The Bloodiest Battle in Afghanistan | USMC 3/5 | Gunnery SGT Joe Reyna | JP Dinnell Podcast 070

Summary

JP Dinnell Podcast 070 - The Bloodiest Battle in Afghanistan | USMC 3/5 | Gunnery SGT Joe Reyna

Release Date: January 24, 2025
Hosts: JP Dinnell, Lucas Pinckard
Guest: Gunnery SGT Joe Reyna

---

Overview

This episode features Gunnery SGT Joe Reyna, a decorated Marine whose career included participation in the bloodiest battle of the Afghanistan War—Sangin, Helmand Province, with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. The conversation covers Joe’s upbringing, his journey to the Marines, his experiences during the notorious 2010-2011 Sangin deployment, the loss and sacrifices endured, the challenges of leadership, camaraderie, and the emotional aftermath. The episode delivers raw insight into the realities of war, the burden of survival, and lessons on resilience, teamwork, and leadership—both in and out of combat.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Joe's Background and Upbringing

• Military Family Roots: Joe was born in Virginia but raised in San Antonio, Texas. His father, a Marine aviation mechanic, instilled discipline and structure in Joe's life. (04:03)
• Turbulent Childhood: After his parents’ divorce at a young age, Joe struggled with energy and discipline but eventually thrived under a stricter environment with his father, learning that "structure and discipline equals freedom." (18:11)
• Sports and Natural Talent: Frequent involvement in sports (pole vaulting, baseball, football, bowling, pickleball) provided an outlet for his energy and competitiveness. (10:39)
• First Major Life Lesson: Joe recounts moving in with his father in high school, which imposed discipline and set the stage for his future military career. (14:59)

Path to the Marines

• Family Influence: Joe always admired the Marine Corps because of his father's service, despite personal animosity during his teens. (13:34)
• College Detour: Briefly attended college on a pole vaulting scholarship (and briefly joined the football team), but ultimately left after losing his scholarship due to injury and lack of communication with coaches. (25:56)
• Recruitment: Staunchly wanted infantry, refusing other MOS options despite pressure to fill other vacancies. (29:39)
• Boot Camp Realities: Despite physical preparedness, Joe found Marine Corps boot camp mentally and emotionally challenging. He reflects on expectations versus reality and the artificiality of military movie stereotypes. (31:44)

Quote:

“Even for somebody like myself who always knew the Marines was there, when I got to boot camp I was like, what the hell did I do?” – Joe Reyna [31:41]

Infantry Training and Entering the Fleet

• School of Infantry: Rigorous 12-week course at Camp Pendleton—basic soldiering, small unit tactics, weapons handling, and survival skills. Joe turned down opportunities for prestigious non-infantry assignments to deploy. (37:12–38:04)
• Marine Culture: Joe shares the camaraderie and hazing culture endemic to the infantry, emphasizing the blend of hardship, teamwork, and humor that binds Marines. (43:10–46:30)

Leadership—Good and Bad

• Experiences with Leadership: Joe relays encounters with both exemplary and poor leaders and describes the impact of leadership on retention and morale.
• Caring vs. Ambitious Leaders: The group discusses how the military can suffer from detached, bureaucratic, or purely ambitious leaders—sometimes alienating the very Marines who make the organization strong. (51:49–54:32)

Quote:

“You start to realize real quick the guys that actually care are typically the ones that are good at their job—and those are the people you want to follow and emulate.” – Joe Reyna [52:44]

Pre-Deployment, Training and the Reality of Sangin

• Shift from MEU to Afghanistan: Originally slated for a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), Joe’s battalion receives orders to deploy to Sangin, Helmand Province—a region untouched by US forces for seven years and infamous for IEDs and Taliban control. (57:17–58:11)
• Preparation: Bridgeport (cold weather/survival), combat lifesaver, live tissue courses, and realistic kill house training (with amputee role-players). (59:20–65:04)

Deployment: Sangin, Helmand Province (Bloodiest Battle)

Arrival and Initial Combat

• First Days in Country: Immediate exposure to hostility—rockets, machine gun fire, IED belts, and high casualties from day one. The previous unit was so decimated that they refused to take 3/5 out on patrols—the proper “left seat/right seat” handover didn’t happen. (70:08–75:17)
• Joe's Personal Loadout: Carried immense weight—2,500 rounds for his SAW, an AT4, and, later, additional demolition gear as the op tempo and severity of combat escalated. (77:32–88:21)

Fighting, Loss, and Chaos

• Battle Rhythm: Punishing rotations of post, patrol, and quick reaction force (QRF), with little rest. Mental and physical exhaustion compounded by the constant threat. (93:32)
• Casualties: Friends and Marines lost to IEDs and gunfire—including machine gunner Smarts (Day 1), vehicle crews obliterated by 150-lb IED (Day 2), Staff Sergeant Tejada (double amputee), and close friend James Stack (sniper round to the face) on the Marine Corps birthday. (74:59, 108:42)
• Humor and Survival: Joe describes the dark humor that pervades these situations—jokes as a coping mechanism amid carnage. (91:14–92:22)

Memorable Moment:

“I was cleaning out the muzzle of my gun... my compensator was just filled with leg meat. Somebody came through and said, ‘Smells like carne asada back here.’” – Joe Reyna [91:06]

Joe’s Injuries (Purple Heart Events)

• First Injury: Low-order IED blast while exiting a building; took shrapnel to the face and perforated his eardrum; medevaced but pressured to return to duty. (111:02–113:25)
• Subsequent Blasts: Within the next 30 days, exposed to two more major explosions, resulting in repeated concussion symptoms and further ear trauma. Self-admits to minimizing injuries to avoid being sidelined. (140:14–142:39)
• Paperwork and the Purple Heart: Ten years later, he receives his Purple Heart after bureaucratic roadblocks and emotional reluctance to apply, noting the challenge in documenting wounds amidst chaos. (80:25–84:29)

Quote:

“Some of it was definitely self inflicted... just being a young, naive individual. After a while, you fight through a MACE report. You’re not going to medevac me... Put me back with the boys." – Joe Reyna [140:59]

Heroism and Loss

• Maldonado’s Death: Joe finally gets transferred to the team he lobbied for, but his team leader is killed in a massive explosion—only his upper body is recovered. The emotional impact of “getting what you ask for, at a price.” (119:01–121:31)
• Survivor’s Guilt and the Weight of Remembrance: Ongoing theme of losing friends, especially witnessing the pain of families and the younger Marines left behind. The frustration with leadership (SecDef Panetta prioritizing his own safety over medevacs) adds to the bitterness and sense of abandonment. (130:19–132:24)

Reflections on Legacy and Brotherhood

• Significance of 3/5: 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines is one of the USMC’s most storied units (referenced in the HBO series “The Pacific,” history from WWI to Afghanistan). During Joe’s deployment (Sep 2010–Apr 2011) the unit suffered 25 KIA and over 200 WIA, cementing its reputation. (145:09–148:19)
• Meaning of Service: Joe’s motivation in sharing his story is not for recognition, but to honor the memory and sacrifices of the fallen—“to speak on behalf of my brothers who can’t speak for themselves.” (149:18)

Quote:

"If there's one thing you can do different today... Google 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Read up on those 25 amazing human beings that are not with us today because of what they did over there. Try to do something to honor them." – Joe Reyna [160:20]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Combat Losses:

  “Not to sound inhumane, but this is what we signed up for. This is what we knew we were getting ourselves into.” – Joe Reyna [76:47]

• On Brotherhood and Humor:

  “The warmest night I had [in the mountains] was cuddling with the boys on the mountain.” – Joe Reyna [62:24]

• On Leadership:

  “You start to realize real quick, the guys who actually care—those are the people you want to follow and emulate.” – Joe Reyna [52:44]

• First Arrival in Sangin:

  “We’re taking shots—get off, now! We got rockets inbound!” (Describing immediate hostile contact when debarking at FOB Jackson) [70:08]

• On Dark Humor as Survival:

  “Smells like carne asada back here.” (After teammate’s leg meat is cooked onto the gun from ID detonation) [91:06]

• On Survivor’s Guilt:

  “I thought I was gonna die... made a video to be played at my funeral, planned out everything.” (JP and Joe discuss pre-recorded goodbye messages) [68:41]

• On Honoring the Fallen:

  “This has never been about me. This isn't my story. It's about the guys who didn't make it back.” – Joe Reyna [160:20]

---

Timestamps of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Topic | |------------|------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Introduction to the Battle of Sangin | | 03:44 | Joe’s Military Background & Childhood | | 13:34 | Influence of Family and Decision to Join Marines | | 25:56 | Losing Sports Scholarship & Pivot to Marines | | 31:41 | Boot Camp Reality | | 37:12 | School of Infantry | | 57:17 | Orders Change: Deployment to Afghanistan | | 70:08 | First Minutes in Sangin – Immediate Hostility | | 75:00 | First KIA of the Deployment | | 91:06 | Dark Humor in Combat | | 108:42 | Death of James Stack | | 111:02 | First Injury: Shrapnel to the Face | | 119:01 | Second Major Injury – Malnado KIA | | 140:14 | Third Major Blast | | 149:18 | What 3/5 Legacy Means to Reyna | | 160:20 | Final Reflections & Honoring the Fallen |

---

Tone and Atmosphere

The episode is unvarnished, deeply personal, and at times darkly humorous—the flippant jokes between co-hosts and guest provide welcome relief amid heavier topics, echoing the gallows humor that sustains men in war. There is also a strong undercurrent of pain, respect, humility, and the drive to honor those lost.

---

Call to Action

Research and remember the fallen:

"Google 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, look up some videos. There are 25 amazing human beings that are not with us today because of the great things that they did over there. Try to do something to honor them today." – Joe Reyna [160:20]

---

Further Resources

• Echelon Front & FTX Leadership Training: Hands-on scenario-based leadership training (Joe participates as opposition force—info available at echelonfront.com)
• Documentary: For the 25 — by Logan Stark (Black Rifle Coffee)—about this specific deployment.
• Books: With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge, HBO’s The Pacific (context for 3/5 history)

---

For those considering the military, or anyone searching for meaning after hardship—this episode offers a rare, unfiltered look inside the brotherhood of the infantry, the trauma of war, and the honor of remembering those who gave everything.

Transcript

[A]

Now the bloodiest battle in the history of the war in Afghanistan. My squadron is yelling, like, trying to figure out who it was. He's asking me and I told him. I was like, it's not me. And then I looked down and Malnat was gone. Once they buried it, they put rocks and all sorts of things on top of it, just create more shrapnel. And that's basically everything that I took to the face. If I went back today, I'm still even knowing what I know. There's no way I'm making it out of there this time.

[B]

Good morning. This is the J.P. donnell podcast, episode 70. I am J.P. donnell, and as always, I have Lucas with me on this podcast. We have had the distinct honor of having a handful of absolute studmarines as guests. And today we have the honor once again with Gunny Sergeant Raina. I'm excited to dive into the life lessons that this gentleman has to offer because I know over the years of just working with him, his experience and what he has done in life has had a very positive impact over my life and also my family's. I know firsthand from working with Joe over the last six years that Joe is a Marines Marine who loves his country, loves the Marine Corps, his family, and is dedicated to improving his life and the life of those around him. I first met Joe at a field training exercise we were doing in Virginia beach at Echelon Front. We were doing this field training exercises and we needed role players. I was talking with Cody and he told me that one of his best friends from the Marine Corps lived close and he would be a great role player. So the thing I know about Cody is he's very protective of things that are important to him. And at this point, Echelon Front was one of those things and important. And I knew that if Cody Gandy, also known as Game Day Gandhi, was going to put his name on somebody, that they were going to be a good human and good for whatever the need was. Well, Cody was right. I was impressed and I was also very thankful for the hard work that he gave us. And I am very thankful that he has also been able to take leave over the years to come, support the Echelon Front mission. And I can also say that I know Jocko and Leif and the rest of the Echelon Front team is also very thankful for Joe's service and what he does to help at Echelon Front. And it's been really cool to see the growth of Joe as a Marine, as a husband, as A father and as a human over these last six years. So over the year, over these last six years, there has been times that I was in legitimate tears, laughing, listening to some of his stories, or the stories that just involved Joe, myself, and the rest of the goon squad from the ftxs. And there was times I was also absolutely speechless with hearing some of the stuff that he has gone through as a Marine, in combat and in stateside. And I am excited that we will get to share some of these stories today as well. Joe, thank you for your service. Thank you for everything that you've done for this nation and everything that you do currently for this nation. And also, thank you for all the help that you provide us at Echelon Front. How are you, bud?

[A]

I'm good, buddy. How you doing?

[B]

I'm doing great, man. Lucas. What's up, bud? What's going on, punkin? How are you?

[C]

I'm fantastic. I'm trying to finagle Joe out of one of those fancy jackets that he gives those kids over there at the. The Marine recruiting headquarters.

[A]

We don't give anything out.

[C]

Yeah, that's what I heard.

[A]

It's all earned.

[C]

Oh, I like that.

[B]

Oh, this is. This is.

[C]

That is not how.

[B]

Great way to start this.

[C]

This is not how things work for the nccs. We just give stuff out to everybody. Right. You don't even. We. Our recruiting is through the roof, and we literally do nothing.

[B]

It's.

[C]

It's just so good.

[B]

Yeah. You know, we were trending in a really solid direction of, like, we don't give anything. Yep. It's earned.

[C]

I think that we should go in that direction.

[B]

Yeah, we're going to. Yeah. Where are you from, man?

[A]

It's always a tough question. So.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

My dad was in the military. I was born in Virginia, in Fairfax, Virginia.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I don't claim Virginia. I was only a few months old when they moved back to San Antonio.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I've lived San Antonio my whole life until I joined the Marines.

[B]

Dude, that's awesome. What was. What was growing up like your dad. You said he was in the Marines.

[A]

My dad was.

[B]

Dude, that's awesome. What'd your dad do in the Marine Corps?

[A]

He was gonna get so mad. He was aviation mechanic.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So he actually worked on HMX1. He traveled with the President quite a few times.

[B]

That's where.

[A]

I know between him and my mom, they got to, like, spend Christmas at the White House a couple times. No big deal.

[B]

That's awesome.

[A]

You know, the normal Marine Corps life.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

How Many times. You spent Christmas in our house. Cool.

[C]

So, growing into my invite.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

I think I lost in the mail. It's been. Weather's been bad lately, so that's probably what happened.

[B]

Aren't we all, man? That's pretty cool. And so San Antonio is, you know, that's home for you.

[A]

It's all I've. It's all I ever knew.

[B]

Awesome. You like San Antonio?

[A]

Not anymore.

[B]

Not anymore. It's changed, right?

[A]

It's. I don't know if it's changed or if I've changed. I've. I felt like that perspective. I've outgrown it. Living here in the Fort Worth area now. It's. This is. It's funny. So my wife. We still have San Antonio area codes for our phone numbers. My wife is. She's so dedicated to up here now. She wants to get her phone number changed.

[C]

She's ready for the 817.

[A]

She's ready for that 817.

[B]

Either 817 or 469. Right?

[A]

She. We're. We're all 817.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. 469.

[C]

What's. What's the churro situation like? San Antonio versus Fort Worth?

[A]

I've never been. I didn't even have churros until I went to California. What? Yeah.

[C]

Charles Barkley is going to be so disappointed in you.

[B]

The stuff you say is absolutely amazing. Okay. Childhood. Any sports? Were you active in sports or did you like band or choir or anything cool like that?

[A]

No. Anything sports related? It's. I've. I've always been a terror to anybody trying to take care of me just because I had so much energy.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So sports has always been like, outlet. That's the one thing that I've always loved doing. My.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I, I Even video games. I. People try to explain video games to me, too, and it's. It's like, listen, man, it sounds really cool. I just, I don't have the attention span for it. It's. I. I've owned video game systems in my life, and then I play it for 20, and then it's like, hey, man, you want to go throw rocks at something?

[B]

Yeah, I would much rather be throwing rocks. You sound like my brother and I. My brother was, you know, he's a really good athlete. Was really like, just. He's a great athlete. So is my sister. But Corey was a really good athlete if he wanted to. But it was like the attention span type of thing also. But Corey was also very talented where he. And that's why I asked him like, do you do band or choir or anything like that? Because Corey, he did choir, band, and he was an athlete.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And he also was like super high scoring on all. You met him at one of the Virginia. Yeah, yeah. And so that's why I was curious because I know like over the years we've talked like, you definitely have that drive for sports because of your energy. I mean, you're also the guy that's like, oh, I'm just gonna go run 16 miles today because you want to. And I'm like, you're insane. But also, you are also very intelligent. And so I was curious, like, did you have some sort of other outlet for, for that energy and that just that mental drive that you have never.

[A]

I, I honestly get in a lot of trouble. Oh, tons. If there was trouble that was able to go out and find somebody, like, it would find me for sure.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

We would meet in the middle most of the times. But I. Yeah, I.

