Dutch Moyer | Delta Force Operator, Ranger Regiment

Summary

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Tier1 Podcast | Dutch Moyer | Delta Force Operator, Ranger Regiment

Host: Brent Tucker
Guest: Dutch Moyer (31-year Army Veteran, former Delta Force Operator, ex-Ranger Regiment)
Date: February 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode features Brent Tucker sitting down with Dutch Moyer, a legendary 31-year veteran of the US Army whose unconventional path spanned being a tank crewman to Ranger Regiment, then ultimately Delta Force (The Unit). They delve into Dutch’s unique career trajectory, elite leadership, organizational culture, the realities of special operations combat (notably the Iraq surge), and the lifelong impacts—including physical injuries, psychological changes, and moral reflections—of life at the tip of the spear. It’s a raw and evocative conversation packed with insider anecdotes, honest moments, and thoughtful lessons for operators and civilians alike.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dutch’s Unconventional Military Start

[05:32–06:12]

• Moyer’s beginnings: Born in 1964, joined the Army in December 1981, inspired by building tank models and the legends of WWII (Patton, Rommel).
• Quote - “I always wanted to be a tank commander... I studied blitzkrieg warfare from the Germans... voracious in that respect.” (Dutch, 07:05)
• Grew up idolizing the ‘maneuver of armed combat’ and armored warfare.

2. Tanker Life: Reality vs. Expectation

[08:08–12:02]

• Tank warfare: Glorious in concept, terrifying and hazardous in practice. Maintenance is endless; leadership often uninspiring.
• Quote - “There was a massive amount of maintenance that goes along with this thing. Something’s wrong with it all the time.” (Dutch, 18:33)
• Disappointment in armor unit leadership—mostly there to "get paid."
• Frustrations with upper echelon laziness motivated his later drive for excellence—and better leadership.

3. From Tanks to Tryouts: Seeking Challenge

[20:39–27:47]

• Transitioned to National Guard, then sought more challenging roles: contemplated Special Forces, landed a Ranger contract.
• Quote - “They crush the spirit of young men who don’t know exactly what they want. If the leadership was terrible, that was one of the reasons I got out.” (Dutch, 24:54)

4. The Drive to Go Further—A Culture of Elite Motivation

[21:44–23:29]

• Discussion on the psychological divide between those content to plateau and those forever seeking the next level—Ranger, SF, Delta.
• Quote – “Everywhere we went…at some point, we said, ‘What’s next? I wonder what’s more?’” (Brent, 21:44)

5. The Realities of Selection and Overcoming Failure

[53:05–57:08]

• Dutch’s three attempts to pass Ranger School: Failed swimming test (cold water; not a strong swimmer); embraced failure; trained obsessively to prevail.
• Quote – “Once I failed it, I went back and I got a rubber duck and ... swam it over and over and over again until I got it right.” (Dutch, 55:38)
• Both Dutch and Brent reflect on failing selections for "the unit" their first time, emphasizing that overcoming failure defines a true operator.

6. Life in the Ranger Regiment (’90s)

[44:13–56:46]

• Assignments, traditions (St. Patty’s Day parade, ‘SF candy’ of special dress), and the pride and tribulations of being a Ranger.
• Quote – “It’s a spectacle…hard not to just beam with pride. ...I come here to see the Rangers.” (Dutch, 46:03, 47:49)

7. Path to Delta Force (“The Unit”)

[66:16–68:25]

• Decision motivated by seeing peers test themselves, natural progression, hunger to operate at the highest level.
• Discusses command support (or the lack thereof) for operators moving up and the ‘abandonment’ perception from subordinate units.
• Quote – “There’s a mystique. ...Men that want to test their mettle. And I wanted to test my mettle.” (Dutch, 66:24)

8. Delta Selection—Ultimate Test

[69:14–73:37]

• Dutch: “Hardest physical thing I’ve ever done…Professional. I learned a crap ton. You learn a lot about yourself.”
• Brent describes the surreal, mythic feeling of being selected: “Once you’re in SOF...it’s this mythical place almost...It almost doesn't feel real to be a part of it.”
• Emotional moment: both reflect on what it means to finally "make it" after defeat.
• Memorable Moment – “It was—I'm getting emotional right now—certainly the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Very satisfying.” (Dutch, 73:37)

