← The Team House
The Team House
1000+ Missions with the 75th Ranger Regiment | Nicholas Moore (throwback episode)
02:26:43
original air date - 9/30/22 This episode dives deep into the combat career of Ranger Nicholas Moore, tracing his journey from early deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq to some of the most significant operations of the post-9/11 era. He recounts the...
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- [00:00]
Jack
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- [00:39]
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- [01:14]
David Bark
The Team House with your hosts, Jack.
- [01:18]
Nicholas Moore
Murphy and David Bark.
- [01:26]
Jack
Hey guys. Welcome to episode 165 of the Team House. We're here tonight with Nicholas Moore. He is the author of Run to the Sound of Guns. He served in 2nd Ranger Battalion from the ranks of private to platoon sergeant, over a ousand missions and 13 combat deployments where he was wounded. He was involved in some very significant operations from Jessica lynch to extortion 17 to Operation Red Wings, the recovery to numerous other things that we'll get into tonight. So Nicholas, thank you for joining us.
- [01:59]
Nicholas Moore
Oh, thanks for having me.
- [02:01]
Jack
Absolutely, dude. Really appreciate you taking some some of your Friday to speak with us.
- [02:08]
Nicholas Moore
No worries.
- [02:09]
Jack
So let's start off, man. Start. We'll start start at the beginning, the beginning of the story. If you could tell us a little bit about sort of where you grew up and why you ended up in the military and why in Ranger battalion.
- [02:23]
Nicholas Moore
So I grew up in Newton, Kansas and you know, just trying to figure out, you know, what to do. And I thought, you know, college sucks, but if I join the army and I want to go to school and, you know, I serve, then I can don't have to take a student loan and I can go and it's all good. And, you know, some of us do it and end up going to school, and some of us don't, and we just end up staying in the military. But the. The whole thing was, you know, I had a recruiter, you know, that just based on the lifestyle that we had, you know, playing sports and being active and out outdoor activities, hunting, fishing, all that stuff. He goes, man, you'll. You guys love the army, but you'll never be happy if you don't pursue the. The Ranger Regiment. And so, you know, that was kind of, well, what's that? And, you know, so you do a little bit of research, and you're like, okay, well, that's definitely what I want to do. And so. So, you know, you go do it. And, you know, there's the old. The old mantra that goes with it, you know, as you continue to be in the Ranger Regiment, what have you done for the Ranger Regiment today? So, you know, there's always that little aspect, you know, as your career progresses through, you know, it's always trying to better, you know, the. The organization as a whole.
- [03:36]
David Bark
Yeah. Did you do. Was any of your family in the military? Was it something that you had been exposed to earlier than that, like, or is it just kind of. It seemed pragmatic at the time.
- [03:49]
Nicholas Moore
No, my grandfather's. Both. Both my grandfathers served in World War II. And then, you know, we've had, you know, family members in the military, but mostly it's always been in the Navy. And I had an aunt who served in the Air Force back In the late 70s, I think. And, you know, but no, nobody really in the army except for my grandfather's brothers. You know, they were in the army in World War II. But, you know, it's. We're basically a Navy family. And then me and my brother decided we were both going to join the army and be Rangers. And, you know, so it was fun, you know, at that part of it. My grandpa didn't talk to me for, like, three weeks because he was mad, really. We didn't join the Navy.
- [04:33]
David Bark
Okay.
- [04:36]
Nicholas Moore
So how.
- [04:37]
Jack
So you and your brother, did you, like, have the same, like, entry date into the Army? I mean, was it that close?
- [04:41]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, we're. We're identical twins. So we graduated school, went through basic training, airborne school, RIP and then got stationed together. So we did it all together all the way until, I think, 0405. And then he went down to his wife, got restationed to Martin, army at Fort Benning. And so he went down to be a RIP Instructor And. And that's kind of where our careers split apart. I stayed at second, and then he moved down to third for a while, and then, you know, went. Did some time in the big army and finished his career as an ROTC instructor at the University of Kansas.
- [05:23]
Jack
What, at that time, just to hit it up a little bit, going through basic training, airborne school. What was the rip experience like? But that was 1999. Pre. Pre 911, before the war kicked off. What was it like going through RIP during that time frame?
- [05:40]
Nicholas Moore
You know, it's. I don't know if it's better or worse, because I think about it, and you're like, God, would I want to sit and do that for eight weeks?
- [05:50]
David Bark
The whole rasp.
- [05:50]
Nicholas Moore
You know, it was. Yeah, the whole rasp thing. It's like, wow. No, but it would. I had a. I had a lot of fun. There wasn't really a lot of my Ranger experiences that I didn't like. You know, some of them good, some of them bad, but they're all memories and, you know, just. Just kind of fun. You know, it's always that. That mental challenge through some of the things, you know, is, can I make it to the end? And, you know, when you do, you're. You're a better human for it, and you're a better Ranger all the way around. And you have, you know, a starting point to learn what suck is.
- [06:25]
David Bark
Yeah. So you get out of RIP and. And you go to the best company in the best battalion. Right. B 275. Right.
- [06:38]
Nicholas Moore
Yep. B 27 went to first platoon. My brother went to third. And so that was always fun. I mean, it was always, you know, all the way up until we both got our tabs, you know, it was just, you know, who's got the better twin? And they were always putting us, pitting us against each other. And so it was, you know, nothing changed from school or, you know, sports. And so it's just, you know, so 275.
- [07:03]
Jack
Something different between 275 and 375. And I believe 175 is. You guys all have platoon names. And three seven.
- [07:12]
Nicholas Moore
Not every platoon, but yeah.
- [07:13]
Jack
And 375. I think my platoon was the only one that had a name. But I'd like to hear what your platoon name was and how it got that name.
- [07:24]
Nicholas Moore
Well, One Bravo, it was. Eventually it became the Sea Bass.
- [07:27]
Jack
Okay.
- [07:28]
Nicholas Moore
And it was just, you know, is that the same? Right. We. They tagged it right at, you know, Afghanistan was just cranking off, and Austin Powers had just Come out. And it was, you know, our Pl was calling us a bunch of mutant sea bass. And so it just kind of stuck. And so that was that. And then, you know, I was in 1 Bravo till I till oath in the middle of 03. And then I went over to 3 Charlie and stayed there till 08.
- [08:01]
David Bark
So you. You actually were in Ranger School during 9 11, right?
- [08:08]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah.
- [08:09]
David Bark
So how did that.
- [08:10]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, that was for you?
- [08:11]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [08:13]
Nicholas Moore
You know, it's kind of one of those things. You know, sometimes you. You're like, now this can't really be happening. And we just thought it was some kind of weird, you know, false motivational thing that the. Our eyes were doing. We weren't, you know, nobody was really sure if it was something that everybody was, you know, accustomed to in every class that, you know, oh, you gotta hurry up, because, you know, the army, the country's going to war, and all this stuff. But what kind of struck at home was, you know, when they came out and they asked people if they had family that worked at World Trade Centers. And, you know, you kind of get the weird look like, why are you asking that? And then, you know, 45 minutes or so later, you know, hey, does anybody have parents that work at the Pentagon? And, you know, everybody's like, why would I raise my hand? I don't want to get singled out for something. And, you know, then they're kind of like, hey, no, this is, you know, serious. And they realized that we weren't believing them, and so they kind of called a couple of guys to go forward and just kind of see the news feed on the. On a TV and for about five minutes, and then kind of came back and said, hey, they're not lying. It's. This is real. And so we had one guy raise his hand and say, yeah, my dad works at the Pentagon. And, you know, they said, well, you need to call him. And so that really messed with him. It was a kid out of 375, and luckily his dad was out of the office. I think he was at Fort Lee, Virginia that day. But he, you know, when he came back to work on the 12th, he didn't have an office. Holy.
- [09:42]
David Bark
Yeah. And then how much. So how far into Ranger school were you and how much longer did you have to go and how did that affect Ranger school?
- [09:53]
Nicholas Moore
Well, you know, you. We're basically day two.
- [09:57]
David Bark
Okay.
- [09:58]
Nicholas Moore
Oh, wow.
- [09:58]
Jack
Oh, wow.
- [09:59]
Nicholas Moore
So, you know, we've just done the PT test, and that morning we just finished the. The five mile run. And so was. It was interesting because you always hear the stories of guys, you know, you got to get, you know, 70 of your patrols, you got to pass? Well, I mean, at that point, they were. You know, the RI's knew the writing on the wall and that. So the whole point was to get the guys back to the units as fast as possible. So you pass one patrol and you never got another one.
- [10:29]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [10:31]
Nicholas Moore
So, you know, and then became guys that failed patrols. You know, was putting the right guys in positions to help them get the next patrol to pass so that they could go on to the next phase so that guys aren't stuck, you know, playing the how many months can I be in Ranger school game.
- [10:48]
David Bark
Right.
- [10:50]
Nicholas Moore
And graduate and then get back to your units because we gotta go do business.
- [10:55]
David Bark
Right? Yeah. Did you have any of those guys in when you were. When you were doing a jack where they just assign, like, four. Four bat guys to him and just say, he's going to pass this patrol, so you basically don't let him make any decisions?
- [11:10]
Jack
I probably was that guy going through his, like, as an E2. Had been in Battalion for, like, two months. I think I was that guy.
- [11:19]
David Bark
Yeah. Yeah. No, but where. Where they basically give you the reins and say, get this guy through this patrol.
- [11:26]
Nicholas Moore
Right. You know, it's not the pick on people, but it's usually the. The young lieutenants that just still trying feet underneath them as, you know what it's like to be a leader. And. And, you know, we've got, you know, guys from the Ranger regiment, been there 12, 18 months. You know, some guys that got hurt, you know, maybe 24 months of experience, and they kind of understand the game. So, you know, let's just turn them loose and.
- [11:48]
David Bark
Yeah. So you were. You were in Ranger school when the first actions when. When Afghanistan kicked off, right? Like, the.
- [11:59]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, we were. Yeah, we were just finishing up mountains when. When everything kicked off and we were getting graded patrols and who was going to go to Florida. And it just happened to be the night that 375 jumped on Rhino and the Ris wheeled the TV card out and said, hey, check this out. And all the guys from 375 are crying, and the guys from first and second are laughing, and the guys from third are like, why are you. You know, why are you laughing? It's not funny. We're not a part of this. And it's like, well, guess what? Our battalions haven't gone yet.
- [12:29]
David Bark
Yeah. Yeah. Were you worried that. That it was going to be like another.
- [12:35]
Nicholas Moore
I'm gonna miss the war, bro?
- [12:36]
David Bark
Yeah, that it was going to be like Desert Storm. It was going to be over before you were out of Ranger school.
- [12:41]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, there was a lot of us that were, you know, it was going to be the traditional, like Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, where it's going to be over as fast as it started and, you know, you're going to miss it all and, but, you know, when you, when you start thinking about the, the amount of time that it was going to take to, to put everything over there, you know, and get it in place, it was just a matter of, you know, when, when's it going to be our turn and is there going to be anything left? Because regiment's going to rotate everybody through at least once and.
- [13:11]
David Bark
Right, right. So you graduate Ranger school and how, how was your reception when you got back to second bat? What was going on at the time?
- [13:22]
Nicholas Moore
Oh, everybody has just gotten back from Yakima, so it's kind of. I got back like 24 hours before the battalion rolled back in from doing, you know, all the big fun stuff over in Yakima and, you know, was just kind of figuring out, you know, how the rotation was going to work because, you know, 175 was just gearing up to go. And so we were trying to figure out what our training schedule was going to be and what it was going to look like. And then when was our window going to come to, to go and was there still going to be anything to do when we got there? Yeah, you know, and then 20 years later, it's still going on.
- [13:56]
David Bark
Yeah. Yeah.
- [13:59]
Jack
So when did you get the word that you guys were heading over and like, what, what was it like jockeying up for that deployment, getting ready to go out the door?
- [14:07]
Nicholas Moore
We got kind of got the word that we were still going to get to go. It's probably late November, December. You know, 175 is going to go and then it's going to be our turn to go and, you know, might be the only deployment that we get in Afghanistan, but, you know, it's. As it stands right now, you know, we still had to go do rotary wing bilats and all the training that, you know, was normally, you know, gearing up for, for all that stuff. And so, you know, we did and then BCO Biko led the, the push for 2nd Battalion because at that time it was basically, you know, there was only the need for like, basically one company. We were still sitting, you know, split between Kandahar and Bagram, and that was about it. And then, you know, everybody realized that this was gonna be the long fight. And so then we started kind of pushing out and doing the expansion for the American footprint and setting up bases and. And all that stuff. And that's kind of what we ended up doing. Our first deployment and had been there for, oh, I don't know, maybe a month or so. They rolled in with the rest of the battalion. So AO and CO came in and. And kind of helped expand the. The footprint and all the. The fun. So what was, you know, like. Yeah, post Taku Guar, Post Taku Gar, and, you know, Operation Anaconda, there really was nothing going on in Afghanistan. You know, it was basically, you know, when you look at what was going on, you know, you hear about 175 in Roberts Ridge and then 375s jumping on Rhino and doing all that stuff. You know, we're going over, you know, it's going to be game on. It's spring, summer, and everybody's going to be fighting. And that was, you know, complete opposite. You know, they were just. As much as we were trying to feel out, you know, what was going on with the Taliban, you know, they're kind of sitting back on the border and just watching, you know, how we're doing business. Yeah.
- [16:06]
Jack
So that first deployment was, like, pretty relatively quiet at the time.
- [16:10]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, I mean, we did one. There was one operation where, you know, they got it. The platoon got in a gunfight. I was on a.50 cal, so I didn't. Didn't get to be, you know, on the ground for that one. But it was one engagement, lasted five seconds, and that was it. Yeah. So the deployment was just setting up bases and driving around Afghanistan and Humvees.
- [16:34]
David Bark
Oh, yeah, you mentioned. I forgot you mentioned in your book that you actually had a. A guide, a tourist guide, and a Ranger who had been a Russian in Afghanistan.
- [16:49]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, there was a kid in. Well, not a kid, but, you know, there was a guy in therpeltoon that was. I believe he was Ukrainian, but, you know, it was part of the Soviet bloc at the time. And he was like, 18, 19, and got conscripted into the Red army, and, you know, he spent a year in Afghanistan in like, 88, 89, right. When they were shutting it down. But it was really cool because, you know, at the time, you know, he could tell you what everything was on. On Bagram, you know, all the remnants of what was left. So that was. I mean, for a history lesson, that was kind of cool.
- [17:19]
David Bark
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [17:21]
Jack
It's pretty surreal.
- [17:22]
Nicholas Moore
So.
- [17:22]
David Bark
So that was sort of your Your first trip, it was just, you know, setting the footprint. There wasn't a lot of activity. What happened then after that you went back and reset and what was your kind of time between the deployments looking like at this point?
