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523: Honor, Commitment, Sacrifice, and Faith. What It Takes to Get Through Hell. With Landon Longgrear
04:30:04
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- [00:00]
A
This is Jocko podcast number 523 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.
- [00:05]
B
Good evening.
- [00:06]
A
My gear was fastened tighter than normal. I had 12 mags on me, loaded to full capacity. My rifle was well cleaned and lubed. I had two grenades strapped to my chest, my tops fixed, blade fighting knife under my left arm, four tourniquets at different grabbable locations across my torso, three smoke grenades, two flares, an extra saw drum, a metal detector and plenty of water in my day pack a alongside my plate carrier and other typical gear. We loaded two MRAPs and departed PB Alcatraz in full expectation of a fight. As we drove, I quietly recited Psalm 27:13 and asked God for strength. The truck stopped at the 605 North. I opened the back hatch of the MRAP and dismounted. This was our first foot patrol into enemy territory and I was the first out. As point man. I made my way 400 meters south on the 611 with the rest of the second squad behind me patrolling in Ranger file formation. My rifle was at the ready and I surveyed the road closely for disturbed earth command wires trailing off into the Green zone and other IED indicators. My head was on a swivel, going from ground to buildings to rooftops to tree lines and back to the Marines behind me. My attitude and posture were brazen, my jaw was clenched, my chest puffed out and my face as scowled as I could make it. There were two voices in my head. The first was that recon sniper act like a bunch of bulls and they'll fear you. I embodied that. The second was my dad. Dish it out with no reservations and all the fury you can muster. I was ready to scrap. Rifle grenades, fixed blade, bare hands or rocks on the ground. I was weaponized and in the zone. Team 1 began pushing across the field toward Building 61, which is 100 meters in front of us. They moved slow, carefully surveying the fresh ground they were on as they traversed across a lush green poppy field. Before they made it 20 meters across, M, who was with us, and team two picked up Taliban ICOM chatter and called out, they're about to hit us. This wasn't good. Team One was in a wide open field. At our 12 o', clock, Lieutenant Huff radioed to Sergeant Ashley that we were about to get hit. And then, almost immediately, the enemy started in on us from multiple positions. As the sound of machine gun bursts and incoming rounds enveloped us, everyone hit the deck. Despite all my training and mental posturing, the moment those rounds rattled off I froze in a brief state of shock and everything hit slow motion. So that right there is an excerpt from a book called U. S. Marines at the battle for Sangin, and it's written by Landon Long Grier, a marine who served in that battle, a battle that saw incredibly intense fighting, vicious IEDs, severe casualties, in fact, the highest rate of casualties in the war in Afghanistan. And it is an honor to have Landon here with us tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned. Landon, thanks for joining us, man.
- [03:44]
C
Yeah, honored to be here.
- [03:45]
A
Very much so, yeah. Incredible job writing this book. Obviously, I've run a lot. I've read a lot of combat memoirs, and this is really an outstanding job and really takes in my mind what's almost the classic American story of a kid growing up, fairly normal environment, goes in the Marine Corps straight into very harsh combat. And you. You capture that so well in this book. So it's really an honor to have you here. And. And also, I think it's great. You know, there's always a lot of focus on, you know, the special operations community. And I've always had to try and have as many grunts and infantrymen on this podcast, and I've had them from. I've had grunts and infantrymen from every war on this podcast, From World War II, Korea and Vietnam and. And obviously from Iraq and Afghanistan. And so to get another grunt ground pounder here to share your perspective and let the world know what it means to be an infantry man, it's just awesome. So thanks for joining us. Before we jump to the book, let's just get a little background on you. I said you grew up in a fairly normal kind of American way. Is that an accurate description?
- [04:59]
C
Yeah, yeah, very accurate. Grew up in a suburb in dfw, North Texas called Arlington. Relatively, relatively standard, like you said, just all American upbringing. I mean, I. I grew up with two parents in education. Started out as teachers. Dad ended up becoming an elementary school principal pretty early on. Mom stuck with teaching for a bit, then became a college counselor. Had a lot of really tight community in my upbringing. And, you know, back then it was the. It was 90s. I was a 90s kid, no cell phones, Internet was barely a thing. And so we. And we just renegaded the neighborhoods, you know. You know, I think about my childhood, it was probably as close to like a sandlot childhood as anybody had been able to experience in my generation. You are familiar with the movie the Sandlot?
- [05:49]
A
I am not familiar with the movie.
- [05:51]
C
Oh, it's like iconic America, I think, like 1950s 1960s, it's kids playing baseball and getting into all sorts of neighborhood shenanigans that are, you know, incredibly innocent, but, like, life changing to them as they're going through it. Incredible story. When the movie come out, probably in the 80s or 90s, I think echo approved.
- [06:12]
B
Yeah, yeah, it was cool. I didn't. I always see bits and pieces of it when I can, but the. You ever watch Stand By Me? I think, yeah, it kind of reminds me of that, like the groups, you know, it has that kind of vibe.
- [06:24]
C
I think, for sure. But I, you know, that. Not going into the premise of that movie, but most of the listeners will. A lot of the listeners will know it. You know, we. I would probably from like third grade on, I would hop on my bike for the day, got. Well, first of all, I'd call one of my friends that lived a mile or two away on their landline, you know, hey, Mrs. Lost Corn, is Eric there? And, you know, chat with my buddy, say, hey, what are you doing? You want to hang out? You know, and he'd say, yeah, sure. So I'd hop on my bike and take off for the day. Parents had no idea where I was or what I was doing. We had general, you know, rules, left and right, lateral limits of what we could and couldn't do. But like, outside of that, it was just disappear and have fun and, you know, we'd be off on our bikes doing anything we wanted at any point in the day, wherever we wanted to go. And it was just total freedom. The city was relatively safe back then. Didn't have a ton of crime to worry about. Didn't have that, you know, the concern that. That we have as parents today with abduction and crazy people doing crazy things. And it just. All that was just over our heads. And so we had parks that we had bike jumps in, and we had, you know, different friends houses in different places and specific stores that we like going to, and creeks we would go into and catch turtles and set fireworks off in and, you know, it's just total, total freedom.
- [07:38]
A
Was any of this oriented in a military manner? Because when I was doing all that stuff when I was a kid, it was all like, to put camouflage on my face and pretend I was going to war. Was that the same with you or are you not quite there?
- [07:50]
C
No, we weren't. We weren't quite there. I definitely did have that element as a kid. I would say a big part of my childhood was growing up in suburb life. You know, know 90s suburb life, which is great. Another big Part of my childhood was getting into the outdoors. We had a family ranch in the Hill country that had been in my family since 1912. I think the original folks on that side of the family that made it there came by chuck wagon and just set up and established in the Hill country and maintained presence down there ever since. That side of the family is all farmers and ranchers or were through the generations. And so we being my. But my family would travel down there two, three times a year, especially during hunting season, and just experience the outdoors. And that was 100% military. I was camoed up, you know, sitting in deer blinds, picturing myself as a sniper in Vietnam, you know, multiple times a year, every year. And then the other half of that is me and my dad would go camping up in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, lower Missouri, which is where his family kind of originated from a few generations back. Same thing. Just be hiking the hills.
- [08:56]
A
Beautiful.
- [08:57]
C
Man's amazing. Yeah. Boulders and caves and bluff lines and forests and creeks and draws and I just love the outdoors. Loved how rugged it was, especially up in Arkansas. It's way more rugged than the hill country. Winters are a lot harsher, you know, and in that time, we would backpack sometimes our way in through snow and ice to get to our campground and then set up a fire and cook everything on top of it. And anything that we had is what we backpacked in. You know, some trips that we couldn't get to where we were going by vehicle. So. Oh, yeah. Met like picturing myself in the military, in the outdoors every year.
- [09:32]
A
And what did you have for veteran history in your family?
- [09:35]
C
Both. Both. My granddad served. It wasn't really something that we talked about a ton. My granddad on my mom's side died when I was one and a half. He was in the army, and he had. He had photo albums of pictures of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, maybe both. He was going to be a part of the big, big invasion force into Japan. Had we not dropped those bombs. So I, you know, had we not dropped them, maybe my mom never came around. I don't know. They were projecting incredible losses. Had we made that. U.S. forces made that movement. But he was ground zero during that timeframe, and that's. And that's about it. He was a chaplain for a time, but I think he did some with active forces, but. But predominantly with. With the VA and then did other ministerial things with orphanages for the majority of his career or majority of his work life. But again, I didn't know him. And we talked about him you know, throughout the years. My other granddad was in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He was in Europe for a time. I think he was a radar tech. And, you know, we didn't really talk a ton about his service. He did serve. I didn't. I don't know that he saw any action in particular, so.
- [10:49]
A
So the military wasn't like a. A huge thing within your family that you guys like lived up to and thought about all the time?
- [10:57]
C
It really wasn't. But the call to service was, you know, a big part of my upbringing was that this wholesome Christian community, my grandparents, my parents, aunts and uncles, friends, you know, we. We have this. I grew up in a devout Christian community that really believed in putting others first and serving others and doing our part as benefactors of what people before us had sacrificed to provide us the way of life that we had. I mean, you know, part of that all American upbringing was we were true believers in the American dream. It was that America is a bright and shining star in this dark world. And throughout the history of generations of societies, nobody has ever lived freer, has ever had more chance, more opportunity to grow and prosper on their own terms, by making their own decisions outside the weight of others. Tyrannical control. And that was fought for, that was there. That was a price that was paid to provide that for us. And we. I always knew that growing up. And so while I didn't have this incredible military presence, the understanding that serving in the military was a part of, part of duty to take what those who had gone before us provided for us and carry it forward, do our part when the time calls for it. That's a big part of it. I can't ever remember a time I really second guessed if I wanted to serve in the military. I think that call to duty was always there as a kid. And you know, I. The majority of my formative years were during the G wad. I was in seventh grade whenever 9, 11 occurred. I remember watching the second plane hit the second tower in my gym coach's office in seventh grade early in the morning. And after that, the early battle or the early air bombing campaigns in Afghanistan and then the invasion of Iraq, then the battle for Fallujah and then the battle for Ahmadi. As I was, you know, approaching the end of my high school years, you know, Internet still was not super widespread back then, so it was evening news and we had it on every night. And every night I was seeing US troops advance against these tyrannical, oppressive regimes. How I Saw it in my mind back then, it's still true today. And I just knew I needed to be a part of it. I needed to go do my part and serve.
- [13:16]
A
So what did it look like going down to the recruiter for the first time?
- [13:19]
C
Yeah, I cultivated a relationship with multiple recruiting offices pretty early on. Again, I always knew I was going to serve. I just didn't know which branch I was going to go into. I'd say probably midway through high school is when it started getting to the point that it was worth actually having conversations. And you know, the Marine Corps is automatically the pool. I mean I man their marketing scheme in the 90s was just so on point, you know, and, and the uniform and the presentation. But whenever I saw Marines, I just saw things that I didn't have back then, things that I wanted. I saw resolve, I saw incredible strength. Those guys were just unbreakable. And when I looked at Marines and I would just watch them, watch how they operated, watched how they talked, watched how they treated each other, how they treated people, I just saw the pinnacle of excellence. I thought, whatever they have, that's what I want. I want to go be a part of what they've got. And I went and talked to the Army. I was looking at potentially going Ranger out at that point. There's a ton of opportunity in the army also, you know, I had a pretty good understanding of like all the schools you get to go to, all the training, all the different experiences, the military bases, they're everywhere in the US you get to go to Germany, you go to Spain. Like there's this breadth of broadened experience that I could have done in the army and that could have been a great route. Also looked at the Navy and Air Force, I just didn't, neither of those really called to me. But, but the thing that the Marine Corps that really spoke to me is I could join the army and do amazing things. I could join either of the other branches, but I could become a Marine. And man Ed, that's, that's what sold me. I wanted to be a Marine.
- [14:54]
A
Yeah. The Marine Corps is just does an outstanding job with their, I hate to call it a brand, but with, with their heritage and let people understand those things.
- [15:04]
C
You're totally right.
- [15:05]
A
Now how did this, now you mentioned before we hit record today, there was like a punk rock element to your youth as well. What was that all about?
- [15:12]
C
Yeah, yeah. So I, you know, I grew up in, in a great youth group with very well intending, you know, amazing, genuine, faith filled people. And that was my Family. Also, the other side of the 90s was punk rock was super heavy. X Games was in. You know, there were TV shows like Jackass and mtv. Just. Just people being wily and rebellious, which is like, that's kind of what, you know, every generation has some form of that. And so that I had friends that were very great, you know, wholesome Christian people. And then I had friends that were just total renegades and we were just caught in between and, you know, all relatively innocent. But going back to those, you know, biking the neighborhood days, you know, we'd be at youth group Wednesday night, we'd ride our bikes up there. And then on Friday night, it was, you know, it was the weekend. And so it's midnight and we're setting off little light bulb firecrackers in neighbors mailboxes. And then, you know, riding off as fast as we could and just creating all sorts of like. Like dumb, innocent havoc that we could as, you know, just little punks. And then there were like, elements of little kids in different parts of the neighborhood. We had some guys that were graduating 2006 instead of seven, so they were a year ahead of us. We knew who they were. It was a group of friends. They lived in the same neighborhood. And they'd be walking down the street, you know, and we're like third or fourth graders, and we'd be hustling on our bikes. They weren't BMXers. You know, everybody had their clicks back then. There were skaters, they were inline skaters, they were BMX bikers, and then there were, you know, sports guys or whatever. So they'd be walking down the street and we would ride up on them, behind them, you know, and. And like, you know, flip them off and cuss at them and scream and they get enraged and chase after us and we just sprint off. And then they got to the point that they started driving and we were still on bikes and. And now the table turned and we'd be riding our bikes down the street and we'd see. I don't name guys, but we'd see this white Mazda pickup truck with three guys in it. And we think, oh, no. So we'd shoot off into a drainage ditch and, you know, snake through the neighborhoods to get out of the way.
- [17:13]
A
You know how like, like pet or baby lions, they like, play with each other and they fight each other and they wrestle each other and they kind of. Dogs do it too. They fight, they kind of play and they kind of. It's. It's like when you're a young boy that's what's happening. Like you're going through kind of these.
- [17:27]
C
That's right.
- [17:27]
A
Experimental games of like okay, how can we be in some form of combat that's not real combat. The quint. The consequences aren't death, but you know, it could be like getting in trouble, could be maybe getting a bloody nose or whatever. It's. I never really thought of that before because this is all the same stupid stuff that we all did. Like when you're in fourth, fifth grade, it's like, oh, we're going to go brush up against a little bit of danger, a little bit of risk and we're going to keep. And then hopefully most people kind of pull back from that. Some people, some of the risks that you can take are, you know, you can experiment with drugs. People try and then sometimes that leads down a path or sometimes any of these paths, if you continue down them, all of a sudden you are in a bad spot. Know people can ruin their lives, people can end up in jail. But there's a certain amount of that, that kind of cub playing and simulated combat that happens as a kid that I think is probably pretty important developmentally because I don't know too many people that didn't do that kind of stuff as young 12 year old, 13 year old boys. It's pretty common.
- [18:36]
C
I think so too. I, I think it's completely normal and it's, it, it's nice to have. It was, it was good back then to have certain outlets that you know, we had pretty strong borderlines in, in any given season of life just with good parents and a good community of parents that were kind of looking out for everybody. And we did have sports as an outlet. You know, when things got to high school they did start to get a little bit out of hand and you, you could start to see there was some bifurcation of that group that's really going the distance in some of those areas that you mentioned that I got into quite a bit. And then you know, groups that were staying away and like keeping themselves away from that stuff. I mean I. Drugs came into play Midway through high 10th grade probably when my friends started smoking pot and man, I got into it and stayed in it and I loved it and I knew it was, it was detrimental for my life, but it just for a season it hooked me. I didn't do anything hardcore. I knew I had. I always felt like I had a really addictive personality and so should I do anything? Man made is where I drew the line. I knew it would end up Bad for me. I had some friends that were getting into some. Some pretty real stuff, you know, cocaine and LSD and some pcp. Just a couple friends. And I saw some of the outcomes of those decisions and they ended up so bad. Some of those friends went into college and continued down that path, and they're not here anymore. Have a good, good number of friends, actually that have OD'd or had drug or vehicle related deaths that could have been avoided. But. But even. Even on the lighter part, like partying in high school, like drinking parties, you know, that was huge in. In my sphere of friendship, and I was way deep into all that. I mean, I just had a. Once I got into high school, I had a very rebellious stint. They're looking back like I've got some regrets from that season of life. A lot that I learned through, though, had some real pivotal turnarounds. And I always knew it's worth mentioning and just always felt the call of God on my life. I just always felt the testimony of Christ in my heart and I always felt the invitation to come back. Just like, man, Landon, this is just not for you. This is not your life. Like, I've got something better for you. You just need to turn back. Just take my hand and I'll lead you. And thank God I did pull out.
- [20:55]
A
Yeah. You know, really lucky for me, I was into hardcore music and straight edge was kind of a part of that whole thing. And I kind of got into that when I was a young kid. And so I didn't drink, didn't. Didn't smoke pot, didn't do anything like that, and then went right from there into the military. So I kind of got forced to not partake in any of that stuff. Yeah, just by. I guess it was kind of the choices I was making. But I feel it's very lucky and I wish that that movement. Movement was a little bit stronger in the world. Perhaps it will be at some point in time.
- [21:26]
C
Certainly hope so.
- [21:28]
A
So what does it look like when you're now. You're now like you're joining boot camp. Like, what's. Did you leave right after high school?
- [21:36]
C
Yeah. Yeah. So thinking back to the time frame.
- [21:40]
A
Oh, you don't even need to think back. I'm gonna go to the book right here. My war journey began on June 4th 4th, 2007, four days after my high school graduation. I said goodbye to everything I knew and boarded a nervous flight from Texas to Southern California alone with the only. With only the clothes of my back. After a short bus ride from the San Diego International Airport to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. I stepped off the bus and claimed my place on the infamous yellow footprints that every Marine before me stood on and began my baptism into the brazen, cultish heritage of the United States Marine Corps. So right after high school?
- [22:16]
C
Right after high school, yeah.
- [22:17]
A
How'd your parents feel about that?
- [22:19]
C
They were, man, they were, they were shell shocked by it. I mean they, they struggled. They always knew I was going in. I mean I talked about it from the time that I was a kid. You know, I'm going to be a military guy. All throughout high school. It's funny, I was, I've got a file folder at home that I keep like special things in and I was looking up this really old, I had to have been freshman year of high school. It was, it was these compilation of papers that we did as an assignment and I remember the teacher saying, keep these for later in life, you're going to want them. Just randomly ran across it. I was talking about my future life and sure enough, the military was in there. I'm going into the service, not exactly sure how it's going to go. I don't know if I'm going here or there. I just. They knew because Iraq and Afghanistan were going on, man, they were concerned. I mean what parent wants to send their kid into the military during a time of war and joining during the time of war? I mean I, I think it's worth it, it's worth mentioning and always remembering, especially during the GWAD. But, but even now America's a 100% voluntary force. But back then we had two active wars going on. We were already suffering pretty incredible American losses on top of casualties that were like life altering in the worst way. And all of that was very widely known amongst American society. And so for, for parents being willing to let their children join into that, volunteer into that, knowing the ultimate outcome, most roads lead to some form or fashion of war torn involvement. It's got to be so hard on them. I have such a higher appreciation now being a parent for everything that they endured and went through as a part of my going into the military now that I have my own kids. So it was rough on them, very rough. But at the same time going back to the, the mentality that we had as a family, it was that there, there are, there are things in life like this that are worth doing, that are on behalf of, on behalf of ideals that are more important than our individual lives and that sometimes we have to make sacrifices. And so they also saw that I Was completely convinced that I was going in. They knew that it would be good for me. I needed some discipline in that season of my life. And they. I think that they had a lot of hope that it would bring out a lot of the best attributes in me, and it certainly did.
- [24:34]
A
Yeah.
- [24:34]
C
So very difficult for them, but they were supportive because I was fully convinced that I was going in.
- [24:38]
A
Yeah. That's such an interesting perspective for people that were joining after September 11th and even maybe two, three years after September 11th, where now we're fully engaged. And now you're talking 2007 like this is. It's. It's on. And there's a. I don't know if you'll have the chance to do this while you're out here, but if you drive up to Camp Pendleton, they built this giant, beautiful, beautiful hospital up there, and you can see it from the highway. And I just, you know, I've told my wife. I told my wife the first time I saw it, and. And we were just driving by and I said, you know, in 2005 and 2006, 2007, that place was filled up with wounded Marines. And it's just crazy to think that now it's like, you know, it's Marine Corps families and there's people that are in there with normal, everyday injuries, but at one point in time, that place was filled up with wounded Marines. So, yeah, you going in 2007 definitely has to give a different. A different perspective to your parents. Yeah, you know, you have a really good. You know, and. Get the book. Listen, I'm obviously not going to read the whole book today. If you're listening to this right now, get the book. The book is just an outstanding account. But you, you, when you're talking about boot camp, you have this. This part. And I thought this was just very it. I hadn't really heard this so clear before in any account of Marine Corps boot camp. I'm. Go to the book. Exhausted, emotionally shocked, and in immense pain from the negative effects of seven simultaneous injections, I broke down in tears. I remember wanting just a little relief from it all. But as I looked around the dark, quiet prison like squad, I knew that there was no relief. I realized I was flagging myself as being weak and that should I wake up the other recruits or the drill instructors, the agony would be further amplified by more merciless punishment. In that moment, it all clicked for me. My personal sovereignty was gone. If I was going to make it through, it was going to be on their program. I knew in that moment that I had to suck it up and accept it. I was already broken and they'd managed to get me there that quickly, which is exactly the point of it all. Every one of us recruits showed up with an ego confidence in our personal strengths, pride in our previous life achievements, and the boast that we would they we had willingly chosen to join the fiercest fighting force in the world. And during a time of war, none of those platforms of self confidence would carry any real weight in the intensity of, of war. And they would all inhibit the developmental process of becoming a United States Marine. At Marine Corps Depot, at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, they pull out all the stops and rip out the foundation of a person so they can effectively build that person back up as a Marine. It is all part of the process of indoctrination and it works.
- [27:37]
C
That's it. I, I had a good feeling about that back then. I had some friends that went into the Marine Corps a year ahead of me and they told me a little bit about Brian Boot camp, told me a lot about boot camp. But looking back especially, I just recognize that, you know, I, there's, there's a lot of, a lot of ego that goes in, into boot camp that shows up there and they've got to tear that all down. They've got to humble everybody, bring you really low. And looking back now, I mean, I, you know, may have not had a full understanding of exactly why all of that was happening at the time, but I just see it clear as day now. And I hit my breaking point quick, which I'm thankful for. And I remember that very moment thinking it's their program or nothing. I'm not like this is all their program. But then it started getting easy. I mean, it was still hard, but from the standpoint that like, I didn't have to figure anything out. I just needed to follow orders explicitly, do exactly what I was told, when I was told how I was told to do it. Just pay attention to detail and then go execute on what they were telling me to do. And then I started thriving and it was, it was fun from there.
- [28:43]
A
And you ended up being the platoon guide, which is kind of the leader. Ideal platoon.
- [28:47]
C
I, I have never been more gung ho in my life than in boot camp. I mean, it just, it checks so many boxes for me. It was such a pivotal moment because toward the end of high school, I, I just did not like who I had become because of some of those bad decisions that I had been making. Some of the crowds that I've been or Some of the, you know, friends, friendships that I had been running around with, I wanted. I. I just, I just didn't. I needed to change. Getting to boot camp was a fresh start. It ripped me away from everything that I had known, and it had placed me in an environment that leveled the playing field for everyone around me. And it was like, all of you have the same chance of being successful as the guy to your left or right. It's whatever you're going to make of it, and we'll show you the way, but you have to choose it. And I was all in.
- [29:32]
A
Yeah.
- [29:32]
C
So I picked up squad leader relatively quick, and then platoon guide maybe a week or two later, was still during first phase here at mcrd before we went to Camp Pendleton. Held onto it all the way through, and, man, I loved it. I got close proximity to the drill instructors. I had the highest performance expectations, but the pressure brought, like this great performance out of me. It was like they, they expect 100% all the time, and eyes are on me. They're not going to let me out of it. But that gave me the chance to like, prove up to it. And it, man, it just, it just brought the best attributes out of me in a great way.
- [30:09]
A
So good you end up platoon honor man.
- [30:11]
C
Platoon honor man.
- [30:12]
A
No joke. I mean, that's, that's legit.
- [30:14]
C
And we had 90 guys in our platoon. I mean, our battalion, we had six. Six platoons of 90 guys each. It was during the surge, if you remember that time frame, the George Bush was trying to surge up the military. I think the Marine Corps at the time. I don't remember the numbers specifically. I don't remember if there's 100,000 or 300,000 Marines, but they were trying to bump up like 20 or 30,000 back then. So recruitment numbers were huge. There was a lot of guys to compete against. But I remember in boot camp, similar to like what I've heard about buds and some of you, you know, seals experiences is you look. I would look around and see some really stout looking dudes. I mean, just, they had the, you know, figure of a bodybuilder and they seem to move like a fullback, you know. And I played a lot of football. We didn't get into that as a kid, but man, I love football, love contact football and totally different topic. But I'm looking around everybody in the squad bay like I'm looking at a football team and I can see who the heavy hitters are, I can see who the fast movers are. I can see who the, you Know the jokesters, whatever. Yeah. But some of the guys that have the physique and have the look ended up not being able to make it because they didn't have the mental strength or maybe not. They didn't make it as successful. They didn't turn out to be what you would have thought them to be just on appearance alone. Once I started to realize that, that I really could be the top, then I became determined to stay the top and made it all the way through that way, man. Just loved it. Loved it.
- [31:35]
A
So where'd you go after you got done with boot camp? So you're part of a reserve unit, is that right?
