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The Team House
20 Years at War: A Ranger Regiment Story | Luis Saucedo
02:43:37
Luis Saucedo recounts his journey from the streets of Baghdad to high-value target raids in Afghanistan as a sniper in the 75th Ranger Regiment. He shares stories of brutal firefights, near-death experiences, and life inside one of America’s most...
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Jack Murphy
Hey, guys, welcome to the team house. I'm Jack Murphy here with our guest tonight, Louis Saucedo. He served in a number of different infantry units, worse. And then went to the 75th Ranger Regiment. Served in 375, went over to snipers. Lots of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. And some other interesting stuff, too, before he went over to the sfab, which was a new unit, a training adviser unit that we'll get into. But Louie, first off, thank you for joining us on the show.
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Luis Saucedo
Hey, man, thanks for having me. It's, it's a real pleasure. I love, love everything about your books.
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Jack Murphy
Oh, thank you.
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Luis Saucedo
I need to get. Yeah, awesome. I really like the, the genre and everything that I know you. I've met Jack Carr a couple times and that dude's an awesome guy, too. But just how y' all writes. Fantastic.
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Jack Murphy
Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, I really appreciate that, man. So let's, let's start at the beginning. If you tell us a little bit about how you grew up and how that took you into the military, man.
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Luis Saucedo
So, yeah, so that's a funny story. So I grew up to. My dad's a cop in Dallas. It's like a 37 year veteran of the Dallas Police Department. My mom was a dental hygienist of all things and kind of middle class. But we had the. I always tell people, it's like we had the. Me and my brother had the picturesque, like growing up kind of American experience where we went to high school. I played soccer, I played a ton of sports. Me and my brother got into wrestling roughly about the same time, and we did wrestling all through high school. And so that I think, especially the wrestling portion, because you hear a lot about guys. I think I ran into mostly guys in regiment that had. They were all wrestlers, every single one of them. And so it's, it's. I, I kind of laugh about that is like, I think the same amount of suffering that you did in wrestling kind of translated into suffering in other parts of your life. So you could do it real well. Like when you were. A lot of the times we were running around, not eating, sitting in bags and wearing trash bags while we're doing everything. So it's like it was a level of suffering that you put yourself through to attain a goal, to just get out and fight on the mat to get to that wrestling match. And that I think really, really translated into the type of suffering that you would do later. Past that. Like, my dad had had a lot of aspiration, big aspirations for us. He wanted us to be an officer or one of us to be. He was like, hey, if you're gonna go into the army, I always knew that I was gonna go into the military. And so he had always had big aspirations for. He was like, you're gonna go an officer, we're gonna try to send you to West Point or Annapolis or this is. I, I wanted to be a pilot until I found out I was dyslexic. And that doesn't work real well for the pilots. So I'd gotten into all of that wrestling and everything, kind of knew that my path was going to be in the military. And then 911 happened. And I was a junior in high school when 911 happened. So. And everybody, you get the same kind of response from everybody where they're like, hey, where were you during 9 11? And I can remember exactly where I was. And then the thought process of, okay, now, now I know I'm going into the military. I didn't know how long I was going into the military for. I thought I was going to do a, like a four year stint and I was going to follow my dad's footsteps and go to the Dallas Police Department. So that's, that's kind of really like the, the growing up portion that led me into going into the military. Had there not been a war, I probably wouldn't have stayed as long as I did. But definitely the way my father and my mother raised us, we were Americans, we're. We lived In a place called Little Mexico for a little while and then we moved to Carrollton and my dad was always like, you're not a, you're not a Mexican. Like don't, don't listen to what everybody says. You're not Mexican, you're an American. So me and my brother pretty much raised on that, took that into heart and then, then we just like doing the hard stuff. We got into. I had the, the risk factor that was always there. I think with all, all guys that do what we do. I got into a lot of trouble, like a ton of trouble. I, I went to parties, I drank and I really knew that college kind of wasn't going to be for me. So I didn't. Never planned on it. Plan on it. And then yeah, so I joined, I tried one year, one semester of college and then I, I called it and
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Jack Murphy
you and your brother both joined. Were there a few year gap between the two of you?
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Luis Saucedo
So there's a two year gap between when. So me and him are actually two years apart and there's a year and a half to two year gap between when we joined. So I had joined in 2004 and graduated everything May and I was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. And then as soon as I got there, I was gone. Probably I think it was like three months later. Like I got promoted to sergeant first class or not sergeant first class, Private First Class. Like on the airfield when it was snowing, getting on the bird to go, to go back, go into Iraq.
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Jack Murphy
And what was Iraq like for you in 2004?
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Luis Saucedo
Oh gosh, that place was the wild west. Like the. So everything had just, had just stopped and it just Transferred over to OIO2. We got there, landed in Biop. They're still doing the. I don't know if you had ever gotten into biop. Probably did but they were still doing the drops. So they were cut the, the combat drops when they would fly and they just, they take that, that crowd aircraft and then they'd be like okay, everybody hold on. And they just knows that thing right like right to the ground. And, and we. That was, I think that was the first time I realized like that hey, this could be real because I'm sitting there and I'm just like have all my grab. I'm like like 19, 20 years old and I'm looking down the road and there's people throwing up into their shirts on the floor. It's going all over the place. You've got the loadies are laughing on the other side. And I was Just like, okay, so this is. They're. They're trying. Either trying to scare us or we're scared of something. Um, yeah, we landed in the middle of the night, got there, and then that deployment was pretty. I was in Camp Taji, Iraq, and so we're right there on MSR Tampa. And it was funny because we just knew that that was. The big IEDs hadn't. The EFPs hadn't started go happening yet. I would meet those later on, early 2006, 7. And so we were really just scared of the 155s. And it was just random firefights. And it was. All of it was super surreal when I think back about it, because we would go down Route Irish, we'd do stuff. We'd be heading down into the Green Zone, taking people in or pulling people out or going on mission. And right there on Route Irish, there was a bridge. And as soon as you cross that bridge, first little tick I got into is we're coming out. And as soon as you cross that bridge, everybody's shooting from both sides of the freeway. And it's just all fires coming in on you. Everybody's. You're driving, the gunners are shooting. They're. We're shooting back at them. They're shooting at us. And then you cross probably about a mile over, you cross back over, and it's over. It's like somebody turned, like, a spigot off. And so I was just like, this is it. It got really surreal at one. At a couple points where it was just like, this isn't real life. Like, we're living. We're living in some alternate universe where this is happening, where you're just sort
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Jack Murphy
of like, I can't believe that happened. Yeah.
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Luis Saucedo
Like, it's like I was like, so that's my first firefight, is me sitting in this, like, the rear. The rear of this vehicle, and we're just getting ding. You know, we're getting stitched up a little bit, but we're not really scared of what they're doing. And it was funny because the. The unit that was bringing us in, because we were ripping out with them, was just like, everybody good? And they, like, it was a normal day. Like, that was just. There's like, hey, somebody passed me that. Rip it down there. We're like. I'm like, sure. Here you go, buddy. So, yeah, so just. Just a very surreal experience. As soon as, like, how Iraq was then. And then through the entirety of it, it was. It was that. It was kind of that the entire Time we had a couple things. There was a rope right on MSR Tampa going north towards Anaconda. There was a mosque. It was called Machada Mosque. And for some odd reason, they really liked shooting down Blackhawks. And they did it a couple times. And so every time it happened, the response was is we'd go down there and we'd get into a huge firefight with them. And it would be like a two day tick. And then we'd be like, all right, that's it. The show's over. Everybody go back home. We did what we said, and then we'd go back to Taji and hang out there. And the surreal part about it was funny, and later on I thought about this was that we were having, like Friday night boxing matches at the USOs at the. Or. Yeah, the MWR right in front of that PX right there on Camp Taji. They were having like volleyball tournaments. And so it was like a little town that we had a haunted house in October. I didn't get to go to it because we were running missions out. But like, they put together in these old abandoned buildings in. On that camp. They put together, like haunted houses and stuff like that. So we were getting. I was getting like this weird feel of like, hey, like, outside. I go outside the gate a lot and it's like every man for himself. The Wild West. And then you come back in here and it's like, hey, there's just people.
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Jack Murphy
It's like a Boy Scouts jamboree or something.
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Luis Saucedo
Yeah, like, it's. It's. It was. It. It was a introduction that I probably will never forget because you go into. You read books and you watch movies and you think, war's one way. And then you get there and you're just like, oh, this is. This is nothing like what they told me it was going to be.
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Jack Murphy
Yeah, those were the mad.
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Luis Saucedo
If you didn't get the. The next Hodge dvd, you know, that month, those were.
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Jack Murphy
Those were the years where, like, you guys would be playing video games, hit the pause button when you had to go on a mission, go and do it, get into a firefight, come back, sit right back down on the couch.
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Luis Saucedo
Yeah.
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Jack Murphy
Start the game again.
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Luis Saucedo
Yeah. It was all, yeah, you just come right back and you'd start playing. Or what was the. My favorite thing was we would just come and hang out and we had chess games going on for, like, days. And we'd go, leave. Just like that. We go, leave, and then we come back and we play chess. And we'd be like, all right, Whose move is it? Or the biggest one is you start a fistfight over risk because somebody, somebody moved your part. I think our place here got banned from risk a couple times because they started a massive, like, fight. It was like, you're a cheater. It's like they were like, all right, well we can't do this anymore because the privates are out there getting wild with each other. And that was the other thing too. The army was a lot different then. It was, I would say it was more kind of what we, we knew it to be where like if I had a problem with another private, I just walked outside and we just fought it out.
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Jack Murphy
And wall to wall counseling was a thing.
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Luis Saucedo
Oh yeah. Like E5s would. I'm not gonna say they'd hit you, but they would, they'd rough you up a little bit just, just to get it through your head.
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Jack Murphy
Some privates were physically corrected, that's all.
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Luis Saucedo
Yes, they're physically into the wall several times. I was one of those hard headed privates. So I think any good, I think any good nco, when you get, when you did well in the military, you, you always remember, you're like, yeah, I was that hard private. I was the one that was, that was slightly out of control. And me at 20, I had, I had the biggest ego on the planet. I was like, I can outdo you at everything, could I? No, not really, but I try.
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Jack Murphy
Well, that's a, that's a good personality asset to sort of have that to take you into special operations. But we'll get there. But you after that deployment, you went over to Lurce.
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Luis Saucedo
Yeah, so I went out to 4th ID. I was start. I was an E4. And it was funny because you get there, I'm pretty much volunteering for, to get on to the next thing. So I moved from Riley to Hood get there and I was just like, hey, like, like I want to get on to the next thing. Got picked up. Physically fit. I'm at that point, like I'm in a, a good place. Kind of like I said, physically, which is really the only thing that matters. I could have been dumb as a box of hair, but as long as you can run your two mile in like, you know, 11 minutes, you're great. Like, you're the, you're the, you're the next best thing. So got into that and immediately 2006 redeployed over to Rustamaya, Iraq. So we were right in the middle of Baghdad. And we get there and this is not the most scared that I Was ever. But when I realized, I was just like, oh, things. Things are slightly out of hand here because the surge was just starting up. We get in there and we get into it. So the normal thing, we get into buy up, get taken to buy it. By this time, I've done it already. And so we're getting in and they get us in in the middle of the night. Well, as we're coming in, there's rockets slamming into this camp. And if anybody. You know anything about Resta Maya, it sat in between two large radio towers. And so bracket. That's a bracketing. That's perfect for bracketing. And so we were getting. We were driving in that night and getting rockets. Rockets were hitting, like, hitting vehicles that we were coming. Not our vehicles that we were coming in on, but where they were having the motor pool. You could see them slamming into the motor pool. And as we're coming in, they're like, the people like, get. It's. It was almost like a Vietnam movie where they're just like, get off, get off. We gotta go. And we're getting off and running right into a bunker and getting into these bunkers. And that's. That's. Hey, welcome to Russia, Iraq. And it was funny because that day, the next morning, we're getting everything set up. We hadn't slept. We're getting. We're getting. Finding our. Where we're going to be living for the next year. And this guy, they come and tell us, they're like, hey, we had a casualty last night from one of the other companies. And we're like, what happened? This guy has been in country for 18 hours. And a rocket had snuck its way between because it was built. It was hard stand buildings, but they had the sandbags that were built up with barriers. And one had snuck right between the barrier and the roof of the building and hit his door and put frag all over him. So he was in. I think they said he was in the country for 18 hours and was being evac'd that day.
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Jack Murphy
Jesus.
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Luis Saucedo
And so that was kind of the realization that we were in things. Things weren't at, like, the surge was real. Things were getting kind of crazy. And we. As soon as we got in, they were like, hey, y' all are going out. I think we. We did a sort of left seat, right seat ride. And then we were. We were to the races.
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Luis Saucedo
You know what I mean? You know what I mean?
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Luis Saucedo
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Jack Murphy
What was that? I mean, what did that consist of? Because worst team, of course, is long range reconnaissance. I mean that's what they're designed for anyway. But what was the actual mission that you guys had when you got to Iraq?
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Luis Saucedo
So it was. It was strange because it was. We were. But we were basically like an area denial. We sat and we sat in a cop and then we were running operations out of that cop and we were. We were tasked to Watch an msr. We were tasked to do operations on that msr. So they essentially we got used as just a. A normal infantry company. So not saying it was mismanaged, but I think that was the sign of the time. It's like, yeah, that. That time during the surge, we were just trying to regain control, and Russ and I. That area was one of the areas that was really contested at that point in time. I can't remember the cop's name, but we. We were in a cop, and we had been in this cop for maybe this is a great one. And we. We actually have a yearly retelling of this story. So we're in a cop. We'd been in there for maybe like four or five weeks running operations out of it. It's. It's pretty much like there's a barracks on the top floor. The bottom floor has another set of barracks. And then we had like, a bay that operated. And all of our trucks were in this, like, courtyard. And that's kind of where we did everything out of it. Had. We had fuel tanks, we had like, small guard shacks. But this thing wasn't very. This thing wasn't very big. It was maybe 5, 600 meters.
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Jack Murphy
Yeah, those cops were like Vietnam era fire bases.
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Luis Saucedo
Yeah.
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John Daly
No.
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Luis Saucedo
And so, and so one night, a guy named Pritchard and another guy named Sprouse were. They were sitting on top of this deck smoking. And normal night, like we had gotten out of the mission. Everybody comes in, some people are eating. I was in. I was in the barracks playing cards. And so we hear a thump, thump, thump. And then like explosions on the building. Like, not. Not around the building. It was on the building. And then we start hearing the guns go off on the towers. As we're running out, Sprouts and Pritchard are running back in and they're screaming at everybody, like, don't go out there. So what kicked this off was they were smoking. And Sprouse and Pritchard look up and Sprouse even says. And Pritchard says this every day.
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He's like.
- [24:15]
Luis Saucedo
He told me. He looked at me in the face and told me this. He goes, man, that's a weird shooting star. As they're looking at it, it keeps getting closer and closer and closer. And as it does, it lands right in the middle of their smoke pit. It's an inner mortar. It doesn't go off. And by all rights, that thing should have killed both of them. So they're running in, they're scared. Like they've just had this near death experience trying to keep us from all running out. So we're pinned. That's the only way out is that little stairway. We're pinned inside of that, that little thing while there's a huge fight going on. And the tanker company that we're attached to is downstairs. They're trying to get. They don't have tanks at this point, so they're doing their best. They're out trying to get out to the walls. And it was funny because my best friend, he was the best friend. He was my best man at my first wedding. In true Ranger fashion, he's the best man at my first wedding. His name's James Dyer. He's now major, which he. This man, he's an amazing. He was an amazing soldier. He still is. I laugh every time I say Major because I'm like, nobody should have ever given him that. But. So James is luckily enough. James had been, had been a washout in EOD school. And like the last week, washout. Like he got drunk and they, they got, they got upset at him. So he washed out the last week. So he's got, he knows a little bit. So what does he do? He's like, okay, well, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to see if I can at least put some sandbags around this thing. So he goes out there, does the EOD thing, puts a bunch of sandbags, and we all take off and run. We spend the entire next. That night repelling an attack where they knock down of the four walls that was at that cop. They knocked down three of them.