9. Culture of Excellence & Lasting Impact

[77:08–79:52]

• Delta culture: Operator is the ‘rock star’; everything built to support the main effort.
• Quote – “That place revolves around the operator...the building is only there to support them.” (Brent, 77:23)
• Support personnel: Respected, but ultimate recognition for ‘the tip of the spear.’
• Quote – “You can’t take and hold ground with a cook, okay? ...It’s the grunt. …But the thing doesn’t work without support.” (Dutch, 78:55, 79:19)

10. The Iraq Surge & Operational Tempo—Making History

[89:40–90:25+]

• Dutch’s time during the Surge: Out West (Al Asad), “the best of times and the worst of times.” Near-daily missions, rapid deployment, high risk, little time for rest.
• Realized the unit’s strategic impact: “The smallest unit in the military did strategic and national effects in a war that wasn't perceived as going well at the time.” (Brent, 89:42)
• Toll of relentless ops: camaraderie, exhaustion, near-misses (“sun coming up on the Helo after a mission—man, you could just relax for a minute”). (98:02–98:33)

11. The Cost: Physical, Psychological, & Domestic Challenges

[82:13–88:06]

• Discussing the toll that high standards and stress take on marriages, personal lives, and the psyche.
• Quote – “Once you get brought up to a certain standard...that standard does bleed over into other things…It’s hard to expect, if not demand, out of other people, including yourself, perfection or at least striving for excellence…” (Brent, 83:14)
• Dutch admits: “I wasn’t excellent at doing the regular normie life thing I should have tried to be...” (Dutch, 83:56)

12. End of Military Career: Injury & Illness

[105:17–109:51]

• Dutch medically retired after four back surgeries and surviving a ruptured gastrointestinal stromal tumor (2009); given five years to live—but is still here.
• Quote – “You’ve done enough now.” (Retirement letter from unit CSM) (109:51)

13. Life After Service: Giving Back & The Sawmill

[113:36–119:22+]

• Dutch serves as an instructor and partner at The Sawmill Training Complex (SC): modern tactical academy supporting military, law enforcement, and the public.
• Courses: Evolutionary Gunfighter, Couples Therapy (firearms for couples), Bullets & Bourbon fundraisers for veteran charities.
• Emphasizes innovation and service: “Now it’s Sawmill Training Complex—not just tactical…We’re off to a really good start in ’26.”

14. Funny/Tragic Stories & The Swim Test Nemesis

[120:13–123:19]

• Recurring humor: Dutch’s mortal enemy is the swim test—haunted him at every level but overcame it through grit and help from teammates.
• Quote – “I’m much better swimmer now than I ever was before…If I have to survive, I will swim. I’m not a Navy SEAL, obviously. Because I haven’t written a book.” (Dutch, 123:40; 124:09)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the mythos of selection:
  “Once you’re in the military, and within SOF...it’s this mythical place...It almost doesn't feel real to be a part of it.” (Brent, 70:43)
• On overcoming failure:
  “The first part of selection is going. You can’t win if you don’t play.” (Brent, 23:12)
• On leadership:
  “Bad leadership impacts people more than good leadership does.” (Brent, 27:04)
• On mission tempo:
  “We could do what we wanted with almost impunity—until we didn’t have impunity...But back to what you say, we did an amazing amount of work.” (Dutch, 90:44)
• On loss, pride, and legacy:
  “So few men in this world will ever see what we earned, and also what we were lucky enough to see.” (Brent, 75:11)
• On transition and loss:
  “Getting off the train is the hardest part. ...I missed the camaraderie. If I’m able to go back there on occasion and say, ‘Hey,’ I do.” (Dutch, 112:05)
• On faith and redemption:
  “Selection is an ongoing process. …My faith journey with Christ is much more powerful now than it ever used to be.” (Dutch, 88:53)

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Highlights by Timestamps

• Dutch’s Army Start and Tank Dreams: 05:32–07:44
• Maintenance & Leadership Frustrations: 18:33–20:39
• Culture of Challenge and Excellence: 21:44–23:29
• Ranger School – Failing Swim Test & Grit: 53:05–57:08
• Delta Selection – Emotional & Defining: 69:14–73:37
• Iraq Surge & Operational Impact: 89:40–90:44
• Transition, Injury & Medical Retirement: 105:17–109:51
• Giving Back—The Sawmill Complex: 113:36–119:22
• Funny Story—The Swim Test Nemesis: 120:13–123:19

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Language & Tone

The conversation is authentic and bantering—deeply respectful but peppered with soldierly humor, occasional self-deprecation, and emotional honesty. Brent and Dutch both speak in a candid, forthright military style: proud of their service but unafraid to discuss failure, weakness, regret, and continuing battles post-retirement.

