536: Ramadi: Sacrifice, Brotherhood, and The Return. w/ William "Spanky" Gibson

Summary

Jocko Podcast 536: Ramadi - Sacrifice, Brotherhood, and The Return w/ William "Spanky" Gibson

Host: Jocko Willink, with Echo Charles
Date: April 15, 2026
Guest: Retired Master Sergeant William "Spanky" Gibson, USMC

Episode Overview

In this powerful episode, Jocko sits down with retired Marine Master Sergeant William “Spanky” Gibson to unpack a lifetime of military service—from rural Oklahoma roots, through the trenches of Desert Storm, Somalia, and especially the brutal urban combat of Ramadi, Iraq. The conversation covers battlefield relationships, the reality of sacrifice and brotherhood, Spanky’s wounding and loss of his leg in Ramadi, his historic return to combat as an amputee, and his post-military journey of mentoring, recovery, and purpose. Unfiltered memories, lessons learned, and reflections on leadership, resilience, and the human cost of war fill this memorable, wide-ranging conversation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Context and Camaraderie in Ramadi

• Jocko sets the stage with a reading on the chaos in Ramadi post-Fallujah (00:00).
• The unity among Army, Navy, and Marine Corps is highlighted:

  “There’s one common theme that comes out of those conversations, and that is the relationships that we formed on the battlefield, the incredible mutual support that was shared…” —Jocko (01:20)

• Spanky is introduced as a Marine’s Marine—funny, professional, approachable, and a leader from the front, whose injury would set him on a historic path. (03:00)

2. Spanky’s Early Life, Motivations, and Joining the Corps

• Grew up an only child in rural Oklahoma, hunting and wrestling, influenced by a family legacy of service (Navy and Marines).
• “My mindset... was I can never get in the military. I don’t want to go to college. I don’t want to stay at home. But I didn’t have enough intestinal fortitude to say, well, you know, pull up your bootstraps and do something. So the best thing ever happened to me was go to boot camp.” —Spanky (12:24)
• Gained his nickname “Spanky” for constantly smiling during boot camp, even under fire from drill instructors.
• Emphasizes: “You tell me to do it, I’ll do it.” (15:00)

3. Desert Storm, Reconnaissance, and Early Deployments

• Early days in 1st Recon Battalion; just happy to be there, learning the ropes, experiencing combat for the first time as a teenager during Desert Storm.
• Anecdotes highlight the unpredictability and excitement of youth in combat, and the transition from Cold War to Gulf War mindsets in military training.
• Touches on the camaraderie, rigorous training, and “getting tested” as a young Marine (21:40).

4. Leadership, Mistakes, and Growth

• Spanky shares a story of getting in trouble with golf carts, which led to temporary career setbacks, but became a lesson:

  “If you don’t keep me on a leash, it’s not too rowdy—not like I’m being evil, but I’ll just be stupid.” —Spanky (36:18)

• The humility in owning mistakes and the value of discipline is a recurring theme.

5. Somalia and Combat Experience

• Deploys to Mogadishu, Somalia, doing real RNS (recon and surveillance) patrols—sometimes “more action than Desert Storm.”
• Discusses the practicalities and dangers of living and operating in austere conditions (43:00).

6. Civilian Transition and Return to Service

• After an unsatisfying stint as a civilian and hospital worker, Spanky returns to the Marine Corps during the post-Oklahoma City bombing era.
• Shares the bureaucratic hurdles and personal drive behind his re-enlistment, motivated both by tradition and by feeling a lack of direction outside the Corps.
• “Being a Marine is more important for me... Stop thinking about the job. Quit being selfish.” —Spanky (54:00)

7. Building 5th Anglico and Deployments

• Plays a key role building 5th Anglico on Okinawa, pioneering close cooperation with Army and Air Force in joint operations.
• Trains, leads, and mentors Marines and forges the unit that would deploy to Ramadi (77:00).

8. Ramadi: Pre-Deployment and Arrival

• Describes intensive workups and robust cross-branch relationships as they prepare to embed with Iraqi Army units in Ramadi (82:00).
• Illustrates how structure, discipline, and adaptability were essential in the chaotic environment:

  "We didn't know exactly where we were going until we hit Al Asad—Camp Ramadi. Next thing you know, we're attached to First IA." —Spanky (82:40)

9. A Devastating Friendly Fire (Blue on Blue) Incident

• Jocko and Spanky recount, with painful honesty, the infamous friendly fire incident of April 13, 2006, during a major clearance operation in Ramadi’s Ma’Laab neighborhood (90:35).
• Confusion among multiple elements—SEALs, Iraqi soldiers, Anglico, and Army—with language barriers and chaos led to a deadly shooting between allies.
• This segment includes a full breakdown:
  • Movement of units, communication breakdowns, and a tragic misidentification.
  • The emotional, tactical, and operational aftermath.
  • Leadership lessons: importance of deconfliction, chaos training, humility, and adapting SOPs.
  • “You need to understand how, what a guy, when a guy is getting shot at, what their viewpoint is—the chaos, the fog of war. Like, all these things really come into play.” —Jocko (101:36)
• Both men emphasize the lasting impact and determination to improve training to prevent such incidents in the future.

10. Patrols and Wounding—May 16, 2006

• Spanky describes, in vivid, granular detail, being shot in the knee by a sniper during a firefight, the heroic actions of fellow Marines and SEALs (esp. Wes Baldwin), his medical evacuation, and the quick action that saved his life (116:16).
• “My focus was get my weapon in front of me, get back to business... And then when they flipped me over, I almost shot myself on the right foot... My left leg was just bouncing, kind of hamburger on the whole back.”
• He details battlefield medical care (“Wes did a bang-up job on me…”), the surreal moments on the way to the field hospital, and the humor he found even in the pain (“If I’m going down, I’m going down high”—on injecting morphine and failing, 125:47).
• On the camaraderie:

  “SEALs are doing medical on you, Marines and SEALs are dragging you out of the street, then Army comes to pick you up… You just can’t—It’s really hard for people to understand the bonds that were formed there.” —Jocko (131:32)

11. Recovery, Resilience, and Refusing Self-Pity

• Immediate and long-term recovery at Walter Reed, additional surgery, and the mental battle post-amputation.
• “Never once was [the amputation] a problem for me, because life is more important than a leg.” —Spanky (139:18)
• His drive was to get back to work, not to be invalided out. (145:38)

12. Record-Setting Return to Combat

• Breaks barriers as the first above-the-knee amputee to redeploy overseas.
• “It was never a personal aspiration. It was, I want to shut everybody up and let them know I’m normal.” —Spanky (153:25)
• His example opens doors for wounded warriors in all branches.

13. Postwar Service, Leadership, and Civilian Life

• Congressional Fellowship on Capitol Hill—representing Marines, fighting for veterans’ health care access and legislative reform (176:00).
• Returns home, working various jobs, VA claims and advocacy, and gradually transitions to spend more time with family (183:36).

14. Retirement, Family, & Continued Service

• Now genuinely retired, Spanky invests in his family, grandkids, and his own projects, reflecting on the value of life after military service.
• Finds new meaning through faith and chooses a path of healing, growth, and humility.
• “I’m not retired, I’m paying back my family,” he says, highlighting the ongoing nature of service and love (195:08).
• Starts sharing his stories and lessons via social media and a new YouTube channel, realizing the value in capturing and passing on experiences for future generations (197:03).

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Notable Quotes and Moments

• On camaraderie in Ramadi:

  "It’s really hard for people to understand the bonds that were formed there." —Jocko (131:32)

• On surviving his wound:

  “I never lost consciousness until just before the last memory I have... That was a big trail but I’m lucky.” —Spanky (135:53)

• On friendly fire:

  “The chaos, the fog of war... all these things really come into play.” —Jocko (101:36)

• On his drive to return:

  “For as long as I can, in the best way I can, I’m going to serve. I already know what it feels like to have it taken away.” —Spanky (153:25)

• On passing lessons forward:

  "Wouldn't you love it if you had... your dad or granddad talking for three hours... about their experiences? ...It's historical content and it's perspectives that people aren't going to have..." —Jocko (199:33)

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Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:00–04:00 | Introduction, Ramadi context, Spanky’s bio
• 12:00–18:00 | Boot camp and early mindset
• 21:00–29:00 | Desert Storm & early recon experiences
• 35:00–41:00 | Mistakes, discipline, and humility
• 43:00–55:00 | Somalia, leaving and re-enlisting
• 77:00–82:00 | Building 5th Anglico, pre-Ramadi preparations
• 90:00–105:00 | Friendly fire—April 13, 2006: incident, lessons, aftermath
• 116:00–132:00 | The firefight, Spanky’s wounding and casualty evacuation
• 139:00–147:00 | Recovery, resilience, mindset on amputation
• 153:00–162:00 | Drive to redeploy, opening doors for others
• 176:00–183:00 | Hill fellowship, lobbying for veterans
• 191:00–202:00 | Transitions, authenticity, and faith
• 197:03 | Launching “Spanky Gibson Produces” on YouTube

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Closing Thoughts

This episode is a master class in grit, humility, and the lifelong power of service and brotherhood. Whether recounting tragic mistakes, the ordeal of catastrophic injury, or the joy found in a new chapter, Spanky Gibson’s honesty and perseverance stand as an inspiration to veterans—and to all.

“Every day is a gift. And we are blessed every day with the sunrise. But we only get so many of them. So don’t waste them and instead go out there every day like William Spanky Gibson and get after it.” —Jocko (end)

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Connect with Spanky Gibson:

• Twitter/X: @SpankyGibson71
• YouTube: Spanky Gibson Produces

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For more in-depth war stories, leadership lessons, and uncompromising truth, follow Jocko Podcast.

Transcript

[A]

This is Jocko, podcast number 536 with Echo, Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. After the Fallujah offensive, the Americans tried to quell the insurgency in Ramadi with a combination of political maneuvers and the cooperation of tribal leaders to root out foreign Islamist fighters. But that plan has spectacularly fallen apart. The men who dared to ally themselves with the Americans quickly learned that the US military couldn't protect them. Insurgents killed 70 of Ramadi's police recruits in January, and at least half a dozen high profile tribal leaders have been assassinated since then. Ramadi has become a town where anti American guerrillas operate openly and city bureaucrats are afraid to acknowledge their job titles for fear of being killed. The government center in downtown Ramadi comes under gunfire or mortar attacks daily. And that right there is an article titled Fear of Big Battle Panics Iraqi City. It was dated 11 June 2006. It's from the Los Angeles Times, written by Megan K. Stack and Louise Rouge. And we've heard from quite a few people on this podcast that fought in Ramadi in 2005 and 2006 and 2007. And there's one common theme that comes out of those conversations, and that is the relationships that we formed on the battlefield, the incredible mutual support that was shared between the Army, Navy and Marine Corps units. And this happened at every level, from the brigade commander working for the Marine Corps division commander, and the good relationships there. And that carried down through the entire chain of command. And at the tactical level, almost every operation that took place was a joint combined operation. And if you're not familiar with military terminology, what that means is joint means it was multiple services, so army and, or Navy and or Marine Corps all working together. And then combined means you have different country involved. And in this case, the country was the soldiers from Iraq, the jundies. And one of the real obvious examples of this was my task unit, Task unit Bruiser. And the relationship that we had with Marine Corps Anglico and on. On the west side of Ramadi, Leif's Charlie Patoon worked with Dave Burke's Anglico crew. Dave's been on this podcast a bunch of times. Lightning 6. And on the east side where Sestone was, there was a detachment from Delta Platoon, and they were working out at Camp corregidor with the first, the 506. And there was another Anglico there, Lightning 4. And we had a great relationship with them. And a superb example of the camaraderie that existed in Ramadi is from one of their Marines, Gunny Gibson. Gunny Gibson, who I knew at the time, was known more commonly by his nickname, Spanky and Gunny Gibson. Spanky was exactly what you'd expect from a United States Marine. He was professional, he was mission focused. At the same time, he was funny, approachable, and likable. And everybody notes that he led from the front. And he helped Seth Stone and Delta Platoon learn the battle space. Passed on, lessons learned, and Gunny Gibson was eventually wounded in Ramadi, Shot in the left knee, was medically evacuated, eventually lost his leg above the knee. But that did not stop Gunny Gibson. He attacked his physical therapy just like he attacked the enemy. He started off with walking and then running with his prosthetic and then swimming and then biking and then skiing and then running races. And eventually, In January of 2008, he became the first above the knee amputee in history to deploy back to a combat theater in the GWAT and is an absolute honor to have him with us here tonight. Retired Master Sergeant William Spanky Gibson. Good to see you, brother.

[B]

Hey, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. It's quite an honor.

[A]

Yeah, man, it's a long time coming. I know we've touched bases and, and we've high fived at various times in the past 20 years, but to finally get you out here is just. It's awesome. Great to see you and you're going strong. And we were just saying you're one of the few people that has actually pulled off being full. You're a retired dude. You don't have any side hustles, you don't have any other things going on. You're a fully dude that's spending time with your family and your grandkids. What is it, seven grandkids?

[B]

Yep, seven grandkids.

[A]

Epic.

[B]

I love it. It's a totally different life.

[A]

So having you out here, man, it's great. I know you're just flew out here for the day to come and do this and, you know, I've had a bunch of guys from Radian and it's. It's so awesome to hear everyone's different perspective of what they saw. And we've had everybody from guys that were, you know, gunners in Humvees, you know, privates, you know, E2s all the way up to brigade commanders from both the 228 and the 11 AD. So Gronsky and McFarland have both come on and then a bunch of battalion commanders, just company commanders. We've, we've tried to get a Full spectrum of guys that were over there. It's really great to hear everybody's different perspective, and it'll be awesome to hear years as well. I'm looking forward to it.

[B]

It's good to be here.

[A]

Let's get in a little bit. Give us a little bit of background of growing up. So you were Oklahoma guy.

[B]

Yep, Northeast Oklahoma. An only child. Yeah. No siblings. Part of my life was spent in the country, running around the woods, you know, shooting things. With 22 until I was old enough to do my hunter safety course and at 12 in Oklahoma and start hunting deer. And my mom. My mom hated living so far out in the country. And we moved back into town, which for me and my dad both was terrible. But so then it was just normal. Start wrestling in fifth grade. I was always very, very small. And, you know, you. When you're in fifth and sixth grade. I played football, paid basketball or, I'm sorry, baseball, wrestled. That was about it, you know. And then as I got into junior high and realized that I'm, you know, weighing a haul of about 68 pounds, and I'm getting hit by 130 or 150 pound guy, I'm like, I don't like this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And here's this. One of my friends missed a fly ball and broke his cheekbone. And I'm like, well, I don't really like this. I love George Brett. I always try to emulate him. And that was big in those years, remember? So I stuck with wrestling. And that was pretty much the gist of it. I. I've always been. I was never a great athlete. I was okay. I got better with time, but I was always a follower. I was always a small guy. Me and one other guy, Jason Brewer, we're the smallest kids in school. Even our senior year, and I knew I had this desire. I wanted to go in the Marine Corps because my grandpa. Dad being Navy, so that was.

[A]

What'd your dad do in the Navy?

[B]

He was CB.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Electrician.

[A]

Hell, yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Joined 58, got out in 70, came back to Northeast Oklahoma, and hence me, 71, so. But the.

[A]

And what'd you know about your granddad being in the Marine Corps? Oh, World War II, looking back.

[B]

Yeah. He was World War II. Got out. He was from Salinas, California, so my mom was born out here in Redondo Beach. He got out in 46. Korea, kicks off in 50, goes back in as a tech sergeant. Back then, they didn't call him gunnies. And then he stayed from 50 till 76.

[A]

Damn.

[B]

Now I Knew that part of it because I was definitely in his life, you know a lot and even in my early career. But you know what? Not until after he passed away in 2000 I was on recruiting duty did I ever think I should ask more questions because then I got all the photos that's all I asked for when he passed away was I just want everything Marine Corps and which was weird because he had a picture of a battleship somewhere in the Pacific because he was in the Pacific and I had a picture back in 1990 of the Jersey doing a we're doing a Liberty float going to Portland Oregon and I just got out of A or C and I've got this picture. Well I when he died me being on recruiting we put all the I love me stuffs on the wall. I stacked that picture and it almost if it wouldn't have been for some of the equipment that was on the boat he was on. We didn't have in those our days But I regret not asking more same with my dad. My dad's been going almost 10 years. I you know I regret not asking more questions and you know I just got meritorious promoted staff sergeant you know I've been selected for it right before my grandpa passed away and then they promoted me over the phone in Yuma at the beq with my mom to staff starting over the phone so I could wear it for a ceremony. Yeah so I, I regret that he didn't get to see me go farther. I regret not asking those questions but then again my grandpa was a typical war to era Marine. The only thing on with the rest

[A]

of his life not worried about what bingo.

[B]

You know it was all about just enjoy what you got left and not you know neither woe is me or hey I'm the hero.

[A]

So so, so what was it like going to the Marine Corps? Did you just enlist right out of high school?

[B]

Oh Yeah. I turned 18 in boot camp. The nice I I there's a best friend of mine that we wrestled together from seventh grade up until I end up blowing an ACL in high school which almost DQ'd me. The my buddy his dad was still here at MCRD San Diego as a series gunnery sergeant still active duty Marine. My buddy John Catcher who looked just like chesty puller back in those days he was guaranteed and I wanted to emulate my grandpa. You know no disrespect to my dad. Don't like the whites, I like the blues. And so yeah that that was going to be the number one thing that I want to do Is go. Well what sucked was we graduated around the 22nd of May in Oklahoma. He immediately the next day came out here stay with his dad before he would check in my recruiter, guy named Johnny Matthews. Never forget this guy, great guy. He calls me, you know, landline my parents house, I'm just hanging out and he goes, I need you to ship. I end up shipping a week before my buddy John. We're a buddy program. We didn't realize. He didn't realize it. I didn't think tell his mom and get a hold of your dad, blah blah blah. We're sitting in church second week of boot camp and he's like, dude, what happened? I'm like, sorry brother. That's our Matthew said you got to go. I went. So I went. A week after I graduated high school, my 18th birthday was shot day walking through all the electric guns and yeah, that started it. I, I, I knew that I wasn't going to go to college. I'd taken VO tech my junior and senior for precision machining. So I like, I like doing anything with my hands but I was going to go to the Marine Corps. My most guarantee. I almost went in the Army. Yeah. A year before I two friends in my German class that me and John were in, they were able to go to boot camp before their senior year.

[A]

Yeah, that's a cool, that's a cool program.

[B]

It was and I almost did but I was only like 10 months out from that ACL reconstruction and it was the old school and patellar transfer where they had big gnarly scar and yeah, so I guess that was God's way of telling me you're not going in the army. And I didn't think I could get in the Marine. I was in house detention. May, May 5th of 1989 in house detention because I got in trouble home at class and Johnny Matthews comes in there. Well, let's try. I'm like, they DQ'd me. I can't. He goes, let's try man. Kissing put me in. A couple days later got me out of in house detention. And then May 29, 1989 I was at the hotel waiting to come to here. I got here May 30. My dad's birthday is May 29. I went to boot camp on my dad's birthday.

[A]

How'd you like boot camp? All good.

[B]

I got the name. What's that?

[A]

All good? What you expected it would have mattered?

[B]

Like I was kind of saying before you tell me what to do because I wasn't a stud. You Know, I was a little guy and I was overweight definitely my senior year because all I did was drink and eat what I want and not because of the acl. Woe is me. I was. I didn't start shaving till I was 21. So my mindset at that year was, was I can never get in the military. I don't want to go to college. I don't want to stay at home. But I didn't have enough intestinal fortitude to say, well, you know, pull up your boot bootstraps and do something. So the best thing ever happened to me was go to boot camp. So when I got here to answer your question was I was happy as hell. That's how I got the name Spanky. I got thrashed all the time for smiling. I was so happy. And not that I was a tough guy, because that wasn't the case. I'm. It's ironic when I look at my boot camp pictures have been a while because I graduated second squad leader from boot camp. Everybody else is tall and here's this just short kid that don't even shave yet. And. But I guess I've always been very lucky in the factor that you tell me to do it, I'll do it. And I might push back a little bit as I got older, but I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna do what you tell me. I'm gonna be a good Marine because I want to make the Marine Corps look bad and keep me on a leash because if you don't, that Spanky side comes out. And it never too much that, you know, I should be hung for it. But I, I could, I had a rambunctious side, but it was not a bad rambunctious side. It was just, you better put me back on a leash because if I use my imagination, it's going to get a little questionable.

[A]

Check. So what'd you end up with for an MLS03?

[B]

And I was open contract. And I remember me and John after I came back from EPS and I said, they let me in. Well, because it was only a few weeks to go to boot camp. I was, you know, I was at good of the core. I wanted infantry because, come on, I grew up in the country. My dad had me in sea cadets when I was in like fifth, sixth, seventh grade. I did National Guard Explorers. You know, I, I grew up watching all the really good Sanziwa Jim and all the cool movies and. But I was such a little kid, I didn't think about, you know, everything that Comes along with that. I just said, I just want to be like them. And, you know, gotta think about it. 1982, first blood, you know, all these things, all the Vietnam stories that were in movies back when we were in that impressionable age group. And so, yeah, I mean, I. To answer your question, I love boot camp. I really did. I mean, it sucks. Yeah, but you just had to, you know, drill instructors like me because they like thrashing me, I think, but it was always that fun thrash because they're like, this kid is just like 17 and happy and always smiling and, you know, not always, but if they would start roaring at somebody with their big boy voice, I would just be over there thinking it's awesome. You know, Full Metal Jacket, Harley Ermey stuff. But yeah, so I enjoyed it and I think it came natural as long as I had guidance.

[A]

So then what came next back then.

[B]

So I graduated boot camp late August. The Marine Corps was testing out the Marine combat training school up at Pendleton. So it didn't matter if you're an O3 or not. Now I found out the end of boot camp I was going to be in O3XX they don't give your individual, but you have to go to four weeks Marine combat training before you go on to your eight or ten weeks of school of infantry. Well, fortunately, a bunch of my buddies from boot camp that I looked up to were all going infantry. Some were mortar, some machine gunners, some were 11s. A couple of them were 5152s. Well, honestly, I didn't care. Oh3xx. I'm happy we set it MCT Marine Combat Training in the old Quonset huts for a month. Well, we get to the end of that and they're like, hey, Spank, we're going to go over an end doc. They were running the weekend before. We're checking in. Staff Sergeant Gertis end up being my platoon sergeant for Desert Storm. They were running in dock. Now I could always.

[A]

So is indoc. Is that. Is that basically like a tryout?