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Jack Murphy
Holy.
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Luis Saucedo
And one of the major things that happened, and James and Sean Myers, another guy. So we were all in the same squad. Sean was the squad leader. Me and James were his team leaders. And so during all of this action, the trucks are all sitting right there. They get hit by mortars and they get a fuel tank goes off on them. And so they're kind of, they're burning on the side and we. So we now have no vehicles either. But all of the AT4s are in there. And somebody's like, is the Baylor? Like, hey, are all the at 4 still on the trucks? Like, yeah. And they're like, if those things go off, we're. And so James and Sean run into this raging fire and start plucking out all these at 4s. Both of them end up with bronze stars for it. Which was that one of. One of the many actions that they did during that entire deployment that actually got recognized. But that was one of the nights where it was just like, holy crap. It was like, this is like Viet. Like you said, like Vietnam style.
- [27:08]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, yeah.
- [27:09]
Luis Saucedo
Attack on a, on a base.
- [27:11]
Jack Murphy
Were you guys like preparing to be potentially overrun though? I mean, was it that bad?
- [27:17]
Luis Saucedo
So once they are, I want to say that our own maybe mortars had knocked down our own walls at some point in time. And so I wasn't sure because we're busy on side. But there was a point where we, yeah, we had thought we were like, hey, like if this, if this goes down the way everybody thinks is. Luckily we had gotten air support overhead, so we'd gotten attack helicopters. But we end up like we're saying, hey, like if we have to, we're going to have to drop back into the buildings. And once that happens, like we are, we are in a bad way. Luckily we had repelled enough of the attack and I think we had, we had had enough firepower out there. We, you know, we come with a bunch of machine guns and everything like that that we had gotten them to get away from us. And once the attack aviation shows up, they heard that was their, like, hey, we're not, we're not messing with this.
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Jack Murphy
What's the kibosh on that?
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Luis Saucedo
Yeah. What ended up happening with that cop is they. That was unusable anymore. They weren't going to send anybody out. That thing was gone. And we ended up having to move to another one that we lovingly called Castle Graceful because it was a. All it was was a five story unfinished parking garage. Oh, that they put that they put barriers around
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Jack Murphy
and you finished your deployment out of there.
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Luis Saucedo
What's up?
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Jack Murphy
You finished the deployment out of there?
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Luis Saucedo
Yeah, we ended up finishing the deployment out of there. Lots of good stories with that actually. Have you heard of Tales from the Grid Square?
- [28:48]
Jack Murphy
No.
- [28:49]
Luis Saucedo
It's a like collection of ghost stories from the gwat. Oh, really? Super. Yeah, it's. It's on ig. I love reading their stuff and I listen to wartime stories. Gets a lot of their stuff off of YouTube, but I love reading stuff. I'm about to write one because we're pretty sure that place was haunted. What? It ended up happening. Yes. Well, so the reason why we had gotten it at such a good price was because during the invasion before the American forces came in, the Bathurst had taken all the people who were not friendly to the Bathurst. And they, the story was, and we've gotten tell this by an elder, was that they had gotten all these guys and rounded them up in that building and then took them to the top, right above. Above the top floor. So you had the. You had the overlook, the top floor where all of our machine gun nests were. But right underneath that, they brought them all up there, and then they had shot them and set them on fire in there. And so what was the crazy thing is, when we were first looking at it, we walked up to that, and I. I've smelled a dead body or two burned before. And I walk up there, I was like, that's a familiar smell. And a couple of the other guys who had been around burning bodies been like, this smells weird. And then we were like, what's all these marks on. These burn marks on the ground? And turns out, like, any. The. Even the Iraqi police, the ia, they would. Whenever we were staging to do missions, would not go into that building at all, period. And we definitely heard some weird stuff up there. So I don't know if it was like large animals or something, but there was. There was a point in time where guys would not go up there with their nods on. They would turn their nods off, they would. They would follow the stairwell, and then they turned their nods on as soon as they got to the. The very top.
- [30:35]
Jack Murphy
I mean, were they, like, hearing voices or something? What do you think?
- [30:39]
Luis Saucedo
So at night, when we knew nobody was up there, you would hear, like, things moving around. One of the big complaints was either knobs would completely go dead. They were the old PBS 14. So, like, they would go dead for any. Any reason. But the. It was the. Everybody had seen. And I saw a little bit of something, and I'm. You know, you never want to say that you saw something to anybody else outside of it, but you would see shadows do things that, like, they weren't really supposed to be doing, right? And so. And I would always chalk it up to, oh, there's a light somewhere way out in the distance. It's shining and it's. It's moving shadows like that. But a lot of guys would be like, yeah, I just don't turn my nods on.
- [31:24]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, like you're trying to talk yourself out of it.
- [31:27]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, you're like, I have to go to this guard shift. If they don't. If I don't go up there, somebody's gonna be real mad. And I'm more scared of that sergeant than I am or whatever's up here. So I'm just gonna go up there and just pretend it didn't exist.
- [31:37]
Jack Murphy
I did. Many years ago now, I did a Halloween episode for a different podcast where I kind of COVID some of these Stories. And I got a guy to tell a pretty cool story about Okinawa. There's a lot of ghost stories out there.
- [31:51]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, about the. What is it, Gate three.
- [31:53]
Jack Murphy
I hear a lot about some abandoned buildings and stuff. This weird, weird stuff. And actually from Iraq there are quite a few UFO stories, which is probably. Probably it's our guys seeing our own aircraft, you know. Yeah, more. More than likely. But there are some stories that you hear and like, like things that an entire Marine battalion saw that like, doesn't really make sense, you know?
- [32:18]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, I like too how like a lot of these stories get. Because you'd hear a lot of stuff. We spent a night out in the old Iraqi intelligence. Their complex. I'd like. So on a lot of the videos you watch tomahawks slamming into like a like almost triangle building. And then there's. They would be like, that's still Iraqi intelligence compound. And we actually stayed the night in that. And they had legit cells that were very strange. And that's where we were sleeping. And none of us slept in there. We slept in the. We went ahead and slept. And it's jealous. It's jail cells, cells. And then there's a walkway that you go up and you can see that there's eyelet, metal eyelets on the ground and you could pretty much guess what they were for. But you would look up and it's a walkway and it's completely. There's no cover. There's no nothing. It's a walkway. And then there's these eyelets on the ground and they're at their space pretty even evenly. And well, later on we asked about that. We're like, hey, what's going on with this? And they're like, oh, that's where they chained. And that's where they just sat him out in the sun and chained them down there. And I was like, yeah. And it was funny because our platoon sergeant already was like, yeah, we're not sleeping in there. Like, we'll just. We'll just sleep out on our trucks.
- [33:39]
Jack Murphy
I think I know some platoon sergeants that would have loved to lock their privates up in.
- [33:44]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, there would have been private chained in there then.
- [33:49]
Jack Murphy
Oh, man, it's so wild. I mean, Iraq does have this, like, parts of it have this quality. It does have a haunted quality to it. I remember like seeing places where you can see just the very top of the foundations of buildings that no longer exist.
- [34:06]
Moto Casino Announcer
And then.
- [34:06]
Jack Murphy
And then the new buildings built like perpendicular or opposite to it. Like the city plan actually changed and these New buildings are built over these old ones. It's just like, this place is so ancient, it's unreal.
- [34:20]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, man. We got into. So one of the ticks that we got into was right outside of the Babylon Gate. So there's Babylon gates right to the north of. To the north of Biop. Right. When you're getting into the Green Zone, there's, like, ancient. There was. There was a wall there that they were like. Yeah, that's part that used to be. This is where the Babylon Gate was. We got it. It was like. I remember, like, being by that gate or by that wall and being shot at from it and be like, this is. I was like, this must be where he said that this was. I was like, this is super cool. So. But yeah, I think that's one of the coolest things about the military in general going to that area. Like, the gwat was the G. Wat was the G Watt. But the things that you got to go and see, like, who. How many people can say that they've been to Baghdad, and Baghdad was almost the. That's in the cradle of civilization.
- [35:15]
Jack Murphy
Yeah.
- [35:15]
Luis Saucedo
So you're. All of the history that you hear about and read about the Bible, everything like that. A lot of that stuff went through there. And I was so. I love history and I was always really. A really cognizant of stuff like that. When I was in northern Iraq, I'd be looking up names and stuff like that, and they can almost get translated into the Bible. And that's part of northern Iraq is part of where like a lot of the Old Testament.
- [35:42]
Jack Murphy
I mean, Nineveh is in the Bible. I believe. I believe the Nineveh forest is actually in the Bible.
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Sponsor Voiceover
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- [35:50]
Luis Saucedo
And so that's.
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Moto Casino Announcer
It's.
- [35:51]
Luis Saucedo
It's weird because you're traveling all through these places and like, one of the cooler trips I did is we were going to check on. On some of the Kurds and we were going towards the Iranian border. It's gorgeous. Beautiful, like, mountains. Like, I've. There's a couple pictures of us. We're looks like we're at the top of the world there.
- [36:11]
Jack Murphy
I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah.
- [36:13]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. And. And you're just like. And I'm like, man. I was like, it's crazy that there's this much conflict and war going on in such a gorgeous place. I think, like, part of where we were at, there was an old ski resort there. And it's like, these people used to be pretty. Especially Iraq, if you think about Iraq in the 80s, that was like a thriving metropolis. Like it was. They had nightclubs, they had, they had industry. And then, you know, the wars kind of set them back probably about like 60 or 70 years, but you know, yeah, man.
- [36:50]
Jack Murphy
And so after that deployment you get back and when does like the 75th Ranger Regiment start? Sort of like entering into your mind.
- [36:59]
Luis Saucedo
Fantastic. You asked that question. I know exactly when it happened. So we were walking down a route that had had an ID strike probably. It wasn't an id, it was an efp. So one of the terrible things about the EFP when that started filtering in from Iran was that they were blowing holes and chunks through all of our armor. And so I was there during the period of time where it was like all our vehicles look like they had come out of Mad Max because they were trying to find any crazy ways. It was like ammo cans with glow plugs in them because hopefully maybe we can catch them if they have heat, if they're not victim operated. So going through that, we would see these vehicles just get crushed by EFPs, you know, couple of them the size of like 55 gallon drums that would just nuke an entire thing. You'd hear about all they would drag. I think that was one of the worst things that they drag them into Rusta Maya and there's still blood and gore all over it. You're like, yeah, they didn't. And it's funny because whenever I think about that. Did you ever see the movie Memphis Bell? No World War II movie about the bombers, the bomber crews. And it was about one, one bomber that had made it all the way through. But the, it reminded me because I saw that movie when I was a kid and then it reminded me of that, of them pulling these planes out like back down the Runway after they'd gotten to a fight. And there's. You could tell somebody had died in it. And that was a lot of. When they were pulling these vehicles out from EFPs was that you could tell nobody. Like there's a huge. There's a hole that goes in one door, out the other through the radio mount and there's gore and blood everywhere on it. No one made it out of that. So that was happening a lot. So what do they do instead of it? They're like, hey, this. They're going to walk us in front of it because we're going to do a route reconnaissance. So in a V, in an inverted V, we're walking down a route, picking at things, hoping that that AFP doesn't Hit us first. And when I asked the question, because there's a million dollar vehicle behind me, the buffaloes. And I was like, these things are meant to take that.
- [39:07]
Sponsor Voiceover
Yeah.
- [39:08]
Luis Saucedo
I was like, why am I walking in front of it? And they're like, you cost less than that would to blow it up your whatever. We have to pay your family.
- [39:14]
Jack Murphy
I never understood why they did that. I mean, if you study world, do the Nazis always have their infantry behind the tank? It's not in front. Nobody does that. That's stupid.
- [39:25]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, it was, it was. And we were doing it down the routes and I think the. Whenever we got the training and everything for it, it was that you did that. And maybe that first guy would be far enough away from the road to catch anything that was victim operated. But if it was pressure plate or anything like that, you're. You're done.
- [39:42]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, you're toast.
- [39:44]
Luis Saucedo
So I'm walking down there and I'm just like, so wait a second. That, that buffalo is more important than I am at this point or any of my friends or anybody else. And it was. They were like, yeah, yeah, pretty much. So we've gotten into a couple things and command, I think was making some bad decisions. We had a friend of ours get killed. I won't put out any names, but in an instance where a person of leadership had put their TC into the back position or into the TC position because they knew they were targeting those, they were targeting the TCs, and that's exactly what happened. And then that guy, that leader survived while a bunch of our friend did not. And so we had taken a couple casualties at that point. Guy named Josh Placa, who was a E4 at the time, he got killed by an EFP. And so we had had a lot of. We'd started getting casualties and that's when it started becoming real. And I had a epiphany at one point in time where I'm sitting there, I'm just like, like, I gotta get somewhere where like my life matters a little bit more like that. I've upped the. I upped the price tag on, on me myself so that if I'm gonna keep doing this, like, I'm gonna survive. So my brother had just gotten in the army and just passed RIP and had gotten into 375. And so that was one of my phone calls to him. I was just like, hey. I was like, I think I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go to selection. Like, and if I don't make selection, I'm getting Out. I'm not going to do this anymore. My brother's a very. Was a very, like, person in 3:7. Even from a private, everybody really liked him. He's just one of those guys. And so as I'm talking to him about this, I'm getting close. I was just like, hey, I'm going to selection as soon as I get. The second I get back, second they'll let me. I get off that plane, I'm going to Selection. My brother's like, so you want to go what, be a teacher? He's like, you want to. You want to go teach people to do stuff? And I was just like, what does that mean? I'm a regular army dude. So I are. At this point, I think Green Beret is just like, I'm going to be kicking indoors. I'm going to be doing all the cool stuff. Like, it's gonna be fun. And my brother's just like, yeah. He's like, so here's the thing. He was just like, green Berets don't do direct action. He's like. And he's in the resume. He's like, we do direct action. He's like, that's all we do. And I was just, at that point, I was like, cool. How do I do this? He's like. He's like, let me. Let me get back to you. Let me figure some stuff out. I'll. I'll email you here in a bit. The next email I get is from Ben Durham. From 375 or he was at the point. I think at that point he was the career counselor. And it's basically an email.
- [42:30]
Jack Murphy
I'm almost positive I know Durham.
- [42:32]
Luis Saucedo
You probably do. Ben is.
- [42:35]
Jack Murphy
He was. He was on the jump into Iraq.
- [42:39]
Luis Saucedo
Yes.
- [42:40]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, I know Durham. Yeah, he's a good guy.
- [42:43]
Luis Saucedo
Durham's one of the best guys in the world. One of the most shadiest people I've ever met.
- [42:49]
Jack Murphy
Maybe that's why they had him working in the arms room.
- [42:52]
Luis Saucedo
So he was actually. He climbed up all the way to be the regimental career counselor.
- [42:59]
Jack Murphy
Good for him.
- [42:59]
Luis Saucedo
And like, yeah, he did real well. He was in charge of the fight teams.
- [43:04]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, yeah.
- [43:05]
Luis Saucedo
He was a boxer for Regiment. Yeah, he did all of that.
- [43:07]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, yeah.
- [43:08]
Luis Saucedo
Ran his own fight program and everything. He did a lot, but I didn't know him at that time yet. But he. He sends me. It's just an email. And it's like, click here to apply. Like, and it's like I click it and they're like, have this printed out have your commander sign it, give it back to me. So I'm just like, all right. So I go get my commander to sign it. And it was funny because I was at that point, I was really good friends. Me and my friend, my squad leader at the time, Sean Myers and James, we were kind of all at the same point where we were disenchanted with the war and how things were going and kind of the regular army lifestyle. So I get everything together. I get it. Everybody signs my paperwork and I'm pretty much on board. Like, I think I was going to get back. I was going to have the two weeks of leave and then I was going right to rip. And so I. We do that. I'm having a conversation with them. I'm like, hey, I'm going to do this. And they were both like, no, I think we're done. And I'm like. I was like, why don't y' all just come with me? I was like, I'm pretty sure they're looking for people. We can, we can all get into this. Both of them said no. I'm the only one that said yes. And to this day, when I talk to James, Sean actually died a couple years ago. But when I talked to both of them when he was still alive, they were both like, I should have gone with you. Like, we should have done that. Because it was the. We were in a squad that was. Was like minded. Like, regiment was like. And I always tell people, like, the, the thing. You can't. The thing. The difference between regiment and the big army is in regiment or the big army, you'll find one or two guys that are about it. They're. They're about the lifestyle. They are warriors. That's what they wanted to do forever. Whatever reason, they didn't get into that. They couldn't make their way because getting into regiment's luck too. Like, I tell people that all the time. Like, it's like getting through selection. That's luck. Like partially luck. Like you could. I watched a guy walk out and. And rip and he was wearing the wrong T shirt. That was the end of his. That was the end of his Rip.
