very important words as a leader.

[A]

Yeah, if you don't care about your people, they will 100 know it and they will not care about you. And that's the way it works. And really, if you think about every, you know, when I look back at my career in the, in the military, the leaders, the best leaders were the ones you knew they cared about you and they, you knew that they cared about your guys. And you know, you know, McFarland, of course, and I don't know how much you Got to interact with McFarland because you were over on the other side of Camp Ramadi. But, like, you could see every. Every breath that that guy cared about his entire brigade that he had working. He cared about every single individual.

[C]

And.

[A]

And you felt it. You felt it when he was in the room with you. You felt it on the street. You felt it. And so, yeah, 100. If you don't have that, it's. It's not good.

[C]

You can teach people a lot of stuff. You can teach them how to fight better, how to run better, how to shoot straighter, but you're right there. And I say this a lot. There's one thing I never figure out, how to teach Marines how to care. If you don't care about what you're doing, man, I'm telling you, get out of the military. Get out of the job you're in. Go sell ice cream or be Uber driver. Like, you should love it. Like, if you don't care about what you're doing, that's what builds great teams is. Is having those leaders in those positions that really understand that you have to care.

[A]

Yeah. And then there's, you know, that's the ultimate dichotomy, is you're going to take these guys that you care about more than anything else in the world, and you're going to put them in situations where they're. They are going to be at risk. They are going to be at risk. And, you know, you. You rolled it right into the Malab district. And the Malab was like, you could start your stopwatch when you went on patrol in the lab district and you were going to get contacted in half an hour or whatever. It was 20 minutes, 35 minutes. Like you were going to get contacted when you rolled out there. And you know that you're putting those. Your guys in harm's way on every day that they roll out.

[C]

Yeah, I remember you. You wrote about it. You. You call the Malab South Central. And like most people equate that to LA and how bad it is rife with crime and gangster. That was the Malab. When you went south on Route Michigan, man, Like, you could just stick your toe over there and it's like rounds would start coming and then you jump back. It's like. And we were in a shitty district, too, in Katana and the industrial district. And. But we were very lucky. I think we. I don't know how we digress, but about Chuck Fair was like, took us in as a team. We felt very, very included in what we were undertaking. With them. And they were great force suppliers.

[A]

I can't imagine how happy he was as a commander owning a shitty battle space. And he has 250 Marines showed up. He must have been freaking pumped.

[C]

And you talked about the casualties from 3, 8 and the Marine battalions that were over there. And, you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the 2004 Ramadi vets from. From 2, 4 that, you know, they lost a lot of guys in April. But when we went into the city again, even my Marines who were Veterans of the 2004 fight in Ramadi, said, it's gotten so much worse, they couldn't believe it. And there was probably five times as many troops owning the city. But when we checked in with Chuck, all those companies in one night, infantry with Manchu, their company strength was only like, in some cases, 75 or 80 soldiers. And they've been slogging it out already for about 10 months on an 18 month deployment. And they were just taking some real heavy losses. So, yeah, when we roll in and I think I was at like 2239 Marines or pure, maybe it was like, maybe it was less than. Maybe it's like 198 or something pure, like off the boat. Like, we had our enablers. But when I got into country, I operated a little differently. I mean, they loved it because we look like rock stars with our numbers and sheer force and aggressiveness. But I would see all these weirdos hanging around these camps like HET guys. Like, they're former Green Berets, but they're doing these biometric scanning things where they hold the thing up and they're cataloging all the insurgents or good guys, bad guys. I'm like, you got a rifle? You want to go out and fight? Like, yeah, sir. And I sent him over to my first sergeant, Tom Foster. He's like, jesus, are you killing me? It's like, so we built like, I had HET guys, I had cad guys, like, that's that. I had Ben Sledge. He's going to be on the next episode of this show. We're all Ramadi vets. And I got. I'll tell you the story about Ben, but, you know, I had just a lot of enablers, interpreters, dog handlers, you know, psyops guys. I took whoever wanted to get in the fight and I brought them out there with me, and they were happy to do it, but it did give us a lot of freedom movement and we loved it. And working, working for, you know, Lt. Col. Ferry, like, he did he did love it. It was tough, though, man, because the army got into this bad habit, too, of getting locked into one position. They didn't want to drive around the city because they were getting smacked with subsurface IEDs. And, I mean, huge bombs buried under the road that were snapping Bradley vehicles into. And it was. It was really. It was scary. And I think it paralyzed them a little bit. They were doing what they could, but when we went in and we worked there and then they handed us off to 177 armor, I worked for Bear Johnson, and he's a great guy to work for, too. And I remember, like, when we checked in, he's like, hey, Scotty, so what do you need from me? I was like, we're good, sir. He goes, well, how are you gonna get around the vehicle without vehicles? He goes, you want some. Want some Humvees or Bradley's? I'm like, nope. Well, how are you gonna get around the city? I go, we're light infantry, sir. We're gonna walk. He goes, you're gonna walk? I said, you're damn right we're gonna walk, sir. I said, we're gonna send teams of Marines out of all these houses, and we're gonna clear through this city systematically. And if a bad guy sticks his head around a corner, they're going to run into one of my squads or teams of Marines, and they're going to get fucked up. And that's what they did. And it was. Those are long days. Clearing Western Ramadi, but we worked systematically, and then we. We kind of rallied it. Cop steel there in the center, but working for Bear Johnson, too, was as good as working with. With Chuck Ferry. I mean, they were just good commanders. They were good, yeah. And we're a little discerning within the service branches, but, you know, you could smell an imposter a mile away. That's how we get to. Is like, you know, your meter gets pretty fine and calibrated after years and years of service and. But they were. They weren't imposters, man. They were switched on soldiers.

[A]

You're getting like a. Going back to being. Being on the east side. You getting checked in. Guy named Captain John Tate. He kind of takes you out there, going to check out the. The various locations that you're going to be, set up, areas that you're going to control. I thought this was good. Tate turned to me, you. You out. He's showing you around. He's giving you. What is it called? Like a. Like a.

[C]

Like a leader's recon.

[A]

Yeah, Leaders recon. But it reminds me of like, what do they do up in Hollywood? Echo Charles. When you, like, drive around looking at the stars of the homes or whatever, what's that called? A tour?

[B]

Yeah, some kind of tour.

[A]

Like a tourist. You're on like a tourist run of seeing all the.

[C]

We weren't on uncovered observation bus, but.

[A]

You'Re about to get out of this Humvee and he's like. Tate turned to me and said, okay, so when we get out of the truck, don't around, run fast and get inside. We had a lot of sniper fire in the area. Cool, Cool. It was good advice too. No sooner had we gotten in the building that we heard small arms fire and the snap of rounds hitting the building and random gunfire in the distance. And then you talk about living in, you know, what these various ops look like, which just look like the straight up, you know, World War II freaking blown out buildings filled with sandbags and whatnot. And. And then you guys take over. You guys take over these positions. Fast forward a little, you say. In Iraq, I faced two pressing responsibilities. The first was to bring all my boys home safely. There were times when I told myself not to give a about anything else but that. But I couldn't do that because we were sent to Iraq to kill the enemy. It meant I had to put my men into dangerous situations. Despite the admirable love I had for my Marines, I knew they'd have to fight and possibly die. My only goal goal was that by killing more insurgents, we'd suffer fewer casualties. Like an insurance policy that we'd have to pay for every day. That's what you and I were just talking about. And there is, in my opinion, being more aggressive is the safest thing to do. Like being more aggressive taking them. If you sit on base, the. The enemy will get you. They, especially in Ramadi, like, they will surround you, they will mortar the out of you and you will. You will take casualties. Of course, at this time, you still got your wife at home and your Bailey, your daughter. So you got that going on in the back of your mind as well. And you end up taking off, biting off more. Like once you're there, you establish yourself, you take it. Take even more.

[C]

Yeah, the opposite. Dave. Dave Norrell, he was a major and he was 19 infantry guy. And they just assumed, like, we could only handle so much battle space. And I wrote about it, but, you know, there's a big map on the wall. It's plexiglass. And so I just grabbed the sharpie said, man, I got this, sir. And like I just started adding real estate to what we would control because we knew that, you know, like John Tate's company and the other guys, they, you know, Jamie Ghidori, like they were their company strength was so light. We wanted to try and help and take some of the burden off of them. So we own more real estate. Part of that was the malab, which again was, you know, we got some, some serious firefights down there. I mean we got, you know, that's where Sergeant Espinosa got shot. He's going to be at our reunion next month for the 24 reunion too. But again, John Espinosa was in the battle of Ramadi in 04. And then he came back as a squad leader and took a sniper round across the chest. And man, that's, that's one of those stories too. Like I've shared this before but you know, when John got shot, we had to go in and we had to pull the platoon out. We had to get tanks, which you know, are like a godsend over there, God bless them. And so we roll in and you know, he's already gone. And you know, as a leader you just have this blind faith in the system. That's why I wrote about, you know, our C130 brothers and you know, how our wounded get back. But you know, the story of Espinosa is just one that you think only happens in the movies, but it happened in real life and it doesn't just happen in my unit. It happens a lot. How this kid who's again, he's a salty seasoned sergeant now with, you know, another comment. But he's 22, he's a 22 year old kid. And the responsibility of leading, you know, 14, 15 guys, that's a lot. And then he's shot, he flies out, dies in the helicopter, you know, flatlines, comes back and then I don't know how he does it, but he Shanghai's rides back to his marines and when first Sergeant Foster found out and he shows up in the, in the tactical operations center, his jawbot hit the floor because his family thinks Sarn Espinoza is coming home. And this guy snuck out of the hospital with still in with his bloody cammies in a bag and he's wearing like some goofy Air Force sweatsuit and you know, gets a ride in through Romani like from the army guys like modern day Uber on the battlefield, man, and gets back there. All of that, that whole story, I didn't know it happened. Yeah, I didn't know any of that because I'm in the fight. I have another 250 guys that I got to take care of every single day. So I didn't know any of this happened. But when I was doing interviews, and I did over 100 interviews when I wrote Echo and Hermodi and I. His wife Heide, she's like, thank you for, like, talking to him because he doesn't talk about a lot. And when I finally shut up, I told him, you know, about the book was how I was writing it and the stories that were going to be important, the periods. And when I finally shut up, he talked for about two hours, which is an astronomical feat for Espinosa. And he knows this because I love him, but he was never real Chatty Cathy, you know, Jocko. He was a businessman. Marines feared him. He didn't talk a lot, but he said a lot. Just one of those guys, you know, and always took care of business and always took care of the Marines. And it was. It was tough when he, when he got, you know, hit. But then he shows back up, man, it was just surreal.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I've gotten asked a lot about. And I'll ask you the same thing. Like, people will ask me, did you know you were going to take casualties? And I don't think it's fatalistic to say this, but, oh, a hundred percent. Like, you are seeing there's. There's wounded and killed every day and your guys are going out every day and you cannot play that game and roll those dice every day and think that you're not going to take any casualties. Like, it's not good, it's impossible. Did you get that sense when you got there or when you. Well, you know, after the first three days or after you got to OP Hotel and looked around and went, oh.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, Opie Hotel again, it's not like the Ritz Carlton by any stretch of the means. It was a. I don't know what was like a six story. Looked like a six story piece of concrete. Swiss cheese, man. It was just a hole of a building and it sat right on Route Michigan, which is a main artery for supply and convoys and all that jazz. But we knew from day one. And, you know, I'd already had a few deployments, I'd already been to combat. And you just know guys are going to get wounded and guys are going to die. And that's part of our business. I think that's what people subscribe to when they raise their right hand and they make that decision to serve their country. And we just need to keep inspiring young people to do that. I mean, that's a tough thing, too. When you write about stuff like this and you share this, a lot of our authors do, who are veterans. And when you write about war, that's a dichotomy. It's like you share this, the grisly facts of what it's like to be in combat. But I also write and share the beauty that comes from it. And our connection here and all the amazing connections I have in my life to this day are somehow born through my service to my country and what I did. And I'm not saying that can't happen in other vocations, but it's very unique with what we do. You know, it's. It's. It's a beautiful thing to, you know, see those things come out of war, you know, which is, again, some of the worst things humanity has to offer, and the conditions are just ungodly. But there's also some beauty that comes from it and some tragedy, you know, But I think focusing on all the greatness that came out of 20 years of war is probably what sustains me. And I know a lot of guys struggle with it. A lot of guys, you know, in my company have killed themselves. I don't ever sugarcoat it. I mean, they took their own life by suicide. And, you know, the numbers are just astronomical. I don't know what the disconnect is. I never try and do the math. We've tried for years and years to be part of the solution, but when you see things like that at such a young age, that's why it was very important for me to go back and order them to kill. You know, they. They needed to know that just to have that pressure valve released a little bit. And in Ramadi, it was tough.

[A]

I'm gonna fast forward in the book here a little bit. Lance Corporal Jonathan Neris. Am I saying that right? A Fireteam leader in 4th Platoon's 1st Squad raced to the rooftop of ECP 8. He could see muzzle flashes of the insurgents weapons coming out of windows as close as 50 meters away. Neris and the other marines drew down on the insurgents, aiming their sights on the enemy fighters running back and forth between buildings. As Marines spotted them, they opened up with their weapons. The firing was intense. Deafening bursts rang out from squad, automatic weapons and medium machine guns, making it almost impossible to communicate to each other. As they fought, Naris could see the bodies of the insurgents drop to the ground as the Marines tore them apart. Naris caught sight of Libby out of the corner of his eye and then heard him say, I'm reloading my.203. Libby then took a knee to slide open the breach of the grenade launcher mounted under his rifle. Moments later, Neris looked for Libby to come back up. When he didn't, nervous, looked down and saw that Libby had fallen. He immediately dropped down to his squad leader's side and saw a bulge in his neck. Libby's eyes stared directly back at him. Neris's heart dropped. The other Marines quickly gathered around, illuminating Libby with their flashlights to assess the damage. Neris couldn't believe what was happening. He stood frozen and frozen in shock. It didn't seem real. All he could say to Libby was, I'm sorry. Still not realizing the full gravity of the situation, Neris instinctually turned back into the fight and resupplied his Marines with ammunition mission. He had to think about the men who were still alive. They were now his responsibility. So fast forward a little bit, you say. My convoy rolled up to the position. 4th Platoon, which held ECPA, was commanded by 2nd Lt. Seth Nicholson and his platoon sergeant, Staff Sgt. Brent Miller. Nicholson told me that Libby had suffered a gunshot wound to the back of the neck. The bullet struck him just above the the protective ballistic plate. We didn't have time to wait. I asked Nicholson, is Libby the only casualty that needs to be Casavacked? He answered, yes. I went back and told Somerville, get the trucks turned around. We don't have time to wait for Kazakh. We are the Casavac. I ordered the Marines to get libby into my hum v4 marines carried him to the back of my vehicle. As they did, they yelled at each other, be careful with them. Be careful. Easy, easy with him. The convoy roared back home. With Somerville's vehicle and lead, we pressed past enemy positions and rushed past OP South House, which was occupied by 1st Platoon. Firefights engulfed the city, and our vehicles got caught in the crossfire. I heard Flanagan in the back of the truck yelling, hang on, man. Hang on. Come on, Libby, hang in there. Flanagan leaned over the seat and yelled at me, sir, I can't get a fucking pulse. There's no pulse. There's blood everywhere. Keep talking to him, I said. The Marines got Libby out as carefully as possible. There was no time to put him on a stretcher. Doc had put a cervical collar on him and inserted emergency tracheotomy tube in his mouth to clear the airway. I stared down at Libby. I thought to myself, God, he looks so young. He's so young. Please, please hang in there, brother. I couldn't believe this was the first casualty the battalion was suffering. It was happening to us. Echo Company. I tried to press inside the battalion aid station. First Sergeant Foster, who met me as I exited the vehicle, grabbed my shoulder. Sir, I've got him. We've got it from here. We'll take care of him. Deep down, I wanted to stop everything I was doing and stay with Libby. But the battalion aid station had a top notch crew of medics, and Foster had things under control. He was right. There was nothing more I could do. I had to focus on the other 200 Marines that were still out there in direct contact. The chaos and bloodshed were not over. We had a long night ahead of us. It was just the beginning of the longest night of fighting we would encounter. Yeah, that's one thing that I think that in the 90s, growing up in the 90s, and I think you probably saw some of this in the 90s, but you probably didn't. I don't know if you got this in the Marine corps. In the 90s, in the SEAL teams, we were always kind of planning for one mission and we would do, you know, in my mind, we would go and execute our mission and then when we would be done. And, you know, Ramadi was not like that. You go out, you do a mission, and when you get back, it doesn't matter what happened on that mission. The enemy will still be fighting. There's still operations that you are going to have to conduct. And in this particular case, you are going right back out immediately.

[C]

Yeah, you. You understand it. And I lost guys before this, but Libby was the first casualty we'd taken in the battalion, in the whole country. And he was one of my guys, so it was tough. And I write a lot about Libby. I'm still very close to his families. Just like you and Mike Mansour when he got killed. There's a lot of similarities between our careers and what happened and losing guys on the battlefield. And to this day, you and I are still very connected to the families that supported us while we fought. She's. How do they do it?

[A]

Yeah, Like Debbie. Yeah.

[C]

You know, I always say, like, I don't know where Gold Star families come from. Like, they breed these young warriors, then you lose them in combat. I only have one word to describe them. Extraordinary. Just extraordinary people to lose so much, but, you know, they continue to love us so much. I don't get it. Like, it's, it's. I don't know where they get People like this, but they're amazing. And that isn't something everybody has the capacity to do as, you know, to maintain that connection. You know, 20 years after we fought there, Jocko to pick up the phone and call and, you know, say, how are you? You know. You know, Libby's brother and I are very good friends. You know, we've watched each other grow up, you know, over the last 20 years as well. But I. I think it is important to, you know, it helps me anyway, to sustain me. I feel also that, you know, there's no expiration date on my commission as a. As an officer. I think that it's a privilege that we have to be a leader for your entire lifetime. And that doesn't stop when you leave the Marine Corps. It didn't stop when I left for Mahdi. I'm still very, very honored to have that capacity. And I also understand that's something that not everyone has. Not everybody has that capacity. Not everybody has the capacity to write important stories and barf your life into 300 pages and hang it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Costco. But you do it in hopes that it will help somebody. And for those people that don't have that capacity, because they're out there, not everybody has to do it. Not everybody has the capacity to lead. You understand, the leadership and followership is equally as important. And that dichotomy. One of the things from that story you read from Corporal Libby being killed that night, that will highlight. What I was just sharing is you do it because you don't want the stories like Ramadi to fall under the other great battles like Fallujah or Baghdad or Kandahar. Like, that's why I wrote the book. Not just to honor those brave warriors and the families and the interpreters that fought alongside me. It's a very important historical battle. And I didn't want it to fall into the shadows. But it's not really a book about war. It's a book about people. And right after it came out, I get an email. It's from this guy. His name is. I'll share. His name is Phil Morehouse. And he says, dear sir, my name is Staff Sergeant Phil Morehouse, and I was with Task Force 19 Infantry. And I was there the night that Corporal Libby was killed. In this. In the cocktail, he said, and I remember the call coming across the radio. I ran across the street to the cache, the hospital. And I remember your convoy pulling in through the maze of chem lights. And I remember your Marines carrying Corporal Libby I remember the sound that brakes made on the vehicles and the dust cloud that surround them when they stopped. And I remember you, and I remember the look on your face, and I remember every single step you took that night. He says, and I haven't thought about those things in about 12 years until I read your book. And so obviously, you know, he goes on in the email and, you know, I responded back with, you know, as. As many words as I could of gratitude, you know, for him sharing that, to really show me how he viewed my leadership through a different lens. And, you know, that was. That was a tough email. And, you know, I've asked Phil if, you know, I can share that story. And he's. He said absolutely, because it was important to him. But, you know, Phil Morehouse, he was this nameless, faceless sergeant that, you know, that I just probably breezed by every time I went in and out of the talk. And to see that through his eyes, you know, 12 years after the fact. I don't know what the word is I use to describe it, other than gratitude. But, you know, as a leader, you don't set out to do things for feedback, for appreciation or thanks. But I think that as a human being and as you move into different spaces, like most people are liars when they say it doesn't feel good to have recognition or to have somebody tell you something you never saw. So it was interesting, you know, when I got that email from Philosophy again, I was just grateful that he shared it with me. And when you do share important stories of your life and writing is important, that's why I do what I do. I think that those just boil to the surface, and that's one. It's kind of a heartrending story, but there's also been some really funny stuff that has boiled the surface as well, you know, you know, thanks to social media to some degree, which I'm not a fan of, but it's an necessary tool. You know, there's a chapter I write in the book about blowing up this huge weapons cache and throwing these mopeds on. And, you know, I don't know if we're going to talk about or not, but we found so much. The Marines were digging in the yard like dogs digging up explosives. And I mean, it was probably 30ft long and about, you know, 3ft high of shit we needed to blow up. And you know, how it was to get an EOD guy out there in Ramadi, like they were busy day on, stay on. And so this convoy calls to request permission to Enter friendly lines. And so they show up, and they're an EOD unit and they're Marines of all things. I said, where are you guys from? They're like, camp Pendleton, sir. I go, all right. So we're doing the grip and grin, and the staff sergeant, I says, hey, man, we got a real problem on our hands. I said, it's like three in the morning. I said, we got all this explosives we need to get rid of. We need to do a command detonation. I said, do you got any C4 in the truck? She goes, oh, we got it done. So they line this thing up and they in it like, clock's ticking, man. And, you know, like, when the sun comes up, the insurgents are ready to rise and start, you know, shooting at Americans. So we want to get this job done before daylight. And they pack it full and they say, sir, we don't. We need something to tamp the charge down, so we need to put something heavy on top of it so everything just doesn't blow up like a big confetti bomb. So the Marines drag two minibuses over, and they push it onto this thing, and then the ends are still exposed. And so the Marines go and they get these insurgent mopeds, and they throw the mopeds on top as well. They're like, yeah, fuck you, insurgents. We stole your mopeds at your using. And they found him in the house. So that's the title of the chapter, by the way. It's called Mopeds. But so the staff sergeant's like, hey, sir, you're gonna want. You get your guys down. This is going to be one hellacious explosion. And it was like, oh, my God, like fireworks on the 4th of July. And sure enough, the Marines did not get down. And you can hear him, like, whooping and hollering like yeehaw. In the middle of the night in Ramadi, like the big fireworks show. Like a bunch of school girls, you know, cheering to pep rally. And, you know, we get. We get done and, you know, carry on. It's, you know, business as usual. Well, fast forward again. Like the book had just come out. And I get this strange DM from. From on Facebook. And he goes on and says, hey, sir, I'm in Jamaica on vacation right now. He's like, I'm not sure if you remember, but I'm reading your book, Echo and Hermione. I get to the chapter called Mopeds. That was me. And so the staff sergeant, who's this name again, A nameless, faceless Staff Sergeant. Like, he's in Jamaica on vacation or the Bahamas or something, and he just happens to be reading my book. And so there's a lot of great things that are born out of, you know, sharing important stories. So anyway, it was a good one. I like that one.