[B]

It is, you know, it's a ruck run. It's two days of, you know, Saturday till Sunday evening. You got to be back at SY by 6pm or 1800. It, you know, pft, swim, qual ruck, run a basic. Do you have the basic capability to go to reconnaissance? And I just followed my buddies. They talked me into it and I got lucky. I made it. And because if you told me to do it, I did it. Now, I wasn't a stud, so I'm not Gonna be the fastest, I'm not gonna be the slowest. But I grew up on lakes, you know, I wasn't lucky enough to grow up surfing on a coastline somewhere. But I was always in the water as a kid in the summers, so different. So water never. Now we don't have swim teams where I'm from in Oklahoma. So I didn't know sidestroke, backstroke, you know, crawl, you know, breaststroke, all the proper strokes that are on the swim call. I didn't know any of that. But they would demonstrate and they would say do it, you know, like the burning oil. Remember when that was all a big deal? You had to do the length of the Olympic pool. You only surface two or three times, whatever it was. Well, you give me the task and you tell me the parameters of that task. I'll do my best to emulate it and achieve it. So I was lucky because I shouldn't have been there. I was a kid, so that was a kicker. So I endock go to school of infantry. Those same buddies, one of them Don Marasca, he's forward colonel now, they got in line at school, you know, basically at school of Infury west is what they call it now they got in line so I just followed them not knowing what line I was supposed to be in. Well, I get up there, There were machine gun 0331 machine gunner and I'm like, no corn that. Yeah, once again first blood. I'm going to shoot up the sheriff's station. Well get up to it. And they're like, no, you need to go down there, you're going to be in 0 352. I'm like, I don't know what that is. Tactically operated wire guided missiles system. So tow on a truck. I don't want to do that. I want to shoot machine guns for my friends. And then they noticed I had 13 driving violations in high school because I was a pizza delivery guy my junior and senior year. So those guys were like, no, you got to go over here. 0351 which was the dragon. Dragon and small back in those days. Now javelin, well now not even mos. I think, oh, I kind of want to do this, I want to go over there. Well, I was a little guy but I had good test scores. I did pretty good on the ASFAB and all that stuff. Took the D lab and the all that in boot camp. So I've done pretty good on testing. So here I am 0351. But then by the time you get about the six week soI then you find out your duty station watch. I got 1st recon battalion, you know. Eventually it disbanded in 92 and then came back because of with my five other buddies.

[A]

Damn, dude.

[B]

So we get there that just luck that that happened. I'll always say it is because I should have never been there. My first team leader before I came down to Coronado for school because remember we used to come to LFTC back in those days.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Now it's all at Pendleton, the BRC or whatever. I just followed those guys. So we all go to Coronado together, you know, a couple of. Some of the same training team with my, my. I almost called him an R.I. not my Ranger instructor. Staff Sergeant Steinhauer was my. We had, you know, Dilaud or we had some real animal recon guys that were instructors as Staffordens. And we get Steinhauer and you know, never, you know, that time between November and, you know, I had to do a rip. I had to do a couple beach weeks. So by the time we got here late, you know, late January to start school, you know, I understood what it was like to a three mile fin and drag your ruck when you get on the boats or doing, you know, that all the stuff we had to do back then, you know, especially hydrographic surveys. The fun stuff. Yeah. Just hope I can get out the perimeter so I'm not getting bashed in the surface.

[A]

So this is January of 90. You're going through recon school.

[B]

Yep. And then we graduated in April. And then after that I was in Charlie Company with Lou Gregory. Ended up getting Silver Star in Desert Storm. But when I got back from school, they moved me over to Bravo Company. So I went to Bravo two two second Platoon, second Team. And you know, John Benish and who I was talking about before Corporal Moffat was my etl. You know, it was, you know, just happy to be there. And then that's when the fun began.

[A]

And so. So you're like right, prime time for the first Desert Shield. Desert Storm.

[B]

Yeah, we. So Charlie Company, all my buddies I've been in Coronado with that were they end up going late or September because they're going to support 7th Marines and they're going to be on the ground during, you know, the shield portion and you know, bombing campaigns and all that. We didn't get there on 5th MEB supporting 5th Marine Regiment because we had 13 ships on that med and we didn't get into country until first part of February. You know, we floated over. I think we got into Longapo. You Know, early December, right before Christmas. And then we started pumping from. We didn't stop from a long ago until we got in the Gulf.

[A]

And then you would. Did you get into Kuwait? Did you guys. Where'd you go into?

[B]

Yeah, that we. We were in a waffle oil field. So everybody talks about cough chi, you know, kafchi being the big stuff for the Marines pretty much on the coastline. We were what, five, six miles inland because there was a. Saddam had blown up a big oil field right there. And the village, you want to call it that, call a village, small town, was a Wafra and that was a Wafa oil fields. So we punched through a Wafra. But when they said go after the bombing campaign for four days were past

[A]

alias, what were you, what were you in? What were you in? Vehicles. What were you in?

[B]

Yeah, we're just trucks in the whole 25 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines were all amtraks. They had like 80amtraks and they kept getting, you know, they had the Micklet trucks up front so they were blowing lanes to go through. I mean it was interesting. As a 19 year old kid, I was going to say it wasn't Ramadi.

[A]

You were. When you were going in there, were you guys thinking. Because I remember seeing, you know, the big reports were on CNN and stuff that there's going to be 40,000American casualties in the first 40. They had all kinds of crazy stuff. Is that what your mindset was going.

[B]

And it was. And you know, I kind of skipped over it. But we, you know, back then when you had Yemen, you know, a little different than Yemen and Oman. Now you had North Yemen, South Yemen, now North Yemen's Oman. Well, that's where we trained for that big faint. So we were sitting down on those beaches doing the hydros so the boat companies could come in and the, you know, all the elcats and the LCU's and all that could bring all the grunts in. So we trained for four or five days on the beach there, you know, in North Yemen. And not knowing as a kid, not knowing that was that faint to storm the beachhead in Kuwait, you know, the traditional Marine Corps mission which in an ephemera recon platoon, our traditional is hydro patrol in be a little ahead of the stay guys and head of the infantry and just keep moving. Well, when I remember we're in, you know on the Tripoli, we're on the com deck and we're going over the maps and I was in RTO, I was primary, I care 104k was 65. Even though I was a grunt. Yeah, we didn't have many calm guys.

[A]

KY65 was a big, oh, it was a beast.

[B]

And my gosh, you jumped that stinking thing and it dropped Phil. So you had to carry a Kick 13 tape reader, everything with it. Oh, we're gonna bring back memories on that one. But the, we're looking at the, you know, with the old school 10 power, you know, like Joel, not jewelers ones, but the map reading, looking at the sad images. And our team leader has got us in there and we're going to try to plan that route after the hydro. And it was just, you know, trench, trench, berm trench, berm trench, you know, on all those public beaches. And we're like, oh, it's gonna suck. Yeah, you know, we got a snoop and poop, you know, by platoons, you know, three teams of six guys. We're gonna have to do our 800 meter lane and then go in and gather some information. This is gonna be interesting. And then it went away. But you know, not like we knew that didn't get passed down to the lowest level, but it was interesting. And then sitting outside of a waffer with a bunch of Saudi, you know, there were Saudis and like a look like an old school little bitty castle right on the border. And we're out there and you know, first time I ever seen buddy pray, you know, Muslims, you know, it was wild. I mean it was just super cool to have that experience at that age.

[A]

Oh yeah, for sure.

[B]

But.

[A]

And so how long were you, how long did you stay over there?

[B]

We only stayed in country like a month. And then they brought, they use the majority, you know, because Tripoli had gotten hit. They were trying to figure out what to do with our platoon with everybody trying to find divers to work the offshore, you know, the go platts that have been blown up. Well, me and one other guy were the only non divers in the platoon and they take us first of all rain to the ASU and then we go into Dubai and they house us in these like little I've come airbnbs now. So everybody else from our platoon could go out and work go plats and figure that out. And then next thing you know they're like, okay, you know, we're, we're heading to Bangladesh and then we're heading that. And that was Operation San Angel.

[A]

What was that?

[B]

That's when that tsunami came through. Now this is in 91. March of 90 or. Yeah, early April. 91, Operation San Angel. Well, we're floating back to head to The Philippines, which we were all excited about that and we pull up into Bangladesh and that was, you know, the stuff we saw in Desert Storm from the air campaigns. I guess that's morbid to some people, but it wasn't that bad. It wasn't saving Private Ryan, getting off the mic boat, you know, getting hammered down. It was just people again blown up because they didn't put up a fight that well. But Bangladesh, when you see a couple hundred thousand people floating in the Bay of Bengal and we've got boats and ponchos so we're going to help this. Well, we only spent three or four days for us and then we started seeing back to the Philippines just before, you know, the volcano went. Because that volcano went up in June of 91. And then we got back to, you know, off the coast, Camp Pendleton. Oh I guess it was right almost July 1st.

[A]

That's.

[B]

I didn't, I only didn't spend long in country in Desert Storm.

[A]

That's still a hell of a freaking first deployment right there.

[B]

Of course.

[A]

19 year old kid.

[B]

Yes. I mean but it's exciting.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

Because who, who doesn't join not to be tested. I wish we would have been tested, you know, a lot more just to see how you're going to react during that test. And what 19 year old, 18, 19, 20 year old kid that's trained. Train, train, train, train. You want to be evaluated now being an RNS or an amphib platoon, you know, because First Force had just stood up in 87, 88. So all we had at First Recon Battalion was we had the Charlie company was deserts habitual relationship, seven Marines, fifth Marines. We could either go support them with amphib requirements if they're going to do raid or guess you can call it deep recon. So most of our time spent was either doing beach weeks or long patrols, seven 10 day patrols, you know, to cover that two to 50 mile barrier. Because in the force DRP platoons would cover everything for the meth agenda. So I love patrolling because I love being in the woods. Did not like carrying a radio. But you gotta do what you gotta do. I mean I didn't become appointment until we got somalia. I carried perk 77, KY57, then the 104 with KY65. And I carried that dude for about a year and a half.

[A]

That was my, that was, I was a radio mentu in the team.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So I was in the same time period. So it was. Eventually we got the 117 Bravos but for HF the HF was the 104 and the 65. Oh, yeah, that's a freaking.

[B]

And then the DC. Do you remember the D? Did you guys get the digital communication terminal? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

What was that thing called? Dmg? Dm.

[B]

We called it the dct.

[A]

Okay, but that was a brick, too.

[B]

It was with that long skinny ass battery and the fact that we would have to do our combo reps, our set reps, you know, all of our reporting process. You had to do it on there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so you just add one more, you know. And back then for us, we called it the dmdg.

[A]

And it was basically echo Charles. It was like a keyboard with a little LCD screen you're typing stuff into.

[B]

At least you could handle the brightness because that was the problem. You got to think when you're in a reconnaissance platoon, you know, if you're going to get under the poncho per se, to. To have a red light on or to have to turn a light on for whatever reason. Well, now you've got this screen about that big. That's red, bright red. And it would just. If you didn't, you know, check the volume control on that thing, it would be loud and bright. But I thought it was cool because I had to go through CW school.

[A]

Oh, yeah, I did too.

[B]

Yeah. And did dawn my ass. I must lay in the rack for

[A]

any good at it.

[B]

Months. I was okay at it, but it went away quick. But I would let. I remember two weeks I was laying there. So I was like, if that'll get me that, that knee key out of. If I can get it out of my ruck, we're good.

[A]

All right. So what you doing to get back.

[B]

What do you mean? Get back in the core?

[A]

No. So you got back to. You got back to. From your first deployment?

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

And just get in a workup for another, another cycle.

[B]

You just start going in the training pipelines. And now there's a whole different mindset. Because the mindset prior to Desert Storm was all. At Coronado, it was all IRA spetsnas. Everything that we trained for was if it's going to be in an urban environment, it's going to be IRA techniques. And if it's going to be, you know, contiguous linear, it was going to be basically Russia, Cold War ideology. And now that's all changed.

[A]

Yeah. You know, when I went to Sears school, it was all like eastern block. For us, it was eastern block. Like they're speaking like Russians, but like. And then there's like Arabic mixed Into it. It was a really. Yeah. They're just trying to cover all the bases, I guess. But yeah, that was the mindset back then.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I was like we hadn't quite. The Cold War was allegedly always over. Right. But they hadn't transitioned out of it yet. So that was still definitely a big focus.

[B]

Yeah. And you're not going to train minus the cage parts or something like that. You're not doing the Vietnam era, you know, portion of it. So we get back, we have relief package and then it starts going in because, you know, I'd already went to jump school in October of 90 and we just start preparing, you know, alert contingency and got our beepers, if you remember that ST time.

[A]

Huh.

[B]

And well, certain portion of Camp Pendleton units have to be on that every month. They rotate it every month. Nothing sexy. You just had a beeper.

[A]

Yeah. Well, I mean when I got a beeper I thought it was like very cool.

[B]

Well, it is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And a Radio Shack suitcase, phone, you know, can't afford to pay. But the. So yeah, then it just kind of was one thing after another. And you know, I got married in 91. We had our. I was actually on a JTF6 op doing counter narcotics in New Mexico when my daughter was born, my oldest. So it was just. It's such a blur at this point 35 years later because it was just nonstop. If you weren't on the beach or out patrolling or going up to Bridgeport or going to a school or whatever, it just. It's crazy.

[A]

That's just life.

[B]

Yeah. It was just so fast. Looking back on it now and then, you know, we take off for Somalia. We were actually in R. You know, a bunch of us were in RS School there at SOTG and well, yeah, I'll say that. We're in RNS School, Louisiana rights. 92.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they pulled us go up to El Toro stage up. Well, you know we're getting ready going 15th mew. So when the guys the infantry's going up there were their attached reconnaissance asset. What the hell are you going to do with, you know, 18 of us? You know, we can't get two on a row in a six man snatch team with two guys in the center that we were training at El Toro for. And you know, I was carrying a saw at that point. I just come off the radio and was getting ready to become an atl which change. And you know, I had turning and get a shotgun. Can't have a saw up there. Well then my gosh gets El Toro and then the next day, they're like, well, we don't need you 18 guys, so come back down. And then. Yeah, I didn't want to miss that. Yeah, because that was interesting. Doing line training and.

[A]

Yeah, that's a little contingency you weren't

[B]

planning on, but, you know, it was definitely interesting. Well, come back. And then we start getting heavy on the mew, you know, we. I got in trouble. Do you ever remember a guy named Bob Hassel?

[A]

No.

[B]

Yeah, he'd been at Team One, him and a guy named G. I heard he got killed on the Silver Strand 10, 15 years ago. But Bob Hassell and a guy. What was Gaffney's first name?

[A]

I know Gaffney.

[B]

They got in trouble, so not a big surprise. They sell them to us for, I guess you're, you know, whatever you guys call it. They came to small. They were 15th meal. They came to be corpsman for us.

[A]

Oh, right on. Oh, because they got in trouble. Yeah, got it. Yeah.

[B]

And never asked, never cared. You know, I. I wish I remember Gaffney's first name, but the. Because he was younger. Bob Hassell's bigger, muscular guy. And we're down and outside of Phoenix, you remember a base called Williams Air Force Base, right next to the FBI training academy. It's where they were doing the aircraft ever went there. Okay. That's where the FBI cadets were doing their aircraft takedowns.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So for our RNS mission for that mu, they flew us down so we can gather intelligence on them while they were training. Well, me, Michael Mattingly, and Bob Hassell decide to, you know, we're in for a few days. We're gonna have sark duty while the other teams are out doing the RNS mission. We were told not to drink. We go to the Air Force E Club there on Williams. Air Force there. And we went straight. Thankfully, Bob broke contact. He probably. I think it was second class. He should have mentored me in the other E3 lance corporal.

[A]

In his mind, he was.

[B]

He probably was. Well, we didn't. When Bob left to go back to the hooch, me and Squeak, Squeaky was his nickname. We decided we didn't want this party to stop. We end up linking up with some young ladies and their boyfriends or whatever they were, and we moved on to a house party kind of thing going on on base housing.

[A]

These are just great decision after great decision.

[B]

Oh, terrible. Yeah. Like I said, you get. Give me a good leash. I'm pretty decent, but you let me off leash, I'll do stupid Stuff. Immature stuff.

[A]

Well, you are what, 20?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Just turned 20 that summer. Well. Or no, I was 21. I just turned 21. Nope, I was 20 because I was on restriction when I turned 21. Well, when they kicked us out because we're. We were just going mad hatter on the Jack Daniels and their subway sandwiches for their party. Well, they basically kicked me and him mad and lay out. Well then now you got two drunk young marines that still want to keep going. And as we're meandering trying to figure out where we're at on this base to where our hooches are, we just see some blinking lights behind a building. And it was golf carts. Well, later on end up being the med building. Well then we get in the golf carts, we start deciding to play beat them up. We ended up as we're bumping golf carts, running one in a big cul de sac. So he jumped in and next thing you know, we see some small cactuses in front of a building. We decided to slalom those, which mean we ran over every one of them. Didn't know they were endangered. Didn't know that was general's building. We get back at the hooch at 4:30. Air Force MPS are there because they know these have to be marines. Well, my buddy Madden Lee was wearing a miss. He's wearing white levi's and a misfit shirt. So not like he's not gonna stand on like sore thumb. Well, we talk our way out of it when they're searching all our rooms and we're like, no, we just woke up. We've got a, you know, we got radio watch over at Sark and you know, which we did at 6. Why the drinking? They wasn't smart. We show up right as our staff sergeants coming over there to say, you guys should have already been here. And lo and behold, they quasi arrested us. If you want to call it that. Nothing in my record for that. Took us to that same medical building to do blood work. They're going to get us for DUI on golf carts on this base back. And then all this damage and then we kind of get stupid in the med thing. They've got us locked to these four chair, you know, these chairs that are four of them together. And we started getting stupid. Next time they caught it, he's dragging one, I'm dragging one. I'm putting IV in his arm in one of the med rooms. That didn't go over very well. Five hours later, we're on a chopper back to Pendleton Monday morning We were in battalion level offset tires so that they can't court martial us so I can reduce Both of us did. Kicked us off the mew, rightly so. Deserve that. And then put me in a different platoon and ended up going to alert and to go to Somalia. So, yeah, I'm not proud of that, but I'm going to say it because I've heard you talk about decision making processes and that's what I. I'm giving that as my bad example of you. You don't keep me on a leash. It's not too rowdy. Not like I'm being evil, but I'll just be stupid.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And immature. Sad.

[A]

Golf carts can be real tempting, you know? Yeah, I know. I had guys, we were at a place where they had golf carts and the golf carts. I didn't know about this and, you know, the security contacted me in the morning, like, hey, we think one of your guys, like, took, you know, golf carts and crashed one of them. And we found it in the ditch, you know, And I was like, well, we worked late. I don't think it was one of my guys. He goes, well, is this one of your guys? Had the guy's wallet and id.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Yep, that's one of my guys. Yep. I guess it was one of my guys. We didn't work that late. We didn't work late enough.

[B]

Yeah, start covering.

[A]

And so when you, you went out with a MEW to go, did you guys know you're going straight to Somalia? Was that the deal?

[B]

No. And I end up not going on that mu. That was 15. They're the ones that did the initial on the TV, swimming.

[A]

Oh, so you were hating life.

[B]

Oh, well, but I deserved it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, I did 45. 45. Reduction rank, half months pay for two months. Spent my 21st birthday. My wife is pregnant, she's doing October, and my parents come out. I never called them and said, I'm on restriction up at san Mateo. We're 5th Marines because that's who technically we're attached to. And then what happens? First Recon Battalion disbands. Well, I stay with 5th Marines and they made Bravo Company, Recon Company, 5th Marines when they disband. So now I just stay there after I get off restriction EPD and we start going back into another training cycle. But now it's totally different. You know, we don't have the funding pool like we did. We don't have the space. We don't have the. All the support. You know, there is no parallel off, no More jump mission anymore, none of that stuff. And we're sitting there training and they're like, they come in and they're like you guys are going, you're flying over. So we flew into Mogadishu December 29 of 92 to support UN head chairman, support the infantry and basically was going to be to guard UN vehicles that were delivering food and run security. So six man teams easy. We got two Humvees, one Mark 19, 150 cal or back then a 16 depending and three guys in one truck, three guys in the other and we get to Mogadishu. Our platoon after about a week after Bush left Bush 41 he came in on New Year's to say yeah, thank you guys, I'm going away. Clinton's gonna take over and went out to Bart, you know, Bardera first then by doa and then we did a couple fly ins in Galahar out on the Kenyan border. So for that three months we, we were staying pretty busy patrolling.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because we were doing a true RNS mission.

[A]

Yeah, that's again like totally legit for a 21 year old Marine that's now out there doing real combat operations.

[B]

Well, and it was more action than Desert Storm. Yeah, you know, okay, no, I'll always compare everything to Ramadi and I know we're going to get there but Desert Storm is a combat action ribbon that don't really know. We hit one anti personnel mine, blew a tire off our truck. That's not combat. It was so fast and so aggressive and they were so weak. There was, you know, Kafchi no Kofche they scrapped up but for our area clearing all y' all Salim and you know, all the bases that we were going through after a Wafra, it was nothing. I mean it really wasn't.

[A]

And what were these patrols like in Somalia then?

[B]

You know, like North Texas scrub brush, you know, mesquite style trees, baboons. That was cool. We because you know we're doing the typical RNS patrol at night, hide site during the day. And where do you, you know like Desert Storm we dig and the net, you know, have our painted nets and sand on them, you know, trying to hide site. But hindsights in Somalia you find scrub and hopefully there's not a bamboo or a pig in there. And that was the problem because if it's going to be big enough to get all six of you in there and you can hide because there is no real. It's, you know, you stop waddies. But there's not a Lot of high ground. It's pretty flat terrain. And you find a. A nasty spot big enough to get the team in. You know, sometimes we do three and three if we had to. And oh, yeah, I've crawled in a few of those little. Because, you know, it's an animal. Cause this in the briers to get in there. So, you know, you're going in, pistol out. It's going to suck. Try not to give away. You don't want to shoot. It's not our job to be firing a weapon. It's gather information. So you don't want to, you know, give away your position because we all know what E is like. That sucks when you're way out somewhere. Well, yeah.

[A]

What were you guys recon in for?

[B]

Basically just gathering information. Because a big problem out in Bardera by DOA Galahari was not only the trucks getting taken over, you know, come February, you know, those fractions. That's why I was calling me. Everybody thinks Blackhawk Down. They think Muhammad Adid Farah Deed, you know, everybody knows his name. They don't realize Mogadish had 13 of those same people. He was just strongest. And then you have the same thing in all those other small towns like Bardera Bar, you know, Baido, all those. And then those were right on the Juba river that runs down the center. And then, so they would come in, they would snatch leaders in a village and then pull them out and kind of, you know, hold them hostage. Well, they were telling us, you know, we're no longer doing the food convoys. Now we're out there gathering information. For the infantry to say, okay, we're watching them come down these lanes, these wad. Typically they would use wadis and because no high ground. And that's what we were doing. You know, anybody that we got a handle on, it's because they were coming in the village and early morning went still purple, snatch up village leaders and then just try to make the village give them whatever they wanted. And then once we started doing that, that started going away. And then by March, they were like, okay, 10th Mountain's coming in, taking your place for, you know, all Marine forces, you know, Mew, 15th Mew, my original platoon, they just did the initial. And then once we got there, they went back on their mew duties and didn't really stand country, but it was. It was cool. It was traditional deer or deeper.

[A]

I know, that's awesome.

[B]

Yeah. But not super deep because not that big of a country, but it was cool.

[A]

And. And then did you guys just Fly home when the mission was over.

[B]

Yeah, came through Shannon like you always do. And then we come into Shannon, got back and that was late March of 93. I got out of the Marine Corps in May of 93.

[A]

And what was your plan when you got out of the Marine Corps going to school?