[B]

So what was that like growing up? I mean, how did your parents handle that?

[A]

There's a lot of, a lot of struggles. I, I definitely cause so my, my parents divorce. I. I don't even remember my parents even being together, honestly.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I, I still remember the day that my dad came back from Georgia because he finished out his service, we moved back to San Antonio, my mom started raising us on her own. And then the day he finally finished his service, moved back from Georgia. And I still, I remember that day so vividly, but I couldn't have been older than like three or four, which is crazy to think that I can. I remember it, but I just, I wanted to be with my dad. I went to go stay with him in the hotel with his new wife. And yeah, it was. But I mean, I definitely caused a lot of animosity between my parents because it was. Well, you're letting him get away with this and the only time he sees you is when you're coming over to get after him. And so it was always a big back and forth thing.

[B]

And what have you taken. I mean, I know you're married and you have kids and we'll talk about that later. What, what have you taken from that experience as a kid and now as your adult, you sit back and you reflect on that and you're like, oh, okay, I'm.

[A]

I like to say I'm a lot more understanding and I think my wife would agree too. I'm definitely for somebody who's just such a hothead and I'm so short tempered, I have so much patience for My kids. And it's funny, my wife gets so mad that I can just ignore them. I'm super good at it and kids.

[B]

Just need to be able to be kids.

[A]

That's what I tell her all the time, is like, listen. Yeah, I get it. They want chocolate milk. They can wait five minutes. You don't have to stop what you're doing right now to go get them. Just like they're asking me for everything. That's why it's always so funny when you see the memes and the videos that come out. Like kids walk past dad to go find mom to tell them that they want something.

[B]

Exactly. I know that's how it is with my kids. Yours are super small, bro.

[C]

Our 2 year old is all the time. And we're, we're having this snack fight right now of like, he wants snacks between every meal. And Mom's like, well, he's gotta eat. And he's asking me for snacks. I was like, bro, you're not getting snacks. She's like, if he's hungry, you gotta feed him. I was like, if we don't feed him right now, I bet in two hours when we eat dinner, that little joker will devour that plate instead of looking at it and being like, I don't really want all of this.

[B]

And then you have the fight of eat all your food.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Okay. All right.

[C]

So love it. Parenting's so great. It is the greatest, greatest joy in the whole wide world.

[B]

Young boy getting into trouble playing sports. I mean, that's, you know, okay. Not uncommon.

[A]

I think way I like to explain it too, is I, I consider myself a natural athlete. Whereas like, I, I can. It's one of my biggest pet peeves for myself. Or like bowling. I'm good at bowling and badminton and pickleball. Pickleball.

[B]

Oh, you're on that pickleball train right now, huh?

[A]

I, I just ran. I just started playing pickleball and the old people at the courts love me.

[C]

What's, what's your duper?

[B]

I've never played.

[A]

I don't know what that means.

[C]

Oh, that's a, that's the pickleball skill rating.

[A]

Oh. Yeah. I don't know it. I, I keep seeing it. I don't even know how it works.

[C]

Yeah, I, I'm not, I'm, I'm not super up on, on how it works, but we got a bunch of students that play and that the. I thought it was just another made up word like bustin or Riz. And they're talking to each other about yeah, yeah. What's your duper?

[B]

No cap.

[A]

It's like, what is that?

[C]

And it's like the actual pickleball rating system.

[A]

Yeah. So I. Like I said, I've always. I consider myself a natural athlet. I could just pick something up and it just comes to me. So I'm just kind of good at lots of sports, but I'm not really good at any sport. So I always wish I can just get rid of all these unnecessary things that I'm good. Badminton. Crush it. Badminton. Things that I'm never going to need in life. And so I always wished I can just take all that energy and focus it into a singular sport.

[B]

And is it because you can't or you just haven't decided to do that?

[A]

My attention span won't let me.

[C]

She goes to the Olympic trials for badminton. I mean, we've got a badminton team, man.

[A]

So my. My dad, that was always his biggest thing when I was growing up was, I mean, I guess, kind of jumping ahead. But when I was in high school, my. So my dad pole vaulted. I went to the same high school as my dad, both my parents, and my dad was a pole vaulter. And my dad graduated in 1986, and the guy that held the record at my high school, his name was Kirk Ward, and he broke that record in 1984. And when I went to high school, that record was still there. We didn't even have pole. We were kind of super poor school, and they didn't have a lot of things. The end of my junior year, they got pole vaulting, but I was already playing baseball. And so I went to, like, two different track meets. But then over the summer, my dad would actually come to my summer workouts for football, and I would do summer workouts for football, and then I would go pole vault. So my dad kind of coached me through that. And then I ended up breaking my high school record my senior year, and.

[B]

It was so annoying. Okay.

[A]

All right.

[B]

So going to unfold this a little bit later. I like that.

[C]

Peel back parts of this onion.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. All right. So what was high school like, overall experience? Did you enjoy it? Were you just ready to get done with it?

[A]

What.

[B]

What brought you to the Marine Corps? Was that in high school?

[A]

Yeah, a little. It was. Honestly, a lot had to do with my dad. My dad was always as much animosity as I had for my dad growing up just because I didn't see him much. And then the only times that we would see him, it was coming over to, like, probably beat Me because I did something that I.

[B]

Thank you. Thank you for our listeners.

[A]

Yeah, Yep.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, we'll go with that.

[A]

And yeah, it was, there was just a lot of animosity growing up, but it was, it was always still my favorite person. And then, yeah, I just, I didn't, I hated school. I've never, always, I've never been the classroom environment type guy. And that was one of the things I still have people to this day that I communicate with from high school. Like, you were actually smart. I was like, yeah, as long as, yeah, as long as my attention span allowed me to do it. And then I, I can jam through something real quick.

[B]

But so throughout high school and life in general, what, I mean, whether you're consciously or subconsciously you've had to create systems and habits that helped you stay focused and, or, okay, we're going from this, we're going to shift to this, we're going to come back to this because, I mean, obviously there had to have been something that you were able to do.

[A]

Something clicked my, I think my junior year, so obviously always playing sports. It was funny because even through like seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, tenth grade, you have to pass all your classes in order to play sports. So I typically got to play like the first half of the sport. And then progress reports or report cards would come out and yeah, it's like, hey, buddy, you can't come out anymore. So, yeah, I don't know what. It was something. My junior year, my dad finally, I actually, I ended up moving in with my dad. I want to say sophomore junior year because I always lived with my mom and it just, yeah. Finally moved in with dad and maybe just having the discipline, the structure. He is extremely strict with everything that I did. Even being a high school kid, I was allowed to talk on the phone for one hour every night from like 9:00 clock to 10:00'. Clock. And if you brought that phone back at 1001 and well, now you don't get the phone for the rest of.

[B]

The week and hope my kids are listening to this. I don't understand how fortunate they are, but we're going to be readjusting some things at our household soon and I might use this for a week to test it.

[A]

Oh, I, it was one of those ones where it's, yeah, that sucks. But it's. Something clicked in that time frame.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And I mean, I finally started passing all my classes and weird. It was just having the, the structure.

[B]

A little more structure and discipline. You started passing your classes?

[C]

Yeah, so is this. Are we talking like the. The corded phone on the wall?

[A]

No.

[C]

Or is this like, your cell phone where you were getting those. Those are like the free night weekend minutes.

[A]

My dad actually worked for Sprint when I was in high school, so my dad had a cell phone and my stepmom had a. So he didn't. They didn't have to pay for him.

[C]

Right.

[A]

So they just had cell phones. We didn't even have a house phone. That's right. So the only phone that I could use was my dad's.

[C]

And you got it for an hour a night?

[A]

One hour. And that was assuming somebody didn't call my dad. And then like, hey, Pop, since you were on the phone during my hours, like, no. Okay. Thanks. I'm gonna just go back to my room.

[B]

Yeah. Thank you for the free room and board and your meals and everything else. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow morning. All right. High school.

[A]

Not. Not to say. It's not that there wasn't structure with my mom. My mom was. My mom is absolutely the nicest person you will ever meet. She's my mom. The way I explain my mom to people is she can literally have $5 in her pocket, and if you ask her for $20, she's gonna find a way to give you $20. She's. My mom's a saint. And, you know, she. She did everything she could for us. We just. She was trying to raise three kids by herself.

[B]

It's hard.

[A]

My dad, like, he was paying like 175amonth in child support. So.

[B]

Yeah, that. Not.

[A]

Yeah, just wasn't anything to do anything. We. I was burning through that much groceries in two weeks just because I can eat anything in the house and.

[B]

Yeah, you still can. Huh?

[A]

It's a bad habit.

[B]

This is impressive how active and fit you stay with. I've seen the food you can put down, and I'm like, how, how, how? You know, it's a skill set. All right, so high school's up and down. You move in with your dad, you get a little more discipline, a little more structure, you're seeing the benefits of that discipline. So maybe. Obviously maybe not. Then you didn't understand discipline equals freedom. But when you've heard us talk about discipline equals freedom at FTXs, and you've been to some musters as well. Now when you're thinking about it, does that resonate a little bit differently with you? Like, oh, my dad, you know, was imposing discipline because he loved me and he cared about me, and it Actually gave you freedom.

[A]

Oh, 100. It was. I mean, I. I was. I was that kid that was. I was grounded for months at a time, and I just. I could never do anything. I couldn't play with my friends. I couldn't talk to anybody. I couldn't even have a girlfriend. Didn't get to play any sports, which is what I ultimately loved. It's the only outlet that I actually had.

[B]

This was because if you got in.

[A]

Trouble, because I was always in trouble.

[B]

And these things were taken away between.

[A]

Getting the fights, just stupid stuff in class, and then getting sent to the principal. And I was always in trouble. And it was like once I moved in with my dad, it's hindsight 20 20.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I. I see that. Once I actually had that structure and that discipline, and it's like, hey, dad, can I go to the mall with my girlfriend? It's like, yeah. I was like, wait, really? I wasn't used to being told yes.

[B]

Hold on. Let me think about this. I've been doing these things right? And I get these free. Oh, maybe I'm gonna keep things. Did you carry that in with you into the Marine Corps? And then now as a parent and just.

[A]

There's definitely been ups and downs.

[B]

Yeah, for sure. But is that a subconscious thing that you kind of fall back to is because of that structure and that discipline that your dad brought into your life? You saw the benefit of that.

[A]

Oh, absolutely.

[B]

Yeah. That's cool. So, all right. At what point are you saying, hey, I want to become a Marine?

[A]

So I pretty much said it my entire life. I. I just. It's always subconsciously something that I knew. And then. So I actually had a teacher. Right. So my senior year, because I broke my high school record. It's funny. You start to get recognized for doing great things.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I actually got a scholarship to go pole vault in college for one year. One year, bro.

[B]

That's awesome.

[A]

So even there was a. There was a coach that. It was funny. He was laughing because I had this. I had a pole that my dad legitimately used in the 80s. It was one of his actual poles. Still had his marks. And everything on was just been thrown in a storage shed. That's how much they didn't clean things out at my high school. And I was using one of these poles my senior year when I went to practice. And we used to share this stadium with another high school where they actually had a pole vault coach. And he was laughing so hard. He's like, if you can pole vault that high with this Piece of bamboo. And he's like, I want to see what you can do with an actual pole. So he started coaching me. Started.

[B]

Oh, he was cool.

[A]

He was.

[B]

I was starting to get fired up.

[A]

No, no.

[B]

I just went the other way.

[A]

And I was like. He. He was just super impressed with what I was able to do with nothing. So he was like, I want to see what you can do when I give you anything that you want. So he literally took me under his wing. I started. I would leave high school, my high school, to go to his school, and he would train me at his school. I would do the workouts with the gymnast. I. Wow. Every. Every track meet, because they were a 4A school, we were a 5A, so they went to different track meets than what we did. So he. I would drive over, like, on a Friday or Saturday and pick up polls, and he would give me polls to borrow for the weekend so that I can go compete at my meets.

[C]

And that's cool.

[B]

Man. Talk about a good human making a legitimate impact on your life. He didn't have to do that. You weren't one of his students.

[A]

No. Yeah. He owed me nothing. He didn't know me from anywhere. Literally. Just the random kid jumping with the.

[B]

Well, he saw. He saw the drive that you had.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

You saw the drive that you had, and he's like, all right, how can I help them? And that's what we as humans should be doing a better job at. I mean, like, you're talking about your mom, and now it makes a lot more sense. Like, the way you are and what I've seen and your generosity and your heart to helping other people, it makes sense. It makes a lot of sense to me now. You know, what you said about your mom, and then, you know, the structure from your dad, now this guy, what he did for you. I mean, those are great examples of what we should be doing in life. So, okay, so you're pole vaulting. What's the transition?

[A]

So I. I had to go. There was a lot of things that I had to do for my scholarship and just for getting the applications and because we. I mean, just. We weren't poor, but we. We definitely struggled growing up. So I was applying for all sorts of scholarships and things like that, and it got to a point where I still remember the counselor. Her name was Ms. Brunel. I got so stressed out one day, and I threw my stuff in the air. I was like, well, I'm just gonna join the Marines. And she lit me up. She went off on me and she's like, you don't ever say that again. Just was super disappointed in me. And I was like, yes, ma'. Am. Went back and I finished filling out all my applications and it was, it was tedious things that I just, I wasn't used to and I thought there was going to be more help doing it and started to realize real quick that I'm getting ready to be an adult and the only person that can help me is me. So it was, it was extremely stressful. So, okay, I filled everything out and actually went to college for a whole semester.

[B]

Like, I love that. Hey, college is a great thing. If there's an intent behind it, that's gonna. Not intent. Well, yeah, if you have the proper intent. Like, if you're like, hey, I'm going to school for this degree for these purposes. But college isn't for everybody.

[A]

No.

[B]

And you realize that after one semester and then what was next?

[A]

I didn't even make it that far in.

[C]

It was okay.

[A]

So it was super funny. It was the first year that that school had a football team as well. And they. When I went for my not interview, but the, the track coach actually did a whole tour with me, gave me a tour of the campus, showed me everything. And he walked me through the new stadium and where the new coaching facility was going to be for the. The head football coach. And when he introduced me, he was like, hey, this is Joe Reyna. He's getting ready to be one of the pole vaulters here. Which it was funny because I always introduced myself as Joe Rayna as like a professional courtesy. But anybody who knew me from high school prior only knew me as Joey. And when he introduced me, the football coach was like, Joe Rain. He's like, Joey Reyna. It's like, yes, sir. Highlands high school, number 10. Yes, sir. He's like, yeah, we scouted you guys. I was like, funny. You didn't call. And he goes, yeah, well, you guys were 0 and 10. I was like, touche.

[B]

Cheers.

[A]

Yeah, I was like, fair enough. So it was. I mean, he knew who I was. He knew my. He knew me by name. He knew exactly what high school I went to, what number I was. So he, he actually offered come try out. I went and tried out and I was on the football team for a whole few weeks.

[B]

So what, what, what caused you to leave college?

[A]

So we ended up getting hurt playing football. Track coach was like, hey, you know, I'm not. You're not here to play football. So, you know, I don't know how this is going to impact you and this and that. So I was like, okay, well I'll. I'm done with football. Like, you're right. I'm here to pole vault.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Well then I, I went to this indoor competition for pole vaulting. And when I got back it was, I think it was like four in the morning or something like that. And the Cafeteria opened at 5:30. We had a 24 hour gym. So let's go play basketball. Hairline fracture up the ankle.

[C]

Oh man.

[A]

So yeah, I was, I was down, down for a few weeks. I was on crutches and I actually went to go re register for classes and my tuition was just significantly higher. So I was already, I was at a private university. Tuition's already sky high as it is. And when I went to re register, I noticed my tuition was even higher than it was semester prior. And it was like, what's going on? She said, well, you were on an athletic scholarship last semester and athletic and academic. And now you're only on academic. And she's like, plus, there's a hold on your account. I was like, for what? She's. You need to talk to your track coach. So I hobbled over there and he's like, yep, I warned you. So he pulled it from underneath me. He put a hold on my account because they had bought me all the poles. Everything. He bought me specific poles that I wanted and I kept them all in my dorm room. Everybody that came through my dorm always laughed because I had gigantic pole vault poles in my room. Yeah. He's like, they're each polls few hundred, close to a thousand dollars, if not more. And good grief. I had all these polls in my room. So he put a hold on my account and he's like, yeah, I'm gonna need those back.

[C]

He gave you. I mean, you didn't find out until you went to admissions though.

[A]

Dude, that's. Yes, sir.

[C]

That's crappy, man.

[B]

Yeah. What? That's kind of weak that he wouldn't reach out to you.

[A]

Yeah, no, no. Text me. He had my phone number. Yeah, he had my cell phone number and everything too. No text message, no phone call.

[B]

So that's frustrating.

[A]

Yeah. I was like, well, I'll show you. I'll join the marines. Yep.

[B]

Okay, so then you leave for the Marine Corps.

[A]

I, I did. I, I went, I want to say like October, November, time frame. I.