[A]

We were hitting a target, bad guy target. We end up finding, like, we start finding little caches or caches around the property. And this was like just. Just north of Ramadi and like a little bit more of a rural area. And then the guys. It was a little bit of a farm scenario. And there was a big, like a. Like a barn that had a bunch of hay in it. And they start, like, poking around in the hay, and sure enough, start finding. Start finding more, start finding more. But it's a massive pile of hay. And same thing. Like, I'm looking at my watch going a. This is not. You know, we cannot stay here for much longer. And, you know, so one of my just brilliant young seals came up with a brilliant recommendation. It was like, hey, why don't we just burn this thing? And I had the brilliant, you know, leadership to say, yeah, sounds like, good call. And they. Then I next, you know, so I give the, yeah, go ahead. Let's burn this. You know, and then 15 seconds later, I see guys walking from the Humvees to the barn carrying the big cans of diesel that we carried for. And there. Anyways, big fire, some secondary explosions, but, you know, very similar thing where you're like, okay, well, I guess we don't have to worry about that cash anymore.

[C]

It's so like, just when you think, like you had an original operation or an idea. It's like, I wrote about that too, when we were working for Bear Johnson, except I got you beat, man. Oh, yeah. I don't like to one up, you know, this isn't like, you know, a measuring contest or anything, but no kidding. Same thing when we're in Western Ramadi. One of the Marines, you know, being smart. He's like, hey, sir, I figured it out. Like, who's shooting at us? They were wearing running shoes, and he's looking through his observation scope. And I was like, yeah, that makes sense, man. No one wants to get a fight with the Marines. And flip flops. So he targets these guys, and they were running into this huge wadi. Like, it's. It's a ravine that's covered in reeds and, you know, tall grasses. And we knew that they were running in there as a weapons cachet, but the thing was huge. This is like five football Fields long separating that part of the city. So I call back to Cop Steel and I requested a tanker truck of fuel. And no shit, I'd like to find this kid too, because I didn't have his name. This Private First Class, an E2 in the army, rolls up in daylight in downtown Ramadi in a freaking refuel truck. And it's him and like one other jackweed agent driver. And he's like, hey, sir, I'm PFC Flip Flop. I heard you need to burn something down. I'm like, yeah, man, this is a huge weapons cache and they're drawing their weapons from it. And this is where we're having problems. So he hoses this whole thing down with, I don't know, 250 gallons or 5. Just ooze like he's out there and like he just checks out, does it? Doesn't say goodbye or anything like, all right, sir, I'm out of here. Just leaves like, God bless that kid, man. Yeah, again, find that kid for me, man. Like, I want to give him a medal or a hug or something. But now we have another dilemma. Like one of the Marines, like, hey, sir, how are we gonna light this on fire? I'm like, that's a good idea. That good problem. So one of the Marines puts the HEDP in his 203. Is like, I got this. And like with one thud, thunk. And we have a picture of it somewhere. I don't know, but it is. Yeah. And then like yours, everything starts cracking off. You know, the rocket motors for RPGs are sailing in the air and. But that's.

[A]

I mean, again, it's another day in Roman.

[C]

Do they teach us this in school somewhere? Man? Did we learn this in a class?

[A]

This was a good, good story here about, About Colonel Fair, Colonel Ferry. Again, I'm fast forwarding. There's so much, so much good information here. Get the book. But you're. You're about to drop some Gimlers, which is guided, mean guided multiple launcher rocket system. 20 foot telephone pole, carries 200 pound warhead. You're. You're making the call from the field. Manchu 3, this is Longhorn 6. Request Gimlers, one rocket each. Sector 26 5. Building 66 and 6 7. Immediate suppression. Over. The voice from the talk, red back. Distance one side, 165 meters from friendlies to target. My company officer, my company executive officer, First Lieutenant Bobby Lee was inside the talk when I called in the Gimler's mission. Watching the video feeds from the drones buzzing over our zone, he heard My call for fire support come across the radio, as did the air Naval gunfire liaison company, Anglico representative and the army battle captain who stood watch over the talk staff. Lt. Col. Ferry was standing beside Lee when the battle captain turned to Ferry and said, sir, you do know that each one of those rockets costs like a hundred thousand dollars. Fairy's response affirmed the unwavering loyalty he had for the Marines he had commanded in his task force. I don't give a if they cost a hundred million dollars. Ferry replied with certainty. They killed the US Marine tonight. Approve the mission. Hell yeah.

[C]

Yeah. That's how he rolled.

[A]

God bless him.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I was the colonel that was in charge of the first, the 506. When I was there, it was like I'd been in Ramadi for like maybe a week and I was over. It's a guy named Colonel Ronald P. Clark. Like now he's a general, but he was just so outstanding. But I was in his talk and he had guys calling for fire and just watching him. The way he was calculating things, the way he, you know, the way he commanded, it was just epic. And I, I felt so comfortable because I ended up leaving a detachment with him for the entire deployment. Guys that lived on corrector with him. But I would, I trusted that guy with, with no reservation whatsoever. But just seeing him, the support he'd give to his guys, my guys, one team. Just epic is very similar to what you're talking about. Fairy here.

[C]

That get that Gimler's though was a lifesaver. It was just kind of the outset of technology. It was GPS guided and you know, it's a lot of explosives to park literally a football field away from your position. And honestly it was kind of underwhelming when they hit because they go through the top of the roof and just really suck the life out of everything. But what was cool I didn't write about this was I had gotten a CD. You remember when you have CDs even of some of the footage from that night and that one of the Anglico guys and they're a mix. Like you know, some army, but it's mostly Marines that were in the cell. And I knew the guy and I says, hey, could you get this back to the battery? Because those rockets came from Fallujah, it's like not sitting at the camp. And I was in the, the chow hall one day in Ramadi and which was rare because we were at Camper Maddie, which is the, the big camp. We lived in the city, but we were back for A brief or something, and this huge superhero looking soldier, big black guy, like, just looked like a superhero. And I turn around, I see this. He puts his hand on my shoulder. He goes, are you Captain Hughesing? I was like, oh, what did I do now? I always, you know, I always think I did something, something. But he says, I got that footage that you sent back. I'm the battery Commander Gimler's mission. He goes, I want to tell you, he's like, no one's ever done that for me. It's like I sent him, you know, care package. But, you know, the guys on the gun line, they never get to see where those rounds hit. So I don't know what made me think about that, but. Because you just don't have a lot of time on your hands over there. But that's. I don't know, I was taught early on in my career too, like, it's the little things that matter the most, you know? So that was probably.

[A]

Yeah, I bet you guys were freaking stoked to see that.

[C]

Yeah, it was pretty cool.

[A]

Fast forward a little bit. Operation Sackets harbor was the. Our last big push while working with Task Force 1 9. And again, I just skipped over 130 pages of the book. So, like, get the book, get the detail. You're going up in the Sofia district. The first day of the operation was your birthday. So that's, that's always a good sign. Around midnight, you're in position, you get marines and you guys start like finding all these blue plastic 30 gallon water drum. Each one of them is filled with AK47s. You have a vehicle get rolled over, you know, but luckily you guys are all right. And fast forward a little bit. At the end of Operation Sackets harbor, we were exhausted. We were also elated. Our tactic of applying relentless pressure on the enemy and forcing them to react to us provided measurable results. We had detained dozens more. We detained dozens more suspected insurgents and confiscated more weapons and contraband than we could count. Matched with the combined results from Fox Company. The task force commander was more than pleased with how his marines performed Echo Company and made a definite impression on the insurgents after only a short time in Ramadi. We had been in direct contact with enemy two to three times a day ever since we arrived. We could almost set our watches by when we'd get attacked. After morning and evening prayers, the mosques called a prayer broadcast from loudspeakers on the minarets and served as our alert system to stand ready to fight. Throughout the action, the marines expended over 50,000 rounds of 5, 5, 6, 762 and 50 caliber ammunition. We devastated the enemy with countless 120 millimeter main gun rounds and shoulder fired rockets and lob dozens of, of M67 high explosive hand grenades into enemy enemy positions. In addition to the multiple Gimler's rocket strikes we'd called in on enemy positions, the task force had already credited the Marines of Echo company with over 50 enemy killed and dozens more enemy wounded. The numbers were impressive. We detained countless more that were on the task force most wanted list of HVIs. Echo Company had lost one Marine and we were fortunate that we suffered just over a handful of wounded in action. As satisfied as we were with our performance, we knew that more hard fighting was ahead of us and Marines were ready. Yeah, that's a lot of, that's a lot of combat activity.

[C]

We redefined for Colonel Ferry and others how vicious Marines can be if given the opportunity. They created these what they called speedball ammo resupplies based off all of the different calibers. And they would pre stage that at Camp Ramadi at Corregidor and they would have them on standby because he knew we were going through so much ammo, they couldn't keep up with us. So they'd have these palletized, you know, care packages of ammo and they would just ship them out and God bless them. Yeah, yeah, they were, again, they're, they were getting at it. But that, that was, I mean, that's what we had to do. Like you said, you have to be aggressive. Not reckless, but aggressive and disciplined and focused on what you're doing. And that's why we were there. And it's not a spoiler alert. Like I literally picked up the phone and this is, you know, maybe a, maybe it was during an interview with the book. I called Jared Norrell. He's like a JRITC principal now. And I says, hey, can you confirm this, sir? I said, I've heard urban legend that only a few months after we left Ramadi in 07 that they were doing like a 5k fun run down route Michigan. He goes, that's God's honest truth. He goes, what you. And I'm not taking all the credit here, but you only know what, you know, what my Marines and soldiers and sailors did in that short amount of time really turned the tide of the war. Everybody did. The guys and, you know, the Marines on our flank, the, the other task forces that were working in zone, the special operators, you know, and I tell a lot of the guys who Were, you know, we had a bunch of ODA guys in there. We had SEALS in there. And, you know, working with those guys, they're off, you know, doing specialized missions. But I always tell those guys to their faces too, is like, it's, you know, if it wasn't for the soldiers and marines setting the conditions for special operators to do what they do without impunity, that couldn't happen in. In an environment like that where you're in a city of over 300,000 people who are trying to live their lives to, you know, to grow up and hope for some sense of normalcy. You have to have those massive numbers creating that blanket of pressure. So all the bad guys on the target list, we can send in the jockos and, you know, the riches and all the ODA guys that were going through. There's some of them, I think at times caused more friction than I would have liked because some things would go bump in the night and there'd be a ruckus on a grander scale than I'm portraying it. But it's basically a targeted hit or a raid. And, you know, SEALS or Delta would go in with a wrecking ball and they'd smash it and basically dismantle kind of the Hearts and Minds campaign because the neighbors would get their feathers ruffled, you know, and, you know, stuff gets broken up or, you know, but that's how you operate, man. Like, there's no nice way to ring the doorbell and say, hey, can I please go abduct your uncle who's a terrorist cell operator. Like that. Just, you know, it's not protocol.

[A]

We, we. And because we were working so closely with the army and the Marine Corps, like, it became a point for us where we'd get like a target package because I had guys that had sources throughout Ramadi and they, they would give us a target. Like, these were my guys. So we'd get. I get a target package from my guys, and it'll be like, oh, this building, whatever. Building 17 in, you know, J Block. And he'd be like, cool. And we'd call the army company commander and be like, hey, dude, can you go roll up a. A military age male in building 17 on J Black? Be like, yeah, I'll call you in 20 minutes. And they'd go do a clearance, get the guy, bring him back, say like, yeah, we got him. Is this him? Yep, this is him. Cool. Set him up here. We'll take him. And like, we did that more than we did our own direct action, because we only, we Only did probably like 30 or 35 or something like, of us doing a direct action mission because it was just wasn't like the, the Marine Corps was in that part of town or the army, the 135, the 137, the 506, like they were just there, they could go, oh yeah, we'll go roll up. We, we were in that house yesterday afternoon. We didn't know that was a bad guy. We'll go get him. You know, it's pretty, pretty, pretty awesome to see. And the other thing that was cool for us is like, because we got to go and work with these other battalions so intimately. Like it was cool to you. And especially now, like I've had a bunch of them on the podcast and you talk to them and what they were doing and, and how, you know, every, every person was making such a concerted effort to do a good job. You know, everyone from the privates down to the battalion commanders, everyone is like so focused on doing a good job. And it's just, you know, it's weird too. When I had Colonel McFarland on here and in preparation for Colonel McFarland coming on, I was going through like, you know how often we were building combat outposts. So you know, when, before you got there, we were building. There was no combat outpost when we showed up, there was none. It was, the whole city was nothing. But you couldn't, you couldn't go into the city. Like, it was gnarly. But we were building those combat outposts, like massive battalion plus sized operations like every four days, every three days in some cases. And you're like, how did I go? Where did you, you know, sir, like, where did you get two hundred and fifty twelve foot tall jersey barriers into Ramadi? And then three days later you had another 250. Like, that's major legit. He's like, yeah, the team, the team took care of it. So there's so much going on and everyone like, you know, you taking your company sized unit and doing everything you can to take the fight to the enemy and secure your zone. And like that's what was happening in every little corner of Ramadi. And every, you know, every squad that was clearing a building was doing their best to make that happen. And it's just, it's amazing to, to look back and, and to have played a little bit of a role in that. And more important for me is like, just to have seen it all taking place and been in those buildings. Isn't it weird? You look at a map of Vermont. You're like, oh, I remember that building. I remember that building. Oh, we were over there. Yeah, I remember that. Oh, it's kind of.

[C]

I hear some of the maps that are probably not supposed to have. But they're declassified. But that's when I'm being exacting about that building number. Like I have.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Pulled up in my pocket, you know, and we highlighted stuff. And it was very important to me too, to like, not just write inaccurate stuff because, you know, the Marines especially, like, they will eat you for breakfast, man, if you get it wrong. And I remember, you know, as a writer too, like, you hit the big red send button to your publisher and you're like, ah, it's great. It's clean. Like there's no type.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[C]

And then I had sent it to this guy who's a. A gunner in the Marine Corps, a chief warrant officer. And he calls me literally the next day. He was reading an advanced copy of my book and he goes, hey, sir, I just wanted to let you know I was reading that chapter about when you're in that firefighter and you climbed on top of that tank and you talk about the coax, you know, 50 caliber machine gun. He goes, It's 762, sir. I'm like, holy. I called my editor. I'm like, alex, we got him.

[A]

Change this. I look like an idiot.

[C]

They will kill me. They will crucify me.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And they do. They. They're pretty merciless. So I was. It took me, you know, a long time to write it. Everybody always asks that when you're. How long it take you to write a book? Like, well, you know, for this, it was 10 years. I say that euphemistically, but soup to nuts. It took me about a year of interviews, writing, and then the whole process of finding an agent, you know, finding a publishing house that, you know, the mainstream world, it's. But it took 10 years before I could get the Espinosas to share. And, you know, they have to. Everybody has their sweet spot when they are able to unpack some of that trauma. And that's not an easy thing to do. And, you know, I think I was. I always used to think about that too, how, how young those guys were, not having experience, you know, Like, I was a 35 year old captain with a couple combat tours and a lot of life experience, but I always wonder, like, how are they going to unpack this at such a young age? And, you know, again, sadly, some guys kill themselves, others drink themselves or overeat or whatever it is, man. Everybody has a way to deal with it. We're very lucky though, as we sit here too, is, you know, we've got a pretty dialed in support system of a lot of veteran nonprofit orgs that, you know, we can lean on or send guys to. You know, I worked in that space for, you know, eight years and, you know, I'm just kind of dipping my foot back into. Actually with Mike Ritland, I got some, some guys I'm sending his way to, you know, help his team out at Warrior Dog Foundation. I love what Mike's doing. I love his. Like, you too. I love, as a storyteller, like, you know, we're doing it for each other, you know, in a sense. So.

[A]

Yeah. And just speaking of storytelling and going back to like, writing a book, I strongly recommend that if you write a book, you try and make it as accurate as you possibly humanly can, because like you said, like, people are going to read the book and if they were there. And look, I get it that people have different perspectives. You know, people in the same firefight will have a different perspective of something and it can be a pretty, it can be a pretty dramatic difference, but it won't look like a different movie. That won't look like a different, like a different dream.

[C]

You know, it's tough too, because, you know, one of the things I'd ask you, you can answer this question too. I ask it of myself. When you write a book about leadership or combat or baking pies, I don't care what it is, you, you build this narrative. And I, I did extensive research and I did ask those questions, like, hey, do you remember this going down like this? Because I remember it just like this. And 99% of the time the guy's like, yes. Or that did this. And then you'd find, you know, you'd pick the scavel and horn, you find all these little hidden gems, and then I'd get to write about that through their voice. But I find myself asking myself this question as a writer and as a storyteller, is this all I know or all I can remember about this? I feel like I've, you know, after hundreds of podcasts and in speaking engagements and telling stories, because this is what people love to talk about. Like, so I love it when, you know, when you're in the studio and the, the, the guest or the host says, and you respond like, oh, that's a good question. Like, I love that. That's a good question moment. This is kind of one of Like I feel like. And is, are there are the stories I'm leaving out because I thought these were the important ones.

[A]

I, I will answer that now. Yes. And, and the reason I can answer that now. Yes, you're leaving stuff out is because just like you, you, you gave that perspective of the person that watched you walk into the battalion aid station that to you, you're, you're like in a detached moment. You don't know what that looks like from the outside. And I realized this. So when I was in the later, the end of my career, I was in charge of the training for the West Coast SEAL teams, right? And when I would go like back to an event at the SEAL teams, there would be a guy now this has been, you know, five years or seven years later, and there'd be some guy that was a new guy that I put through training and they would tell me stories about me that I didn't, you know, I'd be like, oh yeah, yeah. Like there's one guy told me the story, you know, we, I gave him a bunch of down men and one of the guys, like, like, I can't feel my face. You know, like these stories that I do not remember because it was just day to day, like that's what I'm doing. And so for you, you know, when you're, you're a company commander, like there is a corporal that was looking at you at a moment and he was detached from that moment and he was watching what you were doing or he was want, you know, even if wasn't watching you, he was watching what the enemy was doing. And you thought the enemy was doing this, but he saw something else. And so, yeah, trying to gather as many of those perspectives as you can is going to be awesome. And even I had Colonel Dean on from 13 5. And on August 2nd, Mark Lee got killed and Ryan Jobe got severely wounded. And on that day I had actually had a whole nother element of seals that was, that took place in 137's AO where Mark and Ryan, Ryan got wounded, Mark got killed. I had totally forgotten that in 135's AO, which was Tamim. We conducted a huge operation over there and I had seals there in support of that. And I had literally forgotten that completely. And it wasn't until I was reading his book and I was like, oh yeah, that's right. And as soon as I remembered it, it's like, oh yeah. But for him, that was what was happening in his world that day. Seals were there helping Out. I had forgotten about those seals because it was relatively unit. It was a great operation, but it's relatively uneventful. But here I am, and all my focus was on the day that Mark and Ryan got wounded, Mark got killed. So, yeah, I think it's always difficult to capture everyone's perspective, and there's going to be things from other people's perspectives that were not there to you, you know, so.