- [45:16]
Jack Murphy
Forgot your two court out.
- [45:19]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. Like, yeah, you bring the wrong one. You don't like, oh, wait, you didn't bring X, Y and Z. Yeah, you're done. Thanks for playing. So, but that's the difference between what I thought the difference between regiment and big army was that I in the big army, I found a group. Few and far between, but I found a group that was Gonna watch my back during combat. Was gonna fight. Like we were always fighting. We were always trying to get to the forefront of the fight. We were trying to do close with and destroy the enemy regiment. It's everybody. Every single swinging, swinging guy out there is about that life. That's what he does. And if he doesn't, he doesn't belong and he won't be there anymore. So it's like a very stark difference between the big army, but you can still kind of find those pockets. But going back to it, that's. That's pretty much my epiphany. I was like, this is what I'm going to do. And then I. Because I was an E5 at the time, and it's. I don't know if you ever heard of E5s going through as a import. Hard, very hard.
- [46:24]
Jack Murphy
They go through rope though, right? Or wrestle too now.
- [46:28]
Luis Saucedo
Well, so no, if you're an E5, you go through RIP.
- [46:31]
Jack Murphy
Oh, no kidding.
- [46:33]
Luis Saucedo
You go through RAS1. Okay, I went through RIP. So I sold a four week course. I get. And the way it happened was, is I got back from Iraq two weeks later, I'm at Benning for jump school and then immediately picked up. It was in August. Immediately picked up. And then I got into. And then you go. I went right down to. Got into rip. And then four weeks in rip. The four weeks in rip. And then immediately after that, it's because I'm an NCO and I can't have an in. I can't be an NCO and regiment without a tab. So right after rip, I. I'm right into search. Right after search, I'm right into Ranger school. And then it was funny because I got out of Ranger school and Sergeant Major Merritt was the. It was first John Bohannon comes in, pretty much tells us, we didn't do anything special. Like, you're not special. Everybody does this immediately after Sergeant Major Merrick walks up and he's just like. He's like, congratulations, Rangers. And we're like, yeah. He's like, who here's in? He's like, who here's in? Deco, like, raised my hand. He's like, you'll be meeting your platoon in two in. In 72 hours. You get a pass and then you're going to be on a plane. I was like, perfect. And then a week later, I found myself. Since I was my. That was my first deployment and I didn't do any of the train up, but I still have to shadow and they still needed guys. I found myself in Deco. And they were like, you're a goose. You're the AG for a goose and you're going to learn how to be a team leader. So there I am with goose rounds. Like walking up a mountain a couple weeks after ranger school, just being like, well, this is great.
- [48:19]
Jack Murphy
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- [50:03]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, rough. The learning curve was just massive, especially not having been able to do any of the workup. Like I wasn't in the train ups. I didn't do any of it. So my first like induction into the regiment was meeting them overseas in Afghanistan and starting to go out on missions. Like, here's your kit, here's all your stuff. Like, follow us. Don't get left, don't get, don't fall behind. And that's kind of when like I kind of pumped myself up. I was like, all right, like it's going to be normal. It was a the beast of regimen as far as Going and actually doing operations was something just wildly different in the big army. You sit around and it's like, you know, hours of boredom, like. Or days, months of boredom with a couple of stark moments of terror mixed in here and there. There it was like, off the gate, we're. And I was. I was in. I was a deco first arm bully was the first sergeant. And we. We did not like walking at all. So everything was X landing. Like, we called it the deco bum rush, where you just took off, off the back of that bird and beat feet right to that target. Like, if they're shooting at you, doesn't matter. Keep going, get to the doors. Like, we'll be fine. But, yeah, the learning curve that. It was a. It was a rough learning curve. And I can see where a lot of guys don't survive that. Where it's like, hey, you just can't keep up. You're not. This isn't for you. You don't. It is a very different place than the big army. Just what they expect of you.
- [51:44]
Moto Casino Announcer
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Luis Saucedo
The knowledge you're supposed to have as an E5, the getting anybody to actually respect you at that point because they know you're an import. So I got lucky again, because my brother was well known. And so they were just like, hey, like, this is sauces. This. By that time, I think he was a knee. He was a tab step four, too. And he was just like, they're just like, hey, he's. You know, he sauce his brother. So I got. I probably got a little bit of leeway on that, but it was that deployment. And as hard as it was, though, that's kind of where I knew. I was like, no, this is where I was supposed to be. Yeah, this was. This was the road I was supposed to take. But that. That road. I did eight months of schooling to get into the regiment as an E5, because they don't. I don't know if they do it anymore, but it was almost a gauntlet. It was the airborne school RIP certified, then it was Ranger school, then it was deployment. Hey, cool. You get. You get 72 hours with your family, and then you gotta go.
- [52:44]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, it's hardcore.
- [52:46]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. But I mean, as a Ranger, like, again, like. And especially, like, right after getting. I was pumped up. I got a ranger tub.
- [52:52]
Jack Murphy
Hell, yeah.
- [52:53]
Luis Saucedo
And then I was. And as soon as they said, hey, you're going, I was like, fantastic. This is gonna be great. I'm gonna get to. And the biggest thing I was impressed with was the chow hall at. Man. Where were we, we were down in Helmand Camp Leatherneck. I love the chow hall there. It was great. That's what I was doing. I was just eating the whole time.
- [53:16]
Jack Murphy
So this first deployment, you guys were doing time sensitive targets I take it and you're learning the ins and outs of doing direct action raids.
- [53:24]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. So it was. We were doing a lot of direct action if in fact it was all direct direct action. And so I had actually gotten there right cubic and Centaura had gotten killed probably about a week and a half before. And we had gotten sent to that, that mission set because MARSOC had had two snipers killed in that area. Like it was when they, they'd gotten actually surrounded, tracked down, surrounded, killed, almost kind of a, a Red Wing situation. And then they had, they'd been like tossed off a cliff I think at that point. So that's what they brought two strike forces in to go and start like handling that mission set. And that was a, it was a really kinetic. That was a kinetic kinetic deployment where we were out getting, getting into fights going to me we have one. It had to have been a. We got there pretty early right after, right after the. What's it called, nighttime had fallen. Get there, land and immediately start fighting. And we didn't leave until that next morning. We've been fighting the entire morning or had been fighting that night into the morning. And that was one of the. And I'm sure you've had it the. I had one of the most again going but like weird but surreal things that had ever had that I'd ever seen. And it's the, the moments you take. So I always tell new guys or guys getting into it, it's like hey, take that. Like even if you're in a firefight don't, you know, don't get dangerous or anything but take a moment to look around and realize where you're at. And one of the things I realized when I was there. So it was like a movie we had exfilled. These guys decided to follow us from like because we had kicked up the hornets nest. It was right out, I think it's right outside of Calf. And we get on top of this hill and we're, we're, we're fighting like our, the back of our formation is fighting the entire time and pretty much just withdrawing to our hlz. Get onto our hlz. It's on the top of this hill. The sun's coming up over the mountain. So you can. On the right side, you can see, see the mountains and the sun's already lifting up. We're already, we're already in the day. And there's bombers, F15s that are making runs on the top of these mountains, dropping bombs on the side of these mountains. And we're in this kind of a half moon shape. I'm a goose gunner at this point, so I'm helping load a gun and then I'm shooting and we're repelling another an attack on this hill. And like, I look around and everybody's shooting and you see A10s come over. They're. They're like, you see A10s just laying ways to people. We're all firing on the side or we're all firing. And then I. You hear the womp, womp, womp, womp, womp. And we look back in, this Chinook comes right over the top of us, turns its ass around, and the gunners just start shooting off the back of it. And we all like, soon as they land, we all start running onto the birds. We get it. And we got, we got the guy that we were looking for. Like, I think he was like, at the time, he was like number two or three in the country. And we get him on, we're on and we're flying away and everybody's just jacked up. We're. We're high fiving each other. We're sitting there, like, everybody's fist bumping, high fiving each other. We're all sitting on the ground. And one of the things I did is I looked out and we're, we're flying pretty high at this point. And Both of these A10s are pretty much doing circles around the formation as we're doing. And I'm like sitting there and as I'm like thinking about all of that stuff, I'm like, this is like a movie. Like, this is unreal. And this is my induction into regiment. This is my first deployment. I was just like. At that point, I was just like, I'm gonna do this forever. This is, this is all I ever want. So it was. I think if you can, especially as an import, if you can make the road, it's worth the, it's worth it at the end.
- [57:24]
Jack Murphy
Yeah.
- [57:25]
Moto Casino Announcer
Yeah.
- [57:25]
Jack Murphy
If you can get through the, the culture shock, as you mentioned.
- [57:27]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. And a lot of guys don't. Not their fault. Because big army, that, that drop from big army is rough.
- [57:33]
Jack Murphy
Yeah. Yeah. And then you get after that, the first deployment, what happens when you get back to the States? And now you're kind of like that Ranger battalion, garrison life at Fort Benning.
- [57:48]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, man. Completely different from. Again, completely different from big army A. You're always training, but the good old boy's club. Like, I'm a. At that point, you know, I'm a tab D5, so, you know, the world is my oyster. You know, I'm getting privates, you're running around. And I just remember it being. You just wanted to be the best of everything.
- [58:11]
Jack Murphy
Yeah.
- [58:12]
Luis Saucedo
Like, you wanted to be the fastest runner. You wanted to do all the rucks. You wanted to. You wanted to be the team that did the best so that you could get the best missions.
- [58:22]
Jack Murphy
Everything's a competition.
- [58:24]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. And then. Especially then being there with my brother, too, was. Was a good time because we palled around a lot. Like, I'd always go and hang out with him. I think he had just made the move over to Recce, and so I'd always go and, like, hang out with him in his. In his office and stuff like that. And then just kind of the small stuff that you would see where it's the. You're walking around with your tambour at that point, and you're nearly untouchable on that base. Like, everybody knows that. They give you the wide berth. They pretty much, hey, you know, you're behind the brown fence, and everybody knows it. Everybody knows who you are. Which is. Is kind of the difference in. In the big army is that nobody knows who you are. Nobody cares. And I had an interesting thing. So when I graduated RASP and was going to cert, I graduated rasp, and they're saying, hey, you know, you're. Or, no, it was Ranger school. No, it was ras. It was ras, and I graduate ras. So I have a tambourine at that point. And they're like, hey, I got a. I got a couple weeks before my class picked up for cert. So they were like, hey, you need to go out to. You need to go back to Fort Hood. I'll process that. So. So I'm walking around Fort Hood with a tambour and a scroll on, and, man, like, couldn't get any better. Like, I didn't have to do nothing. Like, everybody was just like, oh, God, that guy. They didn't know. And it's funny because in the big army especially, I didn't know anything about it. And then I didn't know that, like, if I. If you would have been in the know, you would have looked at me and be like, that dude doesn't have a tab. So it was funny because that was. The garrison life was so much. It was fun but it was also hard. And it was definitely that warrior culture.
- [60:12]
Jack Murphy
Yeah.
- [60:13]
Luis Saucedo
Like you. Everybody's trying to be the best. Everybody's like. I'd never seen so many guys go to the gym in my life. It was like we went for morning PT and then you see everybody in there going to the gym. If they were in a code, they were all getting hairless and canning out somewhere. The drinking was a lot like. That's. That's another part of the culture is, man, we. We drank when we got back from that deployment. That was the funny thing too, is that they always had pizza and kegs waiting for you when you got back so that you could have a couple drinks while you're trying to go clean.
- [60:46]
Jack Murphy
Weapons. Yeah, yeah.
- [60:47]
Luis Saucedo
The rigmarole. Getting all your weapons in there. And then you'd have the. We'd always get into the. The platoon fights over in the zoo where people are going over. They block off all the stuff on the side so nobody could get through. So it almost looked like a World War I movie where you got people blowing whistles. They got the. The caving ladders that they've extended so that they could go over the top. It was great.
- [61:11]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, the platoon brawls get a little out of hand sometimes.
- [61:14]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, it was so much fun, though. We got into one while we were doing elevators out on the airfield with seaco, of all people. And I was an hh. I was an hhc, but I was attached to BCO as their sniper. And we get into this huge platoon brawls and it's that they. They have their guidons there and there's the first sergeants are talking shit to each other. And I remember getting into that fight and I don't know, do you know Cessna at all? So. Cessna. He actually went to tag later on. Giant. He's a Giant. He was an a. No, he's a seco dude. He was a massive man, like six three, 200 something pounds. I am at that point, probably 170 pounds in kit. And I'm. I'm all. I'm every bit of five, like five, six, five, seven maybe. And during the whole brawl, everybody. You know how it is. Everybody's like falling, they're beating each other up. And I like lock eyes with the. After he had just flung somebody else and he comes running at me and I just latch onto one of his legs and so he's dragging me around. It was great. We had the placebo brawls were probably the most fun I'd had, but the medics probably hated it. Because they were always fixing somebody, like, oh, these fingers are broken.
- [62:37]
Jack Murphy
What was it when we had, like, battalion field games? You remember that?
- [62:41]
Luis Saucedo
Field day?
- [62:42]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, field day, yeah. Get those banners, you know, and we. Our battalion. I'm trying to think now, was it the battalion or was it between companies, or was it from platoons? I think it was platoons in my company. And he had us play this game, Washington over the Delaware, I think he called it, where they put, like. Or maybe it was two different companies, because I think it was our first sergeant and the company commander and one Zodiac from our company and another first sergeant and company commander from another company and the other zodiac. And the NCOs had to hold the ZODs up and go from, like, point A to point B, like, 200 meters. And all the privates were lined on the edge of the field. And if those boats, God help them, got too close to those lines, dudes were getting pulled in.
- [63:31]
Moto Casino Announcer
Bam, bam.
- [63:33]
Jack Murphy
Guys getting thrown off the Zodiacs. I mean, I saw guys get their pts ripped right off of themselves. And walking around naked was. It was totally nuts.
- [63:42]
Luis Saucedo
We did. I think one of ours was dodgeball. And they had. That got, like, uber serious. Like, people are sitting there calling other people cheaters. They're, like, trying to, like, slam this ball as hard as. There was one guy who's going up to get a ball, slips, and gets his face, like, demolished by this ball. Like, somebody stand, like, runs right over him, hits him with the ball. It's in true Ranger fashion. Everybody takes everything just as seriously.
- [64:08]
Jack Murphy
Yeah. Like, any advice I'd give to, like, a young, like, Ranger lieutenant, it would be, you got to be very careful when you pit Rangers against each other.
- [64:20]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, yeah.
- [64:20]
Jack Murphy
And tell them, like, hey, it's game on. Go get that. You know, win that banner for us. Like, something really bad is going to happen.
- [64:28]
Luis Saucedo
It was. So when you got new guys, it was like, their first week was rough because it would be the. You'd get all these new guys, and in the company, get them. I remember I was a squad leader. I'd get new guys, and I'd be like, hey, go into. Go into first platoons. I want you to fight every single one of them. And I'll get like, I will give those guys credit. The new guys didn't. Wouldn't even blink at Roger, Sergeant. And they run over there and tackle the first person they saw. And it was. And then all of a sudden, it's more brawling. Other people are coming in, and I think one of the best ones we had Was in coo. We almost had a hostage exchange at one point where all the squad leaders and team leaders sitting there, and we're like. We had them locked in the lockers, and we're like, all right, I'll trade you the fat one for my skinny guy. And be like, no, he's gonna be two. So it was great that, like, when we got bored, we got bored.
