From Valor To VetTV

Summary

The Antihero Podcast: From Valor To VetTV – Episode Summary

Release Date: February 17, 2025

Introduction

In the "From Valor To VetTV" episode of The Antihero Podcast, host Tyler, alongside co-host Brent Tucker, engages in a profound conversation with guest Ethan Nagle—a decorated Marine Corps veteran, Silver Star recipient, and filmmaker. This episode delves deep into Ethan's transformative journey from the battlefield to the world of filmmaking, highlighting his experiences, challenges, and the creation of impactful content through VetTV.

---

Ethan Nagle's Military Journey

Ethan begins by sharing his early inspirations and motivations to join the Marine Corps, rooted in his family's military legacy. He recounts his grandfather's service in World War II and the influence it had on his decision to enlist.

"I want to be that grunt. I want to hold a gun. I want to go to war."
(Ethan Nagle, [09:10])

Ethan discusses his physical transformation during adolescence, where wrestling played a pivotal role in shaping his discipline and goal-oriented mindset. Dropping over 100 pounds in his teenage years not only improved his physical fitness but also instilled a sense of purpose.

"When you set goals and work towards them consistently, it changes everything."
(Ethan Nagle, [14:35])

---

First Deployment and Combat Experiences

Ethan shares harrowing tales from his first deployment to Iraq in March 2006. Stationed in the Haditha Triangle near the Haditha Dam, Ethan's unit faced relentless mortar and sniper attacks, living conditions that tested their resilience.

"We were getting slammed with 120s. They were zeroing us in and ripping us apart."
(Ethan Nagle, [34:03])

He vividly describes a near-death experience during an ambush, where shrapnel narrowly missed his jugular, reinforcing his belief in fate and destiny.

"I realized, this is where I die. I'm going to die here in a pile of brass, as I should as an infantryman."
(Ethan Nagle, [00:00], [90:36])

Ethan emphasizes the bond formed in combat, highlighting the unspoken brotherhood among soldiers facing life-threatening situations.

---

Transition to Post-Military Life and Filmmaking

After two impactful deployments, Ethan grappled with the transition back to civilian life. Dissatisfied with the prospect of extended service and yearning to pursue his passion, he ventured into contracting before eventually embracing filmmaking.

"I wanted to stay a part of the community as a warfighter in any capacity."
(Ethan Nagle, [55:14])

This shift led him to collaborate with VetTV, where he co-created "Embed Actual," a series aiming to document and share authentic combat stories from veterans.

---

Experience with VetTV and Content Creation

Ethan details his collaboration with VetTV, focusing on the "Embed Actual" series set in Ukraine amidst the ongoing conflict. The series captures the grit and determination of Ukrainian fighters, drawing parallels to Ethan's own combat experiences.

"We captured the stories of these guys, interviewed them, got their footage, and created a compelling narrative."
(Ethan Nagle, [108:27])

He discusses the challenges of filming in active conflict zones, the bravery of combatants, and the evolving nature of warfare, especially with advancements in technology like FPV drones.

"The technology is evolving super fast, and Ukraine is doing a fantastic job adapting to these changes."
(Ethan Nagle, [120:01])

---

Reflections on Combat and Personal Growth

Throughout the episode, Ethan reflects on the psychological toll of combat, the importance of camaraderie, and the enduring impact of his military service on his personal and professional life.

"War is the great equalizer. Enemy bullets don't care if you're Delta Force or a Marine infantryman."
(Brent Tucker, [104:39]; Ethan Nagle, [104:12])

He shares insights on resilience, the necessity of adaptability, and the profound changes he underwent while transitioning from a soldier to a storyteller.

"Understanding your strengths and weaknesses is crucial for success in any field."
(Ethan Nagle, [27:34])

---

Conclusion

"From Valor To VetTV" offers listeners an unfiltered glimpse into Ethan Nagle's remarkable journey from the intensity of combat to the creative realm of filmmaking. His story underscores the unwavering spirit of veterans seeking new avenues to share their truths and honor their comrades through compelling narratives.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "I want to be that grunt. I want to hold a gun. I want to go to war."
  – Ethan Nagle, [09:10]

• "When you set goals and work towards them consistently, it changes everything."
  – Ethan Nagle, [14:35]

• "We were getting slammed with 120s. They were zeroing us in and ripping us apart."
  – Ethan Nagle, [34:03]

• "I realized, this is where I die. I'm going to die here in a pile of brass, as I should as an infantryman."
  – Ethan Nagle, [00:00], [90:36]

• "We captured the stories of these guys, interviewed them, got their footage, and created a compelling narrative."
  – Ethan Nagle, [108:27]

• "The technology is evolving super fast, and Ukraine is doing a fantastic job adapting to these changes."
  – Ethan Nagle, [120:01]

• "War is the great equalizer. Enemy bullets don't care if you're Delta Force or a Marine infantryman."
  – Brent Tucker, [104:39]; Ethan Nagle, [104:12]

• "Understanding your strengths and weaknesses is crucial for success in any field."
  – Ethan Nagle, [27:34]

---

This episode serves as a testament to the enduring resilience of veterans like Ethan Nagle, who continue to serve their communities by sharing powerful stories of valor, sacrifice, and transformation.

Transcript

[Ethan Nagle]

And I remember when that was all happening. I remember, you know, covering his body just because I could feel the rounds. I was like, I can't have him hit him again. And, you know, covering up his body and getting back up and doing it again and just being like, this is it. This is where I die. And it was, I won't say calming, but at that same point, like, this is my mission in life. Like, I'm gonna protect him and I'm not gonna let him die alone. If he dies, he. He's not dying alone and you're not getting his body. Yeah, like, and that's to me, you know, like, I can think. That's where I kind of get emotional sometimes. It's like I accepted. I accepted. That's when I truly was like, this is it. And this is, you know, it's that weird thing of like a, a beautiful death. Like, I was like, this is. And all this is kind of not going through my head, but you kind of feel it. Like, this is it. This is. I'm going to die here in a pile of brass, as I should as an infantryman. This is where I die.

[Brent Tucker]

You've accepted it.

[Ethan Nagle]

Accepted it.

[Tyler]

Hold on, we're not recording.

[Ethan Nagle]

Want to buy a rifle?

[Tyler]

Do you want to buy a shirt.

[Ethan Nagle]

To support military dance?

[Tyler]

People want to see their sausage get made.

[Brent Tucker]

An appropriate level of inappropriateness. Something happens in my family tonight. The Delta Force isn't, isn't coming to rescue my. My family. My kids, like first responders, you know, that are. That are going to save my. My family.

[Tyler]

They want the culture to be down. They want people to not want to be cops. And the people that do want to be cops are now walking into the job, scared to do the job.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm going to try to act like it didn't happen, although we, we all know it did.

[Ethan Nagle]

JV Team for life.

[Tyler]

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[Brent Tucker]

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[Tyler]

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[Brent Tucker]

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[Tyler]

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[Brent Tucker]

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[Ethan Nagle]

All right, super important reminder, everybody. First, Brent, try not to breathe in the microphone when you're not speaking. Tyler, try not to tap when you are speaking. And guest, please be sure that you speak into the microphone and don't make a lot of noises like touching it or touching the table and stuff like that. But please make sure you're talking.

[Tyler]

Somebody suggest. We get so many nice suggestions from people that don't have podcasts on their own. And you guys should undercoat the table with this, this, and that so it's just easier not to tap.

[Ethan Nagle]

I hear myself when I edit mine. I'm like, God, I'm breathing. You can hear me like, so what are you doing next? Jesus Christ.

[Brent Tucker]

All right, cool. Tyler, are you ready?

[Tyler]

I am ready. My kids watch SpongeBob. That's all they say. Ready.

[Ethan Nagle]

I just got my daughter into Ms. Rachel, so.

[Tyler]

What's that?

[Ethan Nagle]

It's. Well, it was a YouTube show when she was, like, 1 years old when, like, during COVID or like, she came out the Ms. Rachel YouTube channel. It's like a kids learning thing, and it's really good. And they had it on YouTube and it was like an hour long, multiple episodes. Just let it play. And so my daughter, when she was, like, probably not even a year, she used to watch it. Well, Netflix bought it because, like, she was making millions of dollars off YouTube. Netflix bought it. So now she's got four episodes. And it's great. Like, I love it. And they're just like, I'm so happy. They just like.

[Tyler]

Brent, do you think Netflix will buy our show?

[Brent Tucker]

For sure? I'm surprised. I haven't yet.

[Tyler]

Yeah, that's our goal.

[Ethan Nagle]

Oh, God.

[Brent Tucker]

30 seconds.

[Ethan Nagle]

All right, I don't know what your suggestions are, but just from the nerd tech side, I got the. The Rodecaster video and that thing.

[Tyler]

That's what someone said. We're but we're looking to do one where we have a switcher, obviously.

[Ethan Nagle]

Right? Yeah, that's the switcher too.

[Tyler]

That's a switcher. How many cameras you can do?

[Ethan Nagle]

Four.

[Tyler]

See, we need.

[Ethan Nagle]

We need more. Okay.

[Tyler]

All right, so we. But we have one. I think we're gonna. We know what we're gonna do.

[Ethan Nagle]

All right. Yep.

[Tyler]

Did you get your camera angles good? Everything solid?

[Brent Tucker]

I think so.

[Ethan Nagle]

All right.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm happy with it.

[Tyler]

Welcome back to the Anti Hero podcast. Part delta force, part street cop. All truth. I'm Tyler, owner of refracted Wolf apparel. Use promo code anti Hero and get 15 off. The best and outsider culture graphic tee stickers, hats, flags, beanies, ranger panties and zip up hoodies for the cold weather.

[Ethan Nagle]

Should go.

[Brent Tucker]

Zip up.

[Tyler]

Yeah, I've had them forever.

[Ethan Nagle]

Dig that.

[Brent Tucker]

No, I've had hoodies.

[Tyler]

Would you zip up or a pullover?

[Brent Tucker]

You didn't give me one.

[Tyler]

Are you a zip up?

[Brent Tucker]

I'm a pullover.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm a pullover.

[Tyler]

Some people do not wear.

[Brent Tucker]

I haven't seen a lot of zip ups actually, so I don't know. Maybe I'm gonna go look back at your catalog. I might be a zip up guy.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

About to find out. And I'm Brent Tucker, owner of First Responder Cigar Company and First Responder Coffee Company. Use FRCC 15. That's FRCC 15. To get 15 off the world's best coffee and cigars.

[Tyler]

And of course this episode is brought to you by Ghostbed. Sleep so good it's scary. Go to ghostbed.com forward/antihero and get free. 50% off. That's 5, 0% off your order. Or go to checkout and use Anti Hero as a promo code. 50% off. 60,000 plus 5 star rating and reviews. All handcrafted here in America and Canada, I think mostly Florida to be honest with you. So go to ghostbed.com support them. They're huge supporters of us. They're awesome. They treat us really good. So if you need any bedding, if you don't even need a bed. If you just need bedding.

[Brent Tucker]

Cool.

[Tyler]

They have the patented. They have the patented cooling technology.

[Brent Tucker]

Nailed it. Nailed it.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Nailed it.

[Tyler]

Go to bed.comforward/android50 off.

[Brent Tucker]

And don't forget, every Thursday night we do the Thursday night lives at 8:00 Eastern Time on. On YouTube. It's. If you've seen our recordings, it's a lot like it and a lot different. All in the. On the. On the same altogether. You really have to see it to, to understand that. And please don't forget our Patreon. Our patreon is now 5 and $10. It's the best way to support us and help cover our overhead and all this equipment. And we can't do it without you guys. Please, for the price of a overpriced cup of coffee or two, you can help support us. We have over a thousand members and it absolutely helps. We could not do it without Patreon. Please go look that up.

[Tyler]

Yeah, it's a good time too. We put a lot of behind the scenes stuff.

[Brent Tucker]

Some people have received more in gifts than they have ever in payment. Yeah, we give two or three hundred dollars away one twice.

[Tyler]

I don't think anybody's won twice yet. We do a giveaway every week.

[Ethan Nagle]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Brent Tucker]

And, and if you, and if you're part of like kind of like I guess one got the gun and tactical community, the discounts that, that, that we give on there will save you the money of the Patreon membership.

[Tyler]

The discounts are insane.

[Brent Tucker]

We're really proud of that. Plus you get, you get behind the scenes content. You get to ask the guest questions that no one else gets you to ask us questions. Enough about that. Don't oversell it. But definitely want you guys to know what's, what's out there. With us today we have Ethan Nagle. I'm really excited about this one. There's your. Your career covers a lot like the left and right limits of, of your career. Spoiler alert. Real quick, from silver star to going to film school, you may be the, the only Silver Star winner that's also a graduate of film school. I'm just going on a limb to say that chances are probably, yeah, one of one guy's gonna comment.

[Ethan Nagle]

Nope. I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

So It's Marine Corps 0311 infantry, also a scout sniper. Silver star winner, Purple heart recipient, three deployments. Went on to work, you know, with Black Rifle nine line. We'll get into all your, your post military time including with vet tv. He was a creator, director and cinematographer of In Bed Actual. It's a series on Vet tv. We're about to hear all about it and I can't wait. Ethan, thanks for coming on the show, brother.

[Ethan Nagle]

Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Like I really do. This is awesome. It's an honor to be here.

[Brent Tucker]

Let's get right into it. Talking to you. You seem like a pretty smart guy.

[Ethan Nagle]

Thank you.

[Brent Tucker]

So how'd you end up in the marines?

[Ethan Nagle]

So got Him. Got him. So you're. You are right? I did speak for you asap. Yeah, no, it was just lineage. My, my, my grandparents served in the Marine Corps and my grandpa was World War II.

[Brent Tucker]

I love that.

[Ethan Nagle]

In the Pacific he was a anti aircraft gun and aircraft gunner on the USS Lexington. And so he, he died when I was 8 years old. But I remember he had like a, like a really weird like tattoo. I'm like, what is? I never knew it for years. So he had this tattoo and come to find out it was Eagle O Maker. Because he was. Yeah, he probably got it in the 40s. He was. It was in the 40s. Yeah. And it wasn't like good tattoos back then.

[Tyler]

Grandpa, you didn't lotion your tattoos exactly.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. I can't believe you didn't do that.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm afraid to see what my tattoo's gonna look like when I'm 80.

[Ethan Nagle]

Well, so, and then, and so he was on the USS Lexington in the Pacific, and then my, on my mom's side he was. Grandpa Allen was Marine Corps Infantry. I believe he was an infantry as well. And then he was in the Korean War, but he got pulled to do like generals detail. Like he was the general's driver, but they went back to the front all the time and he was a quiet guy in general. So the only time I've ever heard him say more than one sentence was after my brother and myself had joined and then the years after I'd gotten out when he was starting, he got Parkinson's and so he started to like, he would only talk to us, so he just open up and it was, it was cool and it was kind of. That's the only thing he would talk about. So I always say, like, when people are getting older, especially like us as veterans getting older, it's like, you know, that's so significant when you're younger. Like he had Parkins. It's the only, it's like the only thing he would talk about. It's the only thing that like you could get out of him. You know, it's like it meant so much to him and he was only in for like the three years.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

But it impacts you so much at such a young age. You know, what's your last memories are probably going to be your military service. So it's always kind of like a reminder that when, you know, sometimes people are like, I hear like, oh, you know, that was then, you know, whatever, move on. It's like, well, you don't ever move on. Like, you know, like when you're, you know, you move forward, but it's one of those things where.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Ethan Nagle]

You always. A party. Yeah, it's always. Yeah, you always move forward, but it's always a part of you. And it's, for some people, significant. And like, said my grandfather is the last things that he knew or ever talked about was the Marine Corps, you know, and. And I love that.

[Brent Tucker]

I do.

[Ethan Nagle]

He was proud. He was proud. The g. What happened. And, you know, he was part of, like, the forgotten war. My mom brings it up all the time. And when. After 9, 11 and after we had joined, he started, you know, busting out the Korea hat. He'd never worn it really, in his.

[Tyler]

Life, so kind of made him, like, proud.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of was, you know, because he was. They just, they, they. They called the forgotten war. But if you. You read into it, it's crazy.

[Brent Tucker]

I think we lost. I'm really close. Some like 50 to 55,000 soldiers in Korea.

[Ethan Nagle]

Korea.

[Brent Tucker]

I mean, how. How is that a forgotten war?

[Ethan Nagle]

I don't know how. That's not a Call of Duty game.

[Brent Tucker]

It's like five times more than we lost in two wars of the gwad. Or three if you. If you consider Syria.