[C]

Yeah, so I just. I also feel like I don't want to be canned. You know, I always strive for authenticity, but you. You bring up something important, too. But is that the impact you make as a leader you rarely see? And, you know, when you're talking to civilians or groups and you're sharing these things that we're fortunate to learn in the military is, you know, having the capacity to do what we do and make an impact. I think that's really the. The keynote when I talk about is that impact of leadership is you may not realize you're doing it, but everything you do is leaving an impression and impact on. On those you lead, good, bad, or otherwise.

[A]

And, yeah, and that's one. One thing that you did in this book, which I didn't read it in the opening, but you say it in the opening, is like, you're showing some warts. You know, you're showing like, hey, here's mistakes that you made, here's bad things that you did. And for me, anytime you're doing, Anytime you're trying to create something, if you're not revealing some stuff, if it doesn't hurt a little bit, the opening chapter for, for example, of extreme ownership, where I'm talking about, there's a freaking blue on blue. There's an Iraqi soldier killed, one of my guys wounded. Like that shit's just awful. I want more than anything to, you know, deny that that ever happened and ignore it and pretend like, no, that happened. Here's what happened. It's on me. And if you don't feel like, if your ego doesn't hurt when you're putting your pen to paper, you're. You're. You're not doing the right thing. So you did a great job in this book of that of like, hey, this. I'm sure some of these things you were writing, you're like, this hurts to write because you're looking back now and you're going, I should have done that. Maybe could have done this different.

[C]

Yeah, it was. I was very fortunate, too, when I found my editor, which. And I interviewed probably a good dozen or so, and Sylvia Mendoza, she's right here in Southern California. And it was important for me also to find a female because Obviously I want 100% of the population to read this story, not just half. So she gave us some really great balance. And when we got to part of it, you know, she was really laudatory in the fact that she's like, I love how I can feel like, you know, I'm with the Marines and like, the way you describe things and the texture and the way you write. And, you know, she would joke too. She's like, how did you get out of high school again? It's like, yeah, I did better in college. Like, so I. It was important to me. But she said to me one thing, Jocko, is there's not enough you in this book. And I did have to go back into it because I honestly thought as a, again, as a writer, as an artist, as. As a leader, it was not fair for me to do all those interviews and pull all that pain and pick open the scab and make others bleed if I wasn't willing to do it myself. And, you know, towards the end of the book, I really pick it open and talk about some of the challenges I faced. And that's not easy thing to do. And as you know, when you write about it and you share it online or when you go speak in front of a thousand people is not easy to pick that scab up in front of, you know, total strangers and bleed. But you do it in the hopes that you. You make an impact and that you can. You maybe change or save some lives along the way. I don't know. It's not too esoteric to say that or lop. You have a goal.

[A]

That's definitely the hope. I know that the, the chap, Chapter one of Extreme Ownership was not an extreme ownership. And Leif was, you know, Leif had been through. I. I used to teach that blue on blue over and over and over again to the SEAL team to make sure that everyone learned the lessons that we learned. So every SEAL team that would. Would form up and start going through training, I would give that to them. I'd give it to the junior officer to the junior officer course. I'd give it to the.

[B]

The.

[A]

What do they call it? The Ground Force commander's course. I would give that brief to them. So, hey, here's what we messed up. Here's what you have to watch out for. Because in Vietnam, there was a SEAL SEAL platoon, X ray platoon in Vietnam had a blue on blue and killed their. Their officer. Got killed. And I never got a debrief on it. I knew it happened, but I never understood why. Didn't learn anything from it, and so I didn't want that to happen. But then, you know, as we were getting kind of. Kind of close to finishing, extreme ownership, Leif's like, you should. You should do the blue on blue story. And I said, yep, you're right. I do. I should do that. And I did. And as soon as I was done with it, you know, we were looking for, like, chapter 12, and I got done with it. And I'm like, yep, this is chapter one. Like, this is how we open. So. So definitely, if you're writing and it hurts, you're doing a good job and admitting the flaws.

[C]

I think, you know, we love to talk about all the, you know, the wins and, you know, kicking doors in and killing bad guys at school. Like, talking about the failures, man, is really what real leaders do. You talk about it a lot, even in your sec in dichotomy. Like, you even talk about how you've fucked up the title of the first book. I think at some point it's like, yeah, biggest thing we did, we should have called it this because people took it out of context. And, like, even, like, there's, like, so many layers to that, you know, mirrored hallway. You're looking. I was like, yeah, we did this. We're teaching about leadership. And then we screwed up this in writing. And it's humble, you know, it wasn't lost to me, is what I'm saying.

[A]

So, yeah, going back to the book here a little bit, you say it was not a matter of if a unit would get investigated, but when a unit would get investigated for alleged detainee abuse in Iraq. After the mass scandal in Baghdad with the Abu ghraib prison in 2003, handling DT in eastern combat operations became a sensitive subject. So you talk a decent amount about that.

[C]

So you talked about how much I interacted with Sean McFarland outside of our reunion, which is, again, how we got reconnected, luckily, because we're doing our 20th anniversary in El Paso. The first time I met Colonel McFarland was because of detainee abuse. I literally was ambushed. They're like, hey, you got to go to Camp Ramadi. So we jock up a convoy, we roll over there, and there's. There's really. There's actually kind of a cool part to this story, too, aside from me getting ambushed about this detainee abuse. My battalion commander's in there. Didn't even know he's in town. Like, he drove down. They're like, am I getting investigated? Like, yes, I was being investigated for detainee abuse. Not me, my unit. Like, so some of the guys we let go, they, you know, made allegations against the Marines that they were mistreated or whatever. But here's the thing. There's no class that teaches you how to be a prison guard as a Marine infantry officer. So these young Marines don't know what they're doing. And they weren't taking a wet hose of these guys. Like they were uncomfortable for several hours. But also the task force over there had no way of sending vehicles into the zone and quickly extricating them to turn them over to PsyOps. Because there wasn't even a jail, there wasn't a prison. It was a holding cell. So, like, we're rounding up all these fuckos on the battlefield who are trying to blow us up and shoot at us, and we caught them red handed. It wasn't unfounded, but these young guys didn't know it. So I roll into the One One BCT headquarters. That's my first meeting with Sean McFarland is like, you're under investigation. I don't know if they read me my rights or whatever, but they were looking into. They really just wanted to get some answers to the questions. And I remember that same day. Do you know Megan McClung?

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Yeah, so she's this gorgeous redhead, kick ass Marine public affairs officer who was right in the bowels of the city with us. And so I'm sitting at this computer in the hallway at 11 BCT. This is a side note, but it's a great story. And I'm getting some pictures sent of my daughter. And she looks over and she says, hey, what are you smiling at? I says, I'm looking at your future competition right here. Because my daughter's a gorgeous redhead and looks like, you know, the character brave, like, it's just crazy great red hair. She gets it. I don't know where she gets it, but Megan looks and she says, oh my God. She goes, where? Where's she at? And I said, well, they're still in Virginia. I just came from Fast Company. She goes, really? Which company? I tell her, she goes, oh, my fiance is in Fast Company. I said, what's his name? Because we all know each other. Judson Daniel. I said, you're kidding me. I said, I was hunting with that guy four months ago. Damn, it's the small world. But anyway, I loved it, you know, being able to meet Megan. That one day, knowing her as a Marine, and you know what. What she did. And then on December 6, the same day Corporal Libby was killed. Megan was killed.

[A]

Yeah. And Travis Patrick as well. And there was another. It was terrible.

[C]

Yeah. It was tragic. But you know, her. Her memory lives on through, you know, great organizations like Carry the Load on it or One Year, you know, Clint Bruce.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So, yeah, she was really a force of nature. She was just super. One of those people that. Just super positive what lit up the room, like, ready to take action to make things happen. Yeah, she was.

[C]

I feel like I know her more than I did just from. I think that one drop in brief interaction with her, you know, was enough. And knowing who she surrounded herself with, too, and who she. She was gonna marry, you know, was. It's just crazy.

[A]

Dang. So I guess. I'm guessing. Yeah. Do you keep in touch with her fiance at all? That's freaking terrible.

[C]

He went dark for a little bit, or. I don't know if he went dark, but he went under the radar. And I just got back in touch with him again. When I called to check in with another. Another fast guy, Jim Lively. He's general now. I said, man, wrinkle. Really got it right. Because I love Jim. Like, you want to talk about, like, Eagle Scouts? Like, this guy is like, he's the best, man. And I was like, yeah, I love it when they get it right. And I just called him to check in. He's like, oh, man, I'm so glad. It's like, I didn't even know if you kept my number. And I was like, he's a general now, but we were captains together.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, that. This is a case for the. You know, the young. Young military personnel that get married before they go on deployment. Like, in secret. They make it happen. And Mark Lee actually did that. Mark Lee actually got married before he went on deployment. Didn't really tell anyone because just in case something happened to him, you know, wanted to. Wanted to have that, and he did it. So it was a little surprise to a bunch of people, but. But I'm glad he did it.

[C]

You know, that happens a lot, too. More than people think.

[A]

Yeah, I'm sure. Fast forward a little bit. Echo Company was ordered to the west side of Ramadi to support another US army unit you talked about. This is the TF170 2007 Steel Tigers, and they came from Germany. You mentioned. You mentioned you know, you're checking in with a new boss. You say, I met the task Force commander Lieutenant Colonel Machido Machiado. Bear Johnson in his office. Mickey Otto Miki Otto in his office. Before the command brief we. We chatted formally for a while, but I could tell he wasn't much for standard protocol. Put me at ease right away. He was a thick man, about 5 9. He was 42 and had thinly trimmed mustache that ran neatly to the corners of his mouth. He had a big bright toothy smile. Underdog clad in traditional army grade digital BDU's. He wore a tan leather pistol holster strapped to his back. His Beretta 9 millimeter service pistol dangled under his left armpit and two ammo mags under the right. At first glance he reminded me of the famous actor and comedian Cedric Kyles, better known as Cedric the Entertainer. But there was nothing comical about him. He was aggressive and proved to be one of the most skilled commanders I ever supported. So, and this is when you say hey.

[C]

I did call Bear Johnson and say hey, do you mind if I describe you like this? He goes no, I've heard it before. I look like Cedric back in the day. So for those of us that know who Cedric is.

[A]

And then you guys went out into Tamim and just started going, you know which Tamim was, was like the, the neighborhood on the west side of the, the Habania Canal and the, the west side of Ramadi and it was a real fertile ground for the enemy.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And you guys just go started going house to house, door to door.

[C]

We yeah. And no, no room left unturned. And it was, it's exhausting, I mean and filthy dirty work. Like I don't know like I should be on and Mike Rose show dirty jobs or like that because that we could tell some stories like if we're on Mike, like that was a dirty job. Like grimy, like marines are fun and digging stuff out of sewers and like they were just merciless man. And I don't know how they did it, but God bless them.

[A]

Yeah, go ahead.

[C]

No, yeah, just like to describe that too. The Tamima. I mean it's a well developed city. You know Ramadi, it was, it wasn't like a you know, shanty town. I mean there were homes and multi level homes, just like a urban subdivision. So imagine going into your house and like having to try and find something in every closet, every piece of furniture, sliding the furniture out. Like this is what they did every single night as we're patrolling for like 8 to 10 hours under cover of darkness going house to house and leapfrogging platoons and, oh, by the way, like, occasionally getting in firefights with the enemy. A lot of the firefights happen during the days, you know, too, where they were active because, you know, what about as good as those insurgent words. And we give them a little bit of credit. They're pretty lazy too. And like, when the big orange ball dipped down and this, you know, the moon came out, they wanted to sleep. So a lot of the guys on the HBI list, we rolled up at night in their sleep.

[A]

Yeah. There. They also knew that we owned the night. They had night vision at the time, you know, so they didn't want to go out at night because they couldn't see us in the daytime. They could see us. They could blend in with the local pompous. The local pompous hunkered down a lot at night.

[C]

So, yeah, we learned that fast. And early on in that deployment, it's like, we're not going out during the day. We did it once. We responded to a QRF call that Colonel Ferry sent us down there. He's like, scotty, do you got a convoy? I'm like, yeah, let's go, sir. I'm like, dun, dun, dun. Like, you know, superhero. Like, stupid, stupid regret.

[A]

We would.

[C]

Sergeant Israel got shot, took one across the nose and a couple other guys banged up.

[A]

But we would operate in the day, usually just because we were out in overwatch positions. So that put us out there in the day. And if the Iraqis were doing a big clearance, and it was our Iraqis that we were training to do these big clearances, we'd go out there with them, you know, because that's part of the. Part of the job. And Iraq is. Doing a clearance at night was kind of a non starter because they have night vision. They didn't really have flashlights, you know, so that's how we ended up in the day. That's the way it is. Yeah. This is an interesting chapter. It's called damage. Uncontrollable variables occur in war. Sometimes innocent people die. It's unfortunate but true. These people and their deaths aren't just statistics. To Marines who fight or those that wind up as some sensationalized news story on cable news, they're terrible realities that we have to live with for the rest of our lives. And yeah, you know, it's the. You go into a story here about echo companies under heavy attack, ECP 8, Quick Reaction Force, small arms fire. It's like all this. All the things are happening and you hit them with a GIMLERS and you end up walking out, walking to see what you guys, what you hit. Like once a. Once a gimmler's hit you, you start moving, moving on those houses, those buildings. We pressed into the houses that not yet engaged. I moved to the living room floor and found an Iraqi family gathered around someone on the floor and wailing uncontrollably. I moved closer and saw they surrounded a man in his mid-40s lying on the floor. It appears he had a single gunshot wound to the head. His face and head were dark purple and grotesquely swollen. But he was still alive. The platoon's corpsman rushed to his aid, began triage. A woman stood next to me holding a child half draft loose fitting shirt that came down past his waist. The baby had long thick black hair. I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. Child's legs were covered in someone else's blood. But he wasn't crying. He was in shock, I suppose. But the child's silence lent a surreal air to the situation. My terp Bruce began to question the dying man's wife. The woman told him the insurgents we'd been hunting at burst into their house, demanded the keys to the family car so they could use it to escape. When the man of the house refused to surrender the keys and insurgents shot him at point blank range in the head with a pistol. Another one. Another incident here. Bam Bam was on watch in charge of the company operations center and received information from the talk at Camp Corregidor that a blue four door sedan needed to drive through our area and in order to transport a woman who had miscarried her baby to Ramadi General Hospital, 1000 meters west of ECP 8. Bam Bam contacted the radar radio operators at all of our positions and relayed the specifics of this important request to ensure the family's safe passage to the hospital. The call went out to all stations on the radio net. A blue four four door sedan would be passing through our area directly past Op South House and then ECP 8 on Sofia Road with four passengers bringing a woman to the hospital for for emergency medical attention. Everyone was explicitly advised that the car would be marked with glowing green chem lights taped to the roof and behind the windshield. Bam Bam also expressly instructed each radio operator to pass the word to their respective platoon commanders, platoon sergeants and marines on watch and report back when they completed the task. Bam Bam went back to his normal routine and listened to the radio transmissions intently. A few minutes later he was startled by the distant sound of machine gun fire. A sinking feeling hit the pit of his stomach. Bam Bam called each platoon for an update. They all confirmed they had not opened fire. OP south house and ECP were verified that the sedan had passed by their position safely. But when he checked in with a US army radio operator that was adjacent to our position, his worst fears were confirmed. That sedan had driven past, clear past our positions as it slowly as it could in the boundaries of another marine unit to our northwest. It crept up an unimproved road directly in the line of fire. Submarines on post, the one who had manned the post earlier, were aware of the sedan's passage. But when they conducted turnover at the post, the word didn't get passed. Fearing for the safety of their fellow marines, when the sedan came into view, they opened fire on it. Multiple three to six round bursts of 762. Machine gun fire blazed from the muzzle of a weapon, ripped through the car, bring it to a halt. The driver, who was the husband of the woman who'd miscarried her child, survived. She and her sister did not. I talked about the incident with Bam Bam. He knew he'd done everything within his power to ensure the marines of Echo company let the sedan through safely, and they had done so. He said, if I could go back and do it all over again, Scott, I would have checked with the battalion headquarters next door to verify that adjacent units were notified between higher headquarters. I did everything I could. I told him you did. Hindsight's always 2020 in combat. It's often the only way to learn some hard lessons to pass on to other warfighters. Later, the husband received payment for the deaths of his family from civil affairs personnel. It wasn't a disgrace to accept money. By Arab standards, the DI Essentially a non negotiable payment of blood money is customary, if not downright expected, in cases of accidental deaths. Yeah, the. As much as Ramadi was a complete war zone filled with insurgents, there was 300 or 400,000 civilians there.

[C]

And.

[A]

You know, things like this would happen, civilians would get killed. And when it. When a civilian got killed and, you know, I've heard people talk about like, oh, there's civilians, like getting killed wantonly being killed, just being murdered and like that just cannot happen. You know, like there's the civilian populace is there. The shakes are there. The, the shakes are working with the battalion commanders on a daily basis. There's relationships like there's a government center with a government that's trying to be functional. So. But this is a good example of how this thing does happen and then how it gets handled, which is like there's an investigation, you go out and pay the family. These are the things that happened.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. And again, like the, these stories aren't, you know, exclusive. I mean, it's similar to like you and Leif, you know, you're talking to your peer, you know, And Bam Bam was a captain too. He's a pilot. He's the guy, you know, calling in airstrikes for us. And, you know, I used to drag that guy around the battlefield like a rag doll with his radio and, you know, Chris muscle on the other side of my radio operator and like make making decisions. But after that he, it was hard for him to share that story and go back and revisit it too, you know, but it was important that he knew that as his commander, he did do the right thing. He did everything humanly possible. But in that situation, under those circumstances, like bad things do happen and you can't hide them. You know, we, I know there's a lot of, you know, mistrust sometimes for the military and what we do, but you can't hide those things. And it was sad, man, you know, that I always say these people that lived in this city, they weren't collateral damage, man. They were people just like anyone. They wanted to see their kids grow up and drive a car for the first time or go play soccer on the weekend. They wanted a life back, not an American life. They wanted their life back. And that's again, American hubris. Thinking we can impose our piss ant 250 year existence and culture on a culture that's been around, you know, almost 4,000 years. You know, it. That from an academic standpoint, from an educated standpoint, always bothered me a little bit that I think we'd have done a lot better, would you agree, from Iraq and Afghanistan and training our young soldiers on the importance of culture than we did in Vietnam, Korea, World War II. I think we've done better.

[A]

Yeah, I think we've done better. But I think the key point that you said was hubris to think that, that they're going to change their culture to match ours. And it's like that is not going to happen. And if we would have understood that from the start, I think we would have been in a much better place. You know, if you go into, if you join a team somewhere and they're, they're, their culture is different than your team and you're an individual showing up and you think you're going to convert this team that's been around for longer than you. And you're just going to convert them into your culture. It's not going to happen. Now they might adopt some small parts of your, the culture that you're bringing in and you're going to. But you have to adopt their culture and work within their culture, otherwise you're going to have significant problems. You know, work with a lot of companies. They, you know, mergers and acquisitions. It's like, you can't just impose your culture onto this company that you acquired. You have to have an open mind. You got to look, okay, what's good about their culture? How can we incorporate, how can we unify the cultures as opposed to, like, you guys are just going to think the way we think. And actually that's easier than, it's easier to do that within a company than it is within a country. Like you said, that's been around a culture of people that's been around for thousands of years and they're very set in their ways. And so they're just not going to change because you say, hey, I think my way is better.

[C]

No, you remember they were talking about it on the news a lot too. You'd hear it from political pundits about how they're trying to, you know, breed democracy in Iraq. And like, and again, going back to what you just said, like these great questions you should ask before you start turning, you know, chairs over. Do you want a democracy? They probably would have said, no, we don't want. And then we got into the thing, it's like, oh, we're going to have American democracy. I'm like, I talk to guys like, you know, in pithy conversations. Like I said, what is American democracy? Like, no, it's just democracy. It's not French democracy, it's not British democracy, it's just democracy. And everybody has their own, you know, handles their own rules and protocols and policies differently. But we went in and tried to, you know, set up a democracy and infuse American culture on how we do business. And that created friction.