- [65:24]
Jack Murphy
Yeah. No, my. My privates did that in Iraq, where they were. They were kind of sneaking around. They put on their balaclavas and were sneaking around. If you remember, the old cold weather gear was all black, so they were dressing up like ninjas and stuff. And they were going out in the middle of the night in those chews. And they'd wait for guys from other squads to go to the showers. So they're, like walking with a towel around them, waddling over there. And privates would just ball this guy up and flex, cuff him and drag him into their chew. And they'd take, like, trophy photos with them and stuff. And it was. Yeah.
- [65:57]
Moto Casino Announcer
And then.
- [65:58]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, it becomes a hostage negotiation where, like, you got to let my guy go. No, you.
- [66:02]
Luis Saucedo
I'm not doing that. Oh, gosh. Yeah, we took everything from. I think that's what I miss about it is, like, it was fun. The culture was always like, About. About the fight, but it was. Everybody was in and good. Even in snipers, we did stuff like that. We had a guy named Baker who had a birthday, and this is my favorite sergeant major merit story. And a guy named Baker had a birthday. And so right outside of the chow hall, they had those. The pull up bars. And we caught Baker out there, and we had duct tape and. And buckets of water. And so we toss him up there, we duct tape him, and then we throw rag over his face. We start, like, waterboarding him right there. And so we're sitting there doing all this stuff to Baker and they. Sergeant Major Merritt drives by. You know, Sergeant Major Merritt drives by. Baker thinks that, like, oh, God, thank God somebody's gonna stop this. Looks over at him, and Sergeant Major Merritt, like, rolls down his window, like, looks from side to side and goes, happy birthday, Ranger. And then just drives. It was just like. We like, kind of look around like, all right, I guess we're gonna go back to what we did. So the.
- [67:21]
Jack Murphy
Sergeant Major Merritt was awesome.
- [67:23]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, yeah. Everybody loves that guy. I don't think there's any. I don't know anybody who didn't like him. I'm sure everybody has, like, that sergeant major merit story. On. Yeah, yeah, on objectives. He went out a lot. He always went out on mission. There's a guy named Bailey and Deco that we were up on. We were pulling security out because we had already taken the compound. So we're pulling security out and there's a big moon out. Like, it's pretty high biz. And Bailey's on the ground. We're wandering around on the ground too. And Bailey looks up and he goes. He goes, hey, whoever that is. He's like. He starts cursing at him. He's like, get down. And all you hear out of the darkness is like, oh, yeah, yeah, roger, Roger Ranger. And like gets out and he goes like. It's like, that was hard to make. And so we go back to. We're going. We're going back to get the debris, like, download all the debrief stuff. Sergeant Major Merritt walks in and he's just like, where's that Ranger who told me to. To get the F down? And Bailey's just. Everybody looks over at him and Bailey's like. Like that. He's like, good job. Ranger coins him and like walks out.
- [68:29]
Jack Murphy
Like, my sergeant major merit story was when we were doing airfield seizures and I was in snipers at the time. And I mean, it's dark out. It's on Watson Airfield. You have no idea who's who in the air. But I came underneath Sergeant Major Merritt and sharked his air and he dropped. He dropped like an anchor. I don't know how many feet, but came all the way down. And I heard him come down and like, blah. And you can hear. Yeah, that Sergeant Major Merritt like, ra.
- [69:00]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah.
- [69:01]
Jack Murphy
And he told me later all of his pens in his pocket exploded when he hit the ground. I felt so bad. Like, I was horrified. But he was a good sport about it. He was like, lower jumper has the right of way,
- [69:16]
Luis Saucedo
that guy. Yeah. Good times, man. That was.
- [69:20]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, yeah, I missed it a lot. So after that first deployment to Afghanistan and you know, now you're living the Ranger life.
- [69:28]
John Daly
What.
- [69:28]
Jack Murphy
What was the next deployment. Deployment for you?
- [69:32]
Luis Saucedo
So after that deployment in Afghanistan, the next one was back to Afghanistan where we. I'm trying to remember where we ended up. It was Salerno. Oh, yeah. So we ended up in Salerno out there doing a bunch of missions. At that point, I was with two Delta and pretty connect. That one was also pretty kinetic. We were actually there with then Sergeant Major. Oh, man, I just brain dumped his name. We were just talking about him, not merit. So Major then right now, the current sergeant Major.
- [70:11]
Jack Murphy
Oh yeah, your Buddy. I. I didn't. I didn't know him, I'm afraid.
- [70:15]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, yeah. Anyways, uh, he was the platoon sergeant there, uh, for one Alpha or two Alpha. I can't remember which. Which Alpha code. So. But we had, like, we were all there. Major Taylor was there, one of the. He was the hhc. And that was a fun deployment because my brother was actually supporting Solerno too. So he was the recce guy supporting them. So, you know, he went out on a bunch of missions. We tried. We didn't go out on missions together as much on that deployment just because I think they were being kind of cognizant of the atmosphere, what was going on during those deployments. And so, yeah, did that deployment and that was a fun one. Had a real good time. We got into a lot of stuff on that. Like, kind of the normal thing though. There wasn't anything like big about it. It was the normal. We got into techs. We did. We did a bunch, bunch of stuff. There was a bunch of shenanigans on Slayer notes, the base, just that the Rangers do kind of like, I think one of my. We were talking about video people playing video games. There was times where the weather was, because Salerno is right there by the KG pass, and that's where we were doing a lot of our operations. But during that time period, you know, weather could come in and they'd be like, hey, weather's red. Or you'd be waiting for weather to clear so that we could go on mission. And so there was a lot of times during that deployment where we were sitting there playing like Nazi zombies in full kit. Like, we were just all sitting there, like, playing Nazi zombies. Like, is the weather. Is it still black? And they're like, yeah, like, all right, like push two hours. Like, fantastic.
- [71:57]
Jack Murphy
I think I saw. I think it was one of the medics in Charlie Company. I saw him get flex cuffed to the chain link fence at Salerno on his birthday.
- [72:06]
Luis Saucedo
We had a guy named Tujo who's also an officer now, and we found out that it was his birthday, but he kind of knew it was coming, so he went and got tasers from the box. And so as soon as the privates rushed in, he started just tasing the crap out of the first couple of them. Eventually he went down and they got him and we put him on a backboard, wrapped him up, and then pink bellied him, put all sorts of stuff on him, and then paraded him around the. The camp. And that was funny because that was the they were just testing out CST on that deployment. And so we had one, and she was horrified. Naked, getting drug around this thing, and she's just like. I'm sure she was like, oh, my God, what have I done?
- [72:52]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, you're shaving the guy's eyebrows off.
- [72:56]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, gosh. We did that to a guy. I feel bad to this day. I was the squad leader. I watched the team leader dude that to this day, I was just. I had actually pulled him. I was like, hey, like, maybe not shave one of his eyebrows off before he goes to ranger school. Like, no, it's like, because he's. He's kind of a representation of us, and right now he looks weird. But yeah, like, they. Yeah, they found out his birthday, and he. Like. I just remember the first guy that came in because I was outside watching it, because all the team leaders or squad leaders are outside watching all these privates rush in. And that first dude who came in got it, took it right in the neck and went right down. Like, was. I was unconscious for a little bit. And, like, some of them stopped, and then the team leader started like, why are you stopping? And then they just all rushed in. And it was funny because one of the tasers that he had actually ran out of battery. He had tased so many guys that actually run out of battery. So. But. But yeah, that was a really fun deployment, too. I think by that time, I'd kind of already gotten my feet wet. Went through an entire workup for. For the deployment, so I was getting. Getting better at being a team.
- [74:12]
Jack Murphy
And were you a team leader or squad leader around this time?
- [74:15]
Luis Saucedo
So I was a team leader around that time. Gotcha, Gotcha. And then after that deployment, I went into snipers.
- [74:21]
Sponsor Voiceover
Okay.
- [74:21]
Luis Saucedo
So did. Actually went over to Snot.
- [74:27]
Jack Murphy
Yeah. So tell us a little bit about that. What was the process like for making the transition from the line company to snipers?
- [74:35]
Luis Saucedo
So snipers was looking for people. I'd actually wanted to get into Recce because I wanted to go be with my brother. And. But they had been like, hey, you know, maybe you do something in hhc, but you're not going to do. We're probably not going to send you over to Recce to do that. So I was just like, all right, that's cool. Went over to snipers. Got it. You know, they talked it up. I never thought I'd be a sniper. In fact, I'd. For a long time, I'd been like, yeah, I don't have the patience to do any of that. But we did the selection or you do another selection to get into snipers. So you do the rpat, you do your PT test, you do your RPAT and then we would do a group in just to kind of see if you could. Luckily I was an okay shot then I wasn't. I wasn't a great shot by any means, but I was okay. But did well enough to get in and then started getting in and then they started putting us through almost like a pre sniper. So 375 that you would be in the section and they be. That's all they're doing is getting you ready for sniper school. So a lot of shooting, a lot of just learning. Mike Pemberton was my pretty much my training partner. He was my early training partner. So. And Nick I think had just left as I was getting in there. So kind of the whole mic. If you've ever met P Murder I. I've never.
- [75:56]
Jack Murphy
I've never met Pemberton, but I've just heard many stories about him from guys over the years. But I'm really happy to hear that, you know, they. They had a really good like induction program for you. Because when I went to stuff snipers it was kind of like, okay, you're here now. We're going to haze you for a year and you know, maybe we'll teach you something at some point. But I mean I had to wait to go to sniper school to learn my entire job.
- [76:22]
Sponsor Voiceover
Yeah.
- [76:23]
Luis Saucedo
And what's crazy is that you don't learn especially in reg. Like what we did was a close in support. Like we were a direct support. And so we really didn't as the shooting stuff, which is. I think what regiment really concentrated on was making. Making accurate shots at distance under pressure was one of our. And that was. This is before all of the PRS stuff and everything. All that stuff was coming out. But we did. We concentrated on that because I think they knew that. I think they knew that that's what we did. We made. We made. We were having to make accurate shots under pressure around an assault force. And so when you go. It's funny because when I went to sniper school and then having done a kind of a process to get to what they wanted us to be and then go into sniper school, I was like, this is two different skill sets like of what they're asking us to do. Like this is.
- [77:24]
Jack Murphy
Oh, because in sniper school you're still doing like stocks and ghillie suits and stuff.
- [77:28]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, you're doing stocks, ghillie suits and stuff. Like that, and, but in regimen, I'm a. You're a direct support for the assault force. I'm trying to make like. I'm trying to figure out if I can make this shot, like, into this building as guys are moving in and how far off I, you know, how far off their barrels I have. Then also, too, you're kind of doing a scouting mission, so if the assault force is walking in, you're pretty much up there with the dog. I have a funny story about that, but it's the, the skill set is completely different from what sniper school is. But I think you go to other. You go to other schools in the army, and then you. You kind of realize that that's more. It's more of an assaulter mindset there than it is sniper school. But I think everybody should go to sniper school if you're going to be a sniper, because you have to traditionally know how to do the job.
- [78:20]
Jack Murphy
Did you find that the ranges also were quite a bit shorter in your job as opposed to, like, I think the, you know, kind of the standard at sniper school is shooting out to a thousand meters, but when you're doing direct support, it's more realistically, like, what, 300 meters at most?
- [78:37]
Luis Saucedo
I think. Yeah, I think so. It was funny because during the. Any of the TFTs or the. The Valexes for platoon live fire, you had as far as the optics then could get you. So they could probably get you 600. So you're. You're shooting out.
- [78:55]
Jack Murphy
Okay.
- [78:55]
Luis Saucedo
You're making shots out 600. If you're. If loom would. Would let you do it, if you had the right optics for it, you could. We were making those shots out to about 600, but on mission, there were sometimes guys, and I've heard of guys that were shooting out to like four or five, but nothing really past that because you're really focused in on like a. When everybody's going up, you're probably. You've climbed a roof and you're sitting on that roof watching doors, watching windows, making sure that, like, there's nobody in, and then making that shot into those windows if you have to. You really become, I think, an asset as far as target identification. Like, hey, this is what you have here. This is what I'm seeing, you know, kind of calling out door heights, wall heights where entries are if things are locked. They use us a lot for that. Kind of setting up the assault force to get into the target.
- [79:51]
Jack Murphy
Yeah. As overwatch for the assault teams.
- [79:54]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah.
- [79:56]
Jack Murphy
Any other sniper courses that they sent you to where you, you know, had some interesting takeaways.
- [80:03]
Luis Saucedo
So I think during the time period that we were going to. We did rifles only. And then the Todd hot. The Todd hot net. We went out there with him because he was. He was out in Texas. We did those courses. We really didn't get sent to a lot of like, Army. Army courses. I think towards the. Now the guys go to Sephardic. They go to Sodic, I think. And some of the guys had actually gotten into Sodic. I know Chris Topher, who was. Had been my partner. He had actually turned out to be my partner for the longest. Chris had gone to Sodic and done all that stuff. So it's. I think it was at the point in time they tried to get you what they could. But during that point in the war, like, we were. We were getting out.
- [80:47]
Jack Murphy
We had. We had a. We had a couple guys that they sent to Marine Scout Sniper.
- [80:53]
Luis Saucedo
Man. We did. We had one too. And that's all he talked about. It was. It was rough being around him.
- [80:59]
Jack Murphy
Like, he's a Marine.
- [81:01]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. He was just like, oh, it's so great. And this is the things they do. And I was just like, when's the last time you go laid up, man? So we were just like. And not to take any away. I think those guys are fantastic. Yeah, they are the. Again, I think they. That school, from what I saw later on, really concentrated on skillcraft. Like, Skillcraft was their thing. Like.
- [81:28]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, yeah.
- [81:30]
Luis Saucedo
Getting gilling up how to move. And I think the army and especially because they were going more towards the. Like, again, the rifles only Todd hotnet stuff, they were going a lot towards more accuracy. They were going to accuracy. Like, we were going to accuracy first. We were going to rifles only, stuff like that. And that was. We were really concentrated on accuracy, getting the ABCs, like tuned up and actually pushing that gun to the limit as opposed to. I think from what I saw from Marine Scout Sniper, it was a lot of field crap. We were a lot of shooting. And right now I want to say that sniper school, that's what it's based off of, is a lot of technical shooting.
- [82:14]
Jack Murphy
Yeah.
- [82:15]
Luis Saucedo
Which I think is great. I think that's kind of what you needed because this day and age, if you're talking about warfare now, a sniper is a dangerous thing. But as far as Skillcraft is concerned, like, we have thermals. We have. Everybody's got thermals, Everybody's got all sorts of things. So it's like you can sneak around the woods all you want in A gilly. Like, if that thing doesn't have thermal shielding on it, then you're. You're kind of dead in the water.
- [82:44]
Jack Murphy
And then what was your first deployment like with snipers?
- [82:49]
Luis Saucedo
So again, going. Going back to that was another one where it was. Was learning a new skill set. Having to readjust my mindset from door kicker. Always wanting to get into, hey, like, you got to look for. You're almost a vanguard. You're ahead of everybody. You got to get into. You got to get into good positions, you got to climb, you got to look for where you're going to climb. And then afterwards, after everything's set, you got to kind of get yourself into a position that you could be able to defend the assault force and make shots. Whether that's on, like you put yourself on BPs or whether you put yourself up on top of a roof or wherever it is going to be on the target. The. I always thought the interesting thing about especially being an E5 coming from being a team leader and then being an E5 is that as an E5 in. In regimen, you. You kind of get told, hey, this is where you're going to be at. And then you have your left and right limits of the decisions you get to make right there and then on that spot. As a sniper, it was, oh, it was new to me because I went into mission planning and then I told the PL where I was going to be. I was like, hey, I think I'm. I should be, you know, here, or I think I should travel here in the formation because I have the best. So that was the growing. Growing up and having that experience. And that was, I think the learning curve was having to realize that, hey, like now you have real input into this mission set into this mission planning, especially as a sniper, because, you know, you got to decide where you got to think like the enemy, where's that contact going to come from and where can I place myself best to make the best shots on that, to end whatever contact that is as fast as possible. So a lot of, you know, you didn't always end up at the bps. Sometimes you were out of bp, sometimes you were. You're on a roof, like I said, or you were in. You were in some area or you had to decide, hey, we had one mission where they decided that the building next to us was higher than the compound and that we were going to go in. And so we actually went in, made entry, pulled pistols, cleared all the way up top, got on top of it, and then they were like, hey, we don't want to clear back down because we don't know what's down there. We don't have anybody on the bottom floor because we were pulling our own security. So we shimmied down like a pipe, which was probably one of the more sketchiest things I've done. I did that. It was app. I don't know. Did you know Paparella?