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Final Thoughts

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the realities behind America’s special operations giants. Dutch’s story is a masterclass on leadership, resilience, humility, and the costs—both noble and tragic—of life spent shouldering the heaviest burdens for one’s nation. There’s inspiration, grit, and a surprising amount of heart.

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Links

• Sawmill Training Complex Calendar (as referenced in-episode; see episode description)
• FRCC Cigars

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Producer: Drew Tucker
Marketing Director: Vanessa Bergquist

[End of Summary]

Transcript

[A]

Welcome back to the Tier One Podcast. I'm your host, Brent Tucker, owner of frcc. We do coffee, cigars and bourbon, and we do it better than anybody else. You could trust me or you. Go to FRCC Shop and find out for yourself. Use tier one as a promo code and get 15 off your purchase.

[B]

And I'm Drew Tucker, male model for FRCC Shop. I invite you to join the Patreon here, sponsored by Cobalt Kinetics. There you'll get exclusive content. There's a fitness forum, there's a gun forum. And in that gun forum is a weapons expert by Cobalt Kinetics ready to answer all your weapons questions. That alone is worth a Patreon. Join Patreon today. You'll be glad you did.

[A]

And this episode is brought to you by Human Performance. Trt. Go to HP Trip. Trt for all your testosterone and peptide needs. It is not too late to make your New Year's resolution come true and make 2026 the best year of your life. Use promo code tier one and get 20% off there as well.

[B]

For the special forces res. Welcome to the Tier One Podcast.

[A]

This is amazing. Dude, check this out. And with us today, we have Dutch Moyer. Before I get into introducing him too much, I want to give him some. Some thank yous for coming. We've been. We've been. We've been trying to get this together for. For a while.

[B]

That's true. True story. Why, thank you.

[A]

That one's for you. That's from Brotherhood Blades. Go ahead and open it. Some tells me you gotta. You got a few like these, but I say it every time because it's true. I don't think a man's ever got a. A nice knife and said, oh, that's okay. I have enough.

[B]

Nice. I met someone just the other day and in the maximum defense booth at shot show, and they were talking about knives. Well, what did you want? More knives. I want more blades. I want more.

[A]

I don't, I don't. I don't. I don't use a fraction of the knives I have yet. Yet I. I can't get rid of them. And I love every new one that I get.

[B]

This is very nice. And a course this one's way different because it says Tier one right on. So thanks, brother.

[A]

Appreciate it.

[B]

Absolutely amazing. Thank you.

[A]

And because you are a unique guest for us, we may have worked in the same building at, at similar times. It makes, it makes it just a little bit more special for, for me, it does.

[B]

Oh, Lord have mercy. Thank you, bro.

[A]

And, And, and that one's. That one's for you. I don't. I don't think we've ever given a. A bottle. Way to guess. And that's gonna. Hope that doesn't upse. Yes. Because they absolutely deserved one. But I want to. I want to give that to you.

[B]

Gosh. Thank you very much.

[A]

Open it up and smoke some cigars. Some cigars after this and tell some more stories.

[B]

That would be preposterous. Also. Welcome. So I. But Drew, he changes his moniker every time.

[A]

Every time. I never know what he's gonna say.

[B]

So I didn't know he was a male model for frcc. But news. Neither did anybody else.

[A]

Yeah. News to me as well.

[B]

Thanks. Oh, thanks so much.

[A]

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So who are we giving all, all these gifts to? If. If you don't know, you should. Dutch Moyer is a 31 year veteran of the United States army, retired sergeant major. He was an E6 twice. That's. That alone. That's. That's unique about you. True, True story. We'll get into that. He was a startup tank crew member, moved to the National Guard, went to Ranger regiment, eventually became a tier one operator and in the US Army. I think I had a fairly unique road to tier one, but when I, When I learned more about you, I was like, Dutch has got a pretty unique.