[B]

The corpsman. That's why I'm, I know Hassle and Gaffney and the guy so well. We didn't have a corpsman on our team. Well, I took natural to all the aid classes and I loved it. Probably hindsight, should have been a corpsman later on in life, but I really enjoyed all the classes. You know, back then, if you remember, it's all MTTS. You know, we always had MTTS. We're like SF demo MTT. You get the 18 Delta guys come out for three weeks, weeks into a class for our corpsman and they would always let me. A matter of fact, in Bardera I was wearing second class petty. I'm an E3, but so I can go to the major battalion class. My corpsman gave me his chevrons and his caduce and I went to the the class because I was the team medic too. Yeah, especially once I quit carrying the radio. And yeah, you know, it is. We always rotate point man ATL, TL. They're not leaving their positions. Typically RTOs aren't either. But you know, when you're really doing long patrols, you're going to rotate that point man out and he's gonna, you know, be an ammo barrel or not carrying a VHF or hf. But for me, I always had Aiden litter. I always had the classes. It came natural, I enjoyed it. So I'm like, I'm gonna go to med school.

[A]

And did you, did you feel like you're, you know, like you had enough of the Marine Corps basically?

[B]

No, I think it was.

[A]

Or was your record a little bit jammed up and you're like, well, well,

[B]

I could have, I could reenlist. I was RE1A. They would let me reenlist even though I had been burnt because oh, threes in the reconnaissance side was still not a whole, you know, not a big mos. A lot of people weren't getting it, but, you know, I think part of it was stuff my grandpa had told me in 91 after I got married was weighing on me because my daughter's born, I'm a jtf. I see her for one few days at Williams when my parents and my, my ex and my brand new daughter come in and then I go on restriction you know, just all that whole time frame and then do a couple classes and bam, you're flying to. You didn't do the mew, but now you're going to Somalia anyway. I just thought I probably didn't have much ahead of me. And I think it's a typical lance corporal mentality of fts. You know, it was cool when we could jump and we could have fun and do a lot of schools. Now we're at the infantry, and we can't do nothing. And we're kind of the bastard chips stepchildren at 5th Marines. And I'm like, yeah, I'll do it. And it didn't take long for me to realize I'd made a bad decision.

[A]

So you get. You went back home.

[B]

Yep. Went back to. Back to my hometown. Bought the house next door to my mom and dad because I have this young family. I work odd jobs during the summer. Worked in a welding shop dumping slag barrel. I just did whatever temp jobs before I started school in August. And then once I started school in August of 93, and my buddy John Catcher somebody, he's getting out, he's getting ready to go to school. You know, I'm get a job at the ER as an ert because I had all the EMT training certification. So I'm like, well, I'll get some clinical experience, which I did. Had none. So I got a job working nights in the er, going to school five days a week during the day, and I thought that was kosher. And then what happens in 94? A lot of my friends went back over to Somalia, and they come back and they're coming through and they're telling me how much different it was in our first time. I'm not really liking civilian life. I'm doing decent school. I got a 383 GPA in 90 some hours. Yeah. Five semesters, I knocked out 96 hours. I was doing 20, 22. I was going at it like a Marine would go at it and. But then it was. I quit the hospital because I got rode up at the hospital for slamming a drunk Indian because I live in the middle of Cherokee Nation. Two Indians come in from the bar. One buddy stabs the other buddy. They get him in on a gurney. Nurse comes in after I do his vitals. He starts groping the nurse. She's screaming. I run in there, slam him off the gurney. And then I get in trouble for him. I'm like, if I hurt him, he's in a hospital. But I'm thinking, save her I'm not thinking we get sued. You know, my brain doesn't think that away. I reacted and which I was common back in those days, you know, they get rowdy and they bring everybody in that they just stabbed. But saw the writing on the wall between the buddies. Work. Not really happy being a civilian. I'm gonna go back in. And that's what I did.

[A]

Was it hard to get back in?

[B]

It was because of that. Because they changed the rules in 95. Now, do you know what happened April 19, 1995?

[A]

No idea.

[B]

Oklahoma City bombing.

[A]

Okay. Yeah.

[B]

The day before I was in there getting in. The day before April 18th is when I went to get back in the Marine Corps. But because of my office hours, I had to get three personal letters so that they would waiver my infractions. Because you gotta remember what Clinton did. Not talking bad about him, but we all know that we're in that time. He was really chopping up the military, downsizing everything. And so to pset, prior service entry. I'm gonna have to. Yeah, I'm gonna get lucky. Well, once again now an ACL reconstruction is permanently disqualifying. So what do I do? I'm sitting out there, I can't take no for an answer. They give me my package, you know, and this is the day before Oklahoma City bombing. So I did five months of work, withdrew from school and I'm gonna. And I was working like security at the industrial part where we have just to make money at nights while I'm in school. And I just stormed into that, that maps doctor's hatch. I saw a kid come out, you know, and it was kind of like a psych office. You know, you come in one door, you leave the other. And that's why. It was at MEPs then at the Mural Building. Well, so I can't. I was just, I was frothing. I said, I'm just reflecting over all the bad mistakes I made getting out and just being stupid. And I just stormed back in there and I said, you gotta let me back in. And after five minute conversation, another guy standing there in his underwear and me not taking no for an answer. He. He overturned it.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

And I got back in. And then I'm laying on the couch next morning, see the building blown in half. And then I call the recruiter, this recruiter was Jamie Nunes and Claremore. And he said, we don't know what's going on. But the captain, the Marine captain, the Marine sergeant that got killed in that bombing, thank God every one of the Marines that worked in the staff were at training off site. And the sergeant that got killed, my package was on his desk, and I'm like, oh, you know, I had to get those letters. This took me months. You know what I do? Been very selfish. And Jamie knew it was like, avionics guy, he's like, hey, spank, we got bigger problems here. And I'm like, well, I withdrew from school. I'm. I. I need to be back in. So come June, I get approved. You know, they. They approve me get back on active duty, go down there. They swear me in just like I'm reenlisting. And major Gavin, I'll never forget this guy's name. I'm like, okay, yeah, what. What's gonna be my job? I'm assuming. And no less than.03 my 0 351. Unless you might not put me back as a recon or he's an 0 321, but you'll at least make me a grunt. He is a motor t driver. I'm like, I got pretty decent scores. What's going on, sir? I said, good to go. And I turned into that same lance corporal driving a golf cart. And I said, good go, sir. Whatever it takes. He goes, maureen, what do you mean by that? I said, because it's my naiveness. I said, well, when I get to del mar for motor t. Because when I got out, first force, first angle co and motor t school was at del mar. I said, when I get to del mar, I'm just going to walk over to first force and see whatever it takes to get me in. He goes, well, that's all fine, and danny, but the school's in Missouri at fort leonard wood. And I'm like, well, that failed. And he goes, well, just wait, wait, wait. And he went back for hours. And I'm sitting in the conference room, and I'm like, this sucks, but it's more important for me to be a marine. Stop thinking about the job. Quit being selfish. Being a marine is more important. And that's how I became an 0861. He's already got your gold wings. Do you know what angle co as? I said roughly, I never work with them, But I said, I know who they are. He goes, we're making a 0861 forward observer, and you're going to be destined for angleco. I'm like, okay, sounds good. They got a jump mission. Hey, this they still patrol. You know, all the things that I enjoy doing, being. Being in the woods. I'm like, I'll take it and yeah.

[A]

Did you have to go to these schools?

[B]

Yeah, I had to go to Fort Silver for Ford observers course which I, you know, stupid for me going there. Honor graded it. And then I came here for naval gunfire at lft. Lftc. They didn't give me honor grad there. They gave a reserve Della Valley. They gave him honor grad because I got the shooter award there. Come on recon, we still do that kind of stuff. So it was super easy for me. And, and because I was a peace sapper, they're like, we don't want you to have both of them. I'm like, I don't give a crap. You give me anything. You know, I just want to get back in the fleet. And. But we had a real lucky class. Naval gunfire with six of U.S. marines. One was a staff sergeant, two sergeants, me is technically a lance corporal and one PFC and three SF staff sergeants. That was our whole naval gunfire class. Nine guys. And, and it was good because it was. Give me time to get back into shape too, you know. After Fort Sill, I'm slowly getting back into active duty shape after a couple years of not being on active duty and not doing anything.

[A]

What were you, two years you were out?

[B]

Yeah, it was a little over two years.

[A]

A little over two years, yeah. And what's your first duty station when you get done with schooling?

[B]

Okinawa, Japan, 3rd Battalion, 12th Marines. I don't go to Angleco. Me and J.T. linhart, the, the other younger kid because that kid, that honor grad, Craig Del Valley from New York City, he was a reservist. So me and JT, we go to 3rd Battalion, 12th Marines. So we check in there and at that time it was down at Camp Foster. I don't know if you've ever been

[A]

over there in Okinawa. Yeah, I've been there, but I don't remember. It was like in the early 90s or mid-90s when I was in Okinawa,

[B]

that's when this was 95, 96. We're down at Camp Foster, the big base. And I get there, I'm there a month and the mass sergeant are, you know, we had the shore fire control party. Do you remember those? So basically he said you're, you're an E3. But I picked up corporal right at that six month mark. And while I was there, when I first got there and he had me take shore for our control party to 31st Mew Do. So we're going to go to Camp Hanson, do that. So I spent six Months at Hanson. By the time I got back, you know, I had a few months. We went climb Fuji, went to, you know, a couple training ops at Camp Fuji. And then it's a one year rotation and me and jt, we get ours first angle, go get some. So that's when I got to first

[A]

and, and then you check in there. What's your role there when you show up?

[B]

Yeah, I'm gonna be on a thick firepower control team.

[A]

And what year is this?

[B]

This is 96.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah, September 96. But the odd thing was Gunny Nelson, opportune sergeant. You know, typically angle code did very similar to recon. When you got there, you're kind of like a roper again, you know, that's how I look at it. And then you go through the angle CO Basic course, abc because they don't have a formal MOS school like Recondas or other schools. Excuse me. So I check in. Well, I would. A lot of times I don't wear my wings on my camis, you know, just didn't wear it. So I check in. I'm a corporal and fresh me, all the NCOs and all the people have been around. They're freshmen. You know how that goes. And you know, start checking in, kind of mining my P's and Q's, getting to know my platoon sergeant or my, my salt sergeant, my salt osc, my fico. I see. And Gunny Nelson, our platoon sergeant, he's looking at my records. Oh, damn. You know, you got Desert Storm, Somalia, you already got your gold wings. You know, you, you've already, you've been to arc. You've been to all these different, smaller schools for when we're younger. He's like, you don't need to go to abc. He was, we're not going to teach you anything that you don't already know. And I said, well, I appreciate that. So. And it was kind of like some of the fellow NCOs were, oh, you just think, yeah, you're not going to have to earn it. I'm like, send me through it, I'll do it. I don't give a crap. Well then we immediately go on salt Alpha thick one. Well, I mean, within six, nine months they sent me to jump master school as a corporal. You know, they're already just, I mean, we are going straight into mew supports. So 96, 97, we fly over for 31st mew, we're just going over six weeks, do one op with the rocks. You know, we stayed a week on A rock LST and then you know just basically do the old school assault. When I'm talking the World War II ones ones I had the anchors that would pull you off the beach head and but the it doesn't do like the old LSTs it just opens like this. They ground that dude and then they jack it back off there. So we do an insert with the, the rock recon guys and I'm gonna tell you those guys no joke when they say we're going to move from here to there because they travel light. We've got long rucks on. We're carrying a little bit of weight and a lot of radios and batteries. You know the deal and but it was great. I mean we had a great time. Six weeks come back and then you know you just some guys rotate you get ready. Well what happens 98 I think I just. I was. I was actually I came back from Ranger school. I went to ranger school May of 98.

[A]

How was Ranger school for you?

[B]

Well it was definitely a good weight control process knowledge base.

[A]

How much weight?

[B]

50. I went at 200 and came out at 150. Yeah my, my. My team didn't even recognize me when I before I went on leave they thought I was a new guy. I was emaciated. Looked like I did when I was in the hospital after get wounded. But the, and that was me as now I won't say it that way because that would just be terrible. She's a good woman. I would do anything to just go away for a while and found out my oldest son. She was pregnant with my oldest son Colton. And answer your question it was knowledge wise because in Coronado we I had a Ranger handbook from a PFC Even you know even ARC we use a Ranger handbook so not like the Ranger handbook. I was not naive. I wasn't like a young kid from a battalion somewhere sergeant I was 27 years old.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And yeah I did well I mean sleep no food sucks. Got. I don't want to boast got an undergraduate position, got the AUSA leadership award but that's just because I was an older marine and one I wasn't going to fail. There's no way we had had a. A captain in the class before me before I even left to go out for rap that dropped during rap C an 08 captain. We were getting lots of billets because this is about time they found out they're disbanding first Angle Company. So first I was at first recom time when it disbanded. Now I'M in another unit disbanding First Angle Company and they're going to spend us summer of 90 or sorry 99. So summer, you know, I go, you know, two months and some change for Ranger school. Yeah, it was good. Used to be on my left calf. That's why I put it on my arm. My jack and my dab used to be my left leg. But the constant reminder I shake a soldier's hand. But you know, I come back, they gave me three weeks of leave because I was bad. Well, in that time a lot of us team, you know, team chiefs is what they call us in a fig team leaders. An officer, lieutenant or captain. Team chief is a corporal sergeant, normally sergeant. So I'm a team chief. Well, all of us team chiefs because companies disbanding, we're all going to do B billets. So when I'm back and I'm just started leave to heal, you know, because

[A]

my

[B]

bottom of my feet look like dive booties that we were in Okinawa. It was like horse hair, you know, I had to heal a little bit and put some weight back on because it does, it tests your body. It's a good school. I'm not knocking that. It's a gut check. It's going to teach you intestinal fortitude all day long on what you can accomplish, you know, good on anybody goes through at school. Well, they call me up at the house and I'm like, I come in and see my sergeant major, Sergeant Major west strip. And I'm like, I don't want to be. I got orchestra drill field. I'm not a drill instructor type guy. I don't look the part, I don't sound the part. I want nothing to do. And because I'm way behind my peers that I joined with an 89 and the troubles I'd had my first enlistment, I was like, I want to go recruiting duty. He's like, spank. Why do you want a recruiting duty, Sergeant major? Ain't no way in hell I'm getting promoted on the drill field. It ain't happening. I'm not the type.

[A]

Is it like if you're, if you're, you know, you're out there on the drill field, you're going to be against these front running people. But recruiting duder is like a little on performance. Got it.

[B]

Drill field. And I can't speak for it. I didn't do it. Drill field is all. It's like being in boot camp again.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's all like a promotion board. It's Your, your look. I was never that stereotypical looking Marine. I could always pt not the typical looking guy. So I'm like right there, I'm gonna fail now. I might outrun them out whatever them, some of most of them I would imagine back in those days. But ain't no chance they're gonna look at me and I'm just, you know, doesn't matter what's on your chest. I don't look the part and I can't live the facade. It, you know, I've heard you talk about decentralized control and that you know the deal when you're in small type of units. Even as a marine, you always have bearing and professionalism. But it's, you know, I'm not gonna blast my boots, grow my hair a little bit longer. I'm gonna, yeah, you're gonna push the Marine Corps standards as the way we do it. You know, Recon and debt one and now Raider battalions. But so yeah, I told sergeant Major, he goes, well, go down to the bowling alley on main side. All the monitors are down there. And when you get up there, tell them I allowed you to come because I'm just a sergeant, I'm not staffing CEO. So I go down while the special duty monitors, you got msg, you got drone instructor, you got recruiters, they're always together. Then you got all the moss that are there. We got to remember, okay, only been back from range school two weeks. I've got my, my Charlie's on, you know, the short sleeve shirt and the green pants. I'm not 200 pounds. I'm at best 155. So I, I look like I got cancer. And I did, I got in the line kind of like back in soi. I get up there and I tell the drill instructor monitors, I'm like, hey, I want to see if I can switch my orders. When you got orders last summer, you know, next summer. He goes, you want to be in the drill field or you want to move forward in drill class? I said, no, I don't want to be a drill instructor. He goes, well, is your command know my sergeant major sent me here. Sergeant Major Westward. First thing will go, you can give him a call. And they're like, okay. Well, he just talks to the gunny and mass sergeant from the recruiting station sitting right there. And they're like, hey, this. Well, one of those two, I don't remember if it was a master or the gunny from recruiting. They're like, are you okay? Well, I'm thinking everybody wants to Be a drill instructor. Nobody wants to be a recruiter in the Marine Corps. You almost have to force them. So few elect. That's my mindset. So, no, I'm fine. You know, I just don't want to be a drone structure. And they're like, no, are you okay? Do you have, like, cancer or something? So now I just graduated Ranger school a couple weeks ago. And that's foreign to them, too. Yeah, yeah. They don't know anything about that. They're all admin people. And I'm like, I've lost £50 in two months. I'll put it back on. And then so they did. I got right across the street here, right next drill instructor, schools, recruiting school. And I. Yeah.

[A]

And then did you go back home? Did you go back to Oklahoma?

[B]

Claremore, that town?

[A]

Right back to your. Yeah, basically hometown.

[B]

Because. And this is the irony, when I got my orders, which was a couple months, I went to, you know, right after that, after a month, I went to Sardin's course. So then they were sending us just school, school, school, school, training, training, leadership training, whatever. Well, I've been back from Ranger school for a month and they sent me to Sargent's course, my leadership school for six weeks, which, yeah, I blew that out of the water. I mean, that. That was. I should not have had to go. But Marine Corps makes you go to those. It was way more senior anybody. It was really easy for me. And I was already back in pretty good shape. And then I get out of that. I go to Mountain Instructors course, and then I take leave for Christmas. And Gunnery Sergeant Steve Bell was working in that office in Claremore, Oklahoma, and he's a local boy, still friends day. He's retired sergeant Major, lives same town as me. I walk into that office, Cocky has come me and I'm like, hey, I got orders in June to go to recruiting school. I want to know what I need to do to get here to this office. He goes, you don't want to come to this office. Why not? He was where the. I think Oklahoma rs, Oklahoma recruiting station. Oklahoma was like third from the bottom of the whole country. They were doing terrible. I said, no, I want to come here. I'm from Prior. And he has, you don't come here. I said, no, Gunny, I do. I want to be right here. And since I had switched to become a recruiter voluntarily and I did pretty good in recruiting school, they gave me rs, but because I'd grease the skids with Steve. When I checked into rs, Oklahoma City and it was July, they let me come to his office. His boss had left, he was taken over. Best decision ever made, greasing the skids with him. And so, yeah, check into recruiting. I'm happy, close to my family. You know, my dad just two years before that had a quad bypass. And you know, at this point I've two kids and my son's young, you know, he was born right before I went to recruiting school. My daughter's born in 92. So, okay, you know, come out here for three years, do my best. Well, it worked out great. You know, I got recruiter of the year, got my mentor staff sergeant that first year. And then I almost became a career recruiter. They tried to talk me into it. Go 8412 and. But what happens September 11th? You know, I came off recruiting in O2, summer of O2.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But when September 11th happened, I had been. This time we're already getting divorced. Wife moves back out here to California. I jump in my jeep, take a week and a half's leave. I just cruise cross country, see my kids. I'm back, I'm on my way back on the 40. I kind of break off and do small roads on my way back. Yeah, I'd carry my ranger, roll my baby sack and I just, you know, pull my jeep over wherever and heat up some food and. But I was pulled into a gas station, getting gas into Mexico along 40 and that's when the second plane, I saw it on the gas station TV and I just assumed that I'd be lucky enough to be brought back in to the job angle core or something. Which didn't happen.

[A]

So what did happen? Where'd you go?

[B]

I stayed. They. They kept me on recruiting till summer of.

[A]

Oh, you just f. Finished out your term of that?

[B]

Yep. But in that same time as S. Dillard, we had an opening at Dev Group, McNeil, Massar, McNeil. He was going to retire and stay there because, you know, we have those marine billets there. And D at one standing up at here at Pendleton, Hbert Field was having an opening that master guns was retiring. Well, John Dillard, I was staff sergeant. All the billets were gunny, minimum or master. Well, jump master. I had Ranger school, had, you know, I'd done real well on the job. So big John Dillard was like, what would you like? And I'm like, well, I don't know, you tell me what you think. Which do you prefer? And he goes, well, I've got somebody slotted Freddie Fowler, big guy I was telling you about. He's going to debt one to be the fires rep there in the sport element he goes you can take Hilbert or dev group and I'm like well I'm not an east coast guy never did any time on the east coast all west coast I'm like would that be cool? You know we're not doing anything sexy maybe come out a little bit but we're not doing the team stuff I'm like that'd be cool well my second wife's marine she got or okanawa because at this point we're dating and I'm going to chase her at OK so I call him up I'm like hey can you give me or to Japan he's like spanking going to go out and interview man I've already greased skids you're going out there and I greased skids because you're a staff sergeant they want a gunny mass sergeant he is I sold you I was like no can you give me a place SOG anywhere in Oklahoma. Oh right then I burnt the bridge I burn it and but it's what we do some some of us I'll say I won't impose that on either one of y' all so they find me a spot 12th Marine Regiment Okinawa Japan oh sorry. Well I get to Camp Anson I don't care I thought I could get an SOTG spot yeah nothing for me there they don't care yeah I'm probably got a bad name at this point in the little community of Angleco which is gone and but I'd done real raw on recruiting meritors promoted all that good stuff I don't care you didn't put me where you want me at this point I'm thinking her and so just beat myself with a hammer or something but hell still young even though I'm not that young yeah I'm almost 30 well okay yeah I'll get into it but it opened up an amazing opportunity for me and that's where I'm going to get to where we're going to be going here pretty quick I assume I'm there for about a year and a half they bring me down to 312 now I know nothing about the artillery they fay tids and advanced field artillery attack data system all the computer systems they use for regiment Marine regiment level battalion fires I know nothing about this Good at patrolling, good at communicating good at dropping bombs or sea admissions that's all I did at Angle Go that's our bread and butter so send me down to 312 within the master guns at the meth goes, hey, we got authority to build a new angle company. You're about the only guy on the island that has angle co experience. So I got to build fifth angle CO Nice. And when you think Dave Burke, Cesar, Janae, all those guys, that was me and Major Craig's Krebs going once a month from Okinawa to Quantico talking to all the monitors, asking for them to give us bodies. So you got to think 04 to our platoon deployment. Deployment. That brigade platoon, we had not even been a unit a a year and a half and we deployed with second angle go. So I think for me, even though we didn't get the jump mission, which is actually better because jumping in Okinawa is a pain in the butt, you know, tiny island often or go to Guam, you know, at best. So jumping there, I'm glad they didn't bring airborne operations back hard enough. Starting a unit, bringing in Marines to build a unit, especially when you got one, two or three or tours and you're going to rotate up a year and a half for a full, you know, or two and a half years, the unit has to do a full deployment. So that was amazing learning curve. You know, I was the staff NCOIC until we would. And Major Krebs was a CEO until we would get a ser major and a lieutenant colonel because it's a company, but it's battalion command equivalent. So you're a command and yeah, I got to build a unit, you know, got to implement the tones, got to, you know, go me and the major.

[A]

Did you build the tones yourself?

[B]

I use the old first angle code.

[A]

Okay, got it.