- [85:26]
Sponsor Voiceover
No.
- [85:27]
Luis Saucedo
B. Co Paparella. He's a. Now he's a. He's also a sergeant major. And so. But that was one of the things where he was like, Pap. Was a. Was the platoon sergeant at that time. And I. And he had put himself on that mission. He's like, let's go. And we did that. And I was like, this is one of the sketchier things I've done. I was just like. And I've done some sketchy. I've kicked some rocks that were real sus. And this is more sketchier than that.
- [85:53]
Jack Murphy
Yeah. In full kit. That doesn't sound fun. Fun.
- [85:55]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, no, it wasn't. But that was one of the things too, is that as a sniper, you started kind of learning like, your kit setup and like, what you need and didn't need and what. What was advantageous for your mission as a team leader. It's shooter preference. But, hey, this is. This is what you're going to wear. You're going to wear all of this stuff. And you got to carry, by the way, you got to carry the shotgun. You got to carry this. Yeah, you're. Or yeah, you got a Sketco on you. And the. As a sniper, it was. I could tailor my kit to my mission. I could figure out how best what was going to work for me. And they let you do that. I think as like, that's part of your learning process as a team leader. Like, you pretty much, you're getting told a lot of what to do. You're just like, hey, you're going to be here and you're going to do this. And then like, that's it.
- [86:41]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're like dropping down to a plate carrier and a couple magazines.
- [86:46]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. Like. Or you're running play carry a couple magazines. Or you're running. You're trying to figure out, like, how you're going to carry some stuff on your belt differently or where your radio really needs to be because you don't have all that stuff. So you have a lot more leeway a lot of the time. You know, I think one of the biggest things with snipers is that that's where I learned is like, hey, you don't want a lot of stuff on the front of your plate carrier. You want to be as. As light as you can on there. Because I gotta climb up walls. If you're on slaughter and addiction, I gotta go chase somebody. Like, that's. You know, how hard is that in full? Like, in. If you're carrying everything known to man.
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Jack Murphy
Any memorable missions from that deployment?
- [87:32]
Luis Saucedo
Man, Particularly. I remember one where we almost got left. We almost got left for a remainder day because we hit the target really late. And then some stuff happened on the target where we were looking for. For a couple things, and they were just like, hey, like, if we don't get to the HLZ. And like, I think the HLZ was like 3K away, and I think we had like 25 minutes to get there. And so it was a legit kit run that we. We just. The entire assault force just running, and you could see the sun coming up, and everybody's sitting there trying to get everybody. Like, guys are like, the gun team's just dying, and so people are trying to take stuff from the gun team. And I just. I. I remember that. The only reason I remember that is because a snow everywhere. It was just the most snow I've ever seen. And a lot of that deployment was like. My first deployment with snipers was like that.
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Sponsor Voiceover
Where we.
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Luis Saucedo
We were. Everything was snowy because we were in deep snow. I hopped off one of the birds on one mission and sunk right in. I'm a short guy. I sunk right in the snow and real far. Far enough to where it. It startled me to where I was like, I'm gonna get left in here. And so I took my. I took my. My STLE rifle and I just shoved it up so that somebody could grab it and pull me out. And I was like, don't leave me. It was like trying to get somebody on the radio. But I remember that one because the air crew got onto our net and was like, hey, It's. It's negative 25 degrees, boys. Have a nice night. And they're like, thanks. Like, appreciate you. But that. That deployment was relatively quiet. We didn't. We got into some stuff. We didn't do anything real crazy. Uh, it's. And it's funny because the relatively quiet for regiment is we'd get into ticks, but nothing was ever, like, you never really thought too much about it. Um, it was the next deployment when I was in snipers, where I was a senior sniper, that it got. It got like, real we got into some hairy stuff.
- [89:45]
Jack Murphy
Where, where was that?
- [89:47]
Luis Saucedo
So I started out in Shank with bco, but they weren't doing too many missions. And so we had two snipers that were down in Jbad and as they were in Jbad, we. There was a really bad strike on Jbad where so two of our guys, it was two of our snipers had gone to. They were doing something. It was a normal morning and morning's our night. So everybody's getting kind of tying down, getting ready to go. And so they go, they're getting ready for bed. And a ticks starts off on the legionnaire. We were on the legionnaire side of Jbad. And so they're outside the gate. A tick starts. And so a couple guys run up to the. To see what's going on. National Guards on the towers. And our. Two of our snipers run up to the tower because they're like, hey, like maybe we'll get some, maybe we'll get some trigger timing. They get up there and one of the National Guard, it was a girl and she was, from the story that we were told by these guys, she was cowering down on the side. And because they were shooting at that, they were putting effective fire on the tower. So one of our guys gets on the machine gun, starts shooting, like takes the machine gun over, starts shooting. The other guy's sitting there, he's on his rifle, calling out shots. And they look down and as soon as they look down they're like, hey, how long has that box car been here? And as soon as she was just like, oh, it pulled up like 15 minutes before this started. And as soon as they had said that the boxcar blew up, ended up throwing both of the sniper kills. They killed the female, throws both the snipers out of the tower. And one of the guys was, it took, it almost took his arm completely off. So it blows a hole inside of, on that, that side of the thing. And the. It was elements of, it was the seals, elements of the seals. And then the Rangers end up fighting over a like four foot hole in the wall, trying to push these guys back. One of the, one of the tyrant, the J Tax ends up getting like, I want to say you got like a silver star for call calls in a random flight randomly going by, gets them to come and respond to it and actually repels the rest of the attack. So at that deployment we, or on that one we had lost two. Two guys ended up getting going home because they were both really messed up. So me and Chris get the Call. And we're down in Shank, and they call us up, and they're just like, hey, you guys need to head up to jbad. So we take their spot down there. And then the rest of that deployment was. Was a little crazy. We had gotten into a lot of ticks. We had been kind of running around JBAD, and that was around the time that UBL had gotten 2011.
- [92:43]
Jack Murphy
Ish.
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Luis Saucedo
And so that was just a. That was the deployment where I think I'd kind of learned, like, how to maneuver under fire a lot better. And then me and Chris are. We're still best friends to this day, but me and him, like, hung around each other. It's kind of where we learned to trust each other a little bit, because that platoon likes sending the snipers up. And there was one where I'm. It was actually. It was funny because there was two twins in regiment when I came through. When I came through Rip, and they were the. They were called the Drotty Brothers, and one went to B Company, and I went through Rip with both of them. And so we're good friends. And one of them's in the platoon with me, and they end up sending. He's a team leader at that time. They send me. They send me as a sniper, him and one of the dogs in the. The. One of the canines up, and we're operating 4 or 500 meter, and we're walking through a town, like in the middle of the night, and we're sitting there, like, whispering each other like, this is it. This is how it ends. So. But kind of the being in that sniper role, that kind of. That was the deployment where I really got used to it. And actually being able to move like it. Operate like it, get to. That was kind of the identity that I had taken on. And I did snipers for a real long time after that. But, yeah, that was. That was probably one of the more memorable moments in that deployment. And again, I go back to memorable moments. We were getting the fights every night. So it's one of those things where. From the first part of my career where I can remember every single firefight that I got into towards in regiment,
- [94:34]
Jack Murphy
it was just so blending together.
- [94:36]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. It was just like, oh, you'd be. I remember being in one fight and being ducked behind a wall, going. Trading shots, shots, and ducking down to reload or just kind of move positions and looking over at one of the guys and be like, what do you think they're serving at midnight child? Like, you think we'll get back before this. Like, so it's just it. You just became numb to everything at that point.
- [95:00]
Jack Murphy
Yeah.
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Luis Saucedo
Just how, how all that would happen. And, and then I think you take that for granted, too, is when you got new guys in and then you'd see them kind of reacting a different way. You just be like, what's his problem? And it's because he hasn't his, his, you know, neurological system hasn't gone like his CNS is, is not tuned up. Like, it's not tuned down to it. He still hopped up on it. So I think that was the. Psychologically, I think that was a cool point where you go back to the first part of your career. You think about your first firefight and you're like, I remember what it smelled like. And then you go to the middle of your career and you're just like, I can't even remember this one. Like, this one blended in with that one blended in with this other one. It was just really.
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Luis Saucedo
Like, some of them were just, like, anticlimactic, like.
- [97:19]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, yeah. But now. Now you're learning, like, the operational art of the job, it sounds like.
- [97:25]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, I think at that point, like, I was. You always think you're good, but at that point and during. With as much as we were doing it, we go back to, like, Green Berets and all. Like that other. Other, like tier 2 units, regular army units. Like, I think we just were better because we did it so much more often. Like, every night we went out, we were looking for a fight, or we were going to get into a fight, one or the other. And so it's the. I think it's really that. That's what sets us apart from it. So you have the Green Berets, and it's not their fault, but they weren't getting into things like that every single night. The operational. Their tempo wasn't that bad. I think the worst part for them is they were just stuck out all the time because you'd always hear the transmissions, right? They'd be like, they're off on their own in. In the wild west doing, like, doing
- [98:19]
Jack Murphy
like, three or four day patrols sometimes.
- [98:22]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, yeah. And as opposed to us where we were sitting there and like, anytime we got into a fight, it was. We could just bring the. The might of everything that we had in country down on top of you, depending on where we were in the mission set.
- [98:34]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, yeah. If you really get into it. I mean, AC130 is going to be overhead.
- [98:38]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, gosh. We saw one. It was my. Then that was. That was one of the first times. The first time I'd ever seen it was that first deployment was watching an AC130. And then the green beam of death that they. That they put out there where it's just like playing whack a mole with people is basically all it was doing. It's like some guys would pop up. We saw a group running parallel to us. And, you know, I'm tapping Haley, who was one of the gunners. He gets it, and he starts firing on them. And as he's firing on them, you see the bullets blinking light, and then just it. Just the ground exploding and disappearing around these people, and they're gone. Or you see there the gun go off and the 30 millimeters, and it looks like they tossed somebody into a blender. And I was like, that was the but then you're on these missions where, like, I don't have to worry about too much because I know somebody's coming for me. It's the Green Berets. I think that's where I give them a lot of credit, is that, like, there's times where they. They didn't know if anybody was coming. They. They were their ex girls.
- [99:43]
Jack Murphy
Right.
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Sponsor Voiceover
So.
- [99:46]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah.
- [99:47]
Jack Murphy
And what were your other trips with snipers?
- [99:52]
Luis Saucedo
So I did. Man. So I did one more after that, and it was to calf. Okay there. So. And again, that was another one where it was just me and Chris. We kind of just piled around. We were out with BCO again and again. It was. We were just kind of hanging around and getting into these, like, little ticks. But it wasn't. I think during that point in time of the war, everything was starting to not wind down, but kind of settle into a very. At that point in time, the. The networks, the Haqqani network, you know, isis, all these people. Not ISIS yet, but the precursors to it in Al Qaeda, where they kind of realized that, like, we were the guys that you didn't fight because we would kill you. It was almost better for you to just get captured, because then all we were doing is we would. We would detain you, hand you off to the Afghans, and then the Afghans would release you, and we'd pay you for the pleasure. And so they were kind of figuring that out around that time. So it started to be less fights, not dry holes. But we were actually going in, and we'd be like, yeah, this is the dude. And the dude would we have one. We at that deployment where me and Chris climbed. We climbed ladders. We're going in, and this guy, like, popped his own hem light, threw it out there, had zipped cuffs, put a zip cuff on one hand and then worked the other one and then walked out. And all the females and males started separating each other. And. And I was just like, hey, it looks like they've done this before.
- [101:33]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, yeah, they know the fire drill.
- [101:35]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. So we were like, they. They know what's going on here. And the guy just seems like, yeah, you know, the Terp, they get the EQ and bit out there. You got the terp out there. And then they're like, yeah, he knows we're here for him and he's ready to go.
- [101:49]
Jack Murphy
That's crazy.
- [101:51]
Luis Saucedo
So.
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- [101:52]
Luis Saucedo
I think that was the sign of the time, of the.
- [101:54]
Jack Murphy
This was the futility of what we're trying to do over there.
- [101:57]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. It's like 15, 16.
- [101:59]
Jack Murphy
Yeah.
- [102:00]
Luis Saucedo
And it was almost the. They're just like, it's better off for us to just go with you guys, like, because we'll, like, we were just gonna show up and kill you, and we weren't. If we showed up at night to come and get you, that was bad, and you'd rather not just deal with that. And so you were still having. I know the bso, the BOW still battle space owners, the regular army guys were still having a lot of ticks and stuff like that, like small attacks on their cops or other forward operating bases, but they would pretty much like that. Pretty much everything was settled into a. A even keel lull of. We thought that we were gonna. That was what, like 15, like, 18 years into the war, something like that. Like, so, like, everything's pretty much settled at that point. We're just. It's. We were almost doing like, hey, oh, here's the. We killed the last guy in an airstrike, you know, two weeks ago. Here's the new guy. Let's go get him. Like, and so it was like every time they promoted somebody, we would just either kill them or go get them. And like I said, I think at that point they'd kind of realize that it's. It's pretty much better off if we just go get you.
- [103:13]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, the game's rigged.
- [103:15]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah.
- [103:17]
Jack Murphy
And then when you went to Europe as an SME, was that with regiment?
- [103:23]
Luis Saucedo
No. So it actually, it was almost a detachment off of sm.
- [103:28]
Jack Murphy
Oh, okay. We'll get to that.
- [103:31]
Luis Saucedo
Take it back off the first cav. Yeah.
- [103:32]
Jack Murphy
So when you got back from that deployment with. To caf. You went to the army marksmanship unit. Was that the next thing?
- [103:43]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. So kind of just like anything else, you get offers to do stuff. And so me and my partner Chris had actually gone there together, went down to the. I had done some deployment. Deployment with SECO, was an E6 now. Had done my squad leader time. And there just. It was an offer that was on the table, and I was just like, yeah, sure, that sounds fine. It's on base, and that sounds fun. So we went. Me and Chris went down to the instructor training group, and we actually were there with other regiment guys. A lot of snipers were there. There was a couple Cat Delta guys there. And it was basically, they hired people who were to go out to the army to teach them marksmanship. And I would say this. I was like, I thought I could shoot when I was in the regiment. I basically didn't. I. I realized I didn't know anything because they start training you up there. So I get there, I go through a shoot through. They look at my resume. It's almost like applying for a job. And then they say yes or no? So they say yes. And so we immediately we come in and we start training with oh man.
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Jack Murphy
Iron.