- [17:39]
Nicholas Moore
You know, so we, we went back and reset. And that was kind of when everybody was thinking that, you know, this is basically a wrap up and you know, we're, we're not going to be involved in this anymore. But you know, all the battalions got at least one deployment and you know, 375 came back over and ripped us. And you know, so when it came time, you know, throughout the year that it was, we were going to at least go one more time, it was, you know, Iraq was ramping up and so it was like, okay, well who's going to go to Afghanistan? And so Charlie Company got picked to go to Afghanistan. And the whole preface was for them to go was to shut down the special ops, you know, footprint over there. And then kind of if things did crank off in Iraq, then they were going to join us over in Iraq. And you know, they ended up staying for six months. You know, they did their three month deployment plus the Iraq and you know, and stuff. So they got stuck in Afghanistan for six months. So let's just say Manning retention and Charlie Company was terrible after everybody got home.
- [18:39]
David Bark
Yeah, yeah. So then you guys were working up toward, towards the invasion of Iraq. Right. Which was that, that was March of 2003. So were you guys part of that initial invasion or did you get to shortly after it?
- [18:57]
Nicholas Moore
We, the, the battalion was infilling, you know, shortly before everything cranked off. But we didn't actually put wheels down, you know, over there until the night that it officially cranked off because we got, I had a bird. We are bird broke in Germany. You know, it's always kind of one of those, those fun things or you know, riding in on the C17, you got your gas mask strapped to your hip and you're wearing your mop suit.
- [19:26]
David Bark
Right, Right. So can you tell us a little bit about what a mop suit is for the people who might not be familiar with it?
- [19:35]
Nicholas Moore
It's a chemical suit that you have to wear and you know, it's a charcoal lined suit and for gas and biological weapons and stuff. It's going to help keep it off your skin. And they're terrible to wear.
- [19:49]
David Bark
Yeah, they, they're like hot and they're.
- [19:51]
Nicholas Moore
Hot in the daylight and cold in the at night.
- [19:53]
David Bark
Yeah, yeah. They trap air. They're basically like sweats like the plastic suits that you used to wear for wrestling or whatever, like they're not comfortable at all.
- [20:03]
Nicholas Moore
No.
- [20:03]
David Bark
Yeah. So when you guys, because your bird got hung up in, in Germany, when you landed for the invasion, did you guys go to Saudi or did you go, did you go someplace else for. Since you were.
- [20:19]
Nicholas Moore
No, we landed in Saudi.
- [20:20]
David Bark
Okay. Yeah.
- [20:23]
Nicholas Moore
So, you know, every, everywhere where the, the special ops footprint was during Desert Storm is the same place that we went to and you know, basically, basically unloaded and then just got everything set. And I think within a couple of days we were running cross border ops out in the West.
- [20:39]
David Bark
Yeah. And so then what was that like for you, like moving into, you know, from Saudi into Iraq. And what kind of vehicles were you guys in? And, and what were those operations?
- [20:49]
Nicholas Moore
You know, we're running? The light, the soft skin, you know, Humvee gun trucks. We'd skin the roofs off and taking the windows out, which was stupid because we caught one of the sandstorms right after it happened. And I know purple team got caught out in it in the trucks and no windshields and they're trying to hold MRE boxes up over their face to keep rocks from blowing in. And you know, nobody can see anything, so they're stuck sitting out there in it until the sun comes up and then they can at least try and attempt to get back. And so it was interesting. You know, we had 550 cord from all the, the tents to the latrines and to the chow hall so the guys could follow the string and, and you know, walk around in the brown out.
- [21:30]
David Bark
Yeah, yeah, those sandstorms were something else out there. And then. So how long was your trip to Iraq and like where it was, did anything particularly notable happen during, during your tour there?
- [21:47]
Nicholas Moore
Not, not in the first part of it. You know, until everything came down for, for us to do the Jessica lynch rescue. And we had just rolled in off like a 24 hour op to go tie in with 375 and help them come back from H1 when they, where they jumped in and then bring their vehicle convoys back. So we drove out, tied in with them, and then brought this like five mile long convoy back across the border. And you know, we were rolling in dog tired and the commander comes out of his tent and he's like, hey, pack your stuff, we're leaving in three hours and we're gonna go do this. And I was like, oh, that's funny. And seriously folks. Yeah, I was stupid. E4. What do I know that the commander's not just you know, not being a jerk and trying to get guys to have some kind of false motivation because, you know, we, you know, get in dog tired and throw down on the cot and start cleaning your rifle and squad leader comes back and he's like, no, pack your stuff because we're out of here.
- [22:47]
David Bark
Yeah. And were you guys aware of Jessica lynch, of that whole situation at the time, or was the mission.
- [22:53]
Nicholas Moore
No, I mean, no, we hadn't really gotten any. I mean, we kind of got like a little brief of it. But the, the kind of, the, this, you know, kind of the, the, the awe of the whole thing was like, how in the heck does a maintenance company get ahead of the front line? Yeah, you know, it's like the, the unfathomable, you know, how does this happen? It's, you know, we start kind of spitballing this whole thing and you start, you know, talking to some of the maintenance units that are out there. And they just, you know, at the time, they weren't equipped with night vision at the time. They're still driving, you know, blackout lights. And the way that, you know, that everybody has since World War II, it's just slow moving and trying to navigate. You know, only the combat arms units have night vision because that's the priority. Right. So it was just kind of like, how does this even happen?
- [23:46]
David Bark
Yeah. And so what was, what was the mission as, as it was brief to you guys, what was your role and what was the overall effort.
- [23:57]
Nicholas Moore
We were gonna set in as far as Bravo Company's part of it. We were gonna infill on Marine Corps 46s on the west side of Nazarea, kind of on this flat. Looked like a, kind of a trash pit area on the west side of town. And then we were just going to run in a few blocks off the desert and establish blocking positions around the, the hospital. While 175, a company from 175 was going to skirt all the way around on the east and then come in from the north and then bring in the, you know, the big guns on the trucks and just basically, you know, lock it all down until we had gotten her out and gotten confirmation and recovery of everybody else that was off those trucks. And I was, we were only on the ground for like three and a half hours and it was all done. Yeah, I mean, by the time the seals came in on the hospital and did the whole, you know, recovery of her, we had just basically put the blocking positions on the ground. We hadn't even gotten them established yet as far as how fast that that whole thing happened. It was a matter of just moments.
- [25:04]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [25:04]
Nicholas Moore
And because, you know, but it was fun, you know, it was fun to be a part of it. And you know, like I, we were saying earlier, this is, you know, there's all these things, it's just another day at the office until you get later in life and then you start talking to people about it and it's like, wow, you know, it's kind of a historic, you know, event that we got to be a part of. You know, first successful POW rescue in over 40 years.
- [25:32]
David Bark
Yeah. Yeah. And then what happened in terms of recovering the bodies? Were, were you guys part of that?
- [25:41]
Nicholas Moore
No, that was 175 with, you know, their guys on the trucks. They recovered them and then they ground X, filled them out on their, on the Humvees. And so we just established, you know, maintained blocking positions and stuff until, you know, that they were done and, and they had exfilled the trucks and then we pushed out for X fill on the 46s and you know, got back on the on the air base there in Nazarea and you know, high fives and handshakes and it was all good. And you know, go find your friends in 175 and see how the, everything went on their aspect of it when they rolled back in.
- [26:17]
David Bark
Yeah. And how, I mean, I can't imagine that, that, that, that was. Well, of course it wasn't pleasant, but was it, was it pretty harrowing for them because those, those bodies were in shallow graves. Right?
- [26:32]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah.
- [26:33]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [26:33]
Nicholas Moore
And it was, you know, they, they said it wasn't, it wasn't pretty.
- [26:38]
David Bark
Yeah, yeah.
- [26:39]
Nicholas Moore
And I could only imagine, you know.
- [26:41]
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- [28:07]
Nicholas Moore
When you're a pro, you gotta do a little bit of everything. A little, a little and even a little. And it helps to have something that works as hard as you do.
- [28:19]
David Bark
That's why Valspar has durable, high coverage.
- [28:22]
Nicholas Moore
Paint for every job. Every time made.
- [28:25]
David Bark
For more Valspar pros, head to Lowe's today and talk to a pro rep about saving time and money on your next job with Valspar.
- [28:32]
Nicholas Moore
Signature paint exclusions apply. See valsparpro.com for details later. Seeing some of the things that I've seen later on, it's just, it's not fun.
- [28:44]
David Bark
Yeah. So was there anything else that happened during that trip to Iraq that was notable?
- [28:55]
Nicholas Moore
We did, you know, Operation Reindeer, which was a, the, the true, you know, the, the true Ranger mission. Smash everything, kill everyone, you know, destroy it all and then, you know, come out high fiving and, and handshaking at the end. We had our first wounded in action on that, on that deployment of team leader from second, second squad got hit with an RPG and lost his lower left leg. So, you know, other than that, it was, it was a, you know, it was a great traditional, you know, typical Ranger training op, you know. Do you remember everything?
- [29:42]
David Bark
Oh, I'm sorry, but do you remember any, many of the details of Operation Reindeer in terms of like who you were after and sort of what, what, how it was going to go down?
- [29:53]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, so what, what it came, came down to was that there was a, a second collection that had, you know, large size force was kind of out training in the, in the desert kind of northwest Afghan or Iraq. And it was just basically, you know, it was like 80 to 120 is what intel was, was putting on that. It was, and you know, you could tell they were holding formations and they were doing training and, and things like that. And so it was, you know, who could hit this first. And you know, this is at the big command level and this is, you know, what's been filtered down through the company commander at the time was that it was in the 101st AO or area of operation, and they were going to take like, a week to plan it out. And that didn't make, you know, the powers that be happy. And so it kind of came to the special upside, and, you know, we just said, well, we can hit it tomorrow. And so we, you know, just work through our normal op cycle and planned it out, rehearsed it, and, you know, it. It basically, other than Matt getting hurt, you know, it worked, you know, the same way it does in training. But even to that part, you know, we train, you know, casually play and all that stuff, so. Just sucked that, you know, it would actually happen. Sure.
- [31:23]
Jack
So, I mean, that's a pretty sizable force on that target.
- [31:27]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah. Yeah, it was the. I don't. The exact count. I don't remember exactly the number, but, you know, it was over 80. So first and second came in on Hilos and. And third had launched basically about 10 hours before the half. The. The helo package launched and. And they drove up on trucks. They were going to do the backside blocking and set up the fart for the little birds and. And all the stuff. And so then they, you know, after we exfilled the half, then they stayed and kind of did the bda, the battle damage assessment afterwards, and gave a rough count and, you know, handed the objective over to the 101st when they. They came in to take control of it. And so it was kind of interesting when they came back, you know, kind of get the picture of, you know, what it looked like in the daylight.
- [32:22]
David Bark
Yeah, So. So after that, then it was back home. You become a team leader, or were.
- [32:37]
Nicholas Moore
You over to Charlie Company and took. Took a fire team over in Charlie Company, and then we did the. The winter surge in 03 to Afghanistan. We walked around in the mountains for six weeks. We always call it mountain phase research for those of us that were there.
- [32:54]
David Bark
And can you tell us about that? What was. Was it similar to your first deployment to Afghanistan or was it completely different?
- [33:05]
Nicholas Moore
I was different because we were up in the Konar and in the Pest River Valley.
- [33:09]
Jack
This is that big surge. This is the big surge Wesley Morgan writes about, isn't it?
- [33:14]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. Yeah. So we were, you know, kind of expanding the footprint and just kind of getting into the mountains to kind of chase down some of the rat lines that people were, you know, Taliban fighters were using to. To come in and just kind of deny the access through the mountains in the winter and. And show everybody that, hey, we're not afraid to come up here, and we're not afraid to. To hang out for weeks on end and. And. And do our thing, which was. It was fun. I mean, you know, like, I wrote in my books, you know, sent a lot of the people, you know, in villages at, like, 10,000ft. You know, they're still thinking that the Russians are in there.
- [33:52]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [33:54]
Nicholas Moore
And so, you know, just to see the disconnect in that country at, you know, at that. You know, at that primitive point was like, no, they haven't been here for, like, 10 winters now, at least.
- [34:11]
Jack
What was it like operating at that altitude and such? Like, I mean, it's some of the most difficult terrain in the world.
- [34:17]
Nicholas Moore
It was definitely taxing, if you will. Some of the guys, you know, they never been at altitude like that. Some of the guys, you know, out of Florida and Georgia and, you know, never, you know, being on the Mount Yona and ranger school is probably some of the highest elevations they've ever been on. And so you're getting guys up there, you know, 10,000ft or above, and guys are coming with altitude sickness, and they're just not being able to adjust as easily as. As some. And, you know, Manning is still low. And Charlie Company at the time, because it's just coming off the Iraq thing, guys are like, I'm out of here. We got hosed over. And so we're. We're in there with five man squads, so we're still carrying all the gear for nine. And so, you know, the only. Only nice thing is we went in with no body armor. We were just carrying chest racks and ruck sacks, but the ruck sacks were still weighing in about 80. Eighty to 90 pounds, depending on, you know, what is in there.
- [35:15]
David Bark
Yeah, yeah, that land will break you, too. That's not easy terrain to move over.
- [35:22]
Nicholas Moore
No, you know that we did. We did hire on some pack mules, which is kind of interesting for a while. And that was a lot of. It was just to go to the resupply points to be able to bring. Bring back the supplies that we needed instead of doing the ranger school ruck dump and then walking down and loading up and then carrying it all back up. It's like, well, let's just hire some people with mules, and we'll pack. Mule this stuff up there, and. And all we have to do is just walk.
- [35:52]
David Bark
So did you guys just hire, like, the mules, or did you actually have people? Because you have to know what you're doing with a mule, right?
- [36:00]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, no, we. We hired the locals at the time. And it's like, hey, you know, here's however much in, you know, Pakistani rupees that makes them happy and it feels like they're justified to waste a day, you know, renting their mules to us and walking them up the mountain.
- [36:16]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [36:16]
Nicholas Moore
And then bringing the cases of MREs and whatnot. And.
- [36:23]
David Bark
One of the story. Oh, I was gonna say one of the stories you told during that time because you, you guys were on the hvt, the high value target, the time sensitive target. And can you tell us about when you went out with the SEAL team?