- [31:40]
C
Yeah. So this is where things get a little start taking a downturn. Whenever I joined the Marine Corps, initially during a time of war, my parents were obviously very concerned. One of the things that my granddad had always told me growing up is if you're going to go into the military, go as an officer. And the standard way to do that is graduate high school, go to college, and then go into the military through OCS and officer training. I just needed to get, I needed to get in. I just didn't see that being a successful route for me. I couldn't really envisioned going to college for four years and then still going into the military successfully. In addition to that, man, I just wanted to get in so bad. So I chose this middle ground called the platoon leadership course program. Can't remember if I actually contracted under it or if that was just the intended path, but that's what I initially signed up with the intent of doing. You go in, you going through boot camp, combat training, MOS school, however that looks, drop into a reserve unit, start college and do OCS in the summers in tandem with college. And then whenever you graduate college, you commission as an officer. So it's. There's not really a. I wouldn't say it's a faster route to becoming an officer. Maybe you can make the argument that it is. It's just an option and happened to be the option that I chose. So because of doing that, I took whatever mos, the drill instructor or the recruit recruiters put. Put in front of me because it really didn't matter. Ultimately, once you go into the officer corps, you re establish mos, whatever field you're going to go into and you, you pick it. At that time, man, it was I, I initially signed up for, I think it was 2887 artillery electronic technician, which is fine for some people. It's a terrible decision for me. I ended up going to out of boot camp, went to combat training back at Camp Pendleton, which is about a month. Everybody goes through it. If you're a grunt, you go to soi, which is two or three months, I think, depending on which route you go. So MCT and then basic electronic school in 29 Palms and then to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for radar technician school. It was. It was so tough because I just did not want to be there at all. I just so regretted deciding to go that direction. Now. The goal was still drop into the reserve, start college, start OCS for summer, and continue through to ultimately become an officer. But getting through that MOS school was so bitter. And I was so. It was just so bitter because I did. It just felt like a total waste of time. A lot of great guys go into. Went into that field. I mean, there's a lot of great guys that go into a lot of fields in the military. And I just. I honor anybody that chooses to serve. It's all volunteering. Everybody has a part to play. Just was not a good fit for me. Dropped into the reserve unit, started college, and my rock bottom just got even lower. I just thought, well, I just. I just revved up. I finally got into. Into the Marine Corps, made it through boot camp on top, Absolutely loved it. Building some momentum towards this career that I am going to absolutely love. And now I'm just right back where I. Right back where I started before any of it. And it just feels like, not a waste of time, but like I'm just taking steps back and not really going anywhere. In addition to that, the wars are progressing and I'm over here on the sideline, and I hated that. So I gave college a go, tried to do my best to stay motivated, keep the ultimate goal in the forefront of my mind. And I just couldn't do it. It was so tough. And being in the unit that I was in, it was in Fort Worth, 14th Marines, which is an artillery battery headquarters unit, in particular, which is support staff to the main arty battery. Not sure where the battery was located. You know, we did some trainings, did a summer at. It was all fine, but again, it just was. It just was not what I signed up for, not what I wanted. So I had a first sergeant at the time who was very high speed, end of career. I think he was just kind of riding out his final, final years of his 20. And then he. He was a police officer in Allen, Texas, which is in the Metroplex, and company first sergeant at this unit. And he was a prior grunt, had a Ton of wartime experience in Iraq, had been a few around a few different units, maybe did a stint or two in recon. I'm not sure I know was a sniper for a time. I went to talk to him and laid it out flat. I couldn't talk to anybody else at the unit about it, but that guy I went to talk to and I said, I need something different and I really need some advice because I'm not sure what to do. And we talked about inner service, transfer to some of the other branches, talked about going active duty and doing an MOS change. All of that was possible and on the table. While I was at 14th Marines, there were two deployments to Iraq and one to Afghanistan that I missed out on. And looking back, it's, I'm thankful that I missed out on those, but I didn't see it that way at the time. One had gone right before I got there and they were taking groups of guys and then attaching them to active duty units as kind of augments, fill ins. The first one happened right before I got there. The second Iraq deployment happened maybe two or three months after I got there. I missed out on that because they had too many volunteers. Then there was one Afghanistan, missed out on that because there were too many volunteers and guys that had been at the unit longer than I have. So they had seniority in picking. And I was very concerned that I was going to miss out on both wars. And I just thought I joined the Marine Corps during a time, my generation's war to go and be a part of it. And if I don't do something, I'm going to miss out on it and I'm going to turn 50, 55, 60, 65, 70 years old. And I'm going to look back on my military service and think I joined to be a part of the war effort, my generation's war. And I missed out on the whole thing. And I just couldn't live with myself. So the last piece of advice that first sergeant gave me is he said there's this unit in Houston, Texas, Alpha Company 123. I've got some friends down there, they're on cycle for deployment 10 months from now and they're all going and they're going to Afghanistan. It's a grunt unit. They'll take you. I had top tier. I always had first first class pft, always shot expert. My proficiency and conduct ratings were, were above average. Always. I mean I was, I was doing really good, presented well on paper, was super fit and very motivated. He said, I'll make a call down there, you make a call down there and let's push to get you into that unit. And so that was it. That became the plan.
- [38:05]
A
So did you have to go to, did you have to change your mosquito?
- [38:10]
C
Well, I tried to. I, I checked into 123. The way that I, the way that I was told at the time is if you are moving from air, from, from one city to another and there's a, another reserve unit closer to wherever you're going to live, they have to accept you and then it's up to that unit if they send you to the school or not. So my plan was to move to Houston. I had an apartment picked out. I was going to restart college down there. I didn't know anybody there, but if that's what it took to get to the unit, that's what I was going to do. Didn't end up having to follow through with it once I transferred down. But that was always my understanding was y' all are going to send me back to soi. I said, great. I mean send me tomorrow. I'm, I'm just, I'm ready to go and I want to go, I want to get overseas. Um, that never did check. I checked in. Yeah. Company, Company Gunnery Sergeant Coleman. Iconic Marine Corps guys named in the book. And that was one of the very first conversations. Lo and behold, off topic here. I found out at Gunny Coleman's funeral. We just, we just unfortunately buried him six or seven months ago. Died of cancer. But he was a prior non grunt guy. First four or five years of his Marine Corps career, he was a, I think a mechanic of sorts. Then he switched over to the infantry. And when I say that this guy's Marine Corps icon, he was MCMAP black belt with two red tabs. He'd served in every role in the Marine Corps Infantry. He fought, he saw combat in Somalia, was a part of Desert Storm, Desert Shield, did maybe three deployments to Iraq, saw a lot of activity there. And then our pump to Afghanistan. This guy was freakishly strong, super big and like not one to be trifled with. I mean I, there's not many men alive that garnered the respect that this man did. And, and come to find out, he had a very similar start.
- [39:55]
A
Yeah, so, so picking up the book Here, fast forward three years is October of 2010 and you're, you, you come out to Pendleton and you guys are on pre deployment workup for Afghanistan. And again, a bunch of really interesting, you know, you talk about what that looks like. You talk about what you guys are doing, you give some background on, on kind of the emotional part of it as well. The start of the five month pre deployment workup you're doing, you're. And again, this stuff is detailed in the book, but you got live fire ranges, you got ID lanes, you got life combat life saver training. Picking it up here. You say. Training intensified as the weeks progressed. We packed on more gear, carried more ammo, went longer distances and engaged increasingly more complex operational scenarios. Everything escalated. We would regularly perform things like five mile hump with 75% full gear, 100 pound plus, followed by combat patrols all day in the mountains, which often proved worse than the humps, and finished the day with NVG patrols in the middle of the night, capturing only a few hours of sleep before the next day's regimen begin. So you guys are in it. You're also learning about Afghan culture, learning about Middle east tribalism, learning some of the language, Pashtu, working on your call for fire stuff. Just, just doing everything you can to get prepared. And you go into this point here where there's a couple Marines that had just been in Hellman province and you know, this is Hellman problems. I think everyone's heard of it now, but this is a very hostile place to roll into. And these guys, you know, they, they roll in to kind of give you guys a brief and explain to you what it's like on the ground. You say very monotone, very glazed over and rigid and I'm going to fast forward a little bit, you say. They insisted that at times death in the platoon was entirely random and that knowing the roles up and down the patrol element would be critical. Radio Corman, machine gunner, point man, grenadier. Anyone at any point could take a round in the face and it was incumbent upon all of us to be able to pick up the slack in an instant when it occurred. This is a point that Staff Sergeant Smith, our platoon sergeant positional title, second in command behind the platoon commander in second Platoon, asserted regularly. And we all took it to heart. We closed out discussions with the two Marines and as I shook their hands, they both looked me right in the eyes, brother to brother, and issued their goodbyes. Good luck, boys. Stay sharp, one of them said as he turned to walk out of the squad bay. We talked amongst ourselves after they left and reaffirmed what they all asserted. It was going to be more real now. We could all feel that.
- [42:40]
C
Yeah, those guys, I, I remember being taken aback by just how they presented themselves. They what I Picture in my mind now, what. Even back then, I remember thinking, man, they both look the exact same. They both talk the exact same, and they both just look weathered. They look like they've just come out of something that has really shaken them up. And there's just no highs or lows. They're just leveled off in a really, really weird way. And, you know, our unit was very heavy with prior service guys. In fact, my whole experience in the Marine Corps was interacting with prior. Not. Not prior service, but prior active. Like, prior active and prior deployed guys. I mean, my drill instructors in boot camp had just gotten back from Iraq and then became drill instructors. One of them was. Two of them were grunts. They were very rigid combat instructors in mct, grunts with Iraq experience. And then when I dropped into 123, a bunch of prior active guys that had had two or three pumps to Iraq already. And even the guys that were in the unit, in the reserve unit, our. Our corporals and above, had just gotten back from Iraq two years before I got there. Everybody had wartime experience, and a lot of them saw some stuff. These guys in particular, it was just so fresh. I mean, all those guys that I had talked about, they'd had time to get back and kind of, like, level off a little bit. These guys were probably just back maybe a couple weeks. I don't know. Just thinking back through the time frame, I'm not sure where they were in Hellman. I don't know if they line up with the margin push or not, but. But regardless, I just. It was a. It was a market moment. I remember looking at those guys while they were telling us about everything that was going on and just thinking, what have they been through to. To be so obviously torn like they are, like, they'll bounce back. They'll recalibrate. They'll come back. But, oh, my gosh, they, like. Something impacted them deeply for a long time. So it was a moment.
- [44:35]
A
Fast forward a little bit. You talk about the spiritual impact going on in your head. My reputation as a Christian made its way around my battalion early in the workup. I began the deployment determined to maintain my faith in the highest regard. Eat and drink, for tomorrow we die is the reigning mentality of Marines. We work hard, fight hard, play hard, and die hard. The cascaded severity of life in general yields limited lifestyle restraints in the ranks. And getting caught up in it is all. Getting caught up in it all is much easier than avoiding it. I knew the cards were stacked against me when our workup started, but I'd Committed myself to Jesus. And as much as I could stand it, I was going to be bold about my faith, stay true to my convictions, and be a light in the dark places we were headed into. I determined that as much as I would be a vocal witness, I would show the love of God by my actions. Even more, no one was going to out serve me in my platoon.
- [45:30]
C
I meant that to my core. You know, there's this verse where Jesus says that the greatest among you will be a servant, and that those who exalt themselves will be humble, but he who humbles himself will be exalted. I just had this core Christian value system that gave me such unction to go and be a light and to be an example of service to the guys that were around me. I remember a conversation I had with my granddad, Jack, a couple, I want to say, a couple months before he activated for the deployment. He was telling me about a good friend of his name, H, that was struggling with the thought of joining the World War II effort. H had apparently seen quite a bit of combat in the Air Force, and I guess he was a college buddy of my granddad's all the way through. H had gone to see this old Baptist preacher, and he was at this is, you know, World War II time frame. And he said, I'm not sure what to do. I feel like I need to go be a part of this, but I'm not sure if it's the right decision. I mean, people kill people in war. Like, am I supposed to go be a part of that? And the old Baptist preacher said, if it was me, I would join up and I would save every one of those guys as I could as a part of the effort. And I just took on that mentality when I joined the Marine Corps, but especially Whenever I joined 123, when I decided I was for sure going overseas, I was determined to be an incredibly effective war fighter. I wanted nothing more than to honor my Marine Corps heritage by being as good of a Marine as anybody before me, being highly effective at my job, which in that context was killing the enemy. But I also wanted to be a light. You know, I know the. The experiences that we go through in war are about as traumatic as anybody can experience. You know, they say there's no atheists in foxholes. I think that brushing up close to death starts bringing up some of the bigger life questions that we often forget to ask, which is something I try to remind myself of all the time. The bigger picture. Why are we here? What are we A Part of life is so quick and fleeting, and, you know, we look up at the stars at night and there's profoundly more up there than we think to remember. You know, I just. That in. In this season of life for all these guys around me, every one of them is going to start asking those questions at some point. And I just wanted to make sure that they knew where to go to ask. So I just presented myself real, and I thought, I'm going to evangelize to these guys. I'm going to, you know, like, do some of the. Like, I'll be verbal about it, but I'm going to try to not be pushy. I'm going to show them what it means to be a real Christian, to serve and. And to be real about that, to have an attitude of gratitude wherever I go, as often as I can force myself to. To abstain from certain things that are bad for me and to drive really hard into things that are good for me and always be open. And I found myself recruiting some of the guys that were on the social peripherals that were struggling in different places, or maybe they didn't quite fit in, you know, and I volunteered so belligerently for work, working parties when they come up, which is huge in the. In the, you know, lower ranks. All throughout the day. When you're in the field, when you're in garrison, some, you know, sergeant or staff sergeant screams out, I need two. You know, I need two Marines. And God forbid two guys don't immediately run every, you know, run up to him to go figure out what he needs. And half the time he needs trash taken out or something stupid. But, you know, if two guys don't run up there, everybody pays for it. And. And so I just, like, I will always be one of those guys, no matter what, man. I gave it my all. And, you know, I've fought through periods of ridicule, you know, being a Christian and in a sincere sense, especially in the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps just does not allow for weakness. You know, SEAL teams, I'm sure, obviously don't either. And like, a commitment to any type of religious persuasion is generally seen as weakness. I just. I just had to stay true to it. I remember being. I remember realizing after, you know, two, three months of real intense time with these guys as a part of this workup where we're spending 24, seven with each other, in and out of operations, in Garrison, back in the field at live fire ranges and the like, after a while, it didn't. Didn't matter anymore. They're like, man, this guy's performing really well. He's always willing to lend a hand. He's. He's helping us in ways that we're not asking to be helped in. And he happens to have this sincere faith, like, so what? Yeah, like, he's, he's rock solid. And I remember thinking, it just takes standing through those periods of ridicule, and then people start to respect you for it.
- [49:44]
A
Yep. Yeah. I think that performance of your job duties is, is so paramount in the SEAL teams for sure in, in the Marine Corps. Like, it. Can you do this job? And the way you've kind of phrased this thing here, you, you have like two sentences that you use, or maybe it's three sentences. Eat and drink for tomorrow we die is the reigning mentality. I just want to make sure people understand what that means. That means when you're 19 years old and you're going on to deployment to Afghanistan, there's a part of your brain that says, you know what? There's a chance I'm not coming back. And so guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to live life to the fullest that I can right now. And generally speaking, for a 19, 20, 21 year old, living life to the fullest is we work hard, we play hard, we fight hard. That's what we're gonna do. And so you can. That, that's, that's definitely what it was in SEAL teams when I got the SEAL teams. That's what it was. That's what you want to be a good frogman. Here's what we're doing. We're drinking, we're fighting. That's what we're doing. We're gonna, that's. That's how it is. And we're gonna show up at work the next day and we're gonna bust our ass at work. That's the way it is. So for you to step back from that, to not engage in that, and you, you literally say, I knew the cards were stacked against me when our workup started. You, like, it's, it's very hard to not get caught up in that. And there's a lot of peer pressure. There's massive amounts of peer pressure. So for you to hold the line and have your faith and stick with that, and like you said, that's a speed bump in the beginning, right? Because, people, if you and I are going to bond and I offer you a beer and you say, no, well, now we just didn't bond, so we have to bond at Some. Some other way. Well, guess what? When I'm having a hard time carrying my rucksack and you say, hey, let me carry your extra ammo, boom. And you're stepping up and you're proving that you're willing to make the sacrifice, because there's a weird thing. There's a weird mentality of. One way that I can show you that I don't care about myself, that I'm willing to make a sacrifice is to down a freaking fifth of Tequila. Like, it literally is a way of saying, like, hey, look, I don't care. I. I don't care. It doesn't mean anything to me. Smoking, drinking, like, I don't care. I'm just going to. I'm so. I don't care about myself. I'm willing to sacrifice. It's a weird way to put it, but it's true. I saw that mentality. I had that mentality. So for. So if you don't have that, you have to do it another way. And the way you do that is by performing your job exceptionally. And like you said, oh, you know, out serving everyone in the platoon, you can only do that for so long before people go, thank you, and you are part of this, and we respect you, and we. You're our brother, too. So that's just a great way to put it. If you're a young person that's going in the military, that's an outstanding example to follow. And, you know, it's interesting because when I was telling earlier, like, I didn't. I didn't drink. I didn't smoke pot when I was growing up or didn't in high school. I thought it was weak, you know? And then I got in the SEAL teams and peer pressure and me wanting to be a good seal, like, okay, well, this is what the good seals are doing. Drinking, like, going out. That's what we're doing. Okay? That's what I. That's what I did is weakness. But I think that nowadays there's more people with a better example. They're more mature. And there's also that whole mentality of, you know, the crabs in a bucket type thing where you see someone starting to step up, they're starting to do well. They want nothing more than to pull you back down into the. Into the bucket, right? They think you're gonna get out of the bucket. So they want nothing more than, you know, you see this? I would see this like some guy, you know, I think I only. I've thought about it. I think I only knew two Guys when I was in the SEAL teams that didn't drink, there's way more than that now. But when I was a young seal, my, let's say, my first two or three platoons, there was only two guys that didn't drink. Two guys. And these aren't just in my platoons. I'm like, I never met a guy. So when a guy was like, even a guy that would say, hey, you know, I'm not drinking tonight, it would be like, dude, get this guy three shots right now. You know, like that kind of thing. Like, get back down in the bucket with the rest of us. Get. Oh, you don't want to go out tonight? Oh, you know, we're going out tonight, you know. You're not designated driver. No, you know what? You're designated drinker. Like that. It was like that. It was always trying to pull people back down. And look, is there bonding that happens? Sure, there is no doubt. Is it worth it in the long run? Nope. There's better ways to bond. There's better ways to, to unite. So really cool that you, you put this forward in this book and, and set that example so clearly for people.
- [54:07]
C
Yeah, I, I appreciate that. And you know, some of it was just like, just youthful zeal to try to try to do it right. You know, I, I honestly today I really don't have, I really don't have a big hang up with drinking. I'm not a big drinker. I'll have a drink on occasion. And I think to your point, like, there is a lot of camaraderie, there's some great bonding that can come there. But on the, on the whole and like, you know, being a part of the big party scene, going out to the strip clubs, like, doing things that are, you know, just very secular society, just fine, you know, it was those types of things. I just tried to keep myself from just thought, man, if I can just maintain a pure heart, I, I just think it'd be best for me. And I, I just wanted to honor the legacy of my, of my family and, you know, and, and do it right. So I was just trying to do it right. Sometimes that pendulum swing would go a little too far in one direction, you know, or the other. And you know, of course, nobody gets it right all the time. I think also it's worth noting, like, nobody was going to outserve me in the platoon. There was a lot of hard charging guys that were very committed. You know, I had that as a mentality. That doesn't mean that I always did.
- [55:09]
A
Yeah, I should have said that as well.
- [55:10]
C
No, no.
- [55:11]
A
Yeah, there's going to be people that are there. You know, the Marine Corps is filled to the brim with Marines.
- [55:18]
C
Yeah.
- [55:18]
A
And they are not looking to get outshined by anybody.
- [55:21]
C
That's. That's right. I mean I, I just give so much credit to the guys that I deployed with. I have so much respect for them. But anyway, so fast forward a little.
- [55:30]
A
Bit, put on notice. From the start of our workup through the end of October, our intended area of operations in Afghanistan would be a place called Delaram. Am I saying that right?
- [55:38]
C
Delaram. Yep.
- [55:39]
A
In, in the Farrar province, which resided roughly 100 miles east of the Iranian border. Our mission would be to uproot the Taliban's foothold and reach region and enact drug interdiction mission to diminish the Taliban's heroin operation. So that's kind of what you were planning for. That's what you're looking at. Fast forward a little bit. At the start of November, a major shift happened. We received word that delirium was being put on the back burner for Alpha Company and our mission focus was changing. Over the month of October in 2010, a large scale Marine Corps operation mission began in a highly strategic region of Helmand province called Sangin. Sangin was part of, of a vast of the vast agricultural plush river valley that flowed the mighty Helmand river, which snaked out of Afghanistan's northern mountains. Fast forward a little bit more. In the preceding year, the Marine Corps had taken over command of the entire Helmand province, a major shift in the war, and was launching large scale enemy eradication operations in townships both north and south of the Sangin region, including Kajiki and Marja in particular, which effectively pushed the enemy to regroup and dig into Sanging. In this regard, Sangin was reminiscent of Ramadi in Iraq. After the Marines pounded the insurgents out of Fallujah in 2004. It was primed to explode the moment the Marines step foot there. So you go into and there's some really good background that you give on Sangin. You know, the Brits were there for the preceding years. They were kind of doing peacekeeping and then the Marine Corps shows up, they took command and control. The strategic intent shifted entirely to affirmative combat action. 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines was essentially tasked with scoring, sweeping the valley and eliminating enemy forces. Overnight, regional stability deteriorated and Sangin turned into the most kinetic combat operating zone in Afghanistan. 3, 5 sustained 10 killed in action and 35 additional wounded action in their first three days of operations in Sangin.
- [57:28]
C
And that swelled to 15 KIA in the first month and 40amputees and 70 wounded in action. Those guys, what they had to have gone through, man, I just, you know, talking about respect for the guys that I deployed with, the respect that I have for anybody that served with 3 5, the opposition that they were up against during that time frame, apparently the Sec. Dev. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, was trying to pull them out of Sangin just because of the opposition and the casualties that they were taking. The commandant of the Marine Corps said, hell no. I. I remember reading somewhere, he said, you will break the spirit of that unit if you pull them out. They have to go win that fight. And so instead of pulling them out, the Marine Corps doubled down, started packing out support units to go and become a part of their effort. And. And we went to town so saying it flipped overnight into the most kinetic combat operating zone in the nation during that time of the war. And it was just. It was all out.
- [58:22]
A
So fast forward a little bit. General John Kelly, the commanding general of the 4th Marine Division at the time, came to speak to our battalion in person about our upcoming deployment just days after received word that Sangin was our new destination. His son was, coincidentally, a platoon commander with 35 in Sangin at the time. He spoke at length about the strategic importance of the region, the mounting casualties, given the ferocity of the enemy fighters there and their determination to hold it, and the dynamics of the combat operations we were soon to be engulfed in. He said that Sangin was one of the last major Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan and that they would fight to the death to retain it. He wished us luck and assured us that the eyes of the Marine Corps and of the nation would soon be upon us. It was extremely bolstering. On November 9, 2010, just one day after General Kelly came to speak to us, his son, First Lieutenant Robert Kelly, was killed in action in Sangin. It seemed surreal when I heard it. General Kelly was so optimistic and resolute in his speech about Sangin and why one day later was dealt the most crippling blow with the loss of his own son in that same battle space. If anything, this put a postmark on the confirmation, all of confirmation on all that we'd heard. We were about to be part of a major operation that could result in a large scale shift in the entire Afghanistan conflict. And it was sure to be as bad as we had been told.
- [59:43]
C
Just one of those, you know, additional markers during the workup that was like, man, this is this is real. This is as real as it gets. You know, I remember General Kelly coming to speak to us and we thought this is a big deal. I mean, you don't get a commanding general of a marine division coming to speak to your unit very often like this must matter. And he came to speak to us and he spoke with incredible confidence. And I remember thinking, man, he talked about the strategic importance of saying the heroin trade. You know, I mentioned that, I go into the context of the book, but at that time of the war, we were told that at that time, at that time period, we were told that 70% of the world's heroin originated in fields in Afghanistan where poppy, the poppy flower grew. Poppy's a waist tall flowering plant. And the bulb and top has, in the top of it has raw opium that can be extracted and then used for, or used for heroin and on top of other morphines and codeines and things of that nature. But the Taliban were apparently receiving 50% of their annual funding from exports, and then it would be refined in Pakistan, Iran and other surrounding nations and then shipped off to the world. So we were going after their supply economy. We were trying to cut that revenue stream off. And Sengen being just south of Kjaki, Kajaki is where there was a big water dam. And a damp water would flow out of the mountains in the northern part of the nation, hit Kanjaki, and then flow down into the Helman River. And so the river valley was 30 miles long, longer if you extend south, passing in and sometimes in some places two miles wide. It's just this plush oasis of croplands and farmlands interlaced in asymmetric fashion with these mud wall compounds. But it was just huge amounts of farmland. And apparently the poppy flower, they could get maybe two or three harvests a year. So it was, it was a cash crop for the locals. Of course, in the, the Taliban came in, they were taxing them out of a lot of their profits, from what I understand. But it was very, very strategic. That's one of the thing, the things I, I think that undergirded the big push into the region. And man, there's so much more context that, that needs to be covered that I don't have the knowledge or experience for, to be able to speak to with three, five and everything that they went through. I mean, I. And there's some stories out there, there's some books that have been written, but man, those guys have a story to tell. So we just got to be a part of, part of supporting the effort there just as, as a part of it, but, but anyway, yeah, General Kelly came in and, and then we found out his son was killed. I mean I in singing right after he talked to us, just thought, holy. Like this is. It's got to be real.
- [62:22]
A
You end up getting promoted. You got a good story about getting promoted in there. And I'm going to fast forward a little bit more the last day before. Again. Get the book everybody. The book is just outstanding. On the last day before our scheduled flight out of the U.S. staff Sergeant Smith gathered many of us around the TV in our squad bay to give us a potent dose of reality. He played a handful of real raw videos where insurgents had filmed themselves barbarically beheading their tied up, helpless victims. I remember some of them in vivid detail and being both sobered and enraged. The hopeless pleas of some of the young victims and the sounds they made while their lives were mercilessly sawed away from them by their bloodthirsty, malicious, evil captors struck a deep chord within me. It was easily the worst thing I'd ever watched, but I needed to see it. We'd often talked about the potential outcomes of capture and we knew all the risks. There would be no mercy given by our sadistic enemy. And watching those videos removed any doubt. The brutal reality seared deeply into my mind and heart. I committed myself to right then that at any point should I wind up in a capture situation that I could not get out of, I would forcibly fight to the death, no matter what. Kill them all, force them to kill me, or I would kill myself, but I would never be captured alive no matter what.
- [63:44]
C
We all felt that way, you know, all throughout the workup. We were getting intel briefs about Sangin in particular, because we were relatively confident at the time that Alpha Company was going to get assigned. And so we thought we had a strong confidence that was going to follow through and we were going to end up there. Lot can change. But. But even if Sangin wasn't the target, we still would have been getting intel briefs. But if you remember back to that time period period, there were beheading videos popping up on like national outlets regularly. And it's important to always remember going into the war, the Taliban's oppression of the locals and the foreign insurgency forces. It was the same in Iraq. I mean, they just had brutal savagery that they enacted on the populace through fear and coercion. I mean, torture in the worst ways, severe repression of women. They pulled everybody out of the schools. They had barbaric Criminal justice practices, just very, very old world cruelty. And obviously we knew they wanted nothing more than to get their hands on us. So as we're preparing for combat and thinking through things, it was, it was great leadership on Smith's behalf and I think on, on behalf of Huff's also. They sat us all down. They said, hey, let's like we're about to be there, just so you. Let's just remember what we're up against, against. And we probably watch 15 or 20 videos of, I mean, as real and explicit as they get, you've probably seen some of those two start to finish, and there's just nothing. I've never seen anything worse than that in my life. Just absolute mercilessness. So that seared. It was just like there's. There is, there is no possible way I'd have. I'll have to be so unconscious and near death to allow myself to be captured alive. I will force them to kill me if I don't kill every single one of them that come up against me or this bullet in my pockets going straight in my head. And I have no problem with that. And you know, we, we talked about it a lot and we, we all thought this is exactly the way that it is. Just there, there's no outcome that I, that we will allow if we can help it. We'll all end up on one of those videos, videos for my parents to see. You know, it's just terrible.
- [65:59]
A
Fast forward a little bit. C17, yeah. Into Afghanistan, C130 to Camp Leatherneck. You get start getting your introductory briefs, the IED briefs, you know, the COIN briefs, the ROE briefs. Interestingly, in the roe, got some snarky attorney, as you call them. One rule I'll never forget, which the attorney stated emphatically, was that if we were engaged in a gunfight with enemy combatants that were positively identified and actively shooting at us and they dropped their weapons and ran, we could, under circum, certain circumstances, be held on murder charges if we continued to engage and kill them. I was shocked and immediately demoralized. Rules of engagement are necessary. There are many heinous outcomes that can, can and have resulted from two loosely governed combat units engaged in regularly in battle. But still, this brief left me with sickening feeling that I should be very afraid out there on the other side of the world of my own US Government, military court system and all the possible punitive outcomes I may face should I, even by accident, slip up in combat. In that moment, it was more concerning to me than the thought of being maimed or killed on the battlefield that my same government sent me into in the first place. It felt like betrayal. I understood the reasons behind the rules, but it didn't shake the feeling. We walked out of that briefing tent and we were handed our ammo. I pondered all I had just heard as I loaded three magazines one by one in my personal magazines. Each individual 5, 5, 6 green tip bullet having the same potential of sending me to military prison as the last. I might as well have been had, had one hand tied behind my back for the rest of deployment. We all felt that way.