- [104:56]
Luis Saucedo
We start training with like Dan Horner, okay. And there's a couple other like green is there and all these like kind of superstars within the. The shooting world is there. And so we start going through all the shooting. And I was like, I thought I was a good pistol shooter. I had no idea what I was doing with a pistol until I got there. And you start learning that you don't know what you. You didn't know what you didn't know. And I was always like. Because I was a. I had gone through our mike, the regimental marksman instructor course. So I thought I was a good shooter at that point. And then so I get there, I do that and realize that I'm not nearly as good of a shooter as. So that's almost the kind of work up to what I started doing, especially with sniper stuff. So I did the time with the itg trained, went around and started teaching regular army units how to, how to train. We were, we were in charge of teaching I Bullock weird or the infantry basic officer course. We started teaching the captain's career course. Guys coming through, the sergeant majors academies coming through because. And I really appreciate this about how regiment does it is they want to send guys out to know, to get to know things. We want to be the best at, at our, our craft. So any ranger does and where do you send. You got to send them to the guys that are going to know how to do that. So we started, we learned to shoot really well. And when. I mean, we learned to shoot like we were shooting every day. They had a really cool program where I could go to their bunker with my gun. I'd sign my guns out from my cage, I would walk over to the bunker and we'd walk up and I'd be like, oh Yeah, I want 2 grand of 556 and I need, you know, 4 grand of 9 mil. And then I would take that and I would go and shoot all day long, just all day. So it was great. Just that. But you learn the skills of actually marksmanship, of how to run a gun, how to hold a gun, all the small nuances of footwork when you're shooting. And that really, I think is something that regiment later on took back home and Said there's like, one of the biggest things we got taught from AMU was that shooting, marksmanship, combat shooting, is a. Almost like a martial art. There's footwork involved in this. There's where you place your foot, where you place your hand, the little movements that you make with your head, those all come into play. And that's something that you all have to train so that you can optimally take targets down and make good shots on. Good shots on a body. And so we took all of that out. We. We went and we were giving that to the army because, like I said, coming out of Regiment, I thought I knew how to shoot. I did not. And if you look at the army holistically, there's a lot of NCOs, officers who think it's sergeant majors who really think that they're very good at shooting. And they. They are not. They are not. They were not the best. And so having an instructor training group like that to go out to the army to actually do that was great. One of the notable things I did is I was the NC for the. The XM17, which became the M17 project. So I went down to Aberdeen and I actually did a lot of the testing for that. And while I was in the amu, me and Chris also shot international cyber together. So it's really cool. My partner from Regiment, we both go over to AMU and then we both shoot an international sniper, which was a great time.
- [108:37]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, that's awesome.
- [108:39]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. So. But I really appreciate my time in AMU because that's where I learned to do, to actually enjoy the skill craft, the craft of marksmanship. And then that actually carried me over into kind of the rest of my career. That's what I ended up teaching and being known for wherever I went.
- [109:00]
Jack Murphy
And how did that take place that you went from AMU to the sfab?
- [109:06]
Luis Saucedo
So went through some stuff personally, as most Rangers do. A marriage fell apart. And I'm from Texas, and so the closest place to Texas is. Is. Or the closest base to Texas is Fort Hood. So there's an S5 standing up at Fort Hood, asked a favor, and they let me come. They let me leave and come. Kind of the fall of my family. So as soon as I got into that, it's actually a strange place because there's a lot of Rangers. There's a ton of Rangers there. Not the. Not RFS Rangers. It's guys who were like, oh, hey, I need to get out to do something else. I need to go somewhere else and do for whatever Reason they had so ended up in there, the S. FAB and started doing. Pretty much took control of a marksmanship program there, Got a team team and started running that. And that's how I ended up in European deployment.
- [110:03]
Jack Murphy
Do you want to tell folks out there what the SFAB Was?
- [110:07]
Luis Saucedo
So the SFAB Is a. Is pretty much a security forces
- [110:15]
Jack Murphy
advisory battalion.
- [110:16]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, advisory battalion. So we would go to partner forces and we would advise them on how to do it. So they're really big into troop leading procedures, operations procedures. We were teaching at first. I think it started when it first got kicked off. Guys were doing low level tactics, almost like an SF Job without having been SF Right, right. But then they kind of started taking. When I got there, it was more strategic level. So it was battalion. It was battalion and brigade up for the partner forces. So.
- [110:49]
Jack Murphy
Oh, I got you teaching like their staff.
- [110:53]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. How to move formations, how to actually be able to get your equipment and sustainment out to that. That was one of the big things. They would send you sustainment courses. And they had. For each operation, for each level and operation, they had their. We had a counterpart for it. So whether that be intelligence. So each part of the operations order, we would have like, we had an intelligence guy, we had a sustainment guy, we had a command and control guy. We had a maneuver. And so they would take people from each part of the army who were subject matter experts in that, and then they would put them in those positions to be able to advise other units. So essentially it was taking. I don't want to say it was taking work from S. SF but it was taking the. The strategic level work from it. So now they would have to put people strategically in their commands. There could be this. This overarching. And it wasn't for. I think Special forces kind of had their knit. Their. Their thing in. In special. In a special operations mindset. This was a big art. Like, we were a big army mindset. We were like, hey, like, this is how you put an army together.
- [112:08]
Sponsor Voiceover
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- [112:08]
Jack Murphy
There's another organization, I believe it's called Smatco that. Does that bring any bills? Yeah, I mean, did you guys dovetail with them at all?
- [112:20]
Luis Saucedo
We ran around with them, but we weren't. We never really like worked work with them, but we. You. We would be in common places because those are like.
- [112:28]
Jack Murphy
As I recall, that organization would have like, here's our expert on the Bradley fighting vehicle. And they'd send them to like a country like Ukraine and be like, teach these guys how to do that.
- [112:39]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, so. And that's what I said is, I think that's taking that. You're starting to take it down more. We were more in the end of the operation. So, like when we would set guys over, it was just like, hey, here's how to conduct a defense. Like, this is how we do defense, this is how we do offense, this is how we do route reconnaissance. And we would take that and we would have our. Whoever our counterpart was, we would be training them on that portion of it. So generally your maneuver guy was a infantry guy. Generally your sustainment guy was somebody who did sustainment at whatever brigade he was at. He did a high level brigade operation. So it's. That's where we were going. I know that's where SFAB was going with it. I think they're kind of coming away from that now, though. I know they're closing down a lot of them.
- [113:32]
Jack Murphy
But when you were there, you were the sniper SME, I take it.
- [113:35]
Luis Saucedo
So they had, they had stuff that was going on. They got requests for things that were going on. And so I was a sniper. I've done all the stuff. And as much as I was that I'd done a lot of shooting too. It was funny because when I got sent over there, I competed in the European Best Warrior while I was there. So they actually pulled me out to go to Germany to do European Best Warriors. So I do European Best Warrior there, but I'm not allowed to win it, which was funny.
- [114:03]
Jack Murphy
They actually told you that?
- [114:05]
Luis Saucedo
They did. They told me. They was like, hey, you're competing. But this is more for. For us to get our name out there and not for you to like, you can't specifically win because you have to be the European Best warrior. Has to be in a unit that's currently stationed, like home, stationed in, in Europe. So I go there and I do the whole dance, which was. It was fun. But like, I got. I got top shot and I did really well in combatives, got taught, and I got the top shot out of the thing and it was out of the competition. It was funny because when they were giving the award, they were like, hey, no surprise here. You know, Sergeant First Class Sal blew y' all out a little with the shooting. And so it was funny because during the qual, I was really cocky at that point in time because I knew I was winning. I got down and they have this known distance range with an M4 and it's iron sights and for. And so you have so many shots. And I was knocking all of them Down. I was just out there. I was like, bam. Down, down. Hitting all of them. I was like, this is super easy. Hit the last one out at 4, 400. And as soon as I do it, I immediately, like, unload my rifle. I'm like, yeah. And the cadre looks down at me and he's like, target up. And I look out. And I had like, the last round. I had. I ejected, and the magazine's empty. I ejected this round. It falls on the floor. I look out and this pop just goes just right up. And it's like. It's the. It's like 100 meter popper. I immediately reached down, grab the bullet, shove it in finger, put my finger in the magazine well, slammed the bolt shut, and then fire from almost the shoulder position. I wasn't even on the stock. Thing goes down, and I made it go. Yeah. Stand up in the. It was funny because the cadre was there. It's like, I've never seen anything like that. He's like, that's. He was like, that was crazy.
- [116:03]
Jack Murphy
So you kicked it. You kicked ass the first couple days, and then the last day you had to go get drunk off your ass and you not show up so that you. You lost the thing.
- [116:11]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, man. No, it was the. The road march. I didn't prepare at all for it, so I came in top of the pack. But not first. But the. So they did. I'll give it to him. Like, the. The way they put this competition on was good. There was an unknown event at the end of the competition after the road march. We all knew that. So I was just like, man. I was like, it's probably going to be an O course or something weird like that. Like, I can handle it. Of course. Came in probably top, middle of the pack. Not great, but not terrible. Like, in true Ranger fashion, I'm like, I'm kind of sprinting the whole time, and I got, like, short little legs because I'm a 375 ranger and all of us are tiny. And so we get to the end, and as we're getting in, they've made us have a uniform on the very top of our. Our ruck. So I get in and they go, hey, go inside. As soon as you get in. It's immediate. It's like, as soon as everybody gets in, they're like, go inside to the gym, get into that new uniform, and then you guys are gonna line up underneath the stadium steps. And I was like, all right. So we go and do it real quick. They were like, they gave us something like 10 minutes to do. So we get dressed, we go out there. Well, as soon as we go out there, you walk out and they're introducing everybody and there's a mat on there and they've got shin guards and hat and gloves. And it's a round robin combatives tournament. And it is. You can do, you can kick. And it was fists. You could do fists to the body. And it was open hand slaps and we had. So it was a European best warrior. So a lot of it was a little bit of everybody. There's females with us, 110 pound females and they were. It was around Robin fight. So we're gonna like, we're going out there watching like a chick get picked up and hucked across his mat on one match. And then everybody had to fight each other. And so like. And it was right after a ruck march and I was just like. It was, I think it was like my third or fourth match. I was just like, I'll give it to them. This sucks. Like, this is rough. Like, I'm so tired of fighting this guy. But that was a, it was, it was an experience. That was a really good experience. That whole deployment was a good experience. Being able to work with a Eastern European army who like didn't have the equipment, but definitely had the guys like the, the want and the, the want and the know how without the equipment. And then kind of showing us how we, showing them how we do things and then showing them how they do things. It's a completely different mindset. Like we talked earlier about like the be close in support, like direct support for assault forces. That's not a thing to them. They, when we, when they talk Cyprus, Eastern Europeans talk like, like old time.
- [119:01]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, we're shooting a Nazi general from the bell tower of a church.
- [119:06]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. And then you're ex billing like, you know, back to your lines or you're, you're in it. Like, they. We did one scenario where we talked about, talked about we. They had it on their actual compound where they had a bell tower. And it was like, hey, you're gonna shoot from this belt. Targets from this bell tower.
- [119:24]
John Daly
No, I'm not.
- [119:26]
Luis Saucedo
And they were just like, yeah. So we go over mission planning because that's our job. Like, all right, so how would you do this? And they're like, oh, no. It's like, so what's your XFILL plan? And he's like, xfil. I was like, no, I get it. Yeah. They're. I was like, you're on A bell tower. You're probably not getting out of that tower. Yeah, like, maybe you should make some kind of plan. Or maybe we don't even do it from this bell tower. Like, so that was. That was a really, really cool experience. And then just the ability to travel Europe, because in regiment, you don't really do that. It was all. It was all mission, mission, mission, mission. And the only place we went to is, you know, bad third world countries
- [120:08]
Jack Murphy
and not a lot of opportunities to meet women in the ranger regiment.
- [120:12]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, no, not. Not. Not even a little bit. And then you go to this other place, and it's like. It's, you know, Germany. It was. Oh, man. The base was mk, and that was in Romania. And I always tell people, I was like, hey, if you want. If you want a good vacation for bottom dollar, go to Romania. So you're having a lot of fun. We had. It was. It was bad. There was, like, a. A beach there that was a topless beach. And so, like, you know, nobody was that unit that was there. Nobody was ever there. Like, we were like, hey, it's, you know, Wednesday. Where is everybody? It's in the summer. Like, oh, they're all on the beach. Like, of course they are. What kind of PT we doing? Oh, we're doing beach pt. Okay, cool.
- [120:52]
Jack Murphy
Hey, ask the Secret Service about Moldova. They had a great time out there.
- [120:57]
Luis Saucedo
I have a. I have a buddy that I work with now. One of the guys that I work now on the team is. He's an ex secret service guy. Guy. And I always give him hell about Colombia.
- [121:05]
Jack Murphy
Oh, yeah. Columbia.
- [121:06]
Luis Saucedo
Like, you know, if y' all just pay the hookers, they. They won't tell on you.
- [121:10]
Jack Murphy
My understanding was that was kind of like a setup. Like, it's a scam where, like, the girl pretends that she's just a normal girl that wants to sleep with you, and then you get to the hotel room, and it's like, oh, but, yeah, you got to pay me.
- [121:22]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I would have been like, I just get out, and here's some money. I'm. I'm gonna pay you to leave. How about that?
- [121:28]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, Here's a five SP spot. See you later.
- [121:30]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah.
- [121:31]
Jack Murphy
Yeah.
- [121:32]
Luis Saucedo
Those guys. That was like, sf, though. Like, sf. Like, those guys, like, constantly getting the seventh group, man, just constantly getting in trouble.
- [121:40]
Jack Murphy
I know.
- [121:42]
Luis Saucedo
I always give. I think, you know, Alejandro.
- [121:44]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [121:46]
Luis Saucedo
Me and him are good friends. Like, me and him are good friends. Every time I go to Colorado, we stop and visit him, but. And I talk to him all the time. But I always give him that. I was just like, yeah, man, this is like a Ranger. A ranger in a Green Beret. Sounds like you might have had a hooker problem.
- [122:04]
Jack Murphy
So after or no, you're still in the S. FAB and you got deployed to Erbil?
- [122:09]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. So my last deployment was in Erbil, Iraq, and we were working hand in hand with the courage. So at that point, I kind of worked my way. And being a sniper, I think everybody kind of says that they're just like, oh, you're kind of like a. You're, you know, scout intel guy. You know, stuff about intel. And then I went to a school or two, and then I found myself as the chief intel guy for my. For the SFAB In Ervil. So apart from a lot of the stuff was. I wouldn't call it humid stuff that we were doing. It was a lot of checking in on guys. And then that's kind of where I learned a lot about the culture.
- [122:53]
Jack Murphy
Oh, like. Like liaison.
- [122:56]
Luis Saucedo
It wasn't a liaison because we were definitely. We were being used by other entities to collect, to give out, like, good information. So there was a lot of entities that we'd get downloads from. They'd be like, what you see, what you do. Okay, I need you to ask for this when you go back. I need you to do this. There was points where we were pretty much running sources just because we were very in with the Kurds. And so we talked a lot to them. And like I said, like, we try, like, as. As. As we are an army, we trust people to a point. But then we're also keeping tabs on everybody, too. So that's a lot of what we were doing. So we had our side reports that we were writing, kind of collecting on other people, which are. Was a super interesting job, especially for a Ranger, because I'm going out there and I'm just like, okay. Like, you know, we'd go and look at their storehouses. One of us would pair up, like, peel off and go look at what they had. And then you compare it to numbers of what we. They actually said. And you'd be like, this dude just lying. And then not only is he lying, he's asking us for more stuff. And it was funny because one day I asked one of the. Our Kurdish counterparts. It's like, what are you getting ready for war? I was like. Like, you got enough. I was like, you got enough at weapons in there to. To kick start the next war. I was like, so, what is it? And he was just like, Oh, y' all are leaving soon. And he's, like, straight up looked at me in faces like. He's like, as nice as you guys are, he's like, y' all aren't gonna be here for very much longer. And he's like. And then the Kurds are going to be left alone. Like, Kurdistan's gonna be. They called it Kurdistan. Nobody else wanted to call it that. But they're like, the Kurds are going to be left alone, and we're gonna have to fight them. And I was just like. There was a point where I was like, now you're right. Like, yeah, fair enough, man. Yeah, yeah.
- [124:44]
Jack Murphy
It's always like, one of those things where, like, man, could you guys not, like, start a war with the Arabs at least while I'm here, Please?
- [124:50]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, Like. And then. So it was funny because the. That was right when I think the precursor to what's going on in Iran was going on then because we had an icbm, like, alert where we all had to get in. They were like, hey, oh, is this.
- [125:06]
Jack Murphy
Is this when we smoked Soleimani? And then they fired the ballistic missiles?