[Ethan Nagle]

It's insane. So she's going into, like, the Marine Corps. You go into, like, the chosen. I got to interview some of the chosen soldiers. Like, did a panel last year at or in 2023 at American Veterans center, and it was. It was an honor just like, meeting these guys, and their stories are wild. Like, it's insane. Anyway, so I had that lineage, and I was kind of wanted to join. And so watching movies like Saving Private Ryan, you know, Black Hawk down came out after 9 11. You know, I always. I was a big, you know, film nerd. So I was like, all right, you know, kind of want to do this thing, but we'll see how it kind of pans out. And then, you know, I was. I was a wrestler in high school, which is a really big impact on me. So, like, when I was younger, I. This is going to be a fun story. So I weighed like, 320, 20 pounds when I was like, 13. What? Huge. Yeah, I was massive. And so. But I was athletic, so it was really weird. So, like, I. I wasn't like, yoked three, by no means, but, like, I could move. I was in footballs, you know, all that stuff. Well, come wrestling. Doing it. Seriously. In eighth grade, my buddies. My best friend's dad was the wrestling coach at the high school. It was a small high School. So they're like, hey, why don't you come on? But it's. It's high school wrestling. It's a much higher elevated tier than, like, grade school. I lost, like, it was. I was hooked. Like, we would do the hardcore practices, and I was hooked. So I end up dropping, like 50 pounds overall. Basically. I dropped 110 some pounds between my. My eighth grade freshman year. Ish. And then sophomore was like 120 ish pounds. 30. And so after that, and then for me, and then I'd be like, oh, you know, high school. But the high school, what. Especially at an early age, when guys talk about the influences on their life, like, that was huge. That was goal setting. So everything that people talk about now with goal setting and, you know, clean your room, all that stuff like that was. I was fortunate enough to have that at the wrestling camps. It's like, what's your goals for the next year? What's your goals for three years? Four years, five, 10? And I'm 13 being like, I want to be a Marine.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

I want to. You know, and then. And when you're a wrestler, you're like, well, I want to pin so many guys. I want to make this weight or I want to go to state. And you. You work for five years. Like, for me, going to state was my thing. I didn't care to be a state champ. I just wanted to get to state. And it took me five years for. I said five years for six minutes. And, yeah. You know, that's what counts. And. And I accomplished that goal. So that kind of was, like, always driving me in the back of my head was like, well, I want to be a Marine. Nine, 11 happens. And then it didn't quite affect. I mean, it was affecting all of us, but the. The Iraq was the one that was like, oh, this might actually happen.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

And so, you know, I got a.

[Brent Tucker]

Question about your wrestling.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And on face value, people are probably gonna look at this, and that was a really rude question. But it's absolutely. It's just a very, like, upfront question. I'm very interested in the answer of it. You're a freshman or you're 13, 300 pounds.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Roughly around your eighth grade.

[Ethan Nagle]

Right.

[Brent Tucker]

So you're. I'm assuming you're not a bodybuilder.

[Ethan Nagle]

No.

[Brent Tucker]

You're fat.

[Ethan Nagle]

No, I'm fat.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

If you want, I can.

[Brent Tucker]

Like, you're like, oh, like, egregiously fat.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

But here's what's. So that's like, that's a That's rude to bring up, but, like, that's a fact.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

But what's. What's really interesting to me about that is we don't need the adjectives. You weren't necessarily lazy because you found something that drove you and you shed a hundred pounds. So it was there.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. What.

[Brent Tucker]

Why do you think you were 13 and. And £300, yet you. Yet in a few years, you were that, you know, type of person that. That wasn't that, like, I want to kind of dig into that.

[Ethan Nagle]

So. It was weird, too. Even with my parents. I think I just ate when I was bored. Like, it just comes down to that, you know, I was like, oh, ice cream before, you know, was like, awesome. I'm. I'm a. You know, I would say I'm a. I'm a fat kid at heart. So I was like, you know, it's like, ice cream. I did ice cream before football, you know, and it's not like, these are crazy hard practices when you're growing up, you know, And I. And I do it to this day, like it's something that affects you. Me, psychologically, like, I'll open up the fridge now. And it's just a habit. I just go, I do it too. And I shove.

[Brent Tucker]

We all do it.

[Ethan Nagle]

We all do. But it's like. But it really is. Like, it doesn't matter. And I just don't grab anything. But like, it was. I think it was just. I just ate when I was bored. Just all the time. Because it was. Because even my mom was like, I don't know how you got that big. It's not like they were stuffing me full of KFC or whatever. It's just I just. Because I was. I was doing 2, 3 sports at a time growing up.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

And I was just always a bigger kid. I don't know. But. But yeah. So what's. Funny story, though. So football that. That I was in 8th grade. They also. Because it was a smaller Lutheran school. It was still in the cities, but it was a smaller Lutheran school. And so my. Again, my dad's. My best friend's dad was like, hey, why don't you come play on the football team? You're just really big and fat. So I was like, all right, I didn't play. But it was just like, why don't you just. Whatever.

[Brent Tucker]

How do you not play at £300? You don't even have to be very athletic.

[Ethan Nagle]

That was like 160 pounds. It was really weird.

[Tyler]

Look at basketball. They take all the tall kids and they're like, we don't care if you can play.

[Ethan Nagle]

You're playing.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, we'll teach you. We'll teach you.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and so I was athletic to some extent, but then we got on the scale and I was right at 300, right. And it was like, oh, my God. Me and my parents, like, what the fuck? And then I joined wrestling, right. A few months later, the scale literally said error. It wouldn't even weigh me. So it was because I was too big. It actually took a few weeks. And by the way, you're dropping, like, when you're that heavy and you're working out, like in a true wrestling, like, wrestlers know, it's like true wrestling practice. You're dropping like £4 a day. It's coming and staying off, like water weight, fat, everything. So it took me like two or three weeks to finally like, would read my body weight, you know, like, that is funny. 298.

[Tyler]

That stick you to the grocery store? Yeah, it was way.

[Brent Tucker]

Analog scale.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. So anyway, so I, I, I, you know, I saw the, you know, I always worked out and you know, and anyway, so once I had that opportunity, because when you're young and that big, psychologically, dude, like, you're a furnace. You're always insecure, you know, like, it just sucks, man. Like, you know, it just, it just sucks. So.

[Brent Tucker]

And middle schoolers are. That's the worst time anything wrong with.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. And I grew up in a small, like, Lutheran school, so even then, like, they were. Everyone was friends since we were kidding. But it was still sucks, you know.

[Brent Tucker]

Like, tell me middle school isn't the worst. In elementary school, everyone still kind of go happy.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

In high school, people kind of, kind of start to come into their own. They're still mean kids. In high school.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

There's something about middle school. What a loser. People just let it rip in middle school.

[Ethan Nagle]

It's ruthless. It's ruthless. So I, I saw the light. I literally, it's like I just saw an opportunity and light at the end of like a, Just a glimmer of like, hope. And it was like there. I'm like, all right. I just ran to it and like, I just, I just kept going. And I'd stay after practice another 20 minutes until they, like, kick me out. My coach is like, all right, man, you gotta go shower. But I just keep stay on the bike because I was like, this is it. I can't. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I see a solution and I'm Going to tackle it. JV team for life.

[Brent Tucker]

Tyler, how many critical incidents do you think we've covered so far in this podcast, man?

[Tyler]

At least five, six.

[Brent Tucker]

And they're not going to stop, you know, there's, you cannot stop them all. So they're going to happen. And you really have, you know, two charters at that. Obviously, one is to stop them from, from happening. But since you can't stop them all from happening, you owe it to the people that you protect and depend on you to react to those situations in the most effective and efficient manner. And right now, really, whether, you know, you're a fire department, ems, law enforcement, you're, you're stuck with essentially radios.

[Tyler]

And Apollo is the best way to manage resources during these events because it's designed by first responders for first responders.

[Brent Tucker]

It gives first responders a common operating picture which allows them to see where everybody is in real time, overlaid onto a map to see where they are. You can drop pinpoints and let them know where they need to go. And without constant talking on the radio, everybody knows where the incident is, where it's happening, and where they need to be.

[Tyler]

Apollo is an app based application. This is just download and go.

[Brent Tucker]

It's an app and so it works with androids, it works with iPhones.

[Tyler]

Apollo makes sure on the back end everything works and you can just plug and go. They handle all the licensing, all the encryption compliance, all the security. It's all handled by Apollo. It's crucial to know where everyone is and what they are doing in order to effectively control chaos in one of these, either natural disasters or shootings or anything like that.

[Brent Tucker]

So if you want to learn more about Apollo, scan the QR code and ensure your department is ready to react to any crisis in its most effective and efficient manner possible.

[Ethan Nagle]

JV team for life. So anyway, so that was a kind of the impetus in going into the Marine Corps and also losing all that weight, working hard, setting goals. And then it came down to, were.

[Tyler]

You at weight for. When you said, when you walked in the recruiter's office, were they like, we can work with this or were you still.

[Ethan Nagle]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I was a 215 pounder, so it's like I dropped all the way. But then it's just like, all right, I fluctuate like crazy.

[Tyler]

Yeah, right.

[Ethan Nagle]

I can always maintain. But like, so I would. I dropped down to like 189 at one point. Oh, wow.

[Tyler]

Yeah, that's lighter than I am now.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's Dude, I look like a Holocaust victim. It was not healthy, right? Not healthy. I came out of boot camp that same weight, and it's like, this isn't sustainable.

[Brent Tucker]

So how old were you when. When you joined the Marine Corps?

[Ethan Nagle]

18. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I joined between my junior senior year. I went to USC film school to go look at it. My parents in San Diego State. And the film's always been there. Oh, yes.

[Brent Tucker]

I love that.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. 13. I. It was this weird, crazy click in my head that I was like, I want to be a film director. I want to work in films. I want to do movies. So I literally. That's it. So all my high school career, I'd be like, watching DVD commentaries and special features, making my own shitty short films, built my own computer use the height, digital capture cards, you know, and like. And just was a film nerd and. But the Marine Corps, I knew when I went to usci, I didn't like it. I thought it was a crappy campus, like, not a good program.

[Tyler]

Because then you went to the Marine Corps barracks, and you're like, wow, yeah, USC didn't look that bad.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, well, it was funny because the recipe recruiter, when I. When I signed everything up, they were like, oh, you want to be a filmmaker? Why don't you join combat videography or combat photography?

[Brent Tucker]

Okay, well, twofer.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I just like, no, I. I want to be a grunt. I want to hold a gun. I want to go to go to war. I want to go to war, you know, and so, you know, they were like, you want to go recon? I was like, no, it's like, no, that's so high. I was just like, I just want to be a grunt. I want to be. I want to be that, like, when I watch Black Down.

[Tyler]

You. You actually were not interested in soft.

[Ethan Nagle]

No, not at all. Really? Not.

[Tyler]

I think I never heard that.

[Ethan Nagle]

Well, it's just. I didn't know enough about it.

[Tyler]

Yeah, that's true.

[Ethan Nagle]

You know, like, you just. I mean, like, you don't know what you don't know. And so I, you know, and it's like, all right, that's cool. But, like, I just was like, I want to be that grunt, like, in the trenches, you know, Like. Like, you know, you watch Black Hawk Down, I want, you know, they're Rangers, but, like, in my head, I'm like, oh, those are just the regular dudes. And you had Delta. But I was like, oh, I want to. I want to be those guys or Saving Private Ryan. I Want to be, you know, the ba. You know, I want to be Rybing the bar guy. That's just like walk on patrol. We just get into fights. We're just moving through cities. Like that's where I want to be. And so, you know, and the other movies are cool, but it's just, honestly, it wasn't super appealing to me. Like, it just wasn't like, I want to be in the thick of it, you know, and Band of Brothers was out. It's like, I want to do that. Like, I want to do these campaigns and like, be there the whole time. So that was a huge influence. And you know, my grandparents, Marines, you know, comes the Marine infantry. The best. The best.

[Tyler]

So did you really. Did you score high? High on your ass?

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, I did. You infantry 70. I think it's like 75 or 76. I mean, it wasn't like way up there, but it was.

[Brent Tucker]

It's up there.

[Ethan Nagle]

It's enough.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, it's up there.

[Ethan Nagle]

He said, you can do mostly what you want, the exception of like.

[Tyler]

But they let. But they picked. But they don't let you pick in the Marines, right?

[Ethan Nagle]

No, they do. They do. So you, so you can pick your, your infantry. And I was far enough out. This was like, you know, this is the beginning of the, you know, 2004. So they were like, all our infantry slots are taken. I was like, well, that doesn't matter because I don't graduate till May.

[Tyler]

And this was, you'll lose a couple.

[Ethan Nagle]

I was like, august of oh, four. And I was like, I mean, this is a good one. I was like, I want to leave the week after July 4th. I'm going to spend time with my family. I'm not going to, you know, So I signed the papers and I said, I want this. He's like, okay. Because it was, it was a far enough lead time that they're like, yeah, we can do that. And so it was funny because they were, you know, I signed the papers. I was like, do not call me until I have to leave because you have me. Like, I'm not going to. You know, and in my. I didn't realize that you could back out of contracts, right? So in my head I'm like, look, yeah, I made a commitment, I made a promise, I signed. I will fulfill this obligation. I'll see you July 10th.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, where do you think you. I mean, we're, we're barely into your story and. But there's something really unique about you from a 13 year old who wanted to do film and we know that works. Like, you ended up doing film. Like, you knew what you wanted to do early. You wanted to join the Marine Corps. You did. Like, you're not a whole lot of people like this door. I'm going to, I'm going to be in control here. I will still be one because I'm going to join next year and I'm going to join after July. Like, you know what you want to do at. At an early age, and that is really unique. Like, some people know generally what, what they want to do, but you seem to be very focused and very driven, and I don't think you're overly aggressive about it, but it feels like, this is what I want, this is how I'm going to get it. Is that, that. Do you realize that's who you were? Or do you look back? Is that who you were?

[Ethan Nagle]

I don't know. Like, I would say that, like the goal orientation, I guess you could say that. That, that absolutely applies, I think. But it was because I was so. I don't say self aware, but I was pretty self aware back then. Like, it just like kind of like how you're like, all right, you know, this is the, this is especially. A lot of. Came from wrestling. Was like, one of the really important quotes that was ever said to me was at wrestling camp. And I took it to heart, which was if everyone, if anyone pulled your, you know, pulled your book off the shelf, like your life story off the shelf, would they open it and read it and keep reading it or would they shut it and put it back? And I remember being like, well, that's not, you know, nowadays you have, like, social media influence, but back then it just meant, like, not that people are going to read your story, but are you, like, are you going to accomplish the goals that you want to do? Are you going to live the adventure that you want to live? Yeah, and I've just. From a young age, I was just like, yeah, that's what I want to do. Like, and I don't know any other way. Like, you know, I, I, you know, you know, Marine Corps was scary because you know which way it was going to go. You know, I. Infantry. Yeah, that's cool. But I mean, I didn't realize I never wanted to be a scout sniper. They're the best of the best of the battalion. So I was like, okay, I got off my first pump I was gonna get after that, you know, and, and trying to just level to the next best thing. And, you know, I guess I consider myself fortunate just Fortunate. Like I, I discovered what I loved when I was 13, you know, and then discovered some other things I love along the way. You know, like I think the war fighting aspect and being a part of that community, like has stuck with me even after my time. And yeah, I mean it's, it's, I just consider myself fortunate and I've been pretty self aware of things. Like when I'm going into a more like I understand what I'm going to be in a moment to hold that moment and just to kind of like enjoy it, if that makes sense and you know, kind of look around and be like, okay, this isn't going to be forever, you know, what's, you know, what's the next step? But also like just enjoy the moment that you're in.

[Brent Tucker]

I love that you said like I was, I was self aware and I think that's, I don't know how do you, I don't know how you can make someone self aware, to be honest with you. Like, you're either, you're either self aware or you're not. And nothing's more annoying than someone that's not self aware. Like you think you're this, but you know, but, but you're not. Like it's dangerous to some degree not be self aware.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

And, but I don't know how someone becomes self aware. That's a kind of a weird, almost like deep question. But it's super important because then we all have kids. Like you want your kids to be self aware. So how do you transfer self awareness?

[Tyler]

Because I, I, I think most kids are not self, self aware. I wasn't really self aware until after the military.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, and there's a healthy amount of self aware. Like there's another part of self aware where you're aware of your strengths and your weaknesses, but you're so much of where your weaknesses that you are now insecure. And that's, you know, that's a, that's a dangerous level too. Like there's a healthy medium that you have to be in really to be successful in life.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, yeah. Like I said, I, I, you know, I honestly, I think part of it is watching films. I think if you, if you watch movies and you get entertained, that's great. But when you take films to the next level, it's almost like when people are reading books, like you're reading people's stories like normally people read books. And that's when you intellectually, it's a little bit higher than films. Like watching films typically, like in in the culture. But if you watch films and you go, that's the hero. That's the hero's journey. This is the cycle. You can tell their flaws, you know? You know, but they still overcome. Like, if you, you know, even if you watch, like, the fun stuff like Die, but if you die hard or. Or, you know, whatever, you still see that structure.