[A]

Yeah. And, and tried to do it quickly. Right. Because if you want to change a culture, it's going to take generations to change culture. Generations. It's not going to happen in four years.

[C]

So, yeah, they, I don't think, I think they put too much emphasis on the democracy before they did the freedom and security. But it should be security, then freedom, then democracy. And they were trying to jam, you know, ten pounds in a five pound bag and that. And for us guys on the ground, you know, I'M sure you get interviewed a lot and they ask you questions about political amount, ministry of level decisions. I was like, look, man, again, I was there to survive and I wasn't concerned about those levels. Now I can talk about them. But our only responsibility was taking care of each other and killing bad guys. Like, that's what we were there to do and we did it well. So.

[A]

January 2007, you guys start putting like Iraqi police stations in and you say, I never knew if the Iraqi police occupied that police station. It wasn't my problem either way. That was Echo Company's final mission with Steel Tigers. We had orders west, which is actually a really good sign if you think about it like the fact that you guys were getting ordered out of Ramadi in. And I know you, you know, you didn't get to see like the, the 5K fun runs down the street or anything, but it felt weird. Yeah, but we were seeing, we were seeing because I was back here. You know, I left. You got there in November, I had left in October. And we were reading the reports and like the enemy attacks were absolutely going down. And there was definitely stability at least was visible. Like, you could see it was changing. It was changing. It was getting better. And that had to be the case in order for them to send you out to Rupa. You say Echo Company departed Task Force 177, headed to Camp Korean Village, 40 miles west of our ultimate destination location, destination Rutbah, Iraq. And so that was your. That was your next location, was heading out to Rupa. How'd you feel about going out there?

[C]

You're conflicted because Ramadi was where the real action was. But, you know, there's again, we were part of the surge, so we went where they needed us. And it was a significant emotional event to move that whole company out of zone, do the relief in place with army units. Luckily, again, you know, working for that task force and everything under Colonel McFarland at the time, like, they're pros. Like, they're some of the most switched on soldiers I've ever encountered in my 24 years in service. And I just loved working with them. They got us rides at Arupa. We. We tried to fly. It was funny. Like, the only helicopter ride was into Camp Corregidor and it was on Army CH47s. I love those dudes too. And we were Hela Bone Company. Like, all we did during the pre workup was like helo ops.

[A]

And you did around Ramada, driving and walking around.

[C]

Yeah, that's all we did like, it was interesting.

[A]

I always joke too, because, like, I never did a real mission in a helicopter. You know, I was in trucks. Wrong foot. My every. In Iraq, I never went in helicopter for a real mission, which is kind of a bummer. But, you know, it also shows you that that's what the war was at the time for me. You know, I talked to some. I was talking to some guy the other day, and he did almost all helicopter because when he was in Iraq, he was with a. With a strike force, and they were just flying everywhere. And then when he was in Afghanistan, all helicopters. So, like, we. He had the. The absolute opposite experience as me. I was like all vehicles and foot. He was all helicopters, no vehicles, no feet. Pretty crazy.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Other than foot patrol. Once you.

[C]

We know too, like, it looks sexy. On recruiting, I was like, fast roping and jumping out of airplanes. I was like, but the fastest way to get there is actually drive or, like, walk or, like, land the helicopter and just walk out of the hel. Like, that's the fastest way. Just doesn't recruit as many young studs.

[A]

You. You say this when you get there. You say our mission in Rutbah was focused more on support and stability operations rather than daily raids and constant firefights in Ramadi. So what did that mean to you guys? Support and stability operations?

[C]

Well, that was the brief that we got before we rolled out. And again, the MU commander was over there. There was a reconnaissance company, the maritime special purpose MAGTAF was over there. So we kind of knew what they were doing in RUPA itself. So again, if most people aren't familiar with it, this is like the truck stop of Iraq. It's on the western border in Alambar Province. It really is like a truck stop. There's a Buc EE's in Texas. It's probably bigger than Rupa. I mean, it's where they would come in through a porous border on Syria and they'd drive over to Ramadi and fight. And so they had taken some resistance over there. And when they. When I. We finally arrived after another series of significant emotional events and friction like, Bam Bam's truck broke down on the road out. Like, they didn't fly us over. Like, we didn't even get a ride over there. Like, I flew over not out of privilege, but like, it was available. So I took some dudes with me and we did the recon. But they had gotten some sporadic, you know, gunfire, and it seemed like their tactics were off and. But they hadn't been in the City to clear it out. So when we got over there, luckily for me, the mu apso was one of my faculty advisors at EWS when I was a captain. Paul Nugent, love that guy. He gave me great autonomy and understood what we were doing in Ramadi and how, how desperate the situation was over there. And again they were relieved. Now, now before I get into the planning and talking about what Paul let me do is like you probably understand this as leaders and what we do is guys that kick doors in for a living is, it's pretty easy. It's not much of a leadership challenge to give a young guy, Sergeant Echo a machine gun and a box of ammo and a little training and have him go from 0 to 60 and engage the target and kill them with pretty, pretty good efficiency. The real leadership challenge is take that same guy, move him to a different spot and get him to go from 60 to 0. That is a real leadership challenge for a 19 year old kid. It's a real leadership challenge for a 35 year old commander in charge of 200 plus people. So as we transitioned to Rupa, the rules of engagement also changed. So now you're in this mindset where the ROEs in Ramadi, you know, at the time is like, if they're digging a hole in the street, shoot them. If they're driving a car at night, shoot them. If they've got a phone, shoot them. If they're doing this, shoot them. Like it was very permissive. That changed when we went to rupa, but it wasn't because that the city was at peace. They just hadn't been in and cleared it out. There had been units going in and out but they never had a presence. So when they brought us in, I was very fortunate to look over the map and get the after actions from, you know, Paul. And so, you know, Nuge says, what do you want to do? We're going to do this. I says, no sir. I said, I would prefer to do this. And honestly I was a little paranoid because coming out of Ramaya's like, you know, we're not doing it during the daytime, like first and foremost, like we're doing this at night. I said I want to do this. And I came up with, with a, a detailed plan. I says, we're going to go in at night, we're going to have insertion points along the southern border and we're going to clear the city from south to north. And if you gave me, you know, 72 hours, we'll have Marines occupying different positions throughout and Then I had my good friend Stan Hawk, who was a recon company commander, on my flank and a couple other subordinate units. And it took us a little longer. It took us like 96 hours, but then we stamped that city clear. And when we went through, you know, I took a great amount of shit, I think, from some of the leadership. And, you know, I think it was a misunderstanding of really what the. The standing minister of defense in Iraq allowed weapons in homes. Like, no, they're allowed to have weapons. Like, they're not allowed to have weapons. I'm like, I used. Like, I lived in Baghdad for a year, like, in the palace. Like, I know all these clowns who wrote the laws and. And the new constitution or whatever is. I said, they're not. So it was like, I told the boys, and they fucking hated me for it, too. It's like crazy hughesings going out of business sale. Like, every weapon must go. And, oh, by the way, we figured out the more weapons we'd pull out on raids and patrols every single night doing clearance ops. We got shot at lesser in the day. Go figure, man. Again, I don't like to do math in public, but those stats speak for themselves. And. But I did get some pushback. Like, no, they're allowed to have a. I go, no, they're not allowed. I go. And I had to literally show it to some of the senior commanders, like, look, this is. This is not. But now you got Marines clearing. And sometimes we would do patrols during the day. We're doing, like, eight, 12 patrols. It was. It was a grind for the boys. And then if they're clearing, they're slinging AKs on the back. You know, that's another £8. There's another £16. And now they get in a firefight, and they got to run and save their lives. And they got all these, you know, this extra gear. Like, we're not carrying no shit on our backs already.

[A]

Yeah, because most people did have AKs in their house. So, like, if you hit 10 houses, you got 10 AKs, most likely, that you're now lugging around.

[C]

Yeah. And if they came by those weapons legitimately, that's fine. None of it was registered. But one of the things the insurgents are really smart at because they. They. They didn't wear a uniform. We didn't know who they were, is, you know, they would intimidate the locals. And they say, look, we're going to store our weapons in your house, jocko. If you tell anybody, if you tell the Americans you got these weapons, we're going to come back and we're going to slit your throat. That's how ruthless they were. It's smart tactics. Just stage weapons all around. Then they would be out at the market bebopping around, doing what insurgents do, having a little insurgent chit chat and they're like, oh, here comes a patrol. And they duck in a house, boom, grab a weapon. They just intimidate the people, like, where are the weapons? And they grab and take some shots and then they blend back into the landscape. That's the enemy we fought. Yeah, it was tough. So we had, we had to clear everything out, man. I didn't want to give him an opportunity to kill any more of my Marines, man. That's just so we, I got some photos like some of the nights we raid and hundreds of weapons. Thousands. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

There was a, an army captain, Mike Baima, who was a freaking awesome guy and he had that too. And he, he, he in his little, in his combat outpost, he kind of put, he hung all those weapons up. Well, not all, but a bunch of weapons up. It looked very, like a, like a hunting cabin with a bunch of, you know, buck heads up there, a bunch of trophy Rome just had freaking AKs everywhere. It was pretty good to go, but it made you feel a lot safer rolling out. Yeah, you know, it's like, yeah, get these, get these people. They don't have a second Amendment. Like, don't talk to me about their gun rights.

[C]

You know, that's how, that's how screwed up we are too is. You know, I always say is like, you know what Marines are really great at? Breaking up. You know what we're really bad at? Building stuff up. So don't act like, you know, governance or, you know, this like that, that rubbed me the wrong way. I know what I'm good at and I know what we're not good at. And to think that in the middle of a war, like they're allowed to have an AK47, like, no, I'm going to call bullshit on that one. So.

[A]

I'm going to fast forward a little bit here. 21st January 2007. We formed up and stepped off, sweeping north, knowing there was plenty of work ahead of us that first night. Six hours later, I dropped down on the cold marble floor of building, which we had just gone firm. I was exhausted. I stared up at the plastered ceiling, dizzy yet feeling relieved and excited that we had pushed so far in one night. I was still in my gear and lay there stretched out trying to get my second Wind. I was pretty sure I could have fallen asleep if I wanted to. Then I heard a call across the net that we had a casualty. An adrenaline rush instantly flooded my body and a gut dropping feeling, a combination of anxiety and rage hit me hard. The Marines came in and gave me the news. Lance Corporal Sanchez was down, shot by a sniper. McKibben was. And then fast forwarding a little bit. McKibben was off post at building 500 and this is one of the buildings that you guys had taken on the first floor of a three story house when he started hearing shots fired outside around 0700. McKibben immediately pressed to the roof, not knowing one of his Marines lay wounded. Concerned there might be a sniper about, he did a turkey peek around the corner of the doorway that led onto the roof. He saw Marines racing around yelling, corpsman. Doc. Doc. Get the fuck up here. Doc. The top of Building 500 was a large flat concrete slab with massive gray cinder block ledge around it that stood nearly six feet high. It provided excellent protection and concealment for the most part for the Marines on post. He raced over to the back wall where four or five Marines and Docs Lee and Leva Leva Yeva were already performing first aid on lance Corporal Sanchez. McGibbon stepped in and helped take off Sanchez Sanchez's gear. As he did, he spoke to Sanchez. Sanchez, hang on, man, we're here. We've got you. Just blink or squeeze my hand if you understand nothing from Sanchez. McKibben heard the other Marines on the roof shouting, what the. Where's the shooter? No one had located the sniper. It was not the first time McKibben had been in a firefight or seen his brothers get shot. But he still felt scared and helpless at the moment. The sight of it all took his breath away. The Marines moved Sanchez off the roof to a convoy that would carry him, carry him to TCP 3. We'd be transferred to a helicopter that would fly him to a medical station. As he watched the vehicles leave, he felt a sense of responsibility and his heart felt broken. Not knowing if Sanchez was alive or dead weighed heavily on him. That morning, Foster rode in the convoy with Sanchez. Sanchez. As they rushed to TCP 3, the Marines gently moved him from the Hunvey Humvee to the landing zone. As a radio operator made contact with the inbound CH53 helicopter that was providing the Kazavak, Foster sat beside Sanchez and could clearly see the hole from the bullet that had pierced the right side of his Kevlar. Helmet. Sanchez was silent, but Foster could see agony in his face. As Foster listened to the radio transmissions, he knew it was only minutes until the kazavak would arrive. The corpsman and the other Marines tried to stabilize Sanchez. He his breathing was labored as they inserted the intubation tube to free his airway. Foster held his hand. Sanchez gripped Foster's hand and rubbed it feverishly as he fought through the pain of his wound. His hand was warm and dry. Foster rubbed it gently, trying to soothe off, smooth off the cake dirt. But as he looked down, Sanchez's hand lay soft in his own, covered in dried blood. The smacking of the helicopter's rotors was loud. As it approached the lz, the Kazakh team moved Sanchez. They would wouldn't get pelted with loose gravel kicked up by the helicopters downwash. Foster instinctively knew Sanchez would not let go of his hand when they moved into the helicopter. Foster held on and moved with him. The hulking CH53 Super Stallion was on final approach to the LZ 30 seconds out. Sanchez stopped rubbing Foster's hand. Foster felt it go still. It slipped out of his grasp as the aircraft landed. And as I mentioned earlier, the fight doesn't stop. Continuing on as we geared up for another fight, a second gut wrenching call came across the net. Another Marine was shot and being CASA backed to TCP 3 to the south Again, my heart sank. I could not believe that that in less than 24 hours in zone we'd suffered two casualties. After McKibben had watched Sanchez carried out of Building 500, he went to his squad on the first floor. Hey, I need someone to volunteer to get up on the roof now to take over Sanchez's post. Without delay, Lance Corporal Andrew Mattis chimed up. I got it, Corporal. Who does that? What kind of person unhesitatingly jumps to the task and challenge of assuming a post where another Marine had been shot? What kind of character do young men have that drives them to go into harm's way? Without a second thought, McKibben walked with Mattis over to the wall on the back side of Building 500, almost exactly where Sanchez had been shot. Mattis was armed with his M16A4 with a203 grenade launcher fixed to the bottom. The wall was too high for Mattis to see over. He found an ammo can and slid it close to the wall wall for a step so he could view his sector of fire that McKibben had laid out for him. He placed a hand on the ledge of the cinder block wall and pulled himself up for a peek. McKibben said to Mattis, keep your eyes open. There's a lot of windows and doors out there. Brother McKibben took five or six steps away when he heard a strange noise, like the sound of a hammer cracking the bottom of a frying pan. McKibben turned back toward Mattis, and as he did, he saw Mattis standing facing the wall, almost floating. He fell backward slowly, as if someone was behind him, waiting to catch. Catch him. And then, in a game of trust. Doc. Doc, get over here. McKibben shouted in panic. Mattis lay on the roof, motionless. His eyes were bloodshot, he wasn't breathing. His face began to swell, and he was limp. As the other Marines quickly moved him onto a blanket to get him off the roof as fast as they. Yeah, that's a. That's a Marine right there.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, guy gets shot, we need someone to take his place. I'm on it.

[C]

When, again, I. I wasn't. We were at three different positions. That. That was the morning or day three or day two of the clearance op in Rupa. And, you know, again, my paranoia was, I guess, justified because there were some bad guys there. And, you know, McKibben told me that story, you know, when I was interviewing him for the book. He. He sent me a bunch of tapes, like, on a little cassette recorder. He had a really hard time sharing that story with him because he's a corporal at the time and he's still on active duty. But I think. And again, you know, I. I never profess to say, like, I knew my Marines, but I didn't know, like, Matisse or Sanchez. Well, they were kind of quiet kids, you know. You know, Matuse was from, you know, like, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and I didn't even know Sanchez was Native American. And probably one of my favorite chapters in the book is Pueblo, where Sanchez's family invites me out to their annual ceremony that they do at. At their reservation in. In the Pueblo. And it's, like, very emotional for me and. But very impactful as well. And I'm really, really good friends with Sanchez's older brother Joey, who's like, I don't know. He's like 15 years older than Sanchez. Like, yeah, he used to get accused of being. Being his. His dad, which rubbed in the wrong. He's like, nah, man, we're brothers, you know, and this huge, cool tribe of Keras Indians that, you know, live in New Mexico. And to be welcomed in, you know, again, from the family Members of, you know, Marines, you've lost. That's, that's tough, man, for some guys and it's tough for me. So, you know, you kind of sometimes like, what do I say or do? But again, I think if anyone's listening, because there'll be another generation that has to go through stuff that we went through. It's just inevitable. You just got to be yourself, man, be authentic and be there for him if, if you can. Not everybody can. I get that it's tough, but we have a lot of fun together too. And Joey, his older brother, makes a habit of doing surprise appearances when he catches wind of something of me speaking at an event on social media. Like, he pops up and literally surprises me. I'm like, what are you doing here? And like, you know, bear hugs ensue. And it's again, you know, these, these people who lose, you know, Marines and soldiers, you know, like the Libby's, they may have lost, you know, Dustin, but, you know, they inherited another 200 Marines. Whether they like it or not, you know, we still keeping, still keep in touch. You know, it's. I think it's important. But that was, that was tough too, because fighting in rupa, you know, we, we did kind of make some assumption. I think the Marines did, that it would be a more permissive environment. And it, it just wasn't. Even though the, the ROEs were more restrictive, I think they, they had their own set of challenges there too. But again, they're doing a lot of stuff too, that Marines just aren't trained to do. And you know, we tried to, we tried to operate as best we could. And after the book came out too, like, you see how the Marines will reach out. And it's funny too, like, you know, when you write about someone, like, you think like, hey, thanks for writing about me book, or like, hey, that was, that was cool that somebody I never even hear from, you know, like, they, it's not that I need the acknowledgment or anything, but they see things from my perspective too now. Like some of the. We had to do. Like, I was just like any Marina, I, we do take orders, myself included. And some of the things we were ordered to do were very hard for me to stomach. And it wasn't until I was able to share those in, in this story that, you know, the Marine's like, God, sir, like, I never knew you had to deal with all that. And I was like, yeah, well, wasn't my place to down, so. Leaders don't do that. I was very Lucky though that I had been Bam Bam and we're still very close friends to this day. He's. He's an airline pilot now for major airline and he's coming out to my ranch in Texas next month as well. So I get to see him and his new baby. And yeah, it's, it's cool, but outstanding. He, he was able to be my sounding board, you know, even First Sergeant Foster, like Tom and I.

[A]

What was Bam Bam's position?

[C]

He was my fac.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

He's a Ford air controller, so he was a Ch53 pilot in the Marine Corps and just completely unflappable. I mean I, you probably have come to terms with this too because you. I'm an emotional person. Like I, I don't get overly emotional, like to influence my decision or anything, but like I sometimes think like, should I be feeling this way about this or like express or get let anger boil over in some cases and like I just came to terms with it. Bam Bam was a pilot through and through, you know, very procedural. Like there could be, you know, stuff blowing up. And he. I remember, you know, it's like, did you see that Bam? He's like, yeah, I saw that. Like, Roger, you ready to go? We're going to head out here in about five minutes. Like just really unflappable. Like we could be in the middle of a firefight and like roger Echo six request, blah blah. Just like he's. It's, it's. Pilots are built a certain way, as you know, because we know a bunch of them, but just very unflappable. But from a friendship standpoint too, to have another guy who's a captain that you can kind of release the valve on in that situation too was important. And thanks. Bam Bam.

[A]

Fast forward a little bit. After the shocking loss of Sanchez and Matteo Matus. I think I mispronounced that earlier. Sanchez and matusa sniper final 21st January 2007 My boys weren't too keen on the new rules of engagement. It frustrated them when I told them to use more restraint. As an infantry commander is not a significant challenge. To train a 16 year old or 19 year old how to fire a machine gun. That's what you're just using with Echo. Like getting them to. And you're. You, you, you have to. That's like the worst case scenario, right? You got to train, train these guys that are going to have to go into face a determined enemy in a gunfight. Like that's what you got to get them ready for.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Everything else okay, well, we'll. We'll figure that out when we get there. Well, and when you get there, it's not so easy to. To pull the leash on these dogs. Yeah, we did one op where. And you mentioned, you know, you talked about the uniform of the insurgents, like a tracksuit with an AK47. And we did an op, like, over by the. What, the University of Alambar Province. Right, the University, which is on the east west side of Tamim. Right, that whole complex over there. And they had government sanctioned. So we get told we're getting intel. There's like, there's a security element there, a government security element. Okay, how do we. What uniform are they wearing? They're wearing track shoots, tracksuits, and carrying AQ47s. I'm like, all right, we must have. I briefed, you know, Leif. It was Leif Splatoon. Like, Leif briefed them up and down, like, we cannot shoot these guys with AK47s with track shoots. They are their friendly security element. I told them that 10 times. And sure enough, we rolled up. The first thing we rolled, there's a gate, and it's like, there's a guy with an AK47 and a track sheet. And I'm like, well. And he did, you know, he like, you know. All right, good.