[B]

Now at this point, six second angle CO and first angle CO had stood up about eight months prior. You know, they didn't stand them up till around that 03 moment because as we're transitioned from Afghanistan to OIF and they knew that was a push or like, we need to bring these guys back. It's so purple. Think about it. I mean, just like with all of our guys. So, you know, that's one of those dirt to dirt moments at headquarters Marine Corps when you save money during the 90s to chop up all the little units, you know, and then find out that the more and more purple we get, the more and more you need some of those units. But it is what it is. But it was an opportunity. It was amazing, you know, and at that point I just picked up Gunny and I went to THP school back here and I'm going to be Running, you know, ops. I was ops chief, technically. Once we got all the pertinent people in, I was going to be in charge of the jtax, the training. You know, what I know about, you know, I won't say I was dumb at that. When it comes to operations, you know, for that type of environment, I'm pretty good at it. It's just the artillery side, computerized, I don't know, it never wanted to know. It just like having a ruck on and walking around the woods. I mean you only do that so long. But it was cool, you know, bring a bunch of our artillery officers out here, you know, I remember the day Caesar and Dave came in. You know, they were super good dudes, you know, both being 18 drivers, you know, Burke was a major and Caesar was a captain. We're getting chopper pilot, you know, we're getting all types of the pilots because as you know all too well now, Anglico is very aviation heavy on the salts, sporting arms liaison teams. But to build it traditionally. But then when it came into play that they gave us the authorization to attach the second angle CO for that deployment, you know, we got to come back in from Okinawa in September of 05, start to work up, you know, get all the 400 quals for all the, you know, Jtax. And yeah, because we had 32 JTACs, so non aviation guys. Well, Colonel Campbell being an old force guy who owns Second Angle Co, he totally deviated from the traditional Engelco mission where you have salt fic, maybe two fix if you're lucky under assault, attaching to a battalion or a company from a foreign element or the army, you know, that traditional role. He said, I want four man JTAC teams spread all over Anbar. Well, of course I, you know, I talked my colonel in in Okinawa and let me go on the deployment as the ops chief. I sold him Colonel Schrader. I was like, let me go over and work in Al Assad in the ops. I'll left seat, right seat, the second angle co ops chief. And then when we come back over in a year, I can do that five month training package with our guys in Okinawa and then bring the whole company over and we're gonna have a bunch of new guys that rotated off island. So I sold him on it. Well, what's Colonel Campbell do? You, you're a gunny, you're a jtac, you're one of the most seasoned shooters, you know, bomb droppers. He goes, once you take a team. So what's he Do. He gives me the three junior guys in our brigade, platoon Bravo, Huerta and Mitchell, you know, they're both lance corporals. And Mitchell, they were all physical studs. And here I am, 34 at that time. I didn't even tell you. After that deployment, they were talking about doing a total knee reconstruction on my left knee from that ACL reconstruction at 85, 86. So I'm like, I'm doing everything I can to at least get in theater. Because he's sitting in Okinawa when these guys been deploying for, you know, three or four years at this point. Well, Colonel Campbell gives me that luck and I like, but I'll, like I said at the beginning, you tell me what to do, I'll do it, you know, or the best of my ability. I'm like, sir, if that's where you want me. And, you know, not like, I don't know Caesar, but he's going to get a salt, which wasn't a traditional salt. He was a jt, as you know all too well. He was a fake team, just like I was. He was my OIC at that level. But, you know, I'm definitely the more seasoned guy in, you know, at that point in my life. But, man, I was always concerned those young boys were going to run my, you know, what in the dirt because they all three of those guys are studs. They just didn't have much time because they hadn't been with us long before we deployed.

[A]

So at what point, how far out did you know you were going to Ramadi?

[B]

Not till we. They never. Colonel Campbell, because of that audible. Now, when we did our workup prior to taking off in January, it wasn't our whole team. It was basically just jtax because we were going down to the proving grounds. You know, we're staying in Tucson. And the colonel treated us like we were socom. I mean, Paraclete. I mean, he spent a buttload of money on equipment, training, all that for that few months. We, when we got to Al Assad, I think it was four days maybe, but it was. All of us at the headquarters showed

[A]

up to Al Asad not knowing exactly where you were going.

[B]

No, because he was in. He was in that manipulation of we're breaking all these 30 some teams down. Dave could tell you better than I could, but, you know, when I first got there, I've got personal videos of, you know, me and the staff sergeant at work for him for the, technically the platoon, you know, and our troops, you know, our hooch there. I don't Know if you ever went over our little compound, that old para. Yeah, yeah. Building they were in. Well, we probably weren't in there four days. And they called Caesar and he called me up and we went into the meeting. He said, hey, we're going to go over and we're attaching first I.A. i said, good. That's a traditional angle mission right there.

[A]

So first IA for those of you who don't know, say, Iraqi army. So. So it's like, what is it? First brigade of the Iraqi army.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Who is stationed over with the first of the 506 just above camp Corregidor in there. I don't. I forget what that was called. The. The place above, like north of Route Michigan.

[B]

Yeah. You had combat outpost, you had Camp Tiger, Camp Ranger, and then I forget that other one where they were in those three. And the Alpha company was in combat outpost. So with the tanks.

[A]

So you're gonna go over there and just basically embed with the. With the ia?

[B]

Yes. Yeah. Do a traditional angle commission, except not in a traditional tone, but a very robust equipment package. See, spot threes are brand new. I mean, Colonel Campbell pulled all his strings in from his background and force.

[A]

Do you guys have two hummers?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Just decked out with the gear that you needed?

[B]

Yeah. Caesar head. Well, one hummer for all four guys. So Caesar had one, I had one, and then we had a 240 on each of our trucks. You know, like most time Muerta was on the gun, but we went on one QRF from Camper Mahdi proper and did one dagger mission. I pulled. I pulled rotation. Then day after the dagger missions when we went over to Corregidor. I mean, initially, not Corregidor, initially.

[A]

Your first dagger mission, like one of the. Just nighttime route clearance.

[B]

Yeah, I was just running an aircraft over. Looking for lollipops. Yeah, I just pulled it. They were kind of. You know, the way they were doing it over there is they just kind of put us in a rotation.

[A]

Kind of interesting. The first time I went out on a dagger mission, it was at night. And you're like, they're using white lights and you're all comfortable in the. In the. Were you in the Buffalo?

[B]

No, I was following in an MRAP behind it.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Even one in. I did one in the Buffalo.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

That's impressive.

[A]

Just the, like the fact that you can. That you feel safe. I mean, I felt like. Because you never felt safe in a hummer.

[B]

You know what I mean?

[A]

You're like, you're just waiting to get blowed up. But. But in a mrap, you just, like, get to look around, and it's kind of like the air. The air conditions kick in. You're kind of like, man, this is. This is kind of awesome. And then they're like, stop. They stop and you go, oh. And you start hearing them on the radio, like, yeah, we're prosecuting. You're like, oh, so we're. Now we might get blown up anyways, but start digging. Yeah, those guys are freaking heroes, man.

[B]

Yeah, that first, I only did two dagger missions total. Yeah. One at the beginning, one was a follow on when they brought them to Full Metal Jacket. We got a lot of good pictures out there. About time your guys got there, I think. And that one I got to ride in a buffalo. So I only did one in a buffalo. One in an MRAP behind the buffalo. But, yes, you're right. When they turn all that Christmas tree of lights on and they start digging, I'm like, this is retarded. And, you know, the one, the. The second one I went on out of Corregidor, it blew the bucket off. You know, it detonated. And, you know, it was manual, but. Yeah. So it wasn't long at Camp Armani before me and Caesar came over. You know, we initially checked in with the mitt team that was attached to them, and we were. We had a couple rooms set up that was going to be in the headquarters for the IA Caesar didn't like that idea, and he said, I'm not comfortable with this. And I said, well, whatever you want to do, sir. You know. So we drove across the road to Corregidor, check in with first 506. And that's when they gave us, you know, a couple rooms in Full Metal Jacket. And, you know, yeah, that's February. Well, we drive across there, you know, we drive around for their. Their CoC, if you remember, it was just kind of that bigger building facing all the runoff. We drive around that little spot there where we had our shower tent at one point, and we come around on the back side where the palm grove was, and the generators are sitting right there. And that's where that little courtyard was kind of in the middle of, you know, and as soon as we get out of the vehicle, boom. Right next to the generator. And. And that was the best wake up call any of those guys could get. And so right out the gate, everybody was like, okay, this is realistic. Because we would hear the alarms. A few days we're in Ramadi at Camp Ramadi, but, you know, Wasn't Cricketor's

[A]

tiny as you know say Radi is such a bit much bigger camp. You can get hit and you wouldn't even know it.

[B]

It's laundry service and all kinds of crazy stuff stuff there.

[A]

But at Corregidor, no.

[B]

You know it small arms fire go all the way across the camp especially be sunbathing up on top. Full Metal jacket up there.

[A]

So what were your first missions? Were you. Were you going out with.

[B]

Were you.

[A]

Did you go out with just like the whoever was going out and you said he started out like in northeast, up in the more rural areas.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That's where you guys started kicking it off.

[B]

Yeah. So we started off. I remember correct. It was either Jaleba or Sophie, whichever. The most eastern was right on the Euphrates, which I thought that's super cool. You know, I'm walking around the Euphrates River. This is neat. And it traditional supporting. You know, sometimes you get a company of. First of all was. I don't think it was first of. Yeah, I guess it was, you know, company. The army guys. Well then we're just doing their typical clearing palm groves, going through. It wasn't like you're knocking talks and all that. You're just kind of move to contact, I guess best way I can put it and draw them out and which most of the time I do a chauffeur. Chauffeurs fly by, you know, maybe pop a gun around, maybe don't dump something small. But to me that always seems pretty wasteful in those more rural environments because you three guys with a gun. I'm gonna spend all that money with a 500 pounder, you know, let's just go up there and do the traditional infantry locate close and destroy the enemy by fire maneuver. To me that saves more money. But of course that would change.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

As you know all too well.

[A]

So then at what point did you start moving back more into the Malab?

[B]

That was probably March.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I would guess March. Not long. We probably only spent three or four weeks kind of working our way back because we did have some patrols by that amusement park. And then matter of fact later on as we'll get to with your guys too. Too up there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But yeah, maybe a month. And then so we're at this point it's got to be March. And then late March, the focus of effort was going to be start clearing, you know, those different parts.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And. And your guys had to come in about that same time.

[A]

We came in in April. So I came in in April. That's when. And we got over to Corregidor pretty quickly. I don't remember the exact dates, but we. When we initially went to Corregidor, we spent a little bit of time in Corregidor and then we went back and then we kind of formulated the guys that were going to go over to Corregidor permanently, you know, in a permanent way. It was ended up being maybe. Maybe eight guys total of Seth's guys. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Because you guys changed it up after the 13th of April.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

I'll never forget that day.

[A]

Yeah. So that I'm trying to think. No, you know what? So we. When we went over for. For that mission that we were all going to do that big giant clearance of the Moab.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So this is when the blue on blue happened.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And when we went over there, I took a big bunch of guys. So we had. We had a pretty good group of guys. It wasn't until after that happened, then we all went back to the camper Mahdi and then we assembled a smaller group of guys. Guys that were going to go over and basically be embedded with the first, the 506 and the 118 IA. So, yeah, we went. When we went over for that big clearance in the Blob where we ended up having the blue on blue, that was a pretty. We had a pretty big chunk of guys.

[B]

I remember you had more people then because that's when Tony was downstairs. And after the 13th, that next day, when I went down talk to him and talk, you know, the guys, that's when it was like, whoa, okay. Not seeing these guys around. And then Seth comes back, it's like, hey, let's work together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we know we're going to be in the area together, let's kind of.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Which could call.

[A]

Yeah, of course. Of course. And I don't know. Did you listen when I had Joe Claiborne on?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. We had to watch that, see him.

[A]

Of course. Of course. It's awesome. Yeah. You're the. You're the gunny that I talk about. So when, you know, we just Real quick brief. I had. I had four little elements out in the field. I had an element with C2. I had an element with the Iraqi soldiers that were doing the clearance, which is, I think where you started off your Dave. Because you're doing frontline trace. The whole nine yards I had. Then I had two sniper overwatch elements out there real quick, just giving people the lay of land. We start everyone's pretty much in a gunfight pretty early in the morning. And my guys, one of my sniper elements had moved across the road just on the other side of the. Of the limit of advance. And a group of Iraqis that, no one really knows why they did this, but they had the idea that they were going to go set their own perimeter on the area that was being cleared. They started running down. From what I understand, you were like, where are they going? But you gotta, you gotta follow front line tracer. You just follow them?

[B]

Oh, yeah, right down there with them. Held my guys up, Said, hey, you just stop where they stop on that last building for that open court, if you remember that open thing. And I'm just running with them because it's dark, you know, it's just now getting purple.

[A]

Just getting purple.

[B]

And by the time I got to that metal gate, the driveway gate, not the personal gate, is when he took it. Yeah, you know, right there at the door. And yeah. Yeah, that's when I changed.

[A]

So your Iraqis went in to get control of this building or set up an overwatch position. My guys were already in there. And when my guys saw a guy sneaking through the courtyard of a bill of a door that they had zip tied shut. One of my guys saw a guy with an AK47. He looked, looked at his Iraqis because we. My guys had Iraqis with him too.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, this is enemy shot him then. Now you got a doubt. You got a down guy in the courtyard. You don't know who's in the building. You're assuming it's bad guys. You guys start engaging that building, what do my guys do? Return fire. This is just a classic horrible blue on blue.

[B]

Insane.

[A]

Yep. You your guys or you called the qrf. The light QRF shows up, it's humvees. The humvees start dumping rounds into the building. My guys are inside receiving those rounds. And again, I mentioned some of these details, like the fact that Matt has be who is who like 11 hours earlier had been shot out of a. Of a sniper tower with a dishka. So now he's on the rooftop getting shot at with a.50. But he's no, it's a 50. He thinks it's a dishka. He's literally going, I can't believe these bastards found me again with their disca. Because if you're thinking if you could start. Start getting shot at with a.50 cal, you're gonna like, know you. Oh, this is Americans. But he's thinking it's the dishka.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Again, One of these horrible situations. So now my guys called the heavy qrf. When I hear the heavy QRF call, I say to Joe Claiborne, hey, those are my guys, but let. Let's go. So when we round the corner, the tanks are in front of us. The tank stops, starts like. I see red smoke. That was one of my indicators. I was like, wait, why are we seeing red smoke right now?

[B]

Me and him both pop smokes in that courtyard same time.

[A]

So I get out. I. I'm. I think I said to you, I was like, hey, what's going on? And you go, there's moving that building right there.

[B]

Yeah. And I go, first time we ever met.

[A]

Yep. That was the first time we ever met. Maybe in a briefing we might have, like, glanced exchanged. Good. But I go, hey, what's going on, Gunny? And you go, hey, there's. There's Mooj in that building right now, and they're bringing it. And I was like. And something didn't add up in my head. And I looked at Z, my sea. I was like, on me. And he followed me over, kicked open the door, and I see Tony inside, and he goes. And I said, what happened? And he said, I killed the guy in the courtyard. And then they brought it. And I was like, hey, it was a blue on blue. And he gave me the look of, you know, what the hell?

[B]

And.

[A]

And then I came back out. I was like, hey, where's. Where's Claiborne? He was up on the roof. And I got to him, I said, hey, man, it was a blow on blue. He's like, what? And I said, yep. So that's, you know, the. The quick dump from my perspective, I don't know whatever other detail you want to add.

[B]

Well, that was, you know, when he. When I got up, it was right when I got to the gate when I heard the round go off. And then that. The guy that was right behind him, he just starts screaming. And I try to stop him at the gate. And then I run back because, remember, the built. They were going to go firm in that last building. And then there was that empty lot that had that big dipsy dumpster. And then you had that road, long axis. And then your guys were in that house. And I'm, you know, inside that big old place there. So I kind of run back and forth. I'm trying to call one of the guys to give me some more men. And then my guy, my, you know, Mitchell Warton, Bravo, they come up and gun him where you want us. Said, you get up on the roof. Get calm. Get me an aircraft. Call the battalion command. Tell them what we got. I'm gonna run back down here. So I grabbed two of the jundies. We come back over, we go just inside that gate. They had a toilet out that outdoor toilet right there. So we pop into there now, I might add, this whole time I'm suppressing. Every time I get close to the building, I'm.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I got the jundies shooting. I'm waiting for the army to come up. And it wasn't the gun trap. I didn't call the QRF until my error was denied. And that's when I called QRF and requested a tank.

[A]

Yep. And I'm pretty sure you got your air denied.

[B]

Thank God.

[A]

Because I. My sea and me were like, hey, we don't. We don't know exactly where our guys are. Like, do not drop right now.

[B]

No. Thank God.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah, thank God.

[B]

I'm glad you guys were there. Like you and Joe talked about. So glad. Because being the. Being on the ground and running it all. All my focus of effort and this is bad on me, but my focus of. Because you remember Caesar's independent. I'm talking. My guys are straight to battalion, you know, battalion command. I'm thinking, get air. They killed. And I don't care if it's, of course, who it is that gets killed. When I'm working with them, I'm going to treat them no different than anybody else. So in that mindset, I'm going to treat whoever killed them the same way. And that's the hardest part of that day. You know, when it came to. When I saw him coming out of the building when you were there, that. That's a worse. You know, I know for you guys, it's big Marine Corps. It's always been huge.

[A]

Oh, yeah, that's the worst.

[B]

Because it was such a big thing throughout our warfare of it happening. But so come back in. I'm suppressed and I'm waiting to get the truck. Come up. I'm, you know, I'm on my inviter and I'm calling back over to Mitchell, and I'm like, hey, where's my hair? Where's my. Where's my error? And he's denies. I come back over, and I'm like, okay, I'm kind of running back and forth. Well, me and those two, we decide we're not gonna go grab the body yet. It. And we start running back and next saying, I see a grenade roll right by that dipsy dumpster. So not that they're going to understand their jundies. Most of them, they didn't speak English. Most of those guys, I just grenade drop wounds. Guy in front kills a guy behind. And then you know, that's where in that one video that Stephen knows. I remember they gave it to me, I was in hospital. You see the one guy run at me, throws the belt, you know, for the, you know, his belt, whatever it was, throws that belt down. And you hear him going off and then you hear me go bang on that. Because at this point I'm whisk, I'm Winchester, I fired 13 magazines. So once that gun truck, that first gun truck waiting for the tank to get up there, you see it in the video. I right as I'm banging on it. And I do that proverbial follow me because I want that 50, I want to walk that 50 right where I want them until that tank gets there. But right before he started that video that, that army lieutenant was in the front seat. I'm like, give me all your mags. Now thinking back, I should never do that. Give me two. But I'm like, give me ever. Well, they had just gotten the 35 rounders, so I was excited. Several standard 30s and yeah. So once I got the truck up there, I started suppressing and that's when I saw the movement on the rooftop by that big satellite dish when I, you know, the old school six foot satellite dishes. When I saw. Because now it's, you know, right before that tank came up, before I popped the smoke, it was just getting good enough light.

[A]

Yeah, that's another thing that was. There's so many little holes in the Swiss cheese. Bad crypto changed at 2:00 in the morning. I don't know if you remember, remember that like it was if there was just thing upon thing upon thing.

[B]

It's. It was terrible. Yeah, worse. That is probably my worst experience ever. I mean honest country, that's way worse than what happened to me. Because if, you know, when I saw the movement on the rooftop through the mouse holes, I, because you know, I carried him for a two or three. Now I carried a couple smokes, always had a tube for a Hilo. But you know, I carry 10 hand grenades and 10 HE rounds in my Nalgene. You know, putting algene bottles in those. It was hey, for that time frame, hand grenades and 40 mic mike. He's so remember I took my smoke out loading he and I'm like that dish where those holes were. I did, I sent, I sent one over that dish oh, that didn't kill nobody. And then I hit that dish and my intent was hit that dish. And that frag pattern would get the two guys. So glad I didn't work out. That didn't.

[A]

Yeah, so glad. And by the way, Matt Hasby, he was like. Cuz he, there was, he was the guy that was stuck on the roof.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So another guy was, I think one more guy was with him who just like was able to very quickly like get down the stairs, but Matt couldn't move. And he, he, you know, when he tells the story now, you know, of course, you know, 20 years later, but he's like, oh yeah, I was just like waiting to die. He got his pistol out and he was like, hey, when these guys come up here, I'm going to get a couple of them. But like I'm going to die now. And yeah, freaking absolutely horrible. And you know, it's one of the, it's one of the biggest focuses that I had when I came back and I took over training was to cause enough chaos and confusion that the seals that were getting ready to go on deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, every single troop that I put through for three years of training, I all had blue on blues because, because we put them in situations that was going to be really, really challenging because it wasn't emphasized as much as it should have been. And the, the way it was emphasized during training for us was like, oh, it, you know, this would never happen. Number one, you have all seals. I'll tell you what, the percentage of it happening if you only have seals goes down a lot. Just like if you only have Marines, just like if you only have Iraqi army, you put all the, those elements together, you, you throw the language bar. Like there's so many things that roll into it and those, those, you know, the Pat Tillman case is another one.

[B]

Oh yeah, Bad one.

[A]

Yeah, is a bad one. And one, one of the things that bothers me is there was a, there was a case of blue on blue in Vietnam with seals. It was X ray platoon. And I knew it had happened, but they never debriefed it to where like to explain it to young leaders like, hey, this is way more, this is, this, this happens a lot easier than you think it does. And I think that's one of the, one of the biggest things that I tried to emphasize afterwards when I went, when I got home and started running training, it was like, you need to understand how, what a guy, when a guy is getting shot at, what their, what their viewpoint is the Chaos, the fog of war. Like, all these things really come into play. And, you know, Joe Claiborne, highly experienced at that time.

[B]

You.

[A]

Highly experienced at that time, by the way, with the seals we had. We had Iraqi soldiers with them with the sole purpose of, like, making sure that they can deconflict. They had, you know, you know, they carried like the little ICOM radios. Like, we wanted to make sure that our interpreter could talk to the Iraqis on their ICOM radios. You know, just get given the communication. So even with all those protocols put in place, like, that was like an absolutely freaking awful day.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, you know, to the, you know, the battalion commander, I went back and, you know, he. I went with Joe Claiborne. I don't know if you were with us, but we walked right up to his office and he was like, what happened? And I like, just. I was like, hey. I pointed out, went through it on the map, like, this is what happened. He was. And he was such a great guy. And he understood, you know, he understood the chaos and the confusion that occurred. And he was like, okay, guys, make sure it doesn't happen again. Get your gear back on, because we have. Whatever it was. I think we had four more operations to do that day.

[B]

But work carries on.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, work carries on. And I guess you had to go reload your mags.

[B]

Yeah. And that wasn't. That's the honest got truth. Me. You told me that. That did it floored me, you know, because one, at this point in my life, I'm gonna thank God for that. Not get any worse than it did. But that mindset to me at that point was, you know, initial instinct. I'm gonna kill everybody in that building. You know, I'm gonna drop a bomb on it. I'm gonna. They're shooting at me now and throwing grenades. There's all this other stuff going on. Yeah. I'm gonna lay waste to it. And I think the whole effect, you all, you and Joe being in the positions that you were in, maintain that's important thing that I think most people don't even realize when it comes to what you just described, is having that command and control ability from the outside. Visual. No visual. Being able to determine common sense. The fifth principle of patrolling something. Right. Okay. My guys are there, his guys are there. You guys went a little too far. This hat. You know, it was just a bad situation. And. But thank God you guys saw enough to deny the error. Yeah, I was pissed at the point, but I went right to my training and said, okay, nowhere. Get A tank. Okay. Gotta wait for the tank to get here. Get a gun truck. Because we were walking. We had no vehicles that day. We're doing walking patrols like we had been doing for a while at that point. But yeah, April 13, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If I remember correctly.

[A]

Yeah, I don't remember the exact day,

[B]

but yeah, just a few days from now.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So after that, so we got put like, stand down, investigation, the whole nine yards.

[B]

Change uniforms.

[A]

Yep, change.

[B]

Remember that?