[B]

What year is this now?

[A]

This is 2008.

[B]

Okay. Oh, that's a good time to join the Marine Corps.

[A]

Oh, definitely.

[B]

Good lord. Let's go.

[A]

And yeah, I Called up my recruiter. Like, I. I talked. He. My recruiter, actually, he was a super good guy. He used to come out to all my sporting events. He used to come watch me play. Even my junior year, he would come watch me play baseball. He always was just there and then, good.

[B]

That's what good recruiters do.

[A]

Yeah, he's. He's a good guy. And I, I. I knew if there was anybody that I owed, it was it was him, so called him up. I was like, hey, man, I'm done messing around. And he picked me up from college, took me to the station, got me set up to go take an asvab. And then it's like, all right, when do I leave? And the big issue that I was running into is I wanted infantry and infantry jobs. They were. They were just getting eaten up back.

[B]

Then because everyone wants to be infantry in the Marine Corps.

[A]

Everybody wanted it. So, okay, he was telling me that I. I wasn't going to be able to leave until, like, June, time frame of 2009. And he actually kind of fought me on it. He was trying to put me in a different job, and I was like, nope, I refuse. I absolutely will not do it. So I held off, and I stuck to my guns. And then there was a random day in February.

[B]

Always one.

[A]

And he's like, how bad do you want infantry? I was like, it's all I want. He's like, are you sure? I was like, yes, sir. He's like, you leave in two weeks. I was like, oh, boy.

[B]

So did you have a girlfriend at the time? What were you doing?

[A]

I did. I. Honestly, it was just hanging out with friends, and I. I worked at American Eagle. No big deal.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, One of the door greeters. Oh, wait, no, that was Abercrombie A. Finch.

[A]

Yeah. I was dating a girl that I worked with there.

[B]

And the only reason why I asked that, obviously, she doesn't matter. You're happily married with your kids. But I asked that because a lot of as, you know, as a recruiter, and I know we haven't opened that door yet for what you do right now. How many times do guys not go in or delay going in because their girlfriend doesn't want them to leave?

[A]

That's up there with the number of excuses that we get. It's, well, my girlfriend. And it's like, listen, buddy, I'll call you in four months when she dumps you. We'll have a conversation.

[C]

Yeah, when she dumps you so she can date a Marine.

[B]

Okay. So you have your job you're hanging out with friends, you have a two week window, probably trying to make the most of that time with your friends and family. When you leave for boot camp, what was that day like for you?

[A]

It, it didn't feel real. I, it didn't really, it honestly didn't hit me until I was at boot camp. And it's super funny because even for somebody like myself who, like I said, I've, I've always known that Marines was there. It's even since I was a kid, yeah, I've known I was going to be a marine. And even when I got to boot camp, I was like, what the hell did I do? It was like, oh, I messed up.

[B]

And they are really intense.

[A]

It's like why are you yelling? And yeah, it was definitely, it was a, it was a shock for sure.

[B]

Now because of the structure that your dad brought into your life, did you thrive in boot camp? Did you enjoy it?

[A]

Definitely not. No, I really still. No. Yeah, it was. I, I've as much structure as my dad did bring. I, I still have always been one of those individuals that I, I think to yell at me, you better be able to beat me up.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Kind of in a mentality.

[B]

Okay, I get it.

[A]

That wasn't.

[B]

Well, so as you know in the military, in boot camp there is a rhyme and reason to that.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

But to your point, that's not, that's not good for sustainment, for building up people. And the problem is when people are trying to replicate military type of leadership, they go off of movies that they've watched about drill instructors and, or you know, whoever they think about and they think like yelling at somebody and being intense, like that's the way I gotta lead. And as you know what we teach at Ashe on front default aggressive isn't towards people, it's, you know, towards getting the work done, towards building relationships, towards improving your things in life, seizing the initiative so you don't react well to people in your face yelling and you're in Marine Corps boot camp. What, what shift did you have to, to make personally? Do you recall?

[A]

No, I, I just kind of had to roll with the punches and it was one of those ones where I mean I, I would go from being the, like the stud in the platoon just because I, I did, I was super physically fit, doing 40 plus pull ups. I, I ran like a 16 minute three mile. So I, it's not that impressive when you hear how much I weighed. It was like £120 when I joined the Marine. So. Lord, really yeah, super unimpressive.

[B]

No, that's.

[C]

So I was gonna say that's almost more impressive. Right, because there's so much less muscle to be able to bear the load of some of that stuff. Like, the fatigue has to set in so much quicker.

[A]

So the, the big thing for me was doing the whole pole vaulting stuff through high school.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

A lot of the workouts that I did were gymnastics style where I, I worked out with a bunch of gymnasts.

[C]

You're the same size as some of them. It sounds like £5 or something.

[A]

So it was all about just being able to manipulate my weight. And that, that's honestly why I was as good as I was at pole vaulting is because I, I was, I was quick, I was strong and I was light. So the, the poles are all weighted. They have a max weight that they're supposed to be allowed for. And when you go into certain track meets, just depending on how sanctioned it is, if you weigh 215 pounds, you cannot bring a pole into the stadium that is under 215. So there was guys similar to like a wrestling weigh in. They were stripping down and so what, they were going to jump in and holding their track spikes as they're jumping on the scale. And please, please make it, please make it. And. Wow. Yeah. So because if you were, if you were 216 and you had a 215 pole, that was your go to. You could not bring it in to the stadium. And then for me, I was 115, 120 pounds and I was jumping with a 165 pound pole. So that thing just kind of flicked me up like a booger.

[B]

That's amazing. Well, I've learned more about pole vaulting.

[A]

Than you probably wanted, huh?

[B]

No, no, it's intriguing. Okay, so you're in boot camp. Physically, you're crushing it.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

That's crazy. 40 plus pull ups a 16 something 3 mile run.

[A]

It's like 16 10ish. And.

[B]

Same 1 mile. Yeah, I go knock out 1 mile on that.

[A]

So, yeah, I would go through these spurts of being the stud and it was like, hey, we're doing an O course competition today and you're gonna be in it. I was like, yes, sir. And then I'd go through and crush everybody and then I'd go back to getting yelled at. It's so emotionally torn. I thought you loved me.

[B]

I thought you were proud of me. Dang it.

[A]

So, yeah, I definitely, I'm not gonna say I struggled in boot camp, but it was one of those Ones where.

[B]

I just weren't enjoyable. It was not enjoyable.

[A]

I did. And that. And then there's a lot of classroom stuff that goes into boot camp too that a lot of people don't talk about. There's a lot of close order drill. And it's all about like, customs and courtesies and traditions.

[B]

These are very important things for the military.

[A]

And that's my thought process was like, this is Full Metal Jacket. We're gonna be, we're in the field every day. We're just gonna be shooting guns and doing o and camping. And that's. Yeah.

[C]

And they're going to issue you your, your golf ball and garden hose by the end of it and then you'll.

[A]

Be good to go.

[C]

Yeah, that's the only line I remember.

[B]

Full Metal Jacket. What are you doing right now? Oh, it's amazing. Okay, so you get down with boot camp. You have infantry lined up for schooling. Where is that at? And what was that process?

[A]

So I went through Camp Pendleton. It was a SOI west. And that's where we go do all of our infantry training.

[B]

And SOI for our listeners stands for school of infantry. Ok, cool.

[A]

And, you know, made it through there. I, I screened. They had, they had some screeners going on during the time I got screened for like 8th and I, which is in D.C. that's like the guys that guard the barracks out there, stuff like that. They, I was like the perfect height for it. And they were like, do you want to do it? I was like, nope. And then I got screened for recon and didn't want to do that either. My only goal was get to the fleet now and go deploy. That's all I wanted to do. I, all I wanted to do was go to combat.

[B]

That's awesome.

[A]

I knew 100% that's all I want to do. So anything else, Ethan? I recon. Recon was you're going to go into a holding platoon where you were going to get crushed for six months and then, then you go to recon school, then you get put in a platoon. And I wanted nothing to do with it. I just want to go to the fleet and go deploy. That's all I wanted.

[B]

Okay, so you get screened for all these things. You turn them down because you're like, hey, I'm stay true to my dream of infantry. That path. How long is school of infantry?

[A]

At the time, it was like 12 weeks, I believe.

[B]

And what's for our listeners, I have zero clue what infantry is. And the fleet for the, for the Marine Corps, what How would you describe in infantry?

[A]

So the infantry as, as a whole, it's, I mean not to dumb it down, but it's literally just a group of guys that like to hang out and do goon things with their friends. It's, that's, that's literally like when I hear people like now talking, when I talk to individuals as a recruiter, it's so funny to hear people say, listen man, I just want to hang out with my friends. Like what do you think I do every day?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like these guys are my friends. Yeah, I get to hang out with my friends every day. And now we get to go just do cool things. We get to shoot guns and we get to drive around these really cool trucks and it's.

[B]

So what skill sets are they teaching at School of Infantry?

[A]

School of infantry is all the bare basics. You get your. You do like another land navigation course. It's all Introduction to land Navigation. It's nothing crazy. You're doing Nightline Nav. You learn basic offensive techniques, defensive techniques.

[B]

In regards to shooting, moving and communicating.

[A]

Correct. A lot of live fire and movement ranges more. Because boot camp doesn't really go into the whole tactics or anything. Anything side of that.

[B]

And teaching you to be a war.

[A]

Fighter 100 that this is where like now you're trying to hone in on what little bit of skills we can try to squeeze into these 12 weeks.

[B]

Because obviously radio demo long range combatives calling the air support. All those things.

[A]

So no, no air support type things. But we, we did. It's like intro to radios. You, you have to master just even turning the radio on, how to load frequencies and things like that, get radio.

[B]

Checks and then dumping crypto, all that stuff.

[A]

We don't even, we didn't even touch crypto back then. I didn't even mess with crypto until like 2019 was the first time that I ever actually had to do it.

[B]

Are you sure?

[A]

Well, I'm sure we always had somebody else that did it.

[B]

Okay. I was like, bro, your radios were encrypted.

[A]

Oh, somebody did. It wasn't me.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So what is, what is crypto for For? Because when I hear crypto, I think bitcoin, which is obviously not what you're talking what it is.

[A]

Bitcoins.

[C]

You put bitcoins in the radios. You guys are loaded. So you're like, what was that Ice Cube movie where they went to go find all the gold they buried in the desert and that's what you guys did.

[B]

It's actually a really funny movie. Yeah. Crypto is. It's. It's keeping things encrypted, our technology encrypted, communication encrypted, so it can't be intercepted.

[A]

Gotcha.

[B]

And the radios that we use in the military are encrypted. So end to end user, we can communicate, you know, a lot of different things. You know, Jock. I wish we could talk to Jock about it because, you know, he's a big, big radio guy, comms guy. But I didn't know if they were, like, teaching you the crypto side to that as well.

[A]

No, not.

[B]

Not in regards to loading and unloading. So you got a radio guy that did. Okay.

[A]

School of infantry. Everything is so basic. Even, like, the CQB aspect of it. There's. They don't really go in depth into everything. You do demolition, you do grenades, you do offense, defense. Just kind of, hey, here is a foundation. And then when you get to your unit, that's where they. They really hammer everything on. And.

[B]

Okay, so they're giving you the baseline so that you can be an asset, not a liability when you check in. And when you get to your unit, then at that point, they're going to increase your capabilities.

[A]

OJT was highway. Learned probably 90 of my job.

[B]

That's awesome. So 12 weeks, and then after you get done with Soi west out in Pendleton. How'd you like the. The hills of Pendleton?

[A]

I loved it. I.

[B]

It's awesome for you as a runner.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And it's.

[B]

What about those rocks? I mean, you're. So how much are we weighing now? Did you put on any lean muscle mass?

[A]

No, I was still, like, even before my first deployment, I. I think I maybe got up to 135 pounds, 140 maybe.

[B]

So putting on a rock, that's.

[A]

Oh, it was an equalizer for me, for sure. Oh, and I. I had. I had people capitalize on it really quick. When I got to the fleet, it was because, again, I've troublesome individual.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There we. We were on that. That brink of hazings. A big no no in the Marine Corps when I was coming into it. And so there were people that weren't willing to put their hands on individuals anymore. But now it's like, all right, well, we're gonna find other eventful ways to make you pay. And one of those ways was, well, hey, let's go on a run. And I was like, okay, yeah, let's do it. And.

[B]

And then they quickly realized that wasn't a form of hazing to you, so they would just load you up with the rucks.

[A]

Either with a ruck or with my buddy. And yeah, fireman, carrying your buddy up First Sergeant's Hill in San Mateo, California, is, it's an equalizer for sure.

[B]

Yeah. All right. What was your first duty session? So you go to the fleet?

[A]

Yep, I went to the fleet. I was with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, basically right on the other side of the hill from School of Infantry. And it was, it was a culture shock for sure. I, I. So super weird circumstances. When I graduated School of Infantry, we had to stay at the School of Infantry for another, like, week, two weeks, because our unit was deployed. They were on, they were on a MEW Marine Expeditionary Unit.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And they just weren't back yet, so there was nobody there to receive us. So they made us stay back and we just stayed in a squad bay by ourselves and kind of wreaking havoc over at the School of Infantry for another couple weeks. And then they finally got back and.

[B]

Then where'd your unit come back from?

[A]

From ship. I don't know where they were. They were just kind of floating. They did like, Thailand.

[B]

Okay. So it wasn't like you have this group of guys coming back from Afghanistan.

[A]

No, they, they did. So they did a Iraq deployment, Two deployments before that. It was. They went Iraq and then they did the mew.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And then is when I was showing up. So as they were coming off the mew.

[B]

Okay. All right.

[A]

And I rolled into this super jacked Puerto Rican guy screaming just incoherent language at me because he had such a thick accent and he was upset about something. I don't know what it was. I think I looked at him.

[B]

So, see, that's what's crazy about the Marine Corps. And the army can do this as well. You can smoke somebody if they're lower ranking than you and you catch them doing something wrong. Correct? No, no, not no more. Oh, not no more. You could, you used to be able to correct.

[A]

Well, whether it was okay or not, it used to happen. I, I'm so far removed from the infantry at this point. But yeah, even as, like, I was finishing up my last couple deployments, it was so frowned upon, Pond. To the point where guys were. We, we had guys doing machine gun drills. They were disassembling, reassembling a 240. And I mean, it was a competition for them. They were having fun. Like, the guys loved it. It was like, all right, let's see who's going to break this time. And if you didn't beat the time, it was like, all right, 15 burpees, everyone. And then.

[B]

Yeah, okay. Not a big deal.

[A]

Yep. NJP Non judiciary punishment or all of them.

[B]

All right, well, so something we can maybe go back to later in regards to bad leadership in the military and how that has an effect on people. That's why you lose good Marines.

[A]

Oh, 100.

[B]

That's why you lose good Marines.

[A]

These are. They were. There was definitely some, some super good guys that got, they kind of got the, the beating for everyone else. It was like, hey, we're gonna make an example out of you to show everybody else what's not okay. So if you're doing anything more than even what they were just doing, then understand that the hammer's coming.

[B]

That's crazy, man. So the reason why I brought that up is to me, it's bizarre. I remember seeing this at, at Airborne. So we went to Army Airborne. I was out in Fort Benning, Georgia. It was the army's jump school. And we actually. I remember this guy, I was like, man, this guy is so old. He was a 25 year old recon marine that was with us. And I became friends with him. Good dude. You know, I'm like 19 and this guy's so old, but he would like, he would kind of protect me and a few of my buddies from like higher ranking army guys that would try to mess with us. Because in the army, like if you're walking around, if you see somebody, at least the way it was for what I recall when we were at Army Airborne, you would see dudes like smoking. Some dude, like some regard meaning, like make him do push ups or sit ups or burpees or. Or pull ups or whatever else like that. I remember watching like an E4 screaming at an E3 and then doing a smoke session. I was like, what is going on? And he explained, he's like, yeah, this is. And somebody tried it with us one time. He's like, no. Like, this Marine was so awesome. I wish I would have stayed in touch with them, you know, but you're young, you don't. You don't think about those things. So. Okay, that's why I opened up that door. So you're checking this unit. You have this angry big jack Puerto Rican just going off on you for who knows why. All right, what's next for you? As you're checking this unit? What's it like and when do you start training and when do you deploy? What's the timelines for these things?

[A]

So everything is extremely delayed for us because obviously they're literally just Coming off of a deployment. So they, you know, I'm sure they already know the schedule beforehand, but these guys are still trying to wind down and we're just showing up. So it was, yeah, we, it was one of those ones where. So the barracks, you have the catwalk where you go up to the second deck and it's basically the balcony that leads to everybody's rooms. And it was to the extent where it's like these guys are drinking on weekdays and just getting trashed. So you'd have to poke your head out of your room and then just kind of scurry like a little meerkat down the catwalk. And yeah, it was, it was intense. Just the aggression coming off of these guys. Those muse were, they were rough back then. I guess Australia was relentless.