- [67:37]
C
It, it was as real as that. I've heard some other people talk about, talk about this in the more recent too. And you know, I, I look back and I have a much higher appreciation and understanding than I did back then. And I understood back then, you know, I, I remember hearing that Vietnam was one of the very first wars that got televised and that was a major part of what lost the war. A whole lot that you can dig into that I wouldn't, I won't go there necessarily. But you know, I think videos of wartime occurrences, if taken out of context, can be so incredibly damaging. Not to mention just they're, they're hard scenes to be a part of. They're hard scenes to watch. And so I, you know, I, I can envision what could happen. Should we be engaged in a firefight and then some guy, some enemy combatant drop his weapon and run and get shot in the back by a squad of marines and then that front end context be completely left out. And then, you know, what's propagated is what's shown. Like I, I get it, but back then, man, it was tough. It's just like what we just have just spent all these years, like from the, from day one at MCRD all the way through your whole world is kill the enemy.
- [68:50]
A
Did anybody reinterpret kind of what they, what the lawyer meant for you?
- [68:57]
C
No. Well, I think, just adding in, I think adding in the context, the way that I just laid it out, like, guys, the reason for this is that, you know, there's like, there's bigger things at play here and should one minor mistake be made or something happened that could be construed another way, like it could really damage the war effort. And so I understood that it's just very high pressure. The problem is it made a second guess on the battlefield. I mean, I, you know, there's place in the book that I had a guy lined up in my sights, very obviously an enemy combatant. He Had a tactical gear on, he was wearing brown fatigues, he had a radio in his hand, did not have a weapon. But I like he's around a building and you know, there's more context to the story, but I ended up not taking the shot. A part of that context was is this positive identification. Like I'm second guessing myself and you know, it's broader story with more details. But. But again that those ROEs, man, they're necessary. Like I get it. But it did result in some second guessing. Made it more challenging, that's for sure. One thing, one thing I think is important to go back to before we deployed. One of the things that was a real marker was my last trip home with my parents. You know, we talked about that a little bit on the front end. I've had a lot of conversations here in the last couple months of people being impacted by like the story of me and my family in this book, particularly me and my parents. And I remember my dad took me to Veterans Park. It's a park that we frequented a lot when I was a kid called Veterans Park. It's got some woods in the back. We go mountain biking there. He took me in his 1959 International Harvester truck. He wrote a letter to me so that he would be able to get out every single word that he had to say. And he pulled up in this parking lot and he read the letter and we had this very heartfelt moment this last time, this was it. I'm headed overseas after this moment. And I remember thinking while my dad was reading the letter, just kind of going back to what we talked about on the front end. Like in his eyes, like I'm his little boy. Like our memories in this place. I'm a 6, 7 year old kid that doesn't know anything about the world and is so excited about everything that's happening. And my hero, my dad is showing me how to mountain bike on these dirt trails. And he's having that feeling and then thinking as this little boy's provider and protector, he's going into war where people are going to actively try to kill him. And I could do nothing about it. I'm just stuck here hoping that it all goes well. And I just again, the, the pressure, you know, we there, I just, I'm so appreciative to the emphasis on thanking veterans for service. And you know, that like, we have it really good today compared to generations before us. There is a widespread recognition that people volunteer to go into the military, serve honorably, get put in these crazy circumstances and have to make the right decisions when there's a whole lot of wrongs and on and on and on and on. But man, the parents, the parents that send their kids and have to deal with all of that pressure and all of the fear and all the bitterness and the anger and God forbid they lose their kids or the kids get seriously maimed or wounded and come back never the same. I just, I just want to constantly cast, cast light onto the commitment from the families back home that send their loved ones away. It was a big moment. You know, on that same trip home, I had some defining moments with my mom. But one of the things that I remember thinking about is she's just holding me a lot more. We'll be sitting on the couch and she just want to hold me, wrap her arms around me in small ways. Just, just a lot more that weekend that I was home than before. I just thought she's feeling the same thing, you know, her little baby going to a really, really, it's going to war.
- [72:41]
A
Were they tracking you going to San and were they talk tracking the casualties? Were they tracking what's going on with 35 at that time they were, but.
- [72:47]
C
We were being very, very quiet about the details. I mean, I, I, there were things that they were allowed to know. There were things that they were a part of. They were, if memory serves me right, I think they were there when, when General Kelly spoke to us. I can't remember exactly, but there was a parents weekend around that same time frame. So they, if they, if they weren't there for it, they had heard some of the speech, so they were as aware as they could be. Now I was very aggressively trying to not share many details and tried to do that throughout the deployment up until a point that I had to share some details. But man, just, just so tough on the families.
- [73:22]
A
So salute to the parents. Families for sure.
- [73:25]
C
Big time. Yeah, but, yeah, so we're, we're there.
- [73:30]
A
Your mission tasking. Here we go. Lieutenant Huff, our platoon commander at Alpha Company 2nd Platoon huddled second away from the others and let it out. Alpha Company was tasked Sangin exclusively and 2nd platoon would be fully operational as a gun truck quick reaction force attached to Marine Corps 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion in the northern Sangin Valley, who was also there in support of Three Five's main effort further south. When we weren't needed on qrf, we would be running our own combat patrols. I couldn't believe my ears. All our hard work and training actually was going to pay off. We 2nd Platoon landed the hottest mission of the entire battalion. And we were ecstatic.
- [74:11]
C
Man, what, what a moment. You know, all throughout the workup, we knew we were competing. And I. I remember Staff Sergeant Smith and. And Huff, you know, just exclaiming over and over again, Huff was relatively green lt. I mean, he was a stud. Awesome dude. But this is his first deployment. Smith had already been on three deployments to Iraq. Very senior, very, very seasoned guy. And I remember him telling us over and over and over again, top performers get the hottest missions. And that's all we wanted. You know, I. We joined the Marine Corps to go be a part of the fight. Now we're finally going to get our chance to. And especially in my mind, I'd already had these experiences pass me by, you know, and I'd already had some regrets of, like, man, I should have made this decision. It could have turned out better for me in my military service in that way, you know, mos Active duty versus Reserve PLC and all that stuff. And just like, we want to, like, we're finally going to get overseas. We're finally going to get to play that Friday Night Lights. I talk about it a little bit in the book, but one of the things that I think presents a real struggle for combat, for forces is, is not getting to go experience combat. If you join the Marine Corps, join the SEALs, join Army units, I mean, if you join a combat force and then you spend yourself training and sacrificing, enduring pain and agony and being away from your family, going through long nights, early mornings, being in the field, and, you know, to get to the point that you can finally see, see if any of it is going to prove out and be what you're told it's worth. You know, if we go play football, one of the things I loved about football is you practice football, where you practice just like you play games. I want to go hit somebody. You know, we. You go hit somebody in the play. But. But even still, as a team, you're operating in football. You're running plays and running drills, and you're making, you know, hard decisions to try to be the best. And then you get to go put it to the top test every Friday night against another team that's doing the same thing. And then you really see who's the best. But in combat, in training for combat, you don't get that. And so there's just this weird mental exercise of, like, I've got to stay in a position of being ready for the most extreme violence that humanity can come up with. But there's no real ultimate Outlet. Nobody's shooting back at me. All of this is imagination. Like we're assaulting this enemy position but the enemy's not really there. It's just these pop up targets. And so either I'm getting geared up and I'm super aggressive and I'm ready to let it out, but I can't because any type of hand to hand or, or you know, like gun battle combat, like you can't go up against anybody and test that out or you're gonna hurt or kill them or they're like there isn't any of that. So it, you're either like, you know, pent up, ready to be super aggressive and violent, but you can't be, or it's hard to take seriously at all because again, it's all ultimately imaginary. And so just I getting the news that SEC the Alpha Company was getting Sangan and that 2nd Platoon in particular was going to be this mobile quick reaction force unit. It was like, finally all this actually does matter and it is going to, we're going to go get to test these skills. Managers meant the world.
- [77:19]
A
Yeah, you use the word ecstatic.
- [77:21]
C
And we were, and man, we were ecstatic.
- [77:23]
A
And this chapter is by the way called the Big Show. Yeah, right.
- [77:27]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [77:29]
A
We fast forward a little bit. Going outside the wire here, you're doing your relief in place. All that stuff has taken place. Route 611, this is a kind of a critical route. Give us a little description on 611.
- [77:39]
C
Yeah, Route 611, it traveled the north, south from Sangin all the way up to Kjaki. I, I understood that there was just a part of the COIN mission, the counterinsurgency mission in Sangin. Maybe taking a step back, you know, whenever we invaded Iraq it was like, the objective is very clear. We're going to take over this nation and establish ourselves and root out the enemy force that's in our way. From doing that thinking about World War II and Vietnam, it's, you know, there's an enemy force over there and here we are and there's a front line and you know, it's more complicated than that. But just to oversimplify it, but in Afghanistan the, the lines weren't so clearly drawn. Setting up and establishing ourselves is not incredibly difficult. Initially it was maintaining stability after the fact. And you know, the opium trade in particular was very convoluted because that supported the entire local economy. In Sangin and in these rural areas, we can't just go wipe out the fields. We'll pit the entire community against us. And then we lose the war because the people we're trying to liberate, we've just killed off their way of life. So we couldn't just go do that. So we were trying to institute like economic boost in the area and bring about new opportunities while we were also kind of putting a damp, damp on or pushing back against the opium trade. It was all just very muddy. But a part of that, part of the initiative was up in Kenjaki. In the dam. There were some energy turbines. I think we're trying to maybe bring a couple more online and improve them to improve electricity in the area to create more modernization which opens up more opportunities for who knows what. So Route 611 was very critical to own and maintain. In addition to that, I think just maintaining our footprint and stability in the valley in general. That was the main arterial road up and down the entire valley. So it was very critically important. We had a few friendly institutions up and down the valley, but the further north you got, the more hostile it became, the more rural it was. And, but that main supply route, it was, it was a part of our logistics hold on the region and was very strategically important because of it.
- [79:52]
A
And that's why it was so heavily attacked. There's all over it but you know, crater holes, choke points, just, it's, it's, it's the main area of, of use and therefore the main area of attack.
- [80:06]
C
Yeah.
- [80:07]
A
Fast forward a little bit. We pulled up on another Marine unit that had been hit by an IED and ambushed less than an hour prior. Their 6x6 MRAP was flipped over and laid out on its side 20 meters off the road. It looked like a beached whale. All four marines inside had just been airlifted out and critical condition before we arrived. Fast forward a little bit. Here's a freshly dug hole. Three the the 325 Marine in the front passenger seat looked back at me with a smirk and said, ready to get your hands dirty? Let's go check it out. The driver chuckled. I took a deep breath and said, let's do it. Then went to open the back hatch of the mrap. I stepped out of the first metal great stair step and scanned my surroundings with no noticeable, immediate, immediate threat. I started to step down to the road and all of a sudden an AK47 auto burst blasted off and rounds wisped and cracked, crackled in, nearly missing my turret gunner. I jumped back into the hull of the mrap, slammed the door shut and the driver yelled, hold on and punch the gas in Reverse to get us off the X. The turret gunner was just days away from going home and nearly had his head shot off on one of his very last patrols. Unable to identify exactly where the firing was coming from, we cautiously drove around the hole and pushed south out of the target area to give the enemy the impression that we were not interested in a fight that morning. The 325 guys had a plan, though, so they use ISR, bring it overhead, bring in a Predator with Hellfire missiles, and take that guy out again. But it's kind of your first time getting shot at.
- [81:38]
C
This was the very first time outside the wire. I mean, we were a day. I think this was day number two in Nolay, in Sangin. So we, we flew into FOB. There's three major FOBs in Sangin. Fab Nole, FOB Jackson and FOB Inkerman. Fab Nole is the furthest one south. And I think it has the biggest. I don't know if it's the biggest, but the biggest, like, airstrip area. There's no airstrip. It's all Hilo. But anyway, we landed in. We linked up with 325 to do our transfer of authority or relief in place. This is the very first patrol and it in like, very first time. We leave in the early morning. And while we're going, they're telling, they're downloading us with all the information. So for anybody unfamiliar, the way that relief in place works worked back then. Unit leaders from the new unit will tag along with the existing during their typical operations and pick up all the information that they can. And the existing unit is sharing a lot of information, anything pertinent, real time, what's going on in the area. And then after, you know, a couple patrols, then the new unit will take over. And then unit leaders from the existing unit will tag along in an advisory role just to make sure that everything's really sealed in. And then there's a full handoff. So this was like, first patrol we're going in to learn about the area. It had been heavily. It had been really rainy, apparently in saying in the few days prior, in fact, I guess all over southern Afghanistan, we were supposed to get there five or six days ahead of when we officially did. We kept trying and kept having to either turn around or not get on the planes in general, out of Manas, just because the rainstorms are so bad. Sangin being as rural as it is, the roads were sloppy, muddy. So 325 had not been on the road. Nobody had relatively Speaking. So yeah, we traveled up to 611. Another unit had been hit. And the thing of it was, they got hit and ambushed 30 minutes before we got there. I mean, had they not gone on the road, that would have been us. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And these 325 guys who had been there doing that QRF mission for the last few months, it was just like another day to them. You know, they just, no, no problems.
- [83:41]
A
Here's your assessment. This is, this was my first time outside the wire. Only days in country encountered the aftermath of an unfortunately successful enemy IED strike and accompanying ambush. Four critically wide wounded Marines, another IED near miss and controlled detonation in place, A very close enemy small arms attack, a 500 pound GBU drop on enemy compound and two Hellfire missiles strikes from a Predator drone resulting in three enemy KIA. All this in just a matter of few hours on my very first patrol outside the wire. And it wasn't even fighting season in Sangin yet. So welcome to Sangin Wild West.
- [84:15]
C
Yeah, it's exactly what it felt like.
- [84:18]
A
Fast forward a little bit early March, we're fully operational. Once everything was set, we started mounted patrols around the clock. And you talk about kind of what you had. Of our 10 trucks, we had four MRAP, four 4x4M raps, two 6x6 MRAPs and four MATVs, Matt V's.
- [84:35]
C
Yeah, initially the mission focus was for us to try to basically always have presence on the road. You know, if we're, if we're up and down all the time, we limit the enemy's ability to plant new IEDs. We're showing presence constantly. We're, you know, the initial onset was, hey, we want y' all to be on the road all the time and your mobile quick reaction force ready to go in an instant. The problem was there was just so few of us. We only had enough guys to man two independent squads. So we're on 12 hour shifts, 12, 12 hours patrolling, 12 hours off. So we would, we would set out at 6pm and patrol till 6am pitch black. And Sangin, except for our trucks for the first couple weeks that we were patrolling, we're lights on, just getting used to the environment. But it was just us on the road. And once we get out of, we patrol out of Nolay, past the, the main urban epicenter of Sangin, which is where FOB Jackson is, and then hit kind of the northern part of the road. FOB Anchorman was up there and we would push out further south, further North. Second recon was in PB Alcatraz, even farther north. It's a very, very small establishment. And then their Bravo company had had another patrol base, I guess that was probably named. I'm not sure what the name of that one was way up there, but that was it. And we were just on the road, and so we would get calls while we're out there for any number of things. Another unit would come out of it, come under attack, and they would want us to come in and just provide some road presence, maybe cut off the flanks from the north, south, depending on what the unit was doing. Internal into the green Zone, or, you know, check out IED suspected locations. Or maybe the ISR drones would pick up some enemy activity somewhere on the road. And we try to rush in and keep them from planting an ied. The early days, we were just trying to figure out what all was going on. So we were just out there all the time trying to constantly patrol and figure everything out. We. We'd pace 5 to 10 miles an hour, and then we'd stop somewhere for 30 minutes and just kind of surveil everything. We had G boss cameras that could zoom in, I think, a mile or two. We had really good IR screens for nighttime patrolling, and. And we would stop, scan, try to get a feel for the pattern of life in a particular area at a particular time during the day or night, and then continue pushing on, do the same thing somewhere else. We were starting to scout out the road and then the offshoots and get our minds wrapped around where everything was. And even while we were ripping with 325, we would be pushing up and down the road, and we would. They would stop at a particular point and say, hey, listen, this alley right here goes back a far distance. We've taken pretty consistent sniper, sniper fire from this alley. You need to really watch for this one. Travel up, you know, three, four miles further. And then they'd stop and they'd say, look at that rock on the side of the road. It's turned up not flat on its belly, but on its ridge. That's a marker that the Taliban is trying to show the locals or mark for themselves that there's an IED somewhere in the vicinity. We'd see trash tied in trees. They'd stop and point that out. They'd say, you need to watch for that. See how that trash is up in the tree. It's not just there. It's tied there. Somebody put it there. That means something, and you need to watch for it. And on and on and on. And that's what we were trying to do in the initial days. The problem was we had a mission methodology that was not sustainable. We hit our first ied, the very first patrol on our own in the middle of the night. It was our front truck. Thankfully, the mine roller hit it, which is this extension on the front of the truck. It's like a row of tires with metal plates on top of it that hopefully hit a pressure plate ied, which is an IED that explodes from downward pressure. So that enemy would set it up that if our tires ran over it, two electrical leads would close on each other and an explosion would happen. So the mine roller took the initial blast, wasn't that bad, thankfully for the guys in the truck. But it destroyed the mine roller. And then over the course of the next few days, first squad took two more IEDs, and then we took a huge one to our truck directly a little ways after that, which we could talk about, but it was like we're each other's QRF and where everyone else is qrf and we keep hitting IEDs. I think we got a couple weeks in and we had four IEDs. And the last one that we got was a very near miss. A massive explosion way north in the Valley at like 2am exploded just under the back left tire of a matte V. Shut the truck down, rattled all the guys inside. We thought it killed all of them. And it was like, man, we, we. We're three mine rollers down and now a truck down. Like we're barely in country a little while. It's not even fighting season yet. The trees are just barely starting to green. Like this is not a sustainable mission method. And so we. Eventually some changes happen which, man, we're. We're very much for the best. But those first few. Couple weeks trying to just get ourselves figured out out there was near miss after near miss.
- [89:26]
A
Yeah, yeah, the details you give on that one. I mean, just this, when the Matt V gets hit and you know, you're what you're. You're a couple vehicles behind him and you just see nothing but smoke. Your vehicle starts getting hit with pieces of metal. Yeah, in the book here. Vic 2, Vic 2, how copy you guys? Okay? Silence. From my vantage point as the dust settled, I could roughly make out the shape of truck two, but it was mangled. And without any flicker of tail lights, cab lights, etc, Concern grew by the second. They're freaking dead. Is it all of them or only one or two? Which ones do we need to rush for An A for aid. Will we step on pressure plates if we do? The first 60 seconds following the blast crawled by and our anxiety grew. Mathes decided to go survey the carnage. Just as he started to open his door, the radio sounded off. It came through broken, but we could hear, make out what was said. All vics, all vics be advised this vic to. We're all right. Say it again. We're all right.
- [90:23]
C
Yeah, my best friend was in that vehicle. And of course, all the man. I loved all those guys so tremendously. But Alfredo Garcia was in that vehicle. He was the driver. He was. We did boot camp together here at MCRD in San Diego back in 2007 and ended up at the same unit. And, you know, one thing led to another. He ended up. He was the best man in my wedding, and I was the best man in his. But he got hit. And again, initially, you know, for that first 60 seconds, we couldn't see anything, we couldn't hear anything. It's middle of the night. That, that explosion, though, I mean, you alluded to it, but it sent out a dust plume that I'm looking through the windshield, and it was taller than I could see through the windshield. I had to lean up to figure to see how high it was. It was so big. We just thought, there's no way every single one of them are dead. You know, and they. But thankfully they made it out. Rattled, but. But they made it out. And then that truck hobbled along, you know, we. What happened is second Recon squad from Bravo Company came to help us out. They brought an EOD guy with them. The EOD guy said it was over 100 pound. 100 pound IED. Can't remember if it was. It was 100 or 120. And I have no idea how they make that determination, but that's what he said. We managed to get that truck off the X and out to the Bravo Company establishment. And then like, we went to go change the tire. And half the back rear tire, half the bolts were seared off from the explosion. When we went after it, put the new tire and wheel on, and it was just as jerry rigged as it could be. Nobody had any confidence that it was going to make it all the way south. But the second recon unit agreed to patrol with us to just to escort us back down to Nolay. Um, and so I made for a long night. You know, that IED hit it. I want to say it was somewhere between midnight and 2am we made it up to Bravo Company's position, stayed there for an hour while we tried to get the new tire on and then pushed out before sunrise to make it back to Nolay. Pulled in just right as the sun was coming up, and that was just the pace of things. So, yeah, early days. We just got our taste of it real quick.
- [92:30]
A
Now, you mentioned that there was. It was like, literally too much to do. And you go here for the section called mission refocus. Lieutenant Met with our regional commands and negotiated a new mission focus for us. Our current operational method was not sustainable. We were being hit left and right, and we're pushing crazy hours with extreme sleep deprivation. So he comes up and tells you all of you should make a call home. Today we've been assigned our own ao and tonight we're moving up to our new patrol, our new home at patrol base Alcatraz. It's about to get even more real, and you should all be thankful. No way. My jaw must have just hit the floor. This was unexpected, but exactly what we needed. PB Alcatraz housed elements of second Recon's command and their own Alpha company. It was as remote as things got in Sangin, right in the heart of enemy territory in the northern valley. Our newly assigned AO was north of PB Alcatraz and was the worst stretch of road on the 611 for IED strikes and ambushes. So you're going from the. Out of the frying pan into the fryer.
- [93:34]
C
Yeah. Yeah. You know, the. The trick of it was, though, if you think about it, I mean, we just gotten there three five and Second Recon, like, they were already. They'd been fully in it for several months. So to us, it didn't feel like we. It was as. It didn't feel like it was escalating into, like, territory that was unknown. It was like, finally we're going to get to do what everybody else here is already doing, which unknown to us, relatively rare, you know, in the gwad. I think overall, and certainly hot spots like Fallujah and Ramadi were nuts, you know, in Iraq. I. I think that there you can make that argument for Afghanistan and other battles, too, but that, like, the whole valley was like that. And the frustrating thing to us in the front end is we're here to fight this enemy, but we're just kind of the. This big fat target on this. On this route serving a purpose that's needed, but they're able to hit us, and we're not able to hit them on that. Garcia IED in particular, our interpreter tuned into their ICOM and there were Two enemy combatants reporting to whoever they were reporting to that they just killed a bunch of Americans and they were going to stay in place, that they had eyes on us. And we're scanning around the area, looking at all these buildings, and, like, half of them are filled with, you know, just locals. Like, we have no idea where these guys are. There were other patrols in that in those early days. We'd stop in the middle of the night. I would get my IR camera and scan over into a field and I'd see two or three guys laying down, like, obviously trying to hide. And on the IR screen, there is white as snow against a black backdrop. And I see him moving around. And they're watching us. I mean, they're planning, but we can't PID them. They're not attacking us. We can't be the first ones to shoot. It's just. It got so frustrating. So frustrating. There was a huge battle that we missed out on during that time period also where the valley was. It was obvious that the Taliban and foreign insurgents had planned this massive attack because the entire local populace was acting way off the pattern of life. They were all exiting the northern valley. They were all wearing brown. There was Afghan flags everywhere. The road was littered with false flags, like rock strings across the road, rocks turned up everywhere. Like all the signs that they use and they know that we know that they use. They just put them everywhere. And it was like, man, we're headed in. We're finally going to go toe to toe with these guys that have been hitting us and hiding. And it just didn't manifest, not for us, did for somebody else. But getting to go up to PB Alcatraz and take over a particular area that was exceptionally bad for IED along the 611 and start doing foot patrols into the Green Zone. We hadn't talked about it, but in Sangin, probably one of the most important distinctions we should have already covered, the Green Zone was off the road and into the agricultural valley. Most of that road, what line? The valley was a wadi system, like a stream, engineered stream that was 3 to 4 to 5ft deep, maybe in any given spot, maybe 10 to 15ft wide, which is kind of the main stream that will come off the river, and then they would use it for agriculture. Once you cross that and actually drop down in the crop fields, now you're in enemy territory. And what everybody had told us from day one is if you go into the Green Zone, you're going to get ambushed. Nobody goes in and doesn't get shot at. So always be careful when you do. When we were maintained, when we were doing the patrolling on the 611, we never went in. We are always right beside it and it's right there, it's just across that wadi. And they were hitting us with IEDs on the road. And if they got a unit hit with an IED and bogged down, then they would engage a small arms fire and idf. But if you go on foot in the Green Zone, they're going to, they're going to fire at you no matter what. And so going up to P.B. alcatraz, the communication that LT gave us was we're still doing QRF, but we're not going to focus on Southern, Southern 611 so much anymore. We're going to stay focused on the hotter spots to northern, wherever second Recon wants us to really focus on which for now is going to be these particular grids is going to be rao. And our focus was not to really go deep into the Green Zone, but to own that part of the road and the Green Zone associated with it specifically to fight that IED threat there. You know, the, the, the IDs, the engineering that the foreign, that the enemy forces came up with was, I mean very noteworthy. But they would have command wires. Command, they would have wires strung across the field. They would connect to IEDs that were push button activated. And so there would be a trigger man in one of the compounds or in a tree line or something in the Green Zone just across one of the first crop fields that would push a button whenever we drive by. Then they also have pressure plates, they had cell phone call in IEDs that would pick up a signal like we've seen in some of the movies. And they had magnetic IEDs and tripwires and directional blasts and, and on and on and on. Just very, very crafty. But, but anyway, so that portion of the Green Zone was going to be ours and, and that was the communication. We're going in on foot whenever we have the chance to. We're running our own operations when we're not needed elsewhere. We're going to take the fight to them. And we all thought it's about time. I mean given we like we'd only been there for, I don't know, a couple weeks at that point. But we just didn't, I didn't want to be a target.
- [98:37]
A
I want her to go, go on off.
- [98:39]
C
Test the skills. That's right.
- [98:41]
A
You end up calling home. While you're calling home, your dad's was actually writing you an Email. You get off the phone, you talk about that in here, but I want to get to this email. He said, here's the end of the message. He said the following. Stay focused on what really matters and pay attention to detail. When the time comes, dish it out with no reservations and all the fury you can muster. Give them hell, son. Dad. A wave of emotion hit me in that moment and a weight fell off my shoulders. A father's words can be so powerful and his approval was second to none. I was eager to be in the fight and was at the point, that point, completely resolved to pull the trigger without hesitation when the time came. But deep down, I still felt the heaviness from it all. Reading those words from my dad shot right to the issue as if he was speaking directly to my inner man, saying, it's okay, son. I understand and approve of what you have to do. I wrote Dad's words on my Kevlar as a reminder every time I geared up that my father approved of the often rage fueled harm that I was tasked with inflicting on other human beings. Right or wrong, in that moment, I needed his validation and I had it.