[C]

So, yeah, it's like cats sleeping with dogs, man. It's just. You can't half the time in that environment make sense of it. And those stories are funny, man.

[A]

You. Another thing you talk about is you get permission to hit like, one mosque, and you get. You have good intelligence that there's a store enemy or weapons being stored in this mosque. You're gonna hit one. But then you get like, you look around, you're like, well, there's three actual moss that could be used. Let's hit them all. And that's kind of a big deal because you have to have. For me, it was the first oh6 in the chain of command would have to give you permission to hit a mosque, but you didn't have time to get that permission. And you hit three mosques.

[C]

Colonel Boudreaux gave permission for the one because we had verifiable information and that they were storing weapons there. And then, you know, I mean, audible as a guy on the ground. I mean, These guys are 40 miles away, you know, so they can't really make a call. But the, you know, I had. I had patrols in zone. I'm like, it hit them all. And it paid off. It also sucked, too, because we had a A civilian get injured. She got shot in the elbow. And that turned into a whole episode of, you know, added friction in the middle of the night after we raided. But we did, we did discover a ton of weapons in those moss. Like they were using the moss us to save Havens. We all knew that. But again, you know, at the end of the story, after we, you know, are wandering the streets of Rutbah 03 and trying to find medical care for this Iraqi civilian, her brother steps in and we pay him some cash and come to find out he doesn't even take her to the hospital in Ramadi and drive back, which is like three hour drive. There's no hospital in Rupa. It's again, it's truck stop, they need a first aid kit. And then we shot someone accidentally. She charged one of the marines in a dark room and luckily it just went through her, her elbow. But, you know, we find, we found out later she might have lost her arm. It wasn't verified. But you know, the next day too, after that whole episode, I get a call. Oh yeah, career warning light is flashing quickly. And I'm summoned back to go talk to, to Colonel Boudreau. And first office, I go into his, Major Nugent. So Paul Nugent, he's like, yeah, I just think the boss wants to talk to you about it. And I was like, I'm gonna get fired. I'm like, this is twice now, like I've gotten called in these rooms with full colonels, you know, and I'm like, I'm getting fired. But thankfully, you know, Colonel Boudreau was. He's pragmatist. I think he's an interesting guy too. He's coming to my reunion. I invited him because he was a mere commander. Really big dude, you know, just looks like a, you know, football players, great shape. He said salt and pepper, you know, flat top. And he's a very soft talker, if it talks, very soft even in briefs. Like, he's like, all right, I'm so do we got that? And I always, I always liked it. It was hard to hear. And like, I was like, does he do that? So people listen to him more. Like when you're that big, like, you really don't have to like. But it was effective and I was thankful for it that, that morning when I walked in and it was, it was funny though, before I stepped through the door, you know, I go to Paul, Paul Nugent's office and I walk through the operations center and you remember that scene in Saving Private Ryan When Hanks is at the. I don't know, it's a little forward staging post and all the soldiers have sandwiches and they're like, oh, yeah, yeah. You know, grab ass in and drinking.

[A]

Hot coffee and like, nice uniforms.

[C]

So here I am, I walk out of zone, back to ckv. Yeah. And my nose was cut. I had like just gash across my nose because, like, we were in a firefight and I took a header and, you know, busted my nose open. And they're all just like. You hear a pin drop. Like they're looking at me like, yeah, like a savage. So then I go talk to the boss and he says, is my call. He says, don't worry about it, Scotty. Is my call. You do the right thing. I was like, holy crap. Saved my ass. And. And trust me, like, you know, there's a couple other meetings I think I had with, with Colonel Boudreau too. Like, you know, he rolled out, we took over the bank. It was literally a bank, the bank of rupa. But it afforded the best position. And he had come out one day, I was out on another patrol. And I don't. This is non attributional. Like, he's just being the colonel, you know, he's a new commander. But he didn't like what he saw. Like, there was, by the way, there was like two platoons of Marines living in a bank. And when he walks into the bank, so they're safe, it's a bank, thick walls, and they're in flip flops and PT shorts. And, you know, so he didn't like that. For some reason, it kind of rubbed in the wrong way. He thought it was a sign of maybe being loose or undisciplined. And. And then. So he's got me in the office and I. I've told him this story. I think I might not. If not, I'll tell him someday or next month. He. He questions Tom Foster. He goes, and what's up with your first sergeant? I says, what do you mean, sir? He goes, well, he just doesn't strike me as a typical infantry guy. I go, he's not. And in the Marine Corps, you don't have to be in the infantry your whole time to become a first sergeant, because that's an administrative role to a large degree. So I said, he's not, sir. I said, Tom Foster was a legal clerk and a legal chief. He's been in a legal field his entire time until he got into the Marine Corps or in the Marine Corps. And then he got that first Sergeant, and he was assigned to an infantry unit. And I tell you, I wouldn't replace him with some 20 year burnout grunt. I said I would. I would take him every day of the week and twice on Sunday because he, Tom, loved it. Like, everything was new and exciting. Like everything he had sold as a recruiter, he was getting to live to the point where I'm like, hey, Tom, like, you need to get the off that tank and do some admin. So I kind of would put him in there. And we're still great friends to this day. He lives in Colorado, but I told that to Colonel Boudreaux, and I says, you know, sir, we're running 8 to 12, you know, combat patrols a day, and, you know, the Marines need a place to let their hair down and decompress a little bit. And he. It was a light switch for him. And so he, you know, again, he cut me off the leash again. He's like, so he was. He was a really, really good guy to work for, you know, but it was also a little different than Ramadi because, you know, we had a little more top cover. Like, I don't know, it was. It wasn't a micromanager. That's not what I'm saying is like. But there was just another layer that we kind of had to deal with. Jack.

[A]

Yeah, you guys are, you know, pushing these clearances, and then I gotta cover this. This section right here. You say this. We approach a group of young Iraqi males. They were posturing like tough guys as we advance, one at his hand, hands tucked in the back of his pants underneath a lightweight jacket he wore. He was young, maybe 16 years old. I forcefully told him in Arabic, eriny, yeah, show me your hands. He stood there with his gaze fixed on my Marines and me. We had our rifles at alert, but we're not pointing them directly at the boys. I repeated the command. The boy still didn't comply. Defiant. Then he bolted to me. It confirmed he had a weapon. I shouted, keef. Keef, stop. Stop. I instinctively took off after him. I had a habit of doing this, much to my Marines frustration. Lance Corporal Zach Shores followed close behind me for cover. Another veteran of the battalion's 2004 deployment to Ramadi, Shores was big, 6 2, and more than £200. He was scruffy and surly and exuded a I don't give a about nothing attitude most of the time in a firefight, however, he was dependable and as dangerous as they could become. A killer. I pursued the boy as he made it Around a corner, yelling at him again to stop. This time he did. And then he turned to face me, hand still in his coat. I trained my M4 on him, ready to shoot if he drew a weapon. I could see him looking around for an escape route. Sensing he was about to dart into the an alley, he made a move. I fired two shots, not aimed at the boy. I drilled two rounds into an air conditioner unit that was on the ground 10 meters away from him in a vain effort to get him to compliance. Why? I had just violated our own policy of never firing warning shots. The boy took off. Shores grabbed me and said, sir, he's gone. Him. Let him go. It was nothing. Let's get back to the squad. As we moved, I could still feel the effects of the adrenaline rush. I was out of breath and sweating. The men in the street looked at me cold, coldly, scornfully. And this was all for you guys to set up a meeting at a secure. At a government center. And they were doing a meeting with like the. The key leaders of the. Of the city out there. And the meeting ends and then a guy. You see Staff Sergeant Slaughter sitting on an elevated concrete sidewalk, dangling his feet over the side. I walked over to him and I sat down. I took off my helmet and stared at the ground. Slaughter was 29 years old from Santa Fe, Texas, married with two kids. He. He stood 5, 6. He was rough and built like a fire plug and constantly had a big thick dip of Copenhagen snuff in his lower lip. He took. He always had an air of seriousness about him. Maybe because he was on his second combat tour in Iraq. A sense of vulnerability and uncertainty hit me as I sat there. Slaughter sensed it. So, sir, how'd the meeting go? I said, same shit. He dug deep, deeper. What's going on, sir? You all right? I didn't normally divest my emotions with Marines, but when Slaughter asked me if I. I felt I had an overwhelming need to share with him. Staff Sergeant. What the fuck would have happened if I'd have shot that kid? I don't know what I was thinking. I just can't get it out of my head. Why did I even shoot my rifle if I wasn't going to shoot him? Slaughter didn't hesitate to respond. Sir. You did the right thing. It wasn't worth it either way. It's this place. It's a fuck story. And it gets to everyone. That includes you. You're good, Sir. I felt that Slaughter was right. At least that's what I wanted to believe at the time. He was, though. I thanked him for listening. He gave me a quick head nod. I told him to get the boys together and get ready to go. That moment weighed on me for days. That young kid, cocky as he may have been, would never know how close he was to his death. Either way, Slaughter and Shores were right. That's, that's some, that's some combat fatigue mentality going on.

[C]

I forgot about that story, man. It's funny, like having someone ready read your book to you, by the way, like, and you. Yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. That was. You, like have. Just listening. Have you read that is. And knowing Jeremy Slaughter too, is what a cool name. Like Sergeant Slaughter for sure. He was a good dude, you know, and like to. I don't know, he's a great leader too, you know, and he, he was able to balance me out that day. And you got to have that. That's why, you know, everything. I remind people this all the time. Everything I know about officer and I learned and was taught by the dogs, enlisted guys, staff NCOs. So I. They are the balance. When you, when you talk about the important things of, you know, leadership and, you know, listening is one of them. And it's not. Also not lost to me, as I'm sure you get this guy that runs his mouth on, you know, podcasts, you speak in public and you write a lot. Like, listening is probably one of the greatest attributes a leader can have. It's a learned attribute. In some cases, I'm one of those guys. But his ability to listen is what creates that great balance of leadership in a team. And you know, we weren't some hand selected super company of Marines. Like, we, we took what we got, but we had this remarkable chemistry. I think that we all had a hand in as, as leaders at every level to, to really, you know, be able to listen like that. That, that's. I think that's tough. I always love the guys. You know, like I've read about Pete Somerville in the book is like, he was like a ninja. Like, he'd always been on the fringes of those guys and you know, they're in meetings or parties and they're kind of just like a ninja. They're just sitting there taking it all in. And I'll spot him now because I've been trained like, God, I wish I could be like that guy. Like, I couldn't be like Echo. Like, he's sitting here, this whole podcast and like, hasn't said a peep. I mean, you know, like, how does he do that.

[A]

That's the Ovon said. He sure don't say a lot for.

[C]

A guy, how he does that. How does he do that? I don't know what he's doing down there.

[A]

You know, I'm gonna fast forward. You cover a couple more. You have another couple civilian cat. Another civilian casualty. Again, this is just. It's so good that you put this stuff in the book so people understand what it's like. And then we get to this. Our departure date from Iraq was finally announced. We would be turning over our battle space and route, but with 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines. For the most part, the Marines were ready to go. But they also had become accustomed to living so close together under such austere conditions for so long that the reality took a while to sink in. After being extended on deployment twice already, they braced for the impact of another letdown. This time, however, there would be no letdown. We were headed home. Had to feel pretty good to be getting the hell out of there.

[C]

Yeah, I've been cursed with having extensions on deployments. Normally, a Marine deployment is, like, six months, but they all knew, too. I had a track record of, like, getting extended. It. It was good, but this.

[A]

The boss bringing the bad luck with them.

[C]

They psyched us like, a couple times, like, yeah, not going home. Psych. And that just happened. And, you know, Marines bounced back. But, yeah, it was. I. I liked it that we were on amphibious shipping, too. And I'll give it. I have multiple times given a lot of credit. And thanks to our Navy brethren from that Argus, they stayed on station. They could have gone back home, but they waited for us to get back on those ships. They, you know, not kicking indoors or anything, but they knew how important it was for the Marines to return to their own stuff that we just left. You know, it's. And in our case, it was garbage bags of moldy green cammies that were stained in red soil from trading in India as the first US force to ever train with the 21st Punjab. And. But they had to store it. They didn't have. When we got the order to launch, like, they didn't even have time to do the laundry on the ship. So, like, bag it all up and, like, they were destroyed. But the Navy waited for us, man. And that cruise home and stop in Australia, I think was. That was important.

[A]

Yeah. Were guys like, no, I don't want to go to Australia. Just take me the whole home. Or guys like, hell, yeah, take me to Australia.

[C]

Oh, they want to go Australia.

[A]

I'm sure the young single boys Were very Iraq, Australia.

[C]

Pretty. They were, they were pretty jazzed about that.

[A]

I've always talked about the fact that, you know, in, In World War II, when the war was over, you got in a boat with, you know, whatever, 3,000 of your brothers and you debriefed on the way home and you discuss things and you talk about what you did right, what you did wrong, and you had a chance to get stuff off your chest and what have you. Whereas for a lot of people in the G WAT or even Vietnam for that matter, it was like, hey, I'm here in a totally horrible place. I'm gonna get on this freaking airplane and 24 hours later or 36 hours later, I'm back at home, I'm walking down the street and there's my kids and there's a, you know, some bum, you know, wanting money for me and some, you know, 18 year old high school girl in a freaking Mercedes that's like telling you, honking her horn at you or whatever the case may be. Like, that can be a little bit of a rough transition. Did you feel like it was helpful that you and your guys got put on a ship and you guys got kind of quarantined from the world for a little while?

[C]

Yeah, I think it was smart. I agree with you. You know, like World War II, like that, decompression time. I think it's important. It's just. It doesn't feel natural, like to hop on a plane. Even being on the plane and getting like, would you like a Diet Coke or something like that feels weird. Like no one's offering you Diet RIP it's in Iraq, you know, it's like, it's just no service. Like you're, you know, it's just, it's a. It's. It was very beneficial, I think. And I wrote about it too. It's like, interestingly enough, after going through all that, we didn't have a single liberty instance. Like no bad behavior from the boys, not one. It was nuts. I don't know if the whole muted, but I know, echo company, like we were good boys and they took care of each other out there. But yeah, it was. And it was tough for me too. Like adjusting on ship. Like, I didn't. My roommates were, you know, other company commanders. Like, are you ever gonna sleep? I'm like, I can't sleep. Like, I'd have the TV on in the state room and. Or I'd be up and I'd be one. Wandering the ship and like, I, I still don't My sleep has gotten a little bit better. But you know, back then it was, you're working so much, you're operating around the clock and you're, you're, it's not good to operate on little sleep. I mean, we're the worst at advocating like, oh, we can do this. Like, but it's not effective to be sleep deprived as a leader in any environment. So a lot of people brag about like, I haven't slept in three days. I'm like, well, you're a walking idiot right now.

[A]

So do you feel like you might have some genetics that are, that you need less sleep?

[C]

Yeah, I, maybe I don't, I don't know. I'm no geneticist. Yeah.

[A]

Illinois State doesn't I kind of get that from my. So I don't, I don't need a lot of sleep. My oldest daughter, like when she was in high school, she'd be up at 11 o' clock at night studying. And like I'd go to bed and I'd wake up at 4:30 in the morning and she'd be up study or she'd be like up studying like she was, she needed very little sleep. My middle daughter, if you want her to get out of bed, you better be ready to scrap. Which is also what my wife is like. Like, my wife, she likes to sleep. My son's kind of like in the middle and then my daughter's a sleeper. But I've always, and, and I would not need much sleep and be like, you know, I would, you know, people like, oh, if you haven't slept eight hours, that's like three beers or whatever that thing is. I'm like, bro, I've been operating on like a 12 pack forever then. But did you feel, do you feel like that might be the case? A little bit.

[C]

I function pretty well in limited sleep, I will say that. But I never have really slept eight hours. And I don't know, but I know this and I'm, we are completely opposite on this. Like, I do not like getting up early. Like, I know. Do you do that naturally? Like you're just like, bing, it's 4:30.

[A]

Take a picture of my watch. Actually, I told my wife this morning I was in a, the deepest sleep this morning when I woke up, like the, the alarm clock went off and I was like, where am I right now? What is going on? And it was like my whole sleep took place in like 30 seconds, you know. But so sometimes it's the alarm clock, sometimes it's not. It's a little Bit of both.

[C]

I don't like getting up early. I don't like being cold. I don't like being wet. Pretty much a really horrible career, Joyce for 24 years. But, you know, seriously, like, even the Marine scene was like. Like, sir, like, you don't like getting out of the bag in the morning, like, nah, it's cold outside, like. But I do it. You know, I was like, I wasn't tardy or anything.

[A]

But how was it?

[C]

You're bragging rights, though, right?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. How was it when you got home, like, so now you're in San Diego. How was that?

[C]

I, for me, personally, it was a pretty easy adjustment because of my experience, I think. And then, you know, we had, you know, welcome home ceremony, and the city of San Clemente, California, up here, like, just the chamber of commerce adopts a battalion. Each city does. Some do, some don't. But we were very fortunate that the city of San Clemente adopted us. And they did this huge welcome home. And then, you know, it was a few weeks later, but they invited all the gold star families out. And. Yeah, I don't know if I wrote about or not, but it was beautiful. When the Sanchezes showed up, there's, like, the whole tribe. It was like 40 people.

[A]

They had the T shirts on.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't. I can never remember, but it was so heartwarming, you know, to see them and, you know. But, you know, the tran. The transition back, I think, for most guys was relatively easy. I think it's like. And, you know, it's that Tyler writes about this in his book Forging Chaos is like. It's that lack of. Of traumatic stress disorder. Like, I use it definitely. Everybody shares it. Like, mine is the friction. I. I was like, you have all this friction in your life, and especially in combat is like, when you remove that. It's. For me, it was like the absence of that friction. Like, how do you replace that type of adrenaline? It's. It's hard to replace, but you got to find ways to do it. You know, maybe it's working out. Maybe it's doing this. Maybe it's baking cupcakes. I don't care, but you got to find something. I don't know if there's a big adrenaline rush baking cupcakes, but who knows, man? Mecca might like, you know, some skills.

[A]

Well, I want to close out the book with the memorial service that happens. And this is the 15th of June, 2007. It was a warm, sunny day when the magnificent bastards of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines honored their fallen brothers. We held the last memorial at Camp San Mateo, a smaller camp aboard Camp Pendleton on elaborately decorated parade ground behind our battalion command post. It was lined with all 50 state flags that ruffled slightly in the wind as it blew through the base of the mountain. Surrounding the camp, aluminum bleachers were set up to accommodate the hundreds of attendees. We had the customary memorial displays. Eight dressed wooden pedestals with eight upside down M16A4 rifles, their bayonets thrust into a sandbag at the bottom, holding them tight. Combat boots at the the base of each pedestal with a camouflage covered Kevlar helmet on the top of the butt stock of each rifle. Dog tags of each Marine dangled over the rifle's pistol grips. Every pedestal had a hand drawn charcoal portrait of the eight Marines that died on our deployment in 2006 and 2007. Three were from Echo Company. The tribute we paid to our fellow Marines that day was a fitting ceremony. After the oral homages, music played softly over the speaker system as the crowd filters slowly out from the bleachers. Marines were the first to gravitate to the eight battlefield crosses on display. Individually or in groups of three or four, they stood before the memorials, placed their palms on the tops of the helmets that rested on the rifles. Some reached down and gently rubbed the aluminum dog tags between their thumbs and forefingers, pressing the tags into their palms. Some wept. Other Marines swarmed around their broken comrades, wrapping their arms around their back, supporting each other and trying to fight off their own tears. Some of the Marines stood paralyzed by emotion in front of the pedestals, unable to leave. I watched from afar at first. Then I felt compelled to rush to the men and hug them myself. Heat and emotion welled up inside of me and I blinked hard to fight back the tears. I sniffed sharply and swallowed against the tightening muscles in my throat. I was heartbroken too. Watching my Marines in pain was hard. I'd always tried to safeguard them from danger and during our time in Iraq, but there was nothing I could do now to protect them from this. The Marines lingered at the memorials for a while and were given respect from the families and friends that watched this immense display of affection and loyalty as they had while they were in Iraq. The family supported us that day, even though our job was to be there for them. I'm sure seeing us so vulnerable hit them hard. In contrast to the hard charging warriors they watched go off to war. The families descended upon us with hugs and support. As we stood there, weakened by our grief, they put their arms around us still saying it's all right. So, great book. And again, I read some of the. The highlights of the book, but there's so much detail and it's. It's just a great, incredible history of what you guys went through. And you know what I didn't do? One of the best things that you do in the book is you give a great. Basically a biography of everyone that's in the book. And I was throwing out names today, like, just one off. You just hear a name, like, randomly, but you give where that person's from, what they were, like, you know, whatever they went through in high school, what, you know, how they ended up in the marine corps. And so you. You realize that these people that were. That these marines that you're talking in the book about in the book are people. And I didn't do a good job of reading that today. But when you get the book, you really get to learn about these men. So that. That's just awesome. So pick up this book. The book is called echo and ramadi Firsthand story of U. S. Marines in Iraq's deadliest city. What was your job after. After that? Like, what was your job in the marine corps?