[Tyler]

You're a film guy, right?

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

So I take what you say in account probably as about as professional opinion I'm gonna get. Was Die Hard a Christmas movie?

[Ethan Nagle]

Yes. Okay. 100.

[Tyler]

I agree.

[Ethan Nagle]

100.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. Keep going.

[Tyler]

I just wanted to.

[Ethan Nagle]

Do not think that.

[Brent Tucker]

No, I absolutely do.

[Ethan Nagle]

You looked over there.

[Brent Tucker]

I was like, no, I do. And under the premise. I used to think it wasn't actually until I read. I was reading the arguments, you know, in the comment section, and they're like, it's. It's. It's a Christmas movie. If you remove Christmas in that storyline, does Die Hard still happen? No, and it does not. So it does make it a Christmas movie, like, under that, like, argument. Like, yeah, that's true.

[Ethan Nagle]

And the funny thing is, when you. When I watched it as a kid, I didn't realize it was about Christmas because there's no snow, because I come from Minnesota. So when someone says it's Christmas, there's snow everywhere. And I wasn't used to seeing something that's like, oh, it's Christmas time, no snow. So, like, growing up, it didn't translate until I got a little bit older, and I'm like, oh, this is totally a Christmas movie.

[Brent Tucker]

The way it's written, it's written around happening at Christmas, and people are there.

[Ethan Nagle]

Because, by the way, the second's the same way. He's at Christmas in Dulles, Washington. Dulles Airport.

[Tyler]

I've never seen the second one.

[Ethan Nagle]

Well, that one is snowing. But, like, you know, it's still. It's around Christmas, though. He's like, his wife's coming back. She's picking her up. The in laws are the Iowa. One of the problems is Bruce Willis came out and said, it's not a Christmas movie. Wrong. How can you.

[Brent Tucker]

I was just about to say, well, I don't remember Die Hard 2, but neither does Bruce Willis.

[Ethan Nagle]

No. Though I don't think so. Oh. Oh.

[Brent Tucker]

So I don't think he'll be bad at that.

[Ethan Nagle]

No. No. I don't think so either.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, Moving on.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

So your. How long were you in the Marine Corps? You know, sign you before your. Your first tour.

[Ethan Nagle]

All right. Yeah. So I was very fortunate with My one enlistment, I did four years, and then I extended for four months, I believe it was. And I got in in July of 05 and went to boot camp, came home in October. Infantry school, they picked us up right away. And they weren't supposed to because the high tempo of operation or of deployments. So they end up picking us up like, a month and a half early. The class was massive, like, massive infantry school class, like, way beyond the capacity. And so it was awesome. And I was like, this is great. I graduate 1-5-06.

[Brent Tucker]

Do you have any idea of the numbers? I'm gonna say it's huge.

[Ethan Nagle]

I think it was.

[Brent Tucker]

Can you give a bad.

[Ethan Nagle]

I guess to it? 400.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

And I might be completely off, but I, I could have swore. I think it was like, 400. Now. I could totally be exaggerated. I don't remember.

[Brent Tucker]

How many, how many instructors do you have for that? 400. Let's work that number as if it's.

[Ethan Nagle]

A bunch that I don't know about.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

There was. Yeah, yeah, and, and there was like three. It was full infantry bays. All of them were stacked. They had overflow going.

[Tyler]

Do they use cadre or do they use drill instructors?

[Ethan Nagle]

No, we used to use Marine instructors. Marine instructors, yeah. Yeah. So you were 11 series, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I, I don't know much about that. I, I joined the Guard later and I was 11 Bravo. But, like, I didn't know much about the, the army. And, but for the Marine Corps, you go to school of infantry. So then once you get back from boot camp, you, if you're, if you're not infantry, you go to mct and then your school, which is Marine combat training, it's like, like two, three weeks, and they send you to your school. If you're infantry, then you go to school of infantry and you train. It's different now. I was there for, yeah, 20 years ago. Six, eight weeks. God. It was.

[Tyler]

Isn't that hard? Jesus.

[Ethan Nagle]

It was 19 years ago. Yeah, yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

That's crazy.

[Ethan Nagle]

It's crazy to say that. No, it was 20 years ago. Jesus. Yeah, and. But now it's changed now it's like, way longer, way more training. But so I got done in January 5th, and we got our orders to Hawaii. And I'm like, we're going to Hawaii? Three. Three. We asked our instructors, we're like, what's three? Three. Because there's only 10 of us going, okay. And they go, oh, you'll never deploy. You'll never see combat. It's the Hawaii Marines, they're toxic, aren't they? Oh, dude. And I was like, fuck, man. Like, the worst place to be in the Marine Corps is in the peacetime. But also the worst case is if you never deploy during wartime. Oh, for sure, right? And get stuck in a Marine infantry unit in wartime.

[Tyler]

Never deploy security forces, Those guys?

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, dude. It's the worst. And so I'm like. So I'm on the flight to Hawaii. I'm like, well, I'm going to do two years. I'm going to lap, move to. To combat videography, get a deployment, try, whatever. Like, I. You know, so I'm trying to, like, come up with a scheme, you know, Obviously it's the Marine Corps, so they're going to not. Nothing's going to happen. And so we land, and then the staff sergeant comes up to us. He's like, hey, you guys ready to get into a fight? We're like, yeah. He goes, good, grab your stuff. You're gonna have to repack it. We're deploying in 60 days. And I was like, holy shit. Nice. Come to find out, 3rd Marine Regiment, actually, I believe 3rd Marine Regiment was one of the most rotated. It deployed units of all the GWAs, or at least Iraq, Afghanistan for, like, a hot second. So 332-3313. I went to three three. We deployed to Iraq in March of 06. So we. I was in country within seven, eight months. Where.

[Brent Tucker]

Where'd you go in Iraq?

[Ethan Nagle]

So we were in the Haditha Triad off of the Haditha Dam out of Barwana. So I was Lehman Company. My main AO was Barwana. And we weren't as kinetic as Haditha and Hakalaniya were much more kinetic. And I believe Kilo. I think Kilo or India Company were main efforts, but Barwana was fucking Mortar city. Yeah. So we were getting slammed with 120s. Like, just. They zeroed us in and we're just, like, ripping us apart. They blew up our generator, our fuel farm. We took over. Like, it was about a smaller city slash bigger town, but we lived. That's where we lived.

[Brent Tucker]

That's a Company element.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, Company.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

Company plus.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

So it was like a company in a map section. And then we had some, like, Civil affairs dude or something, like right outside the gate or something like that, which we never saw. And, like, human. It's like one one or two dudes. And so we were there for seven months from March of 06 to September of October of 06. And that was. That was the worst deployment, like, out of everything I had like, that was the baseline of pain, misery. I was a boot, so I had to do all the shit details. So we burned. Like, literally burn. It was a small compound that we took over school. We lived in the city. They were mortaring us. I didn't. I had one good shower in seven months. We. We're supposed to do resets every, every month at the, at the Haditha Dam to be like, hey, right, you know, go chill out. Go buy some fat snacks. Right? Take a shower. Don't do anything.

[Tyler]

People forget. When I say, when I. My biggest argument was that women cannot be in combat arms. I'm not even talking about their capabilities. I'm talking about health. Yeah, people forget you had one shower in seven months. That is a health problem for females. They have to be able to shower.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, it's not popular opinion. Even my wife isn't happy when I. My answer. I was like, look, they don't belong in the infantry. I was like, you can go combat arms. Women should totally be in combat. But I was like, the specialties, whatever. But I was like, when it comes to the infantry. No, no, like, again, not a popular opinion, but that's, that's what I got.

[Tyler]

Do I got a risk, a truck company to come get you to take you to showers and have them get blown up.

[Brent Tucker]

It's okay. Common sense is coming back.

[Ethan Nagle]

The pendulum swing.

[Brent Tucker]

You can, you can say it again now.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, boy. Hexath, he's 34. IDs Red Bull.

[Brent Tucker]

I love that dude. We're talking about more him on the live tonight.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we.

[Tyler]

And so he went like this and touched my leg.

[Ethan Nagle]

So it was so we, you know, we were getting hit with IEDs, snipers like, you know, turn. It was 120 degree heat. You know, we were getting two, three hours of sleep a night, if that. You know, taking over houses. You do patrols for four or five days. Just like, just the. Just miserable. Just absolutely miserable.

[Brent Tucker]

And then I only deployed in special operations, but I did get to see a lot of, of conventional forces. I got a lot of facetime with, with those guys on certain deployments. And, and I'm not saying this was your deployment, but. But maybe it was. I don't think people realize sometimes the amount of attacks a conventional force can consume. And never fire your gun or never deal out, you know, anything in return. Like when, when you hit an ied, there's, there's no one to fight back on if they hit you with a near ambush and run away. There's no one to return fire on. If they hit you with mortars, there's. There's no one to shoot back on. So it gets very frustrating for conventional forces sometimes to. To fight those type of wars because they're kind of just targets, you know, waiting to get moved around.

[Tyler]

We talked to the one Marine, and he said, you know, our job was to roll around and pick fights.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Be on the defense.

[Ethan Nagle]

Well, sometimes it was dependent on. Over on the other side, the snipers, they didn't want to make them be bait. But the infantry guys like, look, if you need to draw guys out, we'll do it.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

And the snipers like, okay. Because that means that they can draw guys out and they can kill them. And, you know, and so let me.

[Brent Tucker]

Get out of the comments. Someone's going to be like, oh, I was conventional forces, and we, you know, we mix it up all the time. And. And I'm not. Right. Awesome. I've gone as far to say there are some rotations where CF got into way more gunfights and special operations ever dreamed of. Like, but. But people don't understand. Like, they hear those stories and they think that's the normal.

[Ethan Nagle]

No, no.

[Brent Tucker]

And I'm not saying the. The other one is the normal, but, man, they. There's so many sides to that spectrum of war that people don't understand.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. And we're. And the thing is, we're reactive. So psychologically, it's much different than being proactive or active, you know, and so if you're going out on a hit, which is totally cool, you're active, you know, you hit, you go in, you get what you need, and you get out.

[Brent Tucker]

It's on your terms.

[Ethan Nagle]

Exactly. And when you're reactive, like myself, like, I almost got killed how many times by a sniper? I mean, every corner I turned, am I going to get my brains blown out?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

You know, it's hot. You're getting into a firefight. You know, you're shooting in some vague house that, you know, you. Sometimes we could see them, but most time we couldn't. We get ambushed. I almost got my. I remember my first deployment. This is like one of the weird, like, firefight moments. We got ambushed. And I remember tracer rounds going I. In between, like, one side of me and the other trace around the other side. So I almost got cut in half with a machine gun.

[Tyler]

Luckily, you weren't fatty.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's true. And I remember him going both sides of me. And, like, everything slowed down. And then I started lighting Up. And then, you know, it's just like. But that's it. But again, though, it's not like we were like, all right, boys, let's go. In the movies, you're like, this house, and you find the guys, you kill them. Like, no, that's it. Like, that's it. You know, and, like, you get into a firefight, you can kind of see what's going on. And I'm a private, so I don't get any. I'm, like, looking through a peephole. Yeah. Like, and that's in psychologically looking. I don't know what the fucking intel is. I don't know what we're doing or not we're doing. I don't know what. What the higher echelons are thinking. I don't even know what's going on.

[Brent Tucker]

Holistically, you don't know.

[Ethan Nagle]

You know, your job, they tell me, and I go do it. And so it was one of those things where, like, you know, my team leaders, God bless them, they're on their third pump, but this was their first to Iraq. So we were all in the same boat, going over, doing, you know, urban combat. And so it was just. Yeah, you know, it was rough. And. And I got a bunch of stories from that. But so that really gave me the, like, baseline of misery. Like, I mean, like, I look back on that, I'm like, I don't know how we did it. Like, we slept on the floor. Like, a room this size. This size was 13 Marines, fully kitted, no showers.

[Brent Tucker]

And, oh, the smell of that room.

[Ethan Nagle]

Horrific. I didn't smell.

[Brent Tucker]

You don't smell it.

[Tyler]

You know what I think about that? That room is staged to go kill you. Like, those guys are m. Living in misery. They're like, do. They're like pit bulls.

[Ethan Nagle]

Give them a reason. And every time we had the opportunity to light ship, we did. Like, it was like this because it's. You know, again, when people aren't part of our community, dude, there's no. I said there's nothing better than pulling the trigger at an enemy. Like, it feels so good because it does release that psychology of, like, there is so there. There it is. A to B, you know, like, aggression. Exactly. Now, how's an outlet? Yeah, yeah. It has an outlet. Like, is it out? There's nothing better getting behind like a machine gun just ripping. And you're like, yeah. You know, because you feel like you can control your. Your. Your fate or your destiny to some aspect opposed to. You know, we turned a corner once, and I remember had this bad feeling. Like, a really bad feeling. I turned the corner. I look up, I'm like, this is bad. This is. Within a split second, I. My whole squad. I thought they were killed. This IED cut us in half. And it was. Wasn't even. Like, Wasn't even. We weren't with trucks. It was foot mobile id. They. They hit it. I thought half my squad was gone. In a. In a heartbeat, it was. They were gone. They're gone. And luckily, and this is, again, luck, pure luck, no one was killed. They build it. They. They put it in, like, a foot too deep on the side.

[Brent Tucker]

Yep.

[Ethan Nagle]

Just blew up.

[Brent Tucker]

Yep.

[Ethan Nagle]

And. And I remember Chanel, he blew him to the side, and then he checked for his balls. It was hilarious. I was, like, looking at him. He just, like, checked his nuts, and he gave a thumbs up.

[Tyler]

Priorities, man.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, but. But the thing is, what's crazy, too, is, like, that would happen, but we knew what we had to do. We couldn't run in because the secondary IDs. So I had to stay, like, go down, take my. My sector, and then just kind of like, okay, what's the next move? Because if you start running in, you can get shot or hit with a counter or with a secondary id. Now there's more people down.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Ethan Nagle]

So it's just like, everything. We had to do that anyway. So that deployment was just wild and then. Yeah. And they were hitting us with mortars and 120s.

[Brent Tucker]

You said it was your worst of the three.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, when it came to. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

My question for you is. I mean, it doesn't sound like that. The other ones were obviously better, but this is what you. Like, this is your first deployment. So this is what you know of War, My base. Right. This is your baseline right now you know whether it's right or not. This is your baseline. Did it make you not want to deploy? Like, you know what? I don't know if that was. If that's war. That's not. That's not for me. Or were you just, like. It was just. We just ready. Like, I want to go again. I don't know if that's up.

[Ethan Nagle]

I didn't want to leave. Yeah, we. In fact, we volunteered to stay with 2:3 for another seven months, and our command goes, you're fucking high. No, you need to go home. Like, you need to go home right now. Because we were tweaked out, and I was like, no, we'll stay. We'll keep fighting. We'll keep fighting. I was like, I joined to fight, and so it was. Yeah, man, all I know is I must kill. Yeah, it was like, that's my job is, you know, is to, you know, kill the enemy in the most aggressive way possible. And so that was my. So we got back and I just wanted to redeploy. Like, I just love that. I was like, I love that. I want to. I want to get after his vengeance. Like some people, like Woody, I was like, no, I want my. My good friend of mine was killed a week before we left. So he was. We were on patrol. I was. He was in the other squad, first squad.

[Brent Tucker]

What was his name?

[Ethan Nagle]

Ryan Miller. And so we were.

[Brent Tucker]

I just always want to hear that. Yeah, their names. Yeah, exactly. No, I say his name.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, and exactly. And so he. They were on patrol. And I remember we were in the house. I remember the star cluster going up. They hit an id. It's nothing. Nothing. You know, crazy wasn't like some crazy catastrophic, but it. What happened was, is the. A piece of shrapnel went right above the plate and then like right into his heart. Like, it was like one of those freak things and.

[Brent Tucker]

And could have happened on the operating table.