[B]

This is funny. It's just, it's just like life. It's strange. It goes in different pathways, but it's.

[A]

I don't know. I don't know what the. I don't know what the. The data is, but I don't believe there's a lot of tankers in the unit on.

[B]

Really good guy. And he was an ammo guy.

[A]

Really. And, and then there was. You said, well, they got a pretty, Pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good lineage for the ones that made it. They just have to make it that least.

[B]

I went Ranger beforehand.

[A]

You did. You did. So which is. Which I was. I can tell you before this. It's both unique because of how you started and the way you kind of wandered into it. Yet it's, it's also not at all because you were at Ranger Regiment before then. We're going to get into it all. In fact, let's. Let's, let's start at the beginning.

[B]

We started.

[A]

What year did you join?

[B]

I was born a poor black man in 1964. That's. That's a reference, right? It's a movie reference. It was never easy for me. I was born a poor black child.

[A]

That was before I Did not recognize it. We'll get it.

[B]

That's already a faux pas. If I admit the quote, I should know where it came from. So.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Anyway. Anyway. So was it the Steve Martin? Maybe. All right. Anyway, it's old school. The question was when I joined the army in December of 1981.

[A]

I'm sorry, did you say 81?

[B]

It's so strange when I say it, because it really didn't feel like a long time ago. But when you look back now, I'm like, good God, it's a long time ago.

[A]

I love doing episodes with Friends because you could. You could harass them right there in the episode.

[B]

I'm so old.

[A]

But that's that. I mean, but you think about it. I mean, what your career spanned and. And spanned. And we'll. We'll get into it between the 80s and 90s and. And the 2000s. And I'm sure each one of them were very un.

[B]

It was super unique. I appreciate that. One shout out real quick. There's a tall blonde girl way in the back. She's got a question. Thanks for asking that question. The answer is she's like, you're 80, dude. Is what you are is you're 80. That's a shout out to her. She knows if you know, you know. She knows it.

[A]

So anyways, so you go, why tanker?

[B]

Yeah. So in high school. Wow. Even before high school, I used to work on models. Tank models that were my. That's my favorite. That's my thing. I wanted to. I always wanted to be a tank commander. I always wanted to be a tanker. I wanted to be a tank commander. I studied blitzkrieg warfare from the Germans. I read books when I was a kid, just over and over again. It was very voracious in that respect. I did a term paper on Erwin Rommel and George Patton, and so obviously that's armored warfare. I wanted to be part of that, and so I went and did it.

[A]

Yeah. One of my favorite books is Killing Patton by. By Bill O'Reilly. Yeah. This whole killing series is. Is great. But that particular book might. Might, might be my favorite.

[B]

Man.

[A]

I don't know. I was gonna say, I don't know if you really want to. I think tank warfare has got to be just dangerous.

[B]

Let's go. No, let's talk about it.

[A]

I mean, but. But then again that it's not like you went later on in your career to something safe.

[B]

I don't know. I don't know. I agree with you. I mean, what. What would. What would be fearful of you being a tank, what.

[A]

So when, when, when you're dismounted, you can easily hide. You can hide behind things. Let's say you're not the machine gunner or the radio man. There's nothing on the battlefield that. That kind of highlights you to be like, we have to take this thing out first. But when you're in a tank, you. Someone wants to take you out and take you out quickly.

[B]

Without a doubt, you're right. You're the heaviest and probably the most powerful piece of equipment.

[A]

You're loud, you're hard to hide. So those, those are things that jump out at me.

[B]

Yeah. So getting hit by a sabo, which is, you know, armor piercing, discarding sabo around and having it drill through the. The hole, it'll bounce around. Yeah, you don't want that. You don't want to be caught on fire. So. But to me, it was. It was glorious. To me, it was the, what they call it, the maneuver of armed combat. I can't. There was. The army had made a bunch of prints back in the day, and it was. Infantry was whatever she was. And artillery is the queen of battle. Right. Armor with the. Something of maneuver warfare. Combat arm of maneuver warfare or something like that. I saw it in print when I was a kid, but, yeah, I just always wanted to be that guy rolling through the house. You know, growing up watching Kelly's Heroes, that was like the first real tank movie that I think I saw. Saw a couple other ones battle the Bulge, which was done poorly, to be honest, but, yeah, that's what I wanted, so I did it.