- [125:09]
Luis Saucedo
They fired the. They fired icpm. And they were like, everybody get to a bunker. And I was like, why? Because it's like, you know, we should really just get on top of one of these. One of these shoes and enjoy. Enjoy what we. While we can. But it's. It's that deployment kind of, as far as my military career is concerned, really kind of opened my eyes to a lot. I know people get into a lot cooler stuff, but, like, having a career kind of like that, you're in, like, this intel world of you're playing, like, I was playing checkers, and now I'm. I'm watching chess getting played with everybody. And it was. It's. It's funny to come from kind of that, to be able to see all of that in a career. Just very odd. Like I said, there was times where I was listening to things, and I was just like, this should be in a book. I was like, sometime somewhere, like, this is like, the truth is stranger than fiction. Like, as much as we can write about things and make these stories up as, like, stranger things are happening.
- [126:20]
Jack Murphy
Any stories like that that you can tell or that you can share?
- [126:24]
Luis Saucedo
One of my favorite stories was me and my partner got sent out to. With some other agency guys to talk to two people. And it was because we were the only ones around. So they were just like, hey, we need you to go look at this. It ended up being two Russians that had stuffed their face full of. They were trying to get in. They had fake accents. They were trying to use fake accents, saying they were from Tennessee, but in a really bad way. And what they were trying to do is they had gotten a bunch of dip and they were putting in their mouth, like the ch in their mouth so that they would. They were spitting and trying to do it. One of them never done it before.
- [127:03]
Jack Murphy
So it's Puz.
- [127:04]
Luis Saucedo
Throwing up everywhere. Yeah. And cursing in Russian. So like, they called. They were the gay guards. Like, hey, can y' all come and talk to these people? And we go over there and just like, oh. And immediately it was what you think. They were trying to gain access to the camp and get on. But we had a lot of stuff like that going on because our offices were outside of camp. Like, we weren't on Erbil. Yeah, we were out. We were out in the town. So we were like constantly going. We were in civilian clothes, going around doing.
- [127:35]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, the Russian SVR has a station out there in Kurdistan.
- [127:40]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, we knew. And we knew exactly where it was too, so. But the having. Be the having been there and to see all of that and others. Other stories of. You were watching international play happen kind of right there, like Portugal, like. And you can't. I can't really get into a lot of it, but, you know, in 25 years, maybe I can write a book about.
- [128:08]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, I hope so.
- [128:09]
Luis Saucedo
But it's the being going from like. Like I said, we were talking before. Going from the start of the war, me getting there as a. As a 19 year old and being in Baghdad fighting and stuff like that. And then the end of my career, I think one of the times I was sitting on top of the. One of the airfield, not bunkers, but the. We climbed up on top of the. Oh, gosh, I'm trying to remember what it was. The hangers. And we were. There was a group of us sitting there smoking cigars on a hanger and I was just like, it was. I didn't know at the time that that was going to be my last deployment, but I knew I was coming towards the end. Just I had had a back injury and it had. It progressed to the point where I didn't know if I was going to be able to keep going. And I was up on the eight list, but it was just like. I knew it was that I was like, hey, my time's coming close to the end of this. So standing up there on the. Again going back to that, like, you take snapshots of your service and the times you stuff and you think about, like, from the time from the firefights to the guys laughing, to watching sunrises come up over the, like, Hindu Kush, or, you know, being watching suns go down, like the sun go down over Baghdad by the Babylon gates, or doing all of that, and then being in Kurdistan and, you know, being on the. Over by the Iranian border, but watching. Looking down and out of the mountains and seeing how gorgeous it is. And then I think one of the last things I remember is being, like, on that hangar and smoking a cigar, watching these sea rams go off and being like, this was cool. This was a. This was a cool experience. And realizing that, like, the things that you touch through it, maybe it didn't affect so much, but it affected a lot to you. So I think that's. That was kind of the. The end cap to my military career.
- [130:11]
Jack Murphy
And when you got home, you went through the med board process?
- [130:15]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, so went through med boards. The worst thing I think you can ever do. The. What was rough about that was I thought I had more left in me. I. I was still doing a bunch of stuff. I like, I think I was in my. I was like, 36. I did best ranger at like, 36, 37 years old, and I still had. I was still doing a lot of stuff. Like, I was still going out and training, running CrossFit. I'd gotten into jiu jitsu, and I started competing in jiu jitsu, and I was just like, man, I got a ton. But there would be times where I couldn't get out of bed, and I had to call somebody to my house to be like, hey, I need you to come and help me out of bed. And so I'd been getting shots in my L or my s. It's like L5s1. Yeah. And I'd been getting epidurals for a long time. And when we were in Erbil, we'd gotten into a little car wreck. We were with the Brits, you know, crazy, crazy Iraqi drivers don't know how traffic circles work. Want to go in the wrong way. Hit our hit. My car back was a little messed up after it, and I was like, I'll be fine. I'll get back and it'll be good. I was on the E8 list, you know, getting ready to look at where I was going to go next, what I was going to do next. And I was actually looking at selection, another selection. And Dr. Comes in, he's like, I've done all the X rays. And stuff. And she comes in and she's like, hey, pull. The first thing she says is like, do you. Do you want to walk when you're 60? I was like, what kind of question is that? Yeah, I want to walk when I'm 16. She's like, okay, then you're done. Like, you're my bad. Med board. We're recommending med board right now. We're going to start going through the process and you're. And you're essentially, you're finished. And I was just like, that took. That took a little bit to kind of internalize.
- [132:04]
Jack Murphy
Yeah. That took the wind out of your sails in that moment, didn't it?
- [132:07]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, I wasn't ready for that. I was just like. I didn't think I was gonna do. In fact, I'd made a promise to my ex wife that I was gonna die at my desk so that she didn't get any retirement. So I was like, I was. I was fully intending on following through with that. So, you know, I had. That had kind of taken. Taken me aback a little bit. But then at that point, I met somebody. She was in Dallas, and I was just like, I was over the moon for her. And so I was just like, okay, maybe this isn't too bad. Kind of started getting the feeling that I was on my way out, trying to make peace with it, and then started trying to, like, make those plans. But the army makes it really hard to make plans for that.
- [132:53]
Jack Murphy
Yeah.
- [132:54]
Luis Saucedo
So eventually they approved it. I got out. What I will say is the army does need to do a better job and taps. The regiment does a fantastic job. I will say that regiment is, I think, one of the. And that's just because now I work a little bit with them. But the Ranger for Life program and the. The way they do it is so much better for. For rangers in general. I didn't have that option at that point, or I had the option. I just. I think there was a point in time where I was in a little bit of a denial. I was like, well, maybe this won't go through. And then it came to a point in time where it was just like, oh, no, it's time for you to leave now. Like, you're. You're done. So, yeah, med boarded out, started my transition. The transition's probably, like I said, one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. It's. I can see where guys just self destruct at the end of it. You come from. You're coming from, like me. I think I have 71 months deployed. 71 to 75 months deployed overseas.
- [134:05]
Jack Murphy
Holy.
- [134:07]
Luis Saucedo
And it's. That was like. You can't tell me that, like, at 19, like, when my frontal lobe's not even really developed yet. At 19, this is the way of life I learned. And then at the end of it, say, hey, thanks for playing. Talk to you later.
- [134:23]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, good game.
- [134:25]
Luis Saucedo
And then all of a sudden, one day, you find yourself and, like, I'm not that thing anymore. I'm not. I'm not Ranger. I'm not a Ranger. I'm not a. I'm not operating in austere environments anymore. There's no next deployment for me. And I think that's kind of what took a long time to. Even when I got out. So I got out, actually, I did the very private thing. I feel like when I got out of. I did everything in one year. So I, like I said, met somebody I was over the moon for. We had kind of. We have a. A very. That's an interesting story, and that's something I'm kind of. I'm writing about now because of how funny that was. But met, got married, move, blended families, bought a house. All in that year that I got out of the. Like, right before I got out of the army, and that got out of the Army. So it was. That probably didn't help the situation any much more, but just going through it and having to realize that that wasn't me and then find a new purpose. So that was the. That was the hard part.
- [135:36]
Jack Murphy
I mean, how did that come about? You mentioned to me that you worked in projects management for, like, six months, and that helped teach you what you didn't want to do.
- [135:45]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, yeah. I don't recommend for. For. For men of our ilk and people. Men of our stature and say, men of action. I don't recommend going to be a project manager. Like, that's the. Like, you got to kind of be dishonest to everybody. Everything's from Lowe's. Better. And then, like, you're like, yeah, this building may fall down, but, like, I got it done under budget.
- [136:11]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, we got a lot of that here in New York City.
- [136:13]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, God. Yeah. And so I hated it. I hated when I realized what it was. I was just like, this is not for me. And I would go to work and just dread it. I would tell my. I'd wake up and tell my wife. I was like, I don't want to go to work today. Like, I really don't. And then, you know, being. Learning that, like, nobody was Going to yell at me if I didn't go to work was fun because then I would just be like, you know what? I'm not going to work, and I don't have to give you a reason why. And so that was the. That was the funny part of the whole thing. And it was fun because I was working with one of my best friends, Anthony Wilstrom, who's a mentor in jiu jitsu for me, and me and him kind of work together a little bit, too. And we had those conversations all the time. I was just like, man, I was just like, what would happen if I just see a. Broke my leg and didn't show up? And he's just like, you don't have to go that far. Just. Just don't show up. So it got into that and really learned that that's not where I wanted to be or what I wanted to do. I wanted a little bit more purpose in. In my life. So kicked around being a cop. Talked to my dad, who's a. He's a. He retired Dallas police officer, and he's like, don't be a cop right now. He's like, it's rough. He's like, and you. You stand a good chance of going to jail, like, more than anybody else else, just because of our service. Talked to some other guys, and it's like, I think especially coming from where we came from, violence is a thing that we do well, and it's our spoken language. And so with normal beat cops, that's something that they have to learn over time. When you put a guy like us in it, and we already know it, our threshold for I'm going to kill you is so much lower. And so when it's the. When that threshold is lower, you're you. I think we don't understand why, like, the, you know, this guy pulls out a knife and I blast him. Like. But I did it. Like, I shot him 20 times instead of like the. The cursory three or four.
- [138:15]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, you don't. You don't comply. And the nightstick is coming out, bro.
- [138:19]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, like, yeah, like, it's that. Or like, ooh, a fight. Like, I'm into this. So it was funny because my dad was just like, hey, maybe that's not something you. You want to get into right now. And honestly, I still kick that around a little bit. My. My wife is in law enforcement. She's in federal law enforcement. And so, you know, she's always the one kind of telling me, she's like, yeah, maybe. Maybe not that. I Think maybe we don't get sued this month. So learning that, though, from the project management point and then trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I got really lucky and stumbled into what I'm doing now. And so essentially, that is I work for Allegiance Project Security, and it is a company, security company that takes veterans, and we try to put them into schools and churches, which is. It's funny because after Uvalde happened, I remember having a conversation. I was in amu, having a conversation with my partner, Chris, and it was just like, hey, what? Like, we should put, like, special operations guys in. Like, they don't want to be cops or anything like that. They should. We should stick them into schools. Well, Matthew Easter, who's the president and the owner of the company, had that idea. He. He's not a special operations guy. He's never been in the military. He never did anything like that. What he does have is a wife that's a teacher that he's worried about. And he was just like, why aren't we taking these guys who already did this and put them into these schools and churches? And it's funny because I say that when I think about Yaldi and situations like that, because now it's my job to think about those security risks in schools, in churches, and Red Team that take that intelligence background, Red Team it, and say, what would I do if I was. If I really wanted to cause damage? What would I do? And I take Uvaldi as a. I always tell the story around people, but people were talking to. I take Evaldi. And what I take from that is it's not that police officer's fault. He learned that he was not about that life at that door, at that breach. Realize that's not what he's built for. What now kind of the. The mission is, is to take guys that are built for that, that pretty much did a year, years in their lifetime of running through doors. And not only that, but made that decision of life or death. Like, hey, I could die in this room. Because you remember what they told us when we were doing CQB and stuff like that. They're like, you're running into a room with four guys, like four or five guys. You're running in a group with four or five guys on your team, and then a room with a couple guys who have guns. Somebody's getting shot, somebody's getting killed. And there's a really good chance that a lot of you are. Are getting shot in that room. So the. That when I say that that it's not that cop's fault is because he had that thought right at that door. We had this. Probably the same thoughts that we did during training where you kind of internalize it. You're like, oh, God. But we got indoctrinated into it. We lived it. We were. That's that we understood that that was our purpose. Like, we. Our purpose was to run into doors. Like, run into danger, run into doors. We were going to breach that threshold. We were going to jump out of that airplane. So the question of life and death never stopped entering our mind. And it was like, how do I get in here and how do I stop the threat? So that's what this. This organization basically does, is we're trying to take guys like that, usher them into civilian life by easing them into it, not taking everything away that they are, not taking the gun away from them, not taking the brotherhood away from them, not taking that culture away from them, and slowly kind of saying, hey, like, you're not running through those doors. There's not. This is a TST right now. Could be. But what your job is is we're going to give you that new mission to protect these children, protect these churches. Once you do that, like, you start kind of easing them into it, and then eventually the. The point of the whole thing is for that guy one day to say, hey, I'm done. I think I got it out of my system. I think I've transitioned enough to, like, a stepping stone. Yes. So it's almost like essentially, we're drug addicts. When you leave the regiment, when you leave the military, we're. I'm an adrenaline junkie. I still do. I fight. I go fight people on my off time for competition. Because I like it. Because I like the way it makes me feel. I'm a drug addict. As far as, like, that adrenaline. I'm always looking for that next rush, that next thing. We are all like that. And you got to kind of step yourself down from it. So you never just take a dude off cold turkey. And essentially, that's why I have a problem. The taps in the military, the way they do offloading of in retirements and pushing people out of the army is they essentially just drop you off at the bus stop and say, hey, good luck, man. Like, and so getting into that, though, has really kind of made me really kind of given me that new purpose. And then aside from that, I do the. The mercenary thing. I'm a gun for hire. I always tell guys, we'll have gun will travel. I've Done a lot of executive protection work, done some overseas stuff. And that's, I think, for a lot of us, and especially Rangers and special Operations, that's where we. We end up there. Not because we want to, but because that's what we know. I know a lot of guys that do a good job in the transition, and I just. Stepping away from. It's always been one of those things where it's, It's. It's hard to do, and I'm only a year out, so.
- [144:07]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [144:09]
Luis Saucedo
I'm. I'm still in that point where I'm not looking for a fight, but still kind of stepping myself down from it.
- [144:14]
Jack Murphy
I. I totally get it, man. And I mean, like you said, you're a year out from retirement. And I mean, I swear to God, I was only in the army for eight years, but it took me at least another eight years to like, de army myself, you know, and become something else and do something else. So for a guy like you, you know, somebody that did 20 years or whatever, it's just fundamentally a part of who you are. Like you said, I mean, it's. You can't really deny it, you know, that's who you are.
- [144:47]
Luis Saucedo
I don't think you're ever going to really get away from it either. Like I tell my wife all the time, I was like, I. I still have dreams, and I dream in green sometimes. I dream. I dream a run off a ramp. I dream and, you know, white phosphorus. Like, I, I dream in those colors.
- [145:05]
Jack Murphy
White hot.
- [145:05]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah.
- [145:06]
Sponsor Voiceover
Yeah.
- [145:07]
Luis Saucedo
In those places that I don't think they'll ever leave you. I think. I think that'll always be a part of us. And it's just a. Figuring out how to. To combine those worlds, if that's what you want to do. There's some guys that get out. Kyle. Kyle McMaster is a farmer, you know, and he was. He was in BCO for a long time. Did a lot of stuff. That guy's a farmer now. One of my buddies, Chris, he's. I would say, like, I used to say that, that that guy killed more people than the plague. And he's a therapist now.
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Luis Saucedo
It says that people. There's people who do well at it.
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Jack Murphy
Well, sometimes people go into a profession because they're trying to learn it for themselves.
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Luis Saucedo
Yeah. No, and that's definitely. That is. That is definitely Chris. And he's another one that he got injured at. Just the beating that your body takes out from a lifetime of that. You're not going to be able to sustain it. You're not going to be able to keep going. There's a point where your body's going to fail you. So. Yeah, so it's the. I think for guys like us, the most important thing is. And again, that's what Allegiance Project foundation does, is we're. We're trying to offer you, or we try to offer the guys a community again, to say, hey, don't step away. Like, we isolate every Ranger that I ever knew that killed themselves. Isolated themselves.