[Ethan Nagle]

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So that was super shitty. We lost a friend, you know, a good friend right before all of us, because we. And we were fortunate, like. And again, psychologically, to me, I got to the unit. I was the last 10 guys to get to the unit, so I didn't know anyone. I knew no one. So we had about, I believe, 13 killed, if I remember the number correctly. But I didn't know any of them, you know, from like, India or Kilo. So Lima Company, we were getting hit, we were getting wounded, we were getting shot, but no one had died. Yet again, very fortunate for, like, half the company should be dead. Like, I should be dead. And. And. And then. So we. Ryan fucking sucked. We. We lost him a week before we're supposed to go home and then we get back to Al Assad. And then Corporal Yulestrada was killed on the last patrol coming home. Got hit with a. A Chinese, like a Chinese rocket ied. And he was in the gun turret doing the changeover, so we were already in Al Assad. I knew him, you know, because he was a senior Marine, so I knew him. I. I'd said hi, you know, I wasn't super close to them, but everyone I knew was close to him. All the senior Marines were close because a lot of these guys had never gone into. They done Afghanistan in like 04, but they. Iraq was the hot spot, right? So they, all of them. Our, Our. Our whole battalion was stacked full of senior Marines. It was like full squads, sergeants, corporals, everything, because everyone was from the senior, you know, from our seniors were like, dude, I'll go. I'll stay if you go, or, you know, like, we should all stay. So all of them signed extensions to go on to this Iraq deployment. So they all knew each other for like three, four years. Years. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, I didn't ask you that as, As a test. I, I knew you would do. You would say his name or know his name, but there's a vet influencer out there that claims to have lost so many good friends and can't remember one of their names on the spot. So I, I appreciate you remembering their names because it happened.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. No, and dude, we all. He's tattooed on my chest, you know.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

And it's. You don't. It's tough. I guess. I like, you know, I agree with you also saying his name like, you know, Ryan was killed in 2006, you know, and, and we wanted vengeance. I just wanted vengeance. And I think people in our community sometimes, yeah, man, we want vengeance. I want to get back and I want to start fucking killing as many people as I can.

[Brent Tucker]

So how was, how was your second deployment different than your first?

[Ethan Nagle]

Way different. So I ended up.

[Brent Tucker]

We're all through to Iraq, just no, no.

[Ethan Nagle]

2 Iraq. So my first 206-second deployment, get in the snipers, go to sniper school, survive, become a scout sniper, redeploy. I, I graduate in March. Had about a month not even to myself. As soon as we got back, they ran the indoc. This whole. My whole life was being a scout sniper, just making sure I pass.

[Brent Tucker]

Did scout sniper school meet your expectations?

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, and exceeded it.

[Brent Tucker]

And exceeded it.

[Ethan Nagle]

It was it. Well again, so in the Marine Corps, like, I never thought I'd be a scout sniper. I, I, you know, I knew of snipers like, you know, and that's, that's a cool trade, but I didn't know anything about the Marine Corps scout snipers, but just from my wrestling training. If you want to be the best, then go where the best are. Well, my. In Marine Corps battalions, if you want to be the best, the scout snipers are the best. And also we had operated with them. I wanted to do as much as I could to deal as much pain to the enemy as I could, and that was the Marine Corps Scout snipers. You get to go in, you know, take dudes out, IED in placers. That was a big ied. In placers. And so we went in. Hold on.

[Tyler]

Let me ask you about scout snipers. So in the army hhc, in your traditional Army Italian HHC houses, the scout snipers.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

And they are typically, and I'm not saying this derogatory at all, they're washouts. I don't want to call them failures, but they're washed out of SWIC or they're washed out of. And so. But they're like. These guys are probably the most physically fit guys in the battalion. They're the most trained. So they move them into the scout. And I didn't know if that was the same thing.

[Ethan Nagle]

No, no, no. Marine Corps scout snipers. It's a whole different breed. It's a whole different breed. So, like, if you're in the Marine Corps, you know, they don't have pipeline at this point other than, like, recon at this time. There's no pipeline for anything. Everything is by luck and by timing, you know, in the Marine Corps, Scout snipers, this same way. So, like, if you get into. If you are fortunate enough to even get a slot into scout sniper school, it's up to the unit. It's up to your platoon if they like you or not. It doesn't matter if you were good. You don't have a cadre. You don't. Yeah. You don't have a cadre being like, hey, well, you know, I think he's. No, it's like, we like you. We don't like you. You get to school, we like you. Well, they don't really like you. But, like, you know, it's. They have an attrition rate and they're gonna. They're gonna meet it, you know, and this was. And that was in 06. Those were the days that you could do that.

[Brent Tucker]

So if you. If you graduate that and you get the identifier.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yep.

[Brent Tucker]

Are. Do you have to go to the scout sniper call platoon or.

[Ethan Nagle]

You're already in it.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, you're already in it. Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

They don't allow you to go, like, again, so there's no pipeline. You can't sign a contract to go scout sniper. There's none of that exists. So if you are lucky to even get the opportunity to go like it. That's why it's so rare to have a scout to go to scout sniper school or, like, there's fewer scout snipers than there are, like, a lot of, like, seals or whatever. I mean, it's like, it's very small community, and they're in the gwat and.

[Brent Tucker]

They'Re attached at a battalion level?

[Ethan Nagle]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Battalion, yeah. So there's one platoon for the battalion.

[Brent Tucker]

Platoon for the battalion.

[Ethan Nagle]

Either weapons company or hhc, whatever. They're, you know, I don't know, wherever they decide to place them, but they, you know, they have general support teams that go out and then they have teams that are committed to each company. So I, you know, I get through it. You know, just from our unit, they sent 12. Four of us graduated, so it was like just from our unit. So, you know, doesn't. Doesn't count like 3727 all the West coast units that came to Hawaii and so.

[Tyler]

But were those guys already slotted in scout sniper platoon?

[Ethan Nagle]

And then everyone has to be in a scale sniper platoon.

[Brent Tucker]

So what happens if they don't make it? They get sent back, you know, they get another chance at it at least.

[Ethan Nagle]

Depends.

[Brent Tucker]

Depends.

[Ethan Nagle]

Depends if one, if. Did you do one? Did you, you know, screw yourself over? Did you, you know, what was it that got you dinged?

[Brent Tucker]

The circumstances?

[Ethan Nagle]

Exactly. Like if you're dipshit and they're like, oh, you're off, we'll get the. Out of the platoon.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, like, is there, is there one central school for scout snipers or. A couple?

[Ethan Nagle]

At the time there were three.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

So at my time it was east coast, which I think was Stone Bay, I might be wrong. West coast was Pendleton, and then at the time Hawaii 3rd Marine Regiment schools had had a scout sniper school. That's where we went because I was stationed out in Hawaii.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Ethan Nagle]

So got through that and. And I was like, awesome. We got to get after it. So we deployed early in 07, I believe it was the end of July or right, beginning of August. We deployed to Camp Fallujah into the Fallujah provinces. And we were, I was ready. We were like, this is it, boys.

[Brent Tucker]

I got a new skill under my belt.

[Ethan Nagle]

Like, we're here to fuck shit up. I was so pumped. And so we get There, we relieve 27 or 37 and shit was popping off. And you know, they had, they had had a rough deployment and then at about it was, there's some stuff. We were doing operations for the first month or two, hadn't gotten a kill. We. We went in into Zadon or Garma with recon. We did a big push with them with tanks, with Abrams and all that. But then it was like everything shut off. And I guess it was the Alambar awakening or whatever it was. We just paid the insurgents more than. Or paid the locals more than surgeons or Something. I don't know. But it went to zero. We couldn't find a tier one IED site. And then it turned into safety, turned into, you know, we went from running missions to like once every week to once every two weeks to three, and then just stop missions.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

And. And basic. We were the first unit, you know, which is good. We were the first unit to bring everyone home alive from Iraq.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[Ethan Nagle]

But they had. But also it was risk assessment. There wasn't snipers. What do we do? We go out and we kill people. Well, they were making us. They were like, we're not send you on a mission. Like, we want a giant investigation of you guys killing people or like attaching you to a unit that could get you killed. Like, you could tell the way the officers were thinking, right. Was like, okay, we. We're gonna bring everybody back. We're not gonna do more than we need to do.

[Brent Tucker]

Yep.

[Ethan Nagle]

So that ended up turning into a. You know, we end up playing a lot of Xbox and watching that 70 show.

[Brent Tucker]

There is. It's a different type of dangerous, but it. It's dangerous to your career when the boys aren't busy.

[Ethan Nagle]

Oh, yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Like shenanigans happen.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

And when you're busy, not busy for a long time, the shenanigans just get worse and worse and worse. The boys will find alcohol. The boys will find something to get into. And you'll lose people, you know, not. Not. They're not going to lose their life, but you'll lose to stupid stuff.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You'll lose them to Article 15, to investigations or something. The boy. You have to keep the boys busy, which is.

[Ethan Nagle]

They did. So they kept us out. We were in Lima company, and then they started making us do stupid shit. So they were like, hey, you know, you're going to start doing weapons, cash sweeps into, like, these places that had no weapons. Like, it was just kind of like to avoid us doing anything else. So that sucked. But we're like, all right, cool. The war's winding down. Whatever, you know. This was 7, 2008. Yeah. So it was 07 to 08.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

So February of 08, we come home. My brother calls me. He's with 1 6. He goes, hey, we're going to Afghanistan. I'm like, oh, okay. I was like, a new playground. Well, here's the funny thing. You don't know what you don't know. We had no idea what was going on in Afghanistan. So he. I. He calls me. He's like, do you know anything about. I was like, it's like nothing's going on there. You're gonna be a boot the rest of your life. He's like, oh fuck man. I go, oh yeah, yeah, hang up whatever. He goes. We start getting his unit. He was attached to 1:6 as a common engineer. We start getting their after actions and they're killing platoon sized element of Taliban. The snipers are. So we're getting all the intel, getting all the, you know, all the after actions. Right. Holy shit. I was like, I, we need to get there, right? Like what's going on? Long story short, save some for us. Yeah, exactly like, yeah. So long story short, I end up volunteering to get on a combat advisor team, the embedded training teams to go to Afghanistan. Now those are part of. That was part of regiment that wasn't even a part of like 3rd Battalion. So basically I left because technically I had done two in the Marine Corps. You do two deployments, you're done, you're over. So technically my career is over. But I had joined the unit so late or sorry, so so early on in my career that typically you have 8 month work, 8 month workup before you deploy. So now I'm stuck in this weird limbo where they want to take me back to Iraq where nothing's happening for like three and a half months and then ship me back to Hawaii and then process me out. And I'm like, that's a nightmare scenario.

[Brent Tucker]

And when you say your career is over source. But what you're talking about is that after two deployments they want to send you as a drill instructor. They want to, they want to send you as an instructor.

[Tyler]

They want to fun times over.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

They want to put exactly. You have to, it's your now you have enough experience, you have to give back as, as they look at it, you have to give back to the Marine Corps and it'll be another three years before you get to come back to the action again.

[Ethan Nagle]

And I was, I was a one and done. I wasn't doing any more, any more time. I was like, I'm doing one enlistment. This isn't my life. Like I was very much like, no, no way am I doing 20.

[Tyler]

Very self aware.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

I was like, absolutely nobody wants.

[Ethan Nagle]

I was going to film school, you know. And so, and so I was like, well that's it. You do your two pumps and then you're out. Well, they tried dragging me back into another deployment. I was like, oh my God. So I was fighting to get on this ett, the embedded trainer team. So I Eventually did.

[Brent Tucker]

Got.

[Ethan Nagle]

Got on it. That's a whole other fun story. But I managed to get on it and that changed my life. Like, that changed my whole trajectory of where I was going, what I was going to do, what I learned. And so we ended up going and it was, it was, you know, I always say it was like, you know, the TEMU version of Special Forces. Like, you know.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, I remember the E.T.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I mean, if you know this, you know, like, Meyer, Dakota Meyer, he really. He was in my platoon and then he relieved my rotation.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

So my Silver Star battle was. Was about a month and a half before his battle took place, and they relieved our rotation. There was a sister company, and then we had gotten word that they had gone through that battle when we landed in Hawaii. So it was like, the whole vibe was shitty. So anyway, so before all that happened, we deployed in 2008. It was really awesome. It was Advisor Mission. You know, they're like, oh, yeah, well, Special Forces has this mission. We're going to give you guys this mission. And I'm like, well, this is awesome. He's going to be running around. You're on your own.

[Brent Tucker]

Little oversight.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, exactly. Big boy rules.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Ethan Nagle]

You know, it's amazing. It's amazing. And, and they look to us because it was really weird, but it was also cool because all my experiences led up to that, to that kind of. That apex, which was like you just kind of. You level up into all your experiences and it's like, boom, we're going to send you into the Valleys, Afghanistan alone with a terp and a corpsman and a gun truck and a Ford Ranger. And you're the most experienced guy on these teams. We were. There was a. There's another buddy of mine, Staff Sergeant Herman, who had done like five deployments to Iraq, whatever. He was like, invasion, Fallujah, everything. So there's a few of those guys, but most of us were, oh, three 11s that were on our third pump and had volunteered. And so it was really, it was amazing. We got to work with Norwegian sf. I stood up my own Afghan sniper school and ran our kandak through that. And then, you know, our sis actually our sister team went to Korengal. So those guys were getting into it. Yeah, they're all over Fox News for, like, three years. Yeah, it was like stock footage. So I look at Maddie and, and, and, and Conroy or on like, Fox News for, like, three years. I see him like, you know, getting after it, and I'm like, they're still fucking using that footage. So. But they were getting after it and it was really awesome. And we were waiting back in Kabul and they're like, hey, you're going to take over these valleys. Usman Valley, Alice A to gob. So we were spread across multiple valleys. Sarobi District, FOB Torah. We worked with the French Foreign Legion, the French army itself, Norwegian SF. And then we had a 20th group, 19th group, special forces major join our team.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

Major Rocco Barnes. And he was a National Guard dude, but he hopped on with an active duty unit. He was like a mitt team or. I mean, he was like, individually doing stuff in Iraq. And then he. He managed to get on with us and. And. Which was crazy because I remember being in Hawaii and I'm like, the. Is this old dude in ACU doing in our. In the Marine Corps, like, base, like, training with. I was like, who the is this guy? Yeah. And then you come to find out he's like a Special Forces, like, legend and shit. We're like, oh, my God. You know, so he took over, basically. Long story short, he took over our team and ran us like an oda. Like, you know, it was great. And we worked with 10. I was attached to. Eventually attached to 10th Group, Special Forces and then. But we also worked with 20th Group out of Chicago. You know, a lot of those guys were like former Marines too, you know. Yeah. Work with Blackwater Contractors, which then I learned about Blackwater and like, contracting and then, like, learned a lot about special operations. Learned just like, open my eyes up to all these other opportunities and all these other avenues and all this stuff that you just don't know. Because in the Marine Corps, your blinders are on. Right. You don't know anything else. I don't know about Rangers. I don't know. I don't even. Delta. Yeah. Blackhawk Down. I don't know anything about them. Navy seals, they're a whole nother thing. Like, you know, we had it because we have bud Studs come through as corpsman, so. So we know more about seals. But again, though, it's not. I don't. I don't. You know, it's like in Afghanistan was like the Wild west, you know, they're like, anything can happen.

[Brent Tucker]

Right?

[Ethan Nagle]

And so we had National Guard guys attached to us from Georgia. So it was just an amazing experience. But basically it came down to, you know, big boy rules and just being able to, like, run these spearheading operations in the Valleys. And it was. It was awesome. It was an amazing experience. It changed my whole trajectory in life. Instead of going to film school right away, I'm like, I'm going to be a contractor, but going to go do this, I'm going to do that, and then I'm going to go to film school and you also. That's when I kind of, it clicked for me that I wanted to stay a part of the community as like quote unquote, a war fighter in any capacity, whatever it might be. And I, I, I kind of identified it at that time, but I knew I didn't want to do 20 years. Like, I wasn't like, oh man, I need to go, I need to go MARSOC for the next 20. It was like, I want to keep one toe or foot in any, any, any given time. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, if, if you think we're going to let you skip right over your Silver Star battle and move on to film school, you're, you're sorely mistaken.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. Yeah. JV team for life.

[Tyler]

And of course we got to give a shout out to our boys in 09 holsters. Custom built ruggedized duty gear. Made in the USA for cops by cops, a Leo and veteran owned small business. They do an upgraded solutions for duty gear including cases for portable radios, body cameras, tourniquets and pretty much everything you need to carry on duty. So go to 09holsters.com and use promo code antihero10zulu9. That's anti hero10z9. And get yourself 10% off your order. Are you tired of using your standard issue flashlight? I know you're still using it because I was still using mine. But I have good news. We've teamed up with Cloud Defensive. The best in the game when it comes to weapons mounted and handheld lights. Go to clouddefensive.com, put in promo code antihero15 and get 15% off your entire order. Cloud Defensive Pushing the boundaries and illumination.

[Ethan Nagle]

Revenge is an act of passion. Vengeance is an act of justice. Injuries are revenged. Crime are avenged. Almost a century ago, big pharmaceutical companies re engineered medical school curriculum and faculty with one goal. Putting profit before progress. Anyone pushing back against the medical matrix they carefully crafted was threatened, silenced, censored, financially ruined or worse. They are the problem. We are the solution. Engage with weapons. You're clear to engage with weapons. JV team for life.

[Brent Tucker]

I want to hear it.

[Ethan Nagle]

Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

And selfishly.