[B]

I guess I must have been really hard on them. Yeah. So no funny when you see guys come back from PAYCOM styles deployments, they're freaking jacked because all they're doing is lifting, eating, you know, that's what SEAL we used to joke about the acronym for SEAL before war was sleep, eat and lift. Because when you're on a ship on deployment, because they SEALs used to go on ships for deployments, you know, Jocko and those guys, it's like, well, what do you got to do? Cool. We're going to shoot guns off the, you know, off the ship. They're going to do shooting fans for the rest of the fleet guys out there and you know, they're sleeping, eating and lifting and it's just like unless they go to port to go do training somewhere, like that's literally what they're doing. And so guys even in the SEAL teams come back from, you know, those different areas, Thailand, the Philippines, Guam, all those other areas that come back and they're just freaking jacked and they're pissed off because their other guys are getting. We're in the combat or we're actually in combat. Do you think part of that was maybe some of the anger from these guys was they weren't in the fight like some of their other guys were.

[A]

There was definitely a complex for, for some of them. And it's, it's not everybody obviously, right. Like we, we had some really good guys that came off of that. That was their first deployment and they were extremely influential people. One of the guys name was Samuel Fair. He's now a firefighter. This was the just a monster of a man. He was the guy that you went to for advice. You went to like when you couldn't remember an acronym like, he was, he was the guy that any. Anybody else, like, hey, I can't remember this acronym. Oh, you're gonna get torn up. But fair, you. You know that he's gonna actually try.

[B]

To teach you a firefighter out of.

[A]

Do you know, I don't remember. We follow each other on Facebook and it. That's what I absolutely love is, you know, he was one of my senior Marines, and he still to this day, like, we follow each other on Facebook and he's one of those guys, like, every time I get promoted or every time something happens, he's one of those just good guys that just genuinely happy for you and always takes the time to reach out. He's just, just a good human being, Human good leader.

[B]

And that's what's crazy is you have guys like that, and that's not very common in the military, unfortunately. Could you imagine what our military would be like if 75% of the leaders were like, that guy, like Jocko, like Leif, like, like Seth, you know, where they actually cared genuinely about their guys? What. What do you think it would be like?

[A]

I mean, completely different dynamic too. And it's. It's always hard trying to navigate. It's.

[B]

I'm not, I'm not like, trying to go down like, like a political road towards, you know, good leadership, bad leadership. I'm just saying, like, when you have people that show that they care about you, okay, let me remove the leadership, you know, aspect that I threw there. Just people that cared. If more people showed the people around them that they cared, what do you think the military would be like?

[A]

It'd be completely different. And I think that's what was a big thing for me too, was, you see, who truly just. They truly care about you, about your well being. They're not just there to collect a paycheck and then get out and go on the next deployment, do it all over again. And it's. You start to realize real quick the guys that actually care, typically the ones that are actually good at their job too. And those are the people that you want to follow and emulate. And it's definitely a different dynamic. That was 100%. One of the struggles that I had in my first unit was leadership.

[C]

So I've, I've heard. Jp, You've talked about this, and Joe, it seems like you're kind of hitting on the same thing that several of our guests, especially guys who are veterans, have talked about is that there is this, this strange disparage between, like, the really good leaders within the military. Or you have a guy who doesn't care much for, you know, the people that are underneath him. Maybe he's, like, incredibly ambitious. Or you've got something that, like, in the business, what we refer to as the Peter Principle is like, you've kind of. You've been promoted to your level of absolute ineptitude. And so you're like, they're just kind of surviving. Do you think that there's. There's something within those guys that maybe they started off as the guys that cared, but were influenced by the leaders above them that they felt like didn't care? Or they're watching so many of the guys that, you know, that they came up with are. Are getting out and they're having these new restrictions and things put on them, and it just kind of jades them to the. To the entirety of the process. Or do you think that more often than not, these guys who end up not being the best leaders. We'll put it that way.

[B]

Right.

[C]

That they are. Are just full of ambition and out for themselves. You know, where's the balance there? Like, how many of them are jaded or, you know, started off the right way and then just the. The bureaucracy of it all has just kind of like, weighed down on them to where they don't care and how many of them is just pure ambition?

[A]

It's so hard to navigate that, because I've seen every aspect of it, and I. I see exactly what you're talking about. Like, the guys that. We call them, the short timers that, you know, they're. They're getting out of the Marine Corps in the next two, three months, so they. You might as well not even correct them because.

[B]

Which is unfortunate.

[A]

Yeah, it's. It's not going to go in your favor. They're just going to piss you off more than anything else. But then I've also had the guys that, you know, we had a guy that he. He was actually an Iraq vet, and, you know, he was one of the senior lance Corporals still in E3 getting. Getting ready to get out. No, it was tough times in the infantry. It was hard to get promoted back in the day, so that's crazy. Yeah, he. I think I want to say he got promoted to corporal right before he got out. But, I mean, he. He was just a genuine good dude, and he cared until the day he left, and he was just. Just a good human being.

[B]

Do you remember the guy's name or.

[A]

His last name was Honeycutt. I actually had him promote me to E3. It was cool. He. It was. It was kind of a shot across the bow, too, because there's. So he wasn't even my squad. He. We were in the same platoon, but he was somebody else's squad. And my squad leader was, I think out. He was at like, advanced Infantry. It was a infantry squad leaders course back then. And so my. The one guy that I actually loved in my platoon, in my squad, my squad leader, he was gone. So the next guy up there didn't really care for. So we had Honeycutt from a different squad come up in Florida. So that's radio, but. But again, you know, it was one of those ones where, you know, just silly, silly nonsense that would happen. They just kind of builds your. Your hatred for certain individuals.

[B]

And it's unfortunate. It's unfortunate. All right, so what was that training cycle like?

[A]

It was how long, man? It was. It was a long one. We. We were originally slated to do another mew. They were going to put us on another mew. And I want to say I got there in August of 09, and we didn't deploy until September of 2010.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And I know a big part of it was, I want to say sometime around Christmas of 09 is when we got the call, and that's when they got the shift from whatever mew we were supposed to go on to. Hey, you guys are going to sing in Afghanistan. And that. That was one of those ones where we would learn was going to be now the bloodiest battle in the history of the war In Afghanistan was 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines in saying in Afghanistan.

[B]

Good Lord. So I'm sorry, what was the time frame that you learned about that before you went out?

[A]

I want to say it was sometime around Christmas, around December of 2009.

[B]

Time frame you knew you were going to Afghanistan.

[A]

That's when they, they finally put it out there, like, hey, we're going to Afghanistan.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And then. And basically shifted because all your training. Yes.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Because all of your training is typically based around certain types of deployments. And when you're going on a mew, you train for all sorts of different things. Humanitarian assistance, non combatant evacuations, things like that. And you're training to be on ship. You have to do ship time. You have to. We were boat company during the thing, the, the whole workup. And so we're doing a lot of boat stuff. And then it's like, hey, you're going to Afghanistan and there's no boats, and so we're going to shift this entire thing. So. Okay, now, now we Started pushing more towards that type of environment, that type of training.

[B]

What was your main shift of focus for the training? Like, hey, we're going to Afghanistan. We're going to focus on these things.

[A]

They, they put, they threw everything at us. They, we ended up going to Bridgeport, California that year. That's where we do our cold weather training.

[B]

Place is no joke.

[A]

That's the first time I ever seen snow in my life. And I was handed a shovel and told to go dig a hole because that's where I was going to sleep.

[B]

In the Sierra Nevada. Bridgeport is no joke. When I went on my backpacking trip this last September, we drove through Bridgeport to get down to Ansel Adams Wilderness. So like, we stopped to like top off on gaffing gas and get some snacks. And I was just telling my buddies about it and Mike Mitchell knew about it because obviously he's a marine, but the other two guys were like, oh, cool. And I was like, oh no, this, his training here is like, it's, it's, it's crazy. All right, so super.

[A]

So they, they start ramping everything. They're, they're almost throwing everything at us as a worst case scenario type. Like, you need to be prepared for this. You need to be prepared for this. You need to be prepared for this. So they, they kind of threw everything at us. And it was, yeah, it was definitely, it was a long one and we pushed through that.

[B]

Any favorite parts of that training? They're like, okay, this is cool. This is awesome. Anything start clicking for you that you just really enjoyed or are you just taking everything in?

[A]

Yeah, I was just honestly along for the ride.

[B]

I was drinking from a fire hose.

[A]

Pretty much that was it. I, I, it was one of those ones where, and this is why how I try to explain to every young individual even today, is it's one of those ones where it's like, it sucks when it's happening. It's so bad. And there, there were times where I think they so, like Bridgeport, right? I was so miserable because I was so cold. I was, I've never seen snow in my life and now I'm living in a snow hut that I just dug with a bunch of other guys. And one of the warmest nights I had, there was a time that we had an incident where they, they were like, hey, we, we called in a pause rep and we had already been there for a couple days. And the company commander's like, hey, why are you still there? It's like, what do you mean? He's like, you guys were Supposed to have moved hours ago. I was like, well, nobody told us. So then we have an extremely young platoon commander. And he was like, fill in the track plan now. So, like, our entire track plan around our little patrol base that we had on top of this mountain, they were like, making us fill it in. It's the middle of the night, and it just extremely miserable. Like, all we want to do is go to sleep. We've been up doing patrols through the snow all day. And then our instructor, our mountains instructor that's up there finally comes out of his tent. He's like, what are you guys doing? Filling the track plan. We're moving, man. He's like, no, we're not. He's like, go back to bed. He's like, you don't have safety fix. You don't have this. You don't have this. You don't have this. He's like, we're not going anywhere. So then we just kind of laid on top of the snow. I was like, I'm not digging this hole again. And we laid there. And then it was funny. I didn't even get in. I didn't take my clothes off. Didn't take my. Pull my sleeping bag back out. My buddies, we put a. Put a wooby over the top of us, and then we put the poncho or the tarp over that. It was the warmest night I had the entire time just cuddling with the boys on the mountain.

[B]

Oh, man.

[A]

So it's things like that that I tell people. It's like, man, it's gonna suck when it's happening. But that's what makes the memories.

[B]

Those are pretty incredible memories, though. I mean, they're funny stories, and it's just classic, these things. That's what's awesome about the military is here's the deal. You're gonna have things like that happen in a. In most corporate companies across America of the whole back and forth. Miscommunication. But in the military, when things like that happen, you're like, hey, you know, miscommunication. And like, with an IT company, like, they're not gonna have a funny story like this. Miscommunication. The Marine Corps, you're like, well, no, we're sleeping.

[A]

Hey, remember that time we took that wrong turn on that hike that was supposed to be 12 miles and it turned into 21? Do you remember that?

[B]

Yes, I will remember that for the rest of my life. Oh, goodness. All right. So Bridgeport stood out to you. Any other schools or training?

[A]

No, I mean, I. They. They were kind of just throwing everything at us, punching a bunch of guys through, like, combat lifesavers, getting intro to different types of, like, first aid things, live tissue courses, stuff like that.

[B]

Life tissue courses are gnarly.

[A]

They're pretty intense.

[B]

Yeah, we'll just. We'll leave it at.

[A]

Yeah. Yep. So, yeah, just. Just kind of trying to take everything in that you could and go to any and every course that they would allow you to go to.

[B]

Okay, that's cool. All right. So you deploy, and you're heading overseas. What was a week like leading up to your first deployment in the Marine Corps? So knowing you're going to Afghanistan, and we've been at war for a while, man.

[A]

And I. I think what was worse, it was. I don't. I never knew how much truth there was to it, but from what we were being told is like, hey, saying in Afghanistan has been untouched by US Forces for the last seven years. The Royal Marines are there right now, but, you know, they're kind of to the point where, you know, the Afghans are just kind of walking up, throwing grenades over the walls. Don't know how much truth there was to it. But we did know for sure that, you know, it was IED laced everywhere you walked. Taliban kind of had free reign to do whatever they wanted. So we. They. They 100% did not shield us from what we were about to get ourselves into. So the reality was there. And, I mean, they. They did some amazing things to get us prepped for it. I think one of the most. One of the cooler things and most realistic things that I've ever done was they have what's called a kill house when you go out to tour Nine Palms.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they have actual amputees that are in there. So then they'll put, like, a fake leg hanging halfway off and, like, blood squirting out as you get in there. And you got to get in there and deal with it. And it. We. I've had. I've had guys that walked into those, and, oh, my God. And they freeze up, and it's so funny to watch from the outside looking at it, but being a new guy and, hey, fix this now. And it definitely set us up for success and for what we were about to get ourselves into in Afghanistan.

[B]

All right, so you fly over to Afghanistan.

[A]

So right before that, I was. This is around the time that me and Ashley started talking.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And it was, yeah, super funny.

[B]

Welcome to the Marine Corps life, honey.

[A]

Oh, it's good. It's golden.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So we've known each other since high school. I actually met her my freshman year of high school, and she was a sophomore. She's a little older than me. Yeah, she's a cougar. Yeah, I got one of those. Yeah. And I was. I was that guy that always caused problems for her with boyfriends, and she was the girl that's always caused problems for me with girlfriends. And we've always been that person. And we honestly, we didn't talk long. We didn't date. We didn't nothing. And I want to say there was a time in February that I talked to her of 2010, and she was getting ready. She was going to take a flight to San Antonio because her family ended up uprooting, moved to Georgia from San Antonio. So she was going to go back to San Antonio to visit. And I was like, you've been to San Antonio? I was like, come to California. And she talked her grandma into helping her change her flight. So she changed her flight. She came out to visit me in California, and that was it.

[B]

That's it.

[A]

Yep. She. I want to say she came to visit me in March of 2009, and then she. We had a conversation one day. There was some.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Some other things happening on the side. And I. I talked to her, and we were just friends this whole time. We've.

[B]

We've never. That's not really happening on the side.

[A]

We've never kissed.

[B]

We've never done anything that's called something else.

[A]

Me and Ashley have, like, have been strictly platonic our entire lives. And. And it was when we were talking, she was like, I'd marry you. I was like, what? She's like, yeah. Not even for money. Not even for this. I'd marry you.

[B]

Good. Thanks. I'm in the Marine Corps. I got none of that.

[A]

She was like, yeah, you're my best friend and I absolutely love you. And she was like, yeah, I'd marry you. So then that's when she came out to visit me. It was like March of 2010. And then I want to say, like, May, June 2010, I proposed. And then August 2010.

[B]

Good for you guys.

[A]

We got married.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

It was.

[B]

Bro, that is super quick. Awesome. And then you roll out the door.

[A]

Yep. And I was like, hey, by the.

[B]

Way, I'm leaving for Afghanistan.

[A]

I gotta go. So it was one of those ones that I. I honestly, I thought I was gonna die. And I.

[B]

Leading up to it.

[A]

Oh, 100%. I just. Knowing everything that we knew about where we were going, I was like, yeah, I'm gonna die.

[B]

I had that same mindset. Leaving for Ramadi. I actually, on one of my old laptops, I have videos that I had put together to send to all my family members as, like, one final last thing. And I had a video to be played at my funeral, and I had planned out everything.

[A]

I sent one of those videos, and I sent one letter to you. It was. It was one of those. I swear, if I went back today, I'm still even knowing what I know. There's no way I'm making it out of there this time.

[B]

Okay, so boots on the ground, Afghanistan. Let's. Let's share with people what the bloodiest battle looked like from your perspective.

[A]

So we. We fly into Camp Leatherneck. This is just a huge staging point for the Marine Corps out there in Afghanistan. We're going down Helman province. So we're. We're at Leatherneck, kind of getting our final briefings and everything before we fly in. And I think I want to say we're there for maybe like, a week, week and a half, and then jump on a bird and head out. And it was funny. I think this. There's, like, a common trend, because I listened to the podcast you did with James Gonzalez.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

His experience getting into country. It's almost to the T. Exactly what happened with us. So we land at FOB Jackson in Sangin, Afghanistan, and as soon as this bird touches down, this guy comes running up the ramp. And we. We all knew who he was. He used to be in our platoon, but he was. According to higher leadership, he was a toxic for our growth. So they removed him, but everyone loved him. And he comes running up the ramp, and he's like, we're taking shots.

[B]

Get off. He's like, we got incoming fire.

[A]

Get off now. So we're fumbling, we're grabbing bags, tripping over everything. I took a buttstock to the chin, busted my chin open, and he's, like, throwing us on the side of this Conex, and he's like, get down.

[B]

Get down. We got rockets inbound.

[A]

And he's just going off screaming. And then he's got us hunkered down. I ended up dropping to the sea bag somewhere. And I got my deployment bag, and I got my gun, and I'm sitting on the side of this kind of this little Conex little shipping container. And we're all back there, and we're just, like, trying to catch our breath. And the bird takes off, and he looks around, he goes. And he starts laughing. Like, the most sinister laugh. Oh, my. It was.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

That was day One in singing it was.

[B]

I could see how the guys loved him. I can also see what the leadership thought.