[A]

I feel like this could be easiest question all day, but that's an assumption. Favorite tank movie.

[B]

Oh, Fury.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Best job I've ever had.

[A]

Best job ever.

[B]

But it wasn't. Not for me, it wasn't. But.

[A]

Oh, man, it'. Yeah. How many times that's. That's been said at the unit after. After that movie. But they, they made tank warfare look cool. And it also showed, like, how. How dangerous.

[B]

Well, terrifying. I mean, you're coming up against machines that are much bigger and better than yours. And that was true. All that was true. Not necessarily that battle was true with the Tiger tank that they go through, but, you know, the actions with a Sherman tank versus a Tiger tank were very true. They had to outmaneuver them to get to the rear. The Tigers were too powerful. But they weren't so. And not only that, Germany didn't make them in any large numbers. Then they do a movie called Panther Tank, which is the Mark V, which is Actually wasn't even obsolete until the late 50s. So that was an even better tank. But they didn't do a movie on that.

[A]

So why the was. Was our tanks superior to theirs or just our, our numbers superior?

[B]

Yeah, the Mark 5 and Mark 6. The, the tiger was the Mark 6 and she was devastated with, because of the 88 because they decided to take this anti aircraft gun and mount it to a, to a turret. The Panther was a 75 millimeter high velocity. She was lighter, faster, had better sloping armor. But you know, again, they didn't make their tanks in numbers. Yeah, look, I'm not an apologetic guy for the German army, don't get me wrong. But their technology. Can we look at cars right now? I mean I don't know if Volkswagen holds a lot of marks, including Bugatti. And oh by the way, the BMW is a pretty nice car.

[A]

Oh well, when it comes to, I mean they definitely had some, well clearly some, some great scientists on their side because, because we took them, we took them for a reason.

[B]

Yeah, we did.

[A]

But you know, they, they had a, they had a jet on the battlefield before we did Y. They did a lot of things that you don't have to, you don't have to like them as, as a, as a country or you know, as a, as a military to, to not be able to respect what, what they, what they were capable of doing and learn from it. You have to learn from you.

[B]

And we did a good job because certainly armored warfare in the first Desert Storm. Right. When our tanks go rolling across the field, when all the news pundits said the tanks aren't good enough, they won't make it. The M1s and the M60s, whatever, they crushed them.

[A]

So good to see our, our own news has been rooting for us in a while.

[B]

I think it's still that way.

[A]

But yeah, I know you love history, military history, war too specifically. And I do as well. I love war too because it has, it's really the last great military venture, if you will, that had it all regardless, whatever you're into. It had it air to air battles, tank battles, airborne infantry, just infantry, mechanized, special operations, naval. It had it all.

[B]

It was all over the world, by the way. Jungle warfare.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Desert warfare. Yeah, it was all over the place, man. It was super cool.

[A]

I mean it's, it's so far away now, it's hard to even fathom how real it was. It's almost like it was a movie.

[B]

You know, how cool it was to me and, and I Love this whole thing, by the way, because we can just sit here and have a great conversation, which is super cool, and then hopefully you can make some money off it. So I get a nice bottle of whiskey, by the way.

[A]

So so far, I've lost money on this venture.

[B]

Well, hopefully with some time you won't, because obviously what you got going on.

[A]

We'Ll try to recoup is really cool.

[B]

But it was the end of empire. England, you know, the sun set and rose on England. Germany had part of an empire. France had part of an empire. Really, America didn't have any empire at all. Russia wanted an empire. And then World War II, the end of World War II really saw almost completely end of empire, I think with the Berlin Wall coming down in, what, 80. Wasn't 86, was it? 82. No, 84 came down. Then that really kind of solidified Russia's empire falling apart, but with the Warsaw Pact, whatever. But it was the end of empire.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Japanese wanted empire, they didn't get it. England's empire went away.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Everybody wanted freedom after that. Right. So the French, same with them. They had part of North Africa, they had part of Indonesia. All gone. The Germans had part of South Africa. All gone. So anyway. Interesting.

[A]

Yeah. And it's. It's a perfect segue, actually, because part of that Russia wanting to expand their empire really goes into what was still a. A real world mission for you in the 80s was as a tanker. It didn't end then. It. It continued for decades, all the way into the 80s, into your career.