- [36:36]
Nicholas Moore
Oh, so we had just coming out of the, out of the Pesh. We've been in there for three weeks and it was like supposed to have like a 72 hour rest and refit back to Blogger. So we all get back, you know, off the, off the birds and you know, kind of standing around in line for showers and this HBT comes down and they said, hey, the team's going to. SEAL team's going to go out and, and hit this and we got to go out and do blocking position so get it all back on and, and load up. And so, you know, I didn't get a shower. And so we roll in there and we hit this, this draw off the, off the Konar and you know, seals are hit the wrong side of the valley because intel's just not very good in Afghanistan at this point. It's just, you know, it's humid so it's, there's a huge margin of error in it. And they didn't want to walk across the valley and go up, so they just called the Hilo to come pick them up from one side and carry them to the other because they didn't want to walk it. In a nutshell, I guess that's the nice way to, to put it short.
- [37:42]
David Bark
Yeah. Yeah. So was there anything else on that? And for those of you who don't know, I, I'm not really drinking, I'm on meds, I had surgery. So if I'm a little like faded. But was, was there anything else on that, on that particular trip that, because you mentioned that that was up to that point like sort of one of the best sort of all around sort of, I guess military experiences you had just in terms it of the type of job you guys were doing.
- [38:17]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, you know, it was kind of the, for those of us later on that, you know, that were, that were still in, in the regiment or the battalion, you know, that that kind of became the baseline for the word Suck. It was like everything else. If it didn't, you know, meet that threshold of just pain and misery, it, it wasn't that bad.
- [38:39]
David Bark
Right?
- [38:39]
Nicholas Moore
Because that was, that was just brutal. I mean, you know, got knee, knees and ankles and you know, guys are quitting and it's like, oh, well, awesome. You can quit all you want. You ain't coming off the mountain. They're not sending a helicopter for you, right?
- [38:54]
David Bark
Yeah. Where are you gonna go? Yeah, yeah.
- [38:57]
Nicholas Moore
It's like you're a private, they're not going to send a helicopter come get you. Great, awesome. We'll deal with, you know, you quitting later.
- [39:04]
David Bark
And those are also the type of operations that you hold over the new guy's head. When they weren't on it, you're like, oh, you know, they start complaining like, ah, you weren't there.
- [39:13]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah. But then you make yourself feel like a dinosaur later on.
- [39:16]
David Bark
Right, right. So then, so you guys are on this hopping schedule because that was in 2000, like late 2003. And then this spring you're right back in Iraq again.
- [39:30]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, we did the, the winter, the end 03, we were back in Afghanistan and then we were kind of doing the spring surge as we refer to it, in 04. And it was just a short little 45 day to kind of reinforce the, the special ops footprint so we could move some units around, you know, shift guys and not loot, have a loss in combat abilities. So that was, that was definitely interesting because that was like the, the introduction, if you will, to IEDs. You know, at that point, you know, was starting to get armored vehicles and it's like, why are we driving around with this? You know, what's the, what's the big deal? You know, they're like pop can size explosives and you know, like within a year, you know, we're, they're planting, you know, £2,000 of HME under the road beds and, and blowing tanks apart.
- [40:23]
David Bark
Yeah, yeah, well, and not just that, but you talk about your story with the, the tanks, the, the Abrams tanks, right?
- [40:33]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, yeah, we had that, that trip. We were going from bayout, from the airport into, into town into the Green Zone to, to link up to do an op and you know, we're running blacked out and you know, we got the city light shining in our face so you can't really see anything other than about 20 yards in front of you. But you know, the highway is a long straight run and so you know, put it down and, and, and just go. And there was a tank that had been Sitting in the median. And they traversed the cannon to look at something with thermal off the cannon. And they brought the barrel across at a zero plane. And it was right at the same time we came in with the truck and almost killed the gunner out of my truck. You know, he was in a medically induced coma for about 45 days and his face broken in about 13 places. Turned the mark 19 on the front on the lead truck into a. Basically, the receiver was a banana and the barrel broke in three places. The strike plate we never found, and, you know, it. It basically almost totaled the truck. It took us two days to get the turret, you know, reconfigured with strip parts off other vehicles and put it back together. Jesus, that's insane.
- [41:48]
David Bark
Yeah, it's. It's. It's. And it's weird sometimes, too, in combat how it's those, you know, in a war zone how. How it's some of the most random events that. That.
- [42:01]
Nicholas Moore
Right.
- [42:01]
David Bark
You know, you know, blue on blue isn't always just friendly fire. Sometimes it's just these incredibly random events like that.
- [42:11]
Nicholas Moore
You know, and it was just one of those things. They didn't see us because they were busy looking at something and we couldn't see them with the lights and just the, you know, the, The. We're all running, you know, the monocular PBS 14s and, you know, it's like, well, hey, we're. We're good. We're on this. We own this section of highway between town and. And the airport, and there's nothing going on out here ever. And so, you know, we don't really need to, you know, watch out for. For other forces. But, you know, there's a tank sitting in the median and.
- [42:40]
David Bark
Right, right.
- [42:42]
Nicholas Moore
Happened to be the. You know, I just had chosen to drive in the left lane as the lead truck, you know, and we. We hit it. Didn't damage the tank. I mean, we scratched the paint a little bit, but no damage to the barrel.
- [42:57]
David Bark
Yeah. And so that was a fairly uneventful trip for you guys, right?
- [43:07]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, that one. That one was. Yeah. As far as any operations that saw, you know, any contact in it, you know, there wasn't really a lot going on at that point.
- [43:20]
David Bark
And then your next trip was Mosul?
- [43:25]
Nicholas Moore
Yes. Well, no, Afghanistan. Oh, we went to Afghanistan. That's 005. That was Marcus Lutrell.
- [43:32]
David Bark
Okay. Okay. Sorry about that. So can you. Yeah. So can you tell us about that then.
- [43:41]
Nicholas Moore
Marcus Lutrell? You know, it's a. Afghanistan targeting was, you know, still in its infancy, is Still a lot of human base at that point in time in Afghanistan. So they're really wasn't a great targeting platform to go on as. You know we look for, you know, legacy targets and, and plan out some of that stuff. And as far as what the Rangers were doing, a lot of it we were just on TST's time sensitive target manning for one platoon and then the other was on Cesar Combat search and Rescue as a, you know, basic standard Ranger taskings at that point in time. And we had just rotated off of the CSAR tasking onto the time sensitive target tasking. So we had just finished all the, the stand ups for you know, running through timelines and, and checks on all that stuff and got the, the word that you know, Mark Zutrell's team was, was going to go out and do this Operation Red Wings and you know, as Rangers always do, you know, we get enough information to have a conversation about it at the chow hall table and so started talking with some of the recce guys and you know, they're, you know, they're briefing us because they've been following this a lot closer than like a rifle platoon has. It wasn't kind of in our, in our wheelhouse as far as targets we were looking at, but stuff that recce had been looking at in, in areas to do, to do some of their stuff. And they were like, yeah, we wouldn't do it this way. Not four guys. No, we take a whole recce section, you know, 12 guys and then. But we wouldn't do it without a rifle platoon and support, you know, even if it was a, you know, 5K standoff between the two because they can fight to us and we can fight to them and it's a bigger footprint on the ground. Yeah. Do we run the risk of spoiling the target? Yes. But you know, on the other side of it, you know, we as Rangers, you know, we're always going to bring everything in the kitchen sink to bear on, on an objective to turn the, the, you know, the, the odds in our favor and you know, did they do anything wrong the way they did it? No, they, they made judgment calls along the way and you know, we can armchair quarterback this right. You know, years, years later and say, well I wouldn't have done that and I wouldn't have done this. But you know, they, they did what they do and.
- [46:05]
David Bark
Right.
- [46:06]
Nicholas Moore
So you know, that led us into, you know, you know, them losing comms and them getting in the fight and you know, as the, as the movie portrays it out and. You know, and then we got to go in and. And do the combat search and rescue on the Turbine 33 crash site and then figure out what the question mark.
- [46:30]
Jack
Is, what was going on on your base with your platoon? I mean, are you getting word that this team is compromised? There are guys who are mia. We might have to go look for them. Then you find bird went down. I mean, can you take us through.
- [46:42]
Nicholas Moore
A little bit of that? So, so that morning. So June 28, that morning, you know, we. We got up and we just did what Rangers do, you know, we got up, did pt, went and ate breakfast. Going on with our training cycle, we were going to go out to east river range, which is just outside of Bagram, the little town of Bagram. So we left the base, got outside there, we're gonna go do some shooting drills and, and just, you know, have a good session on the range, and we get out there and start throwing. The target stands off the trucks. And that's about the time that, you know, we. We find out that the. The bird's been shot down. And, you know, it was, hey, don't forget, don't worry about what you've thrown off the trucks, get back on the trucks. You know, we got to get back. And there was a lot of guys were like, what are we doing? And, you know, we didn't have any of the answers at the leadership level of what was going on. We just knew that, you know, we had to be back for something that was going to. Going to get briefed, you know, to us. And as the situation was developing and. And so then as we were rolling back in, you know, we find out that the aircraft had been shot down, that team's in the fight, and, you know, we're just on standby at that point. And so I wouldn't really kind of understand the whole situation for, you know, probably another six years as I progress through. Through leadership. But, you know, as I tell people, it's, you know, it's. As a young guy, you know, it's not that we're not going to get in there, and we're not going to be a part of this, and we're not going to. But we're going to turn the tables. So that way, when we do recommit forces into this area, we've got so many assets to bear on the objective that nobody would be in their right mind to want to play. So, you know, it was probably, you know, about 10 hours or so after the initial shoot down that, you know, that night, as we're getting ready to, to launch and you finally got the green light that we're gonna go and we load up everybody that's going to fit on the aircraft at altitude and, and launch. And then we hit mountain weather on that night and have to divert infill and go sit at Jollibad for a day and then wait to get infilled the next night.
- [49:00]
David Bark
What, what was your understanding at that time of the situation on the ground?
- [49:07]
Nicholas Moore
The so the understanding was that the 47 had been shot down. There was no movement on that. You know, ISR feeds were terrible at the time. I, you know, don't even understand how people could understand, you know, what they're seeing on that screen. It was such a bad quality feed even then, you know. And so we knew that the aircraft been shot down. We were going in to do combat search and rescue on the crash. You know, Murphy's team was still a question mark as to what's going on because there had been no radio comms with them since Murphy's sat phone call. So the priority tasking was to recover the crash because we knew where it was. And then after that it would just be to figure it out if you will.
- [49:59]
Jack
So we, we, we interviewed Tony Brooks on the show before. Was he in your platoon?
- [50:07]
Nicholas Moore
Tony was in one Charlie so he was the other half of the, the element that went up. So it was a ther platoon led the way because we weren't on the Cesar so we didn't have all the recovery and crash axes and all this stuff to, to do that. So we, we kind of plowed the way if you will. And we were there to kind of take the brunt of any contact that was going to be made because we were just there to add security to, to what they were going to come in and do as far as recovery. That was, you know, one Charlie's tasking at the time. So that was, that was where Tony was and. Okay, cool.
- [50:47]
Jack
Yeah, no, it's cool to get like some different perspectives on it. So, so then what was your platoon? I mean you just explained what your platoon's role was. But then walk us through infill and getting on the ground.
- [50:57]
Nicholas Moore
So infill we infield somewhere about probably about 8,000ft. You know what we could get to with the package size that we had on the aircraft. And so there, we knew there wasn't a way to land anywhere up there. So we knew it's going to be a rope and it was going to be at least a minimum of 40 footer and it ended up 40 and then as a rope drifts, you know, it kind of goes 40 to 60 to, you know, as, as it works out. And then when one Charlie came in, I know their rope started at 60 and it ended to somewhere around 80.
- [51:33]
Jack
Tony said they just roped down into fog with like no idea of where the bottom was.
- [51:38]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, yeah, it was. Well, I mean, the thought came in after we were already on the ground. I know what he's talking about because, you know, it is just the way the weather was working and you know, it's just, it was, it was, you know, one of those points where I, I never really, you know, after a private, I never roped with, with leather gloves, you know, fast rope, you know, the working work gloves anymore. I always did it in, I mean, Nomec, shooting the Hamburger Helper. Yeah, I never tried like trying to take those gloves off and always felt like my hands got so much hotter. And you know, I had a team sergeant said, hey, just, just rope in your shooting gloves because you don't have to grip the rope as tight. You dissipates the heat just as well. And he said, just try it on the fast rope tower. So I did. And that's, that's a 40 foot rope. And, you know, it wasn't terrible. And then I was watching guys carrying 240s and stuff roping in and they've got the big thick gloves on and they're squeezing extra tight just to have a feeling on the rope. And so then they're burning in, you know, and their hands are getting so hot that, you know, they're blistering at, you know, still 10 or 15ft above ground and they're just letting go. They're like, I'll just deal with it when I hit the ground. And you know, when one Charlie came in, you know, they had the, the same problem and guys were falling off and then they were just ending up in a big pile. And I know their RTO had had his arm broken because he got stepped on.
- [53:03]
David Bark
Yeah, that's.
- [53:04]
Nicholas Moore
And so, you know, you got guys that need to get medevac, but you ain't getting medevaced.
- [53:08]
David Bark
Yeah, yeah.
- [53:10]
Jack
So what was it like for your platoon, roping in and getting on the ground?
- [53:15]
Nicholas Moore
It wasn't, we didn't have any contact or anything. And it was, it was quiet, you know. And then when you, when the, the brownout cleared and all the, you know, the wash of everything and you know, you kind of look up the mountain, you know, you, you can see the crash because it's still on fire, still burning. And it's just kind of one of those ominous moments, if you will. Just kind of, you know, the gravity of what you're doing has finally set in because you're seeing it with your own eyes and not on a TV screen. And then, you know, just becomes the all night walk uphill through the nettles and you know, the scotch or not the Scotch room, but you know, the pines and, and all the ground cover that's up there in the mountains. And it's just.
- [54:06]
David Bark
Were you guys, was there any intelligence that there were enemies on the objective or around the objective?
- [54:14]
Nicholas Moore
We had, you know, any eyes around the area, but it wasn't anything like on, on the objective. We, there wasn't any movement on, on there, you know, throughout the day or, or anything. And there wasn't, there wasn't any, you know, people coming and going from it. I think, you know, looking back at it now as they realized what they had done and what was about to happen, and so they just kind of got a little bit of standoff and they really were, it was to observe, you know, how we were going to take care of it.
- [54:50]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [54:51]
Nicholas Moore
And so, you know, as the, the. That day turned into, you know, a week to two weeks, you know, there at night, you know, you see little fires on the mountain and you know, get eyes on it as best you can. And then AC130s dropping, you know, 105s on it.
- [55:09]
David Bark
Yeah. So what was that first movement that first night? What was the movement like for you guys? How long did it take?