[Ethan Nagle]

No, no, no, I get it. Yeah. So we had. This is the whole. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Here you go.

[Ethan Nagle]

Thank you. So we had. It was end of July. Sadly, Rocco was killed in a rollover. And so in the mountains of Afghanistan. We were in Usman Valley. I was attached to 10th group, and we had the new next rotation coming to relieve us, but we end up getting extended for an extra month because of the elections in Afghanistan. So we were like, hey, we haven't been to the end of our valley, like, to the end of the road. Let's go, like, let's go do a key leader engagement at Klein at the very end of the road. We'll, you know, we. We planned it properly because we had done further pushes into the valley and gotten hit and had got turned back because we were split up into three different elements. There's one road in, one road out. There's nowhere else to go. Like, there's, you know, that's it. And so you have to have certain, like, three elements. The. The front, mid and back element, and you kind of bound yourself up, you know, and to make sure that, you know, you don't get cut off or something. Gets wild in Afghanistan, man, it doesn't matter who you are. Those mountains will eat you alive. Like, they will. They just will. Like, I've seen it clearly. There's plenty of stories other, like, we were always self aware of, like, you know, lone survivor and all these other stories. And even guys that had been before that were Fallujah vets, they were like, don't around in. In the mountains. They're like, the comms will go and they'll surround you in a heartbeat and they'll. They'll run around you. And especially in the mountain. Mountains. We weren't in Helmand. We were like, in the mountains, right? And we've seen it. We knew it. So by that point in July, we had been there for, I think, eight months at point. And so we had enough experience with our Afghans and everything. And so I was attached to 10th group. We're like, all right, let's go. So we did this patrol essentially to the end of the valley. And I was, you know, attached to 10th. So I was with them in the front because we made a drug deal with 10th group. Because 10th group, active duty, like, couldn't operate in the valleys for some reason without Afghanistan National Army.

[Brent Tucker]

So, right, they. Without. They have to have a counterpart. They have to have an app to them.

[Ethan Nagle]

Exactly. So we made a drug deal because Rocco was, you know, sf. He was like, hey, you know, you will give you our recon platoon, which is my platoon, and then you guys can operate. Right? And then they'll use. Got to take Corporal Nagel here. So it was awesome. I Got to live, like in the SF compound. They had showers and, you know, it was great. Yeah, they had like a whole. Everything was good. It was great. It was like we were sleeping in tents in the valley. And then I got to go back to them at FOB Torah and the French base because they had built the compound on the French base. And then they had like, we each had our own connects with Internet connection and ac. It was awesome. It was great. Damn, son, where'd you find this? We ended up pushing all the way into the valley. We knew it was enemy territory. We, we basically spook them. They wake up at like 6am and we're there and we're like, okay. You know, we talk with them. You know, we're just doing the chai, taking a lot of photos because again, way more military age males than there ever should be in that. In that little village. And so we're like, okay, here, start taking photos. One guy came over, he's like, hey, I'm amp Afghan national point. Like, oh, cool. Took a photo. And they were like playing nice. All right, sounds good. So we take off. We're like, this is the end of the road, which is. I love Afghanistan. I thought it was a beautiful country. I took photos. There was another village with no road to it, with bunch shitload of buildings, no road that went to it. And I was like, we never made it to that, to those villages. And it was nuts because that we were at the end of the road, like, this is where it ends. And so we're like, okay, cool, we'll eventually make it over there, but let's start heading back. And then we'll start hitting every village on the way down just to do a key leader engagement, Just, you know, whatever. So we're heading our way back and Chief Warrant Officer Voes, he goes, hey, well, let's do a dismount. Let's go down into the riverbed and we'll start. We'll patrol the riverbed and on land and we'll parallel our convoy going down. And I'm like, okay, cool, sounds good. We had. So we had waited for the new rotation. Go back a little bit. So right before we started this patrol, we were actually waiting on it like 3am we're waiting on our next rotation to relieve us. So they show up last minute. So these guys are. They show up, these new marines and, you know, they come on the patrol with us. And so anyway, so flash forward back to. We're about to split off. I had this one guy, Gunny Rogers, with Me, and I'm, you know about big boy rules, so I'm running ball cap and whatever. But I did put my Marine Corps mar pad on because I was like, all right. Like, I don't know how the. These guys operate. I don't know if they're going to tattle on us, the rcac, all that kind of. So we roll out and I didn't even bring my helmet. And I, like, I remember I stopped and I looked back and I was like, all right, I'll grab my helmet. Yeah. So I. I went and I grabbed my helmet, threw it on. We patrol down. We start patrolling and paralleling, and immediately, obviously, the gun trucks outrun us, like, immediately, because they're. They're. There's one road and they're just taking it, and we're kind of doing like an L, and we start moving and then we start getting on the radio. Not long. And these are terraces, by the way. They're like, I don't know. Right. I could actually send you guys some pictures for post production or whatever. I'll look. I got. I have the last photo I took before we got hit. And it's beautiful mountains, and the terraces are like 10ft tall. Like, these just. They dropped on a rock. So terrace is like where they. They farm. So if you ever see, like, photos of Asia, you know, where you see like a patty rice patty, and it goes down. It goes. Yeah, that's what they are like. Afghanistan's like that. Not just built their own. Exactly. Not as drastic, but they're. They still drop like 10ft, 5ft, whatever. And so that's where they farm. And so we're patrolling that. We're going down. We get into this dry riverbed.

[Brent Tucker]

How many people on your patrol at this point?

[Ethan Nagle]

It was. I always get the numbers. It's myself, roughly. Yeah, Rogers. It was. It was Bose, Stovall, Shoey, Aflag. So it was four SF2 Marines. I think it was about 10 Afghans.

[Brent Tucker]

Like, roughly six Americans. 10 Afghans.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Roughly that. Yeah, about that.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

And might have been a little bit more Afghans. Not a lot. And so we were patrolling, you know, and we're stacked heavy. I mean, it's a pretty. Pretty solid patrol, you know, per se. And. And so we start moving, and that's when the radio starts, you know, chirping at us. They're like, hey, we just talked to some locals. They're. They're organizing fighters, like, okay, all right, game on. And then they're like, hey, they're starting to move on your position. And then we're. But we're going down out of line of sight. And so then our comps are going to cut off. So they start. Really. We start relaying the. The message down the. Down the road. I'm at the front along with my Buddy Shoey, who's 10th Group Special Forces. You actually. Do you know Shoey from 20th Group. Okay. He said he knew who you were or you must cross path or something. But. And so we're moving through the riverbed and there. And then we finally got the last radio call, which was, you're gonna get hit. Like, all right, man. This is what we signed up for.

[Brent Tucker]

Right?

[Ethan Nagle]

So I remember I looked over to my Afghan. He was like a kid. He was like 18. And I looked at him, I went like this. Which means. Which I flipped your finger down, which means, like, hey, turn. The AK is ready to fire. You know, like, put off safe.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

He looked at me like he's about to shit his pants. Because he knows, you know, he's an Afghan. He knows how things go. We're alone in the middle of a fucking valley with no support. We are mountains everywhere. Like, there's no one's coming for us.

[Brent Tucker]

And that is not a very big patrol.

[Ethan Nagle]

No, no, it's not a big patrol at all. No. And we knew it, too. But, you know, for me, in my experience, I was like, okay, let' don't bring it on. But so we kept moving. And we have a little bit of canopy overhead of these trees. While we're going through, my buddy calls me up, Shoey. He's like, hey, man, do you hear that? Hear that? And I. So I kind of again, like, go down by a tree, like, take a knee. He's like, do you hear that? And immediately, you know, alak akbar everything, all hell breaks loose. They're really screaming. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, I remember, I distinctly heard them go, alak akbar. And then there. That. There. That close. They were within like, maybe 20 meters, but they were up on. They had the high ground, but they couldn't directly see us because of the vegetation. So it was like summer. The. Like, the tree canopy came over the. Over the riverbed.

[Tyler]

I have a question. When you started going downhill and losing the high ground, did you know that they were coming for you, or were you already downhill and then found.

[Ethan Nagle]

So we were already down in the riverbed.

[Tyler]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

You know, because we were. We're going to take the riverbed into the next village, and if you follow the riverbed, you know, the village near the riverbed. So we're like, oh, let's do that. Although those who wanted to vose, the chief warrant officer, the special forces warrant officer, he's like, hey, you know, Shoey was the point man. He's like, we shouldn't lose the high ground. And I agreed with Shoey. I was like, yeah, you're right. Like, let's not lose the high ground. But Vo's wanted to keep going in the riverbed. I'm like, okay, man. Like, you know, she. You know, like, I get it. Like, it's not like, we're like, oh, my God. I can't believe it was like, okay, your call. We'll do it. We can handle ourselves. So we, you know, Vo made that call. Shuey kept. You know, we didn't take the. The high ground. We kept going into the riverbed. And then they. They ambushed us there within 20, 30 meters. Like, I. We could hear him talking, like, because we sat down because sh. Heard him first. And so they were, like, talking me to you, you know, and so he could hear that he was picked up on it. And then they, you know, scream, alec Bakbar. And then they started hit with machine guns. The tree exploded next to my face. So, like, a round hit it. And this is why you wear I Pro. I wasn't wearing Eye Pro. And it was actually on my helmet, like, you know, hanging off, and it shrapnel. And, like, the ricochets hit my eye, and I. Again, miracle. I had punctures all along my eyelid, my nose, and I had a cut across my face, but it didn't take my eye out.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, it was nuts. It was. I. Yeah, it was pure. Again, I should. I shouldn't have an eye. Like, I should have one eye right now. You could be like Crenshaw running for Congress, and. And just joking. And. Yeah, so we. And then Stovall gets hit in the leg. He's the medic. 18 Delta. He gets hit. And we're. We're. We're going back now. We're duking it out. They have the high ground. We're firing. I have an M14A1. I love it. It's a great rifle. Not exactly what I want to be pinned down with, you know, a near ambush. No, it's not. Yeah. Burning through Mags 20, you know, and again, this was a issue. The M14 was issued to me from the armory, but I only had three mags. So this is the time that, you know, I went on optics planet and bought, like, seven more because that's what you do. Like, if they're not the army or the Marine Corps isn't going to give you supplies, then buy it on your own. Like, don't. Don't know the Army.

[Tyler]

Yeah, the army will buy what you need.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, you guys have funding the Marine Corps doesn't let you do. So it's like we were. I had dude totes of kids. Anyway, so we get into ambush. Stovall gets hit. I run over Stovall. It was really funny story. I whip out my KA bar because I have a Marine Corps KA bar. And I whip it out and I started cutting. And he looks at me, he goes. I'm like, oh, sorry. You know, he goes, don't do it with a K bar. And I'm like, oh, sorry. You know, like, I was all heat of the moment, right? So I like, pulled my K bar back and I had medical shears. I got really good at medical. Teachable C. And that's. I love medical, like combat trauma stuff. So I was like, sorry. And I got ahead of myself and I whipped out the shears, got them up, got them patched up. So I got a stove all up and running again. Clean in and out, no issue in his leg. And then. And so we. We pushed the ambush back, you know, repelled the ambush. And then we started moving up the. The side of the riverbed and then broke through the canopy. And it was really funny. And again, it's Marine infantry, which. So we're moving up. We're like bounding up a little bit. And VO's, you know, it was. It was his. He was bounding. And I, he, I. It was. It was funny. But he was like. I was like, dude, you gotta go a little further. You gotta breach the canopy. He stops before the. Breaching the canopy. And he looks at me, goes, set. And I'm like. I looked him like you, you know. Yeah, look at your dick. And he's smirked at me like, all right, Marine, it's your turn. I was like, you. And so I. I went and charged up through the canopy and asses hanging in the breeze. And there we were, you know, and fought our way behind a rock wall. We got situated. It hadn't gone south yet. We were still duking it out. Got everybody up. We returned fire again. And this is where, like, events start to kind of like, blur together. We got on the rock wall and got everybody online. And I remember this one guy came around the corner. And I'm not saying I'm not ashamed to say this, but I I was glassing him, and I was. I was like. He came around the corner, and I'm like, holy. Like, he was caught off guard. I was caught off guard. So there's, like, a finger. It was like, a little bit of, like, the riverbed, and. And we were on this other, like, ridge, but they weren't far away from each other. It was, like, ridge to ridge, but it was. It wasn't far. And he comes around this corner. It was like. And it was vegetation or not corn, but it was something. I remember he came around it, and I'm sitting there, and I'm. I had my. My reticle on. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, I've never, you know, through the scope, I've never seen so. Nothing so clear, like, in your, in your career. You're like, man, I hope I see a guy this clear with a gun. I put a bullet in him, you know? Never happens. Now he's like, comes around, walks in, and I pulled the shot, man. Pulled the shot, Hits by his foot. He sees us, freaks. He goes, oh, freaks. I saw the look on his face. He turns. That's. Sorry. He turns. That's when I pulled the shot. Hit by his foot. I go back on for a following shot. Dude. All I see is this dude gets blasted in the back and then ripped apart. Because there's 13 or there's, you know, 16 guys online. Everyone saw him at the same time. It was a volley, dude. It was a volley.

[Brent Tucker]

It was a marking shot. So you guys could see where he was.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, I'm like, yeah, exactly. I'll start saying that. It was a parking shot. I marked it for you guys. Yeah. So I, I. And it just blew him apart. And we were all. It was like one of those funny moments in combat. Everyone, like, dodge each other. We're all excited, like, s. Guys. The Afghans were like, did you see that?

[Brent Tucker]

Like, yeah, it's the dark humor of.

[Ethan Nagle]

We gotta be, you know? So it was like a bonding moment. And. And then. But we kept duking it out. They're. They're on the, on the. The. They would have been the east side. And at this same moment, which we didn't know what was happening at the time was they're hitting our southern element in the middle element. So this started becoming a giant operation.

[Brent Tucker]

It's a coordinated attack at this giant, coordinated attack.

[Ethan Nagle]

We didn't know that. We didn't know that. So because we're cut off. We don't. We don't, you know, from everybody. So more shit Happens. I end up dropping two dudes that they got. Started running, and I scoped them out, drop them on this. On this ridge finger. Just kind of comes back to. At the end of the story, I'll tell you why or what happened. So. And then we're. I remember dropping those guys, and it's just like one of those things when people are like, hey, have you ever killed anybody? I'm like, yeah, I have. Like, how'd you feel? Like, I didn't feel anything. Like, in the.

[Tyler]

And I've been sitting here listening to you, and I love the fact that you are not afraid or, like, you know, or. Do you guys mind if I talk about it? Like, you are.

[Ethan Nagle]

You did it.

[Tyler]

You moved on.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. Yeah. And that's what happened. It's like, I dropped them. I moved on. Like, it wasn't like, oh, man. Like. Because this is. I. I've. I've put the reticle on people in the sniper platoon when on my second deployment. Dude, you're shaking. Like. You're shaking. Like. I'm not afraid to admit that. Most guys are. They'll be like, oh, yeah, you know, until you get used to it. Or until, like, things are more, you.

[Brent Tucker]

Know, you more cut and dry.

[Ethan Nagle]

More cut and dry? Yeah. Because so you're sitting there like, oh, my God. Okay. And then you're on the gun for, like, 20 minutes, and you're just like. And then are we getting the green light? And you're just like. You start thinking way more and more and more, you know? And so at that point, though, it was like, nope, these are. These guys. Bad guys. Drop them. That's it. It's the end of it. And so we start engaging, you know, multiple targets. You know, they're. They're starting to maneuver on the north side. The west side is still kind of secure. There's no fire come from there, and that's where kind of our backs are. So I go, all right, cool. It kind of lulled out a little bit. We're like, all right. I said, all right, let's. I'm going to go take the west side, and we'll get a perimeter kind of going, and then we'll start making our way back to the road because the road was on the west side. And they're like, yeah, sounds good. You know, and at that point, I believe we were going to hold there and just kind of like, you know, let's get some targets. Let's duke it out. So I go over to the west side, and I'm still Looking to the east though, because all the threats are coming from the east, north, and we had not from the south yet. And so I'm up against this rock wall looking, and this is when all hell breaks loose. I thought I got hit with an rpg. Like this blast happens next to me, sparks are flying and I went out like, it was like black. And then next thing I know, I'm running. Like, I'm running against this rock wall. Like in slow motion. Rounds are kicking up all around me. And I remember, think I, you know, I. I was doing a self assessment, like in, in nanoseconds, right? It's like my, my neck is on fire, my forearm is on fire, but there's nothing pulsing out of me. Like, it's just. It's like one of those weird things. Was taking a medic, you know, it wasn't like, oh, you know, it was like as I'm running and literally in my head it's, you know, I. I told myself, you're not fucking dead yet, so keep fucking fighting. Like, that's it. That's what. They're my exact words, you're not fucking dead yet, so keep fucking fighting. And so I was take off, took off running. And I could see the rock wall and bullets are just kicking up all around me. And the, the path and the rock wall will get to a point where I could jump over it. Because if I jump now, I'm not gonna make it. Like, with all my kit, I'm not gonna make it. So I was like, I got to the point and I saw one of my Afghans who's a Dragon off shooter. And I see him, he's an older guy, I believe he was a Mujahideen fighter in the 80s. And he was looking at me and I could see him just go, come here. Yeah, come here. You know, and he's. And I'm running and I get to him and that's when I just roll over the rock wall and just fire with M14. And then that's when all hell breaks loose. That's when we got surrounded on all sides.