[A]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I. I think he's still in the Marine Corps too. His name was Kiesling. Oh, he was the most hilarious guy you'd ever talk to. It was super funny. So, yeah, it was. This was, this was the day we welcome Afghanistan.

[B]

What was the birthing like, where you're at?

[A]

So we were those hescos. So it was Hesco barriers that they just filled with dirt and then they had almost like steel roofs on them. So everything's pretty short. Like as you walk through, you can reach up and you can touch the ceiling. We're sleeping on cots out there. Well, when we first got there, we're sleeping on the floor. So every night you're just kind of sitting there, mice jumping over you as you're sleeping and just kind of taking that in, for what it's worth. And I, I hate mice. With a burning passion. So. Yeah, they're like. Some of them crawl into your sleeping bag too, and then you freak out and it's super fun. And I mean, we, we rolled straight into it the unit that we were kind of ripping with. And you know, not. Not to try to badmouth them or anything, but, you know, we typically, the way we describe, we call it a left seat. Right seat.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So left seat is like, hey, you come out, roll with us. We're bringing your key leaders out with us and we're going to show you what we do. And their leadership said, we're not patrolling anymore. Like, we're going home. I've lost too many guys already. We're not doing this. So they're like, you don't get a left seat. You get a half of a right seat. And that was. I mean, we were there for a few weeks and it. We went into a major clearing operation, maybe a couple weeks into it, with.

[B]

No actual pass down from the other unit.

[C]

Yeah. And these the guys that you, you replaced.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Okay.

[B]

So it's supposed to be like Joe was saying, Leslie Wrights seat typically almost all the time. That's crazy. They didn't do that. But I mean, I wasn't in that position. I hadn't lost a bunch of guys. So I'm definitely not judging them. I'm just thinking it's not, it's not the right way to do things.

[A]

No, the way we understand too, from what they were dealing with was they would make it 2 to 300 yards outside the wire and they would take an IED casualty. They would take sniper fire, they would take machine gun fire. So it was. I mean they would literally poke out, take casualties, and then they got to come right back in. So for them it wasn't worth it to like, hey, let's go show you guys what we've been doing.

[B]

Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes a little more sense.

[A]

So we ended up going up, I want to say out west and we did this major clearing operation. And I mean it got real on day one.

[B]

Okay, what was day one like? What do you remember the date?

[A]

I don't remember it too. And this is, this is the end.

[B]

Of 2010 though, right?

[A]

It is. It's like September time frame.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

September, October. And I mean day one. One of our. One of the machine gunners in my company ended up getting killed. Day one. Lance Corporal Smarts, it was almost immediate.

[B]

And how did he get killed?

[A]

I wasn't with him. He was with another unit that was out there with us. We took our whole company and it was just a massive clearing operation. This is the first time I've ever been able to put into perspective an IED belt. Like when they say ID belt on a map and you watch all the red pins as they get plotted from every time somebody calls in an ieg. It was. It was insane. And they, they would literally just cordon off certain areas. So it was between IEDs, just people coming out randomly taking pop shots. I want to say he. He died day one. I want to say day two. There was an IMRAP that we. There was four guys in the MRAP and they. I was 150 pound IED. So everybody inside that MRAP died that day.

[B]

That's day two.

[A]

Day two, go a couple days through, just kind of moving from house to house.

[B]

What are you thinking at this point? You're like, day two, you've already lost five of your guys just riding the lightning.

[A]

I mean, I mean, what's your thoughts though?

[B]

Just. You just kind of void of them or you just like.

[A]

It's. It's. Not to. Not to sound like inhumane or. But it's just like this is. This is what we.

[B]

Yeah, that's what you signed up for.

[A]

This is what this is. We knew we're getting ourselves into.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And you know, even I want to say it was like day two or day three was the first time I got shot at. And you know, I was. I was a machine gunner for my squad. I carried a 249 saw. And yeah, you know, I pushed out even my squad leader. Too. He was. He was laughing because he's like. I think he thought he was going to get me. He's like, how many rounds do you have? It's like 2500. He's like, shut up. No, you don't. So, yes, Corporal. And he checked my bag, and I had. I mean, I was rolling around with. I had a drum.

[B]

Crazy.

[A]

Had a drum on the gun. I had one drum on each side. I had another drum in the middle, and then my backpack. I. I sacrificed food, water, to carry more ammo.

[B]

Yeah. Because each drum is what, 200 rounds? 200 rounds. Yeah.

[A]

And then eventually somebody. One of these guys ended up. They. They call it a nutsack.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it carries. It's just a smaller. It's easier way to patrol. Carries 100 rounds. So somebody ended up giving me one of those. Because the drums were made out of plastic.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So you'd be on a patrol, and then drum would pop off, and now all your rounds are just got dragged out. Yeah. Not. Not fun dealing with that in the middle of a combat zone.

[B]

We. We learned that lesson actually, real early in. On. Actually our training and then in. In combat. So we would tape all the drums so that. That wouldn't happen. Just get a little bit of that rigorous tape wrapped around there. Man, that's a lot. That's a lot of ammo, man.

[A]

Yeah, it was.

[B]

But, I mean, you. It was what was required. It was heavy in that area. I. I can't wait for the YouTube comments for people. Like, there's no way carried that much weight. Cool. Thank you for your opinion and your insight.

[A]

No, no, I promise. I was there.

[C]

So.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, this is. This is what's kicking off the war for us. And then, you know, even the day that we finally. Hey, we're done. All you got. All you have to do is patrol back to this little patrol base that's established over here, and we're gonna get you guys on trucks and get you out. And, you know, even that alone took pop shots. Another one of our guys, Sergeant Bud, he took. Took a round off the top of his side, Sappy. And it ricocheted up, ended up lodged in his bicep.

[B]

So it hits a side plate, ricochets.

[A]

Up into his bicep, up into his bicep. And I didn't. I didn't even know what happened.

[B]

I mean, that's horrible. But how lucky is he?

[A]

Oh, super. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, half an inch higher. That's going through and through.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

Into the chest cavity. The ricochet up in the bicep not hitting that artery.

[A]

Yeah, he, I mean, he, and he stuck out the whole deployment with us, too. He, I, I watched them when we finally got into the patrol base, because, again, I didn't even know it happened. Like, I knew we got shot at, but I didn't know anybody got hit. We were just kind of running and laughing, and, you know, we, we got back and, you know, they, they pulled his shirt off and immediately. Combat gauze. I watched a corpsman's finger disappear into this man's bicep. And I was like, oh, that's real.

[B]

So that's crazy. Okay, so from start to finish, it's just pure chaos.

[A]

Oh, 100%.

[B]

All right. What was your first, like, real big firefight. And I mean, I know I didn't share at the beginning with our listeners, because we're going to dive into it. You have a couple Purple Hearts. You have a few that if you would have, like, finished the paperwork, you also would have had.

[A]

But, yeah, they're, they're still out there. I, I, and that's what's funny is so I actually, I brought my medical records with me because I was just trying to refresh my brain as far as, like, dates and stuff like that. And I was looking at all my mace reports, and it's all in the truck right now.

[B]

But that's crazy.

[A]

Yeah. When I submitted even the first one, I got the phone call from the captain. And this is 10 years after the fact, too, because, yeah, I didn't even get it immediately, but, yeah, 10 years later, his captain called me. He's like, hey, brother, for what it's worth, congratulations. I think he's like, so you're. You're being awarded the Purple Heart. He's. When, when I submitted all my paperwork, what was told to me was, submit everything you have. Just give them everything. And then they don't have to. We don't play this back and forth game of what do you need? So I submitted everything. I submitted all three times that I got blown up. And he. I only submitted the statements for one event. So he asked me if I had, if I can get statements for the other two events that he's. I truly believe you. You rate two additional Purple Hearts for this. And I was like, yeah, man, I'm good. It took me probably a year to even get that first one processed. And it was, I mean, emotionally draining and then trying to reach out to the right people to have the right things done. Yeah, you, it has to be endorsed by every officer that was in your chain of command up to the battalion commander.

[B]

Oh, geez.

[A]

From that time, which even when I was going through this in 2020, the battalion commander from that time was now a general. So.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Hey, General, you remember that deployment you did 10 years ago? Do you want to endorse this?

[B]

That's crazy.

[C]

It seems from the outside perspective that, you know, point to it would be like an easy enough thing, right? Because there's so many guys that got wounded on those deployments or you know, guys that lost limbs that you've got the scars to be like, nope, this is where I got this. And then what should happen, it seems like in, in those kind of scenarios would be like, yeah, absolutely, you, you did this. The amount of paperwork and you know, we've, we've joked on here before where people have talked to JP and be like, oh, you don't understand the bureaucracy in my company. Right. Like it. Hearing stories like this. It took you 10 years to, to do that where you know, how many guys were around you whenever it, whenever it happened?

[A]

Oh, you know, like partially self inflicted too.

[C]

Well, like so much of it just seems like it would be so easy to prove.

[A]

Oh yeah, right.

[C]

That just seems like so many unnecessary steps that y' all have to take to reap some of the benefits that are owed to you for, you might say just doing your job. But the fact is you put your lives on the line for our country and we as a nation set these things up in order to honor you guys so you can take care of yourselves and your families and stuff moving forward. That how many guys are out there that don't have the type of support that you guys did or the intestinal fortitude or by the third time that they've gone, you know, and relived one of these experiences, they're like, screw it, I'm done. Like, I'm never going to get this. That really need, you know, the benefits that are provided by that that are never going to get them.

[A]

Oh yeah, it's something that can definitely possibly change the course of somebody's life. They have access to like certain types of disability related things. And it was kind of a reasonable.

[B]

Understand how it took 10 years.

[A]

I chose not to submit for it for, for a long time. Roger that. And somebody definitely could have done it on my behalf, which that, that's kind of why, I mean just being a young naive individual, it's. And again, I'll, I'll get into it here in just a minute as well. But some of it was definitely self inflicted okay. But yeah, I mean, yeah, but we.

[C]

Know people who have served that, I don't know earned is the right way to put it, but earned the Purple Heart and didn't get it there. Their people may have filed paperwork for him and they got out or whatever before they were given their Purple Heart and have just moved on from it and like, yeah, forget it. I'm not, I don't want to hassle with it and whatever. And they like Joe said they could really use it.

[B]

I know guys that, that they should have gotten it on deployments, but because the deployment was so dynamic and crazy, like it wasn't like, it wasn't like a big major injury, so it was like, all right, it just wasn't a priority.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that individual didn't want it either. It's like, no, this is, that's stupid. Not understanding the benefits long term and then started working through that process later because it was like, hey, yeah, this happened. We know this. We actually have pictures of the wound and the blood on the uniform and you know, like guys getting things and then, you know, the leadership was like putting them in for. And then the leadership passes away. And then it just fell. Yep, it just stopped. Right. So it's, it's crazy.

[C]

It just sucks, man.

[B]

Yeah. All right, so let's open the door.

[A]

So, yeah, man, we, it's. We, we make it out of this like first major clearing evolution and we, we think we're untouchable and you know, we come back and immediately there's one of the platoons gets pushed out to a FOB that's on an elevated position down one of the major. It's a msr, the main supply route that runs through there. And so third platoon gets pushed down there immediately. So now It's US and 1st Platoon operating out of FOB Jackson. 1st Platoon's taking the majority of the patrols and the. And things like that. So they're kind of dealing with things immediately to the point where, you know, good buddy of mine, Jason Hallett, he's a triple amputee. And even at that, you know, his, his one arm that he does have, you know, he's kind of missing some digits and things like that. So this is kind of a big reason like, like I said, self inflicted things. You know, these are the type of individuals that I'm seeing. The types of wounds that they're suspended, sustaining. And it's like, listen, man, I, I bled out of my ears for a couple days. Do I write a report?

[B]

Answer is yes. But I, I get what you're saying because it's, you know, you have people that get awarded a Purple Heart for catching some fragment. Okay, Fragment gets pulled out, whatever, they're good. And then it's the same thing gets awarded to your buddy who's a triple amputee. Yeah, that's crazy.

[A]

And that's where, you know, we're kind of dealing with this now. So, you know, Jason Hallett kind of takes a big one. Not too long later, one of the platoon sergeants, Staff Sergeant Tejada, stepped on an id, lost both legs. And this kind of cemented why I always carried so many rounds with me. So on top of my 2500 rounds, I also carried at four. And this is like my daily loadout type thing.

[B]

And how much weight do you know? Do you ever weigh yourself?

[A]

Ungodly.

[B]

Yeah, this is, this is stupid amount.

[A]

It doesn't even. It doesn't even stop there either. It progressively gets worse.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So, yeah, Stephon Tahada gets hit and this basically turns into like a platoon online, like returning fire. As we have a QRF force that's gone out trying to pull them back. Eventually they, you know, everybody's just kind of gassed out. They've been fighting for the last couple hours trying to get this guy back. He's on a stretcher and it turns into, you know, hey, we need to go meet them. There's like a six foot wadi that they have to cross through. And these guys, like, everyone's just gassed. So, you know, I was. I burnt through 2500 rounds already. I shot my AT4 there. There was another like 14 between 84s and laws that we had shot that day. Just kind of ammo dump, just kind of laying it on thick. And then, you know, I had no more ammo, so I was like, all right, hey, like, I'll go, I'll go on this patrol with you guys out to go meet them. And so I ended up having to take point on there. And.

[B]

With no ammo.

[A]

With no ammo.

[B]

What was the thought process behind that, bro?

[A]

It's like, I can't do anything else. I mean, everybody else is shooting, so. Ye.

[B]

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I was like, yeah, I might as well make myself useful. So I lit a patrol out there and I mean, some amazing human beings that came with us. Even my company first sergeant was out there with us. He was carrying the litter with me. And, you know, we, we were able to get him out, pulled back and, you know, patrolling back with him. And, you know, that was, it was, it was the first time that I had, like, actually seen the effects, because even when my buddy Jason Howlett stepped on his, you know, I. I never got to see him. And. Okay, you know, he's an animal. But, you know, this is the first time that now I see what amputated legs look like. And it was. Yeah, it was rough. Oh, yeah. Traumatizing. And, you know, to the point where, you know, I have this saw slung on my back, and I just burned through 2500 rounds with my barrels just piping hot. And, you know, he ends up sliding forward and his nub is, like, digging into my back. And we ended up getting back. It's funny, like, Marine Corps humor, too. Like people. His name was Staff Sergeant Tejada, if it doesn't give away his nationality. And when I got back, I was, like, cleaning out the muzzle of my gun, and, like, my compensator was just filled with leg meat. And it was, like, kind of cooked in there too, because my barrel was still just steaming hot. And somebody came through. And they're like. Smells like carne asada back here.

[B]

So.

[A]

Jacked up. But that's all. I mean, this. Hours later.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And this is.

[C]

I mean, you gotta find a way to survive.

[A]

Oh, 100%.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And.

[C]

And that's what I think a lot of people, like, don't get that. Haven't been. Obviously, I've never been in a war zone, but having been in traumatic experiences and things like that, where, you know, maybe your life is on the line and you're in a. In a weird spot, if you are not doing those things right, making those kind of jokes, then you're actually going to be unhealthy when you come out of it.

[A]

I've definitely noticed a lot, and a lot of guys that just kind of compartmentalize a lot of that stuff. It's. Eventually it's gonna come out, and it's typically not in a good way that it happens too.

[C]

So that gallows humor that so often is one of the things that guy talk about whenever they come back, that, you know, they still have that sort of humor that they had whenever they were in the fight. And then, you know, the people around them are giving them sideways looks and they're like, that's not what you're supposed to say anymore. And it kind of. It makes them feel a little displaced. But at the same time, that is what that helped them to survive whenever they're there, because those are those little, you know, mental and emotional releases that. That are necessary in order to. To Survive a war zone, man.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right, so what's up? That's. With a lot to process.

[A]

Oh, yeah. You know, we deal with it the best we know how and just keep pushing through. And I mean, every day is. I mean, we had a rough rotation. It was like post patrol, qrf, and it was six hour rotations. So if you start on post for six hours, you get off post and you go straight on the patrol for six hours. And it's not. You're not necessarily patrolling the entire time, but you're, you're planning for the patrol, you're prepping, getting our gear ready, making sure everybody knows the patrol route, all handed, arm signals, things like that. And then you go patrol and then you come back and you go straight on the qrf. And then, you know, God forbid something happens to the patrol that's out because QRF is your rest cycle. So that was the only time that we got to sleep and then we went straight back into it. If you, if you did the math on it, that's only 18 hours. So if you started on post, that means you're going to do another six hours of post for the end of the day. So it was.

[C]

That's intense, man.

[A]

It was, it was draining.

[B]

I was gonna say that's got to be hard on the body.

[A]

Oh, super.