- [99:49]
C
Those words meant the world to me. They really did. And I. It was just, it was amazing timing. Just one of those God things that you couldn't have prepared for whenever we first got there. I'll never forget the first time I lined somebody up in my sights. It was before we really started patrolling on our own. It was a 325 and won't go into all the details, but we were on FOB Nolay. Somebody appeared around a corner and it just caught me off guard initially. So I racked around and put my ACOG on him and I was searching for intent and only a few seconds went by and it was kind of obvious that they, the guy was just kind of going about his day still a little peculiar. But he didn't have, he didn't have a weapon, he wasn't about to fire on us or anything. But it struck me in that moment like that's. I just lined that guy up and I was about to shoot him without thinking twice about it. Like, no problem. And I just thought, I'm, I'm there. Like I'm a. I have my, I have mentally crossed this moral boundary that I wasn't sure I would ever cross in my life. Like I always knew, joining the Marine Corps, going to war, like we're gonna see combat. Until you face it though, until you face the moment where you now have the decision to pull the Trigger or not to end someone's life or to spare it. Man, it was a momentous moment and I just thought, you know, I wasn't overly emotional by it, but I recognized the significance. And after that moment, as it led up to this one with my dad sending the email, starting to feel some aggression against these guys, like some real vengeance because they're hitting us and they're getting really close and it's not like other combat experiences weren't also happening in the valley. 35 was still taking losses from, you know, from their foot patrols, from IEDs and the like, as was second recon, as were other guys. There were still medevac and medevac helos flying into the valley left and right. We're still getting reports and hearing about the other battlefield happenings. Like we're up against an enemy that, that's taking their toll on us. Now we're taking ours on them, but not us personally. And so I, I just, I had all dad speaking. That to me didn't. It just validated everything. You know, a father's words to his kids can be so powerful, more powerful than we think at times, as can a mother's. But man, him saying that to me, it just, it just gave me this release where it was like I'm, I'm toting this line between trying to, trying to hold my heart right before God, being a Christian, valuing humanity, acknowledging the tragedy of all this. But I'm also trying to be an effective war fighter. And a part of getting in the fight is feeling that aggression and feeling that sense of vengeance and being willing to go there from a retributional mentality of I'm going to get in there and do it. You know, you try to pull back and keep it very non personal and keep it very professional, but the environment that we're in, we're fully engrossed in it. You know, some units, wartime experiences were being a part of bigger bases and then going and doing a mission and then coming back to the bigger base, which is, which is great. But we were in enemy territory 24 7, feeling it left and right. And I mean it was, it was just, it was hard emotionally and mentally to maintain. Wanted to be professional, non personal, but it got personal. It was really hard for it not to. So hear my dad just say, it's all right, like I get it, but listen, I want you to go do what you're there to do. Oh man, it just gave me such a release and it was, it was perfect words at the perfect time. So.
- [103:19]
A
So you guys make the move up to P.B. alcatraz, you guys set up camp. You, you do some jerk, you had time to write some journal stuff and I'm going to read one of your this. Great to hear your thoughts. At the time, we just had A sniper from 2nd recon come over here to brief us on his experience in the Green Zone. He reiterated a certainty of making enemy contact and insisted we increase our ammunition loadouts in the event we get pinned down for any lengthened period. He admonished us to maintain an aggressive posture and exude strength at all times times because the enemy fighters are more emboldened to hit harder on weaker looking units that they think they can decimate. He said emphatically, boys, you're heading into the killing fields. Act like a bunch of dick swinging bulls and they'll fear you. He said the two grids we are going into are among the worst and with the heaviest attacks and a high density of pressure plates. He asserted, don't play the Taliban's pressure plate game when you make contact. Pin them down and drop ordinance on their heads. Don't be quick to pursue them. That is what they expect and are planning for. We motioned an agreement in closing. He said, good luck boys. Stay vigilant and kill them all. We shook hands and he walked off.
- [104:41]
C
Big moment there too, I think. You know, we, we had just moved into PB Alcatraz. Yeah. And we, our, our first squad, we determined they were going to go set up a picket line along the 611 in that AO, which was not far from PB Alcatraz. I think the first truck we could even see from, from the border. But they set up in trucks for two days on the hillside just surveying the valley, which we determined after that was really not going to work long term. So that was the only two days that they did that for. But we were going, our second squad was going out on our very first foot patrol the next morning. And so one of the second recon guys came over. I suspect somebody asked them to come over and just kind of share some, some things. But it was great, man, it was great to hear from that guy. You know, they had been there for, I think second Recon made it to Sangin in January, so just a couple months before we got there. Had some great experiences up to that point, you know, and man, we looked up to those guys. They're solid unit. They were doing some really high speed stuff. And so to have them come over and just share insights, let us ask questions, you know, let us Kind of glean off of their experience and try to build out our understanding of what we were stepping into. It was. It was really meaningful, and I was very glad to hear from him.
- [105:53]
A
Yeah, we. We. I just had a guy on the podcast, Joe Claiborne, who was a company commander in Ramadi, and I listened to that one. Yeah, like, the same thing. He goes. He goes, hey, we're going to have. He goes, we'll be in contact. We're going to the Moab district. We'll be in contact in 42 minutes. And I'm like, okay, you know, sure enough, you know, whatever it was, 38 minutes in, boom, we're in contact. I remember I had one of my elements of SEALs and Iraqi soldiers was heading out, and this. This assistant platoon commander, one of Leif's assistant platoon commanders, was taking this patrol out. And I'm like, it was downtown Ramadi, going out of Combat Outpost Falcon. I'm like, how long you think it's going to be before you get contacted? Because you're going to get contacted. And he was like. He kind of gave me that look, like, oh, yeah, like I need to be ready.
- [106:40]
C
Yeah.
- [106:41]
A
And he. They. They commenced their patrol. I hit my stopwatch. Twelve minutes later, big gunfight. Iraqi soldier killed. Iraqi soldier wounded. Like, but. And then the other. I remember when Seal Team 5 came into take our place, and I actually had guys that got wounded. Did you see the movie Warfare?
- [106:57]
C
Yeah. Oh, not yet.
- [106:58]
A
Okay.
- [106:59]
C
Not yet. Only because me and my wife want to watch that one together. We just haven't found it.
- [107:02]
A
With little kids at home, it's very heavy. But the two guys. There's two guys that got severely wounded, and I had them both on the podcast. But, you know, when they showed up in Ramadi, I was. I would, you know, I was saying, like, this is what's going to happen. And I remember I told him, you are going to take casualties. Which is such a weird thing. Thing, like looking back, saying, you know, there's only 35 seals. I'm like, you are going to take casuals. It's kind of like when you get to SEAL training and they go, take a look at your life. Take to look to your right. Two of you aren't going to be here at the end of training. You know, you're kind of like, really? Is that really true? And believe me, it's true. But, you know, telling guys, hey, you are going to take. You are going to take casualties. And of course. And this goes back to Dean Ladd, who's a Marine that we had on the podcast who went into, did a bunch of the island hopping campaigns in the Pacific and he was going into Tarawa, and I asked him, I said, you know, were you, Were you? You know, because they, they told him, hey, we're going to take massive casualties. That was the first one, if I remember correctly, going into Tarawa. They told them, hey, listen, if a Marine goes down while you're heading to the beach, leave him. We have to take the beach. That's a priority. I don't think they said that for the other ones. And I said, so were you, you know, were you, were you nervous about getting hit? Were you nervous about getting wounded? And he just said, no, that always happens to the other guy, you know, and it's like, and, and that's kind of the feeling that when I talk to the team five guys, when I'm telling you you're going to take casualties, all their attitude was like, that's going to happen to someone else. Yeah, so that's what you guys are getting into. But there is a, at least some level of reality hitting when someone's telling you, like, hey, you are going to get contacted. Because like you said earlier, you go through years and years of training, and for you it was a few years of training. For me, going to Iraq for the first time, it was 13 years I've been in the military. And even my first deployment, there was no gear you could go out on patrol. We went out on hundreds of patrols, didn't get contacted. So when Joe Claiborne's telling me, hey, when we go out on this op tomorrow, we're gonna get contact in 42 minutes. And I'm like, okay. Sure enough, he was right.
- [109:06]
C
Yeah.
- [109:07]
A
And that's kind of the story that I opened this, the, the podcast up with. And, you know, I. When you were going out, how you were prepared, that thing where team one's pushing across and Lieutenant Huff, Raider to Sergeant Ashley. We were about to get hit. Almost immediately, the enemy started in on us from multiple positions. As the sound of the machine gun burst and incoming rounds enveloped us, everyone hit the deck. Despite all my training and mental posturing, the moment those rounds rattled off, I froze. Froze in a brief state of shop shock. Everything hit slow motion from the moment the firings. The firing started. Lieutenant gave notice to command and began coordinating air support. Within minutes, we had two Hilo gunships inbound. At this point, we seem to have gained the initiative by establishing battlefield Superiority and Team 2 held in place while we maintained a steady pace of alternating Suppressive fires and select shots in various mer in the various murder holes, trying to catch the combatants as they popped up the fire. Team one managed to crawl up against a couple of small berms in the field. Once set, Team 2 also adjusted position down along the smaller branch wadi that I had moved into alongside Mathis. We maintained contact on and off until the gunship showed up and an Apache and a Huey began circulating the area and the enemy shooters were still engaged with us, stopped firing and turned for cover. Team one scrambled to mark the target compounds with smoke range grenades, but they were positioned so close to do it to it without any cover egress, and there was too high a risk of blue on blue friendly fire from the air. The helos performed a couple mock strafing runs instead, which gave us a brief window to reposition for our next move. While doing so, word came over the radio that a recon unit a few clicks south had also just declared a tick and helos gave us notice that they would be depart our position to help them under the hilos coverage cover. Under the hilo's cover though, team wanted move 20 meters to the north of their first position to an into an irrigation ditch along a walk path. They kept their distance from the compound where the pressure plates would likely have resided. Now it was our turn. LT gave us a heads up. Long Greer, we're about to move. Get ready. All eyes were on me, the point man first to leave cover and advance across an open field that had just been riddled with gunfire toward a new building. A rapid analysis screamed through my mind. We are in a battle lull and both us and the enemy have now regrouped. Our helo's left and I'm about to get up and move across this open field with no cover, straight toward the compound that the enemy most likely repositioned themselves in. And I'll be target number one when they open back up on us. If there ever be a time to get shot in the face, this is it. And I'm walking right into it. So this is what it means to be point man. Lt gave me the word Long Greer. Push forward. My heart was pounding and fear hit me hard. I started quietly reciting Palm 27 again, and a surge of faith welled up in me. I postured myself with strength, reminded that I had nothing to fear, and pushed straight toward Building 70. Walking speedily through the crops across unchecked ground, fully aware of both the risks of stepping on a pressure plate and and getting sniped. I continued reciting the prayer King David recorded from his own wartime experiences. The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? He is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? Step after step with my rifle at the ready, I scanned corners, door opening on, the doors opening on on and roof line of building 70 while trusting that my other marines had me covered everywhere else. I was ready at any moment to re engage whoever popped out to draw on me. I looked back to scan the rest of the patrol and noticed that Most of Team 2 was still in the wadi except for Sergeant Peck who was 30 meters behind me. Lt appeared to be tied up on the radio with command. I looked at Peck who gave me a nod to keep pushing and I continued another 40 meters. I was now far ahead of team one and starting to close in on building 70. My heart was racing again as I anticipated the enemy's opening shots. I continued to scan the potential firing positions that I was walking straight towards, raising my rifle at some to peer through my ACOG and continued taking step after step without any warning. Snap. A single shot rang out from Building 70 right at me. I hit the ground quickly and immediately realized that my entire body was numb. I couldn't feel anything and was completely uncertain if I had just been shot or not. I frantically crawled up into a small path embankment in front of me. It wasn't good cover, but better than nothing. Peck screamed out from a distance. Long Greer, are you hit? Long Greer, I yelled back, I don't know. And then started to belt out alert direction, description, range assignment and control adrack while trying to catch my breath. I was in a bad position with no good options. After a few seconds, physical sensation started to come back. I ran my hand up and down my body. I didn't feel any external blood flowing or any sharp pains. Long Greer, are you hit? I screamed back, no, I'm good, I'm good. The enemy shooter had the drop on me for sure and I felt the round wisp and snap. But they missed. Thank God they missed.
- [114:28]
C
Man, what a nervous moment that was.
- [114:31]
A
You know, dude, I was freaking nervous when I was reading this. Yes. The past couple days.
- [114:35]
C
Gosh, yeah. I mean, just getting up to move, you know, the way that those battles transpired, most of them, they were, they would be super intense for a few minutes and then they would kind of lull out and then they'd be super intense again and then they would lull out. And the way that we trained the engage with with enemy forces because of their, because their IED tactics Was, was not to aggress the buildings, you know, the three, five and other units. Just as tactics evolve daily as we're force on force, we're adapting to their tactics, they're adapting to ours. They knew that our, you know, standard mission of the infantry is to locate, close with and destroy the enemy through fire maneuver. We locate them and then we start aggressing towards them and try to get close enough to take them all out. And so they, they would try to lure us in to IED, lace minefields essentially or try to get us into the buildings that they were positioned in. They take pop shots or full open on us so that we would aggress into that building, into all their booby trapped IED snares as we're trying to get there. So the standard procedure that all of the, all the units in the region wanted us to operate off of was to, was to get under contact, try to pin him down, try to cut off their flanks and try to keep them consolidated and then drop air overhead, which is not incredibly personal and you know, it stands against some of the conventional Marine Corps, you know, fire maneuver training, but that's just what was working at the time. So the, the battlefield lulls, you know, we'd be under contact and our, our immediate focus was to gain the initiative, just gain fire superiority, keep their heads down more than our heads are down so we can figure out what's going on, make tactical movements as it makes sense to try to get close enough without getting too close, all the while calling in air support. And because Sangin was so hot at the time, the moment any unit called in a tick a troops in contact, any air asset that was open was automatically allocated. So we had Predator drones, high Mars, we had jets, we had Huey helicopters and other attackers helicopters, all just kind of primed and ready to get out there and get involved. Didn't have any artillery just because of all the air support, but, but that was a known thing. It was, hey, you have all the assets that you need. The number one killer in this valley right now is guys stepping on IEDs. We don't want any more of that. We want you all to get in contact, call an air, and then let's take them out that way. It took a pretty incredible amount of restraint, even to great frustration at times to operate that way. But, but, but that's, that's how they wanted us to.
- [117:08]
A
Yeah, Echo Charles just it eventually, and I don't know if it was like this for you guys, but eventually it escalated for guys where when they'd get contact with the enemy, like shot at. They weren't even, they were like kneeling down where they were. Because even to move four steps to the right to get next to a, a, a wall or a berm or something like that, that's uncleared space. And so you might get blown up. And Rob Jones, this is where Rob Jones got wounded in 2010, was in Sangin, lost both of his legs. But yeah, so it's. You guys are, you guys are constrained by the enemy tactics. And yet with all that constraint, your LT says it's go time.
- [117:52]
C
Oh, big time. I know.
- [117:54]
A
Here you go.
- [117:55]
C
Long.
- [117:55]
A
Greer, you're up.
- [117:57]
C
Yeah, yeah, that's right. And team one was like, everybody's down and you know, it's first one up. And we didn't cover it. But I volunteered for point man once we got in country and you know, it was a man. It was a big decision for me. It meant a lot. One of the things that we talked about all the time when we were in training was that point man's the first guy to get his legs blown off. Or opera if you're on foot patrols or foot patrolling in Ranger file, which means we're one behind each other. No staggered column, no edge formation, nothing. It's the point man's up front. Everybody try to put your foot where the guy's foot in front of you was because you know for sure a reasonable confidence that there's not an IED there. And that's how we tended to operate. So that was the first real moment that it was like, oh no, I volunteered to be point man. And we're in a battlefield load, the Hueys are gone to that other recon unit. Like they're going to open back up on us. And you know, it had just happened at first to the other team. They were wide open in a field like it. But it was a nervous moment. And I just, in my, in my head, you know, and in my heart, I just reminded myself, I, you know, we're all influenced by everything as kids. One of the moments in Saving Private Ryan that always marked me as a kid is in that last battle defense. Whenever the team is trying to, to defend that bridge against the German, Germans aggression, there's a sniper in the tower and he's, he's got a cross around his neck and he's reciting Bible verses while he's trying to stay alive and he didn't make it. But I mean, who couldn't be marked by a moment like that? Just connecting to the father in the middle of, like, whether if this is my last moment, at least you're one with me, you know. And so I, man, I carried those Bible verses and I recited Psalm 27 and man, it just gave me so much faith. Just in that moment. It was just a quick reminder, a quick mindset shift of like, wait a second, what am I afraid of? Yeah, exactly. And from lt's perspective, I mean, for all of ours, the plan during that patrol was we've got building 60, 63, 70, and then 71, 72. Maybe there's four buildings that we were going to go hit. Like, this is going to be a three to four hour thing, minimum. Like we're here to do this. So the fact that we took contact, it. It didn't. There was not a thought in my mind like, okay, well we're just going to pull out now, or whatever. It's like, well, we've got. We still got a mission to go do. So pushing to Building 70 and then getting shot at again. While that was happening though, what slowed everything up? I mean, you read it. I was wa. I was patrolling toward Building 70, toward Building 70. Peck was behind me, but the rest of my team was still in the wadi. And that's because LT was caught up on the radio with second Recon Command and they were in the process of telling us essentially, hey, we want you all to egress out. Your another unit is now heavily bogged down, just like y' all are.
- [120:50]
A
Need two elements bogged down.
- [120:52]
C
That's exactly right. And if y' all get hit and if. And this is the very first patrol outside the wire and our internal backup is in that picket line up on the road. They're not coming in to get us. So second Recon was like, we need y' all out before one of y' all gets hit, because we will struggle to send somebody in to help you out if you need it.
- [121:10]
A
Meanwhile, you're charging forward going, it's a day late, A dollar shirt for that word. I know the other thing that's really kind of not totally unique, but it's, it's a little bit of a, of a differentiator is that you have. And this is going to sound very minute, but you have time to think about what's going to happen. There's a lot of times in combat, there's times for me when like I was doing something and it wasn't until it was over before you're like, oh, that maybe was pretty dangerous, what I just did, you know, 17 seconds ago. But then there's other times where it's like, like this one where you're getting told, hey, stand by to go. And now you have, whether it's 4 seconds or 8 seconds or 12 seconds or 30 seconds or a minute to ponder all the horrible things that are, could possibly happen to you. And luckily you were able to overcome those. But that's just a little bit different. You know, I've always, I've always said that, you know, the, it's the waiting, it's the once you go, once you're go, like once you're going, you're thinking about the job, you're thinking about doing the thing. But in those, whether it's three seconds or even, like tomorrow, oh, we're going into this area tomorrow, it's going to be bad. There's a high chance of IDs. That's. You get 24 hours to sit there and think about all the bad things that can happen. Yeah, those are way worse than the, okay, now I'm going, like, once I'm going. And that's become sort of my protocol when something seems like it's going to be like I'm afraid of it or there's some danger there, like, okay, I'm going. I'm just going to like, get, just get, get out of my way because I'm going.
- [122:40]
C
Yeah.
- [122:41]
A
So it's just a little, little note on fear. The more time you give it, the more time it's going to work on you.
- [122:47]
C
Big time, Big time in the mentality shift, you know, correct your mindset, stay, get in the positive, start thinking about the positive and stay there. And, you know, that one turned out okay. Go ahead. I was just going to say I, you know, after that shot was taken, I. BMX biking and skateboarding and everything. I broke an unusual, unusually high amount of bones as a kid. Most of them were compound fractures or compound breaks, but dang, okay, like shoulder blade, not shoulder blade, collarbone. Three times, one compound. One of them was two more compounds. The other one that maybe was a hairline fracture. Yeah. Both BMX biking. One was at an X at like a skate park. Went way over a tabletop jump and went straight into the concrete. Just total bust. Another one was on a wooden, like, handmade launch ramp or something. Launch ramp? Yeah, in. Just in a cul de sac, you know, being stupid and. Oh, but back then it's like, oh, we're X Games, you know, seventh grade. But anyway. And then wrists and I, But I. When those injuries happen, your body, like my body, your adrenaline is just Pumping so hard, like you go numb for a second. Then afterwards, the feeling hits. And when that shot rang out, I could feel nothing. And I'm like, this guy's gonna like steady his aim and put the next one right where he land, right where it's supposed to go. And I'm in this wide open field. I got. I'm like, I got nowhere to get. I mean, there's just. And so I. That's. But that's where training and repetition kicks in. You know, we trained over and over and over again. There's a reason you do mag drills, you know, in the thousands. It's so that you don't even have to think about it. Chaos is happening or whatever, your body just kind of reacts. So belting out an adra, identifying where the enemy's at, you know, combat or contact front, and then a particular direction where I think he's located. Trying to give some intel to where, you know, some of the other guys that may or may not have seen it. That's it. It's helpful to have that training to take over. But we. Yeah, it was a moment.
- [124:46]
A
Yeah. You guys get that situation under control again, get the book. But you go on. This is kind of your debrief. It had not been 24 hours and I'd flirted with death five times. And again you going to these. The first machine gun burst of the enemy's ambush where I froze in place. The single shot at me while I approach Building 70 in the open field. The enemy's re engagement while we aggressed. Again, I didn't cover that. But that's in here. The pressure plate that I almost stepped on again, didn't cover that. But it's in here. And now this. Almost being crushed to death between two massive combat vehicles in the middle of the night along the mountains, along a mountainous IED infested roadside. I pulled off my gear at my dirty smoked out cotton and thought about the conversations I had with my parents a few days prior. They nearly lost their son numerous times in the past 24 hours and obviously had no idea it was now day three at PB Alcatraz and our next foot patrol was hours away. I debriefed Sergeant Smith and others, received an attaboy for completing the night's tasks, and hit the rack just in time for direct sunlight in my face. Within a couple hours, I was awoken to begin prepping for our next foot patrol. That's three days in one op.
- [125:53]
C
Yeah, yeah, just extremely fast paced op tempo. But you know, like all Those guys were facing that, too. You know, I books my story, but every single one of those guys were right there with me. They were doing the exact same thing. The IED was nuts. I, you know, I just seeing it for the first time, won't go into the details, like Jocko said, it's in the book. But the. While we were egressing out and still getting shot at from overhead, I took a step and my toes were just over the crest of what we called a disturbed earth patch, which is a. If you dig, just imagine digging a hole in the ground, then filling it back up, you can tell where it was dug out. And coming out of that hole was a faint piece of dirty cloth that had a string wrapped around it a whole bunch of times. And it was just a very clear indicator. Taliban would do that because they didn't want the locals getting their legs blown off because then they pit the locals against them and, and, and, man, just one thing after another, and then getting nearly crushed, you know, between combat vehicles, just a. You know, would have been a terrible way to go, you know, in the midst of a war. Details are in the book, but just get put in these extremely dangerous environments, of course you're going to have close calls.
- [127:06]
A
Yeah.
- [127:06]
C
You know, and then, like you said, while they're happening, you're not really thinking about the significance of them. But then you said it was always afterwards. I would sit down afterwards and just kind of replay the scenes in my mind and just think, I cannot believe I am involved in this. And that. I just experienced that and that like nothing happened. I mean, I. We would get ambushed. Ambushed, it's probably the proper word. But we would get engaged all the time on foot. You know, the enemy would have to drop on us left and right. Sometimes it'd be multiple, automatic, multiple fighting positions. Sometimes it'd be just one, but automatic fire would reign in. And we take off running. It's like, what are the statistical chances that 20 bullets hit you when you're running for cover? Whenever they have the. Whenever they have the drop on you. I don't know what those are, but I just have to think. There's so many close calls that we had that you guys had in Ramadi that, you know, take a step left or a step right and that's it. But just because you were where you were, you made it through.
- [128:04]
A
Yeah. One of the, One of the nicest things about Ramadi, because that, that thing you just said, the enemy always had the drop on us. That's something. When I was on My first deployment to Iraq, that's what I felt like all the time. I'd feel like, you know, you, you get out of the vehicle in downtown Baghdad and you are surrounded 360 degrees. Maybe not 360 degrees, but whatever percentage of degrees around you is enemy threats. Every window, every door, every rooftop, everything is. You could get shot. And if they're there, they're going to get you. And it was. When we got to Radi, we got to oftentimes flip the script where we would set up our sniper overwatch positions and the enemy would come walking down the street having no idea that we're there. They got their, they got their RPGs over their shoulder, walking to go and. Or a mortar tube. They're walking to go and hit one of the combat outposts. And we just be able to. My guys would just be able to shoot him.
- [128:57]
C
Yeah.
- [128:57]
A
And it was just very nice to be able to flip that script. And if you're listening to this and you're in the military as often as you can, try and flip the script so that you are on offense. It is a sickening feeling when you're out on patrol and you know that the enemy, as you just said, man, the enemy is going to have to drop on you. That's. They live there. They're there 24 hours a day.
- [129:19]
C
Home field advantage.
- [129:19]
A
They got the home field advantage. They don't care. You know, that's another scene from the movie Heat. You seen the movie Heat Echo, Charles?
- [129:25]
B
Yes, sir.
- [129:25]
A
Of course. Like the enemy can get, it, can get, can, can get it wrong a hundred times in a row and it doesn't matter. You get it wrong one time and, and you're dead or one of your guys is dead. And that's what you guys are dealing with. I'm gonna fast forward a little bit here. As the days progressed, our operational pace and range of mission activities were all over the map. We were on the road at any point throughout the day or night, responding to calls for reinforcement, road security, investigation of suspected IEDs or enemy activity, routine check ins at the three major FOBs, and more every day. The valley was filled with the echoes of explosions, gun battles, and the roar of air support periodically thundering overhead. You guys are just in it big time.
- [130:04]
C
You know, anybody that was in the valley was. But we and all like just, you know, thinking about anytime a Hilo is in the air, it's like somebody's in contact somewhere. We hear an explosion and it was very, we could very quickly get to the point that you can hear and feel the concussional difference between an ammonium nitrate explosion, an IED, or a C4 controlled detonation. So we, we would know, like, okay, it's a friendly unit, they found an IED and they're blowing in place. And we did a ton of that on the road. We, we would find locations, and either we would have EOD in our trucks, or we would note it, hold security until another unit could bring them along. And then they would use the robot or hand place C4 and, you know, blow the IEDs in place. And then rocket drops and Hellfire missiles and high Mars and, you know, Harrier JDAM drops. I mean, they all had distinct sizes and concussions and feels. And the Blue Force tracker also, as we're going, as we're up and down the road, we're also receiving intel input from units in the area. And so it's just non stop everywhere. So somebody's involved in something. Yeah, it was just incredibly active.
- [131:09]
A
Yeah. The interesting thing about Ramadi was it was so small. It's only four miles. And like saying is, what'd you say, 30 miles?
- [131:17]
C
If you really broadened it out, I mean, operationally, we probably made it almost to Kanjaki a time or two, but the whole valley. Yeah, it's a big valley.
- [131:26]
A
Yeah. But then you guys had more hilos and stuff. Like, we, we didn't really have hilos coming in very often into Radi because it was too dangerous, but for you guys. But it's just like constant activity. Constant activity. Constant activity.
- [131:37]
C
Yeah.
- [131:38]
A
You say fast forward a little bit. At this point in the deployment, we began to really come into our own. We were bullish on in our operations, confident in our strategic thinking, creative in our tactics, and very heavy handed in the blows we dealt. We had plenty of close calls already, though, without any serious casualties. And it was on all our minds how much longer it would be before that changed. Everyone paid the piper and Sanken, and it seemed obvious that we couldn't be the only exception.