- [55:16]
Nicholas Moore
It took all night. It, we didn't get to the top until about an hour before, you know, sunrise. And then we're sitting there on it and then kind of listening to one Charlie, you know, suck their way up the mountain. And then one Bravo was still about halfway up the mountain because they had driven in from Jalalabad the night or the morning that it happened. They drove up the 90k in their trucks and then they started walking from the base of the mountain up and they didn't make it until the next day. And you know, only about half the guys that started to climb up the mountain made it up. The rest of them had to go back down and, and get picked up by the, the trucks and, and you know, because they just either heat, heat exhaustion or, you know, twisted ankles and whatnot.
- [56:09]
David Bark
Yeah. Yeah. And so what did that, what was the next like, week to what, how, what did that set in motion for you guys in particular?
- [56:19]
Nicholas Moore
So what it set in motion for us was, you know, priority tasking was to accountability and recovery of all, you know, members of that aircraft crew. And then the. The QRF team that was on there. So that totaled 16. And so we got those numbers, you know, kind of early afternoon, and there was a small clearing on top of the mountain. You could put a small helicopter, like, little bird on it. But it was, you know, CDS drops for demolitions and, you know, basically had to create an HLZ to be able to get everybody off that mountain that, you know, the remains for those guys. And so it was kind of was a. A good distraction, if you will, to do timber charges and. And clear that space to. To be able to make enough room to bring, you know, helicopter in. And. And so we just finished our regimental breachers course. And so all that old stuff, you know, that, that timber stuff was still fresh in everybody's mind. So it was, you know, we're all sitting there trying to do the math, and the first sergeants are like, use the P method.
- [57:32]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [57:33]
Nicholas Moore
So we're sending tree stumps and everything up, you know, like Roman candles. It was, you know, just pack as much explosives in these little burrow holes underneath and launch it. And yeah, so that. That was fun. We cleared that and then we got to tasking for, you know, what would turn out to be go down the mountain and. And find Marcus. And so that. That started the fun of the mountain. Weather moved in that night and dumped on us. And we're trying to walk downhill and, you know, the trails, a little stream bed at the time. And so guys are slipping and falling and guys are trying to not fall off the. The ridge. And then we end up, just for safety reasons, you know, we end up spending the last few hours kind of huddled under pine trees waiting for the sun to come up so that we don't lose anybody.
- [58:20]
Jack
How many guys did you have left in your platoon at this point?
- [58:24]
Nicholas Moore
We had split the four. So we had two. Two squads in the PL's package. So, you know, the platoon leader, RTO, FO were with us. And then the platoon sergeant had his, you know, one squad, two machine guns, you know, on. Still on the top. Okay. On the. On the top of the mountain and close to the crash site. We knew we were. Yeah, they were still up there with. With one Charlie and, And reinforcing them. And we're just kind of the. The maneuver element, if you will, going down and trying to confirm or deny what this push to talk signal was that. That we were getting being triangulated down in this, I, I always forget the name of the village, so I can't ever remember it.
- [59:14]
Jack
So you guys, you guys had to kind of like hide it. Hide out? Not hide out, but, you know, take cover under the pine trees until dawn and then continue to move down to where this, you know, ostensibly there's a second hit that you had to go investigate.
- [59:29]
Nicholas Moore
Right. And so that was basically confirm or deny. You know, was it enemy recovered American equipment or was it actually, in fact, you know, Murphy's team or, you know, what, what the question mark was still for that. And that was kind of where we were at for the tasking. You know, the crash had been accounted for. So now we're just trying to figure out, you know, the fate of, you know, this four man SEAL team. And so you know, finally pushed down in there.
- [60:00]
David Bark
Was it a consistency signal that you guys were going off of or was it just like a single, a couple hits and they're like, okay, around this general area?
- [60:11]
Nicholas Moore
No, it was, it wasn't like a consistent. But you know, it was like somebody just keying the, keying the push to talk, you know, intermittently enough to get a, you know, an orbital transmission to triangulate, you know, where it was. And so it was kind of confirm or deny what that was. So, you know, there was an SF team that was walking up that we tied in with.
- [60:34]
Jack
Okay.
- [60:34]
Nicholas Moore
And then push back down into this, this little village. And then, you know, as we're doing the Ranger smash through all the doors and clearing the village, you know, here comes Marcus, you know, from up from where they had him hidden and kind of stashed. And so, you know, confirm that and then start, you know, doing the. So.
- [60:55]
Jack
So they actually brought Marcus out to, to meet you guys, right?
- [60:59]
Nicholas Moore
They knew why we were there, they knew what they were looking for. And so it was to, you know, hand him over and then do the, you know, the kind of, the whole SF thing where they do the, you know, let's drink some tea and talk. And, you know, what was that moment like?
- [61:14]
Jack
What was that moment like when you first got face to face with Marcus and confirmed this guy's alive. And what, what was your, your perception of all that?
- [61:24]
David Bark
I don't know.
- [61:25]
Nicholas Moore
The big question, you know, that we, you know, the first thing that we asked was once, you know, we went through the whole challenge and, and kind of confirmed that it is him, you know, through the whole, you know, MI pow MIA cards. Yeah. You know, we all fill out and going through that. It was, you know, dude, where's Everybody else, you know, and then, you know, he's like, they're dead. Well, okay, great. Not great, but, you know, it's like, okay, but where they're on the mountain, that's it. You know, it's kind of that you can't give me anything more. The CEO has just started kind of a. A frustration thing. And I get it. You know, he'd been, you know, that wasn't. I probably wouldn't have been fun to come down that mountain the way he says he came down that mountain. But, you know, I. I would like to hope, to think that, you know, if my friends were dead on that mountain, I could at least remember some kind of terrain feature that I could at least tell somebody that they're, you know, they're up here in this area.
- [62:29]
Jack
And so what was the next step after that initial. You had that initial questioning of Marcus. What. What happened next?
- [62:38]
Nicholas Moore
So then what happened next was, you know, we just kind of secured the little village that we were at and, you know, confirmed that it was him passed up, you know, over SAP that, you know, we had him and we were in control of him. And then we just had to sit and wait for nightfall to come so that we could bring in the middle back bird and get him out. And then it just started, you know, days and days and days of sweeping and searching this mountainside for the rest of the team. For the rest of the team.
- [63:13]
Jack
I mean, did you guys eventually find the. The remains of those three other guys?
- [63:20]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, we exfilled Marcus, and then the next day, you know, we were sweeping the lower portion of this. Of this spur, and the other half of our platoon was coming from the top of the ridge down. We're just kind of meeting in the middle. And so after we had met in the middle and, you know, kind of traded information and they got a break, you know, they started to climb back up for the night. We turned around and started coming back down to finish our suite. They stumbled on. On two of the remains. Just by happenstance, somebody lost their footing and slipped into a little wash and ended up, you know, face first with. With two of them.
- [63:58]
Jack
Oh, man, that's rough.
- [64:00]
Nicholas Moore
And so. Well, the rough part was that they still had to go like 800 meters vertically with, you know, two. Two sets of remains. And all we have is the old school poncho method to carry them up, right, because you couldn't do it with a litter. So it was wrapping them up in the poncho and. And kind of getting them up as best as possible. And you know, then they had to carry it, traverse them across the ridge, back over to the, the hlz and you know, that it. That was the hard part is after that now we're just looking for one person. Right. And you know, we ended up searching for. Oh man, probably another 10 days before we got ripped out when 375 came in.
- [64:50]
David Bark
Yeah. And.
- [64:51]
Nicholas Moore
And you know, at that point, you know, we're. We're 14 days, 12 or 12 days into this whole thing and it's. Guys are just gassed.
- [64:58]
David Bark
Yeah. And I remember Tony saying that, I mean, the weather, you guys weren't getting enough water, that it was just, it was just non stop for you guys.
- [65:10]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, it was, you know, from sun up to sundown, you know, and then you got to, you know, we're pulling security and small elements and so you're not getting much sleep and guys are getting sick with, you know, dehydration stuff or guys are getting, you know, you know what happens. And you, you get a bad MRE and then you got a little bit of food poisoning or whatever and work doesn't stop. You just got to keep going even though you've got a little bit of food poisoning from an MRE that may have spoiled and you ate it anyway. And. Yeah, so.
- [65:44]
David Bark
Yeah. So you guys get ripped out before you find the, the final body. Yeah.
- [65:55]
Nicholas Moore
And then. But we got ripped out and then. So I want to say it was probably eight hours later, you know, that 375 had. Had found the, the last one. And so it was. We were happy that we were upset that, you know, we didn't end up finding him, you know, because somebody else had to come in. But, you know, we're glad it was over with.
- [66:19]
David Bark
Right. Right.
- [66:21]
Nicholas Moore
Get that AMEX Gold Card ready. I'm too tired to cook.
- [66:24]
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- [66:38]
Jack
Well, you said that you mentioned earlier on that, you know, there were things that you pieced together years after the event because at the time, you know, you're a, you're a sergeant. You're, you know, reacting on the ground as things unfold in front of you, doing the best you can. I just want to ask you real quick, you know, what's your perception of what, what happened out there today versus what it was when you were actually there as a younger man? I mean, is there anything you've learned, anything that kind of like, opened up your scope or offered a wider context that was surprising to you or that kind of, that you look at this event much differently today than you did at the time?
- [67:18]
Nicholas Moore
I think it just, what, you know, comes to mind is, you know, the amount of effort that goes into this type of situation is one of those things that we never train for when, you know, nobody ever goes into a training scenario that, oh, we're going to have aircraft shot down, we're going to do this and we're going to do that and then all this kind of stuff. And so it's like the worst of everything, you know, as far as the circumstances. And it's trying to understand all the pieces, you know, the wizard behind the curtain, if you will, of what's going on. And, you know, it's all the questions that we asked after we got back, you know, why did it take so long for us to launch? You know, what were the circumstances? And, you know, it's, it's. When this type of situation happens, it, it is, everything stops in, in, in theater, you know, and then it's, it's all assets shift focus and it's trying to put everything in place. So that way, you know, like I said, you know, when we do commit the force, it is, you know, with all the odds, can be stacked in our favor as best as possible. And so, you know, not, not to jump forward too far. But, you know, it was kind of one of those things that always stuck in my head. And then when the extortion 17 shoot down happened, you know, we're on the ground and so then it's. I can explain, you know, because I'm the old fart at this time. You know, it's kind of explaining to the boys on the fly. It's like, hey, look, you know, this is what's happening behind the scene. You know, we're here in the middle of it right now, but this is what's going on on the backside. And so it's not that, you know, we're not going to get things that we need, but there are steps and things that have to. That have to happen. And so it was one of those. That was the big learning lesson for me was, you know, what are, what are all these steps on the backside of, of this type of scenario?
- [69:18]
Jack
It's as we, we talked about on, on last Friday's episode. I mean, it's, it's amazing the effort that the US Military will go through to recover Our soldiers, even if it's only to recover their remains, that will go through incredible lengths to. To. To repatriate every American troop is just incredible.
- [69:39]
Nicholas Moore
Right, right. You know, that was, you know, the Warfighter series on History Channel. We did a segment with. With this Marcus Luttrell Red Wings recovery. And, you know, something that he said. You know, it's, you know, when they get in trouble, you know, they. It's. It's not expected. But, you know, when they say that the Rangers are coming in, you know, it's. They're coming in with everything, you know, because, you know, we're bringing everybody that we can, and we're bringing all the toys and all the stuff and, you know, we're bringing a big footprint. And.
- [70:19]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [70:22]
Nicholas Moore
It.
- [70:24]
David Bark
I mean, and, you know, even though it was. It was challenging for all the Rangers involved, I mean, we. I mean, I'm grateful and I think, you know, obviously the families are grateful. Like, everybody's grateful that. That those seals did come home, you know, that they were found. Because that would also be a horrible, you know, thing for a family to go. Are they just out there missing? You know, are they still alive, being held somewhere, like, to this day?
- [70:52]
Jack
I mean, dpa. I mean, we deal with it with our Vietnam veterans. You know, there's like 150 special forces soldiers alone, I believe were missing somewhere on Laos, in Cambodia. And I mean, that's just terrible.
- [71:06]
David Bark
Yeah. Yeah. So after. Did it. Aside from that, you guys ripped out. So you left Afghanistan at that point, correct?
- [71:18]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, that was our last op. You know, we were out of there with just a couple of days, long enough to, you know, download the ammunition, pack everything up, throw it in the pallet, and get on aircraft. We were. We were out.
- [71:29]
David Bark
And then you turned around, and then you were in Mosul in 2006. And I thought you're. Yeah, I thought that your. Your chapter name Fast and Less Furious was. Was funny. Can you. Can you tell us why you. Why you called your chapter that?
- [71:46]
Nicholas Moore
It was just a. I'm not really sure anymore. It was just kind of a play on. On words with, you know, I. You know, things are speeding up in. In Afghanistan, but, you know, or in Iraq, but, you know, not necessarily. Are we having more fun, if you will? There's not, you know, we're smashing targets and taking guys in, but we're not really getting in the fight. Right. No gun fights really. Right. Going on.
- [72:13]
David Bark
And part of that, the way what I got from this chapter and the way you explain it, the reason you weren't Getting in as many gunfights is because you guys had really nailed down how to do these hits. And that 98% of these hits were debt, were done silently, where the bad guys never even knew you were there.
- [72:34]
Nicholas Moore
Until exactly, you know, it was one of these. You know, so we've just come out of Afghanistan. We've been dealing with this, and, you know, the other battalions are. Are, you know, kind of setting this new trend, if you will, this new TTP for this what we're calling silent entry. And, you know, it's not the traditional Ranger blow the front door open, go in, smash everything. It's, you know, how can we come in as sneaky and quiet as absolutely possible? And, you know, basically, we're waking people up out of a dead sleep to take these targets. And so, you know, at first you're like, God, this is such a big letdown. But then as you start going on and it. It really becomes this thing that we're all kind of driving for is, you know, mission success is now not how much can we smash, but how. How successfully can we get in repeatedly, silently, without firing any of these shots? Because now we're getting all of this intel from all these people through interrogations and all this stuff. And so, you know, when you shift your mindset kind of away from the traditional, you know, what we like to call the Ranger smash. And now we're kind of playing on the same ttps and. And kind of lines that, you know, Team six guys are playing on and Delta Force is playing in, and they've been having success for, you know, years and, you know, all kinds of settings around the world that they're employed in. You know, we can, as a Ranger resident, we can employ these types of, you know, operational guidelines that we're going to go do this and we're going to do it as quietly. And mission success is now based on the amount of people that we can not kill on target, but we can drag off target, right? You know, and then it really becomes the driving force, you know, mission success is now can we do it? And how many times can we do it? And then, you know, it's kind of the. Not necessarily mission failure, but, you know, if shots are. Have to be, you know, fired in, right, you know, what did we do wrong that. That got us into that gunfight? Because it's really impressive, you know, as a leader, when you can bring, like 13 plus guys into a target building and roll up 14 or 15 dudes without anybody knowing that you're even in the Room.
- [74:51]
David Bark
Right.