[C]

Yeah, I. I like the marines too. I will say this because when you're doing. When you're writing and you're doing, like, character development, I. I would have written about all 250 of those guys if I could have, but that would have been a big, fat, thick book and no one would have read it. And when I. When I share those details, I thought it was important. And I have kind of a formula. You know, there's kind of a rhythm on how different writers are in the style. But I wanted it to be emblematic of all the marines. You know, I wanted people to know there's like, this such an awesome cross section of young, patriotic Americans, men and women who raise their hand and volunteer to serve their country. And, you know, I'd like to share a little bit about them. And, you know, not just the physical. Brown hair, tall, fat, short, fat, A little bit of that, but, like, the lengths it takes for this kid in, you know, North Dakota to even drive to recruiter station. You know, it's like, you know, that's dedication, man. When you get in your. Your pickup truck and you drive three hours just so you can sign your life away and go fight and, you know, die for your country, you know, it's. It was impressive. So. But after. After that transition with. I stayed in the battalion, ultimately, I became the operations officer, worked for One of the best Marines in Boston, Chris Wortman, he's a general now, and went on another deployment to Okinawa and did another mew. Then I went to Yuma, Arizona as the again, the token grunt at the Marine Corps version of Top Gun, which is Premier Aviation school. It's a Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron one and they are the best pilots, rotary wing and fixed wing. And I was a department head out there for three years. And again, it was a cool job. I went kicking and screaming like I told you, you know. You know, I called my boss, like monitored CJ Williams and my EXO at the time in the battalion, I was the opposite. He goes, hey man, you're going to Yuma. Scott Garris, he's a full colonel, not so, he's about to retire. This guy goes, you're going to Yuma. I says, you're full of shit, man. I said, I'm not going to Yuma. So I called CJ and I says, hey sir, what's, what's up with these orders to Yuma? He goes, well, Mott gets what MOTS wants. He says, hey Scotty, by the way, isn't it like three in the morning in Okinawa right now? I go, yeah, sir, this is the. That keeps me up at night. I go getting orders to Yuma. But it was again, you know, you got to make the best out of a bad situation. Like I wasn't, you know, loving the commute back and forth to San Diego, Camp Pendleton and you know, to Yuma every week and living in the dorms like a, you know, college dorm puke and sharing a bathroom with another major. But you learn so much and the talent is so impressive. @mott1 and that community too is, it's a little mafia matzes. Like if you get the, they call it the chicken patch, it's an eagle. And if you're a weapons tactic instructor, that's like being a top gun. Like you're that guy like you, you don't become a student or an instructor at Motts unless you've been hand selected by your peers or by the schoolhouse. So it was, it was cool. But again, like the community, it took its toll on me, you know, running that, running the program twice a year. And then I kind of did a little hookup deal with the modder, who again was one of the guys who's like five guys standing at ews is like, you guys aren't graduating. And Brian, Brian Moville was like, he did like screw over. He got in trouble or something. But now he's a full colonel. He's a regimental commander. And so he was my mod or says, hey, Brian, like, I need a. I need a cool job. And Sean Carroll, who I was in fast company with, again, this is like nepotism, but it happens, you know, Sean says, hey, I'm the 15th mutual. You cisopso, you want my job? Like he was finding his own replacement. So Sean calls me and I call Brian and says, hey, man, I want Sean's job. He goes, well, they're gonna have to let you out of Yuma a little bit early. So I had to kind of plead my case to the boss at MOTS1. And luckily, you know, Colonel Heckle, he was a good dude and like, he had respected how much I'd done for the incident institution and kind of gave me an early out or a parole or something. But, you know, there's. There's one book I don't brag about too much or never get credit for writing, but I wrote this book. It's called. It's the new helicopter Borne operations book, but it's called Air Assault and it's Marine Corps Doctrine. I don't talk about a whole lot because there's nothing sexy about it. But for a Marine in that schoolhouse, we used to do this, you know, run off the publications, the information for you guys. It was called, you know, how to plan a Helo Operation, or, you know, helicopter one Operations. Well, we bought this plane called the Osprey, not a helicopter. And those pilots were like, it's not a helicopter. So I took a thousand monkeys and a thousand typewriters to an off site in Fort Worth. All pilots, aviators, from the schoolhouse. And we wrote that book from scrap. I mean, and it took like eight years to get published through the Marine Corps Dr. Production. Like, we suck at that, by the way. So that was one of the good things that came out of that. And then, you know, I went to the 15th MU, did another deployment, and as I had a Australian counterpart that came with me, and so we had kind of overlapping jobs, but I was in Bahrain as the CENTCOM LNO. So, you know, after 10 deployments and some shitty duty assignments, the sun shines on the dog's ass every once in a while. So I was staying at the Diplomat in Bahrain.

[A]

Nice.

[C]

Getting all the Radisson points and, you know, sushi in the club. And so I'd go into the office. You know, during that whole deployment, it was just, you know, they're doing training exercises afloat and stuff, and they did some real world stuff in the Middle East. And it was a cool job though. I go and brief the admiral and I wish I remember that guy's name, but he was funny, man. The, the captain was the. Of the arg. He was a country boy from like West Virginia or something, man, as redneck as they come. But he's a full car. Like, he's smart guy obviously, but he, he used to love it and you know, he. It all the sailors there hated too. You know, they were all like SWO dudes and whatnot. And they. I'd roll in. He's like, scotty, like, unless you have to brief me or the admirals on some. I think it was like Admiral Scott was run the show or their time. He goes, I don't expect you to be in this office. And so I just rolled in and flip flops and civvies and damn, you know, it was. Yeah, I'm sure you're familiar with that.

[A]

Very.

[C]

Yeah, it's like it was, it was a cool gig, you know, and you know, you're. But again, that deployment got extended, so like, I didn't. I needed to go early. But that, that too was where I kind of made the decision where I was going to retire. Because after getting blown up in Iraq and having a lot of spinal surgeries, my neck, my lower back, you know, thanks to the guys right in your backyard, you know, Balboa Naval Hospital, they took good care of me, but I was having a lot of problems. And you know, this after the daily grind we put on our bodies like it's a young man's game. And I honestly knew, and my boss knew, you know, I wasn't even allowed to run a PFT the last two years. I was with the 15th Mew and I was coming up on. On my 20 as an officer, so I could, you know, retire. And you know, my boss was cool about it. Scott Campbell, he was an operator dude. He was an orange guy and anglico guy. He's like, look, I don't, you know, I've never needed you for your body. He's like, you're in great shape. You know, because I was swimming. Like, I'm always hyper conscious of that, but I couldn't run a pft. He goes, I need you for your mind. He's like, you're one of the best planners I've ever had on my team. He goes, that's what you're going to do and you're going to keep doing that and I want you in Bahrain. Like, I Want you to be my mouth to these Navy guys of how we're fighting the MEW in their ao. So it was cool. It was a good deployment. But, you know, on that deployment, same deployment, I made the decision like, I, I'm going to retire. And I always told myself, when it stops being fun, like, I'm going to hang up my rifle and try something else. And never thought it would be, never thought it would be writing. Honestly, I, you know, I've shared enough of that background. But, you know, I like talking about that. Like the guy I'm staying with here, Mike Sager, I love talking about writing and I love telling other veterans about the importance of writing and sharing great stories. I'm not saying everything has to be a bestseller. I'm just saying it's like you, there are ways to, you know, tell your story and do it the right way and that, that's kind of one of the cool things too, that, you know, I, I created for myself after I retired and worked in the private sector for a little bit. I just didn't love it. You know, money is great, but I just didn't love it. And that's when I.

[A]

What'd you do in the private sector?

[C]

I worked for a private security firm in, in Hollywood and basically wrote their training plan. And, you know, a lot. And there was a lot of veterans in the, in the company as well. But the, I, I just found that there, there was a lack of culture that didn't, that I didn't like. And so, you know, I transitioned again. I, I just said, hey, I'm going to lock myself my student, I'm gonna start writing. And that's when I started working on Echo ner.

[A]

And then so at that point in the book, you talk about you had like the neck surgeries, now you're on painkillers, you're drinking, you end up in a drunk driving crash.

[C]

Yeah, I almost killed myself.

[A]

And you're.

[C]

Or someone else, that would have been worse. I mean, luckily.

[A]

Were you, were you in the Marine Corps when that happened?

[C]

No. Or.

[A]

So this is after you retired.

[C]

So I'm writing the book.

[A]

So when you, when you were. Because it sounded like you, you were in a pretty rough spot, like you were drinking a lot, not, you know, painkillers. You're having panic attacks. All that stuff is after you retired.

[C]

I had, I had panic attacks started while I was on active duty with the 15th Mew, just a couple of them. And then I, I would continue to have those occasionally, but I think I got them under Control, it wasn't frequent. I mean, I could count on both hands, like the number of times have had it. But it's a weird feeling if you've ever had one. Yeah, the physical, it's just overwhelming. You have no control over it. But it's, you know, as explained to me, it's like, you know, your body's way of releasing its own pressure valve, but it feels like a heart attack. So. Yeah, then, you know, as I'm, as I'm writing the book, you know, and I'm, I'm in, I'm still in a lot of pain. And then, you know, again, this, this is kind of like where I was talking about Sylvia's, like, there's none of you in the book. And I had to share this. This part of my life is like, it wasn't easy, but you know, it makes you feel a little bit more human when you share that part of yourself. It's like, look, I know I'm not the only guy that's dealing with this. And again, I was, you know, just trying to replicate that friction, man, that, that adrenaline. So, you know, I'm drinking, I'm self medicating, I'm taking pain pills. And then, you know, I'm going to my buddy's house. He's like a pro. He's not a biker biker. Like, you know, Hell's angel, he's like, he's one of the lead pro motocross. Jimmy Fitzpatrick, he was my neighbor. Like, you know, Fitz army and metal militia. Like, you know, anyway, that's Jimmy's like, he threw some ragers. It's like Playboy Mansion, you know, the Grotto, big house. Like, they weren't Playboy, but there's a bunch of, you know, party animals over there. We go over and we're hanging out. Like, I'm fighting Jimmy. And like, he's like, you know, I'm like, he's a young kid. Like he's in good shape too. He was like. And I was wasted. And you know, I drove home that night. I don't even remember getting in my Jeep. And then I was only literally less than a mile is how close you were. But I made the stupid decision to think that I could drive. And I woke up surrounded by yellow dust. And that was the airbags that had gone off in my Jeep and I had crashed into a culvert full of, you know, eight inch rock and Stewart, Stewart Drain. And someone from the party drove by. But, you know, again, you know, I wrote it was like that, that was humbling experience. For me.

[A]

Was that like a rock bottom scenario for you?

[C]

Pretty much.

[A]

Not quite.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Did you stop drinking?

[C]

I did, yeah.

[A]

So. Because that's what for a lot of.

[C]

Times you hear people talk about, I mean, I stopped cold drinking for a year. Like, I just couldn't physically go by it. And like, that was kind of a switch too, is like, I. I never want to be out in public where I can lose control. Like, I still drink if I want to, but, you know, I don't. I don't feel like I did then. Like, I was using alcohol to do this and I was using as a tool. But, yeah, that was. It was kind of a rock bottom thing. And to share that too is pretty tough. You know, it's like, you know, especially when you have family and, you know, it was kind of swept under the rug, you know, it's nothing you really like to brag about, to be quite honest with you. But again, I'm human. You're human. I think the people we lead and surround ourselves by are people that see us on social media from afar. They think you can become infallible. But when you share that about yourself, it was real, real lesson for me that I had to find a new way to replicate what I was missing in my life. Maybe I don't. I don't even know if writing about it was. Yeah, I don't know if you ever get this too. Your story is so much different, though, even though you share a lot of those. People ask you when you finished the book, was it this big cathartic moment for you? No, it was. It wasn't. I did. Wasn't. Like, oh, man, it feels so great. Like it should. Like I can sleep well at night. It wasn't any of that. For me, writing is a job. It's work. It's a lot of work. It's a kick in the balls most days. But sharing that story was important, but it didn't provide that relief. But I also liked having something to focus on. Like, when I'm writing this book, man, when I'm writing anything, like, I am in it. Like, I'm doing the work.

[A]

Yeah, you have a mission.

[C]

Yeah. When I'm helping other authors with what we've created, like, I'm in it. Like they are getting everything I have for them. And it's a lot of work. And it's a very, very long, discouraging process, you know.

[A]

It is indeed, man.

[C]

I don't know if you do. Like, I go into libraries or bookstore, Barnes and Noble or whatever, and I Look around. Like, it's hard for me to read. Like, I'm disciplined in how I read. Like, I make it part of my daily routine as a discipline. But I wouldn't want to read most of the stuff that's on the shelves. But I can totally respect the process that it took to get that one little book sitting on that shelf. Because the ones that aren't sitting there, I know where those are, too. Sitting on someone's computer because they didn't do the work.

[A]

Yeah. When people come to me and they want to write a book, I'm always like, well, it's a big undertaking. And selling books is really hard because not only you're asking for someone to give you 20 bucks and, like, 10 hours of their time, because that's what it takes to read a book. It takes, like, 10 hours to read a book. So, hey, Scott, give me 20 bucks and then give me 20 or 10 hours of your time. That's what you want. So that book better give them something back, you know, Otherwise, they're probably not going to read it.

[C]

It has to be entertaining, too, when I coach people. So Ben Sledge is going to be on the show next week. This is another great story. I love telling the story about Ben, too. And I haven't shared it a lot. It's usually just it. Not in public, but. So there's. There's a couple pieces of this story, and I brought some props in there sitting here on the desk, but that are these linkages, which is cool. So this. This guy, Ivan Ingram, just wrote this book once we pledge forever, published by Mike Sager, who I'm staying with here. As I came down to hang out with you guys, I get a phone call from Ben Sledge. Hey, sir, this is Ben Sledge. I'm not sure if you remember me or not, but I want to let you know that I wrote about you in my book. I said, really? I said, what's your book called? He goes, it's called where cowards go to die. I go, man, that's cool title. Great title. I said, who's your publisher? He says, regnering. I go, hold on a second. I said, we have the same publisher. And they didn't call me and asked me for a blurb or, like, endorse it or help. He's like, I don't know, sir. He's like, I don't get it. And I told them about you and this. It's like, man, they suck. I'm like, you know, this is an indictment. I'll hold comedy. I'm just saying, it's like that they missed a beat. And so he says, and I'm not sure, sir, if you remember me, go, I actually fought under your command. I said, that's why I wrote about you. I says, well, man, I'm honored. I says, who were you with? He goes, I was one of your cad guys, like Civil Affairs. I said, I don't remember you, man. I said, but there's a lot of guys in my command and they were in and out. And this is when we were in Western Ramadi. And he goes, you actually gave, you actually gave us some awards too, like before you rolled out and gave a guy some mail. Says, I don't remember that either. I said, but I'm glad we were taking care of the boys. And so he goes on and on, and it was just kind of a cool little reunion. And he asked me what I was doing and, you know, he was very congratulatory about echoing Hermodi. And I says, well, honestly, man, I said, you really just started helping this other guy, Ivan, who's a marsoc, Marine Raider, Special Forces dude. Ivan calls me and he's like, hey, Scotty, I really would like your help. I want to be a writer. And I know you can't teach me everything, you know, in a one hour phone call. It'd be a waste of everyone's time. I says, you're right. I said, and I don't do that. I said, and we were lieutenants together. We went to the base. Like, I've known him my whole life, smart guy. And so he says, how about you think about it? And, and I want to pay you. He goes, I insist on paying you. And so he would just venmo me some cash. And so I created a syllabus from like soup to nuts, like, creating a story arc, character development, how to find an agent, how to, you know, deal with publishing houses, everything, you know, in the whole process I went through so he didn't have to do a million Google searches, but I wrote it all down. And so I said, all right, man, you're going to call me on these days and we're going to talk. I'm going to talk for one hour. You're going to shut up, take notes, and this is going to be what I do. So I told Ben about this. He goes, hey, sir. He's like, yeah, you should make a company out of this. You should create a website. I'm like, no, no, no. It's like, I got enough websites. I had like Three already. Like a speaking website, the book website. He goes, no, I'll do it for you. I said, what do you mean? So he's also a web designer. Ben is among other talents this kid has, which is why I threw him under the bus when we were playing in the Ramadi reunion in El Paso. I was like, oh, Ben's going to do that, Sir. I told General McFarland is like, he's perfect. And so he creates this website and we started this company in Texas, Solid Copy Media llc. And so I started teaching guys and really it was cool too, because then I realized, well, I need to bring in other people who supported me and are smart and other best selling authors. So I brought, you know, I said, told Ben, I was like, hey, congratulations, man, you're now the managing partner. And he goes, really? I go, yeah. I go, it doesn't pay much. It's what we get. It's like right now. But so we launched this and just through word of mouth, we've started helping coach and mentor aspiring writers because they, I brought like Michelle Black in who, you know, wrote, you know, sacrifice. And then word of mouth just started, started spreading. So, you know, here's a guy I went to TBS with and now through my connection with Mike Sager, who again, I met from my neurologist here in San Diego. And I was getting treatments. You know, he's an award winning, you know, journalist with Esquire and Rolling Stone is. I says, hey, I think you should work with Ivan and we should publish his book. So he did, and it just came out last month. It's called Once We Pledged Forever. And it's a novel, but it's, you know, loosely based off of, as you can guess, a MARSOC Special Forces operator.

[A]

Fancy that.

[C]

Yeah. And so that's how that kind of, you know, just came full circle. But.

[A]

So what's the name of the company?

[C]

Solid. Solid Copy Media LLC.

[A]

And is it, is it solid copy media.com?

[C]

Yes, solid copy media.com.

[A]

So if people are interested in this, they can. That's where they can find.

[C]

Yeah. You know, you know what this company is, has become. I created the world's best bullshit filter I've ever created. Because here's the thing I used to get and still do. Me and Vinny Vargas were talking about this when I was doing this pot up in Salt Lake. He's like, how many people you have? Like, hey, can you help me write my book? Or hey, will you read my book? It's like, like a lot. And again, I don't have 10 hours of my life to just waste. And then they want advice and then they want this. I'm like, man, I just got to the point where I'm just like, delete, delete, delete. And then when I started helping Ivan and Ben came in and we kind of formalized it and I created a syllabus and the website is awesome, by the way. He did it in his sleep. It's really amazing. And I tell people, it's like, hey, if you want to do this course, it's going to cost you money. You have to invest in yourself. And I never hear from again. I'm like, self correcting problem. I'm like, perfect. Like, obviously they're not a pro. They don't want to do the work. And I never hear from them again. They never keep passing me like, read my book, read my book, read my book. Because it's an investment. And sometimes when I hit the delete key, it might have been the next, you know, New York Times bestseller, but they, they don't want to do the work. Like, I doubt that's the case. It was probably, you know, a couple hundred pages of garbage. So we built this company and again, we just. I really enjoy it when you're in training command, like teaching and instructing people is like, I really enjoy that. I really. And I really love, you know, sharing that with people. And sometimes people, you have your own disciplines. And like I do four things every day. I try to do four things every day. Like I try to do something physical, maybe just on my chainsaw. I try to educate myself. I try to read or do something that will inform myself. I try to put myself in difficult position. Maybe it's, you know, flying to California again and, you know, doing a podcast. Maybe it's speaking in front of a group of high school students. That's an uncomfortable position, by the way. But I do it. I force myself out. And then the last thing is like, I always try and help someone besides myself. And if I was able to do that for one hour a day, every single day, like there's still 20 hours left in a day day. And I don't beat myself up if I don't do that every day, I give myself a break. But being able to help people share their stories and bring in other best selling authors in, we have former presidents of publishing houses, we have freelance editors, we have publicists, we have podcasters, we have screenwriters. All people are successful in this business. So I brought them all under the umbrella, says, hey, you want to be Part of this company. And like, we do a percentage and do this. I said, but what we've created is access. Now you have access to a screenwriter, you have access to a podcast, or you have access, like, how do you do this? And you can get a consultation from, and learn from a pro. So you're not doing a thousand Google searches. Like, how I had to learn. And so, you know, that's how we started the company. But even before that, that's like, you know, when we're talking about, like, what do you do in transition? What is, how was your transition? Like, I never thought I'd be doing this. I don't know if I'm going to do it for another five years or ten years or not. But, you know, how did I become people? Tyler likes this too, because he loves calling me his agent. You know, I'm like, hey, man, don't call me a literary agent. But I am a literary agent. I have sold all these books to mainstream publishing houses. That's something that is, you know, just come into my life and, you know, again, it, I'll tell you the story, how it started. It started with this, with Andy B's book the Rifle. This is literally how, like all of these books have. I became an agent, even though, again, I kind of shunned the title because I don't want to be lumped in with, you know, scummy ambulance chasing lawyers or whatever agents. Like, they, you take it over the head. You know, what's funny to do is before I share stories like, you know, the veteran community is tight. And the reason I do it is because I like sharing those stories. We were talking about that. But the minute things go sideways, like, I stopped being a fellow Marine or veteran, like, now I'm just the agent. Like, why did you this, you know, get an all caps text? I'm like, hey, man, remember like, when everyone else said no to you, like, Scotty said yes, because I did the work.