- [132:03]
C
We, we all knew it. We knew it was coming at some point. We already had a number of close calls. You know, that, that IED that. Well, I mean, heck, I was going to say the IED that Fredo took was. It was a really close one for those three guys. But the firefights that we started to get into, you know, when. When the enemy opened back up on us out in that first one, nearly shot Mathis in the back. Gosh, that was a close call. I mean, man, was that close. And there Was man, there was a lot of that but, but we just, we weren't stung by it yet. Everybody else was getting stung around us. You know, there's this one mission in the book that is probably worth going into, but there, in fact I will go into it. But there's. Aside from three 5 second recon and us, there were route clearance platoons that were up and down the road, fixing the road in different places and creating new routes into the green zone. Push it, you know, widening it, making it better. And then there were. Somebody would get hit by an IED and there were like mechanics crews that would come in, riggers that would rig up the busted equipment and haul it out. There wasn't a ton of supply being trucked in. We would truck in our own supplies. The other units would, but there wouldn't be supply units trucking up the Sangin Valley to the fobs. Usually be Hilo drop offs just because it was too, it's too hot. But the route clearance guys, man, they got hit a lot. And like because they're focused, they would be doing route clearance stuff. So I, you know, they're softer target by nature of what they're actively involved in to no fault of their own. And they got into some heavy stuff. There was this one patrol that we went on that we dropped off on foot. Second squad did. I started to make my way across the, the wadi and we took small arms fire, just a quick burst near the front of the patrol. It's kind of uncharacteristic. It wasn't super heavy. Might have been five or six shots. And we just kind of kept on going. But we got a call over the radio from command that a rock clearance platoon had taken an IED and were really in a heavy ambush. And we thought, okay, that guy was trying to get our attention to keep us here, to keep us from, from pulling out and going north. But we loaded up quick and went to those guys and they had, I want to say four or five trucks in a convoy. One of the middle trucks took a hit, blew the front end of the MRAP nearly off and they were getting hammered. I mean it. We pulled up. I've never heard so much automatic gunfire in my life. And the way the story played out, we, they were taking fire from the green zone. We pulled up and our turret gunners just started letting loose. Once we started coordinating with that unit, we got in between them in the green zone and just kept pounding back the green zone. But before we got there they were starting to get, I don't want to say they were on. I don't want to say they were starting to get overrun, but they were getting. They were getting hammered. There was a. In. In the truck that took the hit. There was a Mark 19 in the turret, and the Marine in that turret was trying to fix it to get it back up to engage in the firefight. He took two rounds to the torso, dropped back into the hole of the mrap, now critically wounded. I have no idea what the condition of the driver and the. A driver in that vehicle where they might have been knocked out, conscious anyway, in an act of extreme heroism. One of my favorite stories from the whole deployment, and it's secondhand information, but it came from one of the guys that was up there interacting with that unit. There was a female corpsman in the back of that mrap, and her. Her. Her brother just got shot in the torso twice. They're in a truck that's taking incoming fire left and right. As far as they know, they're on their own. We're not there yet. They have a heavy amount of gunfire coming in. She pops open the escape hatch, which is right underneath, right behind the turret. She gets up through it, turns toward the enemy with her M4 and starts ripping rounds to try to suppress back while, you know, since the. The main gunner went down. Just the decision, the courage that she had to have to make that decision to. To get up and start ripping rounds. Not only was she a corpsman, but she was a female, but she was as hardcore as any of those Marines out there. She starts ripping rounds at the enemy, and then they turn their fire to her. And she. As she's leaned up on the truck with her M4 shooting, takes a round through her elbow and out of her shoulder and nearly blows her arm off. And she drops back in the truck, critically wounded. I don't know how many minutes it was after that we showed up, but thank God that we did. But I just think about those two. Oh, my gosh. I mean, to your point, the fact that we hadn't had any occurrence like that yet, and we're. That was what we're there for. We're supposed to be on the road taking all the heat, and a unit like this takes that. But oh, my gosh, that female corpsman, like, what a hero.
- [136:49]
A
Yeah.
- [136:49]
C
What incredible courage.
- [136:50]
A
You know, the story I was telling you earlier, that's outstanding. The story I was telling you earlier, and I. I have not been able to confirm this. The story I was telling earlier when I had looked at the young assistant Platoon commander and said, how long do you think it's going to be before you get contacted? Because you are going to get contacted. Fast forward, 12 minutes. They're in a big gunfight. They have an Iraqi soldier killed, an Iraqi soldier with wounded. And now I'm at the combat outpost and I'm watching, you know, we're coordinating the casualty evacuation and the, and the fire support to go to them. And in a, in an M113, you know, armor personnel carrier rolls out and the gunner, I'm looking at this vehicle rollout, and the gunner is a female soldier. And I, you know, saw that for four seconds. You know, I was like, oh, there's a female soldier in there. Get some. You know, and she's manning that.50 cal, getting ready to go get it. And I never, you know, I didn't see her again. I don't know, you know, who it was. I never, like, talked to anybody about it until literally right now. So if that female soldier that was rolling out on, I forget what the date was. It must have been sometime in June or July down at Combat Outpost Falcon. And you were rolling out to go and recover, you know, some wounded Iraqi soldiers that, with my guys, get some. And same with this female corpsman I know, stepping up and returning fire, getting wounded, like that's what, that's what we're doing.
- [138:13]
C
That's right. They were there and committed. Committed to be a part of it all. It really meant something.
- [138:19]
A
So you, you mentioned this in here. Tension be. Began to show between LT and some of the more senior enlisted, which was not unexpected or uncommon. Lt wanted to maintain command and control, but some felt like he was overbearing at times. He'd brush off advisement from some of the more senior guys, guys who had been on several deployments already. They did the same to him, though the position he was in wasn't an easy one, and at times we were not an easy group to command. This was Lieutenant Huff's first deployment, but there was not another platoon commander in 1, 2, 3 better suited for our mission than he was. So that's just a natural tension that is going to develop.
- [138:55]
C
Typical. Yeah.
- [138:56]
A
And it sounds like they, you know.
- [139:00]
C
Work through it, they got it worked out. I mean, I, yeah, we, I, I don't know why I felt that I should add that in, but it just fit into the story. And a part of it's because I just wanted the book to be a reflection of what it was like and that was happening. But like you said, like, at. Of course, it's going to happen. You know. Lt was, he was solid. And our, our most senior NCOs were also. I mean I, you know, there's going to be differences of opinion and things, but just putting, putting myself in his shoes, he, you know, we were a small detachment away from our parent unit that we had trained and been a part of. It's his first deployment and he's operating in the most kinetic combat operating zone. He doesn't have the feedback of his other lts and the other platoons. He's getting feedback from his boss, you know, Major Wood, our Alpha Company commanding officer. But Major Wood is involved with things that are going on down at Jackson, not up in the northern San Valley. Recon is, you know, we're getting some feedback from those guys, but it's good and bad. You know, they want us there, they don't want us there. Also probably it's like he's in a very peculiar, challenging situation. We all were, but him leading, steering the ship. I just think, all things considered, a lot of credit to that guy.
- [140:16]
A
You know, that's, that's awesome. And like you said, it's kind of normal, expected.
- [140:20]
C
Yeah, totally normal. Yeah.
- [140:22]
A
And you just have to make sure that it doesn't escalate to a point where now we have disrespect or lack of trust and all those things. Because I can disagree with you and still trust you. I can disagree with you and still respect you. You can disagree with me and still respect me. And that's what the critical component is. But if we don't trust each other or we don't respect each other now, we might have problems.
- [140:38]
C
I think it got worked at. You're completely right. I, I think it probably what kept it from ever manifesting into any territory that it shouldn't have been was open communication and confrontation. It seemed like there was never. We were around each other all the time. We didn't have really have anywhere else to go either. And P.B. alcatraz, we hadn't really explained it, but it was a four wall dirt compound. There was no overhead. It was the size of maybe a football field and a half and second recon occupied three quarters of it, which by the way haven't said this, but we slept right next to the PB burn pit because that's all the space that was left. There wasn't anywhere to go. So that's where we were. But I think that afforded like as some of those problems started to occur, it all just had to be confronted up, you know, up front And I think everybody did a good job of like, of communicating, showing each other mutual respect, hashing out the problems when there were problems to keep them from manifesting into bigger problems. And so it worked out.
- [141:33]
A
Yeah. One thing that can really hurt an LT in this situation. Situation is, you know, you say to me, hey boss, I don't think we should do this way. And I say, no, we're doing it my way. Shut up. As opposed to like, well, tell me what you think. Hey, here's what I think. And instead of us using our rank to overcome the situation and the same thing with the, with the senior enlisted guys, senior enlisted guys going to, going to the troops and saying, oh, the boss doesn't know what he's doing, like none of that stuff's going to be good. Like you said, if we have open communications, we work through it. We make little compromises on either side. That's how we get the, this stuff done.
- [142:02]
C
Yeah, big time.
- [142:05]
A
Fast forward a little bit. You guys are continuing all those missions. You guys are out on patrol in this. In the green zone. The civilians were now out of the immediate area and the pressure was building, awaiting the inevitable fight. I requested permission to take out the shooter in the tree line. LT was tied up on the radio with command and I made the request and I waited. I eventually made the request again. Lt, permission to fire. A few seconds later responded, affirmative. Longer smoke him. I flipped my safety to fire and began to slow, slow my breathing while waiting for the combatant to come back into view. It was roughly 200 yard shot, which was not a difficult distance, but it was with a heavy heartbeat. Thoughts began to flood my mind. I had experienced enough enemy engagement at this point to satisfy my youthful Marine desire to simply participate in combat. But I had yet to have the enemy squarely in my sights like this. I felt the height of dominating power and the pen pending fulfillment of that week's buildup of aggression. But it was intertwined with a sense of heartache. As I steadied my breathing, waiting for the combatant to creep back into my sight, the burden got heavier. By now the rest of the squad was well positioned, covering various sectors of fire and aimed in on the likely attack positions in front of us. Through the crops and trees obstructing my line of sight, I focused intently, trying to identify body mass. Suddenly my right eye caught movement through the thick crop stocks near the location I'd last seen the combatant. This was it. I quickly aligned my red ACOG chevron, began applying trigger pressure and started my. My Exhale. As my shot was just about to ring out. The combatant's body's mass cleared the crop stocks that were obstructing my view, and I rapidly released the trigger without firing while a surge of adrenaline coursed through my body. My eyes widened at the realization that the movement I locked onto was not a combatant, but a small boy that could not have been five years old. Yet he was all alone and started running east, trying to clear the area before the fighting started. It had already been several minutes since the last group of civilians left the Green Zone, and this was very unusual. The kids were always the first ones to clear the area as the parents knowingly directed them to safety before the adults. I don't know how or why, but this little boy had been left behind, and I was just 2 pounds of trigger pressure away from mistakenly killing him. My heart sunk deep into my chest, and I dropped my head into the dirt. I almost just shot a little boy. I called out to the child. I called out the child to the rest of the squad so no one else would make the same mistake, and started to brush off the angst.
- [144:40]
C
Almost one of the worst moments of my life. You know, the. What we. What we always talked about was pattern of life shifts when. Whenever we're on patrol. Pay attention to the pattern of life. That's what we were trying to establish whenever we first got there. Just how was life happening here? We want to try to set a benchmark so that we can understand when things change, that they have changed so we know something's up. Whenever we would step foot in the Green screen zone, every time, as soon as everyone noticed that we stepped foot in the Green Zone in a very regimented, awkward way, the civilians would just drop what they're doing, go grab their kids and start walking across the 6 11. Every time, it's like there's the pattern of life shift. Because they. Because the repetition had been, okay, well, there's about to be a fight and they need to get out of the area before there was. And we would never. We would never engage. And I don't. I can't think of a time that the enemy ever engaged while there were still civilians in a field. It was just a known thing. It was weird. Weird. Taking a step back and thinking through when we were in it. It's just the way that things were happening. But it happened every single time we'd step in the field. Civilians would come across. The funny thing is they would cross the 611 and just go sit up on the hillside still fully in view of everything, just they had nothing better to do but like stray rounds are, are going to hit half of you if the battle shifts in your direction. And they would still just sit there and just watch it all happen. But in this instance, the civilians had already made it across. I mean we were well past that moment and we'd already had enough engagements, you know, where we were confident in that pattern of life shift. Civilians are gone. We've got ICOM also, we're getting, you know, reports from them. I mean we're listening into their reports to each other about where we're at, how many we are, what, you know, where personnel is located, up against what tree and what berm and what building side and so on, so forth. And, and you know, they're talking about which machine gun is going to open up first. And we're just like it, man, it's coming. And as the civilians were leaving Initially there were two MAMs, two military age males that we bid as combatants. One was turkey necking around a building head. I could see his thick black hair come around the edge of a wall just every so subtly and he'd kind of eyeball us for a bit and then pop back around. No idea that I had my sights lined up on him. And then, and then another guy in the trees, same thing. And that guy in the trees was setting up to be a part of the initial attack. So he went out of view and when he came back, my mind's where it was. Whenever he first left, I just thank God that I didn't pull that trigger. You know, I think back to growing up hunting in, in Texas. I had some, I just, I spent a ton of time deer hunting. And a rule that we always followed was you don't shoot until you can see the whole thing. You never shoot a deer through the trees. Always be positive what you're shooting and what lies beyond, no matter what. And that's something that the Marine Corps taught also. Yes, indeed, but that shooting discipline, you know, they're there. I never hunted on public land, it was always private. But public land in particular. Particular a lot of people get shot because somebody gets trigger happy because they see movement in a bush and they start shooting and it's another person, it's another hunter. So I just, I was always in the back of my head, wait until it's clear. At the same time, what's competing against that thought in this instance is I got this combatant right now, I got him dead to rights, you know, if I don't Take the shot and I wait. Now he's got a chance to take one of us. I need to take him. Thank God I waited.
- [148:10]
A
Yeah, and you didn't have to wait long because once that kid rolled out of the scene, this guy tiptoes back into view and use your own center mass squeeze, and you take him out.
- [148:21]
C
That's it, you know. And then the firefight kicked off immediately after. I mean, everything was just ready to go, you know, that five, five, six bullet, small bullet. It was a single shot and he just slumped over. He didn't drop like they, you know, like people drop in the movies. It wasn't a big, you know, 308 bullet, but he slumped over and just a weird feeling, you know, I. Like after the kid was there, man, that just got me pretty emotionally mixed up. And I started trying to regather my thoughts and, you know, and just get logical again. Get. Just get the emotion out and just kind of hone into the moment in a very cold and calculated fashion. So when the guy popped back up, I'm still having that mental mix up and just trying to get myself out of it. So I took the shot. It seemed relatively uneventful, but I. But it hit him and then again would seem like two, three seconds afterwards. Now everything's just rattling off.
- [149:26]
A
Yeah, you guys get into a big gun fight, rockets going out, saws going off, and eventually you guys gain the, the initiative and you say this. It got quiet enough for. For a moment to hear, far off, coming from behind the compound wall. Directly in front of me were belting moans of a dying man and what sounded like excruciating pain. There was no way to know which one of us hit him. He whelped and cried for 3, 30 seconds, and then his cries started to die down. I pitied the man in that moment. It was hard to listen to. His screams eventually subsided after what I assumed to have been his bleeding out, and things became very still. Fast forward a little bit. On the way back to Alcatraz, the mood was ecstatic, but I was bitter. We leveled our enemy's attack again and left unscathed. But this one got to me. Hearing the whelping moans and the dying enemy fighter complete silence in the aftermath of apparently killing some of our other combatants. Acknowledging how close I was to accidentally shooting a little boy and grappling with a growing resentment of our enemy really sank me. I was embattled internally. As much as I tried to stay disconnected and to just do my job, things started to get personal. It seemed that way for a lot of us. And I don't know realistically how anyone could do any different in the circumstances.
- [150:46]
C
Yeah, I started getting to the point in the deployment that just. It was starting to impact me internally. You know, things were getting very negative, very dark. I think just in reflecting back on trying to keep things from being personal, you know, you try to stay very professional. This is a, this is war. You know, we are here to kill them just like they're here to kill us. And if we just kind of set the playing field that, that those are the rules and now we are doing that to each other, then there is a coldness that can come about you. But, but gosh, it gets personal because we are adapting to what they're doing and they're adapting to what we're doing. Like, I can feel that those guys, they are like not cold, calculated. Like we have a scheduled time to meet on a battlefield. They are actively hunting me and I am actively hunting them too. And to get to the point that you can commit that on other human beings, you either have to stay completely out of the, out of the loop, like stay cold to it all, or you have to dehumanize and almost hate them, or else you just cripple under it all. And I just, I started getting to the point that I started feeling ashamed. Not from killing. I don't have any problem with, with wartime occurrences and being a part of it. Apart from wanting to, from harboring vengeance and bloodlust in a real way. It's always an internal struggle. And I think everybody has their battles and probably, you know, undergoes that, especially given the circumstances, like I don't have any hang up with, with, with those feelings and emotions cultivating. I always just tried to combat against them. I never wanted to go there. I didn't want to hate them. I just tried to. I just acknowledged the tragedy of it all. I think that war was never a part of God's intent for humanity. And yet it's always been a part of it and it will always be a part of it. And I am not, I'm not anti war, I'm not for war. I just acknowledge it as part of the human existence. I think some of the greatest attributes of humanity come out in war. But it's ultimately in the backdrop of incredible cruelty from human on human. And if I take a step back and I just think about humanity as a whole, I just think about everybody being a child of God. It's just so tragic that so much life destruction comes out of the decisions that we make that ultimately lead us into war. There's always going to be war. There's going to be justifiable reasons for war. I mean, there are just wars. In this war, we were the good guys, hands down. We're fighting on behalf of freedom, on behalf of justice in the world, on ideals that establish liberty for the masses against a tyrannical, cruel, bitter, oppressive enemy. I mean, there are some savage human beings on this earth that don't deserve to live. I have no hang up with killing whatsoever. I just don't want to ever let my heart get to the point that I want it, that I want destruction on other people. And so there were moments like this that, man, they just got to me. I just think about that little kid and, you know, some of the fighters that we were fighting against were young dudes that were brought up, completely indoctrinated from their earliest in, you know, remote mountain towns, brought up in madrasas and taught that jihad is the only way to life their whole lives. You just have to think, given enough time and maybe exposure to the world, that some of those guys would have turned. Now there was a lot of others that knew exactly what they were doing, that knew the way that the world was, that, you know, they were just about their own, their own self benefit, you know, at the pain and suffering of others. And those guys, you know, we took out a lot of them. But anyway, moments like this, yeah, they were just. There were times that it was tough to act out those war duties and there was a lot of other times that it wasn't, but yeah, and there.
- [154:38]
A
Was no slowing down either. You say with the acceleration of good weather, blooming vegetation, came a heightened intensity in the enemy attack. So they're, they're, they're stepping things up.
- [154:47]
C
That's right. You know, the valley was becoming more and more lush green. And during that time frame, we're getting intel reports left and right of new influxes of enemy fighters. The way that that combat arena was operating in Afghanistan in particular was that there was fighting season, which is when all the trees were green. It was in Sangam, but it was in, it was elsewhere too. The intel of the time was during those months, foreigners from all over the place flood into Afghanistan to fight against us. And then when winter comes along, they go home for RR and then they come back in the spring again. And so it was getting beefed up. There were mams everywhere. We passed by vans and trucks filled with military age males. Mean, mugging us hard. Well, like, we know exactly who you are and we just let them drive right on past.
- [155:33]
A
See you tomorrow.
- [155:34]
C
Exactly. That's exactly it. And we would just mean mug him right back. And it was just like, why don't you all just get out and we'll get out. Why don't we just do this right now?
- [155:43]
A
The first, like, one of the first operations I did in Iraq in 2003, and, like, we hit this big target in Fallujah, and we were looking for a specific guy, but we was like, it was a hotel. And so we ended up rounding up, like, I don't know, a dozen or 15 mams off the target.
- [156:04]
C
Yeah.
- [156:04]
A
And so now we got them lined up. We're kind of in a. In a little perimeter. We got them lined up, like, trying to figure out. Oh, no, it's actually. It was when we got. We got back to the. The Marine Corps base, I think it was. Marine Corps base. Yeah. And so we. Now we got all these guys, we line them up, and we don't know who, like, the bad guy is. And I'm, you know, again, I'm been in country for a short period of time. It's my first, like, times doing operations, and I'm, like, walking down the line, and all of a sudden, I just look at a guy, and I was like, oh, this is 100 him. Like, the way the guy's looking at me and the be compared to way everyone else is looking at me, I was like, oh, this guy just hates me and hates us, and this is the bad guy. And sure enough, they, like, went through the PID procedures. That was him. And you could tell I was like, oh, yeah, this is good. This is it. So it is interesting as much as I always say, like, it was good to work with the Iraqi forces, because the Iraqi forces go into a house and be like, oh, this guy's from a different region. This guy's a foreign fighter, whatever. Whereas we could never tell that. But as far as just, like, a bunch of normal Iraqi civilians compared to a freaking straight jihadist, oh, it was real evident the guy was not good with his. Disguising his feelings.
- [157:07]
C
No kidding at all. Yeah.
- [157:12]
A
I'm gonna fast forward a little bit.
- [157:13]
C
Sure.
- [157:14]
A
And again, get this book like the. I'm. I'm just reading 5% of the book right now. There's. There's so many powerful stories in here. This section is called Everyone Pays the piper in Sangin. April 6, 2011. You guys are going out on a patrol in the Green Zone. Your. Your mission is enemy and ied, identification and elimination. And then Come out. Fast forward a little bit. This time the enemy fighters had set up a U shaped ambush of sorts comprised of several fighting positions in the west and north and IDF indirect fire artillery team in the hills to our east. Rounds started coming in from the west and north, and not long after, mortars came down at our trucks from the east. So this is not a good situation. First squad was eventually dispersed widely throughout the compounds, fields and trenches between 611 and the main wadi, trying to locate and investigate and eliminate enemy shooters in the Green Zone. Fast forward a little bit. As soon as the shooting started, LT began coordinating with command and an ISR Predator drone loaded with Hellfire missiles was sent in to overlook the battlefield. Coordination efforts among the dispersed ground teams, our squad and the trucks, local command elements and a remote drone pilot proved an immense challenge. Amidst the radio traffic, the order eventually came over for the guys on the ground to consolidate as a Hellfire drop was imminent. The furthest inserted team in the Green Zone went to consolidate back along a wadi that lined up the eastern edge of a large crop field. Smith and Rast, these are two of your guys. We've heard Smith's name before, but we haven't heard Rast yet. But these are two of your guys. One's your platoon sergeant. Right? Smith.
- [159:00]
C
Smith.
- [159:01]
A
And then Rast is a corpsman.
- [159:02]
C
Yep.
- [159:03]
A
Were pushed into the Green Zone. Were pushed further into the Green Zone than most and held firm in their position to continue providing cover for the other Marines. The radio traffic was heavy. Mams were scattered throughout the area and we were taking sporadic gunfire from numerous locations. LT made his way on the radio amidst the traffic and yelled, break, break. Impact in 17 seconds. Say again. Impact in 17 seconds. Moments later, the explosion ripped through the valley and I watched from my truck on the 611 the smoke plume clear the treetops to my west. In typical fashion, we cheered excitedly, even though the explosion seemed to be closer than it should have been. Quickly after the blast, the ground element came across the radio screaming, cease fire, cease fire. With the highest shrill of angst. Our exhilaration immediately halted. This was a very. This was a very uncharacteristic response to an ordinance drop. Sergeant Hammonds then came on with a gut wrenching transmission. Break, break, break. That landed right on top of Raston. Smith, Peck and I looked at each other, shocked. Did he say what, what I think he just said? Lt immediately came on. Say again your last. Hammonds replied a few seconds later. That dropped right on top of Smith and Rast. We waited helplessly for further communication. One of the Marines on the ground came up on the radio. Corman up. I need Fleming on my position now. Dob Fleming, Doc, Fleming and Mathis dismounted from the 6x6 and sprinted to the west, disappearing into the foliage. A short while later, we all what we all feared came across the radio. The ground element requested for immediate medevac followed by two nine lines, one critical and one routine. We all knew what that meant if a casualty situation. If in a casualty situation a Marine was badly wounded but alive with a chance to survive, then the communication was critical. Conversely, if a Marine had been killed, there was no rush for the medevac, given he was already beyond saving and the communication was routine. One of them was dead and the other not far from it. One of the second squad Marines in the trucks belted out a knee jerk, knee jerk reaction over the radio. Who is routine? As if in that moment it mattered, nothing came through. Even though we were all thinking the same thing. Staff Sergeant Jeremy Smith, our respected platoon sergeant, was dead on impact. The missile obliterated his body. Doc Benjamin Rast, our brother and trusted Corman, also took a bad portion of the blast. Smith was gone, but we thought there was still a chance for Rast. We raced back to Alcatraz to get Rast on the chopper as soon as possible. Fleming and Mathis worked Rast's unconscious body all the way there. His heartbeat had apparently stopped before they loaded him into the truck, but they tried to get it back while en route. When we pulled up to Alcatraz, I jumped out of my truck and ran over to lieutenants to pull Smith's body out. I opened the back door to a person sized thick plastic bag, slumped over in the seat and had an immediate reaction of pause as my brain struggled to grasp the situation. I hoisted Smith out of the truck gently and his blood that had pooled in the seat beneath him and congregated in the bottom of the bag splashed up on me and ran down my chest. I was shocked. It was all a little too real. Amidst all the chaos, Turner, who was in the truck turret for the entire event and focused on engaging enemy shooters, had no idea who was in the body bag that had been loaded into the back seat right beside him. When I started to pull Smith's body out of the truck, Turner crouched down through the turret hole and said, who the is that? I said, it's Smith, man. He immediately burst into tears and sunk back into his turret seat. I carefully laid Smith on a stretcher and ran over to help the other guys offload rast from the 6x6. Just as the Blackhawk medevac chopper approached and touched down, kicking up a thick brown cloud of dust. Six of us picked up Rast and ran him to the helo. I gripped the stretcher in one hand up by Ras chest and his right hand in my other. His face was turned away from me and I saw that he had a golf ball sized hole right behind his right ear that nearly went all the way through to the other side of his head. At this point, I didn't know we had already lost him, but in seeing the gaping cavity in the back of his head, I knew things had to be final. I think the saving grace of the event for both Smith and Rast is that they didn't suffer at all. They were gone quick. Under the thundering sound of the Hilo's rotation, I leaned in and yelled in Rast's ear. Hold on, Rast, hold on. The Lord's got you now. Hold on. We slid him onto the chopper and the onboard corpsman immediately started working on him. I ran back and grabbed hold of Smith with the others. When we approached the medevac chopper with Smith in the body bag and the other onboard corpsman hand saluted the body before receiving it into the helo. It was the. It was heavy and that hand salute sealed it all for me. A rush of emotion came on as my adrenaline dissipated and reality set in. We hoisted Smith's body into the chopper and stepped back to watch them dust off.