[A]

Well, yeah, that's right. Like, even that afternoon, guys were. The Iraqis were putting like armbands on, like with like just some kind of armband that indicate. I think it had like a blue sticker or something. It was like trying to make the PID easier for everybody.

[B]

Yeah, they were worried that. I imagine you guys were worried. Oh, yeah, retribution might happen.

[A]

I think. You know, one thing I will say is it seemed like everyone understood that, like that was, that was. There was. There wasn't like hostility between, you know, like all my, not all my guys, but guys went to the dude's funeral because, by the way, an Iraqi soldier got killed and a couple more got wounded and, you know, you know, we paid money to the family. We did our best, you know, like, they understood. And that's, that's one thing. You know, there was a, was a, A SEAL captain who had been, who, who had been in the Marine Corps and he'd been the tail end of Way City. So when he showed up to like the tail end of. Yeah. And he's a guy that said to me, he goes, and I knew him beforehand. And he said, hey, Jono, Way City. He go. And I forget the percentage. A big percentage of casualties in Way City were friendly fire. And again, I wish I would have studied that more and known that more and been more aware of how easily it can happen. But, you know, he's a guy that said, hey, man. And. And pretty much all the conventional commanders in Ramadi were like, oh, yeah, you, you had a blue on blue. Kind of like no one ever said like that's acceptable, but everyone understands, bound to happen. Yeah, it can happen. And I always. One of the, One of the points that I always like to make is like there was blue on blues with Humvees versus Humvees. And if you think about that, there's no vehicle in the world that looks like a Humvee and there's only one. You know, we drive them. You know, friendlies drive Humvees. So if you're in a Humvee and you shoot another Humvee Think of the mindset that someone has to have. That shows you how easily and how foggy things get if you're in a Humvee and. And you shoot at another Humvee. Like, that's wild. But that happened. And so, hey, that's another good. Leif wrote about an extreme ownership where. Same thing, like, we had army guys. Chris. Kyle sees a guy with a scoped weapon in a building, and Chris is like, hey, is there friendlies in that building? Leif starts asking the company commander, hey, are there. You guys got friendlies in building whatever it is? 28. Army guy's like, no, we don't have any friendlies in there. He's like, well, we. We got. Got a guy with a scope, weapon. Army's like, hey, kill him. Because we lost guys from snipers, you know, I mean, Chris, Leon, you know, it's like, hey, we got. We got a guy with scope, weapon. Kill him. And Chris is. Chris is kind of like, I see him, he's kind of behind this curtain. And they like, hey, confirm you don't have any guys in, again, Building 28 or whatever it was. And the guy's like, no, we don't. And, you know, life's like, hey, they. They say they don't have any guys in there. In between Chris and Leif, they just didn't feel comfortable taking the shot. And again, part of the reason they didn't feel comfortable is because of this blue on blue had happened.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So Leif finally goes, hey, we're not taking the shot. And the army guy who we know is like, bro, okay? And he goes, we're gonna have to assault the building then. And Leif is like, hey, we're covering your movement. You know, like, best we can do to support. And here goes the army to go to salt the building. And guess what? Guess what building. They leave the building that Chris is looking at, and it's like, you know, one tiny decision of, you know, Chris putting a sniper round into an American soldier, You know that. But again, because we had had that blue on blue, everyone was so much more aware of the possibility of it happening.

[B]

So that's a bad situation. Leads to good SOP and TTP changes.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

As bad as it.

[A]

Yeah, well, you hope so if it gets debriefed properly. And he definitely debriefed it properly. Like, we went through every part. And I continue, by the way, when I was running training, I briefed that mission to every SEAL team and platoon that I put through training. Like, exactly what happened. Here's the mistakes I made. Here's what I should have done better. Like, just write down the list. When we got done with that, though, we got done with the investigation. Now is when I put together a crew of guys to go back out to Corregidor. And this is. This is when you kind of built your relationship with the.

[B]

With the boys, Seth and JP and the guys.

[A]

Yeah. And then how. So you guys now are out there starting to run missions. What was your off temple like with those guys?

[B]

Well, it. The way I would talk with Seth, it'd be me, Caesar. Because sometimes it'd be Caesar and Seth, sometimes it'd be me and Seth. And it would be. Sometimes. Sometimes start off together. Sometimes. Let's just link up at this point to kind of overlap because we know it's going to get heavy. And that was the biggest part of it. And I know it stemmed off of that previous blowing blue. And I always joked set. And so you just. You don't want to get a scrap with me again, do you? And, you know, just good fun. Of course, you know, true respect. But the. Yeah, it depended because there were stays. We did three foot patrols. And I'm glad we were doing it that way because after Kai. Cowie.

[A]

Cowie. Cowie, yeah.

[B]

Didn't know him super well, had met him a number of times. But when he got shot that day, I was doing overwatch, and that's one of the. Caesar would normally go to the meetings. I don't care to be in those stinking command meetings because a few that I went like the day after he got shot when they were doing that extract, because I think it's what they were doing. They were extracting. Your guys had went up with some steak or snipers from the army and wanted to hide the extract by bringing those 11 13s up. I got. I got pretty angry. I went to that meeting with Caesar and you know, Caesar did give me the hay spank. You just mind your P's and Q's because I was frothing. Because the other problem I had was, you know, some of the stuff senior staff NCOs. Because the. The admin sergeant major. Not the command sergeant major, the admin sergeant major. We didn't see eye to eye and a lot of things because he didn't like the fact that I shared the hooch with my guys. Me being an E7, they'll be in two E3s and an E4. And he always came after me about that. And I'm like, this is my team. This is our Equipment. We got a ton of equipment. I'm like, I thought you respect Sergeant Major. I don't work for you. And. And then I went told. I went downstairs because Caesar hooched up with all the Air Force Major Francis and those guys that were supporting First 506. We were. We had two different rooms upstairs.

[A]

Yeah, I don't work for you usually. Doesn't land very.

[B]

No, it doesn't.

[A]

But I was just FYI.

[B]

But we had a sign in our door that said lightning for two two and all four of our name and ranks on it that one of the guys had printed up. So not like, you don't know that's our room, but, you know, we're upstairs. Caesar and his guys are downstairs with all the E. Tax and Major Francis and those guys. Well, we're kind of the. You know, I kind of wanted to be away because nobody was on the second deck at that time. They had a blow over for some CBs that came in to build a helo pad or something. And the other problem was those were technically all their overflow when they would bring people in, you know, especially right before your guys got there. And, you know, at that point, there was two soldiers in that whole building. And then, you know, we come in, Marine EOD comes in and you guys come in. Well, total caveat. And our first room was around that whole corner, kind of back towards the generators, a little bit bigger. But we came back off patrol one day and damn, our nerd mortar came right through the ceiling, went, made it through the rebar, was laying on Bravo's rack. And you know, we had the, you know, the way we built those racks, we kind of had your sin pit with the poncho, you know, poncho up to give you some privacy and gear on the top. And just four of us in the hooch. And it's pretty good sized room, so. And yeah, Bravo pulls back his poncho to get in the rack, take his boots off, and here's this inert mortar had made it through that roof, reinforced, went through that top plywood and landed and set on his pillow. And he. He's like, gunny, I'm over there, set my tough book back up, you know, plugging in the printer to print everything out from the patrol. And. And I'm like, you guys get out of here. So get out here, go downstairs, go on the other side of the courtyard. I'm gonna go down. Well, thank God we had the 2ed right there down in the bottom. Actually, they were right next to Where Tony had hooched up there for a little bit. So I grabbed them. They're like, okay, yeah, I just failed one. We were on patrol, thankfully. So we move around the corner and they give us a building. So that made that sergeant major bad. But then the fact I was hooching, he goes, no, you need to be. And I'm like, that's my team. We go out together, we come back together. I don't need to be separated from them. That'll just slow down the process. We're living together. I can sit there and we. I brought a Proxima so I can pull up intel stuff and, you know, stuff that gives her. Yeah. And we could go over any planning we need to do as a team. But.

[A]

Yeah, so let's get to the 16th of May 2006.

[B]

Yeah, let's get away from the 13th of April.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So you guys are out. I actually, I. I got. I talked to Wes. Wes Baldwin, and he gave me. He gave me his. I'll start off with his little. His perspective. He says that was an interesting day, which is a very west way of kicking this thing off. He says the decision was made that we were to leave our courtyard and foot patrol assault towards a shooter on a nearby rooftop. We very quickly got engaged by a talented shooter. All single shots. Four of us were shot in the firefight. An IA was hit in the hip, but fortunately was just superficial. Gunny took a round to the knee. Looked like he was stabbed in the kneecap with a pencil. Very small entrance wound, but the entire back of his knee was hamburger venous and arterial bleeding. I told Huerta to hold pressure on Gunny's femoral artery to slow the bleeding, which he did very effectively. I tried to get a cat tourniquet on as quickly as possible, but the blood on my mechanics gloves was very slick. I used my teeth to remove my gloves so I could grip the tourniquet better. Spanky's legs were huge, and the stitching on the tourniquet was breaking with the force I was putting into it, trying to stop his bleeding. I'd put us. I had to put a second tourniquet on just above the first to completely stop the arterial bleeding. Then I put two dressings over. Over the wound on the knee to try and keep everything clean and protected. Weirder was shot in the bottom edge of his chest plate. I saw JP puke after the exertion of dragging Gunny and then run up to our overhead rooftop and engage the shooter. While we were working on Gunny. Later that night, I was replenishing my med gear when I realized that I had a round had passed through my med gear. And Camelback, an exciting daytime patrol in the mob was his final stage statement. Again, that's Wes. And so Wes was the SEAL medic out there with. With Stoner and with you guys. And that was kind of his. His take on it. But I don't think he's ever debriefed you on that. So I figured I'd give you a little debrief from his perspective.

[B]

No, I appreciate that it is good because I've very gl. You know, glimpses of the memory.

[A]

You know, there's pictures of that courtyard.

[B]

Yeah, they sent them. They sent them to me. So they. The only thing that the. Those two Navy, the videographer and the still photographer, they cut out. So when I pull back over and cross street, because I want to say jp, it was where the JP and I don't know who was behind JP when we kind of broke across to do that, that road and we came up to that team where I think that's where I ended up getting hit. It's right there in the middle of that intersection. You know, I never let the guys walk in front of me. Never. You know, I was like, if. If something bad because, you know, I don't know how you thought about it, but for me, life, death, everything main mean min meant wound. You never, you know, it was never everything in the middle was never a concern, I guess. And the guys will tell you that about me. I was. I'm not saying I'll have fear. You got fear. Because I'll go back to what I initially told him. No, I'm not Billy Badass. I'm not anybody like that. But I guess mission always overtakes the. The fear aspect to me. But I definitely didn't want early on, didn't want the guys up front. I'll take point. I'll walk up there and look. So in that retrospect, when you see photos or videos of me, except technically shooting I on my coat strap, I'd be using my hands, I'd be talking to people, or I'd leave it down. You see, worked in the background. He's got the saw up and the other guys are all up and I'm just nonchalantly walking around there. But it was almost like when it gets ready to happen. That's why that day, because I was our third patrol. That day was like right around 6 o' clock in the evening, if I remember correctly. I'm surprised he didn't tell you about the laughter we were having while I was trying to give myself my morphine. I'll get to that. I like telling that story about myself. But the. Yeah, it's like we're gearing up. That Iraqi got shot first. I'm pulling the guys across, we're going to cross over and we're going to kind of bound do our immediate action to get to that. That house that was on the corner where we believed. Not realizing, I think Seth later on told me, you know, we had the guys that were shooting up in the building and then the sniper in the overwatch, I think is what it was, what they were telling me. Well, I'm. I'm doing what I always do. I'm just focusing on gunfire. Let's get to that. Get up here. You know, not to enter the house, just to try to contain that until enough of the people come up or, you know, we make a decision on what we're going to do. And yeah, one minute I'm moving, next minute, yeah, Earth kind of goes dirty, you know, I don't know. I'm confused why, you know, what the hell just happened? Because it didn't hurt at all. It was not painful at all. It's like my waist down went numb. Like you're. When you sit on your feet and they start tingling, they go to sleep. So there was no pain. But, you know, all the gunfire's going on. You know, everything is getting passed back and forth. But I was more confused so because as they didn't say when I fell forward, because of all the gear, when I came forward, you know, it pushed my boot on top of my magazines. So that first time when I find. And then I was trying to push myself up, confused gunfights going on. I'm hearing movement, yelling, you know, just all the sights and sounds of that. I go to push myself up and I can't lift up and I'm. I'm just confused. That's the best way to put it from what I can remember. And I finally realized that my Paraclete, or not all my Paraclete vest, but my Cody strap, I disconnected the quick clip on it and was pulling my rifle because my only instinct at this point, point is get. Get your weapon in front of you. You know, get back to business because, you know, you're definitely not moving at this point because my whole lower body's just numb and tingling. And it wasn't until. And this is what I didn't get. It was JP and Huerta because they were the closest two to me. And this is them telling me after the fact, you know, grab my toe handle on my paraclete and those two strong kids because I was, you know, 200 body weight in those days and you know, all the gear would carry so good 270 to 300 pounds. Somewhere in that ballpark. They grabbed that and they ass ended me all the way over. Because I was at that point I'd got the weapon in front and I was just gonna shoot whatever. I don't give a crap what's in front. Kind of berserker mode, I guess not professional. But I said I'm just gonna kill everything in of front front of me. If it flags, I. I'm gonna aim at it. And then when they flipped me over, I almost shot myself on the right foot. But back then I shot both eyes open. And so I'd look acog in the one but you know, I'd aim over it, you know, especially in those situations. But they flipped me back over. And that's when I got, you know, after I took my finger off the, you know, trigger when I saw my. My foot with my left eye. But then I immediately noticed that my left leg was just bouncing. You know, it's. You know, kind of keep a Samus hamburger on the whole back. I don't know how bad it is. I'm just. It's just bouncing back and forth and then there's a lull. So I take that opportunity to reload and still kind of confused, you know, but not fearful. Just I'm more surprised. Not confused surprised. And then especially when I'm watching my leg just bounces or drag and then it stops and then it goes again. That's when work. I got shot. Didn't know that till after fact. That's why I think. Is it Tom? Yeah, when Tom came out to help JP and. But then when they got me to the courtyard and in those pictures and you know it's a pig trail. Mitchell's got blood all over. It's just a pit. I'm. It was. Thank God Wes and those guys.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But that metal framing on the gate. They were bringing me through the personal gate. My gear was stuck on it. So him JP are just jerking. And I remember and I'm like they gave me a chance to clear the 203 round out of my tube. I just at that building, I'm like, I'm gonna aim at the wind window and I'm sending in that building because that's. We had thought that's where all the fire was coming from. But yeah, and then, yeah, west moves over to me and they start, they give me that courtyard and Bravo, Steve, Bravo Stevens or Steven's Bravo. He's, you know, he's really gunning down hard, helping Wes. Wes is straddling me, my leg. He's trying to cut everything free. I remember Bravo is really pushing down on my femoral bridge on my head, trying to help slow the bleeding because I was. I'm lucky.

[A]

Yeah, you don't have much time with the femoral.

[B]

Yeah, it's like three, four minutes total popliteal bridge. All that was gone. Well, he's doing that. Well, then I started getting shocky. At this point, I start recognizing signs of shock and, and I asked west, you know, because we had those big auto injectors of morphine. I'm like, if I'm going down, I'm going down high, you know, kind of get it. No, Gunny, you're not ready yet, Gunny, you're not ready. I can't. You're not stable, Gunny. You know, and, you know, you kind of feel that, you know, I never, I never lost lucidity. But you can just tell your body's revolting at that point. You see where it's kind of cutting stuff off and you know, your mind starts getting a little cloudy. And because it's doing what a body is meant to do in a traumatic situation, it's trying to shut down systems to keep you alive. I get why it was doing. But then one of those memories I've got is Wes got me, got both of them. He's kind of wrapping me together. We're waiting for that truck to get up there to throw me in there. And like, can I, you know, can I go and get my morphine now? He goes, you, you're good, Gunny, you're good. And this is. I know this is after 6 o' clock because sun's not directly up. You know, I'm looking at that blue sky. We're laying in that courtyard in the middle of those people's driveway. And he's done a bang up job on me for however long it took. And of all the times I've practiced this over and over and over, I pull it out because, you know, I kept it on my embiter case on my chest. I kept it on the outside and I don't know how I did it, but when I pulled it out, you know, you can pull it out, pop the cap and then just slam it in the you know, in a thigh or something like that for someone. You practice it over and over. You pop that cap off, and then you just come around. Sometimes you got to reinforce the back with your pinky so that it gets a good push into the meat. Don't know how I did it. Boom. That needle went right through my pinky and just squirted against that brick wall. And I'm like, what the hell? We start laughing, and I just rip it out of my pinky, and I just start jabbing and Wes, Wes. And where to? Because at this point, where did came up? Tony? I got shot. And not knowing. Dragging me, not dragging me that good stuff. And I just. Jan, he's. You ain't gonna get nothing. I said, yeah, I was just going off. I was so angry with myself. Not only am I laying here, got him working on me to keep me alive. And, you know, I'm looking at this blue sky thinking, I can tell my body's going into revolt, and I want to do it high if it's going to happen, and I can't even be high. And then they. About that time that gun truck come up, because I remember Major Francis Mitchell and all those guys were there. They got me stabilized, and they threw me across the lap of those soldiers in that gun truck. They just opened that door, both back doors. Get me in there. Wes had strapped my legs together, basically. And, you know, I'm holding my helmet. I don't even know where my rifle is. One of those guys kept my rifle, so. And I quit carrying a pistol at that point. It took up space. And so my pistol was under my pillow. But I've got my helmet in my hand. They throw me in that gun truck to take me to the end of mob and camel Hump. You remember that tavern? 1113, pick me up. They didn't want to bring it all the way down, so they, you know, they want to take me all the way down. Meet at the intersection. I'm listening to them, but I remember that gunner. That's one of those memories I have. They get me across the lap of these two soldiers. Yeah, I got blood all over the place. Stop the bleeding thing. Gun. And that gunner. So fun. That gunner looks down out of the toy, the. The turret. I'm laying in the lap of these two young soldiers, and he goes, aren't you that gunny we're always getting firefights with? And I'm like, yeah, I'm not gonna. No crap. Finally bit me in the ass. Give me the end of the block. Well, Now I'm stuck. You got the gunner, you got the guys, you know, you got the other four soldiers inside. But I'm laying across their lap. They can't get out from under me to, you know, get me out of the. And get me 11 13. But I remember that medic that was in the back of the 1113 comes over, opens that door and ask if I can walk. I throw my helmet at him because I was already holding it. And I'm like, you know, it just started to be. But that was the most sickening feeling. That and the chopper ride. Once he got the IVs in me to take me to because, you know, they cut my leg off in TQ. TQ or wherever that hospital was over by TQ. But the back of the 11th dirt. Because I've never liked being in those things. Any, any armor vehicle. I don't, I don't prefer it. And, but then in that chopper ride out of cop, you know, the combat outpost, that, that, that's probably the most uncomfortable feelings I've ever had. The, the most bear. Don't have a weapon, don't know, way of protecting myself. Don't have any control whatsoever. And that whole time my lower body is still numb. It's. I never had any pain up to the point, you know, when they put me under and cut it off. So. But yeah, I remember just asking that command sergeant major over at combat outpost. I'm watching them write my name on the board when they're putting two IVs in me, and I just. Can I have a cigarette? No, you can't give me a cigarette. Who cares? Give me a cigarette. Give me a cigarette. Because I always smoke the falling rain. Iraqi smokes with them back then. But, but yeah, that was, that was that day. Yeah. I think they cut it off before 8:00 clock at night.

[A]

Yeah. And it's. It, you know, just sitting here thinking about this story as, as you're talking through it, you know, here it is. I, I talked about in the beginning of the podcast like the, the teamwork between all these different students. And here, here, sure enough, you have SEALs. Marines. You know, SEALs are doing medical on you, but they're getting help from the marines. Marines and SEALs dragging you out of the street. A Marine and then who comes to pick you up? Army. Like that's. You just can't. It's really hard for people to understand the, the bonds that was formed there. And then of course, you always want to mentioned this too. You know, the, the guys that are out there training as medics. It's really hard training this. The. The medic school for the seals is extremely hard. The special for. We used to go to. I. I don't know if I'm pretty sure that Wes went to the army,

[B]

the 18 Delta short package for you

[A]

guys, but we have. But now we do our own. But they're all. They're all just outstanding schools. And. And the fact that, you know, I. I tell people all the time, like, if I needed to get shot, I would rather have a special operations medic there instead of some, like, doctor, you know, whatever, normal physician, because that's. They're just trained so well. And, you know, same thing. Like, when Cowie got shot, guys were on him immediately. And. And even the. Even the package that we put guys through for T. Triple C, right where, hey, I don't know how to. I don't know how to operate on anything, but I can definitely stop the bleeding. Like, that's what. And guys had to do that and did that, so props to those guys. And then again, you know, just the. The teamwork of the guys being out there working together to. To get you out of there. And that's another amazing thing that, you know, an advantage that we have these days is, like, you know, you are off the battlefield in a matter of minutes, you know, and in a chopper in a matter of minutes. And just to have all that coordination, that golden hour of time, you know, just to get guys off the battlefield and is. Is the modern military, you know, we just kind of witnessed that over in. Over in Iran with the guys that got shot down, and getting those guys out, you know, from the giant country of Iran shot down, and the. The efforts that went into getting those guys back is, like, incredible. But that's. That's the way America rolls, so.

[B]

Especially that Wizzo.

[A]

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I can't wait to hear the stories and get the debrief on what happened over there. You know, it's gonna be. It's gonna be epic. So you were conscious the whole way until.

[B]

I never lost consciousness. Until just for the last memory I have, when I say I've got mixed time, drugs from in the hospital kind of clouded some of the. In between stuff. I never lost consciousness. And when they did the. When they got me that combat surgical or wherever, it was over by T.Q. i don't know, chopper lands, they put me on a big wheeled gurney thingy and rolled me in. It's like a male and a female. The female was wearing Scooby Doo scrub tops. And I'm Looking down, they're doing capillary refill on my left big toe and one or the other don't really remember clearly. One or the other looked Asia and just shook their head. But I remember she had Scooby Doo scrubs. Don't know who was senior, who was who. Don't know. That's the last memory I have. The next memory I have on my NSC 17 on my way to lawnstool and I woke up in excruciating pain and I have no clue on. I have no memory of lawnstool now. I was shot the night of the 16th. Cut my leg off. I was in Bethesda the morning and the the 19th. So we're looking at less than 72 hours from the moment of wound initial amputation to checking into Bethesda. So very quick process. So much so that my mom and my ex and my soon to be second ex at that point are all getting notified that the Marine Corps is flying you to Germany because he is not looking good. And I think that's that spell I had somewhere in between there that I vaguely remember the pain. But I was vsi, you know, I do know that at this point I was able in 08 to look at my own, you know, being working at the meth. I was able to look at my own call where they were doing the notifications and from commands because I was vsi.

[A]

So I guess I got what's vsi.

[B]

Very seriously injured.

[A]

Okay, got it.

[B]

And I think it was the blood loss. I think that's why they said they want to get them to Germany. It wasn't the injury, it was the blood loss by far. And looking at the pictures later on on his hospital, yeah, I get that was a big trail but I'm lucky.

[A]

And that when you remember being in TQ and the. You see the Scooby nurse, do they even, do they even consult you at all about your leg?