[B]

It was very interesting during. In Germany in 1985 and 1986, the Red Scare was real. The Bottoman Hoff gang was a real thing. I mean, there was. Who. Dozier was taken by the Red Brigade. There was certainly a wall between communism and. And the west. And, you know, Berlin. We had to do a little bit of training in Berlin. So Berlin was split, but you had to go through enemy territory on a train closely guarded by the Soviets on your way to Berlin. Our training exercises really almost all revolved around the Fulda Gap, okay. And that's the gap where the experts assumed that the Russians would come screaming through to take over the rest of the West. And we'd get alerted, go on alert. It wasn't anywhere near as alert in jsoc, mind you, but we'd go on alert, jump into the tanks and drive freaking eight hours or whatever to the gap location. No matter if it was hot or cold, it didn't matter. You're going out there. And we didn't do anything. But.

[A]

Yeah, what's. Tell me from. Because you had. This was a passion of yours as a kid. I mean you tanks, you put, you put them together as, as models. The first time you're in, you're wearing uniform, you're in the military and you get to walk to your tank. Like, do you remember that? Was it special to you or surreal to some point or not really.

[B]

So I was, I was fortunate to be one of the better students in Wow, 1982. I can't remember the, the training brigade that I was part of right now. It escapes me. So I apologize for that. But the me and it was Eddie Johnson, like three or four of us were frocked, if you will, promoted to training corporals. I was a private and they gave us a sleeve, a chevron to wear as a training corporal. And we would stay for the next class. And I became much more knowledgeable about the tank of the system. Just going through a whole other ait.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And then I had to sign for a tank. Delta 32 was my tank. And I remember signing for that machine, that weapon system, the stuff that goes in at the radio sign for the whole thing. And I was 19 years old. Yeah, that was pretty cool moment segue when Stripes was made of that. Yeah. And if you haven't seen it, right. You should.

[A]

Absolutely classic.

[B]

You should watch that movie. They're hiding behind a tank in Fort Knox, Kentucky and it's Delta 3 2.

[A]

It's no way.

[B]

Way. Check it, check it. Check me on that. Check my math.

[A]

Did, did you realize that at the time or did it get told to you or did you walk up that thing?

[B]

The movie came out afterwards, I think Germany, time frame, give or take. Yeah, but the same dude that gave Bill Murray his underwear gave me mine. So. Same guys.

[A]

Small.

[B]

Bizarre.

[A]

Yeah, it's very bizarre. So weird knowing as. I mean if you're putting models together, I'm sure it's. You're kind of consumed with it to some extent. You think you know their capabilities. You think you know, you know what a tanker life is about. Was what was. Do you remember something that was drastically different to what you thought it was going to be? And then when you act now, this is your job and it was either cooler than you thought or not as cool as you thought. Different. What, what is. What was it about from your childhood knowing about this and your young adult life, living it?

[B]

I think it's a great question that I think that the biggest thing to me was the amount, the, the massive amount of Maintenance that goes along with this thing. Massive amount. Something's wrong with it all the time.

[A]

Not what you want.

[B]

Your war machines, you know, when you made models, who cares? You're making a model. This is going to work all the time. You're watching a movie. I don't think they spend a whole lot of time on maintenance. No. In Kelly's Heroes, they do a little bit. They talk about the maintenance of the machine because it goes down, but the massive amount of maintenance and then going back to what's not that cool to me really starts with upper echelon leadership. I hope that you would say that in your experience in Tier 1 level organizations or even SF, that there were some killers there.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Dudes that wanted to pull trigger, guys that wanted to really test their metal and see what would happen. Well, let me tell you about the armor. The armor companies. There wasn't a whole lot of killers there. There's a whole bunch of people who are really lazy.

[A]

Yeah. You felt like as a pose. There's a question. But no one. You didn't feel like anyone there wanted to be a master of their craft.

[B]

There was a whole lot of folks that were just there to get paid.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In my opinion. So. Yeah.

[A]

Which is. Which is scary because then you're. You're just hoping at this point that the Russians are just as lazy.

[B]

I don't remember a first sergeant or a sergeant first class. I don't remember a young captain saying, hey, this is serious. Let's take, you know, this is the real deal. I don't. I just don't remember that at all.