- [164:52]
C
Worst day of the deployment, and no sugarcoating it, it was blue on blue all the way, which is just the worst. You know, leading up to that patrol. We had gained all this momentum. You know, we're talking about a little while ago. We all knew, like, the day's coming for us. Nobody is in this valley that hasn't taken their hits like we're gonna get hit. And we just kind of conceded to that on the front end. And to be frank, like going into the Marine Corps leading up into the deployment, going through combat training, you know, pre deployment combat training, and then getting briefed, you know, dropping in country, like everybody knows, you know, it's like we signed up for this. You know, I just think in the mentality of the time is there's really is no life after this. Everything's just right now. So whatever comes, I'll deal with afterwards. Well, let's just hit it hard right now. And man, we had gained so much confidence in that valley. You know, we just ahead of this, we found out in local intel reports that the enemy identified us with a name. And it was so bolstering. You know, we all talked about it at the time how Chris Kyle was dubbed the death, the devil of Ramadi, you know, and that he had like the enemy knew that guy. The enemy knew other units ahead of second Recon being in, in Afghanistan. I think first Recon, Taliban forces down in Marja, I think dubbed them the black diamonds. And that reputation carried on with second Recon because of the configuration of their MVG mount on their new generation Kevlars. And so intel reports finally came out. The enemy called us the tanks. And we thought, man, this is incredible. Like, like we're something, we're doing something. Like we're making an impact in a way that is hurting the enemy's objectives and goals in this region. So much so that they have identified us, that they know us to be a hard hitting heavy opposing force to them and that they know to be very careful when they hit us. And so leading up into this, they had set that ambush up on us and it was just, it felt like, I don't want to say fate, but it was just so coincidental how everything happened. You know, we, they what started that whole combat engagement was a, thank God, a faulty IED strike on the six by six that had like 10 guys inside of it. We had planned to drop first squad to go into the green zone that day with our new sniper element that we finally got attached to. To us we've been running so skinny for so long that we finally got our battalion commander to assign us some support and he assigned the entire sniper battalion team to us, which was fantastic because the majority of our engagements were 100 to 300 meters. So we went, we were not far away from our intended drop point and a blasting cap went off underneath the 6x6 while we were in route there thankfully didn't ignite the ammonium nitrate. But we dropped everybody off and went in and we're under contact and you know, everything that happened on April 6th is, you know, incredibly controversial among everyone. I wrote about that event. The way that I experienced it, I was driving one of the vics, you know, I was fully involved in my place as a part of the mission planning, understood the objectives, understood where the drop points were, what the objectives were. On the foot patrol where the pickup point was, we were going to stay on the 6 11, essentially the whole patrol and just stay as mounted support and try to cut off enemy reinforcements from coming in from the east and north south, which is very typical for what we did on most of our foot patrols. And you know, things went wrong. I think there was a full investigation that transpired afterwards. That's where it gets controversial. A lot of people have some really strong opinions about how, how everything happened. And I, you know, there are guys with opinions that have more information than I had. So I, my, my take on the incident is just the way that I experienced it, what I understood at the time and what I found out afterwards. But you know, in war people die. And I think even if there was a smoking gun, that somebody did something inherently wrong, which ultimately bought the investigation, led to a fog of war designation over the whole thing. And there were some processes and procedures with drone warfare that changed after this incident to try to mitigate, you know, future incidents similar going forward. But you know, I didn't think that that was a, that was a wrong designation. There was a mismatch of information. The drone pilot had locked onto Smith from the get go, didn't recognize that his muzzle flashes were shooting into the green zone instead of away from it. Him and Rast were just pushed out far enough for, from the rest of the patrol element that the drone pilot didn't factor in the other guys, or maybe he did, but didn't. Maybe he thought they were all enemy forces, I'm not sure. And they hellfire dropped. And whenever they drop a Hellfire, the SOP is to identify a target, not to split the difference. They want to make sure that they at least kill the combatant as opposed to like a group of four or five guys dropping one right in the middle and hoping to get all of them. So Smith was the target and it just obliterated his body. I mean he was dead on impact. And I, I said it, but that's the saving graces. I just don't think either of them felt anything. So we all bore the, the weight of the experience after the fact. We were under. We were engaged from sporadic pop shots. Before that though, we had a pretty heavy handed volley or two of enemy fire. The snipers were taking shooters out in the field beyond. But that hellfire dropped and everything paused. I think the enemy was just as confused as we were. It seemed like they weren't shooting back for a little bit. But then sure enough, we started getting re engaged. The IDF teams up in the east, we had our gunners on mams were squirting around on their motorcycles off in the far distance trying to gain position on us to shoot down. And you know, while we were in the field, we thought there was still a chance for Rest. But when that radio call came over, one casual. I mean, it was on all of our minds, like, who got hit? And then the nine line came over, and then we had a pretty good idea. But.
- [171:11]
A
You go into this investigation a little here. We were ordered down to FOB Jackson to debrief with command as well as spend time with investigators to dissect the events of April 6th and determine what exactly went wrong. When we pulled through the FOB entry point, all the Alpha Company Marines who were not on post were lined up along the road in solidarity. We pulled in, parked, and offloaded our gear. Major Wood huddled us up to give his thoughts. He told us about a brief memorial ceremony that took place at Camp Le, the last stop before Smith and RAS bodies were sent home. Major Wood told us he had already talked to the drone pilot who fired the shot and that the pilot asserted he would have put a bullet in his own head instantly if it would bring back our Marines.
- [171:57]
C
If it's okay, I know where you're going with this, and I'd like to say it.
- [172:01]
A
I.
- [172:02]
C
In this moment, we had, you know, we pulled back into Alpha Company. It's our company. But when we got to Sangan, we weren't attached to them. We're all doing our own thing, and we were checking in with them here and there. You know, we made stops at Nolly. All the. We made stops at all the fobs. And so we had. We had a pretty good idea. Like, they had a pretty good idea of what was going on with us. And we. You know, we were checked in with what they were doing. They were doing patrols around the FOBs as a part of their FOB security and getting into some stuff, but we were still kind of out on our own. And now this, you know, incredibly tragic incident, but also just incredibly embarrassing, you know, and again, I. Like, I. Even back then, I just. In my mind, it was like, whatever was ultimately a cause, we will find out. If there's consequences, there'll be consequences. But we're in war. Like, we're. This was coming, you know. But we get back to the FOB to FOB Jackson, Major Wood pulls us aside, and just. I just imagine being a CEO in that moment and trying to figure out the right things to say. This was the very first Drone Blue on Blue ever, from what I understand, which made it even bigger of a controversy. So everybody's really concerned. How's this all gonna go? We're headed into an investigation. What are people gonna say in that investigation? What do people think Right now, there was already some really strong opinions about who is at fault and why. You know, like, what's gonna happen with this? And Major Wood, again, he could have said anything, but him and Gunny Coleman received us in. I mean, these are our leaders up until we got to Afghanistan. These were the guys that are leading the charge. We're following them into battle. Just had tremendous respect for Coleman, had tremendous respect for Wood and Major Wood, of all the things he could have done, he huddled us up and he said, listen, guys, nobody wanted this to happen. You know, we are going to go into investigations. He said, I would just need you all to know you're doing one hell of a job out there. But I want you all to listen to something. I want you to listen to every single word, and I want you to take it in. And he read off a quote that I had never heard before that I'm sure a lot of listeners probably have. I'll read it off. He huddled us up and he said, listen to every word. It's not the critic who counts. It's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again because there is no effort without shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself on a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be among those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. He said, y' all are doing a damn fine job. And you're going into these investigations. Don't you let a single opinion sway your opinion about yourselves. Y' all are in the arena. The eyes of the battalion are on you. They're proud of you. I'm proud of you. And you need to bottle this up, because once we get done with this investigation, you're going right back out. You're doing a damn good job, and you have a lot more work to do. And, man, I just. What a moment. I mean, similar to my dad's words whenever we. I just had my emotional mix up, and he validated me. Major Wood validated us maybe for the first time in a real way, you know, and when it could have been, when it just looks so bad on us that this had happened, he he accounted for all the good that we were doing. And he told us be you were the men in the arena, you know, win or lose, like, don't let somebody else's opinion sway the way that you feel about what you guys are doing. You're doing a damn good job, man. What, what a moment. He just handled it so good.
- [176:09]
A
Yeah, the bite of blue on blue with Iraqi soldier getting killed and one of my guys going to a few more other Iraqi soldiers getting wounded, it was freaking terrible. And the army understood it. The army understood, they, they've been in that battle space for five months. The army unit that we had the blue on blue with, they like understood it. The battalion commander's like, hey, here's what we do. Here's this happened. We got more missions to do. But the, the naval special war for the SEAL community, like not in the, not in Ramadi with us. Definitely, because it's the mortal sin, right? The mortal sin of combat is, is, you know, blue on blue. It's the worst thing that can have happen. But there was a, one of the senior ranking SEAL officers who had actually been a Marine in Vietnam, and he was at the tail end of the battle of Way City, and he got me a message and said, hey Jocko. And I knew him, you know, I didn't know him well, but I knew him. And he said, hey Jonko, I was in way to tail into Way City. And he said, I didn't fight in it, but I was there when we were mopping it up and I forget what the percentages were, but he said something along the lines of like 30 of those casualties in Way City were, were blue on blue. Man, you got, you guys are doing a good job out there. Figure out what you did wrong, fix it and carry on. And like, again, very similar to what your skipper said, you know, Major Wood and then, and then Gunny Coleman as well, you know, Gunny Coleman in the book here, he said, gents, it's sad, but it's what, it's what it is. You just have to pick up and carry on. We are Marines. This is the life we choose. He was right. This is the life we choose. The life I chose. And I did so knowing the risks. You know, you go on to talk about the fact that it was the, the first predator drone, you know, blue on blue, which was terrible. You know, interestingly, I was looking, just doing a little bit of research and I found, yeah, I found an article from the Military Times and, and Smith's dad, Jerry, this is a quote, said Jerry said he didn't want to place blame for what happened. Quote, whoever that young man or woman was, they didn't send that drone over there to kill my son or Doc Rast. Jerry Smith told the Fort Worth Star Telegram, if it was a royal screw up, it was a royal screw up. Make corrections because I don't want another family to have to go through this. He said, trying to put a bigger burden on that person who fired the missile is not something I would do. I guarantee you, if he was standing in front of me, he'd be asking for forgiveness and I would give it to him.
- [178:47]
C
Jerry's salt of the earth. I have a great relationship with Jerry to this day. Talked to him a few weeks ago as a matter of fact, and saw him in person at one of our guys funerals who just died of cancer. Not Coleman, but another guy that I could tell you about. But what, what a, what a word from a father that gave that up. And you know, that was really his mentality. One of the things that would, well, you read it, that would talk to the drone pilot. He said, I put a bullet in my own head today if I could take it back. And you know, the, the drone pilot, he's got a limited view of the battlefield. There are other checks and balances as a part of the process to positively identify friendly and opposing forces. There's procedural approvals that have to take place before bombs drop. I mean that there's, the process is beyond my scope of understanding. But, but, but broadly there are checks and balances. There's just one or two mishaps in the, in the, the process that ultimately led to, you know, to an error. But I, you know, combat's, combat's chaotic. Yeah, I just, I, I, reconciling the situation, you just can't control every ultimate possible outcome. We plan these missions, we have our objectives, we got our sequence of events. We know what assets are in the area, we know the timing of things. And then we set up contingency after contingency after contingency contingency in the event that things don't go to plan and seldom do they, so we pivot to contingencies. But even when all that's set up, I mean, I, you know. LT takes around in the face, radio takes, takes around, a big storm blows in. It's like, what are we going to do now? It's like, well, improvise, adapt and overcome. We figure it out, we go. But any, my point is whenever you set up all that, you do everything planning wise it's like it, it will still go wrong and people will still die.
- [180:31]
A
Yeah. And so there's, you can't mitigate every risk. But on top of that, I, you, you can't really even express the amount of times that air power dropped bombs and saved lives.
- [180:43]
C
And yeah, huge.
- [180:45]
A
You know, the amount of times that a Hellfire was dropped and people were saved. Like that happens over and over again. And each one of those times there was some risk that was like, well, we. Can you be 100% sure that this bomb is going to drop at the right moment, at the right time on the right enemy? You cannot, you can't give the 100 to that. Maybe, maybe if you're lucky you could give a 94. Okay, so because there's a 6% chance we're just gonna not do this anymore. No, there would be way more higher cost of lives. So this is a horrible risk. That's. Occasionally it happens. But I, I can guarantee you everybody that's out on the battlefield would say, oh, we would rather take you that you drop the bombs 96% of the times. And we understand that 4% of the time it's not going to land where we want it. And some small percentage of that is going to be friendly forces and that's absolutely terrible. Do everything we can to mitigate it. But it is such a devastating blow to the enemy and an advantage that we have over the enemy that we can't abandon it just because there is a small chance that, that bad things happen and they are going to happen occasionally.
- [181:49]
C
It's the way it is, 100%. And those predator drones gave us an incredible advantage. I mean the viewpoint of the battlefield when the enemy was moving from building to building and on and on and on. I mean, I sucks that we had to be the unit to take that first hit, but, but you're right on the positive. Game changer. Absolute game changer.
- [182:07]
A
Yeah. We were back in full scale operations for the weeks following April 6 and pushing a fast pace again. I mean it's like right back into it just as your gun. He told you like. Yep, that's right. Going to get it back on.
- [182:22]
C
Yeah.
- [182:24]
A
Fast forward a little bit more. In late spring as 15 began to find their operational flow in Southern Sangin, the hellacious battleground that many had fought so fiercely to secure the valley. Reignited air to ground ordinance drops, IED explosions and firefights all returned en masse. We hope this would mean the continuation of our involvement in Sangin long term. But Regional Command had Other plans. By the end of April, we received the news we all feared. I did not want to believe it would happen, but word came down that our time in Sangin was coming to an end.
- [182:56]
C
Worst news I do it was, man, it was the worst news. 35 left left Sangin in April. 15 was already there, I think, or at least their advent group was already there whenever 46 happened. And they were a fresh fully functional, fully manned battalion, infantry battalion. And they in second recon was also on their way out. They left in May, just around that, just barely after we did. So there was major regional shifts happening. There was some talk in Sengin of doing a Fallujah style clearance, just building to building field to field. And we were so pumped about that because we just thought, let's just put an end to all this. Let's fight it out for the next month. Let's eradicate everything. Let's just do it, you know, let's quit playing around. And you know, I that could have been strategically good in some ways and terrible in others that didn't end up panning out that way. But. But with 15 coming in, they were planning on making PB Alcatraz and established. I don't know if they would have called it a FOB or just more established pb but like up until the point that we left Sangin, it was still just a 4, 24 wall dirt compounds. And then OPD Young, which was this monstrous dirt mound on the side of the 611 that oversaw the entire river valley in that particular area. I mean it was a very fortifiable, strategically important position for sure. But combat engineers were on their way up to put in hesco barriers and actually make a legitimate establishment out of it. And so with 35 leaving 15 taking over, they just, they had pushed Alpha Company maybe just a couple weeks before we left out to Delaram. The Georgian military nation of Georgia had taken, had had Delaram and were doing the drug interdiction mission. But they really wanted US forces to be to head that up. So all of Alpha Company got sent out. We were fingers crossed that we were just going to get to stay in Sangin and keep banging it out. And it just didn't work out that way. So it was pretty bitter. But, but you know, we understood.
- [185:00]
A
In the early dark morning of May 2, we geared up and loaded our trucks for the last time at PB Alcatraz. End up going to Camp Leathernik. You get some R and R and clamp camp.
- [185:10]
C
So great.
- [185:11]
A
Yeah, this is when Osama, Osama bin Laden gets killed.
- [185:14]
C
Yes.
- [185:15]
A
And you're, you're at tv, you're watching the TV in the galley or something when that happens.
- [185:19]
C
Yeah, yeah. It was so surreal and you know, when we showed up to leather neck, like leathernecks, a legit establishment. Everybody's buttoned up, you know, they're wearing their black socks or non white socks, I should say. Like everybody's got a, in regulation haircut. The uniforms are clean. Like they're actually washing clothes here, you know, and they're taking showers and stuff. We never wash clothes. I mean once every few weeks we, we take a longer stop at Nolay and try to. But I go five or six days on the same pair of underwear and then switch over to others and I'd wring my socks out on, on the truck, you know, with water and that's how I'd wash them. And baby wipe showers left and right. Like it was just foreign to us. So we got back into some normalcy, which is nice. But yeah, some have been lauding, you know, we found out he was killed while we were there. It felt surreal. I, I had a hard time believing it for some reason. Just, it's like I, you know, and I, I so appreciated it because it was the just end to this, you know, decades long manhunt. But at the same time the other side of my head I thought, but that didn't change anything about tomorrow. I'm still out here. Those my enemy's still right there. And now they're gonna hit back even harder. So I guess it's game on again.
- [186:27]
A
Yeah. There's a cool little story. I wasn't gonna read this, but I just remembered it.
- [186:30]
C
Yeah.
- [186:31]
A
When you're basically going into the chow hall.
- [186:33]
C
Oh man.
- [186:34]
A
And there's like a first sergeant there and he's ripping into a couple junior marines in the chow line for not moving fast enough. And then he's like starts coming towards you. And I thought, here we go, let's see, let's see what he makes of me. To my surprise, the moment his eyes caught mine, he looked me up and down and his demeter immediately softened. He approached me, grabbed me by the shoulder and with a soft voice said, come up here, warrior. You get to the front of the line and you take as long as you want, Corporal. I was taken aback by the by and began to get choked up. I fully expected to be publicly shamed and ripped into my. For my filthy appearance, which would have been very much in keeping with the normal way of things in the Corps. But instead, I was shown distinction and a warrior's respect.
- [187:16]
C
I've never felt more honored in my life than in that moment. For some reason, it hit me so hard. You know, up to that point, you know, we. Up to that point, like, we were.
- [187:27]
A
We were.
- [187:27]
C
We were a part of it. We were part of the war effort in a real way. And we got to leatherneck. And then you could just see the difference of us versus everyone else. And we were way out of regs. I mean, haircuts were whatever, but we were just gross. I mean, I had dirt ingrained in my hands under the skin that wouldn't wash out. All of us were that way. We're just ragtag, you know, we were eating nothing but MREs most of the time, really. You know, carcinogen filled sun baked water bottles. I got to the point with MREs that I couldn't eat them anymore. I just couldn't. And so I was on crackers and peanut butter, and I remember yearning for fresh fruit. My body was just so done with all the preservatives, and it was just so ragtag. And so then we pull up to leatherneck, and against the backdrop of everybody else, I mean, we just did not look great. And LT told us right when we got there, like, hey, let's go eat. Let's rest a little bit. But let's not. We're gonna draw a lot of bad attention if we stay like this. Like, we need to get showers quick. So I'm gonna line that up for y'.
- [188:35]
A
All.
- [188:35]
C
We'll go ahead and go to the chow hall. And I got there, and, man, Marine Corps culture is super about regulations, especially the higher enlisted ranks. And I just thought, this guy's gonna humiliate me. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna. For the first time in my life, I'm gonna rip him into a First Sergeant Just don't care at all anymore.
- [188:52]
A
Standing by.
- [188:53]
C
Yeah, man. And all these other Marines are. I'm getting bad looks, and I'm just starting to get incredibly angry. And I'm just thinking, if you only. If you only knew, you know, man. And he. And just. Just another moment of incredible leadership, of just seeing. Of just acknowledging a moment and having the right response to it, you know, just what a heart that guy had. He just saw me and recognized it, and he honored me. Such a great moment.
- [189:29]
A
Yeah.
- [189:29]
C
Really was.
- [189:32]
A
Yeah, it's awesome.
- [189:37]
C
You know, one thing just while we're getting all emotional, one thing that we didn't talk about that was very Very pivotal moment in the deployment. Also that I should go back to after Smith and Rast were killed. Smith was just in a weird coincidence, my mom was his college advisor and he. And he grew up in Arlington. He grew up where I grew up. His dad raised him in the same hometown. He was just a few years older than me, went to a competing high school that I went to in Arlington called Martin High School. I mean we're hardcore rivals in football. And Smith, again, I didn't know him at the time, but he was just a few years older. I just, I knew this is going to be all over the news and whenever people are killed, overseas communications, they go black. And it's also probably important to note back then, communications home were only in MWR centers. Marine Welfare Resource center, maybe it's what it stands for. But at certain establishments, bigger fobs, there were computer centers, computers and phones. That's all we had. We did have one sat phone, I think, but we never used it to call home. It was kind of an emergency thing. And I had the mentality while I was over there, I just didn't want to call home. Every time I did I that put my mindset back at home and all the I now I'm really concerned about what's going on back home, what my family's doing, what my friends are doing. I'm starting to think like, man, I really want to be back there. It just kind of rattled me up and got me out of the mentality that I needed to be in saying in. So I just never called and I told my parents ahead of time. I kind of set the expectation without directly lying to them. Like I have no idea how often I'm going to be able to call. Don't expect it often. Also, if anything bad happens at home, don't tell me because I can't do anything about it. It's just going to mess me up. I probably could have called them quite a bit more than I did, but it just was bad for me. So in, in addition to that, they. There were moments that they were expecting information from me, like what mission I had been given, where we were going. I had to tell them those types of things. But I was very shrouded with my answers. I didn't want to give them any reason to worry. I thought we're going to have so much time after this to talk about it all. I can give you all the details, but while I'm in it, I would want to be sitting at home worrying about my kid. So I'm just going to be super positive, very light hearted, kind of, you know, give the high points. Not really talk about things, just super rah rah, you know. Yep, we're beating them back and everything's great. But man four six happened and it's like there's no hiding it anymore. And so up to that point after they were killed, you know, especially that first night, a lot of guys were getting pretty emotional and there's a lot of tears. I just wasn't emotional. I mean I was so angry and bitter emotional in that way, but I just couldn't work up tears. I was even a little bit frustrated. It's like, why is this not like hitting me like it should be? And I love those guys, man. I looked up to Smith. He was a mountain of a man and Rast was every bit of Marine as we were and he just had an infectious personality. He's so fun to be around. Like, I love those guys. I just couldn't cry about it for some reason. But the band lifted while we were at Jackson during that investigation period. And I thought, my parents are going to see this on the news and God forbid I don't talk to them first. What are they going to think happened to me? I mean I, they, this is as close as it gets. It's not even my unit. It's a guy they know, they know everything about this guy and my relationship with him and the fact that we're in the same platoon. He's my platoon sergeant and on and on and on. So I had called my dad, I was not going to call my mom and I, thankfully the phone center was empty, but dialed his number and my emotions started surging. He picked up the phone and said hello and it all came out and I just started bawling and bawling uncontrollably the first time. And it, I don't know why it happened in that moment, but it was, it felt like, man, this is my father. Like I'm not a hardcore war fighting marine with him. I'm this guy's little boy and I'm hurt And the man, I need him. I don't even need him to say anything profound. I just need him and I need my mom. And then I think the other half of it was like, God, what have I done to them? I can't hide it anymore. Like it's really that bad. And now I have to give them a reason to worry and oh my gosh, how hard is that going to be for them and for my extended family and man, he handled it like a champ. He had the right words to say, which were not a lot. Neither of us really knew what to say, but he said, I will find a way to tell the family, you know, keep fighting hard and doing what you're doing. You know, I love you. We prayed together and that was, that was it. But what a defining moment. You know, I, I just felt so terrible for them, but I, it just highlighted this critical importance of the father son relationship. You know, just. He didn't, I didn't need him to say, I just needed him. I just needed his presence in that moment. So powerful, so powerful. Just had to mention that, yeah, that's.
- [194:53]
A
Had to be incredibly hard for them, especially because they've been in the dark for four or five months or however long it's been, and now all of a sudden they realize that, you know, all those situations that you've been in for extended period of time and having to hit that close to home.
- [195:07]
C
Yeah, yeah, it was tough. And I, I, you know, heard from them after and my dad took a trip up to the woods, you know, where we frequented, and struggled through his emotions up there. And then, you know, and then they got past it. But just goes back to the point, you know, the, the family impacts on military personnel. They get deployed to combat zones. It's. It takes a toll on them. It, they deserve a lot of credit. They really do. So, yeah.
- [195:36]
A
Delarom so well rested and tuned up. The morning of May 10, around 0400, we loaded up and pushed a fob. Delarom ready to hit it hard again and mission started immediately. Back in the saddle, you say here. In certain places, pressure plates were as much battle worse in volume as in Sangin. Just prior to our arrival, Georgian army patrol, which you mentioned earlier in Delirium, suffered 11 casualties from numerous pressure plates hits and a follow on ambush. It started when one of their guys stepped on an IED that blew his legs off. Another soldier came to aid him and stepped on an IED also. Then a third did the same. And while the rest of their unit experienced the pandemonium of trying to save all three critically wounded soldiers, the enemy ambushed them with small arms fire and mortars. Many of the casualties didn't survive.
- [196:22]
C
This is absolutely tantalizing. You know, in 3, 5 and Sangin had to deal with this. We thankfully, I mean, we made it in and out of there without anybody stepping on an ied. The closest that any of us know, I guess, is that first patrol when I almost stepped on one, but just I mean, the SOPs of somebody stepping on a pressure plate is you have to assume that there's more than one. There's. You cannot rush up and give aid. But if. But if the femoral arteries hit, you've got 60 seconds tops. And so it's like you're just gonna stand there and let him bleed out and die. I mean, it was a part of our SOP to pull our own tourniquet and start applying your own tourniquet on your own severed limb, because it was. That might be the game changer on whether you make it or not. And so those guys, you know, they didn't adhere to that sop. And. And I remember reading another book or two. I mean, I. You know, even. Even when you do adhere to it, I mean, I 3, 5 had an incident or two like that. I think I remember that one guy got hit. You know, his buddy's trying to save his. His brother running up to save his life, and he gets it too. You know, so that we. We were told about that story. We were told that Delarom had a lot bigger IEDs for trucks. And then again, the pressure plates are generally. Generally clustered. So I was just one of the good examples to kind of set the tone and pace for us early on, just to be prepared.
- [197:44]
A
It was crazy how the enemy, you know, you're talking about the enemy adapting. One of the things the enemy adapt was, you know, when they had Humvees, when we had Humvees, they built bombs to blow up Humvees. And when we had, you know, tanks, they built bombs to blow up tanks. Eventually, when we had MRAPs, they built bombs to blow up MRAPs. It's just like. Was it a little harder for them to put in an MRAP bomb? Yeah, because it was bigger.
- [198:02]
C
Yeah.
- [198:03]
A
And it took a little more time to dig in there, but, like, it wasn't totally different. It was probably a 20 increase in difficulty, but it's still taking out vehicles big time.
- [198:13]
C
It's also important to note, one of the things that we were told at the time is that a part of their tactic with the anti personnel pressure plates is they wanted just enough ammonium nitrate to blow your legs off, but not kill you. If they kill you, there's no urgency. But if they take your legs off now, they create a chaotic situation. And now we're. Now that unit is vulnerable to an ambush. And so they would try to make them just big enough to create a life or death situation. Take legs off where now guys have seconds to go save that Marine's life. And then they can hit you with small arms attacks. I mean, not like crafty hats off to them. I mean, very strategic in their thinking. So.
- [198:54]
A
And that's what you guys are dealing with again, like, you guys have already been through it, now you're back in it again. And. And I'm gonna fast forward through some stuff here, but just get the book. People. Like, there's so much in here. Here's a one point. Fast forward a little bit. The third squad, it's an ied, not on a recovery mission. And things just don't let up here. Second platoon was now down nine marines out of our total of 38. Smith and Rast were KIA. Wade was sent home on a family emergency. One of our guys was pulled from a mission for mental instability. And now Klein, Demas, Vega, and Apgar and Llewellyn were severely wounded and had already left Afghanistan, never to return. That was nearly 25% of 2nd Platoon thinned out over the month of June. We continue to fast pace as the regional qrf. Gun trucks chasing IED emplacements, providing tactical taxi service, running Marines to and from area outposts, and performing mounted security patrols in and around suspected enemy activity and hotspots. We were undermanned and exhausted, but still in the fight. Did you even get any combat replacements or are you guys just down?