- [74:52]
Nicholas Moore
And so, you know, that was, you know, and then when we started going into. To other techniques later on, you know, it was like, but we're so good at this. Why are we switching to doing this other thing? And, and, you know, I. I never really liked what we call prefer, you know, later on it would be the. The call out. And I understand the. The. You know, as a leader, the. The thought behind it is that it's less risk to force because we're now telling the enemy. And, you know, for those of people who don't understand it, it's kind of like what, you know, a SWAT team will do or, you know, the FBI does, you know, when they surround a house or a compound or whatever, and then they're getting on loudspeakers and they're telling people to come out and surrender and. And all that, but, you know, it's never the fun way to do it. It's kind of, you know, if you will, it's boring.
- [75:46]
David Bark
Right. Right.
- [75:47]
Jack
Walk us through, like, one of those ops that really, like, stands out in your mind where you, you know, you just kind of, like, pried open the front door and rangers and night vision just kind of slip through and.
- [75:59]
Nicholas Moore
Well, there was Mosul. We. We had one up. And I mean, we had been in probably four or five houses down the block trying to get the. The right house. And. And when we finally did get the right house, you know, we popped the front door open all nice and quiet, and I mean, there was no. There was no reverberation off the metal door or anything. We had, you know, pressure and counter pressure working, and, you know, we ended up, you know, sliding in all nice and. And quiet. And then, you know, I had a whole squad of guys, you know, pulling security on dudes. And then it was, you know, we had the first floor, you know, secure as. As far as, you know, guys are. We got guns on the right amount of people, and. And, you know, we've got a whole nother squad is sneaking in to take care of, you know, what needs to be going on upstairs. And everybody's all super quiet. And, you know, we're basically. We take the whole house down all in one shot, and we end up with like, 16 detainees. And, you know, the whole target's done in 45 minutes. We got. Everybody's tagged and bagged. We've done all the site exploitation and. And, you know, and then we're. We're on to the next objective. Yeah, and so that's amazing when, you know, when. When you can look back at that and, and be like, wow, I was a part of that. And, you know, that. That worked out great. And, and you know, when you can explain, you know, that that is, you know, mission success because, you know, intel drives the targeting, and when you don't kill the intelligence, then you get more targets and you get to go have more fun and. Right. You know, when you could explain that to the younger guys who are, you know, 19, 20, and just kind of chomping at the bit and it's like, no, hey, relax, relax. We're. We're being smooth, we're being quiet. You know, this. We started, you know, climbing walls and, and, you know, then. Then it became the whole, you know, can we do a top down? You know, can we come in from one building or can we ladder up the side of the building? And, and, you know, not only can we come in from the ground floor, but can we send an assault force in from the top floor and still do it all silent? You know, it just becomes a whole other side of, you know, this developing Persona that we're creating in the ranger regimen. It's not just are we the ability to go smash things, but we can be as precision as anybody else, but do it with twice as many people.
- [78:27]
David Bark
Right.
- [78:30]
Jack
I. I want to take just one second here to give a. A little advertisement, actually, for our own podcast. We have a Patreon site and there's a link down the description if you guys check it out. And if you join, you will get ad free episodes. You get all these episodes without any of the ads in them. And there's also a couple bonus episodes and bonus segments that you guys can check out. So the links down in the description, that's all I wanted to throw out there tonight.
- [78:59]
David Bark
Oh, you get deep thoughts by Jack and Dave sitting in our smoking pajamas and, you know, talking about the way of the world, plus a lot of great bonus content. Yes, but so then after Missoul, you guys did Ramadi, which is a lot more of the same, but now you guys are operating on boats.
- [79:20]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, we're on the, on the swit boats. On the sock R's. No. Yep. So that, you know, it was. It was different. It was totally fun. I mean, you know, because at the time, you got to remember Ramadi and Fallujah, they're still on the, you know, it's still a wild west out there. You know, the Marines are still having it out all day long every day. And we're trying to, you know, kind of squeeze in the seams and, and do what we're doing. And, you know, we had a company commander at the time. He was notorious for, you know, any holiday it was the day that, you know, he had been blown up. And so he didn't really like to drive anymore. And so he's like, the only holiday I've never been blown up on is Halloween. And so we took the ground assault force out in strikers and hit a target driving back, and his truck gets popped. And, you know, it was what we call a catastrophic vehicle kill. So it's a striker, but it had a hole penetration and it was enough to penetrate the bottom of the floor. And then what came through, stuck in the back of the. The seat on the driver, but nobody, nobody was hurt. And, you know, it's testament to the striker as a vehicle platform that we were using. It blew all the circuit breakers in the vehicle, and all the driver had to do was just reach around, push the breakers in and start back up. And it drove all the way back to the gate. And then it gave up the ghost. You know, the, all the steering linkage in the front broke apart and it was plug in the, the ECP there at the, at the gate onto Ramadi. And so that was kind of fun because we had to move the, the T barriers out of the way to open it up so we could get the wrecker in there to hook onto it. Because there wasn't a way to pull it through the chicanes without. With all those barricades in place. So we had to, you know, it was probably a three hour process to get that truck through the gate. You know, we got all the marine convoys and army convoys and Ramadi, they're all backed up sitting outside waiting for us to move our piece of junk. And so after that, you know, the team six guys were like, hey, we've got, you know, the boats are down, you know, at the little off site, you know, on the, on the river. And, you know, we can start employing those. And so we started doing, you know, boats in, helicopters out, or helicopters in and boats out. And that's pretty cool, kind of, and riding the rivers. And it was definitely really cool because we could get way closer to target on the boats then you could with, you know, helicopters without the noise signature. And it just, you know, opened up a whole nother avenue of, Of a technique that we hadn't really, you know, been utilizing. And it was. Yeah, I, I just. The only thing I wish that it was, it had have been in the summertime instead of in the winter.
- [82:06]
Jack
Yeah, I bet I've never been to Ramadi before. So I'm actually looking up on the map. So the Euphrates kind of runs right through the center of the city and there's a few like, outlets, one of, one of which it looks like it runs right into like the city center.
- [82:21]
Nicholas Moore
Right.
- [82:22]
Jack
That's pretty, that's pretty cool, man. So you were, you said you were able to get closer to target using the boats?
- [82:28]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, we could get within, you know, a K of the target building or you know, depending. Sometimes it was within, you know, four or five hundred meters the target. And so, you know, you have the last cons. You know, the LCC is, you know, basically at the boat drop off point on the beach and then, you know, move the target and take the target down and you know, then move to xville and you know, just short helicopter ride back onto the base. And so it was, you know, it was definitely fun because we were the, one of the first to actually implement it. And so, you know, we kind of got to be on the, on the front side of that as far as what the rangers were doing with, you know, boat, Boat ops.
- [83:14]
David Bark
Yeah. Now did you guys, did you guys have those? I mean, I know that boat ops was always supposed to be a ranger thing, but it really, we only at least like in the 90s, we only used it for training. Like, did you guys have those in theater? Did you acquire them? Did somebody else have them? And you borrowed them. How did that all start?
- [83:34]
Nicholas Moore
Well, it was the, they were the swick boats. So the teams brought them. And so the, the swick teams are the guys, they were manning all the boats. And so they're the soccers, the, the, you know, the 900 horsepower twin jet drive, you know, 40 foot assault boats. And so, you know, they've got a whole, there's a whole crew this navy guys that drive the boats, gun the boats. All we did was just get a. And that's pretty cool.
- [84:01]
Jack
I never even knew the rangers did that. That's interesting.
- [84:05]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, it was, it was definitely fun, you know, and the, the boats of, you know, everybody's like, well, I wouldn't want to do that. Well, it's a fully armored boat. You know, it's 900 horsepower. It'll do 50 miles an hour on the water. And Safer.
- [84:19]
Jack
Safer than driving. It's safer than driving down a road that's packed full, ie.
- [84:22]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah.
- [84:23]
David Bark
Unless they're like deploying Olympic mines or something. Mines, Frogman. Yeah, exactly.
- [84:28]
Nicholas Moore
Well, there had been, there was a time, you know, early on where the enemy had been trying to figure out how to IED the river and they couldn't figure out how to do it. And there wasn't any success with it. They tried hanging them from the bridges, but, you know, you can see that. And then they tried to plant them in the riverbanks, but it wasn't anything that was going to cause any kind of lethality to the boat. So they just basically gave it up as like, well, if they're going to use them, then there's nothing that we can do about it until they come on target.
- [84:58]
David Bark
So I, I know that. So we have like more mool in Afghanistan and I don't want to leave too much out, but I also really want to get to. I, I want to talk about 2011. Okay. I want to make sure we talk about that. Am I missing anything? I'll speak. Yeah. So can we talk about, about, about your injury, about how all that came about?
- [85:26]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah. So do you want to skip the extortion?
- [85:29]
David Bark
Oh, no, no, let's talk about the extortion. Yeah, let's talk about extortion. One something first. Yeah, sorry about that.
- [85:34]
Nicholas Moore
No, that's okay. I, We. So that this was kind of the, the 2011 deployment was the, it was the last of this, the surge, the special ops surge into, you know, Petraeus's surge into Afghanistan and kind of increasing that force. So BCO was the last company in 2nd range battalion to surge, whether stay late or, or go early. And so we just finished the, the Capex at Fort Bragg, which is the big, you know, the special ops dog and pony show for Congressman and you know, the President and all that stuff, which was fine because it gave us, you know, an extra week of training with, you know, 1/60 and, and some, you know, platoon time, if you will, to run around and work through, fine tune some TTPS and some SOPs and bring some of the new guys a little bit tighter online with, you know, how we were gonna accomplish these, these tasks when we getting overseas. So, you know, we got tasks to go to FOB Shank and be pass with team six under their command. And so we went over and, and did that and you know, we had a pretty good working relationship with, with the Gold Squadron for, for that early part of that deployment. And then the, you know, night of August 6th rolls around and so objective Lefty Grove comes up on the table as a, you know, it's a, a target that had been tracked and chased and kind of lost, but never could get a lot of fidelity. To, to it because he's a pretty dynamic target, meaning he's constantly on the move and, and you know, hard to nail down to, to one location. But he had rolled into the tangy valley on this, you know, this day and, and SIG had kind of pinned him into a certain location inside the, the valley and a little cluster of buildings. And it was enough that it was probably about 70% fidelity on the, on the objective targeting that it was, it was still solid. And we had just come off a few days of weather and we're looking at maybe some more days of weather on the back end of this. So it was, we had this little like two day window of, of good weather to do an op and I just kind of, you know, looked at the, at my peel and you know, we went to, to ciao and we were sitting there having the conversation. I'm like, look, I'm willing to take a swing at 70%, you know, for this target. You know, you know, we're gonna be stuck sitting for weather for a few days. And I, I don't, you know, we've already been stuck sitting and Ranger doesn't do well sitting, sitting around with, with weather if we don't have anything to do. So you know, I was like, I'm willing to take a swing at 70. You know, we're going into Tangi Valley, so it's basically guaranteed gunfight. And you know, what do you think? And he's like, yeah, I'm willing to take a swing on 70. So we went back and pitched it that we'll take a swing at at it and if nothing else, you know, we'll let him know that we're chasing him and kind of break his pattern of life. And, and usually when we can do that and break the pattern of life on people, that's when they start making mistakes and it becomes easier to, you know, launch, launch a follow on operation because he's not sure what he needs to do. And so, you know, we drew up the plan and got approval and, and then briefed the plan, pitch the plan to the boys. And you know, one of the only times I've ever told the boys, actually it was the only time I ever told them, I was like, you know, this is the Tangi Valley. And, and it's not an if we're going to get into a gunfight, it is a 100. We are walking into a gunfight on this night. And there's a reason why we only go into this valley on the, the no illumination cycle. And that's because they're going to shoot at anything, helicopters, aircraft, people. So you know, switch it on, put it on straight and you know, we're going to get it on tonight. And so we had an uneventful, you know, infill, no rounds taken because we had flown in extortion. 16 and 17 had been our infill aircraft. And so then they flew back, cycled through and Gold Squadron was on QRF for, for us or any follow on objectives that, that came up from what we were doing. And so infield got the guys on, got the boys on the ground, you know, started movement to the objectives, got word that, you know, there was eight to 10 enemy fighters moving off the objective. And so we hold formation, got clearance for fires with the Apache gunships and, and lit into them with the Apache gunships. Two gun runs per aircraft and, and then push the target uneventful after that and then cleared through the, the contact and had stirred up a bunch of, you know, stuff in, in the valley. And so, you know, I was, it's just, you know, guys in their rebel rousing, trying to get guys to come out and you know, gather a force to come and fight. And so we're clearing through our target and you know, it's looking good for what's being seen on ISR because they're seeing a bigger picture than what I'm seeing within, you know, a thousand meter circle of my objective. And so the, the call came from the, from the jock to my platoon leader and myself is like, hey, are you guys going to go, you know, you're going to go push farther into the valley and, and you know, take on this contact and, and at the time, you know, we're working a pretty good objective and we actually kind of thought we had what we were looking for on the objective as far as who we went into the valley to get. And we said no, no, we think we're, we're working it and we have what we want. They said, you know, do you care if, you know, Gold Squadron comes in and you know, it starts their own movement to contact on, on the rest of this objective and you know, about 5K to the west of you. And I said, well that's plenty of deconfliction of space for small arms fire. So if they want to come in, you know, and that's what they want to do, good on them. You know, this had been a pre briefed discussion between my platoon leader, myself, Jonas and Lou, the, the master chief and the commander for the Gold Squadron that hey, look, if, if it does ever happen that it's a single objective but we end up bringing in the other element, you know, we'll link up and then we'll just kind of work exfil, you know, as it plays out. And if we have cycle aircraft and we'll cycle aircraft and you know, we'll just get it done and it's like, okay, great, awesome. So we knew how that was going to go and we kind of had a pre, pre planned position where we were going to link up, you know, if that had happened. And you know, we got the word that they were loading on the extortion and we weren't sure which way they were going to come into the valley. And we kind of said, hey, we recommend, you know, if you overfly our objective then we can at least, you know, provide ground cover for anything. And you know, but that way, you know, we only get a small amount of say and it doesn't really carry that much weight as far as what the airplaneers are doing, you know, because these are conventional aircraft so the pilots are only flying what's been approved through their S3 air shop. And, and so, you know, what we're saying to our jock is not necessarily making it over to theirs. And so we were like, well, okay, so you'll get the call that their wheels up and they're 10 minutes out. And so we wanted to clear one more building. So we've kind of pushed to try and clear the building real quick and get the call that, you know, they're six minutes out and then three minutes out. And so we held our, our assault and what we're doing and we're just kind of sitting there waiting and I'm waiting, I'm waiting to see the birds flush after infill. And, and so that we're not, you know, if we end up shooting on target, that we're not going to ricocheting something into aircraft because they're within, you know, small arms distance. And then that, that never happened. And I would kind of wondering what's going on. And we get over the fire net from the FOS that there's a, a fallen angel. And I had known what the, you know, the, the pro word, if you will, is and I just kind of dumb struck by it and I said, say that again. And he's like, we're a fallen angel. And I was like, okay, now so that my brain and my, you know, it's all connecting, you know, speak it in English. And he goes, extortion's been shot down. And I was like, okay, great. So then it was, you know, how fast can we back out of this target building? How fast can I get the guys on the road and get them to start moving, even though we don't know exactly where it is yet is. I just know the general direction that we need to go, which was to the west. And so we got the boys backed out of the objective, off the objective, and we're moving in about three minutes, you know, as far as getting guys pushed out. And then it's trying to. All the weapons and everything that we had accumulated on our objective is trying to take all that stuff with us and, you know, get everybody and everything on the move and. And not leave, you know, all this stuff to potentially be shot in the back with it. So send it forward and find a place to blow it in place. And, you know, then the question comes to, what do we do with all these detainees? And so it just becomes, well, leave them. And, you know, people are like, well, you're going to untie them. I was like, nope, somebody will come over and cut them loose later. I'm not. Not cutting anybody loose. They can figure it out, right? And so we got off the objective and started moving. I just, you know, I'll never forget, you know, when those. The lead element and the snipers and the. The dog handler finally got within eyesight of, you know, around the terrain feature. And it was just this, you know, I won't use the profanity, but it was one of those oh, my God moments. You know, the whole night sky is just lit up with just fire and, you know, the. The burning wreck of it. And, you know, you know, we're still trying to figure out, you know, the fastest way and, you know, should we, you know, so the tangy road that runs through this valley is heavily IED. I mean, it's IED, like, every three to 400 meters, there's something planted in that road, and it's to stop, you know, the trucks. And so there was this, you know, do we want to go over land? And I told the. The pls, like, hey, look, sir, my recommendation, we got to assume the risk to force, and we're just gonna have to stay on the road because we got to get there. And he said, I agree. So we just, you know, I told the dog and the handler up front, it's like, if it looks suspicious or he wants us, you know, to. To, you know, say that there's something in the road and just mark it and mark good and Just tell everybody to stay out of the way because we gotta go. And so it took us about an hour to go the 5k to get up there. And then, you know, it's a kind of trying to put this whole thing together on the fly. And, you know, everybody's radios are going nuts. As far as, you know, the pl, he's, you know, like basically glued to the stat radio and just like, hey, sir, we gotta, I need some information here. You know, we gotta, you gotta tell me how many people are on this aircraft? You know, so we're working through that and it's, you know, he. I finally get the numbers and I'm thinking, you know, it's half the force. And I'm like, okay, so. And they, you know, but he gave me the number 38. And I was like, so how many are on the other aircraft? You know, I'm not joking about it. I'm like, I'm in disbelief. It's like, how many people are on the other aircraft? And he goes, empty ships.