[Tyler]

Hell hasn't broken loose yet.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, yeah. So the various steps of hell. But that was, that was when we were like, we're in a bad situation.

[Brent Tucker]

And you might get to this. But what was it? An rpg?

[Ethan Nagle]

Do you know? It was Michigan. So what happened was it was a machine gun had hit and it was, it. The rounds had splintered and they cut, punctured in and out of my neck, and it missed my jugular by millimeters. So I had a scar here for. And it healed up, but it wasn't like. Say you look at it, you're like, oh, it's not that bad, but it was, like, this far from my. My jugular, and it punctured out. So that was why my neck was on fire. I had shrapnel up on my forearm.

[Tyler]

You know what? I just want to say this. That's why. That's why I get upset when I think about Tim Kennedy. Because you actually took shrapnel close to your jugular.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Tyler]

And he claims that he took shrapnel close to his jugular, which is a fictional tale. Didn't mean to interrupt.

[Ethan Nagle]

No, no, no.

[Brent Tucker]

I was thinking it too. There are guys out there that actually did this and actually deserve the credit. How dare you make it up and pretend that you were doing what this man here actually did. Like, it's. It's serious. There's serious allegations.

[Ethan Nagle]

No, no, I understand. And that's.

[Brent Tucker]

You're not wrong for bringing it up, Tyler.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, and that's the thing is, like, I remember, like, just like, my neck was on fire, but I was like, okay, you're not dead yet. And then also. Then fast forward just a quick sec. When I was in the shower after this whole. The whole battle was done, I. My. I was in the shower and my legs started burning. It's like, what the. And I looked down, and there's a chunk about this big taken out of my. Right above my femoral artery. No, it was, like, right above the femoral. It was a clean chunk that a bullet. It was like the shape of a bullet, just, like, right off the skin and took it off. And I was like, oh, sometimes you're just lucky. It was. It was.

[Brent Tucker]

Sometimes you just lost.

[Ethan Nagle]

I know. I still have the pain. Yeah. Really? And so, like, my dick's not that big, so was fine, and. But the. The bullet. I kept, the. I believe I still have the cammies with the bullet hole through it. It's not. You know, it's not like, oh, it's a big blow. It's like. Like it's tiny, but it's enough that obviously. And again, the millimeters from my. My or my femoral and millimeters from my jugular. So it's like. You know, sometimes I say fate plays its cards. Like, I should be dead. You know, there's a timeline. I don't make it out like that was.

[Tyler]

That man upstairs wasn't ready to take. Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

I would say someone. Someone upstairs, like me, you know?

[Brent Tucker]

Is it Odd or is it God?

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so that. So anyways, that was after everything. So I run down the rock wall, get over the rock wall. Now we're getting hit from everywhere. Now we're really taking it. And then this is come to find out, Southern elements getting slammed. Everyone's getting slammed. The whole thing became a giant coordinated attack. So gunny Rogers was face down in the mud, and I see him, and I'm like, he's dead. I have to go get his body. I have to go get him, bring him back, or bring him over this rock wall, you know, get him to safety. So I call out his name, doesn't answer. Call his name a second time. Does not answer. I was like, he's dead. I have to go get him. And he's, you know, he's. He's like a gunny. He was like 20 years, and he's kind of a big cat, you know, And. And we had said like, hi to each other. Like, I. I don't even know if I had a. Like, other than saying hi.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Ethan Nagle]

I don't know who this guy is. And so I call out for him for a third time, and he answers. And I was like, thank God. Yeah. One, he's alive. Two, another gun in the fight. Three. You know, saves me from dragging him that I'm gonna have to go drag across and, you know, the fire. So I told him. I was like, hey, gonna give you a count, you know, count of three. I'm gonna give you cover fire. Because we were taking. There's like, these buildings that were on the east side that. That's where the fire was coming from. Like, now they have, like, the getting high ground everywhere and they're shooting down at us. And he was like. Basically, I think he was playing dead, like, because he was like, face down. And I. I think he was trying to assess the situation. And so I was like, all right, I'm gonna give you cover fire. So I gave him cover fire, and I was like, go. And so he got up and ran. He did his. I'm up. Excuse me. I'm down. Yeah, yeah. And I'm just lighting everything up and. With the M14, you know, bolt action gun. No, no, the bolt action. No, the M14. The. The semi auto.

[Brent Tucker]

There is a bull, is there? I believe there is a bolt action version.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, this one's just.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, M14. It was synthetic stock. Love it. Springfield M1A or whatever. Yeah, the M14. But it wasn't even the EBR. It was like the Old school. And so I'm light, you know, 20 round box mags burning through ammo. I get him over, like, he jumps on the wall. I grab him. I'm firing with one hand and pulling him over the other. Get him, get him assessed. I was like, how are you doing? Are you okay? You hit? He's like, no, I'm good. Okay. Okay, cool. You know, reloading. Worst case scenario, my antenna gets. Because I want to be all high speed like sf. I put that M biter, which I've never done before, on the back of my. On my kit. I'm stupid. It's stupid.

[Brent Tucker]

It is stupid. No one should ever do that. No, it's not even oda.

[Ethan Nagle]

Not even oda, guys. Yeah. And I was like, well, let's try that. Because I always had it here because we. I called in so many fire missions, air missions, cast support, nine line, medevx, all the way up to here. Oh, let's try that. That might be this stupid. So my. My antenna gets ripped out. It's gone. So my comms are gone. I got nothing. And then so I'm like, I let. Reach back. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, I don't have. I don't have any comms. And then I. I asked him, I was like, hey, man, you know, I was like, check me. Am I bleeding out? I was like, am I bleeding out? You know? And he's like, no, you're good, you're good. I was like, okay, cool, cool, cool. Reload. And it wasn't more than probably a few seconds maybe again, time just, you know, goes away. And that's when I hear man down. And it's like a blood curdling man down. And. And I shout back, you know, and this is, this is kind of the perimeter is probably maybe, you know, 30, 40 yards or something like that. And they're down like a few tear like one or two terraces. And I yell back, I was like, how bad? You know how bad? And he's just screaming, man. I mean, like, screaming man down. Like blood curdling, like, sad man. Like, like drastic man down. And so it's like, okay. And so I looked at Gunny, I was like, I need you to hold the east side. Yeah, no, sorry, the west side. I was like, you need to hold this west side. You know, take the Afghans. Make sure they're, you know, you hold this. You. This is what, the side of the road. He's like, yeah, got it. Come to find out later, Gunny Rogers was like deployed like five Times Spectacular. Dude ran into him months later as a contractor. And then we did like an after action four or five months later on a FOB because I had got back in the country so so quickly as a contractor that we actually got sit down and bullshit. And like, I was like, what did you do? What happened? And then we, we talked and he was actually a great dude. So anyways, I just like, Tom, I was like, hey, hold this position. I'm going to go check out, see what the fuck's going on. Because I had the big med bag as well. So I take off running and I just start sprinting like dead sprint. Jumped down the terrace, kept going. I remember the feet was wet. Just keep going, get to him. And then come to find out later, my buddy Shoey was sf. He was like on that side of the perimeter, he said. He looked over at me running and there was machine gun fire just spitting all around me and an RPG flying over my head. And I was. And I. I was like, really? And he's like, yeah. I was like, I don't know. Like, I'm so.

[Brent Tucker]

You're in the moment.

[Ethan Nagle]

I'm in the moment, I'm zoned in. I was like, I gotta get to him. I got to get to him. And I get to Doug Vose, Chief warrant officer, and he got hit like right above his plate or something. It had gone down and it was a sucking chest wound, but I believe it hit another organ beyond the sucking chest wound. And Justin, God bless him, he's a great dude. Not, not knocking him or anything. He's just in shock, you know, and he was the echo, so he was the comp sergeant and he was just freaking out. And Susan's a good friend of his. Like, just watch his friend just get shot in front of him. And we're there, we're on a lip, you know, and it's so we're exposed to fucking everything, like naked. Like there's no cover. And it's like this little, little trail and there's a, you know, I jump over the rock, so there's a rock wall. I jump over and that's where they are. And it's just like. Drops down a little bit and it's just. You see the whole valley and every. There's no cover, so there's bullets going over us. And I just remember I looked at Justin and he's just like, he's hit, he's hitting. And I looked at him, I said, I said, hey, get on comms, I need you get on comms. You know, get us out of here live. Like, I need you right now. He looked at, he goes, okay, okay. I was like, just get on the radio, get the comms up. And he's like, okay, okay. So he hops on the wall, he starts working on comms. Give him a task, give him a task. And so I start working on Bose medically. Come again after action, come to find out Shoey and Stovall, Stovall, the 18 delta, they're throwing grenades. They're engaged. They are. It's a all out battle. They're coming within 15, 20 meters of us. And I'm feeling overpressure of bullets just coming over me. I can feel the snaps coming over my head. I'm working on, working on them, you know, I'm returning fire as I'm seeing dudes running and I'm return fire, get back. And I'm working on them. And the M14 I like put to the side or something. It was running out of ammo too. So I put to the side. I remember at one point, and I'm working on him, we're getting shot. And I just finally took out my pistol, my M9, which sucks. But I was like, I just need to put rounds downrange to give myself time.

[Brent Tucker]

Right?

[Ethan Nagle]

Psychology. Just put rounds down range. It doesn't matter, just put it down range. So I had my hand on his chest at one point. I had my pistol and I was firing at. You know, we call them Al Qaeda or Taliban. I can't remember what the. We called it AQI or something like that. I remember what acronym they were at that point. But I had my hand on this on a sucking chest. Went up working on a sucking chest one. So I had my hand on his, on his chest at one point and I had my pistol firing at another. And even Shui was like, yeah, I looked over and you're, you know, pistols going, it's all, it's wild. Like we didn't know if we're gonna get overrun, you know. And at that point we all knew that they were trying to overrun us absolutely. To get the body to kill us all. And that's when like I.

[Brent Tucker]

They're energized at this point. It's like blood in the water.

[Ethan Nagle]

Exactly. We were at a disadvantage, like this was not where we want to be. And I remember when that was all happening. I remember, you know, covering his body just because I could feel the rounds. I was like, I can't have him hit him again. And you know, covering up his body and Getting back up and doing it again and just being like, this is it. This is where I die. And it was. I don't say calming, but at that same point, like, this is my mission in life. Like, I'm going to protect him and I'm not going to let him die alone. If he dies, he's not dying alone. And you're not getting his body. Yeah. Like. And that's to me, you know, like, I can. That's where I kind of get emotional sometimes. It's like I accepted. I accepted death before that, but that's when I truly was like, this is it. And this is. You know, it's that weird thing of like a beautiful death. Like, I was like, this is. And all this is kind of not going through my head, but you kind of feel it. Like, this is it. This is. I'm gonna die here in a pile of brass, as I should as an infantryman. This is where I die.

[Brent Tucker]

You've accepted it.

[Ethan Nagle]

Accepted it fully on. And so. But I wasn't. Like, I stopped fighting. Like, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna fucking kill as many people as I can.

[Brent Tucker]

And I know this story ends well. Yeah, but.

[Ethan Nagle]

But the story isn't over yet. Exactly. So we're duking out. Duking out even. And then finally Stovall comes over. Just keep working on him and his. I could he. His eyes start coming back. And that was the shitty part. He gets his. I. I get him fixed up enough to where I'm like, he's gonna make it. He's gonna make it, you know. And his eyes come back. I can see him kind of, you know, but he's still out of it. He's still out of it. And Stovall finally makes his way over, you know, and he's got a saw. I was like, hey man, let's start work, you know, hey, get on him. And so I grab his saw. And so I start ripping with.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, Gosh, what a gods in that saw.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, exactly.

[Brent Tucker]

From a pistol to a saw.

[Ethan Nagle]

Well, even his M4 was sitting to the side. I didn't see it, but it was like off to the side. And so at one point I was like, I gotta grab. If this gets really bad, I need to grab his N4 as well. And so I grabbed the saucer. Start ripping with the saw. We got him over the rock, rock wall behind us. Finally getting behind some cover. And we're still taking rounds everywhere. And so I'm working on them. We're putting in veins. I'm like, in between, he's working, I work with him, I take a break, I return fire. I, you know, come back, work with him, return fire, you know, just. Just keep them at bay. And. And they're. They're getting close. They're getting with 15, 20 meters. We're pushing them back, pushing them back. And then I remember I looked up a hill and I see two Taliban running up it. And I just remember looking to myself. I was like, thinking to myself, I said it to my head, I was like, it's gonna be a long day. And it was like a path, it was completely open. And they were like, baldy. They're just like, dude, we're just gonna. We're gonna run in front of you, and we're just gonna take position. Like, we, we know we got you guys. And they. So you could just. That's how confident they were. You see them run up this hill, and I look up and I go. I said to myself, I was like, it's gonna be a long fucking day. And out of nowhere, man, like the movies. It was like a movie. Two rockets come in 50 millimeters from the Kiowa. Bam. Bam. Fucking smokes these guys, 50 cal up the hill. I look over, it just spins around us. And these guys on the, you know, I don't have the radio guys are on the radio saying, like, holy.

[Brent Tucker]

He's controlling the air.

[Ethan Nagle]

Well, our guys started making up the valley. So they were like, go. They told the kai was, go to this position. These guys are here. Go find them. And so then they did. So they eventually, you know, because in those valleys, they don't know what's going on to those pilots. No, I wish I really. If anyone's in the usman Valley in July 29, 2009, that would be amazing to talk with those Kiowa pilots, you know, it's crazy.

[Brent Tucker]

We get that stuff all the time. Don't be surprised.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

Those kids, if they're not watching, or someone who knows, you know, Kiowa pilots that reach out to them.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yes, exactly.

[Brent Tucker]

That would be amazing.

[Ethan Nagle]

So. And those guys are crazy. They're awesome. They're awesome. They're like flying infantry. You kind of know that. They're like. They're known to be like flying infantry, the Kiowa pilots. That's what we were told, you know, and so that happens. We're still working on vo, and then that's when the element, the southern element, finally makes its way up to us. And then they, they. They maneuver over, down. I mean, again, it's not like the trucks are like, oh, they're right over there. It's like they had to go through the buildings, go through the village, get down. Get down to us. So it's a. It's a whole big thing. They finally get to us, which is great. Those guys are awesome. So it was a relief. I saw my corpsman come up. I was like, you know, and he was so zoned in, he, like, stopped 20ft away. I was like, gilbert. And he's like. I was like, gilbert. And he's like, oh. And he was just so in that he didn't even see where we were. And so he came over and I was like, hey, you take my position. You work with Stovall. Get him, you know, got to get him out. And we had gotten an IV in him, and we're working CPR and we got more guns in the fight. And they were like, we're going to call the medevac burden here. And I go, okay, we need to. Yes. And I go. I said, okay, but we need to set up positions to do a cover fire for the birds. So I got everybody together. I said, hey, take these positions. And on my signal, we're going to give cover fire. We're going to. They're going to do. The Blackhawk, is going to do a fake with the first one to draw fire. We're going to do cover fire, and then the second bird is going to land. And there's hardly anywhere for these guys to land, but they, you know, they're going to do it. So on my signal, everybody opens up. The first bird comes in, dodges, takes off. Second one comes in, we're engaging all these positions. And then thank God we did, because two RPGs, actually, I believe it was. It was one or two, but this is what my buddy Buckley said again, second hand, two RPGs, like, flew right over the bird. They land safely with, like, a few feet from a rock wall that would just tear this rotor up. They land.

[Brent Tucker]

Those pilots are amazing.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, they're amazing. Yeah. When they're. I remember doing training late, they're like, yeah, black car. They needed so much area to land. I was like, they will. I was like, they will land when.

[Brent Tucker]

The boys need it.