[B]

That's the only member I have to they might have. And I don't know. All I remember is get me off the chopper and those gurneys have those big oh huge skinny wheels and they roll me into that whatever it was. And I remember, don't even remember their faces. I just remember one was a female, one was a male and Scooby Doo scrub top and I remember the capillary refill and beyond that. And honestly I don't even care, you know, at this point. I mean next thing I know I, you know, got part of a leg going and so no big deal.

[A]

You woke up or Your first memory is pain on the flight.

[B]

The C17.

[A]

C17.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Did they immediately put you back under?

[B]

Yes, I. That. So I just recently talked to a guy about. So I was, you know, somewhere in the middle of it, but I remember I was about midway up on the center gurney racks, and the jump seats are there. You know, familiar stuff. C17s. Obviously, we all been on them. Well, I woke up, and I was in really, really bad pain. I can't even tell you the level of pain at this point. I just know I was in bad pain and I was smelling Fritos. And what's weird is, I have this. I know I was in pain. I know I was hungry, and I smell Fritos. And I'm assuming it's one of those Air Force box meals or whatever. Yeah, somebody's eating one on there. So that's the only emotion and the feeling I have in that point. Pain, hunger, help. And it seemed like within whatever time frame, I don't know, as soon as I motion that I'm hungry, I'm hurting, I was out. And I don't. I don't remember from there. And, yeah, I don't really remember very well that first two weeks in the hospital, because I went through 10 surgeries in two weeks. You know, debridements and revisions and all that stuff they did to me. It was surgery every other day. And so you're so medicated that, you know, I have glimpses. I don't remember getting my Purple Heart from General Hagee. That guy talked about earlier. Steve Bell, he's Sergeant Major at 112 in Hawaii at Kaneohe that I'd worked with on recruiting duty. He flew in from Hawaii with his wife and spent the first week and a half, almost two weeks with me. Gave him my haircut the day I got my Purple Heart. I look at pictures, I look at videos.

[A]

Don't remember.

[B]

I don't remember it.

[A]

That's wild.

[B]

We went to the evening parade. I was in a wheelchair. We're all there together, him and them. Common on. You know, everybody's there, and I see the videos. I'm lucid. I'm communicating just like I normally would communicate, but have no memory.

[A]

Dang.

[B]

About that third week, I, you know, started getting memory back.

[A]

What was the. What was kind of the emotional state when you realized you got no leg?

[B]

Yeah, I don't. This guy Jack Sherd, I met, like, a month ago. He finally hunted me down after all these years to give me a coin from Lon Sto. Met Me in. In Oasu. We had dinner. He's been doing this on his own thing every, including him. And this is new, you know, fresh after 20 years of time just month and a half ago. Everybody said during that time that all I cared about was getting back to work now. Cognitive ability on my part, third week at best. It never once bothered me. I don't. I think it goes back to the. My initial instinct of death, life, anything in the middle is just react to it, you know, get past it, find a new norm, do whatever you got to do. It never bothered me. Does it suck? Of course it sucks. You know, I wouldn't wish it on anybody. You know, I tell that to kids all the time that want to play with my cool robot leg. I'm like, you know, I normally tell them, you know, don't ride sharks, you know, and, you know, I got all these scars from all the other upper body surgery. I'll be like, don't ride bulls, don't ride sharks. They like to bite and they like to break your arm off. And kids get a kick out. They don't want to say I got shot. That's boring to them. They just think the robot leg is cool. But, yeah, I don't. I don't. It never once was. Affected me in that way. Never. Yeah, I'm happy to have life. Life is way more important than a leg. And I take it as luck. A lot of really close calls in that time frame. So now as a different type of person, I look back on. That was God's way to tell me to grow up. You know, you're. You're older, you're higher rank, you should be out here playing with the boys, you know, time to get back to real work, big boy. It's kind of why I look at it, but it never wants. The only fear I had was I would have to get out. That is almost God truth. You know, when I was waiting on the med board to come back, that gave me that re. That feeling of 1995 again, you know. And so when they came back on permanently to do or as I could stay, I'm like, well, that's the first step. So. But yeah, it never bothered me.

[A]

And then it goes into the recovery. It sounds like relatively clean situation. In other words, like above the knee, it's horrible, you know, it's terrible. But above the knee, it sounds like there wasn't any major infections. It moved pretty quick as far as. And by the way, it's one leg instead of two. That's a Huge difference.

[B]

You know, that's a gunshot wound in lieu of explosives.

[A]

Oh, yeah. That's another.

[B]

That's what a surgical above the knee amputation based off the damage to the lower femur from the gunshot. So it's a. It's all. There's no blast injury. The elective. To go above the fracture of the femur. Not to cut you off chalk. No, no, no.

[A]

You're. That's. That's the part that's the kicker.

[B]

The healing process is much better.

[A]

Yep. Because Dan can also. Who I know.

[B]

I know Dan very well. Yeah.

[A]

Like, that's.

[B]

I mentored. I met him and Rob Jones, blast. Don't know him that well, but I

[A]

know blast like all those guys. Those blast amputations are brutal. And then you have all the secondary damage from the explosives in the rest of their body.

[B]

Soft tissue, organ damage, all that stuff they have.

[A]

So, yeah, this is. That's what I didn't make that connection of. Why this? Because, you know, you're like, you know, I wasn't hurting too bad. And even the fact that you're conscious because these guys get blown up, it's.

[B]

It's like, you know, so much more trauma.

[A]

Yeah. It's traumatic in. In so many other parts of their body as well. I mean, Dank and Austin was like, you know, just. Just devastating.

[B]

Dan came to my retirement.

[A]

That's amazing.

[B]

I mean, I spent a lot of time with him. When he got there in 10, you know, I was still out there then. We. I won't say we became friends. We were very good acquaintances. We traveled a number of times together on. On trips before he started doing the, you know, biathlon stuff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Good dude.

[A]

So. But. So you're. You're recovery. You don't have to worry about these other blast injuries and all this stuff.

[B]

It's a quick. You know, from May 16th till mid December, in a nutshell. I started my med board in mid December, ran my first 5k in November. You know, I initial eight weeks, get out of the hospital, move me over to Walter reed on my 35th birthday was that day. Then got a week inpatient, then released me for therapy. But I still have, you know, I still have a number of weeks about a month before they'll take the staples out. You know, so I can't do. I can do physical in occupational therapy, but it's on crutches or wheelchair. You know, initially it's a wheelchair that didn't last long because I. In order to not go to the male loan house and get in The Fisher house at Walter Reed. The old Walter Reed. I had to be on crutches. Well, in order to be cleared to do that, I had to be able to go up downstairs because there was no elevator in the Fisher house and all they had was upstairs rooms. So I proved that I can go up and down, you know, stairs on crutches. You know, you all keep saying it. Give me a task, tell me what the requirements of the task are. I'm going to do it. And, and because I don't want to be in the Malone house. And for people who don't know, the Malone house is the old Walter Reed. It was basically a 1012 story hotel and it was wild, wild west for wounded warriors and their families. I mean you. There was constant stuff. I won't even talk about sad, sad things of people doing there. I'm like, I've got a young daughter, you know, a second. I do not want to be in the Malone house. I didn't really want to be in D.C. not like I had any choice in the matter. But fortunately proved very quickly before I even got my first leg, my temp socket. And we got in the Malone house. Much more family orientating. Only got like eight or ten families in there.

[A]

Oh, you mean the Fisher.

[B]

Fisher houses. Yeah. Walter Reed had three of them. Got it. And so you're in a family environment. You can have your own space and store food. You know, Malone House is basically a hotel with a restaurant at the bottom. You know, you don't have that opportunity to cook in the rooms or any of that stuff. And I didn't want no part of that. Plus all that other extracurricular crap. I don't be around. My focus of effort was get back to work. That was my number one focus. So no, get away to. Your staples are out. Okay. When you take my staples out. Oh, let's prove you can go up and down the stairs on your crutches. Okay, I'll prove it. You know, because I'm thinking I'm 35, I've been in the Marine Corps for 17 plus years. I'm, you know, I'm on a timeline here, you know, not fully knowing if they're going to kick me out medically because I don't know yet what's going to happen with that. But my thing was get back as quickly as possible and I don't care what I get back to. First task, get back on active duty from patient status. Next task, where's the Marine Corps need me, you know, and then so on. That was the beginning.

[A]

And so then when, when. How long did the process take? Is nine months until your med board?

[B]

No, my med board was in less than six months and I was back on active duty in 11 months.

[A]

Dang.

[B]

That. That's the problem. It took five minutes five months for the Marine Corps to accept the med process. My rehab wasn't even five months. I mean, that's the weird thing. It took longer for them to figure out, yeah, you can stay on active duty. So at the 11 month mark, I was released from patient status and able to stay on active duty.

[A]

And then where'd they put you?

[B]

Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

[A]

Oh, this is. You did some instructor time there.

[B]

They. Because at this point only got almost two years left. I'm gonna hit 20. So infinite. I don't knock them for it. I've got the MOs. You know, I'd been through piss off and all those training for, you know, and built fifth angle CO Understood, you know, I didn't realize how bad I would hate it, you know, I mean, I didn't stay there very long, you know.

[A]

How long, how long did you stay there for?

[B]

Well, I got there technically checked in in mid May and checked into 1 Meth for the 08 deployment in September. Long enough to teach one class, go through curriculum development course and be checked off in the furniture.

[A]

You just didn't want to be in a classroom teaching. This is not your scene.

[B]

No, but I thought get out of the hospital, he goes back to everything I've told you before, okay, you just let me back. I'll manipulate where I go from there. So that's. That still is even at that time is still my mindset.

[A]

And your goal, did you have it. At what point did you decide your goal was to go back on deployment?

[B]

Okay, so we were doing Alcatraz challenge in San Francisco and Colonel Clark Lethem is there as the aid to General Mattis. General Mattis is getting ready to leave because he's getting close to picking up four stars. So that 08 deployment, General Kelly takes over. We're doing the Alcatraz challenge. Did pretty good, you know, swimming. I've always been pretty decent at swimming. And then once I learned the strokes and learned the proper. And did it enough. I've always been a decent swimmer, you know, I've just gotten better and better. But the, you know, I came out of the water pretty fast. I mean there's only five, six of us amputees there. Out of what, six to 900 people? Whatever it was 600 and something. When you have you ever been up there for it?

[A]

I have not been up there for

[B]

it, but I've been for. Yeah, you ferry over right off the island. You jump off the platform and then you swim back. Me miming point was the golden dome at Crissy Field. You know, depending on the current, how

[A]

far the swim is it?

[B]

A mile and a half.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Nothing, nothing stupid. I did it in 40 some minutes. It's current as you know up there, a current is depending on what you're getting that day, which it's a morning swim.

[A]

Do they plan it around a good current? No, I think current.

[B]

No, I don't know that I can't answer. But they have safety kayaks in the water to kind of keep you from going. There was only one time I'd get nudged by a kayak as I went hundreds of strokes before I really looked up and aimed right at the Golden Gate Bridge. They. They nudged me and swing out and I'm like, yeah, they're golden domes. My aiming point. I'm heading out to Pacific Ocean. We don't want that. So they can say because that, that current, when it's got that, you know, littoral currents, you know all about that. That current when it comes in across where the old Presidio was, it's two. It's got to be a two knot littoral. I mean it's fast. And so yeah, a little bit of

[A]

this, you know, going back a little bit because I know this, this must have landed on you. But Corporal Chris Leon gets killed. There you go.

[B]

June 20th.

[A]

June 20th. So you've been, you've been back in the States for like a month and now one of your. The first Anglico guy killed since Vietnam.

[B]

Yeah. Sergeant Major called me, gets killed in

[A]

Ramadi and sergeant Major called you.

[B]

Yep. And our sergeant Major called me, that was from second angel co and let me know and yeah, because then we had him and then we had Pate. Captain Pate was one of the second. He would go from there. He was our intel officer. They got killed I think in August. He was out of tq, I believe. But yeah, when I heard about Chris, you know what. And that sucks. You know, I'm sure Dave's talked to you a lot about Major Burke. Theo and Chris were best friends. Huerta, both from the same area in California. You know, when they got to the unit, both communicators during that initial build up when me and Major Krebs are getting the unit build up and it sucked. And then to hear the way it Happened, you know, I'm glad it was. This sounds bad, but I don't mean it this way. Quick death. That's all I wish for anybody. If you're going to be put in that position, not bleeding out on the road. I know the guys told me Storm Ranger told me that where to took it super hard because that was a month after me.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that probably bothered me more was what was going to be the you know, obviously family. You know, Leon was a great kid. Cock strong kid. Just like where the funny those two together back in Okinawa.

[A]

Studs.

[B]

Oh yeah. Just good. Good guys. That's the hardest thing for me was that. And I'm not saying what ifs because I don't think what ifs matter. You know, should I push so hard to get get us over there as a platoon. But then I also gotta think, you know, I don't know, it sucks. What. But what death doesn't suck. You know that all too well.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And. But you know, they've named the. When my son was In Okinawa with 5th Marines on UDP, you know, he went by the 5th Angelico headquarters there in Camp Hanson. You know, they've got. It's named after Chris, you know, and then they've got a little memorial for the three of us in there. You know, what do you. I don't know, what do you say?

[A]

Yeah, but that had to. Well, not had to, but I would imagine like going when you're. When you have the goal. What made me think of that was having the goal of going back over on deployment again, you know, knowing. Knowing the cost better than anybody, you know, not only with losing Chris and yourself being wounded and now you're like, cool, you know what I'm gonna do? Go back over.

[B]

Oh, sure. I mean but that's. Yeah, okay. So my thing, just like the initial part of it and the whole career every time, all the stories I've told at this point, one thing has always resonated. For as long as I can, in the best way I can. I'm going to serve. I already know what it feels like to have it taken away. So the leg portion of it, I just wanted to be able to get back to a new normal for myself and. But more importantly, to prove to everybody it was never an agenda to go back to Iraq or Afghanistan. It was. It was never a personal aspiration. It was, I want to shut everybody up and let them know I'm normal, limited. You know, there's limitations now that are blatantly obvious. But I will not do anything. I promise that to. You know, I promised that to General Mattis back then. I promised General Kelly when we got over there. I said, I will never put a Marine in harm's way. That will not happen. I'm not. I won't say I'll never put myself in harm's way, but I can only handle my. You know, I can take care of myself. I know what I will and won't do, and I'll never do that. But then there was that, you know, that the hospital. You know, I left Walter Reed in September of 06 and went down center for Intrepid in San Antonio. I just left. You know, they kept telling me, 18, minimum. 18 months, minimum. That's what Walter Reed kept telling me. And I'm like, give me my task. Tell me what I need to accomplish to get out of here, to get my med board signed off on and see if I can stay on active duty. And they kept, don't worry about that. Just get healthy. Don't worry about that. Get healthy. And I was just like, no, I want to know what I can do to get out of here as fast as possible. Because I've got that ticking timeline. I only have so many years left to me in the Marine Corps, and if I'm going to waste them here just to make 20, yeah, I'll hate myself for it. I will. I'll hate myself because, you know, I want to go on my terms. And that was my whole principle. My whole principle. I don't want to go early. I want to go out on my terms. I want to do as much as I possibly can to prove who can do it and who can't do it. Because that's the tertiary agenda for me. Let's push the boundaries. Let's get, you know, six months after me, we got that single above the knee corporal back over at Okinawa. Two years after I was in D.C. we got Corporal Bradford bilateral above the knee of T. Coley blind. Got him to stay on active duty and work through the Warrior Regiment. You know, that became my goal after that deployment. But I'll get back to the hospital. Stay. I did. I told, you know, Staff Sergeant John Stefanowski, who worked at the Walter Reed liaison. I went into him and I said, listen, I'm leaving when I hate DC we just had a triple amputee get mugged at the. At the little mall area there in Maryland. Oh, my gosh, I can't remember the name of it. Doesn't matter. Pretty close to Walter Reed. And they had a big courtyard where you watch movies. They rolled this kid, you know, in the parking garage. You know, no respect in that factor. A kid can't defend himself. I'm like. And plus, I hate. I hated D.C. at that point. I said, I want out of here. And finally I just told my. My ex's dad was there visiting. And I said, you guys go down and get a rental car where I'm in therapy. Because they kept telling me 18 months and then they would tell me I missed this factor. It's pretty important. One hour. You can do one hour physical therapy. One hour of occupational therapy. I'm like, I have nothing else to do in the day. I'm going to go back over to the Fisher house. I'm going to twiddle my thumbs and sit there and look at this thing I've got missing. You know, I don't have a leg on. You won't let me get it. So it's just one thing after another. Just pissed me off. And so finally I had enough. I really did. I said, go get a rental car. And I told staff sergeant Ski at the Marine lens on there. Well, he has. Dude, you can't do that. You got no orders. I don't give a crap. We gonna do kick me out. And I wasn't trying to be the old guy or, you know, the old spanky, but I was pissed. I didn't, I didn't. I didn't agree with anything I was hearing because I kept saying I'm. That's how I could give you that answer while ago so quickly. I'm a gunshot wound. I have no other ancillary problems here. And that they. I think they did built a task based off of blast injury. And I think their natural conditioned instinct for us as a patient was the highest probability of these blast injuries will re injure themselves throughout the physical theory. You know, the therapy process this many times if they do too much. And I, and I think they just, they, they bought into that based off experience. I get it. But didn't plan for outliers.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And what like 70% of the casualties in Iraq were IEDs. So that means they're looking at 70. 70% of them. They're going, oh yeah, this guy has a bunch of ancillary issues.

[B]

And the ones coming in from Afghanistan.

[A]

Yep. Yep. Both. Yeah.

[B]

So that. That was the biggest kicker. They, you know, I, I'm sure you guys both understand this. I've never liked. I get cookie cutter when you need cookie cutter. I don't like cookie cutter when it's individually based. Okay, yes. I know the times for that, you know, depending. But for me, looking at it from a training perspective, I'm like, don't put me inside the cookie cutter that I don't form in. And that was my problem. And so I just. We got that rental car, we left, went to Oklahoma, picked up our truck, dropped in the rental car at Tulsa airport, and showed up a couple days later at Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio. I put my cammies on, walked in there because at this point, I got a leg, you know, and I was still limping pretty good, using a cane. Walk in, and they don't know what to do with me. But John Sepanowski called, the little corporal, went, got the lieutenant colonel, and they came out and I'm standing the front desk. They don't know I'm coming. And they're like, you know, gunny, what can we do for you? Say, well, I'm here checking his patient. What are you talking about? We don't have you on the roster to be checking in with us. I was like, well, I was at Walter Reed and I left. I'm here. And, yeah, long story short, they made it happen. Ski had called the other staff NCO and told them. Can I ask you a little bit by that. That officer for not being a good gunny at this point, but at that point, I really didn't think anything to lose. I didn't. And I didn't mean it to be bad, but if I didn't get out of that environment, I'd go back to the golf cart incident. I'm serious. But in. Probably in a very bad way. Yeah.

[A]

So you do the swim at Alcatraz, and how does that lead to you going?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

On deployment again?

[B]

Well, because of Colonel Clark Lethem being the aide to General Mattis, his wife Wendy Lethem being on Semper Fi Fund. We had started that triathlon team, team semper fi, in 06. John Sepanowski. that point, we missed all that. We'd been doing all kinds of races, adventure races, sprints, you know, all these different triathlons and endurance runs. Endurance.

[A]

And you were doing this for the Semper 5 fund?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And you were doing this. Was it all wounded athletes?

[B]

Yeah, we. John Stephanowski was. And he was liaison. He built a team. There's about six of us. Dan Laskow, it's, you know, Eric Santayana, me. We did it to raise money for Semper fifth with the secondary approach of getting a cell on the hospital, because this is still during My med board process during my, you know, it started in late oh six and it fit perfectly because that, that early January of 07 up till May when I got back, I continued to compete with them. You know, it was a one way to get me out because I'm not physical therapy, I'm not occupational therapy. I've got a rental house in San Antonio. I'm like, I need something to do and ski got a hold of me from Walter Reed and said, hey, I'm thinking about this. No, you guys got these guys down there, I'm going to come down. And so it raised money for engineering Semper Fi fund, what they were called then, one sure appreciation for everything they were doing for all of us to raise that money and awareness. And it was awesome because like the Alcatraz challenge that time in 07, you got 600 plus people and you've got seven of us, I think that were amputees, one hand amputee and the rest of her lower limb amputees. I was the only above the knee amputee on the team. Most of them BK below the knees and. But you know, what better way to figure out your, if you want to call it new personal best, whatever you want to call it, your limitation. Where's the boundary of my limitation is that I never did triathlons before. I could swim because of the job, you know, I could run pretty decent back in the day. But you know, I'd gotten to the point before the amputation that it's kind of doing me a favor. I might run a 19, 1935, you know, three mile run on the PFT, but definitely not 17 18s anymore. The knee was just done, but it could teach me. And that led General Mattis, General Gray and all these big heavy hitters down down there for that. Mike Thornton's there, you know, for the dinner, the fundraiser. Well, my ex is not X yet, but she was a corporal in the Marine Corps. She's down there talking to Colonel Clark Lethem, General Mass's aid and smoking her cigarette and going, because I got passed over, I'm a patient. You ain't get promoted as a patient. So I got passed over for Mass Sword and she's venting about that. She's venting about just everything. And that's my fault. And I come out there and because I knew Colonel Lathane from his wife for the fund, I was like, babe, stop it, leave him alone. And he did the proverbial if I can do anything for you, what would it, you know, what would you want? And I, I know I'm on the back end of you know I've. I'm already at Fort Sale at this point. I'm still doing this, competing on that. I've checked in and I hate. I've done that one class. I've done that stupid curriculum development development class and that, that's like, that's like business when you're doing lifo, fifo and all that crap. Just wants you to beat your head against the wall. I'm like yeah, I'm not writing curriculum and I'm not teaching classes. And it was like for staff level. So definitely could do it and I'd be a good proof source for it. I just hated it. So that was my sir, I'll take advantage of that. Can I go with General Mattis Tyrak in January? He goes well you know he's not going to be going be General Kelly. I said aye aye sir. Can I. If you can make it happen. I'm going to go back to Fort Sill and I'm going to ask to an individual augmentation request or an administrative action form.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

Because Colonel Campbell and sergeant major Booker at the schoolhouse, he's an old force guy, silver star from yeah I mean he's a very well decorated forest recovering. Colonel Campbell had been my CEO on the 12th Marines trip when I went off recruiting duty. So I knew them both from Okinawa and other things and I got back and you know, they were more wanting to see the medal and hear how the race went and I was like well you know, what would you think about this? They both supported. They said hey you, you get it in. So I mean I fast track, you know through the command fast track the administrative action for him. They supported it and sergeant Booker got it headquarters Marine Corps pretty quickly and then it just said it was just setting and I don't know what, you know, I was getting angry because now I'm building my mind up. I don't care what I'm doing but I'm gonna, I'm going back. I'm going back. It's one of those hurdles I wanted to accomplish. Definitely not teaching a class. And finally as far as your booker, I'm like hey, can you find out what the hell's going on? My package been like two months now and they're gonna start, you know I gotta be there by September and you know, if I don't get that then this is out and then I'll have to be an instructor. She calls out well, there was this sar Major that was in manpower there at Quantico who had sat on it. He was sitting on the package because he didn't, he didn't give a crap what people wrote. He didn't think it was appropriate that I would put the Marine Corps in that, that position to go back over and possibly get injured. So I did what I've done a few times in the past. I called Sergeant Major Marine Corps Sergeant Major Carlton Kent the 95 Okinawa trip. He was, he's an old rigger, parachute rigger, but he was our brand new sergeant Major working for a colonel named colonel Ben Sailor Saunders. Sailor is on engine Marine Semper FIFA.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So I email sergeant Major Kent and I'm like yeah, this sucks. You know, you know Sergeant want to go back? It's like two days later sergeant Major called me and said you're approved. And I'm like okay, I gotta, you know and that's supposed to be a 15 month, a 12 month in theater, 3 month worth workup. And you know, I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to take away but the mass sergeant I was going to replace place, he still had a good solid year and some change so they were cool with it. And then that's how I get on the 08 deployment, you know, get out, you know, late September, early October depend, you know, up here and stay in a hotel and do the workup. Not much of a workup for G3. I'm kind of just the token gimp. Like I was saying earlier. I really am. They, they there's no reason the world should been me to have that, that those kind of opportunities. It really isn't. That's why I say I'm token gimp. I mean thank them. Yeah I do.