- [98:00]
Jack
That.
- [98:01]
Nicholas Moore
And I was like, oh. And. And I was like, for those people that donors, you know, that aren't listening, that aren't, you know, in the military mindset of this is that, you know, it's a, it's a technique, and it's not a bad technique. You know, it's a, it's a risk of force, risk to aircraft decision that leaders make. Do we put everybody on one aircraft and only risk one aircraft to enemy fire and get the force all in at once, or do we only put half the element on one aircraft and the other half on the other? And the, the problem with that, you know, split force on multiple aircraft is that that lead aircraft makes contact, that second aircraft is not getting on the ground. Right. And so then you only have half your force on the ground. So given the situation that they were going in to pick a fight with, you know, of anywhere, 12 plus fighters on that side, it made more sense to just risk one aircraft and put everybody on the ground all at once. And it's not a bad decision. It's just, you know, people ask me, well, why didn't you do that then? Well, I brought 55 guys to the fight that night and we don't fit on one aircraft.
- [99:13]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [99:16]
Nicholas Moore
So, you know, we finally get up there on, on the crash and, and we start, you know, saying, calling for supplies that we're. And, you know, that the backside support, you know, from, you know, guys in the rigor shop to doing CDS drops because we're out of. We're out of water by this point. You know, there are supplies that we just don't have. And the whole way up there, I'm in my mind, I'm. I'm flashing back to all the stuff that we brought in the night we did the, you know, the turbine three three and the Marcus Littrell. You know, that six years ago. All that's flooding back into my mind and, and I'm trying to think of all the stuff that we had and all the stu Charlie had and I'm trying to, you know, request this stuff because at this point in the game, as far as, you know, the G.W.A.T. this is combat. Search and rescue is not something that we have time to train on anymore. And it was something that, you know, back in the day when we assumed ranger ready force one, it was one of those one day, two day taskings that, you know, we all trained, you know, like crash axes and smashing through. And this is what we do now. We get fam egress once a year when we do rotary wing violets on, you know, if the aircraft has a hard landing, not destroyed, but it has a hard landing. You know, this is how we destroy the radios. This is how you destroy, you know, the airframe if need be, you know, and so on and so on. But at this point it's like, okay, well I need, I need body bags, I need water, I need biohazard, you know, and if you could find them, I need class D fire extinguishers. And so I'm trying to get all this information requested to the jock so that they can build this weird CDS palette to hopefully help us, you know, get everybody recovered. Because by the time we got on the crash site, you know, it was still a fireball. It was still on fire for hours after. And you know, it was one of those learning points, I guess, if you will, for the, for the job that, hey, look, you know, this is the second time in less than 10 years that we've had this happen and we don't have any class D fire extinguishers to put out a metal fire, right? And helicopters have a lot of magnesium in them, right? And so, you know, we did correct that, you know, later on that, that all this stuff did, did make it into country and thankfully that never had to be used again. But it was one of those where we probably should have some of this stuff at least on standby.
- [101:53]
David Bark
And given, given that you are already in a non permissive environment, I imagine that you probably had a decent air package to start with. But what happened at that point? I mean did they start pushing all the assets you guys needed?
- [102:10]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah. So air package, you know we had a patches on station and then we had AC130 and then we had fast movers in the stack at altitude. And so what happens is when this kind of situation happens is everything in the country shuts down. Doesn't matter where at in the country it is. All operations are cease and desist. If you're not on target, you better be calling for X filler, you're walking home. Because you know every ISR platform, manned, unmanned, you know, fast movers, rotary wing assets, they're all coming to wherever that crash is at. And it was nuts the amount of support that we had, you know. And then so the big army's combat search and rescue element, the Pathfinders, in the book they're not, you know, Pathfinder Pathfinders, that was just their call sign was Pathfinder. You know those guys almost didn't make it in because they were shutting everything down. And so it was either going to already be there, which was us or it was going to have to come in on a truck. So they made it in just moments, moments before everything got shut down as far as rotary wing assets. And, and the, the, the strange part is, is that you know transport aircraft have flying pairs or triplets and so extortion one six the, the other aircraft in the flight I had to get special permission to fly back from the objective area as a single ship.
- [103:42]
David Bark
Now I, I must have misunderstood because I thought when you were saying everything in the country got shot shut down I thought you meant because it was all pushed to you guys. But why would they shut down the, the Pathfinder or the combat search and rescue effort?
- [104:02]
Nicholas Moore
It's a road. The rotary wing aircraft are getting shut down. It's not the fixed wing aircraft or the ISR or any of that stuff. It is the, you know, the Apaches are getting grounded. All rotary winger assets are getting shut down at this point. You know and it's a timing issue of can we get these in? And basically what it is is it's allocation of assets. And we just had a helicopter shot down. So we're not going to commit any more helicopters into this area. And so what they're whole thing was is that they had to get on the ground after we had containment of the area to provide a ground force security element on their HLZ for them to be able to come in. And so we had that just you know, right before the sun came up.
- [104:56]
David Bark
So it almost, I mean it almost sounds like they get super risk adverse. Like we have one helicopter down.
- [105:02]
Nicholas Moore
Very risk. Yes, we have that.
- [105:03]
David Bark
We have a helicopter down. And so we're not going to risk another hel helicopter to get you guys the assets you need because we don't want to lose another helicopter.
- [105:12]
Nicholas Moore
Right. And that. So then a lot of it becomes like things that we were requesting that normally would come in like on the back of a 47 and just get kicked out in a kit bag. Yeah, it has to get put on a fixed wing aircraft. So C130 and then it has to get cds drop combat delivery system has to get dumped to us that way so they can fly in, you know, A10s as air support and, and all that other kind of stuff. And, and it just becomes a risk aver into more ground fire, rotary wing assets.
- [105:41]
Jack
So how did this unfold as, as the sun came up and you're continuing with this recovery mission now? That's what this has turned into, right?
- [105:50]
Nicholas Moore
It's, you know, so as all this is going on and you know, we're trying to, to figure out, you know, is there going to be anybody else that's coming in and you know, so we're, we're securing the crash site in a, you know, kind of a football shape perimeter, as loose as we can and to start working the recovery efforts of it. You know, it's still dark and night vision's not working because it's so bright with all the fire, it just becomes. This basically sent two fire teams out, one on the north side of the creek that the tangy river and one on the south side. We just started doing concentric arcs, you know, basically fire teams online, just kind of combing around this. And what we're looking for is anybody that has been possibly ejected from the crash, you know, whether they had survived or you know, hurt or whatnot. And so that was the first thing is, you know, how we, how, how much of this can we clear within reason, you know, get out, you know, 100, 200 meters and make sure that, you know, when we start, start pulling remains, we're not missing somebody because they got pitched out of the back. So that's how we found like the first six to eight guys were kind of in this arc pattern that had been kind of thrown out within, you know, 50 meters. And then, you know, we got started getting the accountability. And so then we started finding chunks of the aircraft. The rotor assemblies, the front and rear rotor assemblies, you know, are in these positions. And know, we're kind of assuming that that's the farthest that any of this wreckage is going to get is, you know, people aren't going to get that far. But, you know, the rotor blades are still spinning and, and torqued out and they're going to, you know, wobble off and, you know, end up in an orchard here or get slammed into a tree, you know, cluster of trees over here. And so then it becomes, you know, how can we work this problem while it's still on fire? And so then it becomes, you know, how long can we sustain, you know, the exposure to the heat and things cooking off and exploding and, you know, the risk of force for us to make this as fast as possible. And, you know, it. It's just kind of one of those surreal moments, if you will, because you start, you know, as the sun's coming up, you're starting to see the look on everybody's face of just, you know, horror and disbelief that, you know, I can't believe this has happened. And, you know, you try not to expose everybody to that. So you're really relying heavy on the guys that have a little bit more season under their belts and the squads that are a little bit more mature and, you know, so I was really relying real heavy on second squad at the time to, you know, to work this. And then as they started to get gassed and just worn out, you know, rotating one other squad in to take over until we kind of got this all, you know, accounted for.
- [109:14]
David Bark
Right.
- [109:17]
Nicholas Moore
And I mean, I, I don't, I.
- [109:18]
Jack
Don'T want to get, like, too graphic, but I, I mean, they're, they're actually having to recover the remains of, of these seals and, and attachments.
- [109:27]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah.
- [109:27]
Jack
Who burned up in the crash.
- [109:28]
Nicholas Moore
And we're, we're picking them up out of the firing, you know, wreck and, and stuff. So it's a pretty difficult job.
- [109:37]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [109:38]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah. I mean, you know, if you were. For the guys that were there, you know, it's. We, we had talked about it later. It's like, you know, Hollywood couldn't have written anything more graphic.
- [109:48]
David Bark
Right.
- [109:49]
Nicholas Moore
For people that, you know, wanna imagine what this is like, I mean, you couldn't have written a script like this any. Right. Any more graphic than what it actually turned out to be as far as the way movies are made now. It's crazy. Right. And, you know, and I, I give the credit to the boys because they, you know, they handled a lot. Yeah.
- [110:14]
David Bark
That night.
- [110:15]
Nicholas Moore
And, you know, for some of them, you know, it's their first deployment and, you Know, they're seeing the worst that can happen. And so, you know, it's trying. Trying to make sure that everything was okay. Right, right. And so, you know, we. I think it was probably about four, four and a half, five hours, and we had everybody, you know, pulled out and accounted for. And, you know, it wasn't. There wasn't a lot of. Some people left, so. Because that was one of the questions, you know, later when talking with the jock and. And things after it was all said and done, you know, there was, you know, questions, questions over, you know, how did you get accountability? Because, you know, through the investigation. I mean, there was investigations that went on, this thing went on for weeks of, you know, there's. Everybody wants all these answers. And so then, you know, one of the questions comes, is, like, how did you, you know, come up with that? You had accountability of all of these people, you know, and it wasn't prefaced. The. The statement wasn't prefaced correctly because they're getting information from, like, Mort affairs that says, you know, you can't count it as a human unless you have 51 of the remains. And some of these guys are, you know, not to be graphic. There's, you know, sea spines and skulls. Right.
- [111:46]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [111:46]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, you did the best. That was.
- [111:47]
Jack
You did the best you possibly could under combat conditions.
- [111:51]
Nicholas Moore
Right, right. And so, you know, we go, you know, we go up for the ramp ceremony. And so anybody who's spent any time in the Ranger regiment, you know, personnel and accountability of people and equipment, that is the senior NCO's bread and butter, that's his baby. And so I just remember going into the jock and. And, you know, we're up there for the ramp ceremony, and I'm kind of talking with the, you know, the regimental staff and the officers and, you know, bumped into somebody that I, you know, knew and I respected, and he goes, you know, hey, you did really good under the circumstances. And I said, sir, I got a bone to pick, and I don't care if it gets me fired. You know, it was one of those. Since winning the Ranger regiment is personnel accountability of man, weapons and equipment, not the NCO's job. But when you grill my platoon leader over something that he's not involved in, I have a big problem with that. And so, you know, I'm being polite about it, you know, but it was one of those those things where, you know, it's like, you know, we. We did the best we could under the circumstances, and, you know, I wouldn't have given you a false report in these circumstances, if I wasn't sure that we had everybody.
- [113:10]
David Bark
Right. And so your Pl, your Pl was taking heat like they were trying, like your PL was taken.
- [113:17]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, there was a, there was a, A v. A vtc, so a video teleconference like a few days later and he was being grilled over, you know, accountability and how did we get these numbers, but they never prefaced where they're getting their questionable, you know.
- [113:34]
David Bark
Right.
- [113:35]
Nicholas Moore
Numbers from or, or how we could say we had accountability. And, and so, you know, that came to, to light and I just, I, I, you know, I was still short fused from the whole thing and I just was like, well out. I don't care. No, I, I get it.