[A]

But why? Why isn't my book selling the way you would said it would?

[C]

So this, this story written by Andrew Bijou is called the Rifle and it's combat stories from World War II. He is a huge following. He's a lovable guy, a Marine reservist and Boston cop. And so I get this message on LinkedIn, Jaco, and it's from this kid, Andy Bijio. Hey, sir, I, I bought 20, like, I don't know, you bought like 25 or 50 copies of my book. He goes, I'd love it if you came to Boston and signed him at the VFW and blah, blah, blah. And we do this motorcycle rally, and I really love your work. And I. I said yes. I. I kind of e. Stocked him a little bit, you know, did a scouting report, and, like, he was legit. And, you know, we had spoken on the phone, and, like, I kind of gaffed him off. And, like, he calls me again, it's like a couple weeks before the event, man. And he says, don't worry about it, sir. He goes, I understand you're busy. You know, you got a lot on your plate all the time. I said, no, man, I make time. I said, I'm gonna fly out. I said, I'm getting my ticket today. I said, you can pay me back for it or not. I don't care. But I promise you, Marine, I'm coming out. Because he was a young sergeant, Iraq, Afghanistan vet. He was a reservist, like I said. And so I fly out, and I have no great expectations, you know. And he also asked me, is like, you know, they do this motorcycle rally. He's like, you know, would you say a few words at the rally? I was like, yeah, cool. Not a problem. So I land Boston Logan. Doors open up. I grab my bag off the luggage thing. There's these three burly Boston cops there. Are you Major Scott Hughesing?

[A]

Hell, yeah.

[C]

I said, yep, you go get in the car. You come over there. So I was like, all right, cool. Like, they drive me to this, like, Embassy Suites in Winthrop, Mass. And. And there's this huge event going on. Like, all these disabled vets are there. Hershel, Woody Williams, one of my personal heroes and friends who we lost last year is there, you know, great group of Bostonians, and we're all hanging out. And so I'm like, this is cool. You know, and then the next day, we get up for this little motorcycle rally. No 2500 Harleys around the whole city of Boston. And then it ends at Suffolk Downs, which is this, like, state fairgrounds, man, if you can imagine, it's huge. And so Andy wants me to be the closing speaker in front of 8, 000 people at Suffolk Downs. And I'm not just a closing speaker. I'd prepared some notes, you know, and here I am out from California, and I'm actually standing there as a closing speaker behind, you know, some pretty well known people. Herschel was there as well, and I'm kind of on Woody watch, you know, making sure no one bumps into him. And it was funny because, like, that year, like, me and Woody had been to the Nixon Museum, speaking together. Like, he must have thought I was like, stalking him. But we've known each other for a long, long time. So I get on stage and I prepare some notes. I wad them up and throw them into the crowd. I said, andy, in his true humble nature, did not mention that I'd be flying out here to the great state of Massachusetts and speaking after the governor of the state of Massachusetts, Olympic gold medalist. All these heroes, Herschel Woody Williams. I said, so I'm not gonna say what I plan on saying. Like, So I kind of winged it. The crowd loved it. And so we go back to Andy's house, and it's a family home. Like, it's, you know, this whole family's always lived there since like 1900s. Like this old Boston home since Plymouth Rock. So as we were talking about during our break, grabbing some Jocko fuel, he says, hey, sir, I'm writing a book. And I go, oh, here we go. Everybody's writing a book, like. And I'm like, he's gonna drop the hammer on. This is it. He was such a nice guy like Andy. He can be talking with these World War II veterans and with this air of reverence and yet busting their balls at the same time like a good soldier would do. And they love him for it. Like, it's just remarkable talent that he has. It's just him. So he tells me about this book and I says, yeah, man, why don't you send it to me? So he sends me this manuscript and I start reading it. I start reading. I was like, man, this kid can write. Because Andy might play a caveman on tv, but he's got master's degree in history. He's a resident smart ass even this day. So I read this thing, I says, hey man, I really think that this book should be published. I said, are you, are you ready for that? And so we gave him the, the highs and lows. And so I reached out to my editor, Alex Novak at Regnery. And Alex is the son of Bob Novak from CNN Crossfire. Alex Sharp dude. He's become a great friend and great publisher at, at Post Hill Press. But when we were at Regnery, he was my editor. And so I called Alex, I says, hey man, I really think you should take a look at this in the history imprint. Probably gonna love this. And this kid's got a big, big following too already. He's like, they love this video content of this, this rifle that he's gotten. So he reads it and it sits for A while. And I'm not sure if they're gonna buy it, you know, And I'm just another author who's done pretty well recommending a book of a friend. But Alex knows, like, if I'm reading it, Scotty's probably giving me the sniff test. So it's gonna be good. So this, a couple months goes by and I'm in San Antonio and I pick up the phone and I says, hey, Andy, I got some news for you. I said, congratulations, you're gonna be a published author. And I think he started crying on the phone. I'm not ashamed of that. But he was very taken aback. So he, he writes this book, you know, this, this amazing book called the rifle, about this M1 Garand. And so it's Andy. And people always ask me like, well, how did he, like, why this book? I said, well, like any Marine, you know, he's curious. So he goes into his, his grandma's basement or something, the, the family tree. I'll screw up at some point when I tell the story, but she went through these. He went through her letters from his great Uncle Andrew. And there's a street named after him right by the house too. And he wrote how in World War II and he was killed in Anzio. But he loved this rifle, this M1 Garand. He loved it training, he loved carrying it in war and all this. So you know, Andy, after reading all these letters, like any Marine would do, you know, and he's a cop too, he goes out and he buys a. A rifle. And so he says to himself, self, what the shit am I going to do with this rifle now? So he goes down three doors and starts talking to PFC Joe Drago, this 90 year old, infirm World War II Pacific Campaign Marine. And he hands him this rifle and his eyes light up and he starts waving this rifle around the room and he's like telling these stories and he can't get enough of it and he won't shut up. He's like, go to that dresser and get that bag out. And like, there's a bag of gold teeth from like Japanese soldiers. And like he's sharing all this stuff that he'd hidden away his whole life. And right there Andy says, I'm going to take this rifle and put it in the hands of as many World War II veterans can and capture their stories and they're going to sign the rifle. So over 400 signatures later, we have this amazing story. And there's also the rifle too, which talks about the journey of Andy because again, when I'm teaching people how to write and I'm like, you know, being there a Sherpa on this just grueling, ass kicking journey, being a writer is there's, there's great parts and there's low parts. I said you have to be in the story. You're the hero of this story that all the travels and the journeys and if you follow the rifle and Andy on, on Instagram, like, man, there are some of the most heartwarming stories with these old geezers and like he's a geezer magnet. Like he just, there's just something about it, man. I love watching them and hearing these guys. Some of them are like over 100 years old, but Andy has all the stats and they signed it. And in the second book he talks about some of the stories. Like he found out, like one guy's like, like he was, he was found out. He's like, I was, you know, storming the beaches on Omaha beach. Like no tuba player, US Army Band, never deployed. And so Andy, he's got this rifle which you can see is like hundreds of signatures in paint pen. Now he's here with a Q tip.

[A]

Like stolen, stolen valor.

[C]

World War II. And yeah, you know, when you go.

[A]

To Gettysburg and the Pennsylvania monument and if you go look at the names of the Pennsylvania monuments, got the names of the guys that served, but some of them are scraped off really? Because same exact things, people like, bullshit, you weren't there. Whoa, Scott housing. You put your name on this monument. You weren't there to go. They scraped that thing off. So that shit's been around for a while apparently.

[C]

I know, man, it's. Yeah, so you know, they existed back then, but that, that's, you know, technically how I, you know, became a, an agent.

[A]

So now what do you got for books? Read them out. What do you got? The rifle we got. Yeah, underneath that.

[C]

So. And again like through word of mouth. This is Fred Galvin and Salmana. It's called A Few Bad Men. And so what's that one about the MARSOC 7? So he was a Marine, you know, Marsot guy, one of the first guys in Afghanistan. And you know, they're sent, ordered out into the hinterland. Ambush goes, you know, sideways. They return fire. And then, you know, the essence of the story is, you know, now you've got these seven, you know, specially trained operators that are, you know, accused, charged, tried, convicted and then later exonerated of this ambush gone wrong where civilians were killed, there was crossfire, but never exonerated. So it really is, you know, indicative of the title. And even Fred to this day, you know, and it's funny too, like. Like when I get pitched these stories and you were talking about, like, you get a lot of them too. It's like, so I don't know. Fred and I were both in fast company. We know a lot of same dudes. And when he sends me this book, I read it and it's. It's in Courier, new pitch, 12 single space. I said, man, I said, I gotta tell you, Fred, I said, this book is really good. Like, this is a story. I said, but it reads like an investigative journalist fucking a Marine officer and had this as the baby. He goes, well, you know, I was a Marine officer and Sal is an investigative journalist. I was like. I said, yeah, man. I said, I'm gonna put you in touch with my editor. I said, and she's gonna take this from good to great. And that's what great editors do. Stephen King wrote some books. You might have heard of this guy. But he always said, to air is human, to edit divine. I was like, yeah, Steve knows a couple things about writing. So when I handed this off, that's what happened. And then again, you know, I called. Alex was one of the first guys I kind of always give. He's kind of my default. Like, I give him first ride of refusal. But he loved it. And the book's done really well. I think this, again, is. This is another story of great importance that, you know, is a lot of the injustices too, within the military. And, you know, what I loved most about this book is that he names names. He does not mince around it.

[A]

So then you got this book, Forged in Chaos.

[C]

Yeah, this is. This is the latest one that again, the connection came through. Ben Sledge is. He says, hey, you should meet this guy Tyler. I have no idea who Tyler Gray is. I have no idea who's in, you know, Delta Force Operator, you know, tier one dude, actor, writer, producer on the CBS Paramount plus TV show SEAL Team. And so my phone rings. I'm in. I'm building up my horse arena, and I'm on my chainsaw or some kind of phone race. And, like, it's Tyler, you know, so I'm like, hey, what's up, man? Like, he's telling me a little about it, and he can kind of be a little all over the map sometimes, you know, and his. He tells me about this story. I don't hear from him for a long time. And then he introduced me to his co writer, Lauren Engelde and she's amazing, talented woman. Again, like, she's written 12 books. She wrote Darrell Utt's book Grit to Glory. He's a former Green Beret. She's. She's just phenomenal. I don't know how she puts herself like an alien in a human suit and can speak special operator. And she does an amazing job. But I don't hear from him. And then I see. So he finally makes a decision, like, hey. He goes, yeah, I want to work with you. Because although, yes, I'm an agent, I'm more of a hybrid because I do way, way more than any typical agent does. Like every, every blurb on this book, I think maybe minus one Jack Carr included. Like, I solicit these guys. Like, I don't say that slimy like they're friends. I'm like, like Scott Mann. I'm like, who you know is author of Pineapple Express. I met Scott, man, through my terp, who I wrote about in my book when I promoted him to lieutenant in the US Navy Cyber Warfare. He goes, you got to meet this guy, Scott Maner. He's like, good guy. You meet him. And so we go over, hanging out at Scott's place on the, on the lake. And that's how me and Scott became buds. And so when it comes time to like, sharing great stories, I'm like, scott, you gotta read this book, Jack, you gotta read this book. And you know, that's. Some people say, like, blurbs don't really mean anything. It's not really why I do. It is, you know, this, this story that he has written is the reviews that I see too is what's cool about this is we know we're talking about making an impact. Civilians are posting comments on Amazon. Is like, I needed this book. I really needed this book. Because he talks about the, his theory of lack of traumatic stress disorder that he dealt with and his man, you want to talk about rock bottom moment, like, again, like, it is. It gets pretty, pretty, pretty gritty down there with Tyler, but makes me want to read it. I read it in two days, man. I'm not kidding you. This was one of those books. And again, for a kid who has short attention span theater, like, I, I kept going like, I got to get back and I got to read some more of that book. Like, I wanted to know how this book was unfolding and how it would ultimately end. And Lauren and he did an amazing job. And you know what's cool too, is because of what I do and the, like, my Hybrid nature. Like I'm helping promote it. I'm help doing, you know, whatever I can. I'm editing like agents don't edit. Like right now. Lauren calls me like after this, like before the book even launches last month, month, she's like, I want to work with you again. She goes, I have been sitting on this story, but I have not found the right person. And it is just one of the most. I'm very excited about this project and I can talk about it publicly because it's already been out there. Lauren has written the story of Bibi Aisha. And most don't know the name, but will remember her photograph on the COVID of Time magazine as a young Afghan girl that had her nose and ears cut off. And we just finished the final edits. We're, you know, on the cusp of, you know, introducing it to major publishing houses. But it is one of the most important stories for people to read. Not men, not women people. What this young woman went through is for a battle hardened warrior, like, you know, me or you to read this. You think, just when I thought I had it rough, you read about one of the victims of the brutality of the Taliban in that culture. And I, I couldn't be more proud to be part of the, the project. And it's one of those things where like helping veterans and even, you know, civilians now have, you know, asked for me to help them out because of my love of sharing great stories, not just military ones, but, man, that this is going to be a good one. I'm excited about it. And then Guns, Girls and greed. We, we were talking a little bit about that. I get a phone call from. I was with the Writers Guild in la and I was in a, in A course. And one of the mentors, he goes, hey, man, he goes, I think you should take a look at this book. And this is a couple years back. And it. He kind of got hosed over by some indie press and they took a bunch of his money and they didn't do anything for him. So I, I read the manuscript and no, kid, no kidding, I'm reading this book on the, and like it reads so fast. Like I think I was through the first four chapters. I'm like, I gotta get off the toilet, man. Like, my legs are gonna fall asleep. It's like it was, I was sucked in. I'm like. And I'm reading it on my phone and so I, I call the guy. I said, you got to introduce me. This guy Morgan Lorett. I said, I want to read this Book. And it, man, it is like rapid fire. And it was. He makes no bones about him being a mercenary. And he's a Air Force veteran, Army veteran. He was all over the map. Lives in Arizona now. But. And I told you him, I said, hey, man, I think we should, you know, get this book published. And he, He. I told him this to his face. He. He thought he was doing me some favor. And I was like, no, it's kind of the other way around, but I'll just wait to hear back from you. So he goes with his other place and he gets screwed over. Well, sure enough, phone rings. Hey, Scott, how's it going? I'd really like to like you to be my agent and help me with this book. I go, I can't help you. I said, it's too late. It's downrange. Because it was hung on Amazon. I was like, shit show. You know, we had to go through all this. And I said, I can't talk to you legally, like, until you get the rights back. Like, you just. That's not how the business works. Like, I gotta, you know, protect everybody involved. So he calls me, like, months later, he's get the rights back, his court case, there's all this. And, like, so we got to find a way to kind of relaunch this amazing story because I wouldn't have even picked up the phone because he. Borg is a friend of mine, too. Like, all these guys are friends of mine. They're all veterans, you know, but, man, he's handful sometimes, you know? So I kind of had to lay down the law. I was like, look, man, this way it's going to work. I don't hear anything about what your wife wants. I want this. I said, you're going to do this. What I say, when I say and how I say. He's like, you got it, man. Roger that. So we added some other crazy, crazy stories in this book called Guns, Girls and Greed. We came up with a new title and kind of like, rebirthed it, and it's done great. I mean, I think that it's. It's, man, it's. It's crazy what mercenaries do. And, you know, when you're talking about Blackwater especially, like, and we all know that the guy that founded those, Navy SEAL Eric Prince, like, but there's a lot of scandal going in that community. There's a lot of turmoil with so many multiple agencies. And we work with all of them. I mean, especially we're in Baghdad, and it was like, ages. Triple Canopy, Blackwater, like, Mom and pop gun clubs. Going over there doing private security, man, is like, some of the stuff that went down. Morgan shares that. And again, he's another one of those guys. Like, I respect it if you're gonna name names or. Or Barf. 300 pages and hanging on Amazon, like, you better pony up, man. Give. Give the reader some entertainment and some information at the same time. That's tough to do. So. But it's. It's been a journey, man. You know, again, I didn't read growing up. My mom didn't read to me.

[A]

My mama didn't read to me.

[C]

No single mom, you know, worked. Worked two jobs. And, you know, I'm grateful for that. But, you know, I didn't read. Even in high school, I didn't read either. Yeah, I didn't read book cover to cover Cliff Notes. Like, I barely squeaked by. And I. I said when we came in, I wanted. Talked about. We know a lot of the same people and a lot of your guests on the show, but Johnny M. Clark is one of them. Who you had on, I think it was last year.

[A]

Yeah, just like.

[C]

Because it was funny. I get a. I get a phone call. Hey, man, I'm supposed to be doing this podcast with Jocko Willink. I go, scotty, do you know him? I go, yeah, he's a good guy. So, like, like, because he's in Florida. And in any event, let's rewind and rewind to the first part of the book. I'm in Desert Storm, young lance corporal sitting on a.50 caliber machine gun in Bahrain outside Shakey's Air Base. And, you know, we used to get these care packages, you know, in the, say, any service member. And so I am opening this up and I go through it and, you know, it's corn nuts. And there's letters from kids and crayon and. And there's magazines or comic books. And in mine, there's a book, and it's called Guns up by Johnny M. Clark. And I'm like, out of sheer boredom, I start thumbing through this paperback, and, man, it's about a machine gunner. And, oh, one of the characters is named Big Red, this big redhead from, I think, the Midwest. And so I get into this, like, I read it and I finished the book. The very first book I read, cover to cover is Guns up by Johnny M. Clark. And so fast forward, I published my book. And just out of curiosity, like, I must have been telling that story to someone. The story gets better because I e. Stalk him and see where he's at in the world. And he's a black belt instructor down in Tampa. I was like, you gotta be kidding me. Like, this guy's still kicking around like he's 70 something. And so I email him and we kind of go back and forth. I said, hey, I'd be really honored to send you a copy of my book. And I told him, like, Guns up was the very first book I ever read. I tell him the whole story. Weeks go by, and I pull a manila envelope out of the mail, and guess what's in it? A signed copy of a paperback edition of Guns Up. So Johnny and I have been friends and pen pals for years. I mean, because this is 2018 is when my book came out. So I met a. Last year, I met a 24 reunion in Miami and. Or closer by. But I called Johnny. I says, hey, man, I'm doing this reunion. I said, but I'm planning my trip. If you're going to be home, I'm going to do a layover in Tampa. I said, I would love to get together with you. So, sure enough, last year, I can't remember what month it was, but Johnny picked me up at the airport, drove me to his house, and we cruise out on his pontoon boat, and we're drinking beers and having snacks. That's the first time we ever met face to face. But it all started during Desert Storm when I opened that care package. So when you talk about things coming full circle, all of these stories I've shared is not to gratuitously promote books of clients of mine or anything, but it's like, because guys sit in a room that are like, we're lovers of education. We were readers. It's a struggle for us to read. And then, you know, this power of human connection, man, from. From everybody we've served with over, you know, the better part of our adult life to what we're doing now is like. I remember when Marlissa sent that, you know, questionnaire. I was like, man, I just can't cover it. Like, I. Like I'm a writer. But, like, I felt like I did a disservice to her because I know she's got a tough job, pretty solid protocol. It's all good. I know, but I felt like. And that was like having that epiphany on my tractor. I'm like, man, that's what I want to talk about with Jocko is this. This power of human connection and really what we share. And, you know, I get it, like, how hard it is to do a Show like this, like I was telling you story about Mike early in the hours that go into it, but there's also a lot of cool stuff that comes out of it, you know, and I appreciate that, too.