[B]

And then mentally, I mean, you're not getting enough sleep, you're not getting enough rest. That's. You're not going to be as capable.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

As time goes on. And there's a very real diminishing effect.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

On individuals mentally and physically and spiritually. That's hard. Fatigue makes cards of us all.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

And towards the end of deployment, that's when people start making mistakes. That's when things happen. And that's. That's hard to think about and process because you guys had crazy things happening to you Day one, day two, day three, like you're going through. And so you just went through this big clearance, you see carnage for the very first time. And you know, you come back from that, you process it, you do what you do, and then you're back out there again. And, you know, was there any other, like, major things like that that stood out leading up to your injuries or.

[A]

Oh, tons of them.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Well, there's funny things that happened out there too. I mean, it was. Because as bad as it is, you know, we kind of welcomed it too. So, like, even, even when we did post, there were certain posts on FOB Jackson that just never got attacked. Like, there you're staring over into like a mountain face and nobody comes from that way so that, that side of the base never even gets hit. So nobody ever wants to stand those posts. So it's like when it's your rotation for posts, like you actually get dressed a little quicker so you can get out to the good post. Because those are the posts that if, if there's a post that's going to get attacked, it's one of those and.

[B]

That'S where you want to be.

[A]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[B]

Which is awesome because most of our listeners would think, oh, the good post is the one that doesn't get attacked.

[A]

Oh no, because there was, there was always. So they put the post and I wouldn't, they numbered them like 1 through 5 or whatever. Eventually they found a hole in, you know, our defense and they were like, hey, we need to put one over here now too. In between post two and post three. So they call it post 2.5. 2.5 used to get lit. It was, it was good. So we used to fight for 2.5 between 2.5 and 3 because 3 was like just right down the way from 2.5, but 2.5 was ground level. 3 was like up in like a two or three story tower thing. And so we used to love going over there. And then of course the day that I end up on post three and I'm just waiting for it, the ECP starts heavy, heavy fire. And they're rocking and we're listening to their gunfire on the other side and they're calling in all these radio transmissions and we're just sitting there just like, this is stupid.

[B]

This is on the side that normally didn't get attacked.

[A]

Yeah. And so I was super mad. But then eventually someone popped up and I was like, oh, there's someone came to play. And so I, I had my saw up there and I started rocking with my249 and engaged a few, few guys out there. And then there was just different weapon systems up there and someone had an M32 which is a revolver of, of a grenade launcher. It's a, it's a six shot revolver and it shoots 40 millimeter explosives.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So very, I was like, yup, doing that and set my gun down and I grabbed this thing and there's no sights on it either. So I'm just kind of tilting my tongue in the right direction until I get it and I pull the trigger and then it just doesn't send any more rounds. And I was like, well, let's figure out where this one's going to impact and then it impacts and it's orange dust everywhere.

[B]

Training round.

[A]

So someone. Someone put it. They said that the gunner wanted them to put a training round because there's no sights on the gun. So to just arbitrarily launch an HEDP round with no sights would not be smart. So he's like, yeah, put a training round in there first so you can figure out where you're shooting. But then we stopped getting shot at after that. So then I had to log in this logbook that I shot 200 rounds from my N249 and then one training round from the M32. And even the. The guys, my. My buddy Evan, he was one of my senior marines at the time. He comes up, he's one of the guys that comes to replace me. And he was like, dude, so you just launched orange death at them? It's like, yeah, man. We call him a Cheeto puff round because it literally looks like Cheeto dust out there. And he just. He was just. He was digging into me. He was just making fun of me. He's like, it's like, so you shot one TP round. It's like, yeah, man.

[B]

He's like, idiot.

[A]

It just keeps going. I was like, look at it this way. If we see an orange guy running around outside, like, we know who it is. I know where you were 30 minutes ago. Yeah.

[B]

Imagine just hitting somebody with a training round and it freaking just puts a hole in their chest or like, knocks them out.

[A]

The worst part was I impacted exactly where I wanted to to. There was this like dome shaped thing that they would hide behind. And I was like, dude, I'm gonna demolish that orange dust everywhere right on the front of it.

[B]

I wonder. It would be awesome. Like, just somehow to like, like, what were they thinking? They probably thought it was like chemical warfare or something like that.

[A]

Somebody's told me that before. They're like, what do you think the enemy thought it was?

[C]

Was for sure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, you thought you're going to heaven. You got covered in that stuff. Sorry, there's no way to redeem yourself on that one. Oh, man, that's good. All right.

[A]

So, yeah, man, there was definitely, definitely some funny stuff that happened out there.

[B]

But I want to bring up one thing real quick before you get to your injury, your first injury, which is kind of crazy to say, what was very unique that I. I picked up on that you just said, is you had to log the rounds you shot it. Was that a common thing in all the outstations or was like, if you.

[A]

Came back from patrol, we'd be like, no, it was. It was only on the post, and it was a brand new thing. They just kind of trying to Things for people to. Instead of sitting there doing a debrief and trying to figure out everything that the last guy just encountered, let's.

[B]

Let's log. Let's capture information. Yeah, I know.

[A]

I think so. That way I. I can. I can do debrief with you, and then I can also look back and like, hey, which way did he say that they were? Yeah, because we. I mean, we had compasses up there too. It was like, oh, like this many mills this way about.

[B]

That's awesome.

[A]

300 yards. So I can go back and reference all that information.

[B]

You start building out plans and data and. And kind of see what's going on. And also for your leadership, being able to take that information and lead up the chain of command and say, hey, we gotten 13 gunfights in the last two days. We've shot, you know, Joe Rayna shot 25,000 rounds.

[A]

All of them?

[B]

Yeah, all of them. That's pretty cool. Okay, so what. What was the day like of your first injury?

[A]

So, I guess right before this happened, I. I had a. I had this team leader that, you know, I just. I didn't respect him. I absolutely despised him. He was one of those guys that right off. So he was. He came into our unit from another unit, so he didn't start off with us and immediately kind of showed his colors. So, like, our. My squad leader held all of us to a higher standard. And, you know, we. We all knew how to do call for fire missions. We all knew how to do cas. Nine lines. We all knew how to, like, call for medevac. Nine lines. You know, we. We. He pushed us to do all these things, and, you know, we're sitting there just kind of rehearsing one day and like, hey, man, your turn. He's like, no, I'm good. He's like, what do you mean, I'm good? He's like, oh, I didn't. Didn't realize I was asking you. He's like, so giddy. He's like, can I talk to you? And he's like, I. I don't really remember how to. He's like, oh, good time to practice. And I mean, just refused. Refused to put in the time, refused to put in the effort. And he was just one of those.

[B]

I wonder what he's going through. That's not normal. He just didn't.

[A]

He was that guy that, you know, we, we had. When I first got to the unit, we had guys that would come in and they were like, hey, what does AD Rack stand for? Like, tension direction, description. And like, you're just kind of like, they come in and just test you. This is the guy that would come in and like, fall asleep on one of our racks and like, yeah, I'm gonna take a nap. And just did just very little care. And it was like, it was just really hard to respect him. And, you know, I, I had had altercations with him, like, throughout the workup too. He's one of those guys that, you know, he's. He's gonna, he's gonna call you something, and it's like, well, now I gotta prove that I'm not.

[B]

Oh, got you.

[A]

Yeah. So he, he ended up. He did this when we were in Afghanistan to the point where I was like, well, here we go. And so it was not smart on my part because my squad leader snatched me up real quick.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Yep.

[B]

So instant correction.

[A]

Oh, instantly. And, you know, he ultimately gave me what I wanted, but I didn't even understand to like, what detriment at that point. So his. I, I had constantly asked like, please move me into this other team. Please move, like, let me have Maldonado. Can I please go work with Maldonado? And Maldonado was actually another Lance Corporate was another E3 with us that he came over from Lima Company because I was with India Company and Malnado came over from Lima Company. He got charged with hazing, took his rank and everything. So he worked his way back up and. But he, he was one of those guys that even through all this adversity, he was the guy that we wanted to be behind. And I begged and I pleaded so many different times like, please let me have Malnato. And I was just Got told, no, there's never any why, there's never any. Anything else. So now this altercation happens in Afghanistan of all places. And then, you know, we. He pulls me out back and he eventually explains to me, he's like, thanks a lot, idiot. He's like, you were the one strong guy that I had on that team and you were the guy that I had to hold that team together. And now I don't. Thanks. Thank you. And I was like, man, I just let that down. So he, he was, he gave me what I want. But it, like, it came with a price.

[B]

That sucks.

[A]

And I definitely had to pay the price for it that night.

[B]

And so going back like what, what would you have done different? I think maybe what lessons did you do you take from that?

[A]

I think maybe just understanding the why. Okay, it's huge. Is because, I mean even in the heat of it, even with all the emotions and everything that happened, it was still I, even when he explained it to me, I knew exactly that. I knew I messed up and not, not messed up in a sense of, you know, popping off the way I did, but more so in. Damn, he's right now, now if something happens to this team and I'm not there, then what. And so that weighed pretty heavy on me immediately.

[B]

But yeah, that's a hard, that's a hard one. When you're a junior ranking guy, you know, or you're in a position where you feel like you're not in a leadership position is feeling empowered or having the capabilities to go ask the why and how do you ask the why? That's an important thing too, is because, you know, unless you're being taught how to do these things and you know, decent. That's why decentralized command is so important, is empowering your people with information. And the why is what drives what we do. And had you understood the why, it would have been a different situation.

[A]

Oh, 100%.

[B]

Okay. All right.

[A]

So it's like fortunately, unfortunately kind of gave me what I want. Finally moved me into the team that I wanted to and then, and I mean it didn't last long. So not too long after this. November 10th was, it's the Marine Corps birthday. I'm on the color guard. I escorted the colors into country. You know, I did a whole bunch of events prior to even deploying. Deploying and you know, I, they ended up doing a ceremony just you know, Marine Corps is huge on traditional. So you know, we're not going to let war torn country deter us from celebrating the Marine Corps birthday. So we call culture. Oh yeah. So we're doing a whole cake cutting ceremony in the middle of singing Afghanistan and FOB Jackson and my boys are out on patrol and it's first squad is out there and we, the QRF unit's actually in the ceremony with us and then they start getting the phone call over the radio and we knew something was bad. And almost immediately, as soon as the ceremony ended, I walked straight off, walked straight over to the aid station and that's where I saw my buddy Evans and you know, he told us that my buddy James Stack had been killed. So James was, he got shot by a sniper, took a round to the face, pretty much Died instantly from, you know, everything that I've been told. He. They say he fought for a little bit. They. They kind of put NPA in his nose and, you know, tried to. Yeah. Even at that. You know, took a ride back on a Danger Ranger. But that was the day my buddy James lost his life. And it was a tough one, too, because, you know, James, he's such a good dude, and he was one of our. One of my peers. A super young guy, had a wife, had a brand new baby at home. And, yeah, he's got his. His daughter Michaela. She's the most beautiful little girl ever, too. And I've got to FaceTime her a couple times that she was. She was getting ready to go to a dance, and.

[B]

No way.

[A]

Yeah, her. Her mom was like, hey, do you want to talk to this guy that's taken her? I was like, yeah, I do. So it's been pretty cool to, you know, I kind of disappear every so often. I'll go cold turkey for a couple years and then just kind of pop back up and just try to stay in touch as much as possible.

[B]

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to stay in touch with the family.

[A]

Definitely.

[B]

It's something that we should be doing a better job at. And when I say we, I mean me, because as you said, I go. I'm like, oh, yeah, me too. I do that. I actually just got reconnected with two of my buddies from the task unit recently, and, man, it felt good. I spent three hours on the phone with one of them. Yeah, it's just crazy, but, man. All right, so you lose a close buddy, you've lost teammates, multiple teammates leading up to this. But losing somebody close to you, how did that affect you?

[A]

It was.

[B]

I mean, obviously tarred. But, like, what changed, if anything?

[A]

Honestly, not much. You know, it definitely took a toll on a lot of. A lot of us, a lot of the guys. My. My. One of my buddies, James Prochek, you know, he was one of his best friends. Like, you. You can call yourself James best friend, but, like, everybody knew, like, Jimmy was James real best friend. Like, those two were inseparable. So, you know, he. He had kind of a tough go, and. But, you know, we just kind of kept going, just kept. This. This is. This is what we're here for.

[B]

And how'd you get injured?

[A]

So, finally, with this new team leader, we're on a clearing operation, and we're doing. It's the Route 611, the MSR that runs through there. There. There was a Couple times where you know, we'd get up on a roof and then we see somebody a couple roofs over carrying something and they'll. Yeah, you, you put a blanket over and it's like, dude, I could still tell that's a pkm. Like I see it. You're not sneaky. So we go out on these patrols and look for these guys. We recovered a couple of them. Like they put them out and like bury them in hay where they put all their cows and stuff.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So we found a couple of them and you know, one of the times that we were out, my, my team leader Maldonado, he had just stepped out of the building, he took a left and the doors in Afghanistan are really short. So as soon as I poked my head out, I, you know, looked right, there was two kids there and then I looked left and literally as I looked left, Malnado, he was. Had to have been like five, five meters from me. And he stepped on a, stepped on an id. Luckily it was a low order. You know, he, he took like the heat going up and then I took all like the shrapnel because yeah, they were like. Basically what they were doing out there was they would do the yellow jugs. They had the jugs fold of the homemade explosives. And luckily they were just a little over ambitious with this one. They didn't let it completely dry, so when it detonated, it didn't fully detonate to its maximum potential. But what they would also do with it is they would, once they buried it, they put rocks and all sorts of things on top of it. Just create more shrapnel. And that's basically everything that I took to the face as soon as I stuck my head out. So I, I've heard like you've heard the term like getting peppered before. Like I found out why they call it that. Like, it literally looks like little like pepper all up the side of your face.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And you know, I ended up. That was the day I perforated my eardrum. Even with the low order ied.

[B]

Yeah, that's.

[A]

And so I got medevaced out myself and my team leader Maldonado, we, they pulled us back to Falad and that's where you know, they basically wouldn't let us go back out to the team. They're like, hey man, like you guys, you just got rocked. Like you just need to chill. And it was funny because like for us it was the most insignificant event because it was a low order. So like we're good. And. But you know, I ended Up. I somehow made it through a mace report, but was definitely concussed after realizing that you're not supposed to throw up after head trauma. And turns out bleeding from the ears is not a good thing.

[B]

And so you're back at it.

[A]

Yeah, we. We just. We hang back out at the. The FOB for a couple days and, you know, I was. I was rough, I was hurting. You know, the worst headaches ever. And there was an event that ended up happening. Somebody took off with the vehicles that they were relying on for qrf. And so we. There were some secondary vehicles, but one of the machine gun sergeants, his name was Sergeant Cavazos, this guy was a war fighter. And he comes and finds me. He's like, hey, man, everyone just left. They took all of my medevac platform. Are you good to ban a gun? It's like, yes, sir. So he's like, I don't need you. Just cure just in case. He's like, they went back to the main base. I was like, yeah, cool, man. I'm ready for it.

[B]

And did he know that you had an injury a recent.

[A]

Oh, yeah, they. They knew. Why? Like, because the. The FOB is basically empty.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Everybody's out on a major clearing evolution right now. So it's, you know, headquarters type people that are back here. So that's why he came to find me. He's like, he's got it, dude. Need some war fighters.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, check.

[B]

Let's go.

[A]

And this. He was like, just in case. I was like, cool, man. Like, where do you mean? Stage my gear? He's like, he's like, you know, I've asked 11 people and you're the first person to ask me that. He's like, I don't even know. Can you figure it out? Yeah, man. So I'm like starting to stage gear and stuff like that, and immediately radio call. It's like, ID casualties. So get pulled out and, you know, we go over there. My buddy, Blake Watson is from another platoon as well, but Blake ended up losing a leg. And it was funny. So our. Our company gunny, he. He ended up picking up first sergeant when we got back. But he. Everybody knew him as like a crossfit freak. Like, this guy was an animal. And when we got there to where we were linking up with the casualty, it was a shot straight up a hill, and it was a dash, and it was. It was rough. And he took off, and I was still in the turret, so he took off and I got out of the turret, jumped down and bolted up this hill. And I caught him, like, more than halfway up and then ended up passing him around the rest of the way. And I didn't. I didn't think anything of it. Like, when it happened, I was just trying to, like, hurry up and get out there. And, you know, we got Blake. There was a couple other, like, secondary casualties. And then we got back, and we're just like, hey, man, you guys all good? Like, yeah, we're good. Just talking to everybody. And they're like, did you guys see Raina Duskunny carry on up that hill?

[B]

So that's awesome.

[A]

And this is. I mean, like, two, three days after, like, I'm still dealing with the. The repercussions from that ID blast. And. And it was intense.

[B]

That's crazy. And what point of this is into your deployment? Is it beginning, middle, end?

[A]

We're still like, so James died November 10th, and then the low order ID was December 11th.

[B]

So you're three months in of a how long deployment?

[A]

Seven month.

[C]

Okay, guess it's September of. Of 2010 to April of. Of 2011.

[B]

Correct.