- [113:50]
Jack
You're, you're the platoon sergeant and the buck stops with you. And you, you, you've said that, you know, I understand.
- [113:57]
Nicholas Moore
Well, no, I mean, what was fun is that, you know, I, I excused myself from the big jock and you know, we went over to the ramp to stand by for the ceremony and somebody came over and they actually apologized to Michael Tomb leader or you know, that grilling if you will. And I was, I actually thought that, you know, the, the fabled black Chinook was going to come in and, and carry him off and I was going to be without a platoon leader, but it didn't happen. And you know, it's, I, I felt, you know, justified after that that, you know, he got raked over the coals for something that wasn't in his lane.
- [114:30]
David Bark
Right.
- [114:30]
Nicholas Moore
And you know, I got him an apology and so then everything was straight. Not, not trying to, to brag on the situation, but you know, it was.
- [114:41]
Jack
Yeah, you gotta speak.
- [114:42]
David Bark
But also that they are using an administrative standard for. Yeah, yeah, you know, yes. You know, this, right. This is, this is a sailor, but it's not enough of a sailor to be counted.
- [114:56]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, get the out like. Yeah, exactly.
- [114:59]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [115:00]
Nicholas Moore
You know, like I said, you know, we, you can't, nobody can have more than one skull and one C spine.
- [115:07]
David Bark
Yeah, yeah, no, I, I did, did the, did the army or did the military take steps to make sure that, that your guys were okay after that? Because that, especially if you think about some 18, 19 year old kid, his first deployment.
- [115:27]
Nicholas Moore
So we, sorry. We had, you know, throughout the rest of the deployment we had, you know, the, the psychologists and the chaplains, you know, they were always coming in and checking on the guys and you know, as leaders, you know, we were constantly asking if they were, you know, doing okay and you know, if everybody was still having issues from before. But the. The hardest challenge as a leader was to, you know, look. Look the boys in the face. When it was all done and everything got cleared to operate again, was that. That, you know, tell them, hey, we're going out and we're going to load back on these aircraft, and we're just going to keep doing business. And, you know, to see the look in some of their faces, it's just, you know, there's timidness in their eyes that you can see is because they've seen the worst that could happen and, you know, ask them to step back on those airframes and to, you know, assume that risk, you know, that was the hardest, you know, and then.
- [116:31]
David Bark
It.
- [116:32]
Nicholas Moore
Got easier for him, you know, as we kind of settled back in. But, you know, then we started and we went back into Tangi, like, six weeks later, and we lost one of our guys. Tyler Holtz was killed, had one other guy, specialist who was wounded, and, you know, all in the same area of, you know, where that crash had happened, within about 400 meters, 500 meters of the crash site itself. Because what we had done was we had gone back through all the video and the ISR and, you know, figured out where that those rockets were fired from. And so that became a target in itself, a very deliberate target. And, you know, we brought the rest of Bravo Company up and did a big company op in there, and, you know, we put 150 rangers on the ground. And, you know, we were just. Basically, what it was was to just say, hey, look, you may have shot an aircraft down, but we're not afraid to come in here. And, you know, then, you know, unfortunately, we have a team leader that's killed another guy that's, you know, severely wounded. And, you know, so it is kind of this big, big downer for that. And. And then, you know, and then I get hurt a few weeks later. And so it's just kind of weird to One Bravo just continues to just take a beating.
- [117:56]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [117:56]
Nicholas Moore
Either physically or emotionally or mentally. And it was a. It was a rough trip. I always, you know, guys always ask, you know, what was that one like? I was like, well, at that point in time, you know, One Bravo had been in more gunfights that deployment than the rest of the battalion together. All the other platoons, we had been in more gunfights on that trip, and guys were just spent.
- [118:20]
David Bark
Yeah. Nicholas, before we get into the operation that led to your injury, I. I wanted to ask you because it's something we've talked about on the show before, and As a senior nco, you know, you mentioned the one side of how the guys responded to the extortion. 1 7. The, the, the tin. How is it, how is an nco? Did you have to deal with the other side of that, too, of reining in the guys that wanted to get some, that wanted payback and, and would look. And that was a broad definition of a payback.
- [119:00]
Nicholas Moore
Sure. I know what you're, I know what you're getting at. And you know, it's to say, hey, look, you know, we're going back in here, but we're still going to be as professional as we possibly can and there will be no shenanigans. You know, it is too intense. Beat that into them is like, no matter what you feel, no matter what happened with those guys, we're not going to get shut down operationally because somebody wants to do something stupid as payback. We're going to get it and we're going to give it to them in the right way and we're going to do it our way, you know, within the rules of engagement and, you know, and that's going to be it. There's, there's not going to be any shenanigans.
- [119:39]
David Bark
Were there during your time in the Rangers? Were there like leadership challenges? And if, in that, in that sense, and if so how were they dealt with?
- [119:53]
Nicholas Moore
Not really. I'm, I, I know what you're getting at. And you know, if as a, the Ranger regiment or even just the battalion as a whole, you know, the.
- [120:05]
David Bark
Kind.
- [120:05]
Nicholas Moore
Of, when you look back at the way things were when, when everything started in 2001, you know, we started kind of as a special operations support. You know, we're there to, you know, provide security and blocking positions and things for, you know, Delta Force and Team Six. And you know, to get to the point where we're now we're running and gunning on the same target decks and you know, the same targeting lines and, you know, we've earned our right to, to be in this point. I, most of the guys at this point as far as squad leaders and you know, even some of the senior team leaders, but, you know, team starters, we, we know what it's like to be the guy on the outside looking in. And now we're on the inside right there. There was no way that anybody was going to risk, you know, ruining that reputation that, that we had for anything. And so no, that's, it's, it's really.
- [121:07]
David Bark
Interesting because sound, it sounds like it really was a, a matter of responsible leadership. In the sense of. Yeah, you know, setting the tone and making sure that, that, making certain that that tone is stuck to.
- [121:26]
Nicholas Moore
Right. You know, and, you know, a lot of that, you know, it comes down to the, to the, the people that, you know, we pick as NCOs to continue to lead inside the regimen. It's not, you know, it's not just me, you know, it's all the other 11 platoon sergeants that were there at the time and you know, it's all the squad leaders that we say, hey, this guy has what it takes to be that squad leader. It's that guy that has, has that personal integrity to, you know, continue to push, push the, you know, what we're doing in the right direction. It's not to compromise our integrity or, or any of that stuff because, you know, when those kind of things start happening and you start getting questionable circumstances, chances on target, you know, then, then your freedom of maneuver and freedom of movement and, and you know, what you do, it starts getting, you know, put under the microscope. And so nobody wants to be under the microscope. And so, you know, I give it to the guys that, that took over after I got hurt and you know, the guys that are even still doing it today, you know, it's, it is carrying on that legacy of what we started 20 years ago and still continuing to develop, you know, where it's going in the future. And you know, it's awesome to be, you know, a part of that history, you know, because I look at what the Ranger regiment is now and back to what it was when, when you were there and you know, when I was a young private and you know, it is hands down a completely different organization. You know, we can do all that old stuff, but we are so much better at fitting into the operational roles that we have now.
- [123:16]
David Bark
Yeah, yeah. So we'll just talk about the incident where you were wounded and then we'll take some viewer questions and. Yeah, yeah. So can you tell us about.
- [123:28]
Jack
Yeah, the operation which presumably a purple heart is in the works here. Here.
- [123:33]
Nicholas Moore
So. Yeah, so it's 10-6-7, 2011. We're taking a swing at an IED and weapons facilitator. It's mid level target, you know, kind of the middle of the deck. It gets you the guys above and the guys below, which the guys below are, you know, the, the targets in the pyramid that, you know, the BS battle space owners are dealing with. And, and so when you slice out the middle, you can work, work the targeting from both sides. You can get the guys who are providing stuff from across the border. And then it gives you the ability to pass on to the battle space owner who's putting this stuff in the roads and trying to blow their trucks up. So, you know, that's kind of where we're swinging across the, the food pyramid, if you will, is right in the middle. And so we're in Baraki Barack or. Well, Baraki Barack was the, the little, the, the town, but we're in Logar province kind of on the east side of the, the tangy valley.
- [124:38]
David Bark
And.
- [124:41]
Nicholas Moore
The, the target grids dropped in a little cluster of four buildings that all shared walls. So it's like a plus symbol. And you know, you get 25% chance of taking the swing the right the first time. And so we swung wrong and so we reset all the pieces to, to move and strike the next compound. And as we're resetting all the pieces, you know, I made a stupid decision that I had preached a thousand times before and shoot houses, don't ever put your body in front of an open doorway. And I had just instinctually I just stupidly put my leg across this doorway. And as soon as I did it to hold the door open, I took a three round burst. Took first round through the right thigh. Then I took one as I was getting spun out of the way. I took one through the right armpit and entered in my armpit and exited out my bicep. And then I took the last one through the, through my helmet. Through the helmet? Well, I mean it split the helmet. Like the Kevlar opened up so it hit right temple right here. And then it blew my nods off my mount.
- [125:57]
Jack
Holy.
- [125:58]
Nicholas Moore
It came out right, right on the top.
- [126:00]
Jack
I'm looking at the picture in your book. I mean, that's, that's bad.
- [126:04]
David Bark
From your leg?
- [126:05]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, that's bad. Yeah. So you know, a dual tube. Dual tube night vision. You know, when I, when I got everything, when I hooked it back on and, and went to flip it down, everything was offset. And so I always. People go, what that feel like. I was like, well, I know what a baseball feels like when somebody hits a home run.
- [126:27]
David Bark
Yeah. I mean, and honestly, all those, I mean all three of those areas, your leg, you know, with the femoral and everything down there and then.
- [126:36]
Nicholas Moore
Right.
- [126:37]
David Bark
And then your armpit, like around going in the armpit. One of the worst things. Yeah. Is one of the worst things.
- [126:45]
Nicholas Moore
Right. So when I finally, you know, after it was all said and done and I got, you know, I finally made it to Germany and I was Talking, you know, had a chance to kind of talk with one of the surgeons who happened to be one of the old battalion surgeons. And, you know, he came in and he was kind of joking with me. I heard about this cranky old Ranger NCO who's down here. Just, you know, he's just giving me a hard time. And so I was like, you know, I was asking him questions. I said, I know I got shot through here, but, you know, what were the. You know, how. How. How lucky am I? Or how was it? And he goes, well, you. You have the. The. You know, the femoral artery and the femoral nerve. They. They run parallel to each other down the inside of your thigh. And he said, that round went right between both of them.
- [127:31]
David Bark
God. Oh.
- [127:35]
Nicholas Moore
And I was like, well, okay.
- [127:40]
Jack
And all those ops. And this was the one that got you.
- [127:44]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, all that. And. And this was the. My stupid mistake. And so, you know, that being said, that night, that gunfight went on for, you know, they brought in the QRF. Two Two Bravo came in to back up 1st Platoon because we had. I was wounded. Urgent surgical specialist Saros was expectant. And then we had an Afghan partner who was expectant. He had taken a round to the face. And, you know, we had two other guys that were wounded severely, but they didn't say anything about it because they were still able to conduct OPSIM. And then we had 12 other guys that had received fragmentation because I got shot. And then, you know, there was an exchange of gunfire, and then the enemy threw a hand grenade out in this little alley. And so then it went off, and, you know, I got a whole bunch of fragmentation in the back of my, you know, hamstrings from it. And then a bunch of other guys caught frag off it. But that. That objective alone, that night, we gave out 14 purple hearts. Wow.
- [128:56]
David Bark
Wow. So even after you got shot, you kept getting him. Like, they just wouldn't leave you alone. You kept on. You were my frying. You're like, I'm out.
- [129:08]
Nicholas Moore
You know, it's like, time out. No.
- [129:09]
David Bark
Yeah, right, right. I'm already out, guys.
- [129:11]
Nicholas Moore
Everybody goes. Everybody goes. You know. Did you have this, you know, surreal moment where it's like time slowed down? Yeah. Because what I perceive in my mind as being, you know, just a minute or two, it turns out, you know, it's probably about six or seven minutes.
- [129:28]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [129:29]
Nicholas Moore
Because, you know, my bell's wrong.
- [129:30]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [129:31]
Nicholas Moore
The lights got real dim in the tunnel.
- [129:33]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [129:34]
Nicholas Moore
If you will. And I'm in my mind, you know, we do all this casualty play during training, but when it actually happens, you gotta. It's a conscious thought, effort to go, okay, I have to put a tourniquet on.
- [129:46]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [129:47]
Nicholas Moore
You're like, I know where they are, but it. Can I reach it?
- [129:51]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [129:52]
Nicholas Moore
Can I get to it? Because I'm kind of laid over on it. It's like, well, I can't really move. And I knew my femur hadn't been broken because I stupidly stepped. You know, I put pressure down on my leg when I lost my balance after I got shot in the head. So I was like, okay, good. You know, in my mind, I'm like, my femur's not broken. And so then I'm like, okay, I've got a tourniquet in my med pouch. And then I also have one down on my left calf, but I've got all this crap and I'm kind of in this weird position. Can I even reach it? It? Yeah, you know, because I've got a. I've got a team leader and two other guys who are straddling over top of me trying to get guns through this doorway. And they're, you know, in the. In the fight, and I'm not in the fight anymore, and I'm trying to, like, reach between their legs and my legs and grab this tourniquet and put it on. And then, you know, that is sucks. And then you're like, okay, but I still have to crank this thing down and, you know, get it as tight as I can get it. And then there's a lull. And then, you know, I know that Saros is. Is hurt, you know, so I know I can get. I can probably walk. And so, you know, I get help stood up, and then I try to get myself out of the way, you know, as best I can. And so I start walking back down the alleyway to where we're going to have the ccp. And then, you know, then. Then my leg starts going numb and it's like, hey, doc, come here. You gotta help me. And, you know, really what I'm trying to do is just get out of the way so that they. The other medic can get in there and help Saros and. And get him kind of drug out of the way into the ccp. But I didn't really start panicking about the whole thing until I. I got my equipment cut off and my radios came out. And so then I'm. I lose all situational awareness to the fight, right? And then it's like anxiety comes in. It's like I Have no idea what's going on anymore. And I am not in control of anything, you know, as a leader. And that. That just sucks. But I knew when we reorganized the priority for. For medevac and it became myself and one of the snipers who took frag through the nose to. Took. Took frag through the bridge of his nose. I knew that when I and him went from being on the second aircraft out to being on the first aircraft out and the Afghan and Sarah ended up on the second aircraft, I. I just knew that, you know, things were not. Not going well. And, you know, Doc wasn't going to tell me anything anymore because I'm not in, you know, the first sergeant's on the objective, so he's kind of taken over those duties. And I, I just. Just, you know, was bad at that point in my mind. It's just, you know, everything that's gone sideways can go sideways and inside out and.