- [200:09]
C
No, we. We got a few fill ins. When. When Smith and Rass went down, we got. Doc Sisley came to join us up there. And then. I can't remember if it was. I think it was Staff Sergeant Ferrari, he was a former active sniper that came in to help out. We got a few fill ins and then. But, I mean, when that last IED attack happened, everything changed. We didn't. We didn't get fill ins, but we didn't really need them. We essentially just kind of slowed down operations. And to be Frank, Delarom was. It was just a different overall opinion. Tempo. Tempo is probably not the right word because it was still very fast paced, but we didn't engage, like, weren't engaged in combat foot patrols as much. It was a very arid area. It had some dense, densely populated areas, compounds and, you know, wadis and fields and things of that nature, but was much more like a desert scape and fighting the drug trade out there. It was the main highways over into Iran, predominantly Now. The enemy forces out there were still very aggressive and very brutal to the ANA and ahp, which is Afghan Army, Afghan Highway Patrol, and Afghan Police. They would overrun their highway. Highway patrol establishments Capture, torture and mutilate bodies. I mean, they were doing some nasty stuff. There were some really big IEDs. There was an incident that a civilian bus got hit with like, 30 civilians on board, most of which. Which were killed. Babies on that bus, a lot of women, too. Very chaotic incidents. So it was. It was just as real as elsewhere. It just wasn't as. In your face, confrontive, you know that. But whenever third squad got hit, the other platoons were. They were itching for action also. They really wanted to get out there, and they deserved to. You know, we didn't want to get pulled off as the main. Main. Main force. But after. After that last one, it was like. Major Wood finally was like, all right, you guys, y' all pull back a little bit. We're gonna let these other guys get some action. And so. But that third squad IED strike, I won't go into all the details, and he would hate me for saying it, but Corporal Walker deserves. Deserves recognition for what he did. You know, the. Again, I won't go into all the details, but the truck is on fire. Rounds are cooking off inside of it. Mass casualty situation. And our turret gunner was on fire inside of the truck. His body was completely battered. I think he had. He had a broken collarbone. Both MCLs were torn. He had ribs puncturing his lungs. I mean, we all thought he was dead. It was shocking that he was alive. But Corporal Walker and Sergeant Head. But from what I understand, Corporal Walker was kind of the main head headed up the. Just. The casualty recovery took command and control of the scenario while, you know, being prepared for oncoming ambush. Managed to get Vega out without him burning to death or shooting him to avoid burning to death. All five guys made it out of that MRAP alive, some barely and largely because of Corporal Walker's heroism and what he did. Never recognized for it, from what I understand. And he should be.
- [203:19]
A
Yeah. Again, the. The stories that you put together in here and the way you tell them, I mean, it's just outstanding. And that's just one of the many that I was forced to. So I wouldn't just come on here and just read the audiobook to everybody, but please get the book. And there's an audiobook version of this as well.
- [203:38]
C
Yeah, sure.
- [203:39]
A
Listen to this. Just get. Get one. Get. Get the. Get. Just listen to these stories. You got to hear the stories of these. These heroes and what they did. And like you said, recognized and unrecognized. This might be the only recognized recognition that he ever gets right here, you know, in your Book, So. But obviously he didn't do it for recognition. He did it for his brothers. But it's good to pass that information on and let people recognize why the Marine Corps is the Marine Corps.
- [204:08]
C
No doubt. No doubt.
- [204:10]
A
Fast forward a little bit. Over the remainder of the deployment, Alpha Company sustained no more casualties despite numerous close calls, including very, very close mortar attacks on us at FOB Delarram. Fast forward a little bit more. We land as you're heading home. We landed in California in late September, having had the most incredible view flying over icebergs and crystal blue water in the Arctic Circle. On our flight back, it was early evening when we stepped off the plane back in the States for the first time. I remember the distinct smell of the Pacific Ocean and feeling the cool fall breeze under a beautiful sunset. Four fire trucks were on the tarmac spraying their hoses in the air to celebrate our return. 30 plus freedom riders were lined up on their Harley Davidsons to escort us back to Camp Pendleton, all with American flags affixed to the back of their bikes. We felt like heroes. Walking off that plane was one of the best feelings I ever experienced. And you're talking here about you were gonna kiss the ground because you wanted to, but you thought it was too cliche.
- [205:06]
C
Oh, I mean, you know, like some guys did. That's the move movie thing to do. I was like, somebody's gonna do it. Somebody's gonna. Oh, yep, he did it. What a jackass.
- [205:17]
A
You go through the various classes and briefs people are trying to get you, you know, keep your guard down. You, you put in your journal. You got a great journal entry here. I'm gonna read it. We. We are just a couple days away from returning home, and that's returning home to Texas. So you're in Camp Pendleton. Yep. While exciting, our time back in Cali has been heavy. I went on a long run earlier today to clear my mind and ended up on some of the training grounds that we had trained on so rig rigorously almost a year ago. As we prepared for combat after a couple miles, I became overwhelmed with emotion and broke down in what seems like such a brief blip of time. I am right back where it all started. But rather than just beginning, it is all ending. I remember all the anticipation, anxiousness, and excitement as we looked forward to all that may occur in my fight in Afghanistan. It was all that mattered to me at the time. I was on my way to war and I was completely committed to it and nothing else. It is as if I had come back in time and I can see myself preparing for all that I was about to experience, but now knowing fully all that would transpire. Now I am scarred by the brutality of all I just took part in and pained by my own hardened heart that at times was filled with the most bitterly intense hatred and desire for bloodshed. I am ashamed of that. My mind expended itself over and over on creative strategies behind acts of war that I have now committed on other human beings. And I don't feel like myself anymore. I crossed more moral lines that I cannot uncross. I am back in this place that should feel normal, but I do not feel normal. I feel achieved, but also expended. Will I ever make it back to this place? Will I ever step foot again in these west coast hills where I gave away so much of myself? Maybe. But never again with all the men that were here with me, my own band of brothers. It will never be the same. And I can see that in the last year of my life, this was all that mattered to me. And it is about to be gone forever. I gave away so much. And what feels like, and what I feel like now I am reaping from my sacrifice is just more loss. I fought in my generation's war. I killed men who opposed me and survived their relentless attempts to kill me. I did the best. I did my best to hold myself to the highest standard and keep my honor clean. I should only feel victorious, but what I mostly feel is sadness. Painful. It was all so painful.
- [208:06]
C
And I was so confused why. I just thought, man, we're like, we did it. We did what we set out to do. We accomplished our missions. I mean, we stood up against the enemy force. We didn't talk about it earlier, but engaging in combat is the premier milestone for Marines, especially young Marines. It's what everything leads up to. I mean, from your first day at boot camp, relatively speaking, on your life, what your performance basis is, on your sense of identity, how you stack up in against your peers, how your. Your unit of Marines stacks up against other units of Marines, how fast you promote, you know, what people say is honorable and good and real, is how effective you are at careful planning, premature strategic thinking that ultimately leads to the death of your enemies, killing the enemy and engaging in combat to doing so. And as a part of being in the Marine Corps, you're part of legacy. You're a part of. The Marines have fought through the hellacious battles of World War II. Like you talked about the island hop and Guadalcanal and Tarawa and Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the guys that just sacrificed so much. Battle for Hue City and Khe Sanh and battle for Fallujah. The Marines went door to door. You know, army and SEALs were involved in a lot of that stuff, too, but it's like, we're part of legacy. We're a part of heritage. And to honor those that came before us, we do our part now. But to achieve that milestone, engaging combat, your Combat Action ribbon, it's like there's. There's no higher achievement, and we achieved it, and we did it the right way. And we, you know, we had our hits, we had our missteps, like everybody does, but we came back and, you know, we did feel victorious. Oh, my. We felt achieved. I've never felt better in my life, in certain moments than when I got back when we stepped foot on that tarmac and I could see California and the sunset and, you know, the modern American world. Just no better moment in my life, you know, and there were a lot of moments like that, but there was this other side that was just this intensely bitter, emotional side that was like, but now it's over. And this is 2000, late 2011. And just because the unit that we were in and because of how things had happened, it was like, there may be another deployment coming up, may not. A lot of the guys that are there jumped on board with the unit because of the deployment. They were already kind of getting out of the Marine Corps and going to be done, but they thought, I'm going to go to Afghanistan. All of us during that time period, we wanted to do Iraq and Afghanistan because that's what all of our peers are doing. That's what our seniors were doing. That was the honorable thing. These are the wars. And so it's like, man, we're going to get back to Houston, and everybody's just going to, you know, fly off. And I got back to California and I went for a run outside of Camp Margarita in those training grounds, but nobody was with me. And I just started thinking, you know, Smith and Rast obviously are not here. You know, never see them again. And then a lot of these other guys, they're going to spread to the winds, you know, that we'll never. We'll never do this again. It just hit me. It was just so sad, man. It was so sad. You know, the brotherhood and camaraderie. And that's one of the other big themes that it's kind of hard to grasp, I think. I think I can articulate it in a good way, though. You know, the. The military relationship in your unit. You are closer to those guys than, I think any other relationship, including marriage. By nature of the way that life happens together. I don't mean that you know the feel of marriage or anything like that, but you do 247 everything together all the time. There's never a moment that you're alone and you can't get away from anybody.
- [211:40]
A
And it's arduous things that you're doing together.
- [211:42]
C
That's right.
- [211:43]
A
It's not like you're just watching movies. Like, you know, you're working hard and being stressed and being pressured.
- [211:48]
C
You're getting pressured into the. The difficulty of circumstances that you undergo together. It rips off all of the layers and the true person gets brought out, like your core of who you are. And you, you undergo extreme suffering together and great achievements. And you, you know, you work out together, off hours, you go to the chow hall together. You, you know, you do weekend weekends out to get like, what you do everything together for a really long period of time. I've never had a moment in my life that I've been able to do that with my wife. Shout out to my incredible wife, by the way, could never have written this book without her. Commitment, amazing woman. I would not be where I am today without her. But the. Yeah. Even the amount of time that we spend together when we've never had a season that we've done 247 of every single task, all throughout every single, single day together, you get close to the point that you don't like, you can't hide anything from anybody. And even if you don't want to be close to some of the guys that you're close with, you're still very close to them. And so then whenever you separate, you start. Feel like it's like I'm losing a huge part of myself. Like, what do you mean you're not going to be there? You just got so accustomed to them doing literally everything together. When I first got back into a home, into Texas, the first few nights were strange and tough. I would wake up frantic because I couldn't find my weapon number one. And because I look around and I couldn't see any of the Marines around me. And I just feel all alone. And I remember feeling that way when I left with my parents, too. I should feel like, man, I'm with my parents. Like, this is amazing. I felt so terrible when I left them the first time I felt alone, you know, and now I feel lonely being with them because the Marines aren't with me. Was Just a weird mental, you know, to be in and just takes a long time to adjust away from that. But yeah, that time period is very tumultuous. I mean, it is for everybody. I just wanted to make a point, to really articulate it in a way that mattered. Felt incredible. Amazing praise everywhere you go back in the modern world. You know, modern amenities, modern comforts, just everything's great, but at the same time, like a little bit purposeless. You know, you're not quite as aggressive. People are lazy and they're not moving as fast as you're used to people moving. And you. My own decisions in my own day to day, I don't have a mission that I'm going after. It's just. It's a very difficult transitionary period for anybody.
- [214:09]
A
We'll get into some of that. I want to. I want to kind of close out the book here.
- [214:12]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [214:13]
A
With this section here, it says participating in war was both rewarding and costly. I'm not the same person I was before going to war. War. In some ways I am stronger than before, more resolute in my actions, more determined in my decisions, and more compassionate my understanding of humanity and the plights that people find themselves in. In other ways. My inner man has been scarred. My tendencies are now more rigid, my bent is more critical and my outlook on life more despondent at times than I care to admit. I achieved my greatest childhood aspiration of becoming a United States Marine, which was in my youth, youthful eyes, the single highest representation of excellence in performing my wartime duties as a Marine, though, I crossed moral boundaries which uprooted foundations of my identity and imprinted convoluted darkness in place. As a Christian, I struggled with fundamental contradictions. I was constantly trying to balance godliness with my duties as a Marine and off, and they often conflicted. I could justify fighting and killing in defense of greater good, especially given OEF was in response to real attacks that destroyed innocent lives and credible threats of more. But the heart posture behind the fighting was a struggle. I joined the Marine Corps out of sincere love and appreciation for my country. I had a good heart and was resolved to be a peacemaker the way God wanted me to be. The rigors of war are overpowering. Though effectively acting out the commission of violence can require a tremendous amount of mental and emotional positioning to not crumble from guilt in killing or hesitate and be killed. You must, you almost must hate your enemy or at least devalue their humanity, which is not much better. I think this is because God didn't design any of us to carry the burdens of war. And as war was never a part of his original intent for humanity, war resulted from mankind's fall from grace and has roots as deep as Cain's infamous murder of Abel in the book of Genesis. War is one of the greatest tragedies of humanity. And after having committed myself to it for years and partaken in its actions, I really disdain it to the extent that it results in severity, severe human suffering, and the excessive destruction of lives. I will, however, never succumb to the hopeful temptation of believing that this world will ever be without it. War is inevitable because evil in the human heart is ultimately incurable in this life. The history of humanity is filled with man's seizure of self benefit through the control of others. When left unchecked, tyrannical oppression and abuse of the worst kinds will always manifest. It takes a strong resistance and proactivity from moral people to combat this kind of evil. And that will always be. So. Again, like the book is just outstanding. It really is. And I, I, that's not the closing of the book, that's the part that I read. But incredible job. So what do you do when you get back? Like what you talk about, you know, you were a little bit reclusive when you got back. You, you went back to college, right?
- [217:37]
C
Yes.
- [217:38]
A
And you go into what? Philosophy. Philosophy and the theology.
- [217:41]
C
Yeah, yeah, I sure did. Just real quick, before we get to that, I just want to say couple things. Just in closing out the book, a part of the kind of continuation of just being intentional to do things that matter. A portion of all book sales go to Hunter seven Foundation, which we haven't quite talked about. But Hunter seven exists to kind of combat back critical illnesses, cancers and other diseases associated with military service. I said I buried two of my friends in this last year that died of cancer. One was Gunny Coleman, the other one was Doc Fleming, who's in the book. On the, on the front cover of the book, he's standing right beside me. Rock star corpsman, had an exceptional military career in the Navy and he died of Ms. And pancreatic cancer and it just ripped his body apart. He told me before he died that there are nine guys that we served with that either have had or currently are fighting cancer. I know of a couple other ones. He said the some of them wanted to remain silent. It's been one of the silent killers of our war. You know, sleeping right next to burn pits is obvious presumption. We burned burn pits. Just you burn everything that you can in it. You know, we, we're not trucking trash out, we're burning it. If it burns, we're going to have it burning in place. And so we breathed in that toxic black smoke on every base that we went to. In the case of P.B. alcatraz, we slept right beside it. I mean I could wad up a chunk of paper and make it into the burn pit from some of the guys cots. So it's going to kill a lot more guys. You know they're calling it the Agent Orange of our generation of war and that very well may be. Hunter7 is doing a great job to combat that. So if you buy the book, some of the proceeds go to Hunter 7 and I want to highlight that because I really love the work that they're doing. They for veterans out there. Call them up. They'll give you a free full blood panel cancer review like an expensive one. Check you for any number of indicators for potential upcoming diseases and help you make lifestyle changes to hopefully mitigate. In addition to that they give support to military veterans that are dying of cancer currently or fighting it otherwise trying to combat it. So just wanted to be sure to, to put that in there.
- [219:49]
A
Yeah. And that's, that's you can find them@hunter7.org and again I've met with those people just, just seen him at events and talked to them. They're just doing an Outstanding job. Hunter7.org and like you said the, the number of cases of cancer and other diseases that, that our generation of veterans are coming back with, you know it's like it, it's astounding.
- [220:17]
C
The stats are heavily weighted. Yeah. And I, I can't name name them off the top of my head but, but it's a lot. So anyway, but yeah going back to the topic transitioning back whenever I got back so, so I went back to the plan plc let's get to college, let's get it knocked out as fast as possible and then I want to go back in as an officer. I loved being a Marine. You know I told you guys whenever I first got here. I'm staying on MCRD right now. And yesterday I went and parked on the parade deck or right beside it on the non recruit side.
- [220:49]
A
You almost reenlisted.
- [220:51]
C
I don't think my body or my wife would agree with the decision like that but man I just watched the recruits. There was, there was four platoons just like I remember a bunch of gung ho marines that are going to graduate this Friday and they were Going through their rehearsal for, For. For that graduation, and gosh, I just. Man, I loved it. And being with 123 Alpha Company, loved that unit. You know, the thought of going into the fleet. Absolutely loved it. I always. I just wanted to go back in. So started school after all the experiences that I had overseas, you know, that we just talked in depth about going and doing it, I had a big pendulum swing in the other direction. I don't know if you call it another direction, but into theology and philosophy, into Bible study, philosophy of religion, you know, making sense of all this experience that I had just gone through, it was so healing to me. I mean, it was a. It was a great, great focus. And going back into the military, the degree at the time really didn't matter, so. So I went heavy into biblical studies, philosophy, religion, theology, went to Dallas Baptist University, ramroded my way through those courses, graduated with a 4.4.0 summa cum laude. By the time I graduated in 2014, I'd met my wife Stevie, at DBU, and we were, you know, after dating for a little while, asked her to marry me. She said yes, thank God. And, man, during that time period, I was rough. I mean, I. It was just a year or two back from all this experience and just had some rough edges that she was not accustomed to, her family wasn't accustomed to. In fact, the DBU community in general, there were not many veterans. There were some, but not many people maybe that had like. It wasn't a community of people that had had any similar experiences.
- [222:45]
A
What does rough look like? What are we. What are we talking about here?
- [222:48]
C
Just rigid tendencies, attitude and mentality. Very, very aggressive. Very aggressive. I was aggressive about everything. That's probably what people would say would be the roughest. I took everything seriously. The things that weren't to be taken seriously, I discounted entirely. I got back and I didn't care about anything that didn't matter. I lost all my care, like, my care for sports. Didn't enjoy sports anymore, didn't enjoy meaningless hobbies, didn't enjoy. I just lost enjoyment of stuff that wasn't a part of where I. What. What the mission was. You know, it was like, man, I just got. I just got a second lease on life after this last experience. There are some incredible things that matter a lot in this world that we need to be taken seriously. And I'm going to go do something about it. Get out of my way or join me and don't bother me with little things that don't matter. And it, You Know, I think. I think that intimidated people sometimes. And I've chilled out a lot. I mean, there's so much more to life than mission, mission, mission, you know, and I take a step back to the big picture and, you know, it's just a big jerk. We're just on a big spiritual journey, you know, at least the way the Bible puts it, from start to finish, you know, if we're eternal beings and life is just a part of the journey, it's an opportunity to learn and grow and make impact on people, you know, and choose goodness over evil and, you know, there'd be more that comes after. So. But anyway, that. That time period, yeah, went and finished that degree with the intent of going back in. But the sequester had hit. Obama was shrinking the military. Both wars were effectively over. Now looking back, Afghanistan wasn't, but it looked like it was at the time. All my buddies had gotten out. I had separated my shoulder while overseas, have a pretty severe slap tear in my left shoulder, and then just incurred other joint damage. You know, our combat loadout was 95, 105 pounds at any given time. With all the munitions.
- [224:43]
A
How much do you weigh when you. When you were over there?
- [224:45]
C
We didn't have a scale. Never got the chance.
- [224:47]
A
What do you think you weighed? Why don't you walk around at right now?
- [224:50]
C
160, give or take. So somewhere around 2, 230 to 250, depending on the mission. When we started doing missions, we were under loaded. We got into our first couple firefights, and some of the recon guys said, y' all are not taking enough. You need some 240s. You need a lot more munitions. Because when you get pinned down and you will like, you're going to really regret not having it. So we started really beefing things up, and it just killed our mobility. And we have four sappy plates in. I mean, we had the side plates and we were not getting out of wearing them. And that made a huge difference. So it just destroyed my body, but made a change, you know, me and my wife decided it was just time to move on very reluctantly. And so we did. So I started a grad degree to just try to figure out what was next. It's like, all right, I'm going to go do it business degree, figure out what I'm good at, figure out where in the economy I can make some headway and really gain value or create value. And started that degree. And then we found out we were pregnant. And so it was like, man, I got to get A job fast. So I tried to figure out what marketable skills I had. You know, I just graduated with a 4 0, which is no small thing on my bachelor's degree. But it was all conceptual, it wasn't a hard skill. And so the grad degree that I started, I was headed in the right direction, was all straight A's, Econ, economics, accounting, finance, marketing. But very unconventional, at least to get a good, reputable job at a good company with a good career path. And there's a lot of ways that it could have gone. I interviewed and applied, I think over a six month period. I applied for, I want to say like 60 something jobs. I had in between 20 and 30 interviews, either remote or in person before I got an offer that was like, this is a, this is great. It's a great company. It's a good offer from a comp standpoint, a lot of growth trajectory, long term, something that I'm interested in. And what I realized during that time period, the best way that I could market myself was that the military is very project management or oriented, structured. You know, you align, you get your commander's intent, you put a mission together, you assign roles within that mission. You have a sequence of events, you have assets that you have to bring into it, you have objectives that you want to hit and then you plan contingencies, you go execute and then you do another one. So team leadership, project management, ability to operate in uncertain environments. It was like I got that the qualitative skills are there and very firmly developed. I just don't have any hard skills. But I think very mechanically I managed to sell my way into the Beck Group, a big, very reputable, great company in Dallas, Texas. That's a design build, construction firm. They back then at least were, they're kind of the company that does 150 to $200 million skyscraper, decades old dollars that would be, you know, billion dollar skyscraper today. But that's how they're situated and they, so they did very big high profile stuff back then. I mean, at one point, you know, a third of the skyscrapers in Dallas were built by Beck. They're kind of the legacy company in downtown Dallas that partnered up with Trammell Crow way back in the day. Like the person Trammell Crow to develop and build out the city. And they have presence in a few different cities. But the hiring manager took a chance on me. She said, this guy's got a very high aptitude and ability to execute, execute. And he's got a lot of team leadership skills. We'll teach him construction. And I, it was a big chance. I mean no, none of my peers had had the unconventional route in like I had. They all went for construction sciences degrees. They were all engineers of sorts or architect designers. Nobody had that. And so made my way in and started pre construction cost estimating on big projects in different places and, and eventually landed a role as a kind of assistant project manager for a very big, high profile ground up build in uptown Dallas for a prominent developer. In fact, I mean it's all public knowledge, but it was for Crow holdings, for Harlan Crow in particular. He had redeveloped this old Parkland Hospital, original hospital, way back in the 50s. The second old Parkland Hospital is the one that they took Kennedy to after he was assassinated in Dallas. But the original one he gentrified and then built out another campus or two, another building or two. And then this final building that we were building, the north campus, was probably somewhere in the tune of 80 to 100 million dollars. Building the most expensive real estate for lease in Dallas at the time. George Bush was taking over tenancy in the building somewhere. And so we were dealing with secret service and different, you know, super secret squirrel design stuff. Man, it was awesome. It was just, it was a lot of fun. And I and I got baptized into the construction world, construction sciences and processes and that whole supply economy. You know, where the products come from and where they get carved and how they get brought in, how they the contract structures work, where the risk is hedged, how the insurance program gets set up, the you know, legal legalities of breach of contract. Because we got into several of those and it was great experience and then just kind of continued on there, but eventually made my way into real estate development with very big prominent asset manager that was setting up a shop in Dallas that are based in New York, it's called Brookfield. Was part of their industrial logistics platform for about three years. Helped kind of build out and establish that in the central U.S. and that was also just great experience. You know, I took this construction sciences that I had, but through my grad degree I really gravitated toward economics, financial market feasibility, just all the different types of like mental processes that come with big level investing. Loved that. And in development, you know, construction is a part of it, but prior to that is design. And then you have entitlements and then you have everything that comes with the land acquisition and after that you have leasing and then your long term asset management and eventual disposition and like that's a very long business cycle. And as a part of part of that focused on development. I get to have my hands in all of it. And it's been great. It's been great. So a couple of years ago, I accepted a VP position at another company called Clarion Partners and took on development here, Central US to in west and cover a number of markets. I've since started pulling back from some of the west coast stuff, but have some deals that were still closing out elsewhere and, you know, just got a lot going on, so.
- [231:34]
A
And when did you decide to write the book?
- [231:38]
C
In 2020. Covid had happened. The. Everything shut down. Coincidentally. I was doing hospital renovations at the time with Beck, and they said, we don't want anybody in this hospital that doesn't have to be here. So project management staff don't come in, superintendents, y' all stay here as far as like the renovation jobs. So I was working from home and I just had a ton of time on my hands and I decided I wanted to re engage with my journal. I kept a very intentional journal while I was overseas. I just. And thank God that I did. I just always knew, man, these are pivotal years. I'm going to want to remember these details. You know, talking with my grandparents or my granddads, you know, about their war experiences and thinking back to different movies. You know, you see guys journaling here and there. And just the idea was in my head like, this is really going to matter. And that journal kind of dueled as my prayer journal. It was my, you know, prayer and devotional journal during that time period also. And that also kept me disciplined to actually write things down. But I was ready to re engage with it. And I really wanted my parents and the rest of my family to be able to read it. But just the raw journal wasn't a good deliverable for that. So I just started working on it. I started filling in details. There were things that I had forgotten about. Started looking at some of the pictures from the deployment and started filling in some of those details. And I don't. I. It just kind of. I just kept going and I. I started really committing time to it. My wife and I joke. There was never really a moment that I'd sat her down and I said, hey, I'm going to write a book, so I need you to be committed to this for the next five years. She. I just kept saying, hey, can you watch the kids this Sunday? You know, or hey, I need to break away and do this.
- [233:26]
A
Is that what you would you do like a Sunday for three hours or something like that?
- [233:30]
C
Yeah. So at the start I. It was mornings and evenings. I'm working from home, so I've got a ton of time, no commute. And then once, once I really got into it and it seemed like the manuscript was coming together, it was like, man, this is a real story. I thought I should make a run at this. Like I should really try to finish this out. Then I started getting really committed to it and I had to put it down at times for four, five, six months. People have told me before, you know, I've heard some guys say like man, that must have been a very therapeutic thing to do as goes with typical conversation. But it really wasn't. It was dark. You know, I. At this point I'm headed in a different direction in life. Even just the military vernacular, you know, the conversational pieces, the acronyms, like all of it's just kind of becoming faded and then having to re. Engage also with who I was as a marine and try to make it real. Like I had to go. I had to really get back into the zone on all these experiences and just made for difficult days. But I just kept doing it. And you know, there were some times that I would get to the point that I have to put it down because I couldn't allow. I couldn't allocate enough time to it. It wasn't something that I could do an hour every day. I needed to like do three days in a row to stay in it. So there were. Sometimes I'd sit. I'd use PTO to send my family on vacation and I would stay at home and write. In between going from Beck to Brookfield, I took some time off and I wrote. And in between Brookfield Declarian I had a several weeks and I did nothing but write. And I take PTO days. I rent a hotel right down the street street and I go and stay in it for two or three days and I would write. I committed an incredible amount of time to it. And your Sundays, you know, my. My wife and kids would go to the in laws and have dinner over there and I'd stay home and just get after it. And I still spend a ton of time with my family. I mean I very. It's really nothing. I prioritize higher in life and certainly has been the case over the course of the writing of this book but squeezed out every bit of spare time that I could.
- [235:39]
A
And then you submitted it to. Did you have an agent or did you submit it to publishers directly?
- [235:44]
C
No. Yeah. So as goes with the. The way that I picked up These new industries and things. I just started somewhere and just tried to build my knowledge to find a way in to figure out how it works. Obviously never published a book before. Well, not obviously, I've never published book for this is the first one I reached out to. I just, I looked up like googled a few publishers in Dallas, reached out to three of them. I put together a letter of intent. In the publisher world it would have been a query letter, but that was my language, letter of intent. It was just a very basic, high level marketing of the manuscript. A couple pictures here and there, just a summation of the story of who I am as an author and all that stuff. And senator to him and one of them sent back, he said, seems like a cool story, not my genre, but hey, you should really go buy this book on pitching publishers and read it and then do everything it says. And so I did and I got that book. I can't remember the name of it. Very prominent how to do the publishing world book. And it was a lot. It said, man, you need to do a full book proposal. You need to read five to 10 comparable titles, do full book reviews on those, figure out how your book stacks up against it. You need to identify target audience, target timing, target price, marketing and advertising schemes. You know, why somebody want to pick this book off the shelf compared to the other one. And so then I did all that and I got seven or eight other books. I read five of them, did full book reviews, stacked up mine against those, did examples from there as examples from mine. Made the article argument as to why this should be on the shelf, why it has a place, and on and on and on. And then I had A list of 80 to 100 agents and publishers I was going to reach out to. But my first burst was publishers that publish those comparable titles. I thought, if anybody's going to be interested, it's going to be them. But Pin and Sword picked it up immediately. They said, this is awesome, we want to run with it. And I had been told by some other people, like, don't be discouraged if it takes a couple years. You know, like just, just stick with it. And they like, they immediately. And so that was also. It was like, hey, they're gonna run with it. So it worked out.