[A]

I appreciate, pretty awesome and pretty inspiring though and you know what I mean? I mean that's definitely for a lot of people looking at that going man, here's a guy that you know, have been through so much and he's going out on deployment. That's, it's pretty awesome.

[B]

Well I, I get that part and I've heard it before. It wasn't about that personal, you know, personal agenda I talked about already. More importantly, let's push the boundaries for these, these Marines. Yeah, I can't speak for Navy safe harbor. I can't speak for Army Wounded Warrior program. I can't speak for the other branches but I can speak for Marine Corps Wounded Warrior Battalion. It was brand new then and I

[A]

guess that's what I mean like, like token gimp. I Know, you're saying it humorously, but it is a huge step. You know what I mean?

[B]

I don't want to take away from that. Thank you.

[A]

That's the pathway for, you know, other people to be able to do it. And like you said, push the envelope, which is awesome. So. And you, were you working in ops on that deployment?

[B]

Yes. G3A force fires.

[A]

Chief, this is what, 2008?

[B]

Yeah, it was January of 08 until I left early in November of 08.

[A]

So things are still going. Did you see Seth? Yeah, Seth over there?

[B]

Yeah, that's what I was kind of telling you ahead of time. Sitting in the chow hall in Fallujah, me and Freddie Fowler, and we were 12 on, 12 off. You know, he would be my opposite because that's seven days a week. 12 on, 12 off, nothing sexy. And I see the look on his face and he just gets out look like, what the hell's this guy walking up or something? I can tell. And I just nonchalantly turned around and kind of like you and Joe were talking about the bar in Europe when he's over there. And I just seen big old cheesy grin on his face. I don't know how he knew it was me. I really don't because that was that initial interaction even before Mikey stuff. And I just turn around, we're hugging like a couple of, you know, boyfriends or something. And right in the middle of the chow hall in Fallujah, which is a big chow hall. And yeah, we're sitting there and yeah, I wish I could have took him up. The opportunity I was talking about before when, you know, tell. He. He was like, dude, here's the code. You got to come over. Oh, man, so good to see you. So awesome and all this stuff. And we're going to go back to Armani. I'm going to drive you down the street you got shot on. And then. Which I say that that wasn't even the only cool thing. Some of my recon buddies from back in the day who are now senior, we were. I was going to do a jump at Al Asad. First above the knee, empty to jump. Sandstorm washed it out. And they found my name, but they saw my name on the manifest. We Gibson. See, nobody knows me as William E. Gibson. Everybody knows Spanky. So put my W. Gibson in my last four. I'll get on the jump. Yeah, that sand sandstormed out and then they caught. Caught it. Don't know how somebody threw me under the bus, but yeah, the same with Seth. Just sitting There hugging at y'. All. So cool to see him. He gave me a coin. He was like, I meant to give you this. I'm like, that's the first time I've seen him since. Oh, yeah, those days. And then to, you know, have that surface warfare officer, the commander on the watch floor, come over and say, you know, go and talk to General Kelly. They're asking for you to come over. Mikey stuff, Mike Soreli. And then. Yeah, see, that stuff's so cool. Yeah, Yeah, I just. I think just all of it falling into place the way it does naturally, sitting in that shawl, hugging him. The last time I seen him was me laid up, you know, bleeding in the middle of the street.

[A]

Yeah. That's wild. You know, we were talking a little bit about the 1:1 ad reunion that took place down in Texas, and, like, Cowie, you know, you're talking about Cow. When he got shot, he linked up with the army soldier that picked him, that he was a driver. He's a Humvee driver who pulled up to, like, you know. You know, the chaos is going on, and they need a casa vac. And who shows up? An army Humvee shows up. There's no one. There's no, like, dismount troops to get kawi loaded. So this guy jumps out of the driver's seat and throws Cowie in the back and brings him back to base. And, like, that was the only time they ever met, and that was the last time they ever met. And here they were at. At the reunion, you know, like you said, hugging it out. You know, one of the. I think it was Joe. Yeah, Joe Clayburn comes over. He's like, hey, I. He goes, is. Is Cowie here? And I go, yeah. And he goes, I got the guy that put him in the vehicle on Kazbak. And I was like, yeah, I'll go get him. So, yeah, it's pretty. Pretty amazing.

[B]

Well, on that note, did he ever say if a guy named Chad. Is it Chad Ramsey? Yeah, Chad Ramsey that was in Joe's unit. He got hit the week before me, and. Good kid. I mean, not a kid, same age is. You know, we are. You know, back then, he was just one of those troops that stepped up. I'm setting in center for Intrepid. And there you want to. You want to be in there four hours a day? Being there four hours a day, you know, we see something, we're going to tell you to stop. You just stop. But other than that, we'll let you go. Well, or. No, I'm sorry, it was Walter Reed. I stand corrected. Because the same time I ran into Joe after he had his injury. He's got the, you know, screaming chickens, this kid. Well, he's got the shorts on, got the shirt on and I'm like, hey, where are you at? In theater and we're in physical therapy. Yeah, it was Walter Reed. He's like, yeah, I was in Ramadi. I was like, did you get hit in a vehicle down off through the main road? Malab. He goes, yeah. He's like, man, I, I was curef for your. He was in the vehicle that the tank got flipped over on its top in late March, early April. But the ID was so big it flipped the tank on top of its Turret. He was QRF when they came out in their vehicles, they had EMPs or yeah, EFP, sorry. And coordinated ambush for him and hammered them. Then they called all of us out to cordon off and until they could get the tank retriever to drag out that tank. And so we sat there for a couple. He was in that incident in one of the vehicles and then, you know, run into him, therapy, that's wild. And then find out he's in their unit. That's cool. Small world.

[A]

So then what came after that deployment?

[B]

So after that deployment I got, I put in, remember I got a whole Sergeant Major Ken again while in theater we were moving, we were closing Fallujah down. So me and The British major, Major McDonald, we went advanced party from the G3 to Al Assad to build the new command. And then so it was just me and the British major down there doing all the G3 portions of it. So I put in and we got to swim every day because I had that big pool at Al. I put in for a congressional fellowship and it's the first time that the, the military allowed enlisted congressional fellows. It's typically 90 to 92 officers a year, about 80 from the branches and about 10 to 12 from other brand, you know, non government or other government agencies. Well, the infinite wisdom of somewhere up in D.C. they said we're going to allow the Marine Corps to have the first two enlist fellows, one for the House, one for the Senate. So I put in for the program thought, you know, because I'd been in Iraq for nine months or so at that time, or me and Major McDonald are up at Al Assad getting everything squared away. Yeah, I know my role. I don't need to be here. I am sexy for camera or what? I'm not sexy, but the, you know, I'm A good news story for Jennifer Griffin or Ned Colt or all the other goofy people that interviewed me over there. So it's good news for the Marine Corps, but I'm better served, probably using this time and my experience to help out. You know, Marines stay on active duty if they want to give them the same opportunity. At that point I had. If I'm gonna leave, I'll leave on my own sword or shield, not on someone else's. So where else better do that than go work on Capitol Hill? So I put in token gimp. They approved me. Brad Simmons gets Senate. I get House. Got to be at Georgetown Government Affairs Institute in December, first week of December. So I had to leave in mid November, get out of Iraq early, and then check into the GI Course, which is first two weeks of December. And then you get your. Your placement for Capitol Hill. You know, which office you're going to work in, whatever. So everybody. And it's predominantly. There was about 40 Air Force officers.

[A]

Dang.

[B]

10 Marine, I think, total. There was 10 Marine officers in me and Brad. So 12 Marines total. Navy had about 20. And the army had about the equivalent. Somewhere in that ballpark. Yeah. Maybe a little less than 20 on theirs. The biggest chunk of it was Air Force. They break you down into two classes. So you got about half and half because. Pretty detailed class. And basically it's, you know, I'm not a bill. I'm just a bill. You know, go back to the old cartoons from back in the day. Tell us about Congress. Not like any of us, especially me and Brad. He him better than me. I'm like, if I don't sing the Mr. Bill song, I'm. Yeah. There might be three understandings of co. Equal branches of government. Back then, I didn't give a crap. But the. Yeah, they all interview. I keep talking Colonel Furness, who is office Legislative affairs at the House Liaison. Like, when do I get my interviews? Because if you don't interview by Christmas, they're going on Christmas break. You're starting first January 3rd or 4th. I don't know where I'm going. Well, little did I know, I didn't have to interview. Marine Corps already worked it out. Yeah, they put me in the House Foreign Affairs Committee check, which was a great opportunity because I got to work all four subcommittees for three months each. I got to do the amendment to the Affordable Care act on the priority one through eight status for the Department of Veteran affairs because the first Affordable Care act, as we all knew too well, was terrible for veterans. It's either zero to hero. You're either 100% or you're zero percent. Anything in between doesn't matter. And that was my problem with that. So we start working priority statuses. Get that amendment to the legislation. And not just me, it was the whole team between Senate and the House. I learned a lot with that but also learned how bad legislation can be when it's rushed through. And that was Affordable Care act the first time and you know, first session on 11. Well after you know basically in the middle of that year I was training to do the Marine Corps marathon. You know, come about August, July, August time frame blew off my quadriceps, my OD system, what's left of my FEMUR. So in 09 I have, during that I have another couple inches removed of my femur. Go through. I spent a week in the new Walt or the old Walter Reed and then basically kind of starting over and thank God Congressman Booer who is a ranking member House Foreign Affairs Committee. He, he was a colonel jag. I spent about six weeks away on the back end of my fellowship and yeah came back last couple months worked on one of the committees and then you know, then they had to figure out what to do with me. Brad Simmons got selected first sergeant. He's got to go back to fleet. I'm a Mass Sergeant Kelly. General Kelly promoted me in Iraq in 08. So I'm like now I had a bachelor's degree but I don't, you know it's has only ever been officers. Brad was easy. You get first sergeant, you've got to go back to the fleet. You're, you're leading marines out in the fleet. But a Marine mass sergeant one legged that, you know, what do we do with him? So yeah, it took him a little while and they figured out put me in Secretary Garcia. He was assistant Secretary of manpower Reserve Affairs Reserve F18 driver down in Corpus. I got to be a special assistant to the assistant secretary especially listening to the, the assistant. Yeah, exactly. Well he had the Veronica Valdez the political appointment because you know he's political appointee. He had a political appointee assistant. Once again, I'm the token gimp. I'm a floater. He can do anything he wants with me. I work directly for him. That's weird when you got a Navy three star Marine three star reporting to you a bunch of ses. Kind of wild when you got a Marine mastering at the table with a bunch of people Marine side, they like Nadler. The Marine side knew. Knew me yeah pretty well at that point. Navy Side. Not necessarily so because, you know, Navy yard fault fell under my boss, you know, all the. But it was a good position because I was a proof source for Navy safe harbor window warrior regiment. Yeah, it's solid and approved source. It redeployed so I can, you know, better recommend yes or no on whatever injuries, you know, a marine has if they want to stay or if they want to redeploy.

[A]

And is that the job you retired out of?

[B]

Yes. My payback tour, that was my two, you know, you got to do that utilization tour. I came in zone for Master Guns in 2010, and I did a letter. Do not promote. I just said, you know, because my contract was good till 13, you know, I.

[A]

But you just decided gonna call it.

[B]

Everything came to fruition. Everything did. I wanted to go to grad school. I knew I was getting my sons. They were still, you know, up around slow Templeton area. I knew they were going to be moving in with me. I was finishing up my second divorce, you know, living in Springfield, Virginia, renting a house. Dad's health was bad. Mom's freaking out about dad's health being bad. And it just. It aligned. Everything aligned. And I'm like, why? In. In the 0861 mos, there's basically five, six master gun billets in the whole Marine Corps. Now if I keep pulling the token gimp card, if I think that's going to be influential, like, obviously it'd been to redeploy. Obviously been for my initial promotion over there. Obviously had been for me to get on the Capitol Hill. I did not want that. I did not want that effect to take away an operational seat. Because you got to think it's 1 MEF, 2 meth, 3 MEF 1st div. 2nd. If 3rd Marine Division doesn't have master guns, then you have that floater that might stay in it like Holber Field or dev group or, you know, after they get promoted. So. And I'm like, no, it's stars aligned. I mean, it's made common sense to me. I've achieved every. At that point, achieved everything I wanted. And I achieved a couple things I didn't expect. The fellowship.

[A]

Yeah, that's wild.

[B]

And the connections. So I'm like, yeah, it's time.

[A]

So put on your uniform for the last time. Retirement ceremony.

[B]

Well, technically, my dress suite, my dress blues. It was little until I squeezed myself into my deltas for my son's graduation. Oh, yeah, that was lucky. I've lost about £40 since then. But no, it was because we did the Marine. You know when you work for an assistant SACNAV and you have a full bird colonel that is planning your retirement ceremony.

[A]

A solid retirement ceremony.

[B]

Yeah. Is that the Marine Corps Museum there in Quantico?

[A]

Nice.

[B]

You know all kinds of cool people there. And so yeah, it was pretty neat. Way more all I cared about is going upstairs and drink beer afterwards, get back my Hawaiian shirt, my shorts. But it was bitter. It was bittersweet. My parents couldn't be there, they couldn't travel. You know my, my kids are two different directions at that point because now I'm on the back end of the second and divorce. That kind of sucked. That sucked. I w. I wish I would have been more proactive on at least have my sons. More importantly. It should be all. It sounds bad, not sound, but definitely my sons.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. So then what was the plan? What you. When you retire? Because I know you're like I said, like I kicked this thing off. You're actually fully retired now, but you did a couple gigs after you got done.

[B]

Yes. So intent grad school, that was the number one is I actually intended to get my PhD in clinical psychology, work for the VA psychologist. I've got street credit. You know when I'd been pre med before I got my degree in psych and business law when I was still active. Makes sense. You know who, who should the VA want working with, you know, pts and other veterans then somebody that's got street credit they can trust. Because that's the biggest common denominator I saw in the VA and from friends I was mentoring was I got some 27 year old girl that knows nothing about my life. So I'm like okay, makes sense. So I do go to school. Plus I'm getting used to having two sons. My transition was pretty quick and pretty, you know it was. My personal transition was pretty tough. You know where to bark orders were not to bark orders. Now I've got. I'm feeding myself to. Now I'm feeding two 1011 year old that are just straight turds and I'm being a turd at the same time. So you know, pulling my boat paddle off the walls, you know, giving one of them wax in the living room floor while the other one watches. And you know, I just. It was such a difficult transition because I went from a single newly single man in D.C. that was just worried about education and helping people to now I've got two little turds that don't know how to eat at the dinner table. And I might add that second check it's going out every month to another ex wife. And you know, it just, it was just such a tough point and you know, and it's four hours from where I grew up, where I live now. And so I take a start. School. Colonel Ben Sailor Saunders, Saylor's wife. Semper fifth and been my colonel in Okinawa in the 90s with Sergeant Major Kent as our sergeant major. That story. He's working for a company called Tandis and Tandas at the time. He gets a hold of me because he knows that I think he was just looking out for me because I hadn't seen him in years. But his wife sees me all the time with teams and profi. He brings me on to be a consultant for that company to work in between VA new build facilities or like West Point when they were adding on doing flooring, advisements and like in the hospitals rollability. Something is so far out of my norm. But I took to it. I understood the law, I understood the VA regulations for purchasing. So kind of boring. But he hooked me up and it was actually pretty, pretty good money. But then it started on my second year when I renewed the contract, it went from one to two jobs a month to two to three jobs a month to okay, just an overnighter to. To two overnight or you know, two nights on this one. My dad's driving four hours in that first year before I moved back to prior. Dad's driving down. His health was terrible. Mom can't. She worked. Why did I get out? I got out not to burden any of my family and to pay them back. Now I'm just back to burden them because I got a little greed on some money.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, nothing on Colonel Sailor. Colonel Sailor's amazing. He's hooking me up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so did some public speaking with PP&I, you know, that worked into a thing in Dearborn where they asked me to keep coming back and speaking once a month up there for a leadership and training seminar. It just all weighed on me that second year combined. It's like dad's health's getting bad. Which I'm super glad I did because this is 12, 13. My dad dies in 16. You know, my sons are now in junior high. They require a lot more guidance on my part, but I got to learn that guidance in that first year.

[A]

No go karts or golf carts.

[B]

No, exactly. Or not just, you know, get down 12, count bodybuilders, you know, beat them with a paddle. You know, just all that raw emotion that I couldn't control and that's that's on me. But once that all planed out, got the job with the VA, did that for 14 months that went haywire and I was doing claims and benefits. Yeah I mean perfect role for me. I know the law or I knew the law more then so it was easy for me to write up claims at five offices. I work in each office once a week. I did 1400 claims in less than 12 months and no one in Oklahoma out of the 16 of us that did it there for ODVA. Oklahoma Department of Veteran Affairs. 16, 20, maybe 800, 700 but I didn't give a crap. I'm still on the same philosophy I had back in dc. I want to help. I want to help veterans. Problem was when I would pick up on the BS portion of their story I would call them out. And then when I call them out I'd spend my leg around bang my knee on the table and I'd be like dude, dude don't want to me I'm 90%. See I wasn't 100 on the Marine Corps. I was 90 after 20 plus years of service and above the amputation. But it was I understood why I don't have pts. I have no mental health problems. At least that's achievable through a combat litmus test. The other factory might be a little goofy bipolar but and I would spin my leg around banging on the table and I'd be like hey me, you didn't get 100 man. I'm 90 and and part of me just wanted to shut up and get out because you got mad. Somebody said you know pecker and boot camp or something and now you're 67 years old and you're trying to claim that some micro problem you had back then has affected your whole life. But you sat in front of me clean shaven. That's the other problem they it's like ever everybody wanted to jump on the PTS bandwagon and you can tell who really has it and who doesn't have it and then there's levels of having it. As we all know too well anniversary dates, you know sights and smells and sounds can affect some but the biggest ones those anniversary dates those emotions are and that's our brain being natural. If we didn't have that emotion I think that we were insane or pathological. But when you get somebody coming in complaining about 1970, 78 and boot camp that started weighing on me too. And then it was the deputy director position when they were put me in

[A]

you got PTSD from Treating pts?

[B]

Pretty much, yeah. Treating people that were faking it. Yeah. Not all of them, I don't mean it that way but everybody then 2013, 14, everybody was claiming pts. Combat, no combat, it didn't matter. I mean I'm looking at their DD214s or their discharge papers before Vietnam and I'm pretty good at feeling it out. I've had a lot of friends have serious problems and you know, friends that have went all the way with that problem as we all have, I'm sure. And then the ones that just self medicate to the point of incapability. It's sad but man, because of that sadness, don't fake it. Don't come in and lie because you want a stinking paycheck because I'm not doing it for it. Took three shoulder surgeries and elbow reconstruction. Finally bumped me over 100% you know well after I left the VA. So it's kind of like that just that part really got to me and I know I gotta not judge and take each your own and that's her own problem and you know, lay in God's hands and you know I'm not to judge but it did weigh on me.

[A]

And then what came after the va?

[B]

MC Petroleum, Maze County Petroleum buddy of mine said come in and start training, be the general manager.

[A]

How'd you like that?

[B]

Job was great. I was technically marketing manager in training. Learned a lot about fuel, a lot about mobile products because we were a mobile distributor all of Oklahoma, part of Arkansas, Texas and Kansas. So we had, we did about 18 million a year. You know as a small petroleum company, you know at one point I think it got closer to 2030, maybe a little bit more before the price started going down during Obama when I came on board. But it was a learning curve. It was interesting but it was just a job, you know because I wasn't 100% and because of my. I don't know if you understand how it works is the. Since I have a. I took a disability retirement the Marine Corps put me on a 60% percent more than 55 for 22. But because I'm dis a disability retirement PDRL and I'm whatever level of VA compensation I have to have an offset because they're both non taxable incomes so they have to subtract from the, you know from my retirement to equal the va. So it's just kind of long winded but. But it's a quagmire. So I was still working. Yeah because I'm still paying child Support on one daughter at this point, got the boys. You know how teenagers are. That gets expensive real quick.

[A]

Just the food bill is freaking out of control with two teenage boys. Come on.

[B]

And two totally different directions on sports. So that was always fun being a single parent. But then, but yeah, it, it pretty much, yeah, made it through. It got pretty easy on dad died and December 16th. And you know, that caused some, you know, Gunner went in the Marine Corps the next year and then cult, you know, now they're just getting married, having kids and you know, like we're talking about. It's beautiful. I, I'm to go from. I know you guys have a different look at it because of the fighting experience, the, the jiu jitsu, the discipline and all the stuff that. Because you love it. And I guess with me, when I decided that I was no longer going to work for anybody, you know, nine, 10 years, nine, eight, nine years ago, something switched. Something switched in me that went,

[A]

you

[B]

know, I'll still do a little traveling, but I want to be a grandparent. I had grandkids at that point because my oldest granddaughter is 14 and then her little sister's 11 and then my grandson, my oldest grandson is 9. All of it came into fruition of the fact that I wanted to be kind of like a stay at home person and just enjoy something that I had not gotten to enjoy. But what I will say with my wife Nadine, most wonderful one in the world, she's wrestled me down. She's amazing. Domesticated me pretty well. I never don't have anything to do. I'm constantly working. My house is almost 120 years old. I'm constantly working projects. I'm using my planer, I'm using my joiner, I'm working with cool woods, I'm building cab. I mean, I've constantly got something to do. And so I'm not bored. But it amazes me now, how did I ever get through back in those days? Because I have all the time in the world between grandkids and projects. How in the world did I ever get anything done when I was focusing only on the military, Marine Corps life? I don't know how I got anything done. Even mowing the lawn. I don't get it. But, but that. So retirement's not. I don't look at it as retirement. I look at it as I'm paying back my family.

[A]

Yeah, that's awesome. No, it's, it's, it's outstanding. And when, you know, when I was talking to you about the fact that you're just like, completely fully retired. I know that. That doesn't mean you're sitting around watching freaking TV all day. Especially when you got, what, seven grandkids?

[B]

Yeah, no, there's always something to do. And now we're into softball, T ball.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

We're all kinds.

[A]

Yeah, you might be the chauffeur service. You end up chauffeuring a lot.

[B]

No, it's not normally meeting it. But the biggest part is which ones are we going to go to when we separate her? Go to one me, you know, because everything just never works in alignment. If I was showing my calendar, I filled it out yesterday, updated all the way through the end of May, and I'm like, hi, caramba.

[A]

You know when you have to create a calendar for your kids, sporting events, you know, it's getting crazy.