- [132:44]
David Bark
And so they medevac you. And then when did you. When did you become aware of how the operation went?
- [132:53]
Nicholas Moore
So I got medevacked and got back to Shank. I was probably about 30 minutes after I had gotten shot by the time we got, you know, from the cc, you know, point of impact to the CCP and then over to the HLZ to medac and then loaded it on and then into the cache and then surgery. And then I didn't find out that Sarah was killed till I got the bam. And then, you know, some of the guys that, that were on the S4 shop come over to tell me what was going on on the objective and that the QRF came in and the boys are still out there. And it, you know, the whole thing went for like six more hours before, you know, the sun, you know, it was done and over with and they were pulling both platoons out just as the sun was coming up.
- [133:44]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [133:45]
Jack
And so then you bolt, you begin that long process of rehabilitation.
- [133:51]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it was probably three or four days in Afghanistan in Bagram, waiting on the medevac transport to go to Germany, and then it was a week in Germany and then back to Madigan and, you know, another week to 10 days at Madigan. And, you know, by the time it was all said and done, it was a dozen surgeries and then, you know, rehab. So I, I didn't make it back on active duty status until after New Year's 2012.
- [134:27]
David Bark
Did, did. Did you. Were you able to contact your wife from theater or. When did she find out about it?
- [134:36]
Nicholas Moore
I. I called her right After I got out of the first surgery in Shank and, but they handed me the sat phone and I'm still, you know, trying to come out of sedation from that. And so, you know, sat phones don't work well when the antenna is pointed to the ground. And so I was kind of frustrated, you know, my mouth's all cotton balled from, you know, the anesthesia and the fentanyl and, you know, I'm frustrated that I cannot be coherent enough. I just remember handing the phone up to the platoon sergeant for third platoon. I'm like, just please tell her. And so he gave her the, you know, the, you know, the information that was going on. And then, you know, the battalion commander called her a little bit later while I was in surgery and in ballroom and so she, she knew within, you know, a couple hours.
- [135:28]
David Bark
Yeah, yeah.
- [135:30]
Jack
You write in the, in your book that, you know, probably the most difficult conversation you had to have was with the family of Specialist Saros. And you know, how, yeah, he passed away.
- [135:42]
Nicholas Moore
You know, that, that was, you know, it was, it's always tough, you know, when you have to look, you know, them in the, you know, in the face and say, hey, I'm, you know, I'm sorry that your son died. And he died, you know, right next to me from, you know, not, not getting shot, but, you know, he died from fragmentation that just happened to catch him under the arm and just, just the right spot where there was a gap in the armor. And, you know, that I survived and your son's dead. And you know, that's, that's one of those, those tough situations. And you know, because they can go one of two ways. You know, they could be they can hate you for life or they can embrace you. And you know, luckily enough his dad had spent time in the army, so he understood and so that was okay. And you know, that was kind of one of the harder things. You know, last year I got a chance to, to meet a bunch of the gold star families for the SEAL team that was killed. And you know, I'm always proud to, to meet him, but it's kind of one of those double edged things is that, you know, they're still holding on to anger or grief and, you know, which way is it gonna go? You know, are they gonna embrace you or are they going to hate you? And you know, that that's tough because I, I never not want to meet them, but you know, on the same, same side of it, you know, I, I'm, you know, their, their son is not here And I am right, you know, but regardless of the fact, you know, I, I have a sense of pride. And all the boys that were there that night have a sense of pride, you know, that, hey, you know, regardless of whether you like us or hate us, you know, we brought them home and, you know, we're willing to accept, you know, your anger or, or frustration at the situation. You know, that's just the way it is on the survivor side of it.
- [137:34]
David Bark
Right, right. Yeah, you, I mean, you can't blame people for their emotions and their circumstances, you know.
- [137:43]
Jack
So how did, how did you end up finishing out your career after getting shot up? Pretty badly?
- [137:50]
Nicholas Moore
I spent six months on battalion staff and running the S2 shop, and then we had an incident happen where we had to relieve a platoon sergeant in one of the companies. And so I ended up moving over to snipers for my last year and was running the sniper platoon for the last year. And then I was on the sniper range. We were out in Eastern Washington shooting on a department energy range over there. And, you know, the company commander and the first sergeant come over and, you know, off site training is always fun because everybody gets to be out of the office. So, you know, I'm hobbling around and, and kind of dragging my leg. And the first sergeant's like, hey, you're going to see a specialist when we get back. And so I went and saw the specialist and he kind of just laid it out, you know, bluntly for me. He goes, do you want to walk when you're 40? And I said, well, yeah. And he goes, well, then you need to stop now. And so, you know, that started the whole, you know, med board process. And so then I was out of the army about six months later.
- [139:01]
David Bark
Wow. Wow.
- [139:03]
Nicholas Moore
So I know a lot of guys that take some a year or two or three to get out, but because I wasn't on any kind of pain medications or, or any of that stuff, you know, was. They didn't have to, you know, worry about substance abuse or any of that. And so my packet kind of went a little bit faster than, than some of the other guys. Some of the other guys from that had gotten shot that deployment, you know, were still in for another year or so, even after I got out, because they had to get, you know, through kind of a. I don't want to say rehab process, but, you know, they kind of had to get weaned off the meds.
- [139:42]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [139:43]
Nicholas Moore
And, you know, and finish the, the rehabbing and stuff.
- [139:48]
David Bark
Yeah. I also, I noticed it in your book. You also Are you involved with Gallant Few? I know that you have the postscript for them.
- [140:00]
Nicholas Moore
They.
- [140:02]
David Bark
I'm.
- [140:03]
Nicholas Moore
I'm friends with, you know, some of the guys that do Gallant Few, Tim Abel, and I'm drawing a blank. Carl Monger on some of the others. But it was one of those things. Yeah, Carl Monger. And so it was one of those things that he. Carl asked me if we would put that in there. And I said, I will most definitely gladly, you know, put that in there to kind of help, you know, all the fellows out.
- [140:28]
David Bark
Yeah, I mean, since it's in your book, hey, folks, if you have a spare five bucks this month or whatever, why don't you head over to Gallant Few?
- [140:38]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, I. I haven't spoken to Carl.
- [140:40]
Jack
In a while, and probably I should correct that, but he's a good guy. And Gallant Few does a lot to.
- [140:45]
David Bark
Help guys out, but it's really. Yeah, gallant. Gallant few.org. check them out.
- [140:52]
Nicholas Moore
Out.
- [140:53]
David Bark
Throw them a buck or two, you know.
- [140:55]
Jack
So I know we've kept you for a while here, Nick, but let's hit up these user questions real quick.
- [141:00]
David Bark
Yeah, we've only got a couple. One from Jackson. Thank you very much. Did you ever work with any of the Tier 1 units, Delta Seal Team 6, HRT, and if so, which impressed you the most of the bunch and why?
- [141:16]
Nicholas Moore
I worked with all of them. You know, in. In some aspect or another, I. I leaned towards, you know, I did enjoy working with Delta Force a little bit more. And a lot of it is just because there's kind of this, I don't know, you know, all the tier elements have their own personality. And, you know, we kind of sometimes fit better with guys in Delta Force because especially early on, you know, a lot of the team leaders and squad leaders and, and guys, you know, the career progression is, you know, from the range of regimen is to go to that organization. So there is a familiarity with people who understand where you're coming from as a unit or an organization, whereas we didn't really have that for a while with Team Six. And so we always kind of got looked at as like the kid brother thing. And then as far as the hrt, I've only worked with a few guys from there. And that was in the kind of middle part of Iraq. You know, it was only a select few. And that was to kind of. We were building the terrorist database with the, you know, the three letter agencies for, you know, homeland security and whatnot. So as far as that goes. But, you know, everybody's. They're All a great bunch of guys. I mean, I know, you know, in certain aspects, you know, we all talk trash on each other because we can. And, you know, it's a cultural thing and if you're not a part of the culture, then sometimes it look, gets looked at. It's unprofessional, but.
- [142:47]
David Bark
Right.
- [142:48]
Nicholas Moore
You know, you're reading enough SEAL books and they take cheap shots on us. And so with this, some of this was, you know, a chance to, you know, level the field, if you will, and take a few shots at them. And so, yeah, crash some shade down. If you want to call me unprofessional, then, you know, then so be it.
- [143:08]
David Bark
But, yeah, Ohms, thank you for the donation. So Ohms gave us a sticker and I'm not. And Ohms, later comments. That sticker didn't work out right. Dang. So I don't. The sticker is either somebody raising us up and worshiping us or.
- [143:27]
Jack
I'll go with it.
- [143:28]
Nicholas Moore
Or it's.
- [143:29]
David Bark
It's. I, I don't know. It's like holding up a new baby. I'm not sure, but I. I'm gonna go with the worst.
- [143:35]
Jack
I'll go with that.
- [143:36]
David Bark
Yeah. The three of us, the four of us, including D. The four of us are. Are the new pantheon for Ohms.
- [143:46]
Nicholas Moore
Hey, can we take like a five minute break?
- [143:48]
Jack
Yeah, man.
- [143:48]
David Bark
Yeah, go ahead, man. Yep.
- [143:51]
Nicholas Moore
Kind of crap going on.
- [143:52]
David Bark
Yep, yep.
- [143:53]
Jack
Yeah, sure.
- [143:53]
Nicholas Moore
Thanks.
- [143:54]
David Bark
Yeah.
- [143:56]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah.
- [143:56]
Jack
So, guys, next episode is going to be. Hold on a second, I'll tease this out here. Okay. So on the third, actually, we have an extra episode that we crammed in here. James laporta, who is an investigative journalist with the Associated Press. He is also a former Marine, and he's broken some of the stories about. What's that guy's name? Majewski. Guy running for Congress who's a stolen.
- [144:23]
Nicholas Moore
I shouldn't say that.
- [144:25]
Jack
I shouldn't say he's a stolen valor. He. Guy.
- [144:27]
Nicholas Moore
He.
- [144:28]
Jack
He actually did serve, but.
- [144:30]
David Bark
But it's still stolen valor if you say that you did top secret deployments and you didn't.
- [144:36]
Jack
My deployments are classified.
- [144:37]
David Bark
Yeah, that's still like. I think that's still.
- [144:40]
Nicholas Moore
I know.
- [144:41]
David Bark
We'll let you guys vote whether it's stolen valor or not. But if a dude makes up stuff about his military career, that's kind of not cool. Stolen valor. Ish.
- [144:48]
Jack
And then next Friday is Tim Weiner. Tim is a journalist.
- [144:55]
Nicholas Moore
He wrote.
- [144:55]
Jack
He's written a number of books. He's written some pretty definitive histories of the Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI and a history of political warfare between America and Russia. So that'll be a pretty interesting conversation, I think. And then on the 10th, another extra episode. Joan Barker and she was facilitating some of the aviation foreign internal defense in Afghanistan. And in both Tim and Joan, they will be in studio interviews and so will on the 14th, John Fox, who he was a Marine and he worked or he went and he became an international volunteer with the YPG in Syria. And he wrote this book that I'm almost done with it now. He wrote a book about it's co authored him and two other guys who are foreign volunteers and fought with the Kurds in Syria against isis. So it's a pretty fascinating book. I think it'll be a good interview.
- [146:03]
Nicholas Moore
You.
- [146:03]
David Bark
Good stuff. Good stuff. And if you haven't joined our Patreon, join our Patreon. Like hook us up. Hook yourselves up. There's a ton of bonus content on there. Like I said, you get to see John, Jack and I in our, I said smoking pajamas earlier. I meant smoking jackets.
- [146:17]
Nicholas Moore
Smoking.
- [146:17]
David Bark
But we keep it casual.
- [146:18]
Jack
We don't have smoking jackets.
- [146:20]
David Bark
We keep it really casual. And our waifu pillows.
- [146:26]
Jack
That we have, we have the humidor and the cigars are on their way. So we'll see who wants to smoke it up.
- [146:32]
David Bark
Yeah, Nicholas, thanks so much, man, for, for spending a Friday night with us. We, we really appreciate, yeah.
- [146:42]
Jack
Quick, quick one from one.
- [146:43]
Nicholas Moore
I appreciate you guys having me.
- [146:45]
Jack
One, one of our, one of our Patreon users asks if since you were in 275, did you ever serve with Pat Tillman and, and his brother?
- [146:55]
Nicholas Moore
Yeah, I mean they were in Alpha company and I was in Bravo company and Charlie Kennedy. But yeah, they were, Kevin and Pat were both there at the same time. Do I know them? Not really. I mean, I know them about as well as I, you know, know Matt best, which is I, I know who he is and I know he was an Alpha company and you know, that's about where it's at.
- [147:20]
Jack
Yeah, yeah. Fair enough.
- [147:22]
David Bark
So everybody, some great, great war stories. I mean on the ground stuff for, for so many things that have happened during the g. What first hand accounts run to the sound of the guns. Check it out.
- [147:37]
Nicholas Moore
Get it on.
- [147:38]
David Bark
You know, we say Amazon, the link is down below. But yeah, we highly recommend it. Check it out. Do you have anything that you want to plug? And aside from Gallant few, are you involved in any charities or organizations or businesses that you want to plug? Anything that you want to do?
- [147:59]
Nicholas Moore
Not, not currently. You know, no, I'm not involved in, in anything. I'm just the retired guy who got conned into writing the book, if you will. And well, people ask me, you know, hey, would you, would you write another one? And I was like, like no. Because if I know what it was going to take to write the first one, I would not have even written that one.
- [148:25]
David Bark
Yeah, it's a great book. Tons of references. A lot of great pictures too, which is something, you know, you, you see a lot of pictures in Vietnam era books but you don't see a lot of pictures I think in like modern gwat books a lot of times, which is, I think it's, it's really cool. You know, it's something that a lot of really interesting. And that one of your wound, I've never seen a pump like that.
- [148:45]
Nicholas Moore
That sucks.
- [148:45]
David Bark
Yeah, yeah, it's very interesting. Yeah.
- [148:49]
Jack
Yeah.
- [148:51]
Nicholas Moore
Actually does suck because it's a wound vac so it's sucking out all these fluids and whatever.
- [148:58]
David Bark
Sorry. All right.
- [149:00]
Nicholas Moore
All right.
- [149:00]
Jack
Thank, thank you Nick so much. You know, again, I really appreciate, appreciate your family's patience with us while we suck you away on, on a Friday. And you know, if there's anything, you know, we can do, feel free to reach out anytime and hope to you again soon.
- [149:16]
Nicholas Moore
All right, Appreciate it. Thanks guys.
- [149:18]
Jack
Have a good night. Thank you everyone who joined us. We'll see you next Friday or we'll see you before that with games.
- [150:08]
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