[Ethan Nagle]

When the boys need it, they'll come in. Yeah. And I also, too, I told him, I was like, if this thing goes. If this. If this thing crashes, we're all dead, right? Those rotors, they're going to chop us all up. There's gonna be like 15 casualties, right? You know, in a heartbeat. So we protected the bird I got everybody pointed at positions, do the engagement. They come in, and it was funny. My Buddy Shoey ran VO's up to. He was one of the guys that ran the vose up to the. To the bird. He said, whoever was on the plane or on the. On the Blackhawk, he said they jumped out, and he saw their face. They just went, what the. And they just took their M4 and just started lighting everything up. Because, again, you're kind of like, you know, I'm like, you know, Porsche, you know, got blinders on, and. And. But they jumped out, and they had seen, like, the whole scene was going on. Those guys started lighting everything up, and they got him on the bird, and they got him out. And so then we. We kind of regathered. And, you know, for me, it was like, you know, me and Chewy were the first one on the battlefield. It's like that weird thing, but I was like, I'm gonna be the last one off. And so everyone gets. I was like, all right, you know, I'm last man. So me and Chewie kind of just. We got everybody working towards the west side, and I always have to do, like, never eat soggy waffles. The west side and of the valley. And they started moving towards the road. And then it was like it was, you know, kind of over because we had a bigger element that had parked up there. The southern element had been suppressed. And same with the middle element of, like. And there's multiple gun trucks. Like, this is a small patrol. And, you know, we walk up, and I just remember looking back and be like, that was it, you know, and. And, you know, last man. And then me and Shoe, we just kind of bounded with each other all the way back to the road, got to the. Back to the road, and they were just like, what the happened out there? And I was like, it's our job, you know, and, you know, and. And it was kind of like one of those weird things where I was just kind of like, beat, you know, just beat. But we still had to get back to the FOB but it was funny. They go, hey, you're not gonna go on front element. And I was like, you sure? I was like, I could take point. And they're like, no, I just need some ammo. It was like my. My team leader, they had fought their way up, you know, with guns. Like, he. They got.50 cal kills, mark 19. I mean, it was. The whole thing was going nuts. And so they were like, you're gonna stay in the middle of the column in An A Ranger. I was like, okay. And so I got in the middle of an A Ranger and my buddy Zaire, he was another the advisor for. I can't remember. It was like third company and they were going down, they were getting hit with RPGs on the way down and, and but clearing the road for us. And so we made it all the way back to the FOB and that was it. That was end of mission. And you know. Yeah, and it was, it was wild. And I found out, you know, I had. Had taken the round through my. Honestly through my leg, but took. Grazed my leg right above my femoral. And when everything was, you know, had the dust had settled, I was back at 10th group, you know, staying at their. Their spot, right? And you know, you know, they were like, hey, you know, vo's didn't make it. And I was like, okay. You know, and, and we're sitting there and we start getting after actions. And then we, we kind of gathered all our after actions together. And then I talked with my guys and, and just on a, on a head count on guys that had got seen confirmed kills. Like confirmed. We had killed 25 plus confirmed kills. Like that was visuals, right line of sight, hit him with a 50, exploded and moved on mark 19s. The, the two I saw get lit up with the Kai was the two I got. The guy that, you know, went to. Everybody was like, hey, you know, just to kind of give a general overview, like how many guys we got hit with. And then we found out later, like later in the day. Coincidence, fate happens. All the top Taliban and Al Qaeda members had been in our valley for like a fucking shura, for like a head leaders meeting without our us knowing it. The intel didn't have it or whatever. And so there was multiple HVT J PAL target, they call them J Pal targets HVT targets all in our valley. Unbeknownst to anyone, they had gotten into the valley. And so when we showed up that morning, they all wanted to flex and all their fighters were in the valley. And so we're like, okay. I think they said it was upwards of like five or six head honchos that are like on the tier one number one list. And we didn't know. We were like, we didn't know, you know. And so they, they wanted the flex. And I believe it was close to 70, over 75 to 100 fighters, if not more giant coordinated attack. They hit the southern element, the middle element, to then cut us off, to overrun us in the patrol. You have better plans Baby, that's right.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

And that's, that's how fast they move in Afghanistan. That was, that was all. You know, that was my third deployment. But we had, you know, I would say we had known that but like you have. When I was told guys I went to Afghanistan, I was like, you have to respect those mountains. Like you have to respect.

[Brent Tucker]

Absolutely.

[Ethan Nagle]

Gosh, all that. Because they will quick. How old, how old were you at this time? I was 22. Wow.

[Brent Tucker]

It's.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. Cuz I turned 21.

[Brent Tucker]

What's going to 22? It's going to take me a second now. My heart rate's been up for about the last 20 minutes. That's a crazy story, man. Crazy story.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, I, I didn't open up about it for almost 11 years or so. And the first time I talked publicly was 20, 21. And then I've only. This is the third time I've only talked about it publicly. I appreciate that it apexed, you know, I'm sure you know that the flow state when you, you can operate in the black when you, it really clicks for you and for me that was that moment. Like everything had worked up. I had had firefights before then Afghanistan where I knew what I was doing. But when it came to that moment, like I felt like every move I made was correct. Every decision I made was on the ball, you know. And also too like because I, I'd had enough experience. Like I had. I ran the game. Not saying I'm special operations or anything like that, but I went from.

[Brent Tucker]

You were that day.

[Ethan Nagle]

I went from conventional warfare, but then it. Working along sf, doing an SF mission.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Ethan Nagle]

And working with. It's like I ran the whole gamut in the snipers into hey, we're doing this combat advisor. So it was like all this knowledge and experience came and it. At that moment you were prepared, you know. And yeah, you know, I was. I could just. You could always do stuff better. But I would. The only thing I said is I wish I would have had my M4 203 instead of my M14 that day. But even the M14, I still got my kills, so I was happy with that. But it was like it was nuts and. But every decision that was made, like I felt like I was in that flow state, like I gave up, came up to Justin. It was just like you almost shut off and you become, you know, it's like not, not in a bad way, but it shuts off. Be like. I remember coming to Justin was like, look at me, just get on get on the radio. Give him a task. Give him something to do, you know, I'm going to take care of this. Like, I'll get him back up and running. Just. Well, but I need you right now. Like, I need you right now, you know, And I remember I came up to him later, and he came up to me and he's like, hey, man, you really, you know, thanks for helping out there. And. And he was talking to another dude, SF dude. I just happened to overhear it. I was. I was walking into their compound over at Camp Atlas, which then turned into Camp Bose. You know, I overheard him. He's like, yeah, man. He's like, I was in a bad way. And he kind of turned to me because he noticed in the corner. Corner of his eye, and he turned to me and he was like, and this guy saved my ass, you know, And I was like, you know, I was like, walking to the chow hall, you know, like, yes, I've come. You know, I was letting him have his thing, but, yeah, he was very respectful. He's a great dude, you know, and it was great. I loved working with the SF because they're super professional. And my buddy Shoe, we've been close to this day. I'm trying to get him on my podcast so I can, like, talk to him. Like, what did you. You know, And. And. And we had. We hadn't seen each other. We were gonna do another operation about two weeks later, didn't happen, and I left country, and I hadn't seen him in, like, 12 years. We kept in touch, and then we got together for beers over and over in. Over. Near Bragg where he was working, and it was like, hey, man, what happened? You know, and. And just learn new things that we didn't know. Even my team, my own team, you know, nobody talks about it a lot. And they fought their way up the valley. You know, those guys, to me, were like heroes because they. They knew what they were getting into. Like, we were in a bad way. They were like, we're gonna. You know, we will level this valley to come get you. And those guys are real here. They were like, we're going in and we're going. It doesn't matter what it takes. We will get them out. And to me, that's always. You know, it comes down to leave no man behind. Like, that was it, like, for me, you don't. You stay, then you stay. And if you need to die, then you die. And that's. That's it. There's no other option, you know, And I. That I take that to heart because like I said, I, I, I just experienced, I lived it. And that's just, that's how it is. And I don't know. Yeah, that's how I felt. And, you know, fire firefighter are the.

[Brent Tucker]

Great equalizer in, in this aspect. Enemy bullets don't care if you're Delta Force. Enemy bullets don't care if you're a Green Beret or, or a Marine infantryman. On, on the enemy side. And on the friendly side, when the firefight starts, it doesn't matter if you're a Green Beret, a Ranger, a Marine infantryman. Every. It's time for everybody to pull their own weight and, and do their job.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, and you can have all the training in the world, but in the day, firefights are the great equalizer, and everybody's just brothers at that point.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. Equals.

[Brent Tucker]

Like you really are.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, yeah. It was, it was like, it was intense, and it was just one of those things where, you know, well, I.

[Brent Tucker]

Said you're all equals. You're all equals as you look at each other. But not everyone is the truth. Not everyone acts equally. You know, some. Some people without the background don't act the way they thought they would, and somebody, you know, Is it who you really are?

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Comes out.

[Ethan Nagle]

Exactly. And. And those guys, man, we had, like, Georgia National Guard boys, and. And they were fighting their way up the valley. Love it, you know? Love it. Those guys were hot. Like, I would take a Guard mortar team over anybody any day. Like, they were phenomenal. Terrible at regulations, but they were phenomenal in a gunfight, you know?

[Brent Tucker]

That's right, boys.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, the Guard boys, you know, and. But yeah, it's. It was. It was. Yeah. And, you know, at the end of the day, too, it was just one of those things where, like, that was my job, you know.

[Tyler]

So when you got out of the military, did you go straight to film school?

[Ethan Nagle]

No, no, no. I. So.

[Tyler]

Oh, you did contracting?

[Ethan Nagle]

I did contracting. So I was, I needed, I needed. I knew enough that I needed to stay in it. I wasn't going to be active duty. I came back and, you know, it was kind of crazy because the Marine Corps doesn't fucking care. So you get back and you do all this stuff and you have, you know, I knew enough. I was like, dude, I got three deployments, two wars, Purple Heart, Archon or, sorry, navcom at the time.

[Tyler]

The Silver Star window of your truck is stacked.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tyler]

If you want.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Get my bumper stickers. Yeah. And so. But when you get back to the dude, no one knows that. So it's like, it's super frustrating. It's fine. I was just like, I just want to get the out. Like, I'm out. Like, MARSOC had come over in, like, October with the monitors, which is like a career monitor thing. And they come. It's a bunch of group, and it's a big fucking hubbub of like, hey, they do drug deals to try to get you what you want. MARSOT came out with operators because they don't really make drug deals. But they were like, hey. I was like, well, fuck it. Let's talk to the MARSOT guys. I want to do contracting. I'm going to go make money. I'm fudgeing done with the Marine Corps. And we talked to the MARSOT guys, and they, you know, I was like, look, you know, I was like, one. I don't want to. I want to have a beard. I don't want to do Marine Corps regulations. I want to deploy. And they're like, yeah, man, like, we want you. And so we talked to him. We're like, so what can you offer us? Like, you know, Because I was like, look, man, you got to have some incentive, like, right. Also, MARSOC was bleeding guys because Marine Corps, infantry, the first four years is your best. Four years, that's it. Like, there's no that, you know, so getting guys to go to MARSOC is like, do I really want to fuck with that? It's still part of the Marine Corps. Green Berets exist. If you know enough about special operations, you're like, that. They jump ship. They go to Green Berets. There's a ton of Marines in the Green Berets, you know, all the sorts of stuff. So it's like, you really got to try. So they. And those guys were great. They're just like, no, man, we can't. They're like, we can offer you a $3,000 extension bonus for another six months in the Marine Corps. I'm like, why would I.

[Tyler]

Three army supply guys are getting that.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. I was like, three grand. And so there was just nothing left. And I was like, ah, it's fine. We're. We're out. And they're like, look. And it was funny, too. We had talked to him and they. The guy came back from, like, his command and they go, just show up. They're like, you don't even have to run. You can run the bare minimum, first class. Pft. They go, we will take you. Just show up. To selection.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

Get through it. Just. And they're like. And obviously you wouldn't run bare minimums, but they're like, you could run bare minimums right now. We've talked to the command, just show up because they just needed guys with the combat experience because they were bleeding guys out, you know, they just, they wouldn't want to stay. Or, you know, the guys that did have a bunch of comment, they're like, why would I. Why would I stay in the Marine Corps? And MARSOC was very new at the time. This is only three years in.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Ethan Nagle]

And they were dealing with a shit ton of their own issues, you know. So, yeah. So I ended up just like, all right, I'm going to jump ship. Got out, got my first contract as a. As a metal. My first one was actually working for George Scientific as a metal detector trainer for counter joint GYDO or counter IED work.

[Brent Tucker]

So you get out and I hate to shorten the story, but I mean, you get out, you do contracting, you know, you're part of brcc, part of nine line. But I like, I really want to talk about the, the Vet TV and the embed actual. Like your trip to Ukraine and that experience. That's a really, a really cool experience and I want to give you some time to talk about that.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it. And that's. Yeah. So I end up getting. I would say it's John slid in into my DMs on LinkedIn and was like, hey, I'm looking for veteran filmmakers, like combat veteran or veteran filmmakers to. Basically, there's a reboot going on at Vet tv. You know, he even tells me, tell that to people. It's Vet TV 2.0. He bought the company. They're kind of rebooting it. They got some more shows coming online.

[Brent Tucker]

And who's John?

[Ethan Nagle]

John is the owner. John Acevedo. He is now the owner. Co. Like, not code. He's the sole owner of Vet tv. So we're, you know, he calls me up, I pitch a show to him. He's like, let's do that. But then he texts me, he's like, hey, I really liked what Marty Scovlin did with Coffee or Die when they went to Afghanistan.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

He's like, we could, you know, have you ever thought about doing that? Or, you know, we could call the show like Embed Actual. And I was like, well, funny you should say that because I have a whole pitch deck. What we pitch to like Fox News or Netflix or whatever. It's a pitch deck. Of like a show idea. So me and Chris Naganuma from Project Leaflet, if you follow him on Instagram, they went to. Sorry, they went to. We had these pitch decks ready to go. So we go, all right, here's the pitch deck. Here's all the ideas we could do. We can go to Ukraine. Because I'd been to Ukraine before to help with aerial recovery group with. Helping evacuate, coordinate the evacuation of orphans from south central Ukraine to Lviv. We set up a little bit of intel network, set up a supply lines from Poland going into Lviv. All this stuff with. Within the first three weeks of the invasion of of Ukraine, we've all. I've always wanted to go back and do like a story because now there's all these amazing combat stories, all the stuff that's going on there. So we known these western fighters that were there called Chosen Company. And Chosen Company is made up of a bunch of former GWAT veterans and, and non. I don't say non GWAs. Technically everyone's the gwat. But like kids that got out in like 21, 20, 22, like, yeah, they were. One guy's an air force mechanic. He's awesome. And he was like doing trench runs into Russian territory. So we're like, let's capture the stories of these guys. We'll. We'll interview them, get their footage and we'll. And then we had a bunch of connections. It was kind of like feeling at work. We could go. Because in Ukraine the battlefield is ever changing. Things get more dangerous, things aren't, you know. So we had one plan and they had to go out the window. So we end up getting linked up with 3rd Assault Brigade, which is a sledgehammer for them. And so they're like, you can come and, and film us with our night assault platoon and then interview them. And then we have footage and we got their footage and we, we cut that into the series. But then we also went towards the front line and we went with a. Went and filmed an Artillery Unit, SA90, British SA90, ripping rounds downrange against Russian, you know, positions. And then that's when one of the shots is like, hey, we have to run back. Because they get hit with counter battery all the time, Russian counter battery. So before we even went to that one spot in the show, they had. Again, it's not in the show, but we were like, hey, we ready to go? Like, we're waiting in Izium to go and view some other artillery units that we're gonna be ripping that day. And he goes, no, we Gotta pivot and go to a different unit. The unit we were about to take, you guys got hit with Russian counter battery and absolutely got slammed. And we had casualties. They got them out, but they're like, so we're not bringing you there. I was like, yeah, makes sense, man. And so, and so we went to a different unit. We're still pretty dangerous because we can get with FPV drones. They're always looking for these artillery units. And when the artillery goes, they do counter battery back. So we end up doing it. We got fortunate where, you know, you know, fortunate they didn't hit us back with counter battery. I've been on the side of 155s as an IED. I don't really care to do it again, you know, but if it happens, it happens. But I, you know, prefer not to. Yeah, it was fun. It was a blast. And then we were hoping to get a, you know, FPV drones that are just killing tanks.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

And so we were trying to get embedded with them, but those are really dangerous to go into. We didn't have enough of a rapport with third assault to go in with them.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Ethan Nagle]

And now then they're like, hey, come back and we'll, we'll take you. I'm like, okay. You know, like, I love to, but, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a lot to get into Ukraine. Not hard, it just takes forever to do because you have to fly into Poland. You have the seven half hour drive to Kiev. From the border, it's like four hours. From Warsaw to the border, it's like a whole thing. It's like 12 hours and then you got to get there and that's another seven and a half to Izium. So we stayed in Keev for a little bit, did the interviews. While we were there, they intercepted five Russian cruise missiles over our head. And so that's in the show. So you can pull that clip up too. And it's just like, we get out and it's just like boom. And it's fireworks in the show. It looks like fireworks.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

And. But when you're underneath it, you, you feel it like, you feel it. It's like rocks. And so they intercepted five of those. We got three of them on film. And that was before we went out to the east. We're like, all right, well, that's a nice little kicker to go out to the east, because when you go out to the east, that's when you start looking at actually going down in the south as well. But we didn't manage to get out to the east and yeah, we filmed what it was like to live in. Those guys, the guys living with the artillery unit, we talked to the guys that are going and doing operations at night. That's a big deal for them because they don't like, they don't have night vision. The Russians don't really have night vision either. Like the. Love to hear it, you know.