[C]

So December is like, right about halfway through.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's crazy. All this stuff has happened and then. Did you have any other injuries on this deployment, or are they on other deployments?

[A]

No.

[B]

So, okay, so how does this deployment wrap up? I mean, pretty solid op tempo.

[A]

So, I mean, was it six days later? Secretary Defense is coming in, and they're like, we got patrols already scheduled. We have all this stuff scheduled. My. My team was supposed to be, like, on a qrf, and they ended up like, hey, you guys need to push out into a blocking position. It's like, for what? Like, SEC devs coming in. They want increased security. Blocking position, go. So they push us out on a blocking position and might yell. It finally linked back up with my squad and everything, and they're like, hey, man, are you good? I was like, yeah, let's go. We think it's a blocking position. And, you know, I put on every warming layer. I had, like, everything. Polypro, top and bottom, grid fleece, top and bottom, sweatpants, top and bottom. And I shove it all under my uniform. And we're actually. So we had frog suits for the. That we got issued, but we're operating in what we call the green zone. So we brought green camis with us, too. So took some green camis, put everything underneath there, and was like, this is going to be a warm blocking position because it's December in Afghanistan and it's cold.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, you know, we get out there and there was, there was a couple guys that were, they were doing some stuff and my team leader, Maldonado, started engaging them. This guy was lethal with his 203.

[B]

Like, my man.

[A]

Yeah, it's like bullseye targets at 350 yards with 40. Mike. Mike.

[B]

And impressive.

[A]

Just so good. And, you know, he's engaging targets and he ended up. I'm not sure how or what exactly happened, but he ended up. He laid on an IED in the middle of this entire thing. What?

[B]

He laid down on it.

[A]

So it must have been there the entire time. So we essentially pushed out to this tree line. We pushed out to the edge of the tree line and there's kind of like a berm that's right there. And, you know, our engineer's going through and he's sweeping through all these areas and he's like, all right, you can lay here. And even for myself, you know, I remember he swept an area and he was like, all right, you can lay right here. He's like, well, can you sweep this way more? Because my fields of fire are a lot more open right here. I was like, you're literally putting me behind a tree. He's like, well, you can go up to here, but just don't go this way because I'm getting a metal signature over here. And I was like, okay, cool, man, whatever. Like, didn't even care. It was just. I was more worried about, like, my field of fire. Like, I was like, yeah, you're putting me somewhere where even if we do take contact, I can't even engage. So we, we knew that there was something there. And, I mean, the enemy's smart. They know exactly where you're going to go. They know, like, when we shoot at them here, they're going to take cover here, they're going to retreat to this area here. So they strategically in place, IEDs in those places. And that's literally what happened. And, you know, that, that was, that was a big one that, you know, I, I blacked out for I don't even know how long. It's like, obviously it feels like it just happened. But, you know, as I'm coming to, I. I'm like trying to sit up and my squadron is yelling.

[B]

And how close was this to you?

[A]

It's like 10 meters, like 10, 15 meters. And so, yeah, my squadron is yelling, like, trying to figure out who it was. He's asking me. I told him. I was like, it's not me. And then I, I look down and Malnato's gone. And I don't know where he's at. And so I yelled back immediately. I was like, hey, it's Maldonado. I was like, I don't know where he is. And one of the, one of the machine gun section leaders ended up going. He kind of went back like maybe 25, like 20, 25 yards. And he found like the top half of Maldonado. And you know, I basically had to watch him pick him up and bring him back. And you know, just. He was immediately like, there's. There's no way he survived any part of that instantaneous. And wow. So it. I, I think even worse. You know, this is the team that I fought so hard to get into.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I finally got what I wanted. And you know, we were talking weeks later, I just. Now we lost him. And even one of the worst parts too is one of my best friends, ironically, another Cody. He. He actually lives here in the DFW area. I think he lives in Argyle as well.

[B]

Dude, I've gotta, I've gotta meet this guy.

[A]

Yeah, he's from Louisville. He's like one of my best friends. Been the best man at both his weddings.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

Classic military.

[A]

Yeah. He was unresponsive during this time as well. And so I'm kind of losing everything in me. And I can screaming for him and he's not waking up. One of the corpsmen eventually makes their way over to him and they get him up and he's just out, out of it. And you know, now. Now it's a gunfight. And it's essentially turned into a like three. I mean it felt like three, three and a half hour. It literally could have been 15 minutes. Yeah. Just gunfight the entire way back. I couldn't even tell you how far out we were from the base.

[B]

That's what.

[A]

I don't know how far we patrolled.

[B]

The fog of, the fog of war is a very real thing. Like, you lose sense of time when it comes to those big massive gunfights. And you know, like you said, it could have been a 15 minute just. And then it could have been three hours. Like, it's like time is almost not existent during those situations, especially now. Your brain is like, okay, these are so many other things I have to focus on because you're trying to process what you saw. You're trying to process what you feel. And it's straight survival mode at this moment. But then you're also having to turn off things to actually be able to function and work your way out of there.

[A]

Oh, yeah, and that's what, like. I mean, my. Because obviously, you know, my. My team leader's gone, my. My best friend's unconscious, and, you know, I'm kind of losing it. And this is where, you know, my. My squad leader finally snaps me back in, and it was like, what'd he do?

[B]

Do you grab you, shake you? Yell at you? Slap you?

[A]

He literally just yelled at me.

[B]

Okay. He's like.

[A]

And he's like, I need you, man.

[B]

That's awesome. I need you.

[A]

And so I. I mean, I. Again, like, I felt my ears, you know, just immediately just start dumping blood again. You know, it's six days after I had literally just perforated it, so now it's just bleeding again. And, you know, I just. I started rocking with my saw, and it was anything and everything that I could shoot. I was. We. We put everything down.

[B]

How's it. How is it you don't have hearing aids? Impressive.

[A]

I've had my baseline reset, like, three different times. And the last time I talked to a hearing doctor, he was like, bob, you're good. Like, they. They put these earbuds, like, into my brain. Like, touched my earball with it, and they went into a microphone behind a thing, and they were like, I'm gonna whisper some words to you. Tell me if you can hear them. Elephant. I was like, yeah, elephant. I was like, yeah, no, of course I can hear it. You're screaming it into. Like, you've taken away all the ambient sound, and you're screaming this into. Yes, I hear that. Like, now, let's out, like, add some outside factors and.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, sorry. I know I derailed you with a statement, but I'm. I'm hearing, you know, the second major explosion six days later, blood pouring out of your ears. I'm just shocked that you don't have hearing aids.

[A]

Same. I'm sure my wife would love them.

[B]

I was gonna say, sure. Your wife is like, mine, where she's like, you need them. What are you doing? Okay, so. Good Lord. This is halfway through your deployment the second time. All right. What. Anything else, major happen before you go home? So.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, that's it. That's what's.

[B]

No, I. Yeah, I'm not laughing.

[A]

No, I mean, it's funny. Like, so my. My company first sergeant even made a comment at one point, so even I want to say before, man, I. I don't know how many times are. Like, when this was. But there was another time I was on a post, and I. I watched. Watched one of our guys get Shot. I was. I, like sitting there and I'm looking down and there like, we finally reached our limit of advance and, you know, now the next platoon's punching through us and they're going to continue to clear. So I watched this guy get shot, and from what we understand, he started screaming immediately. He just laid there and started screaming. And from what we understand is he's. He got. They hit his spine. He's paralyzed from the waist down now. But as soon as one of the other. The one of the snipers went to go snatch him up, he reached down, grabbed his flak and started pulling back, and he ended up getting shot. And he goes down. So then I started engaging everything out there. Anything and everything. Like, if you were out there while this is going on, you're a bad guy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, you need to be dealt with. So we started. We started engaging everything out there. And then before I realized it, my entire area got lit up. My whole roof got lit up. And I had double stacked sandbags, like in and out, woven, and it's just piercing through what. And you know, to the extent that like one of the, like the drums that I had, like, exploded a drum, like one of the rounds hit my drum. You know, I had a couple holes, like in my. My clothes and stuff. Just nothing hit me. And then my company first sergeant and my company commander are literally on the ground right below, just watching me stuck up there. Nobody can come, nobody can do anything. Just laying there. And I keep trying to poke my head over to talk to people. Guys, I'm just lonely up here. They're like, reina, get down. So, yeah, finally some other.

[B]

Distinct words added to some of those.

[C]

Please.

[A]

They probably said please.

[B]

Yeah, it was probably please.

[A]

Yeah, the company first sergeant literally said the same. He's like, good. He had this real thick slather. He's like, good Lord, Raina, how many is that now? How many close calls you gonna get? I was like, all of them. First one, all of them.

[B]

I want all of them.

[A]

So, yeah, he even made the joke then, you know, it was so. Yeah, it just. It didn't. Just kept coming. It kept coming. You know, Took Maldonado's loss pretty tough. You know, we got back, finally got back into the FOB. I went Winchester probably like 300 yards outside the wire. So I walked back just naked, let my gun sling and just.

[B]

Yeah, just done.

[A]

Yeah, this is one. I gave up. I 100 gave up. I was like, dude, just kill me. Put me out of my misery, because again, I still have all these warming layers on, and we've been patrolling and fighting back this entire time, and I am just drenched, dude. Like, drenched. And I was miserable, so I. I gave up. I was like, dude, shoot me, please. Put me on one of these litters. Like, I don't care. And we're done.

[B]

That sucks.

[A]

But made it back in. And, you know, I. I think one of the. The worst things, too, about this entire situation was whether it was intentional or not. You know, Secretary of Defense are trying to get out of there. Every medevac bird that comes out there, Blackhawks, I already know they. The medevac birds don't come with. They're not equipped to defend themselves, so they come with gunships, and, you know, they're trying to get medevac bird on deck so that they can get Maldonado out of there. And medevac bird gets waved off, and, like, what is going on? So we're standing there with a body bag out on the flight line, close to the helo pad, getting ready to load this body up, and another bird comes in, lands, and Secretary of Defense walks right by. Oh. Leon Pineda walks right by as we're standing there with a body bag on a stretcher and doesn't acknowledge. Doesn't say nothing, just jumps on his bird, takes off. So turns out they were trying to use the. The gunship from our medevac bird as additional protection to get the Secretary of Defense out of there. So.

[B]

It's unfortunate.

[A]

Yeah, it was.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's definitely something that.

[B]

When you're in that type of a leadership position, you need to be aware of.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because whether it was an intentional or not, the perception.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Of you and those Marines, I'm willing to bet he was not high on the list.

[A]

Oh, it completely.

[B]

Which is unfortunate.

[A]

Oh, completely. Ruined whatever.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Fandom I could have had for this man. I. I actually got to meet him the next year on. On a Navy ship.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

Didn't work out well for me.

[B]

Oh, so one of those life lessons.

[A]

Oh, yeah. So General Kelly was actually there as well. General Kelly's son was actually with me on deployment. He was. He. Lieutenant Kelly. He actually lost his life out there as well. So, yeah, he. General Kelly. I got to talk to him a little bit over there.

[B]

What was that like?

[A]

He. I mean, so my. My interaction didn't go the way I thought it was going to with the Secretary of Defense, and somebody snatched me up real quick, and General Kelly came over to talk to me, and it was. I. I laugh now. I wasn't laughing at the time. You know, like when you have so much emotions and you're, you're trying to hold back the tears and so I was doing the, like, yeah, like it's so, it's not even like I'm crying because I'm sad. It's so much anger in your body.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And General Kelly comes over and he's talking to me and so calm, so humble, like just, just talks to me and it's like I'm over here, you know, crying about my situation and like what I experienced. This guy literally lost his son on my deployment and you know, he's just so much composure. So. Yeah, huge fan of him.

[B]

I was gonna say it's inspiring when you, when you get to meet and interact with leaders like that.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

It's pretty incredible.

[A]

So, yeah, I mean we, so we, we continue through this deployment. You know, we end up going out to establish this patrol base there. You know, it's a control point for us. Every time we get attacked, they started to notice, you know, between UAS blimps, everything started to notice that, hey, every time they reinforce the green zone, they're reinforcing from this bridge over here. So if we control the bridge, we control how we get attacked. So we go out to set up a patrol base out there and engineer gets shot, immediately shatters his pelvis and turns into a big gunfight. And this is where when I say the weight just continued to pile on. They basically told us that we were going into an area that, you know, we, we don't have, we, we don't have route clearance through there. We can't get trucks, we cannot get you resupply. So take what you can carry, take what you need to sustain for the next couple weeks until we can get some route clearance through there. So I packed everything, everything I could in my pack, in my main pack, took assault packs, 2500 rounds, still got my 84. And then now we get an A pod. So. Do you know what a pub is?

[C]

I have no clue. Yeah, I was about to write it down on my list of questions here.

[A]

So apobs, it's these backpacks that the engineers carry around. It's a hard shelled backpack. When you take the case off of the backpacks, there's two backpacks, you link them together and essentially what it is is 1008 grenades that are all strapped to each other and there's a rocket that gets strapped to the front. Well, when you set that rocket off, it pulls that strand of 100 eight grenades and basically we use it for route clearance.

[C]

That's freaking sick.

[A]

So they're not light?

[C]

No, and I would assume not.

[A]

I have everything that, you know, I need. I feel like I need to be comfortable and sustain myself for the next couple weeks. And.

[C]

It'S like that personnel size. You know, Mike Mitchell was telling us about this, that there are like when he was part of the first light or light armor division and that they had like a truck that would shoot out a giant string of like ballistics in order to try to get to do route clearance. It sounds like this was like a personnel sized thing that essentially does the same thing.

[A]

So you guys can carry it instead.

[C]

Of like a massive vehicle.

[A]

Yeah, our engineers had something it might be similar to what it is. It was called a miklic.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

So Mikla, I want to say it's like 1200 pounds of C4 that essentially does the same thing. Instead of grenades, now it's just C4.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

The rocket takes off and that makes a little bit of a bigger boom.

[C]

Yeah, but, yeah, but so this is like a personnel sized miclic, okay.

[A]

Correct. Yeah. So you know, we take that in, you know, engineer gets shot immediately, so gotta, gotta get him out of there. And then we push in this patrol base and now we're operating out of there as long as we can and you know, we get a call that one of our units is out on a patrol and they're like, hey, we got an ied, we need EOD out here. So EOD comes links up with us and my, my squad was going to go escort them over. So in, you know, on our way out through there, you know, make it to one point and you know, one of the biggest things that the enemy was known for out there was like back lane and as soon as you make it through an area, they know you're going to come back through there. So they're going to put an IED in like that five minutes that you're not on the X. So you know, we got to a point and my like, luckily my squad leader was like, hey man, keep your, keep your team back here. And we're, we're gonna, we're gonna push up with EOD and you know, we'll, we'll link back up with you after. I was like, cool. And literally as he said that to me, 11 guys made it through. So it was basically what our way to get from building a building was. Either you're gonna take me, the person that lives there or we're going to blow a Hole in the wall, and we're going to make our way through.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So there was a previous blast hole where we had blown from one wall into the next, and there was an alley that separated it. And so I put one of my guys, I was like, hey, man, like, cover down this. This avenue right here. Just make sure nobody comes through. And like, five. Five feet away or like five meters. It was just big enough to get one of those little Ford Rangers in there. EOD tech went down the berm, cross the alley, and then up the berm, and that's eodtech. Stepped on ied. And that's where, you know, I was on. I was still on the other side of it. Just, I'd say, like, from me to you. And he stepped on it, lost both legs. Mark Zambone, he's actually the first Marine double amputee to return to full duty.

[B]

Let's go.

[A]

Right on.

[B]

Are you still in contact with him or do you know?

[A]

I. I lose contact with him every now and again. Like, we'll. We'll regain contact and then, you know, just kind of falls off. He does his own thing, but, yeah, he's an absolute stud.

[B]

What is he doing now? Is he still in?

[A]

No, no, he got out eventually. He went on to do great things, like climb Mount Kilimanjaro, like, with stubs for legs.

[B]

What?

[A]

Yeah, Animal.

[B]

I'm not shocked that he went on to do great things, because if you're the first Marine to come back to active duty as a double amputee, like.

[A]

He actually went over to be like, the chief instructor over at EOD school, bro.

[B]

Yeah, that is. I love humans. I love hearing about humans like this. All right, so that's super close to you.

[A]

Yep. So now we're.

[B]

I mean, you're affected.

[A]

We're back to the. The bleeding from the ears.

[B]

This is.

[A]

This was like one of the hardest ones that, you know, I. So there. There was a desk that was back behind me, and when. When the blast went off, the overpressure just kind of thrown. Threw me back, and the desk hit right below my back. Sappy. And I didn't think any. Like, obviously I was in extreme pain. But I think one of the things that I noticed from even the first time, the first. The low order id was when I get removed from the platoon and then I come back to them. It's almost like you're being ostracized. It's almost like, how dare you get hurt and take time off. So, like, hey, somebody's got to pull double Fire watch tonight. And they're like, give it to Rayna. He's been chilling for the last couple days. I was like, yes, chilling with blood.