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Jack Murphy
Yeah.
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Luis Saucedo
It was a. They. They took themselves from the pack. They. They decided that they were going to do it by themselves and then never made it. And we don't make it through Ranger school by ourselves. We never made it through this deployment by ourselves. So I'm though. I don't understand why guys think that you're going to make it through the rest of this by yourself.
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Jack Murphy
Yeah, yeah.
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Luis Saucedo
So three Rangers, Allegiance, Projects, foundation, both of them are offering that tribe. We're a tribe like special. Especially in special operations, other big armies, their own tribe or whatever service that you did, you have that tribe in there. And then I have friends. I have really good friends that are seals that I met here. And they're their own tribe. They have their own jokes. And then we have Green Berets. They're their own tribe. They have their own jokes. Rangers, we have our own tribe. We're all tribal and we stay within those. But especially when you get out, it's important that I don't have friends that are just Ranger. I don't just stick around with Rangers because I never find them. There's not. They're few and far between out here. Most of us are scattered. I have friends that are seals, and we sit around, we talk about everything, anything. So finding horse and nations a. That's, I think, one of the biggest things that's helped me. It's fine because I was in a deep, dark hole, too. My wife, God bless her, she married me and probably at the worst, the furthest down I could be at that point. And so. But finding a. Finding those communities, getting with those tr. Getting with your tribe, Find your tribe, find the other special operations guys and then fight off the drop zone together, which is now life. And then the other thing, too, is that, like a lot of these guys, I don't know what it is, we get divorced. Like it's going out of style. Just maybe that's the Ranger way. But realize that, like, you've made mistakes in your life and to find that person, like you said, my wife I met her. This is actually a really funny story and something I'm writing about, but we met on Hinge, and I'm not afraid to say that, like, I was getting out, kind of knew I was coming back to Dallas. So I get on Hinge. We get meet on Hinge, and we meet each other. And it's funny because at the time, I was still working kind of some of the intel piece, and her Hinge profile said it said, like, law, something like that. I didn't know what that meant. And so we start meeting, we start talking, and through conversations, we're not being 100% open with what we are, but you can kind of tell. And so. So I go to the first date, hug her, realize that there's a gun on her. And so when I hug, she brought
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Jack Murphy
a gun to the date.
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Luis Saucedo
I was like, there's a gun. There's. I was like, there's a gun. I was like, maybe it's just Super 2A or something. And so, like, I was like, this is Dallas, you know, maybe. And so we sit down and we start talking. And I start realizing from training, I'm in an. I'm in an interrogation. Like, it is going. It is going. Exactly.
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Jack Murphy
I'm in danger.
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Luis Saucedo
Yeah. It's immediately this, like, oh, no. Like, who is she? What is this? What have I gotten myself into? And so I start going through your usual, like, what? They train you. You, like, you start answering with one words, asking, like, certain. Quite like, if you're gonna ask questions, you're asking questions. And then, you know, if they say anything, it's, you know, deny, deny, deny, make counter accusations. It's like, no, you're gorgeous. Yeah.
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Jack Murphy
You're ready to karate chop her in the neck and run.
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Luis Saucedo
Yeah, yeah. I'm like, sitting there looking at exits, being like, all right, so how am I getting out of here? I was like, because she's definitely armed. And so through the course of this date, we're kind of very subversive. And during the speaking to each other, just texting. Meanwhile, I don't know that later on I find out behind the scenes scenes. Like an entire dossier is getting made about me. She's, like, open sourcing me. She's looking up all this stuff. She's found a video that was in that I had made an AMU, like, years before about, like, teaching. And so we start going through this song.
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Luis Saucedo
Dance and there's a point where at the end of it, I was just like, yeah. I was like, I think you're something else. And she was just like, I think you're something else. I was like, I am in the Army. I was like, I work intel stuff. And I was like, I'm a Ranger. I was like, I was a Ranger. And she goes. And she just comes out with it. She's like, oh yeah, I'm federal law enforcement. So then that starts the whole thing where we kind of have grown in that where I did all that. I made a mistake one time where we were. We were talking and I hadn't sent her this picture, showed up late. It was at Halloween. And I was like, oh, I'm a Navy SEAL. And apparently so many Navy SEALs have said that they're Navy SEALs here that and as far as dating is concerned that she was just like, oh yeah, she another Navy seal. Go great. You know that joke that there's, you know, a thousand Navy Seals and I've all I've met all 7,000 of them. So she kind of went through that, almost dropped me off the app. But it's kind of cool because I found somebody who understands the work, understands me. And then we actually started. She's a firearms instructor too, and so we actually trained together. Cool. She got me into this police week thing where I went in and got to shoot with her in armor. We did some stuff. And so I have this picture that's pretty funny where we're sitting on a car, a shot up car, and it says I have the black box over our eyes. And mine says Merc and her says. So it's. But the story is too that I think we're hard on ourselves in our lives. As a Ranger, you're so hard, you know, you're so hard that you don't find the connections and you don't connect with somebody. And so I think as far as finding your tribe, finding your community, the other, like, important things is like, find that person. Like, find that person for you. Because we do. We do a lot of damage to ourselves in our relationships. In. While we were in the regiment, we. We put everything first, like you. Everything. Nothing circumvented the mission. Nothing started. You wanted to go on that next deployment, you wanted to do the next thing. And to survive all of that, you had to put your family on the back burner. So once guys get out, they still get in that mindset. And it's like, hey, you don't have to ruin everything now. You can. You can go be happy. So I really think out of all the friends that I've seen that have rangers, they're taking their lives. Those are the two key components that I think they need to realize and reach out and actually say, hey, I'm gonna give life a try. Now that that happened, that, that's like such a.
- [155:15]
Jack Murphy
Like when we say it out loud, it's such an odd thing to say, but it's, it's totally true that, you know, you have to give your. Yourself permission to enjoy life and to find something that you like. You know, it's beyond, you know, that sense of duty, but something for yourself.
- [155:32]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, it's. And I think it's just hard for us. It's because you don't. You don't do all of that without coming out of it, without some kind of identity crisis that can take it away from you. It's just a. It's so ingrained in us. Everything. Like if you think back to like anything we did in the regiment, it's funny Because I laugh about the. Like, it's so indoctrinated in us and anything in the regiment. We sing songs about us. Like, we're like. And not only do we sing songs about us, the army sings songs about us. So we're this big giant thing and we don't stop to realize that we're also human in that.
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Luis Saucedo
Like, there's a point where we got. We have to say, hey, like, I was that for that reason, for that time, and now it's time to be something else. It's time to. And. And I'll admit, I'm you. It's not time to lose the Ranger in you. It's not time to lose that identity, but it's time to take on another mission. Yeah, I'm a Ranger and I can be used at anything. And that's, I think, our biggest strength. I can literally do anything. I can do anything that anybody wants me to do. And I've suffered so much that I can suffer through a whole lot more. But that gives us a unique skill set in this world now where now you can. You. You are probably more driven than 99.9% of society.
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Jack Murphy
Absolutely.
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Luis Saucedo
And all. And then all you have to do is go out and find that thing. So.
- [157:01]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, Louie, tell us where people can go to find. What is IT? Alliance and Three Ranger.
- [157:11]
Luis Saucedo
So Three Rangers foundation is the one you can go to. Three Rangers Foundation.org.org. yeah. Yes.org and then I'd ask my better half. And then the Allegiance Project foundation is also. Is a dot org. And then there's Allegiance Project, security dot com.
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Jack Murphy
Okay.
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Luis Saucedo
The security side is actually a security company. So guys need any help with like, getting into the security industry, Man, I got it in spades. You guys come to me and I. I'm sure there's a way we can. Leave my email up. Email me, talk to me. I'll get you to know how. I'll even help get you your level three, level four in Texas if you need it. We have guys for that.
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Jack Murphy
We'll put some links down in the description. Description. But if you want to give out your email, I mean, feel free.
- [158:05]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. So my. My work email is luis l u I s@legiance project.org all one word. And just like I said, email me there for any guys that want it. And I can. We're very connected. The other thing we're doing, uh, if anybody's in Texas during October 3rd, everybody knows what October 3rd is. I'm assuming it's the gothic. Yeah, it's Gothic. Serpent. So we're actually putting on three rangers, and Allegiance Project foundation is actually putting on the first Mogadishu Mile in Dallas. So we're going to be in Corinth, Texas. We got a great place. We're trying to get as many rangers out. And again, that's that community thing, finding your tribe. We're inviting seals. I'm going to make fun of some seals. You know, I'll be like, hey, do you need me to carry you out of here? Like, do we get to the halfway point and you want me to carry you back? Like, how we doing this? Don't get on a ridge or anything. But the. It's finding that it's being able to. To kind of chat it up and find this. But we're putting on that run for the guys that aren't at Benning that think that that can make it here so that we can. We can get communities going everywhere. The goal is that one day, like on October 3rd, we're celebrating all of that. Like, all of us are celebrating Gothic Serpent. We're celebrating that. That portion of our history and actually just making it almost like a big reunion. We don't have to get together during funerals. We can get together.
- [159:35]
Jack Murphy
Hell, yeah. Are you also on social media at all, anywhere else people can go to find you?
- [159:43]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah. So IG from the later days is Diego de la Vega. So I'm a reader and aspiring writer, too. So Diego del Vega was a. Was the real name of Zorro, but that's my name on Instagram and Facebook, so anybody can go on and find me there. Also, we run a company, a training company, Sand Strategic, and that's on IG too. And you guys all can answer there, too. And if anybody's in Texas and just wants to come out and shoot, that'd be awesome.
- [160:19]
Jack Murphy
Well, Louie, thank you so much for this interview and telling your story. It's been great. Is there anything else that you'd like to bring up? Anything that I didn't ask during this interview that you'd like to talk about?
- [160:30]
Luis Saucedo
Oh, man, there's so, like, again, you go through that and I'm sure you. You run into this. It's like you remember things. You're like, oh, remember that story and remember that story. I'm sure I'll be sitting around one day and I'll be like, oh, I could. I could have. I could have said this is this, you know, X, Y and Z. Or I could have gone through something.
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Jack Murphy
It's okay. You come here to the studio. If you're ever coming through New York City, and we'll smoke some cigars, and we'll tell the other stories.
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Luis Saucedo
You know, I saw you. You were smoking cigars. I'm a big fan of cigars, too. I smoke a lot of them. I smoke them out back because my wife hates the smell. I have to come in and shower if I do do it. Which was great, because when we were dating, she takes me. When we. So two months into dating, my now wife says, hey, you want to go to Vegas? I was like, yeah, what for? I've never been to Vegas, but sure. And she goes, oh, we're gonna go to shot show. I was like, this is, like, two months into dating. And I was like, I'm gonna marry you. So I. The cursory thing is, two months into dating, you don't know a lot about each other other than you like each other. So I don't know some things. And I was just like, oh, man, I really want to go to a cigar bar in Vegas. And so she's like, yeah, let's go. Little did I know that she was in the bathroom, like, snorting a Zyrtec because she's extremely allergic to cigars, and then lets me. We go into the cigar bar and, like, she's. She's a champ about it. Like, I didn't realize it until, like, a year later where she told me. She's like, yeah, I'm super allergic to cigars.
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Jack Murphy
Yeah, there's, like, 30 people in there puffing away.
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Luis Saucedo
Oh, yeah, she. And she was a champ, too, when I was deployed. She goes to every. Every few. Like, every month, she would go over to this place with cigar internationals, and she would get the cigars I like, and she'd buy them in boxes and then ship them over to Iraq.
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Jack Murphy
Bless her soul.
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Luis Saucedo
Do what?
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Jack Murphy
Bless her soul?
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Luis Saucedo
Oh, yeah. No, she. Fantastic that. I realized that I was getting married real quick. But it was funny because she ended up winning a Drew estate humidor, and she doesn't smoke cigars at all. And so she had got. She had entered this. They'd given her a couple tickets because she buys cigars there. And they call her, and they're like, oh, you won this? And she said she was walking out of there. She was like, I almost got. Got jumped. Everybody wanted this thing. It's really cool. It's. It's. If you do any of the Drew estate stuff, they got the Deadwood series, and it's all the, like, the old Deadwood hookers, basically, and. But the. The humidor that she got holds. I think it holds like 240 cigars, but it's Spanish wood and it's in the shape of a coffin. I have seen those. Yes. Yeah.
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Luis Saucedo
So she won that. And, like, she doesn't smoke. They were just like, oh, do you smoke cigars? She's like, no, it's for my boyfriend.
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Jack Murphy
That's awesome.
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Luis Saucedo
So super cool. But, yeah.
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Jack Murphy
Well, I'm gonna go and check out Drew estate humidors. Louie, thanks again, man. Really appreciate it.
- [163:48]
Luis Saucedo
Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate. Really appreciate the time, guys, to be able to tell my story and. And really to get the kind of the reliving of the mission of a Rangers and helping out my tribe because I owe everything to the Ranger regiment. And then the other thing is, like, being able to get that message out of helping the guys at the end of it, like, we. We should all be able to tell our stories, tell how we got there, the times we got to look at things, the. The hurts, the pains, whatever it is. And then at the end of it, say, because of that, I'm this. And I hope that everybody like you. You're, like, spent like a writer, which amazing. Like, I want to do writing too. I'm just. I don't think I'm as articulate as I could be.
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Luis Saucedo
Yeah. I promise you. But I think being able to, say, get the message out there that we. We are Rangers, but that means that we can do anything. We. We were given the. We were picked. We were specially selected to. To do that job. But specially selected means we can almost do anything we want. That wasn't just for the Ranger Regiment. It was a specially selected person, a type of person who. Who would have succeeded at anything.
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Jack Murphy
Yeah. To not pigeonhole yourself that if you want to go and get MBA or you want to become an astrophysicist like you, you can do those things.
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Luis Saucedo
Yeah.
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Jack Murphy
Don't. Don't get down. You know, some of the guys I find get down on themselves and think, I'm just a dumb Ranger. I can't do anything else. It's like, no, that's. That's.
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Luis Saucedo
No, just. You are a Ranger. You can do everything.
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Luis Saucedo
Like our. We have innate abilities that were. That were given to us a. By the generations before the Rangers that we learned from and then we passed down to other Rangers that learned from us that we would. We are the type of people. And I think this is true of most special operations we're the type of people that would have been successful almost at anything. You could have put us anywhere. You always look at these other rangers that are. Or other special operations guys are doing businesses doing this, this and that. You're literally taking somebody who would have been, he, he would have been a professional athlete if it wasn't for the war. He would have been a, like, if he had gotten the college education that he can still go and get, you would have been a Fortune 500. You would have been leading, leading titans of industry. We can do anything. I think it's just we pigeonhole ourselves into what we were and being that warrior, the fighter, the soldier, and we say, that's. That's the only thing I could have done. It's like, no. Yeah, it means a lot more. So.
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Absolutely.
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Luis Saucedo
I appreciate being able to get that message out anytime I can, though.
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Jack Murphy
Hell yeah. Yeah, Absolutely, man. And thank you to everyone who joined us tonight. Appreciate you coming by and checking out the channel team house again and we will see you guys next week. So thank you, Louie. Hope you have a good time. Hit us up if you're ever coming through the city.
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Luis Saucedo
Yes, sir, I will.
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take a moment to tell you about the Teamhouse Podcast newsletter. If you go and subscribe, it's totally free and what it will do is aggregate all of our data, all of our content that we put out, the things that are on the team house on our Geopolitics podcast. Eyes on things that I write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the high side, anything else that we have going on books we recommend upcoming guests that we have coming on the show and also, you know, filtering in some fun stuff in there as well. If you go and check it out. We send it out just once a week. We don't want to spam you guys. It's just a kind of roll up of all of our content on a weekly basis. You can find our newsletter@teamhousepodcast.kit.com join again. The website for that is teamhousepodcast.kit.com join so we hope to see you there. The link will be down in the description.
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