[A]

So, yeah, no, like, that's such a great connection. And I've got a bunch of things like that have happened with me with the SOG guys. You know, I started getting it with John Striker. My. I went through all these different SOG guys. Sometimes they didn't even know each other. They weren't. Didn't know about each other's operations. And I had, you know, end up with the. Their Vietnamese counterparts. Then the Vietnamese pilots I had, you know, when I was a young seal, when I was putting in for that to become an officer, the admiral in charge of all the seals was this guy named Admiral Richards. Then his nickname was Hulk. And he had been. When I was a brand new guy, I was in the gym working out at Seal Team 1. And I've got the Metallica cranked up. And the captain walks in at the time, he's the captain over at the center. And he comes walking in. So I like run over and turn down the radio and he goes, hey. And I'm like, yes, sir. And he goes, turn that shit back up. And I was like, okay. And he starts throwing big weights around and stuff. And then later he wrote the recommendation, wrote a recommendation for me to become an officer, you know, So I went when he. He became the Admiral. So years later, I'm not a new guy anymore, but I'm still a young enlisted guy. And he writes a recommendation for me to become an admiral. Well, then I had him on the podcast and he was. He is famous within the SEAL teams because they got in a big gunfight in Vietnam. And he ended up. He was a big strong guy, hence the name Hulk. And he ended up dragging a bunch of his wounded guys out, throwing his guys onto helicopters and on the Navy Seawolf helicopters, throwing guys on and like, hanging on by the skid to get out of this terrible situation. And then a few months later, I had the guys on that were the Sea Wolf helicopter pilots that pulled him out. So, yeah, you get these great, great things to go through and capture these stories. And, you know, I've unfortunately had a lot of guys on here, World War II in Vietnam, that, that died. And so, you know, to capture the oral history of Dean Ladd, you know, who was a Marine that was gut shot going into Tarawa, it's like just epic to be able to do that. So I think you and I are definitely have a lot in common from that perspective. And yeah, getting Johnny Clark on here was just, just awesome. That book is absolutely freaking epic. It's absolutely.

[C]

If you haven't read it and I don't know how spiritual you are, but he wrote a book, walk a little further with Me and man, it is, it's something you wouldn't think from this, you know, Vietnam vet, battle hardened dude like Johnny. But like, man, it is just remarkable story because he's written several books.

[A]

Guns up a whole bunch of them. Yeah.

[C]

Obviously one of the most popular, but it's this.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Metaphysical thing that Face. Great, man. Johnny, you're amazing.

[A]

Even like from the book side, you know, about Face, which is what was my favorite book. Right. My favorite book of all time was about Face and Hackworth. Yeah. And I started, I started talking about. About Face covered on the podcast, referred back to it a bunch and it started selling really well again. And they took what they call, I think they called an archived book where it doesn't get printed anymore. It's just out there. But they still own the rights to it. It started selling so much like on the ebay's that they reprinted it. When they reprinted it, they asked me if I want to write a blurb. I was like, blurb, I'll write a new forward for that thing. So I was like the biggest honor to take this book. And I stole so much leadership stuff from Hackworth and I never met him, but I stole so much leadership guidance from him.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And here I was having the honor to write the forward to that book.

[C]

So that's. I didn't know that. That's awesome. I got shunned one time by a nameless commander, even though I just said I like naming names. But this guy I had, I was a lieutenant. I'm reading about Face.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[C]

He's like, that's a fine example of read. He's like, that's an example of how not to lead. I was like, did you read this book? You're crazy, man. That's like thumb in your nose at once. An Eagle by Anton Meyer is like they.

[A]

They've reaccepted. Like Hackworth is accepted in the army and, and the Navy as well because, you know, he wrote an article speaking of stolen valor. He wrote a stolen valor article about the chief of Naval operations having a V on his Navy combination story. And Hackworth wrote that article. And the chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Borda, who created the program that I eventually used to become an officer, Admiral Border, killed himself.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

And so this, this stolen valor is a thing, but man, you're going to get busted.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So don't do it.

[C]

Well, I think I'll let Ben talk about it, like when he does his job. But like one of the things too, like we've thought about is we're. Yeah, we continue to develop, what we do with solid copy media is, you know, advise guys on like, you know, make sure it's accurate, you know, before you hang it out there like, hey, it's great, you got a deal, you got this. But like, it's got to be sniff checked, man.

[A]

And err on the side of maybe what you did, you know, err on the side of like, hey, I, I jumped onto a five foot wall. Make it three feet, you know what I mean? You know, it's okay. No one really cares. It's like. And part of it I think people get sucked into is if I'm telling you a story, you and I are sitting here face to face and I'm telling you a story. And especially if you're a civilian and I want to, I want you to feel how I felt, right? I want you to feel how I. Because I'm telling you a story. So when I tell you that I got mortared, I tell you that mortar landed right at my feet. Now what do I mean by that? Because it scared the shit out of me. I mean like 40 yards away. Because when you get bordered like, hey, that might as well be right at my feet because it scared the shit. But you're, you know, you're a civilian, you go, oh, damn, you know that, okay? And I made you feel it like, damn, a mortar right at your feet. That's scary. But then when people go from the hey, you and I are sitting here having a conversation to hey, we're gonna put this, the words that you said, we're gonna write them down and we're gonna publish them to the world. And when you make that transition, you gotta make the transition from storytelling and trying to make the small group of people that you're with feel emotional like you felt, which is good. That's good storytelling. It's good. If I make you feel like, oh, damn, that must have been scary. Yes, I just did a good job telling you a story. But when you're in a mook, you can't make those kind of, you can't make those kind of exaggerations. You just can't do it.

[C]

You know, I think there's several guys have gotten their Asses in a sling over that. But I think what Ben is. Yeah, Ben had a good idea. He's like, hey, sir, you know, should we, you know, like, start asking guys? I like, yeah. The thing too, is, like, what we're doing is like, we. We don't advertise. I don't know if it's by design or not, but, you know, through word of mouth. Like, even I work with a publicist in D.C. and he's like, how is it that your name comes up, like, when we're at this thing, Scott? And like. But you don't ever advertise. I go, I don't know, man. I'm like, maybe because I'm honest and like, you know, it's an anomaly in this industry or something. Like, actually, you know, give a about people. Like, I do care, you know, I think that's, you know, normally most agents are, you know, their only job is really just to sell the book and then send you your royalty check. Like, they don't do all the stuff I do. Like, I do. I enjoy it, though. You know, I work with some cool dudes.

[A]

Yeah, well, it's cool that you're so directly, you know, passionate about and it's part of you. You know, you're not. If you were publishing cooking manuals or whatever, you might not be quite as quite as dedicated as you are to, you know, these are stories from people that have been out there, you know, hanging out there. So.

[C]

Yeah, and I've had a couple civilian clients as well. Yeah, I work with some ghost writers, you know, co writers. And then, you know, one of my clients is, you know, the CEO of Johnsonville Foods. You wrote his story and found out about me. And, you know, Ralph's first book sold the, you know, flight of the buffalo, sold like 450,000 copies. And then, you know, a giant, obviously, you know, Johnsonville Foods, like, via Johnsville, brought.

[A]

Yeah, awesome.

[C]

That's Ralph. Like, just, you know, like, again, here's this dumb kid from, you know, Waukegan, Illinois. He barely graduated high school. Like, how do I know the guy that owns, you know, Johnson Foods? Or, like, how do you know anybody? But I think one of the things, and you'll probably be the victim of this, you know, is like, we'll exchange numbers. Like, I check in on people. I'm like, just. I cultivate relationships. And, you know, it's a little trick I've done is like, when I fly, like, I'll kind of go through my. And you've got thousands of them. I'll type up a message and, you know, I'll text it out to a few people, like, you know, a couple from A's, B, C's. And then when I land, kind of who responds back? You're like, just checking in Jocko, like, want to see what's new in your world? Like, haven't heard from him. You know, it seems kind of canned, but it's something like, I'm trying to maintain a friendship or something. Like, maybe like, oh. Because when you have thousands of contacts and thousands of people in your network, I'm not saying you have to talk to everybody all the time, but it's cool to check in. And normally when I call people, I'm not asking them for something. It's just like, hey, man, how you doing? Like, you know, it'd be like me calling you. You know, I can. Hey, how's Helen doing? It's like, she didn't know. Oh, yeah, yeah. So I got this going on, you know, like, Mike, you know, I have termites today, but. So it's hard to make time, though, you know, I think especially with what we do, but you got to make time.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It gets in organizations, training, education. Like, are you making time to do that, like, reading every day? Like, you have to. I have to force myself to do it. It. Especially when I want to read something, you know, that I. Is new.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, right on, man. Does that get us up to speed?

[C]

I think so, man. I. It's been good. I'm. It's good to be back in California for a nice visit. I'm excited to get back to Texas. It's a great, veteran, friendly state, man. I. I love it down there. So. But gates always open for you guys for down that neck of the woods. Let me know.

[A]

That's awesome. Ramadi reunion20.com so the reason you and I got reconnected was because there is a reunion for people that were in the Ready First Brigade or served with the Ready First Brigade or were in Ramadi and Gold star families. Ramadi reunion20.com is January 16th through the 17th, 2026. It's going to be an awesome event putting together so many cool things. If you were there with us, we want you there.

[C]

Yep. So there's like, think. What are they last world over 400.

[A]

Yeah. Like registered.

[C]

Just registered.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. So we, you know, like, let's get representation from all, you know, whoever you are. You guys know the deal. You guys heard all the freaking stories we were talking about today. If you were there, come Down. We're gonna have a good, I think there's golf. I won't be playing golf, but I think they're doing golf. But then we're gonna hang out, gonna meet each other, gonna see each other. It's gonna be cool to, you know, all those different lost perspectives. You know, the, the person that slapped you on the back as you got into a Bradley, the person that pulled you out of a Bradley, the person that you know stood overwatch while you were walking down the streets appeared. People that were walking down the streets while you were standing overwatch, like all those people, their perspectives, their stories and it's going to be awesome. We've got some gold star families that are going to be there. So Ramadi reunion20.com and register if you can register for it. So that way they can put you in the headcount. But this is going to be an epic deal. Our, our fearless leader, General McFarland is the guy running the show. They don't get any better than McFarland, than General McFarland. He's, he's, he's the guy that, when we started talking about this, he's the guy that stepped up and made it happen just like he did in Ramadi. So please, if you, if you can, if you were there, then come here. Ramadireunion20.com People can find you. Scotthusing.com I know you don't like social media, but you are on Twitter X but you haven't posted in a while. You're on Instagram. It's at, it's at Echo in Ramadi.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

Now we also have, which I didn't know about the solidcompymedia.com Correct. And do they have any social media presence or.

[C]

No, no, not really. Again, we, we, we have just been word of mouth right now and it's been good. So we, we work with the right people for the right reasons and it's, it's really cool.

[A]

That's awesome.

[C]

You could you go to solidcopymedia.com and see what we do for people and then also you can see what Ben does like with his web design. And guys, he's triple threat.

[A]

Right on. And Ben's got a cool book which I'm looking forward to chatting with him on here. Echo. Charles, any questions?

[B]

Oh, yeah, quick question. Do you journal?

[C]

I don't, I write a lot of notes down, but I don't, I don't journal every day.

[B]

Have you ever like thought about it and like not wondered but like, like you have a Reason why you don't, because obviously you're not. That's not a foreign concept.

[C]

I don't. I don't journal, but I do. I am pretty disciplined about writing something like. And it's. Again, it's not every day, but I used to do this thing where I would do. I call it 500 words, and it's like a fold, just a folder on my desktop, and I would sit down and anything I could think of, I write 500 words and not more, not less. 500 words. And that's like wordsmithing. It's. It's staying, you know, finely honed in your craft. There was a time where I never used to remember my dreams and my psychology first, like, well, you're dreaming. I go, well, if I don't remember it, am I dreaming? So then I started remembering my dreams at some point in my life. And I would wake up in the middle of the night, and I would type, and I would put my fingers on a keyboard because we all know that's how books get written. And I would go through this drill, and then I'd have to edit it because I'm half asleep and I'm writing these things down, which are foggy. It's interesting, but I don't have a reason why I don't journal. That's a good question, though.

[B]

But it's kind of like journaling, though, what you're talking about.

[C]

Yeah, I try and stay sharp, you know, writing. And then I also, again, like, I love to read, you know, current events and fun stuff and do this. But, like, I also like learning more about writing in the business and what's going on and trying to stay current. And so I get feeds for articles. So when I'm coaching people and they're giving me their time and money, I'm current, you know, and I'm not teaching them how I did it, you know. Well, this is how it was done eight years ago. Like, I know now, you know, through trends in social media and talking to advisors that, like, have educated me is, like, what they should be doing, best practices. And I. I do that with. I mean, we have discussions with presidents of publishing houses as, you know, some of the concerns with writing and what they're taking in or what authors are expecting and what's new. It's. Again, never thought I'd be sitting here doing this stuff. That's a good question.

[A]

Here we are. Anything else? Echo Charles.

[B]

That's it. Good to know. Meet you, sir. Yeah, right on.

[A]

Scott, any closing thoughts, man?

[C]

Closing thoughts, man. This is a good time. That's. That's what I'm thinking. Glad. Glad I came back to California, man. Thanks again for having me on and I looking forward to seeing you in gorgeous El Paso right in January. January 2026, by the way, is when the reunion is.

[A]

Yep, January 2026. It's 16th and the 7th, 17th. And yeah, you're right, it's in El Paso. I didn't mention that. It's down in Texas.

[C]

So I will say this, like, on a serious note. It's important to reunite. You know, we talked about a lot of things, a lot of different stories, how you navigate, you know, post military service and dealing with stress and unpacking, drama, reuniting school. Like, you have to make time to do that and you know, so if you were in the 05 tack 07 reminded me like, get out there. We. We'll be there. We're making the drive, we're making time, so got no excuses.

[A]

Y.

[C]

So thanks again, man. Thanks, brother.

[A]

Thank you. Yeah, man, thanks for. Thanks for joining us, man. Thanks for sharing your lessons learned and thanks your service and sacrifice. Thanks for what you and your marines did in Radi. It was a hell of a fight, as you know, and we won't forget those heroes that didn't come home. And thanks for what you're doing today, getting these veterans stories captured and out there to the world, man. Appreciate everything you're doing, brother.

[C]

Bruh.

[A]

And with that, Scott Housing has left the building. Great to sit down and talk with him. Definitely brought back some memories and awesome to see what he's doing right now with our veterans and the books. He's got all that stuff, so check those out. Also, if you want to support this podcast while simultaneously supporting yourself, one of the ways you need to support yourself is by working out, training, getting after it. You need some fuel. Check out jockofuel.com get some protein. I ate some. Some what? It was like a high, low nutrient, high calorie, low nutrient food the other day.

[B]

Yeah, sure.

[A]

And I did not feel full at all. Like at all.

[B]

Yeah, correct.

[A]

If you drink a milk, whether you get the protein powder or the protein ready to drink, shake either one, you will be satiated. It's incredible. So don't eat some nutrient less food. Get some protein in you. Jocko fuel. We also have a bunch of awesome supplements. We're talking about eyesight, dude. My eyes are solid, knock on wood. And also take time war. Yeah, because my time, my. My vision got better. We did like a. We did a muster we do muster every six months or something like that. And I showed up to one muster. Show up to the next muster six months later. And I looked down at the downstage monitor and I'm like, oh, did we. Did we. Are we using a bigger font? And they're like, no. Oh, because I can see this more clearly now. Only difference was taking time war. Anyways, we got a bunch of stuff that's really good for you. Check out jockofuel.com or go to your local store. We're really getting around. So check it out. Jockofuel.com the clean, the good. Get some. Also OriginUSA.com I was wearing Origin pants the other day. Pants, not jeans.

[C]

Me too.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

But pants actually at cji. Yeah, cj, I was wearing origin pants and someone was like, oh dude, I thought you'd be representing. And I was like, I am representing. No, no Origin pants. And I was like, no, Origin jeans. I go, these are Origin pants. And why was I wearing pants instead of jeans? Because Vegas was hot. Jeans are hot. So I was wearing Origin pants, the GTFO series. Anyways, we got ever and they're 100 made in America. Made in American. Made in materials. Not communist materials. Not sweatshop factories, but real American factories. So check out OriginUSA.com. get yourself some cool, nice comfortable pants or shirts or hoodies or boots or whatever.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

So there you go. Get some.

[B]

I had some jeans on to the other two day. No big deal. It was night time though. So you know, the hotness. So it was the jeans. I was good to go in.

[A]

In cji.

[B]

No, not cgi. I was. This was not last night, but the night before.

[A]

Where were you?

[B]

Downtown Sushi. Okay. With a bunch of family members. Things happened, got some family in town, you know, but that part didn't matter as much as the fact that I was wearing the jeans. You see what I'm saying? I'm going to wear them anyway. That's. That's my whole point. Anyway.

[A]

Also good.

[B]

Speaking of apparel and representing Jocko store dot com. This is where you can get your discipline equals freedom. And good. Stand by to get some. Get after all these expressions that we kind of say to ourselves, you know, that's where you can represent apparel wise. Also new stuff on the way. Give it maybe 30 to 60 days somewhere in between there.

[A]

Thanks for the heads up. Anyway, everyone's gonna sit around and freaking mark that on their calendar. They're gonna mark.

[B]

They might.

[A]

They're gonna mark. Mark a 30 day period on their calendar.

[C]

How about this?

[A]

30 to 60. 90 days. 30, 60 days. Mark your calendar. Check the website each day to see if Echo got his together and got something up on the website. What are you doing?

[B]

How about this? How about this? Don't mark your calendar. Just go sign up on the. Put your email on the freaking form on the front of the page. Chocolate store dot com. Put your email in there. I'll email you the day this stuff comes out. So you, you gotta miss out.

[A]

Okay. Anyway, also you're not going to spam them. You're not going to say 59 more days. No. 58 more days.

[B]

No.

[A]

Because you just tried to freaking basically span my mind right now with your dumb ass.

[C]

Yeah, we've been spamming 60 days.

[A]

There's new stuff. What is wrong with you?

[C]

That's more of a disclaimer.

[A]

Go. Okay.

[B]

Anyway, like I was trying to say.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

Also we have what we call the shirt locker, the subscription scenario. New design every month. I'm telling you, that one you can get right now. Just go on there. Boom, you get this month's shirt. Boom on the way.

[A]

Right on. Also check out these books, Echo and Ramadi by Scott Hughesing. Check that book out. It's a great book. You know, and you heard him rattle off a bunch of other authors that he has helped out. Some solid books which I haven't read yet. But we, when we, when we got done recording, we were talking about getting some of these individuals on the podcast. Also Dave Burke has a new book, it's coming out. You heard Scott mention Dave Burke. Dave Burke has a book coming out called need to Lead. It's a fantastic book. Pre order that right now get that. First a dish. And then of course, Echelon front, we have a leadership consulting company. We talk about these principles that we learned in combat. We can teach them to you and your organization. We have events that you can go to. They sell out. So if you want to come interact with us live, go to echelonfront.com and if you want to interact with us virtually, if you want to learn these lessons virtually, go to extreme ownership.com where we have a online training platform. You can learn all this. So there you go. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Want help? Gold star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. You heard Scott talk about Mark's mom today, Debbie Lee, Incredible woman. She's got an incredible organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org also check out heroes and horses.org and finally Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org if you want to connect with us. Scott Housing on the interwebs is scotthusing.com he's also on Twitter X and Instagram at Echo in Ramadi. And then they also have solidcopymedia.com I think he's going to get a little inundated with people that want to write books, which is awesome. That's what we're doing. And if you want to connect with us and you happen to be in Ramadi, then come and connect with us live in person, Ramadi reunion20.com January 16th through the 17th, 2026. We're going to be there. We want to see you all again. Also, you can check out jocko.com and then on social media I'm at Jocko Willink Echoes at Echo. Charles, just be careful because there's a freaking algorithm that is curated to your brain to keep you highly emotional and insane. So watch out for it. Once again, thanks to Scott Husing for joining us. Thanks for traveling out here to talk to us. Thanks for sharing the story of your Marines and thanks to all our military out there on the front lines protecting our way of life with a bold Semper Fi. To the magnificent bastards of 2nd Battalion 4th Marines, thank you for carrying on the proud tradition of the Marine Corps. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for your service protecting us here at home and for everyone else out there. Listen once again, we heard about these sacrifices made by our US Military, in this case, some of our United States Marines in the city of Ramadi, in the city of Rutbah. And they lived in dirt and dust and grime and they fought and they bled and they died. And we, we get the benefits of their sacrifices. We benefit from it every day. Do not squander their gift, relish it and honor their sacrifices. By the way of you live your life and that should be to the fullest. That's all I've got for tonight. Until next time, the Zeko and Jocko out.