- [237:53]
A
So there you go, man. So what's next?
- [237:57]
C
Yeah, you know, the real estate industry feel like maybe we're entering into a new cycle that there's, you know, last couple years have been very difficult. You know, I'm living in the same world you guys are. Everything's exciting. Expensive. People are struggling in different ways. Companies are struggling. Just trying to make sense of it all. You know, I, I think in real estate development, I look at it like, I look at products. We're just trying to meet market demand where it's demanding and we try to design things that end users want. And so as companies are looking to expand and they need more space to lease in target markets for strategic regions, we want to be there to have a, a product on the ground that they can use that can help them be successful. So that's, that's the game. It's trying to put a product out to market that end users are going to need and very excited about these next few years to do that. Got a lot of, lot of tailwinds behind us for, for what should be some, some very excited developments coming up.
- [238:55]
A
Well, I was going to ask where people can find you. I know you're on. You, you got a private page on Instagram which you should open up to the world. If you got like personal stuff with your family, you want to keep off that. Cool.
- [239:08]
C
Sure.
- [239:08]
A
But you should definitely. Your, your books about publishing didn't tell you this. They should have. You got a Facebook.
- [239:15]
C
Yep.
- [239:16]
A
That I don't know if it's private or not. I think it's public. You got a LinkedIn which you're relatively active on. You don't have a website, which is like a big mistake.
- [239:29]
C
I, I, this set me up.
- [239:31]
A
This, this is coming out in two days. So if you get home, go on Google and Google how to come how to make a website so you can, at least people can touch base with you and get the book and get a signed copy of the book and all that stuff. So I probably should have told you that a few weeks ago, but I didn't. I apologize.
- [239:48]
C
It's all good.
- [239:49]
A
But that stuff for real, like, people are going to want to engage with you. They're going to want to talk to you. You, I don't even think you have an X Twitter X type thing again, like people want some marine that you worked with or some, you know, somebody that you went to boot camp with or whatever. That, that freaking first sergeant that gave you props in the chow hall, he's going to want to reach out to you and say something. So yeah, you know, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, make that thing public so people can talk to you. Because people are going to want to talk to you. The book is just, it's just freaking outstanding. It's no surprise to me that the publishers picked it up immediately because it's really well written, it tells a story. It's. It's a unique perspective from a very. A very important part of the wars. So just outstanding on all that. That's where people can find you. Echo. Charles, you got any questions?
- [240:41]
B
Yeah, did you get good grades in high school?
- [240:44]
C
No, I got. I was average. I was so middle of the pack. And like, I think that. I think the machine was always up there ready to run. I just wasn't interested. You know, we didn't talk about it a whole lot, but I. As a kid. But my interest was outdoors. I was very active, sitting down and paying attention and being slow. Like it was such a struggle. So I. I think. I mean, I graduated with 500 people in my class. I was probably five off of 250. I mean, I was dead nuts middle. Do you remember your GPA in high school is in the twos for sure? Yeah.
- [241:16]
B
Interesting, right?
- [241:17]
C
Yeah. Okay, so here's why. When I got. I. When I got back from Afghanistan, I had a. You know, I had some months that I just kind of. That I didn't do school for a little while. I needed to recalibrate and readjust. But when I got into my very first semester, I took five or six classes, I think 12 to 15 hours, and I made straight A's, and most of them were A pluses. And it. I was. I was shocked.
- [241:39]
B
When was this.
- [241:39]
C
This is 2012. Right. Right after I got back from Afghanistan. I. I have never been a straight A student, but it occurred to me, I just got out of this environment where I do what I'm told to the extent that I'm told to do it. And there is no not doing it. I give my life before I not accomplish that mission. And then in school, all I did was what they told me to do. They said, read the book assignment. I read the whole assignment. I didn't skimp it. They said, do this study. Pay attention to this. I just did what they told me to do. And I remember being so dumbfounded because I thought, I actually am a smart guy. Like, I have aptitude. I could really be as smart as a straight A student. I just had to do what they said the whole time.
- [242:23]
B
Wait, so in high school, you weren't like that? You were just like, no, I'm just.
- [242:28]
C
Gonna phone whatever I could do to skate by. And thankfully, I was smart enough that I could wing it most of the time. I mean, that's how. I just wasn't a complete failure. I just wasn't interested And I just didn't see it as translating. I think at the same time, like, my parents allotted me a lot of. Not too much freedom. They had some constraints, but they wanted me to enjoy my childhood and everything. I think they would have preferred I would have been more disciplined than I was. But it just didn't click to me that, man, it really matters to get good grades so you can get into a good school, so you can, can get good off, you know, get into good internships. And none. All that was just over my head, right in my mind. It was like, I'm going into the military. I just have to be a couple steps above completely stupid and I'll be perfectly okay. And that was the wrong mentality, but that was my mentality.
- [243:11]
B
Well, I mean, what kind of was it, though? Was it the wrong mental. I mean, it takes a certain kind of person to go through that arc, you know, and obviously you're doing great. And the reason I asked is because it's not like. It's like this unique story. I've heard that plenty times where, you know, oh, jocko, did you get good grades in high school?
- [243:30]
A
Yeah, I'm the Same exact way.
- [243:34]
B
4.0. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, it's kind of like, bro, what? What up? You know, it's kind of like, I don't know, I'm still putting the, the pieces together. I think it's going to depend on a lot of stuff. But, yeah, it's. It's interesting how you can have a quote unquote smart person, but this high school experience, the way they're, quote, unquote trying to train you or develop you or whatever, ain't landing with us, you know, what up? What are we doing?
- [243:57]
C
I think one of the big. One of the big things about unit leadership in the Marine Corps is it's troop welfare. But a part of that's motivation. You got to find ways to motivate your guys. I just wasn't motivated in high school, but in college I was motivated. I had something that this was connected to. This matters for a very important reason. And I needed to go somewhere. Back then, I just didn't have that connection. I just was not motivated at all. The other thing, though, I think, you know, it took me until I was 25 or 26 to kind of like figure out where the rest of my life was going. Got out of the military season and then transition, and it took a while, but before that, I mean, when me and my wife got started, we had nothing. We were dirt Poor. We had no good prospects. We just had, you know, a lot of rev in the engine. And then ever since then, it's been working incredibly hard, but it's also been worked very smart. I wouldn't be where I am without very strategic smart work to try to fill. Find ways that I can create value where value is needed and then fill in my own skill gaps whenever there are gaps to get to where I want to get to. That's the smart side of it. You know, a lot of those guys on construction sites, they will work so hard all their life and they will in a, get to the point that they can anymore in their struggle. And I hate that. I've got a huge heart for the labor force because they work in a tough environment. But in order to be successful in life just requires smart planning, smart work. You have to work hard, but that's like a qualifier. Everybody works hard. You got to know where you're going and then strategically find ways to get there.
- [245:31]
B
Have you ever got a hundred percent in a class in college?
- [245:35]
C
That's a tough one. I, I don't, I can't say confidently that I have a lot of A pluses, but.
- [245:42]
B
Okay, so I was in a standout in college. Yeah, I went right after high school. In fact, I entered college at 17 years old. So I really didn't have the big picture in mind or nothing like that.
- [245:50]
C
Yeah.
- [245:50]
B
But I did because of what you just said where if you kind of connect like what matters and then you can kind of do well in it or whatever. I had, I got a 97 in a class. It was kind of a higher level class. Musculoskeletal anatomy.
- [246:05]
C
Oh, that's 90.
- [246:07]
B
97. Because I cared. Like when I went in there, I was all interested. Like this is the interest. Most interesting thing ever. Like all the little muscles and stuff.
- [246:13]
C
Yeah.
- [246:14]
B
But you know, and then I got a cr. What was it? I think it was like a criminology class or whatever that I just barely went. I think I went like twice. Yeah, I got a straight up F. And then at the end, I appreciate appeal to the professor because you can do that as a football player. He'd be like, hey, you know, can I do some extra credit? I'll do some extra projects or whatever. He said, oh, yeah, yeah, let me look into your attendance. And I was like, Brian just knew from that. Like he's. And then he, he writes me back and he says, no, straight up. Okay, your attendance. But you see the contrast there, right? Like, well, I, I didn't Look, I. I didn't want to do anything in the future that involved criminology. So, you know, like, when I wake up, I'm like, all right, well, maybe I'll go next time. See what I'm saying? And I just kind of don't.
- [246:53]
C
You know, there's a lot to say about that. I mean, having the right vision. I've spent time throughout the years thinking back to my time going into the Marine Corps, not to. Not to shoot down anything that's happened. Man, I'm so proud of everything that I did, but I wanted to do so much more. That's a. Like a big pain and regret in my life. And I had the gusto to do it. Just didn't have the strategic planning, and I didn't make the right decision decisions at the right time. But I look back, and a part of that is because my vision wasn't big enough, which is a big thing. My vision back in high school, joining the Marine Corps is to become a Marine. I didn't look past that at all. I mean, not at all. I wanted to be a Marine, and I accepted the other things that came with it. Whatever the recruiter's MOS was, don't care PLC program. That sounds great. I'll go as an in, as an office officer. But what I really care about is I want the EGA tattooed on my arm. I want to earn that title. And then I gave it my all, and I earned it. But then I got in and I graduated. Platoon honor man. It was like, man, I achieved that goal. But now what? It's like I got a whole life ahead of me, and I have no idea, like, now that I'm in, where does this go and how does this translate? And, oh, yeah, there's all these things you can do in the Marine Corps if you apply your yourself and, you know, work hard and could have done all that. Just didn't have the right vision, didn't make the right decisions at the right time. So I think vision matters big time.
- [248:19]
A
Yeah.
- [248:19]
B
Well, looks like you're doing pretty well now.
- [248:21]
C
Yeah. Yeah, I really appreciate that. I just. By the grace of God, there are so many decisions I've made in life that could have ended up just terrible for me. I just think that I was so thankful to be here. You know, the guys that didn't make it overseas and all those wars, you know, we honor them by living hard, living the right way now and living for purpose and making an impact. I want to be a light in this dark world. Season of Life is tough right now with very heavy hitting career and raising a family. But a big part of the way that I contribute to society is being just the best father that I could possibly be, being a good husband to my wife, making an impact on the home front and then in my sphere and circle around me, you know, and I often tell myself, whatever you do for many do for one, you know, you talk about having like the big platform or not big platform, but having social media platforms. I struggle with time to work up that marketing mentality to just put stuff out. And it's not a part of my work life currently. But like, who doesn't want huge following with huge following of people, Lots of affirmation, you know, to get constant feedback that you're having impact in people's lives to be have a platform that you know you can operate off of. I mean. And by the way, your platform jocko, is both you guys like huge impact. So awesome. I mean, keep running. Y' all have had a huge impact on my life. I have extreme ownership here, by the way, for you to sign my copy. We had talked about that.
- [249:49]
A
We can make that happen.
- [249:50]
C
That's right. But. But I tell myself whatever you do for many do for one. So I try to remind myself that individuals matter just as much as masses of people matter. And I can have an impact on individuals and that can matter a lot.
- [250:01]
A
So no doubt about it. No. That's awesome. Any. Any other closing thoughts?
- [250:06]
C
A couple things that come to mind. One thing with this book, I was asked recently, what do you want people, what do you want readers to. To get out of the book? You know, what. What matters to you? It's a. It's a tough story, you know, but it's a great story in some ways. I think that my big takeaway from the overall experience is that life is so precious. You know, we. And I've lost a lot of friends up to this point. I'm sure you guys have too, for miscellaneous reasons, not just military guys. But life is so precious and people deserve second chances. Sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes I think that war is tragic. And you know, the book kind of showcases the dichotomy of it all. Once I got the story written and got the manuscript, well, just once, it was well rounded, I started to realize, like, this is really showing two sides of the same coin. You know, I've got a couple quotes in the book that just talk about like the heroics of war, but the cruelty of it at the same time. And it's really both And I said earlier, but some of the greatest attributes of humanity come out in war. Incredible heroics, great sacrifice and selflessness from some, I mean just some of the decisions that some guys have made to, to their own incredible detriment. I mean, every time anybody dives on a grenade, it's like what type of selfless courage did that take to just split second make that decision? Charging your machine gun nest or you know, into, you know, into a hail of gunfire to save somebody in the street, you know, that had just been shot. It's just some of the absolute best. But it's in the backdrop of just cruelty of human being on human being. And I said in the book, I, you know, I just don't like that loss of life. But I'm also not ignorant enough to think that the world will ever be without it. And we will always have to prepare for war because it's here to stay. You know, whatever systems we come up with, whatever societal structures, there are things that are much better than worse. But it's just in the heart of man, there's always going to be tyranny. There will always be people that try to domineer, coercively control other people. And in the conclusion of the book I get into just quite simply the best existence for humanity is one that is free and clear of the unwanted control of other people and that has to be fought for from time to time. So as much as we don't want war or I don't, we got to be ready for it. There has to be men and women that are going to be ready to fight it. And it's important to that wars get fought at some sometimes unfortunate to say. So I just acknowledge that it's both. You know, war is a great thing in some ways liberating the masses, you know, freeing oppressed people. It's just very tragic that so much destruction comes with it. So that's probably the big, I guess the last thing that I would say is one more shout out to my wife. Love her a lot. And again, I just wouldn't be where I am without her. I think that just the big picture, you know, my Christian faith has driven a lot of my life decisions. I think it's the single most important aspect of my life. You know, the way that the Bible puts the story of humanity is that God created us for relationship and then the fall happened and we created separation with God. But ultimately he wants a family just like we, our families, we care about our kids. I think in a, as a reflection of the way that God cares about us. And the Bible says that if we draw near to God, he'll draw near to us. And people go through incredibly traumatic events in life, some very hard hitting seasons, some worse than are detailed in this book. I mean, having children diagnosed with critical diseases or just yourself, I mean, that's just as tragic and terrible and hard to deal with as some of these combat experiences are. I just think that God invites us to, to just turn to him in those seasons and if we draw near to him, he'll draw near to us. And the freedom and the purpose and the connection to the bigger picture of what's going on and all of eternity is just offered to everyone if you want it. It's made an incredible difference in my life and it's just so critically important. So that's it.
- [254:11]
A
Well, amen to that. You know, obviously. Thanks for, thanks for joining us. Thanks for sharing your experiences. Thanks for, thank you for writing this book. Thank you for your service and your sacrifice in the Marine Corps. And thank you for setting an example. I talk about the greatest generation, came home from war, terrible war, and then guess what? They did. They turned around and built the country and got jobs, moved on and carried on. So the example that you're setting as a Marine, not only on the battlefield, but now post war, you've been through some traumatic things and you're moving forward with a beautiful family, contributing to society, doing a great job, that's just, it's just awesome to see. So thank you for doing that as well. And of course, we salute you. We salute your brothers in arms and we will never forget your brothers that did not come home.
- [255:00]
C
Thank you.
- [255:02]
A
And with that, Landon Longer has left the building. Man, what a great example of the American story. And joining the Marine Corps and serving with honor and leaving the Marine Corps and going out and doing great things in the world, Productive life. Productive. Great career, great family. Amazing to see. So.
- [255:35]
B
And might add, not without his blows. You see him saying, like he took some hits in here, you know, See him saying, yeah, yeah, oh, for sure. Stood back up and made it happen.
- [255:44]
A
For sure.
- [255:45]
B
Respect.
- [255:45]
A
Yeah, those are. That's a, that's a rough deployment. Yeah, that's a rough deployment. And come out of it like that. And very cool to see. Very cool to see. So that's what we're doing. We. So we all need to do is despite, what do you call them, setbacks. What'd you say?
- [256:04]
B
Not without its blows.
- [256:06]
A
We're all going to take some blows. Yeah, we take some setbacks and take Some. When you get. We can take some shots. And when you take some shots, you got to get back up again. And if you start, when you get back up, if your attitude is, well, you know, I just took a shot and I had to get back up, and I'm actually kind of tired from getting back up, and I'm. I'm feeling a little bit dizzy from the shot that I took. If that's, if that's what you're thinking about, you're not going to be moving forward. So you can take your shots, learn from it, get up and then go forward. That's what we're doing. Got to apply that to everything in life. That's what you got to do. You know, a critical node of life is physical health, physical fitness. That means you have to work out, you have to train, you have to run, you have to sprint, you. You have to get after it. And in doing that, you need fuel. We Recommend Jocko fuel. JockoFuel.com. check it out. We have everything that you need. Protein. I'm glad. Proteins. Protein's coming to the forefront of the world. Did you see the new food pyramid?
- [257:21]
B
No.
- [257:21]
A
The food pyramid has been flipped upside down. Okay.
- [257:23]
C
All right.
- [257:24]
A
So now the world is kind of on board with what we have known for a long time, which is you need protein. You need protein, you need fats. And then at the other end, the small end of the, of the pyramid is like, you need grains. Yeah. And you need sugar. That's at the very bottom of the pyramid.
- [257:43]
B
Is that the one with the processed foods, like, way at the top, like, kind of like not part of the. The pyramid or.
- [257:48]
A
Well, the flipped pyramid is like processed foods. I don't know if processed foods are on there, but the processed, highly processed foods would be at the very bottom of the pyramid. But the bottom of the pyramid is the smallest part, the top of the pyramid.
- [257:59]
B
So it's upside down.
- [258:00]
A
Yes, it's upside down. It's an upside down pyramid. At the top is meat, fat, veggies, protein, that good stuff. And so protein. Everyone kind of understands now that protein is the most critical building block that you have. Not that you don't need any fats, because you certainly do. Not that you don't need any carbohydrates. You can survive without carbohydrates, but it's. It's fine to have some. But protein, everyone realizes now that pro. How critical protein is. And if you start paying attention to how much protein your intake is, you will recognize, oh, I need. Probably need some more Protein, you know, that's the, the first in crew.
- [258:38]
B
Yeah.
- [258:38]
A
They very, very strict about making sure you audit what you're putting into your body for like a week to make sure that you know what you're doing. Because sometimes people. Oh, I get enough protein.
- [258:50]
B
Yeah.
- [258:51]
A
And then they look at the numbers, you run the numbers and you realize, oh, actually I'm not getting enough protein.
- [258:59]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [259:00]
A
When you run the numbers, it's. It's pretty devastating sometimes when you start looking and then they think, well, I don't eat too many carbs. And then you run the numbers on that and you realize, no wonder you're metabolically crushed.
- [259:13]
C
Yeah.
- [259:14]
A
So that food audit that they do, I don't know if they even call it a food audit, but first in, first in nutrition, you can check them out, but they do like an audit for a week. So you just know what you're doing. It's kind of like I say, if you want to. In life, the first piece, most critical piece of information you need in combat is where you are.
- [259:34]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [259:34]
A
So by doing that kind of food audit, you figure out where you are on your macros. It's true. And people get surprised that they're eating a bunch of trash and they're probably not getting enough protein. Well, one of the things that you can utilize to get those protein numbers up out of the rookie game into the pro game. Yeah. Is this right here. We call it jocko fuel. Joc.com we got molk protein. We got ready to drink protein. We got powder. The protein is so tasty. That's the crazy thing. I just was having some vanilla is probably fourth or fifth on my ranking of repetitions for eating. The powder, the protein powder, the vanilla protein powder is so good. If you work to a five star restaurant.
- [260:28]
B
Yeah.
- [260:29]
A
And you ordered for dessert, you were kind of like on the path. So you weren't going to get the creme brulee or you weren't going to get the, the carrot cake because it's too much sugar and junk. And so you say, you know what? Give me those, give me those berries with cream.
- [260:45]
B
Yes.
- [260:46]
A
And the person in the back was a, like a Michelin level chef.
- [260:50]
B
Yeah.
- [260:51]
A
And he was like, hey, you know what? Pass me some powdered protein milk powder from Jocko Fuel. And he mixed it up, put it on the vanilla and put it on the berries, and they brought it to you as like the, the cream with berries. Yeah, bro. You would be beside yourself and you'd be like, man, this is the most incredible restaurant everyone's walk with this like you would be beside yourself.
- [261:14]
B
That's.
- [261:15]
A
Yeah, that's what we make is things that will. Will make you beside yourself with how tasty it is. So that's what we got going on in Jungle Fuel. And by the way, it's clean. As clean as you can possibly make it. Protein, energy drinks, hydration. We got you covered. Supplementation. Time war, joint warfare. You know, they're like. Well, you know, I don't know how popular these names can be. You know, you. You use the term war a lot. Yeah, like joint warfare and time war. Well, guess what? You are at war against time.
- [261:49]
B
Yeah.
- [261:49]
A
So you might as well use the weaponry that's available. Time war. Draco fuel. Your joints are at war every day. Every time you do a kettlebell snatch, you need reinforcements because your joints are at war. Joint warfare.
- [262:03]
C
True.
- [262:04]
A
So cold war. Oh, wait a second. What's that? Oh, yeah, because your immunity, your immune system is at war.
- [262:11]
C
Yes.
- [262:11]
A
So listen, if you don't want to buy warlike products, go somewhere else. But we're at war here. Jockofuel.com. check it out. That's what I got. Also. Originusa.com Did I mention we're training. Did I mention we're training Jiu Jitsu? Why are we training Jiu Jitsu? Because you want to know how to fight. You want to know how to defend yourself. You want to increase your confidence, you want to increase your capabilities. You want to get in shape. You want to have cardio training, you want to have strength training, you want to have flexibility training. You want to meet other people, you want to have social interaction. What am I missing?
- [262:44]
B
That's it. Yeah.
- [262:44]
C
Yeah.
- [262:45]
A
So there you go. All those things in one evolution. It's called Jiu Jitsu. So we're training Jiu Jitsu in order to train Jiu Jitsu. Originusa.com we got geese. We got rash guards. But listen, it's not just about the training of Jiu Jitsu. It's about the rebuilding of America. Wait a second, Jocko. What are you talking about? How can we rebuild America by training Jiu Jitsu? Easy when you buy Origin USA.com. and we will help build rebuild America's. We're bringing back manufacturing to America. We are rebuilding our communities in America. And by the way, we're not only training Jiu Jitsu, we're also making boots, we're making jeans, we're making hoodies, we're making T shirts, we're making training gear. We're making hunting gear. We're making jackets. We're making everything that you need to wear in America, we're making it in America. What you need to wear in America, we're making in America 100American made from American made sources. So stop supporting communists, stop supporting slave labor, stop supporting the destruction of our environment and go to originusa.com and get yourself some American made gear. That's what we're doing.
- [263:54]
B
Oh yeah. Stupid. Don't, hey, don't forget while we're on this path, don't forget you can represent. See what I'm saying? Whatever you, you know, as far as what you wearing or you can represent. So discipline equals freedom. Which has legs, by the way. You know what you, you know what I mean by legs?
- [264:09]
A
Yeah, yeah, go. It continues on, goes everywhere.
- [264:11]
B
Exactly right? Can go everywhere. It applies to a lot of stuff. You see, I'm saying anyway, you want to represent. Boom. We got your shirts. You get hats, you got hoodies on there. You got, got a bunch of stuff. Shorts even, by the way. Also good. We all know good. Became a popular video in the past and currently, by the way, yeah, you want to represent that. That's where you do it. Oh, we got some new stuff on there. Get after it. Actually, it's not out yet, but it's in the works. Give me another week, it'll be out. But anyway, if you want to be informed when the new stuff comes, just sign your sign up at the bottom of the website there and put your email in there. I'll let you know when it gets in so you can get the first jump on it saying before they sell out. Also, Shirt Locker, you like the designs, you know you want to represent on a monthly basis. You get a new design every month. Subscription scenario. People seem to like that one. But yeah, check that one out. Click on Shirt Locker on the top, you can see what it's all about. If you like it, boom. Sign up for that. It's a good one.
- [265:06]
A
All, all on Jocastore.com hey, speaking of new stuff, you, you heard of the Warrior Kid books?
- [265:13]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [265:14]
A
Hell yeah. You heard of the Warrior Kid movie?
- [265:16]
B
Oh yeah. I hear good stuff.
- [265:19]
A
So that's great. I wrote a bunch of kids books. Warrior Kid, we now have from jockofuel.com Warrior Kid supplements. Warrior Kid protein shakes for your Warrior Kid.
- [265:30]
B
Yeah.
- [265:31]
A
Do not feed your Warrior Kid trash. Feed your Warrior Kid the cleanest protein out there. They're gonna love your kids love it.
- [265:38]
B
So it's. I'm laughing because. So my kids don't have Instagram. They're on social media, but some of their friends do. So they sent my daughter like some videos and stuff about this new warrior kid stuff. She's like all excited coming to me.
- [265:53]
C
She's like, are we gonna get some of that?
- [265:54]
A
Are we gonna get something we're gonna get?
- [265:55]
B
She was more excited than I've seen her about something like this in a while.
- [265:59]
A
Yep, that is warrior kid. Warrior kid fuel. So check that out. It's@joggofuel.com you can get some of that. Also, like I said, I've written a bunch of books. Hey, books. Also, U.S. marines at the Battle of Sangen by Landon Lang Long. You heard that today. You heard us talking about it. It's a fantastic book, so well written. Check it out for sure. Put your legs on by Rob Jones. Also, another Marine from Sangin province was wounded there. You know him, he's been on the podcast and he wrote an incredible account of what it was like for him to come home home without his legs and how he is just pressed on and have has an incredible life. Dave Burke, need to lead. Of course, Dave Burke, my brother was in the battle of Rati with us, on top of everything that he did in the Marine Corps, which was pretty astounding in its own right, wrote a great book called need to lead. We also have echelonfront.com we have a leadership consultancy and we help teach principles of leadership to companies large and small. So you can check that out. Also, you know what, check out if you need some steak, check out primalbeef.com coloradocraftbeef.com Two awesome companies making awesome steaks for us. And there's also extreme ownership.com extreme ownership.com if you want to help learn, help yourself learn and help others learn the principles of leadership that we talk about, go to extreme ownership.com and we can help you there. If you want to help service members active and retired, their families, Gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org also check out HeroesAndHorses.org and finally, Jimmy May's organization BeyondTheBrotherhood.org and if you want to connect with us for Landon on Facebook, on Instagram and on LinkedIn, he's @landon Long Grier and it's L O N G G R E A R. And I just tried to convince him to be more active on social media so he can connect with people so hopefully he does that for us. Check out jocko.com and then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink. Echoes at Echo. Charles Just be careful of the artificial intelligence that is looking to invade your brain and take it over and use it for its own purposes. And it's right in there and it's just doing that all day long. It's actively doing that to you. So use caution. Thanks to all our service members out there around the world with a solemn salute to the United States Marine Corps, specifically those Marines that fought in the brutal battle of Sangin. Thank you for your service and sacrifice and we honor those that did not come home. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thanks for your service and sacrifice here on the home front and everyone else out there. Here's one more excerpt from Landon's account, and this is actually the end of the book for him. And it's a poem that closes out the book. And this is one portion of that poem. It says, may their names always be remembered and their stories frequently told, that others will emulate their example to be honorable, courageous and bold. To the fallen, but not forgotten. Fair winds and following seas, may you enter eternal freedom. Good luck and Godspeed. And that's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, the Zeko and Jocko out.