[B]

Dripping out of my ears. Thanks, guys.

[A]

Really chilling over here. So, you know that, that was kind of the. What led to a lot of my stupidity going forward. So, like, even with the second one, you know, when Maldonado lost his life, it was one of those ones where you like, you fight through a mace report. You're not going to medevac me. You're not gonna put me on downtime. Like, I'm good. Put me back with the boys. So, you know, my. I'm in extreme pain. My back is killing me, my head is killing me. Like everything hurts. I'm definitely concussed. And they ended up medevacking a good majority of us back to the main FOB anyway. Well, when we got there, there was extreme concerns. They were like, this is his third one in close proximity. He's still three.

[B]

Within a month, right?

[A]

Yeah. Yep. But like literally within about a 30 day time span.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I believe this one was somewhere around January 11th. January 10th. January 11th. So like about 30, 31 days.

[B]

So you've had three major explosions, close proximity in a 30 day window, when the recovery process from one of them is usually, hey, let's do nothing for 30 to 60 days. Correct.

[A]

I believe so, yeah. I've never got to actually experience. I got four the first time and.

[B]

Then I got four. That's right.

[A]

Never took it again.

[B]

Load up. The load up. All right.

[A]

So, yeah. And this is why, you know, when I explained the whole, you know, self inflicted, it was because of that first event where I was like, I don't want to go through that again.

[B]

So it makes sense, man.

[A]

You know, when. When we got medevac back to the. The FOB and you know, they were like, hey, like, we need to send him in now. Like, this is. I. He doesn't look good. Like, they're saying his eardrums are still perforated from the first time. So like we're. And they, they. My company first sergeant ended up talking to the doctors and I snuck out of the bas, the battalion aid station, and I just kind of like scurried on over to where my squad was and I was like, hey, man, we're going back to the patrol base. And they're like, yeah. So I was like, cool, let's go. And I just jumped back on the patrol truck and went back.

[B]

How'd your leadership react to that one?

[A]

They weren't Happy.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And there, there was a phone call or a radio call or something. Something was made and yeah, there was. Somebody was upset about it. I, I, from what? I, I don't know if this was like just trying to make me feel like the idiot that I was for, for doing that. Somebody said that there was a medevac bird that was supposed to be coming to get me, so.

[B]

Oh, shoot.

[A]

But yeah, either way, it was one of those ones where I say self inflicted. I was like, yeah, I'm not sticking back to be further evaluated so that you can further remove me for additional days. Not doing it. Yeah, yeah, I just went back out with the platoon. Just. Okay, jump back out with the boys.

[B]

All right. And so what are the last couple months of this deployment like, other than just pure chaos, clearly.

[A]

Yeah, well, so honestly, it kind of died down, you know, through after December, January or like after January. Time frame. February, March was kind of dull for us. There wasn't a lot going on. And then, you know, we start getting into spring offensive. So March, April starts kicking off. There was only a singular time after that where, you know, I, I truly thought like this was it. And you know, we basically got a phone call. They're like, hey, the blimp has about 40 to 50 military age mills massing to your Whatever direction.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And like, hey, you got to send somebody over there to check it out. Well, from the patrol base that we established at this point, there's a building right beyond it. And then it's a gigantic field in through. It's like 200 meter opening.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To the next building. And I was like, dude, we're so exposed. Like, that's dumb.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they're like, you gotta go. And I mean, this was the time where it was like, dude, there's 40 to 50. We're going to take like 15 guys over there. Like, what are we going to do is like we'll play cards or.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What's the expectation here? And it's like they got the jump on us. Like they're in a fortified position. We're about to move through this gigantic opening. And you know, this is, I legit turned to my buddy and I was like, dude, tell my wife I love her, man. I thought this was it. And. But you made it out, Lucas.

[B]

I know you have. I mean, you've got a page. And this is, what's right, crazy. This is one of his deployments right where we're at.

[C]

And, and this is shown like while, while Joe's been talking. Like, I've Been over here. Like, I, I don't get to. I don't add a lot to the show other than, like, I, I do research and come up with stupid things. And. And so this is. This is one of the things, like, as you've been talking about this, so I've been diving into this. Okay, so some things about Joe's deployment, they're there from. From September of 2010 to April of 2011, 25 KIA and 200 wounded, many of which left missing limbs.

[A]

Oh, yeah, right.

[C]

For people who are. That they've heard the. The 3rd Battalion 5th Marines before, they're like, oh, that sounds really familiar to you. To me, here's why It's. They are one of the most storied battalions in all of the US military. World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam. And since 1949, they've been consistent. Right?

[B]

They.

[C]

They dissipated them after World War II. But since 1949, this has been one of the consistent. And one of the reasons a lot of people will know the. The name 3rd Battalion 5th Marines is because of the. The HBO show the Pacific. And Eugene Sledge, who wrote the book called with the old breed, is 3rd Battalion 5th Marines. And, you know, they is the guides that are in. In Peleliu that are. Are fighting there. Just so I'm. I'm looking at all of that stuff. If you have heard of Black Rifle Coffee, Logan Stark, one of the guys who was a found or, you know, on the Black Rifle Coffee team, I think he's 0317, which is surveillance and target acquisitions. I'm looking all this stuff up. Right. He has a documentary that he put together about this deployment called for the 25. Have you. Have you seen that?

[A]

I don't. I don't think I've seen it. I. I've heard of it. I. I don't. There's so many. There's. There's actually another documentary that's coming out here soon. But, yeah, there's. There's tons of things out there. And this is where, you know, trying to express, like, there's so many courageous units and individuals that have been out there and, you know, trying to put it into terms of, you know, so many units have lost so much, and 3rd Battalion 5th Marines is still renowned for the bloodiest battle in the history of the war in Afghanistan. Yeah. To this day. And I don't think it even ever resonated with us. There was a time like we. We didn't, like, we're in the thick of it, and we don't understand what's going on. Like, we're just living it and it never really head home. Even when we got back to Leatherneck, you know, on our way out of Afghanistan, there was like, we were just dirty, disgusting pig people coming through there and there was some, some guys that saw us like getting on the bus and we were just super stoked. They're like, you guys just get here. Like, oh man, we're going home. And who y' all with? Like 3 5. Like, dude, you guys realize you're famous? Like, what? For what? You know. And that's was literally the only. He's like, dude, everybody knows your guys name out here. Everybody knows who the Dark Horse battalion is. Everybody knows who 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine is. Like, you guys are famous. Okay, cool. I was like, hey, where's the bazaar?

[B]

I'm hungry.

[C]

Yeah, well, and it's thirsty. It's crazy to me because when you look at this at the 3:5 in particular, every war that America has fought in the 20th and 21st century, there is a battle that is attributed to you guys where y' all were the difference. And you know, one of the things we, we talk about what happened in this deployment, but y' all were also in Fallujah and in 03. You know, that battalion was and were instrumental in that, which was, you know, the bloodiest six weeks up to that point. And now, you know, here, here we are again. You guys are just absolutely in the thick of it. So you talk a lot about Marine history. My, my one question in light of all of that and everything that you said, you know, what is it? What does it mean to you to have been part of the 3 5? Like, what does that mean to Joe Reyna?

[A]

It's, for me, it's never been. And this is what I think was one of the toughest things that I typically have to answer is I don't like, I don't even like to wear ribbons around other people because some individuals get a complex and people look at you a little differently and they treat you a little differently. And for me, I've never been in it for the recognition it's by me coming on here. This is one of the things that, you know, I talked to Cody about to. There was a guy that I watched on the Sean Ryan show. He talked about, you know, being able to, to go out and like put this information out there for the public for one, like the mental clarity that it's given him and like the ability to speak on behalf of his fallen brothers that you know, can't speak for themselves. That's. That's what it's about. And that's why, you know, I've tried to. I know this has probably gone on a lot longer than what y' all anticipated.

[B]

No, not even. Nope. Not even. I promise you. Not a thought or an issue.

[A]

Yeah, my number one goal was just trying to be able to put names out there, like, you know, James Stack, Jose Maldonado, Lance Corporal Sparks, even Lance Corporal Sennis Heroes, who's a Silver Star recipient on that deployment. Just a hellacious machine gunner.

[B]

If a Marine gets awarded the Silver Star, that's. You might as well be walking around with the Medal of Honor.

[A]

Literally got shot. Shot. Moving through an open area, got shot, kind of barrel rolled and just started engaging his machine gun until everybody made it into this ditch, got up, ran to the ditch. And again, this is like, secondhand account from the guys, like, boots on the deck. And. But they basically said, like, this guy just got into the ditch, started engaging. They're like, hey, man, let me look at you. And machine gunners, like, if you ever talk to a machine gunner, they're suitable, proud of their babies. And, oh, yeah, he's like, no one's touching my gun.

[B]

He's like, get no piglet pig.

[A]

You know, by the time they got another machine gunner down there to take over for him, like, he literally rolled off the gun and, like, took his last breath. Like, dude literally fought until his last breath was still engaging enemies until he rolled off, and that was it. So it's people like that, you know, those are the heroes that, you know, by me coming on here, if I. If I'm able to tell their stories and, you know, put this out there so that people can remember them, like, that's what this is about.

[B]

100%, man. And now, in regards to your time, like, I knew. Like, I knew. I knew that I knew we would probably get anywhere between two to two and a half hours, maybe three, and be wrapping up your first deployment. And that's actually where we're at. So one, I'm going to say to our listeners, we're going to wrap this up because we're going to record some more with Joe, whether it's, you know, this week, next week, so whether it's the next episode or in two and three episodes, we're going to get another one or two episodes with Joe for sure, if you're available and able to. And. And that's why, like, is what you just said is to be able to honor those guys. And I Can tell you that tonight you have honored them. You live your life to honor them as a Marine, as a husband, as a father, as a, you know, part time member of Echelon Front, whenever you're able to come help us. Like, you bring so much value to every ftx. You bring so much value to our clients, to the team. I know guys learn from you at our team. You help the role players. I mean, yeah, we have a great time, but when it comes to doing the work, man, you don't joke like, you don't joke around when it comes to doing work because you're a worker and that's who you are as a Marine. And I'm damn proud of you to call you a friend and for everything that you've done for this nation and everything that you do. And I knew that this might be slightly uncomfortable for you, you know, coming on a podcast and you had to run it through the chain of command at work and you did everything the right way, but I just, you know, just want to say thank you for that. And so I'm going to close it out. But you know, as always, I like to ask her listeners for their final thoughts at the very end. So just as I'm randomly talking for the next two minutes, kind of think about what your random thoughts are or your final thoughts. But Lucas, any other final little things real quick?

[C]

I've got, I got so much. I don't know I've got anything that's really quick.

[B]

I think the next episode we dive through all that stuff and then we'll just continue going through his journey as a Marine.

[C]

Yeah, dude, this has been just super eye opening, right? Because there's, there's so much that we don't know about what you guys went through. And you know, we make the jokes about the NCCs and stuff like that, but the, the truth of the matter is that like those of us on, on this side that y' all protected, that you kept this, this foreign enemy at bay for so long that, you know, every, everything that we heard and the information that we were getting.

[B]

Seeing.

[C]

Now what you guys went through, now that it's, you know, more than a decade later and y' all are able to tell your stories, I just, I can't thank you guys enough. It's. It's absolutely incredible. So just a lot of gratitude on this head man, sir.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

Yeah, same. Hey, thank you to all of our listeners for all the support you guys give us just by listening, sharing, subscribing, commenting. For those of you that are watching on YouTube. Thank you. As well. If you are not subscribed to our YouTube channel you should be. That way you can be notified when our episodes and different YouTube exclusive episodes and some additional content I think we're be working on this year comes out. If you want to follow us on social media, on Instagram and most other platforms, I am at jpdonelle that's J P D I N N E L Lucas is at Lucas Pinkard L U C A S P I N C K A R D Joe is at G Y S G T R E Y N A USMC make sure you're checking out what we have going on at Echelon Front. We've talked about the FTX just a little bit. Joe comes out. So hey, if you want to come and attend our hands on scenario based leadership training where you can meet Joe, hang out with Joe and have Joe be the opposition force that you're going up against, you should check out echelonfront.com go check out the events. We actually have the muster coming up next month and then we have a one day FTX on the back end of the San Diego muster. So muster021 will also have a one day FTX and then FTX 16 is going to be march in DFW here so you can go to our website echelonfront.com and see what's going on. You can also shop for some of the merch that we have. The hats that Joe and I have, I believe those are on the website now.

[C]

They are.

[B]

I know we got them ahead of time.

[C]

It's a very handsome hat.

[A]

Special Order from Special Order.

[B]

Yeah. Heather and the Ops team, always hooking us up with the swag. Also go to. You can also check out Extreme Ownership Academy if you'd like to see what we have going on the different courses. Also if you want to work with the Celestial on front, you can request that through our website or just send me a direct message. I'll help connect you with someone on our sales team. Look forward to seeing you guys at a future event. Also a ministry that I'm a part of is called Jesus and Jiu Jitsu. You can follow us on Instagram at Jesus and Jiu Jitsu USA. Our website is jesusandjujitsu USA.com. you can go to that website, grab some of the merch. Also we have an event coming up February 15th. Victoria is going to be teaching that.

[C]

I wish I knew how to pronounce her last name, but it's. It would be one That I would absolutely butcher.

[B]

Well, it's Trey Warren's wife, so that's what I call her.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

But according to Instagram and her Brazilian last name, or I should say Portuguese. Yeah, Portuguese last name. Yeah. I. I can never.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. She competes under it. She's a monster.

[B]

She's amazing. Like such a technical instructor. So she is going to be teaching the content. Someone's going to share their testimony and then we'll open it up for some good training. Also, you can still go check out Little Cattle company Get that beef. Yeah, dog. Our website is littlecattle Co. It's a Texas beef company I'm a partner of with Stephen Little, his wife Amanda, my wife. Custom beef company that allows you to order exactly what you want anytime we are able to deliver anywhere in the lower 48 states. You can check out the beef ground beef subscription plan. We have different beef tallow products which include a body butter tallow cream, lip balm, beef sticks as well. If you want to be a wholesaler for the beef sticks and or the tallow products, send an email to amandaittlecattle Co. Also a partner with a printing company called on the Path Printing. Josh Strasberger and I are running that company. It is fully up and running. So if you have any desires and needs for any merchandise to be printed, send us a message at on the Path Printing. Or you can send Josh Strasberger a direct message. You can send myself one and we'll get you guys taken care of. Also, Leif, Jocko and I have a company called Bruiser Arms. You can check us out on Instagram. We are at Bruiser Arms we provide different custom training and different custom gear packages. So if you want to inquire about that, you can send me a direct message or you can send us a message on Bruiser Arms to see the different training classes and or gear options that we have.

[C]

Pretty cool stuff, man. Oh, the stuff that Andy's making custom for y' all is.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Makes me very jealous.

[B]

Yes, yes, yes. It's awesome. And we have life. And I had a pretty cool call last week about different options for gear packages and training that will be hopefully launching this year. So I gotta get you into one of those courses, man. Have Joe Rayna, which we didn't even get to talk about the long range shooting or any of that other fun stuff.

[A]

Oh, yeah, it's coming.

[B]

Oh, I know.

[A]

I can't too.

[B]

I know. Part two, part three, part four. Let's go. You're gonna be the. The most you're gonna be the marine with the most, the most visits on the podcast.

[A]

Look out.

[C]

Mike Mitchell. Joe Rain is coming for you.

[B]

Also want to thank Origin and Jocko Fuel for all the support they've given over the years. What they've done is incredible. What they're doing is incredible. Extremely inspiring to see what Pete and Amanda Roberts have done with that company and then Jocko and Deko and Brian Littlefield and Joey and all the other members. It's just incredible. So if you want to check out to see what Origin has going on or if you want to get the best American made gear, the best American made jiu jitsu gear, the best American made hunt line that's 100% American made, go to origin USA.com if you want to check out some of the cleanest supplements on the market, go to jockofuel.com get you those supplements. Clean energy drinks, man, Joe, this has been awesome. I appreciate it. Any final closing thoughts?

[A]

I mean, I kind of already jumped ahead of it, but you know, like I said from the beginning, this, this has never been about me. This isn't trying to tell my story. This is about trying to tell the stories of the guys who didn't make it back. So, you know, if there's one thing you can do different today, you know, get up, Google 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, look up some videos. Like, I promise you, there are stories there's 25amazing human beings that, you know, they're not with us today because of the great things that they did over there. So, you know, do some research, read up on them and, you know, just try to do something to honor them today because, you know, I promise you, they, they would be doing the same thing.

[B]

Yeah. And if you're a young man or a woman trying to decide what the next steps are in your life, you should hit up Joe Reyna. He is an incredible recruiter. And the Marine Corps is the most elite fighting force that this world has ever seen. So I hope this episode has been a reminder to go out and do the work that's needed, put in the effort, build your legacy, and to never settle. This has been the JP Donnell podcast, episode 70.