[Brent Tucker]

Love to hear it.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. And so they're like, they're like, you know, they're like, it's like Special Forces. They have night vision and they do raids and they have, they, they literally have the advantage at night. But there's very few night vision goggles. So they're like, they're like a specialized platoon within third Assault.

[Brent Tucker]

So like so Chosen Companies as all Americans.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

Group them all together.

[Ethan Nagle]

So I should separate. 3rd Assault Brigade is Ukrainian Chosen Company, is it? We just interviewed them.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Ethan Nagle]

They're currently, I think they're about to go on operations again. But they had done a bunch of trench raids when they were part of like the Legion or something. But they're known as Chosen Company. And the, and the head commander is the. From Iowa. He's a 34th ID.

[Brent Tucker]

Do you feel like for any reason because they're Americans, they have them on a leash A little bit because they're American. Yeah. They let them mix it up. Do they do like, do you feel like they've like, they get, they get treated just like any other company per se.

[Ethan Nagle]

But the thing is, is that unit, the, the Westerners are known to fight way better, especially if they're veterans. They just, they just like, I mean, you know, the Ukrainians fight really well depending on which unit you're with. Most overall Western veterans, especially like guys from our era that are like, they're just willing to go. I mean that's like a dream.

[Tyler]

What happens if you're injured over there? Do they take care of you?

[Ethan Nagle]

No. So that's. They do, but I mean it's like Ukrainian medical stuff.

[Tyler]

So you're not getting any benefits when you get back?

[Ethan Nagle]

No, no, no, there's no, no, you.

[Tyler]

Got no, you got no leg.

[Ethan Nagle]

There's. I interviewed Doc Wolf man and he was a Marine reservist and got over there. He was there when I was there for a few weeks and he went back and he got hit with an anti tank missile in a Humvee and it blew his eyeball out and he got shrapnel. All. Sorry. You know, he's got one eye and he's like, yeah, dude. He's like, I got on that plane and came back home with missing an eye. And he's still doing surgeries here because they just don't have the skill. Like, you know, there's so many guys coming off the front line. They don't have the amount of doctors and the amount of skilled doctors.

[Tyler]

And it makes me wonder, why would you go do that? You know, I'm sure you cover that.

[Ethan Nagle]

And like. And like, look, I understand the draw. Like, it was especially in the beginning of the war, like, guys wanted. They wanted to go and fight, you know? You know, you want to help the. I would say the good guys, but you want to help the good guys. Like, look, they invaded the country. I was there when it happened. When you talk about war crimes, like, this was insane. Like, they were bombing civilian targets indiscriminately. Like, we had that. We were getting these groups of kids out. They had executed the caretakers of this orphanage. And there was one guy in a bus, and he was driving these kids around, trying to get him to safety, but he. It was. It was. He. And then signals intelligence all up. So you don't even know who you're talking to on the other side of this, like, text message and stuff like that. Guacamole. So it's like. And then they had hit the opera house in Maripol. We had guys in Maripol. It was the first time that, like, we had talked to people, and the next day they were dead. So we were talking to commanders in Maripol. This was back in March of 22. He served with my company commander from Iraq in 2006.

[Brent Tucker]

No way.

[Ethan Nagle]

And he was like, hey, this guy is there, you know, he might need some help. Can you guys. What can you do? I was like, well, we'll talk with him. We'll try to get him supplies. We don't know. We're out of Lviv. We're still trying to get our. Our feet under us. We kept talking to him, talking to him. He was a Mariple. And we're like, mariple surrounded. And then next thing we know, no answer. Come to find out he was killed, you know, and. And you just talked to guys like that. And everyone was there to help out in the beginning, during the invasion, you know, and those guys, like, you know, and they cover that, you know, we cover in the Chosen company episode episode two behind. Go to vet TV. Check it out. I believe embed is the discount code 50 off. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Annual subscription. I believe so. Yep. Yep. And then I'll talk to John. If you can put it in, post it. I'm very sure it's embed is the discount code for 50% off. And there's three episodes. First episode is us going in. Second episode is all about chosen company. So it's like a. It's like, it's a mini doc, so it's just them talking to the camera. And I edit the whole thing. And their footage also telegram footage to help tell a story, but a lot of their own GoPro footage of them running trenches, you know, getting blown up, all sorts of crazy. And then the third episode just came out. Is more focused on 3rd Assault Brigade and their mentality and their training on, you know, why they do the things that they do. And where do viewers go to see this? Where is it? Netflix? Yvette TV. Yeah. So go to VetTV.com, you know, behind the paywall streaming service. And like I said, use a discount code, embed. It's 50 off annual subscription, and, you know, go check out the series. It was awesome. Like, we went in, got a bunch of footage, got their footage. It was an incredible experience. But, yeah, it was. It was one of those things I've always wanted to do as a filmmaker. Like watching Restrepo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, like, so immediately like, yeah, now I'm coming out here.

[Brent Tucker]

There's a good account of a CF unit.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

In the.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Yes.

[Ethan Nagle]

Well, my buddies, like I said, their sister company when I was in Afghanistan, ETT, dude, the ETs gotten like 275 firefighters. Like, they were just getting it. Yeah, look, they had fun. Then we talked with them, and they were like, you know, it was awesome. But he's like, but we only saw, like, two guys because it was. It was mountain to mountain.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Ethan Nagle]

They did get into it once. You said they almost overran the perimeter, but.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, there's. There's one thing that, That I hope somehow we're capturing, and that is war is always evolving. And. And you show it in that trailer. The technology side of it is. Is evolving super fast. And it seems like Ukraine is doing a very good job of taking either cots or, you know, evolving that, you know, drones and remote control vehicles and, And. And being successful. And I'm sure they're doing things that. That don't work, and they're figuring out what works, what doesn't work. And I hope we have a finger on that pulse to say, okay, let's. Let's learn from what these guys are doing because they're. They're the ones fighting. Are a near peer.

[Ethan Nagle]

Exactly.

[Brent Tucker]

And winning and.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah. And they're doing very well. The counter to belief, they're crushing the Russians. But right now it's an attrition game and they don't have the bodies, but they are. They are murking Russians like crazy. It's just that Russia can keep throwing bodies at the problem. Yeah, we've interviewed these guys. They have. There's machine gunners that have got 40 kills in one go. And the only thing is they run out of ammunition and all it takes is two or three Russians get through. Right. And then they get the position and then they hold it and they're just willing to throw bodies at the problem. By the way, they do not care about their soldiers, the Russians. So it's like this whole thing of like, oh, they want the war, they don't care. They'll pull bodies off and they'll throw you right into the meat grinder and what's that.

[Brent Tucker]

But that will eventually be a problem. Vietnam was a problem, and it's kind of already a problem. It was a bigger problem for us because of free speech and we're a democracy and you can come out and say things without getting killed over it.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

But Russia will get tired of sending their sons to war to die for nothing.

[Ethan Nagle]

And that's the. And that's the crazy part. So when you talk about. When we interview these guys and the Ukrainians are all in. And again, the technology side of the house, some of these veterans are coming back that are. And talking to the Marine Corps now with the admin changeover, the administration, I believe, and hopefully the generals are listening because a lot of the time for the last two to three years, they weren't listening to the guys coming back. They're like us. They're like, you need to. We need to change SOP because right now those at the 500 FPV is more basically more effective than a hundred thousand, not say a jab. Javelins are very effective. But like.

[Brent Tucker]

And what's an fpv?

[Ethan Nagle]

So sorry. The FPV drones. It's a racing drone. They strike a bomb to. And it's wild. And so they were doing drone droppers in the beginning, which is just regular drones. They just drop a grenade down. The FPVS have revolutionized everything. So you get a kid, they'll make. Then they're only $500 if they had a pop. So you give a kid four, and they do they'll go on a mission, give 40 of them to one guy. That's like his mission for three days. He just launches 40 basically guided missiles into the enemy, and then they go back and that. But they're launching hundreds and thousands or hundreds and hundreds of these about every week. And. And they've created AI so they can launch an FPV drone. It'll lose. Actually lose track of the vehicle. It'll reattach, it'll find a better angle, and then it'll shoot down on top of it without any human interaction. So the stuff they're developing, by the way, this is all stuff like basically lance corporals or E3s with a bunch of. Of. Of ammunition, a little bit of money, and all the explosives in the world. Like, so the Western guys, Ryan, he's just like. He'd call us at the States and we text back and forth, and he's like, hey, can we get EOD to tell us how much the blast radius of this will do? Like, why? He's like, yeah, we got a bunch of comp B or whatever. We're throwing in these big, basically monster cans with, like, detonators, and we're throwing them into trenches. We got to see what the overpressure is so we don't kill our own guys. So they're throwing, like, giant monster cans with, like, whatever comp B or whatever it is inside of Russian trenches because they're running out of grenades, but they can make their own grenades. I mean, what do we. You know, I mean, the infantry, that's amazing. It's like, hey, we're just going to adapt and improvise, and it's super effective. And even when it comes to technology and development on all these drones and whatever that's happening, they're way ahead of us. I know we have the bigger the budget. We got all this fancy shit. It doesn't matter.

[Brent Tucker]

It takes us too long. It takes us three years, three to five years, actually, to usually take with our process to take something from fielding something to. To. To getting it in the hands of boys, so of our boys. So drones get better every six months. We have to find a way around that.

[Ethan Nagle]

Oh, and what's the thing, too, is, like I said there, they figure it out and like, Lockheed Martin sent over their switchblades. Those are like 50 grand a piece, right? They throw them into the. They don't even fucking care about them. They're like, yeah, we don't want them. So we talked about, like, hey, do you guys use the switchblades? And they're like, no, they're like, we can go get an FPV drone for 500 bucks. We'll rather spend the money on that. And we get 40 of them. And they're effective. And I can take any one of us, we teach for like five days. And now you're on the front line drop, you know, running FPV drones in the into T70 72 tanks. And it's incredibly effective. Like, it's insanely. It's a hauntingly effective. And a lot of guys are talking about how they countering these. You know, there's. And there's other tactics too. When you talk about like snipers, dude. Like, well, because they don't have, they don't. The night vision, thermal stuff. So they don't do a lot of night operations because guys don't have a night vision. But also if there's thermal moving in a certain area, they just drop artillery on it. So, like being all high speed and being like, oh, I'm gonna sneak in. No, you're not. Like, you're gonna get absolutely torn apart. And so it's just evolving and how you're utilizing like snipers. So snipers are used a different way. Drones are used in another way. Electronic warfare is used in another way. Like, it's just adapting to what we're doing. Trench warfare, like, dude, it's still about violence of action. You know, Ryan was talking about that. And it's something that we're taught in the Marine Corps and the infantry too. Don't stop. So when you hit a trench, you keep going and you don't stop until you finish the trench. And that's the issue they have with some of the Ukrainians that they're talking about. They're like, look, they'll wait, they'll get to the front of a trench, about to assault it, and they'll wait for a command. The Western fighters are teaching them, don't do that. You get to the open, you go, you keep moving, you keep throwing grenades, you keep going. And so that's what. Hopefully we get across an embed with the chosen company guys in the series that we made is that it shows the western fighting being implemented into peer to peer conflict in the Eastern Bloc. And it's, it's very effective. And it's, it's in. These guys are, dude, they're committed to the cause. Ukraine's their country now. You know, they got, they got Ukrainian girl, you know, girlfriends, One guy's got a kid on the way. Actually, a few of them have kids on the way, you know, And Ukraine. I hate. I love. I hate to say it. I love to say it. It's a phenomenal country. It's beautiful. It looks like the Midwest. It literally does. We drove basically the extent of the country, and it didn't quit. Click for me that they said it was the breadbasket of the world or, like, of that region. And it looks like you're driving through Wisconsin and food's amazing. The people are amazing. They have that eastern block hard look. But then you talk to them, and they're super nice, so it's not like they're too. You just like, hey, how you doing? They're like, oh, hey. But as they're walking down the street, they just, like, look hard, you know, but super accommodating. Amazing cost of living. It's amazing. Like, it's. It's a great spot, but, you know, it's a. It's a. It's a awesome experience to go do that. We hope to go back again and do it, but. Yeah. So if you can check out embed actual on Vet TV discount code. Embed for 50 off annual subscription.

[Tyler]

If it's not. If it's not a discount code, it will be.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. We'll put the right one.

[Tyler]

You said it so many times.

[Ethan Nagle]

I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We need to make our money back.

[Brent Tucker]

Ethan, I can't thank you enough for coming on, telling your story. You know, what you've done for our country, what you continue to do by showing these stories is. Is also important. Thank you so much. Real quick. You also do a podcast yourself. Tell them about that and we'll wrap up.

[Ethan Nagle]

Yep. Into the Breach at Into the breach show on YouTube, but Into the Breach on YouTube, on Spotify. I'm gonna get on Apple podcasts, all the other stuff, but end of the breach, go check it out. It'd be amazing. You guys like and subscribe. Awesome. I appreciate you guys having me come on here. We'd love to have you guys on mine, obviously, but. Yeah, we just started up in January. It's moving, but telling stories of not only veterans, but guys that have done really fun stuff, but also just hanging with the boys as well, so.

[Brent Tucker]

Exactly. That's what it's about. When you're not getting out of here that easy, you got to give us a funny story.

[Ethan Nagle]

Oh, my God. All right, so we were in Iraq. We're watching. We're in this house that was known to get hit every once in a while, but we took it over all the time. That's why I hit with the ambushed. Okay. So we were there one day and I. Me as a dipshit, as a. As a private lance corporal, I moved into the other room. But I was only gonna go check on my buddy real quick to say hi and then go back into the main room. But I left my. My M16A4 in that room, right? So I. I was like. I walk in, I was gonna say hi, turn around, go back in, because you don't. You obviously don't want to leave your rifle. So I walk in and my buddy Guthrie is sitting on the. On a. Basically like a chair slash bed or whatever. And he's watching tv. I'm like, hey, man, what are you watching? He's like, oh, dude. The Iraqi Swimsuit Channel. I was like, oh, fuck. And so I sat down.

[Brent Tucker]

Not sure that's something I want to watch, but go ahead.

[Ethan Nagle]

Surprisingly, it was actually pretty good. They were actually lean, sexy looking Iraqi women. Really? And so we were. We were watching it and I was like, this is pretty cool. He's like, yeah, it's pretty sweet, right? Totally.

[Brent Tucker]

For.

[Ethan Nagle]

You know, like an idiot. Left my rifle in the other room. So did he. You know, he's not expected to get, like, sucked into the tv. So we're sitting there watching, and immediately we get ambushed. The car came down, down the road, started lighting this room up, right? Lighting up the building.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Ethan Nagle]

We take off, we run, and we. We get stuck in the doorway like a. Like a cartoon, right? We get stuck with all our gear.

[Brent Tucker]

We can.

[Ethan Nagle]

Keystone Cops. We're trying to, like, get out, and rounds are ripping through the. Through the thing. And it got to the point where we were like. It was so crazy. It was like, how the fuck can we not get through this door? And we look at each other. We started laughing. Like we said, we're like, no fucking way is this happening right now? And then we finally bust out. He slides across the door into his room. I slide into mine, jump into the room, the main room that we're all kind of overwatching. And rounds are just kicking all over the room because they're shooting right through the. Right through the window. Another funny part of that. I was like, oh, my God. And then we few. My guys returned fire. It was pretty quick. And it started fast, and it Fast. And then we were all laughing and we turned the corner in the. In the building. We, like, started walking. I was like, everybody cool? There's like these three bullet holes in the back window. I'm like, what the fuck's that for? And my, my, my team leader, actually my squad leader was laughing. I was like, what? He's like, yeah. So they started firing. I shot the window, thinking it was going to shatter like in the movies. And he shoots up and he just puts three rounds. And he's like, he's like, I couldn't see anything cuz it webbed it. So then he was like. And then they took off.

[Brent Tucker]

That was a dang, you Hollywood, you're screwing up.

[Ethan Nagle]

Shot it, think it was going to shatter and he'll start lighting them up. And so anyways, I got stuck in a doorway and my team leader couldn't shoot through a window or break a window. So that's off the top of my head. I love.