[B]

Yeah. Where I could look back a few months ago, my calendar month might have, you know, watch grandkids. Watch grandkids. Nadine massage. Nadine massage. You know, maybe something to remind me, but nothing except what I want to make up doing. And now it's like, actually, I have to do something. So it's kind of wild.

[A]

Yeah, that's cool. It's awesome. So does that get us up to speed? That's where we're at?

[B]

Yeah, pretty much.

[A]

So people can find you on. You're on Twitter. Twitter. X. Spanky Gibson, 71.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You're on Instagram.

[B]

Nope, not on Instagram. Yeah, I quit Facebook. Well, I guess I'm still on there, but I quit it five years ago.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Almost six.

[A]

We'll leave that one off. So your primary is because you're pretty fairly active on Twitter. You get on.

[B]

Yeah, I kind of jumped in there. I've been on there a little over a year, and I don't know why, but I am.

[A]

It's an interesting platform because it's just like one liners, you know, it's just like you're just writing one liners all day. And it can be a little bit addictive. You know, you start chiming in on stuff. And then I noticed you have a YouTube channel at Spanky Gibson produces.

[B]

I just.

[A]

You just started it, right?

[B]

Two weeks ago. I've done two videos and three shorts off the second video. I much like saying yes. Come here. I don't know what's going on, but I don't know if it's discernment. I. The anniversary, it's got. It's got to be this window of time my brain is doing something where it just said, yeah, I Bought a. Yeah, I didn't get nothing sexy like these, but I bought like a little Osmo Action 6 camera, you know, decent deal. Bought some extra lenses, but some. And I'm like. Because I know, like, you or so many people that really have the leadership marketer so amazing at it. I don't know, I just feel this call to communicate.

[A]

Yeah. And share your lessons, man.

[B]

Well, and that's. I don't know. I don't know. It's. Something was calling me in my. In my, My noodle. Really was. And I told. I told my wife, Nadine. I was like, yeah, I think about doing this and it's been going on for like six months. I mean, it's been going on for a while and I've, you know, it's kind of like writing a book. You know, A guy teacher of mine wanted to write a book when I first retired, and I always said, no, no, you know, I don't. I don't need to do things like this. I don't. But all of a sudden, this 20 year anniversary thought process, I think is changing. I don't know. It's hard to explain.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

My brain is wanting to do something and I know I'm gonna suck. You know, I have a. I have a hockey smile, you know, and I'm. I don't. And if nobody listens, I'm gonna do it no matter what.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, I. I was actually wanting to shoot a video yesterday, but we got surprised with Sutton again. And I'm like, well, I'll go in the garage and shoot it out there. And just because I was so angry about all the rhetoric on the ceasefire the other night, just. Just the blatant lying from different directions. And I. So I was kind of feeling that pull to talk about it. You know, just get in front of a camera. Like everybody always says, just get in front of the camera and let it go. You'll get better. Yeah. Downloaded all these different programming apps and one of 10 for thumbnails and downloaded that. Oh, that. That ages me too. The da Vinci. Yeah. Down. Everybody was talking about that on entry level. Yeah, I got that down. And I'm like, started like, oh, yeah, I'm out of my wheelhouse on this one. I'm do so.

[A]

But yeah, well, the cool thing is like, you know, like, people gonna want to, number one, hear your lessons learned. Number two, like your family, you know, like they're your kids. You're gonna be able to talk about things that your kids, your grandkids, your great grandkids, will be able to listen to. Yeah, wouldn't you love it if you had some, you know, you talk, you mentioned the fact that you wish you would have asked your dad more questions. You wish you had would ask your granddad more questions. You know, you had your dad serve in Vietnam. You had your granddad serving three wars, the other one served in one war. Like, imagine if you could have those, those, those testimonials. You know, it's the same thing I always say, you know, with this podcast, like, this perspective that you're given is like, someone's going to listen to this. Some Anglico guy is going to listen to this in 10 years or 12 years or 3 years and learn something from it and be able to take away from it. And also, you know, like, wouldn't it be awesome to have, you know, John Basilone talk for three hours about his experiences in the, in the Pacific campaign? But, you know, we did, we didn't get it. So I think there's a lot of guys that are doing this now, and I think it's, it's awesome that people are doing this get, capturing these stories because it's, it's historical content and it's perspectives that people aren't going to have. I mean, the, you know, the Battle of Ramadi was, you know, look, does it compare to the big campaigns in World War II? Of course it doesn't. We, I've never heard anyone make that, you know, claim, but for our generation, it was, you know, it was pretty important. And for us guys that were there, man, it left the mark. And so to be able to pass on those lessons is just awesome. I'm, I'm sure the, the Spanky Gibson produces YouTube channel Will, Will, will capture some of those lessons as well. Man, that's awesome.

[B]

I hope so.

[A]

Echo. Charles, you got any questions?

[B]

Yeah, quick question. You mentioned something kind of real quick. I think when you were patrolling or something like this, you said looking for lollipops. Yes. What's a lollipop? So the lollipop, basically when you get the lightning pod or a pot off an aircraft and that's looking down a road. So say you've got a dagger mission or you've got a mobile patrol or foot patrols. You want to use your aircraft pods to scan the road to look for IEDs. Wait, what's an aircraft pod? Okay, so a lightning pod is basically a camera system at 15,000, 10,000ft on that airplane that they can lock on. And then when you give them guidance for a bomb, they just okay. Put the 10 digit grid and the altitude and they can send it. So that lightning pod is like a zoom in camera. Then go down to Dave Burk and. No better. Hell yeah. Couple meters. Yeah. You can be at 15000ft and looking at 12 meter spread. So they can, we'll ask them, slew the pod and look down the road. And the lollipop is when you put an ied when they would dig it in and then they would take the hot concrete to fill in the hole above the id. It's round and then it cracks a surface so you get this lollipop signature that you can see and yeah, it's just one of those techniques you learn going on and. Yeah, so it looks like a lollipop down there, straight up. It's like a stick in a circle on the end and mean it. Lollipop. Yeah, yeah, right up.

[A]

Cool, man. Cuz they were, they were hardcore, you know, they'd burn tires, melt the tariff, dig the tar away, dig the dirt, bury the id, put the dirt back in, put the tar back on, put dust on it, sweep it, broom it, then throw, throw dirt on it. And I mean hard to see. Yeah, hard to see.

[B]

Or like when they would do them in the curbs on the main roads, cut a curb out and just replace the curb with the id. You never know. Yeah, I mean that you got to give it up. They, they were reactive.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Innovative.

[A]

Yeah, they were, they were working.

[B]

But hey, got to give it up. I mean I never, I never had any lack of respect for them. Even when we'd enter some of the buildings, sometimes the houses, take my boots off, I'd be in full battle rattle and I had my boots set at the door with the guys sitting out, bringing one of the terps and take notes and. But I, you know, I've. I often wonder that, you know, if the respect level is given naturally somehow on the battlefield. Because I always want. That was one thing I wondered. I never struggled with the amputation, but it was why through the knee, you know, why not Leon? Why not in the forehead? You know why. Yeah, that's about the only thing I ever struggle with, you know, why didn't just, you know, because if I didn't got put out of my misery, I would have accepted, you know, had no choice. It would have been accepted for me, but I would have went back to the life or death. I done matter. I'm dead.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's the eternal question, I guess. Echo, Charles, Any more questions? From you.

[B]

Oh, nope. I've heard the story many times from jp. It's good to meet you in person. Tell him. Tell him. Hey, I haven't talked to him in a while.

[A]

Right on. Yeah. It's always good, man. J.P. you know, because he was, you know, he was 22, I think.

[B]

All those guys, I mean, including Seth. What was Seth? Maybe mid-20s.

[A]

Yeah. Maybe 20. Yeah. Maybe 25, 26.

[B]

Something like somewhere in that ballpark, you know, you have to think of me being the old guy in the whole group in Full metal jacket at 34. Yeah. That's what's wild. And still running and gunning down the street, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. But wouldn't trade it for nothing. Was an awesome opportunity to know those guys. You know, it. You know, life situations suck about it, like with Seth and then. But yeah, you know, like my boys meeting Wes and Bozeman Montana.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, just. It's amazing, you know, Seth in the middle of a Chow hall and Fallujah 8.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

These funny little ironies that, you know, And I truly believe that. That God puts it in front of me and, you know, to catch your attention, bring you in. Because that's my life now, other than grandkids. It's faith. You know, that's. My wife is the one. Nadine is the one that set the example for me to accept Christ. Because up. Up to four and a half years ago, almost five years ago, you know, I was a heathen center. And you just happened to come out to that event within months of me, you know, coming down this new life.

[A]

That's wild, isn't it?

[B]

It is. That's what I mean. I. I don't know. Yeah. I'll never say karma, because I don't believe in karma. Yeah, I don't. I don't go down that. But I do believe God pulls us at some reason, some direction, whether we want it or not. Because I've looked at those videos from 08 when I went back over, and I see the videos of me saying stuff like, well, if God wants me, he'll take me. When they would ask me, are you not afraid to come back over here after getting winded? No. 6 I'm like, no, God wants me. He'll take me. Well, I wasn't a Christian and read the Bible then. I didn't look at life that way. I was just going with the flow and doing what people told me to do and reacting to life. Now it all comes into this different mindset, you know, It, I, I realize it more, you know, based off of her, just by her sitting there reading the Bible next to me in bed at night. And it just finally pulled me in. And then I start seeing these things that I must have been naturally releasing but not recognizing way back then.

[A]

So that happened after you guys got married?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So she married the heathen?

[B]

Yes. Sinner. Straight center. Knowing that I had been. Because she'd been married 19 years to her kids's dad. And then, you know, she called me in the hospital bed in 06. Just friends because we know each other forever. Yeah, I don't remember it, but I had them keep a notepad for me. Everybody that called to write down their number so I could call them back. So this little green sheep notepad, she was in there. She says, I remember talking to you. I don't remember talking to you. But it's in my notepad.

[A]

I don't. There you go.

[B]

And that's what I mean. It's funny how that goes because I'm a completely different man. I'm a completely different person when it comes to kids. My kids see it in me on how I'm with the grandkids compared to how I was with them.

[A]

Less taking paddles off the wall, bingo.

[B]

You know, a little less anger. But my friends see the difference because I don't. You know, I already quit drinking before that. You know, I mean, it just this natural progression in my body because I was on a lot of meds. Four, four, three and a half years ago. Four years ago I was, you know, 40, 50 metformin, 20 units Lantis injection, Jardiance. I was, type 2 diabetic. You know, when you saw me that time, I was 232 pounds. So now I'm 185.

[A]

And were you drinking back then?

[B]

I was, I was starting to stop drinking and ironic. I was still working out and swimming and eating the diet the VA told me to and so I could get off all these meds that are going to kill me. Well, two and a half years ago I started eating animal base. Only had already. Well, quit drinking because I knew as a diabetic that's terrible. But yeah, I was eating the fruits and the vegetables and the turkey bacon and the lean proteins and all that good stuff. And yeah, I'm still blowing an 8.8.1 A1C. I'm still severe diabetic. Then all of a sudden I just start eating nothing but steak and drinking water and a little bit of coffee in the day and drop 40 some pounds and go back to A5. A1C do exactly opposite what the VA tells me. And. But that's me. I know that's not everybody. It works for me and I enjoy it.

[A]

So you're just on the. Are you still on the strict, like, carnivore type?

[B]

Yeah. Cheat a little bit when the grandbaby brings a gummy bear to me or a little kitty gummy bears or something. I can't help myself. Happened yesterday. Little Sutton coming over.

[A]

Did you go cold turkey? Did you just say, all right, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna go carnivore right now?

[B]

Yeah. Two and a half years ago was. Yeah, two and a half year. Over two and a half years. August, two plus years ago. I quit the meds. Didn't tell my doctor at the va. I just straight up said, I'm not doing the meds. I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I tracked all my food intake for 12 months. I tracked protein fats. Obviously no carbs coming in, cards. So it was mainly my protein to fat ratio. Am I overall at that beginning caloric intake. Then I realized at a point that I wanted to have a two to one ratio. Fat to protein ratio. So two fat per one protein.

[A]

Is that in grams or in calories?

[B]

Yeah, basically you can do it in grams and grams. I quit count. I couldn't even mess with the calorie portion of it because I realized that it really doesn't. The biggest part was the 2 gram to 1 gram, if you want to call it that, 2 gram to 1 gram fat to protein ratio, which goes against everything we're told at the va. Low fat, lean proteins, all that stuff. I ate a ribeye yesterday, you know, haven't ate since then. And I don't, you know, my. My satiety is always pretty strong. My energy level is crazy now. I quit working out about a year ago. I got back in the gym to, you know, that first six months. You know, the certain things that come to us when our body starts going back to normal, you know, the pup tent. And then hadn't had one of those in years, you know, because the diabetes and the meds, you know, trazodone. I was on just like 18 pills a day. My body was revolting. Get on this. And within six months, I dropped like 30 some pounds. My body, I had an energy level I didn't understand. I hadn't. I hadn't felt it since my 30s. And then, you know, the first year, strict first year, my doctor was like, yeah, I don't agree with this. You're not eating any fruits, any vegetables? No, I'm not eating any fruits or I mean, animal based only. And matter of fact, it's gotten down to hamburger, bacon, steak, eggs, cheese, one meal a day within the first, you know, six, seven months. But when my A1C went from an eight point something to a five, even in the first, first year, he was like, you just keep doing what you're doing. Don't agree with you.

[A]

Isn't that crazy that they can't say like, well, sorry, maybe we should spread

[B]

the word on this.

[A]

You know, it's kind of wild.

[B]

Well, it's out there. I think it's just all the, the, you know, up until probably the last six, seven months on the new food triangle or pyramid.

[A]

They flipped it.

[B]

Yeah, that's back in our kitty days when they came out with the, you know, crazy food pyramid that. But I'd done it in pre med, I'd taken the nutrition in school. I'd lived through the classes with the VA and everything was telling me, even being on the triathlon team, the coach going, you know, I want you 60, 30, 10, 60, 30, 10, what was the 10?

[A]

Fat.

[B]

Yeah, so it was protein, carbohydrates, fat. And I'm like, okay, I remember something about this. But then I go completely against the norm for me, works tremendously.

[A]

And here you are feeling awesome. Yeah.

[B]

Oh, no, it's amazing. And I haven't, I, I quit working out and swimming over a year ago because I was so busy doing other things that I wasn't going, I should go. You know, not having the discipline to go because I'm putting a new roof on my garage or I'm totally redoing my garage or rewiring this or building these cabinets or doing stuff for other people. Finally got the point where I'm like, why am I paying 46 bucks a month for something I'm not even using?

[A]

Well, we strongly recommend the home gym around these.

[B]

Well, I've heard you guys talk about it.

[A]

Yeah, man, that's. People don't realize what a game changer it is, especially 46 bucks a month. Like that thing pays for itself in a year for sure. Get a squat rack and some, some barbells and like, you're kind of good to go, you know.

[B]

Well, it kind of goes back to that too. Because I remember back in the middle, early mid-90s, I bought one of those kind of all in ones to put in the garage, you know, and then. But it was always get Back to the. Because I was never a big weightlifter in my early years.

[A]

Yeah. And there's the reality that I. I don't know what the percentage is, but there's a lot of exercise equipment that ends up with, you know, hangers on it and.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

You know, whatever.

[B]

Like selling as a garage sale for 100 bucks.

[A]

People. People sell that stuff on offer up and Facebook marketplace like because they just don't use it.

[B]

It.

[A]

But if you get like the good. Like just a solid thing and you have like a simple. That's a good thing now is like you can come up with just a simple workout. You know, just. And all of a sudden you look up, you know, feel good every. Feel even better every day. Because going to the gym especially, you got the grandkids, like. Yeah. All these things get in the way, you know, removes a lot of excuses.

[B]

The home gym does well and yeah, because I've heard you guys talk about that. And that same one I was talking about when I was mowing the other. Other day, I really only want to go for the pull. I just stacked it and added the wife to it because I'll just lift light because I, you know, when I blew my elbow out, you know, and then the shoulders, I was like, yeah, I'll just lift light. I'm not gonna get suited and crunch or the Smith machine or the squat rack for me is hilarious because I'll just take my leg off and lean it on the bar because I don't want a chance. Hurt my hip.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, and then. And I can center up that one leg. I'm not gonna do much weight, but I used to have a lot of fun in the gym and then. But mainly was the pull. When my shoulders healed up and I was able to get back in there and swim two or three thousand meters, I just. That to me is running because I quit running a long time ago and the pole was that way. But yeah, I probably should because I've got lots of energy.

[A]

Either that or get some kind of erg, you know, like the rowing machine. But like you could get a ski erg where you're. You're basically using your upper body to pull down and it's. But it's a cardio. It's more cardio. It's strength based but something that's.

[B]

That's more important. You know, for me it's having the. The cardio or having a natural get away from, you know, trying to stack up weight and get big or, you know, because I'm just Retired.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I ain't rolling around on a mat or getting hooked up with somebody, and

[A]

we still over here getting after it, man.

[B]

Yeah. That's awesome. I. Hey, you guys impressed me.

[A]

Y. Any other. Any other closing thoughts, bro?

[B]

No, sir.

[A]

Well, man, it's such, such an absolute honor to have you out here, have you on this thing. Thank you for coming out. Thank you, thank you.

[B]

I appreciate it.

[A]

I think there's a lot of people that are going to take some more precaution around golf carts and alcohol. Those are known. Those are known. Bad mixing. Also, thank you for. You know, jp, I know Seth definitely told me this. Wes pointed it out as well. You know, the. The. The mentorship that you gave them on how to do combat in Ramadi. Like, that stuff kept my guys alive, so I never got a chance to thank you for that, so thank you for that. And I know, you know, thankfully, you trained them up enough that when you needed them, they were there for you as well. And, you know, again, like I said, it was you guys, your Marines. You know, our relationship with Anglico was just awesome, and it was an honor to serve alongside you guys. And thanks for coming out and your service and sacrifice and your example for the next generation. We won't forget it, brother.

[B]

No, thank you. I appreciate it.

[A]

And with that, William Spanky Gibson has left the building. Just kind of chatted on the way out. So. Awesome see him. So many memories come back, and it's just great to see that he's here and he's getting after it. Obviously before, during. After. What was your mental state when you lost your leg? Oh, I just had to. New normal. Let's go. And the last part, when he was talking about just the. The shift in his life in the last five years, just on the path, as we like to say. On the path. So it's never too late. You know, you can make adjustments to your life right now, and you can be in a completely different area of operations, different area, a different level of capability in a matter of months. Are you gonna see a change tomorrow? Most likely not, but you look up in a matter of months, and then a matter of years, you're in a totally different spot. What do you say? Lost £50. Yeah, legit. So that's what we're doing. We're getting after it. We recommend getting after it. I say jiu jitsu. I say lift, sprint, run, swim. Just get after it, man. And when you do that, you need some fuel. We strongly recommend jockofuel. Protein. You need protein to maintain your Strength to build strength. That's what we're doing. Jockofuel.com you can get ready to drink protein. You can get powdered protein. You can get muscle drive. Maintain your muscles even in periods of suboptimal nutrition.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

We have energy drinks. I've had one today. I don't think I'm having another one today because my energy is up. As they say.

[B]

Good to go.

[A]

Solid. You have hydration. We have joint warfare. We have creatine. How's your creatine intake right now?

[B]

Solid.

[A]

Where are you at?

[B]

Good to go.

[A]

Where you at?

[B]

Two scoops. Two big scoops a day.

[A]

How many grams per scoop?

[B]

Well, you figure it's like five, so it's probably like eight or nine.

[A]

Oh, you mean big scoop, meaning you're heaping scoop.

[B]

The heaping scoop. That's what they call that one.

[A]

Two of those a day.

[B]

A day.

[A]

So you're probably taking at least eight, you think per. Eight grams per.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

All right, I'm up there. Solid 20.

[B]

Solid 20.

[A]

Like topped off.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Five and five. So morning. Dry scoop.

[B]

No, no, no.

[A]

What are you doing?

[B]

I don't do. Put it in the water with hydrate.

[A]

Oh, that's a good morning mix, bro. It's a tactical move. Jocker. Fuel.com. go get some. You can also get it in a bunch of retail stores around the country. I think we're in like 40,000 different retail locations right now.

[B]

All right. On.

[A]

So go get some. It's clean and it tastes good. Also, check out OriginUSA.com we have American made goods. Jeans, boots, Jiu jitsu geese. I was just talking to Pete yesterday. We got some sneakers on the way. Yes, finally. It's been a while. Yeah, but we got them. We got T shirts, hoodies, Jiu Jitsu geese. We got everything that you need. And it's all made 100 in America. Not made by Chinese communists, not made by slave labor, but made 100. America with American made materials. Check out OriginUSA.com it's true.

[B]

Also, don't forget about Jocko Store discipline equals freedom. If we have this mindset, we will be representing on the path.

[A]

Yes, that's what we're doing.

[B]

So, yeah, just really goes. Freedom. Good. Get after it. You know, a lot of cool merch on there. Also, the shirt locker, which is a new design every month.

[A]

Is that a subscription scenario?

[B]

It is, in fact a subscription scenario. So, yeah, so you can check that out. But it's all on there. Yeah. So, yeah, some cool stuff on there. If you like something Right on.

[A]

We got a bunch of books. We got. Well, we got put your legs on by Rob Jones. Speaking of blast injuries, losing both your legs above the knee. That's Rob Jones. Very interesting. The fact that when. When Spanky brought up the fact that he was a gunshot wound as opposed to a blast injury and just how much cleaner that injury. And of course, I mean, like, they're all horrible, but the gunshot injury, he's in there like pretty quick. That stuff is on track. Remember what Rob Jones had to go through? Yeah, it's awful. Infections, blast injuries, you know, everything is messed up. But he wrote a book about it. Rob Jones, it's called put your legs on. Also, Dave Burke, you heard his name get mentioned a few times today. He was the part of that Anglico team, one of the Anglico leaders of. As a matter of fact, in fact, he was the leader. Never mind part of. He was the leader of that crew. And he wrote a book called need to lead, so you might want to check that one out. And you can learn to lead. Speaking of learning to lead, you can go to extreme ownership.com and take online leadership classes. And if you need leadership inside your organization, which you likely do, you can go to echelonfront.com and you can. Well, you can bring Echelon front into your organization or your organization can visit with Echelon front and we can help you with your leadership, which will help you square away all aspects of your business and your life. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, the amazing mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org also check out heroes and horses.org and finally, Jimmy May's organization, Beyond the Brotherhood.org if you want to connect with Spanky Gibson, he's on Twitter X. It's at Spanky Gibson, 71, and he also has his own YouTube channel. Putting out knowledge at Spanky Gibson produces. And then for us, check out jocko.com and then on social media, I'm at Jaco Echo, Charles. Just don't spend too much time on there. Thanks once again to retired master sergeant William Spanky Gibson. Awesome to see you, brother. So glad you made it home. So glad you carried on. Thanks for what you did for my guys. Thanks for what you did for the Marine Corps. Thanks for what you did for our great nation. And thanks to all of the personnel from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines that are currently on watch around the world, holding the line for freedom. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for holding the line here at home and keeping us safe and everyone else out there. This what you got right now? It's a gift. Every day is a gift. Every day is an opportunity. And we are blessed every day with the sunrise. But we only get so many of them. So don't waste them and instead go out there every day like William Spanky Gibson and get after it. And that's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.