[A]

Yeah. And I think this, I think, really transcends time and generations. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of lazy people in every generation. I think people really underestimate the amount of men and young men that want to be challenged, that don't want a paycheck, they're looking there to learn something. They're looking there to make their time, you know, tangible and, and worthwhile and. Sounds like you didn't, you didn't get that.

[B]

Well, I met. I met a young SF guy the other day who I liked a lot. Tall, fit, you know, meat eater. And I said, you know, what about taking the next step, testing your metal? He was like, nah, I don't think so. Yeah, so he has no, like, well, you could be. Go be a Ranger instead of. You could do the opposite of what some young rangers do, and they get tired of being in a range regiment, they want to go be an SF guy. Why don't you take the walk? Why don't you see what that's like if you're, I said, because I asked him, what's his op tempo like? Well, you know, what's your range time like? Well, you know.

[A]

Well, it doesn't have to be.

[B]

I'm like, you could go somewhere different. And he's like, nah, probably not. So even though he was a young red eating red meeting red meat eater, it still didn't really want to go.

[A]

Yeah, I don't know why, I don't know why some people are, are so hungry to get to a, a certain level and that, but that, that hunger doesn't just continue to drive them, which I think is foreign to me and you. Not to, not to be boastful.

[B]

No, no.

[A]

But it's just kind of true. Like, but why, like everywhere we went, because we know this because of our careers, at some point we said, what's, what's next? I wonder what's more. And then, you know, then we went out and did that. I don't, I don't know why that's instilled in some people and not in others because clearly he was motivated enough to separate himself to be a Green Beret, certainly. So I don't, I'm sure if we had enough time to talk to him, we could figure it out.

[B]

But let me ask you something.

[A]

I think it's a tough, tough question. Yeah.

[B]

In your time frame, how many men did you know that would say I was going to do that or I was set to do that, but I, but I, but I. And oh, by the way, are they just intimidated by the whole process?

[A]

So many. It's, it's really astounding the amount. It's not every one of them. There were plenty that were, that were more than happy to be where they were at, but it is, I think, a surprising amount of that thought about it, wanted to do it at one point, had plans to do it, just didn't do it. And I've said this before, that even though I did, I, I wasn't, I wasn't the best guy on my team, much less the best guy in my, in my whole company.

[B]

Totally think that.

[A]

But, but, but I made it. But, but one of the reasons I made it is because I, I actually went and did it. The first, I think the first part of selection is, is going, you can't.

[B]

What'S, what's the lottery thing? Right? You can't win if you don't, if you don't play and if you, if you can't win if you don't try. Was I just watched the. The movie F1 again.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And one of the last scenes before the last race, you know, he's we can't win. Javier Bardem says, you can't win. And Brad Pitt's character says, well, we can't win if we don't try.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So yeah, you. Yeah, just try. Why not? But I think people are intimidated. They're happy in their space and that's just the way it is here at.

[A]

The Tier One Podcast. We're excited to have Tasty Gains as a sponsor, a company with values that aligns with ours. I take their products every day, three times a day. And if it wasn't a product that I didn't take personally and believe in and a company with integrity, then they wouldn't be sponsors on this show. Creatine helps the body produce more ATP, which is an energy molecule that your entire body runs on. It helps improve your physical and mental performance in all aspects of life. Let's be honest, creatine powder sucks to take every day. With the creatine gummies, you can take them with you anywhere and they taste great. Every batch is third party tested so you know you're getting exactly what you pay for. Go to tastygains.com and enter the promo code tier one. That's T I T ER the number one. And get 20% off your order. What did that do for you as far as not. Not being challenged and the. The tanker didn't seem like that. Did you sign up to be a career or you're going to sign up and figure it out?

[B]

I signed up for four years but.

[A]

The mentality were you like I'm going to make the army a career or that was something that you didn't really. A career didn't cross your mind. You're going to see what this four year contract.

[B]

I think that's probably the latter. Probably. I just wouldn't. Let's find out what this is like because after my four years was over, I got out okay. I would tell you also looking back though, the places you've been and came from and same with me and leadership roles, they, they crush the spirit of young men who don't know exactly what they want. If the leadership was terrible there, it was terrible. It's one of the reasons why I got out. I told stories like this before that, you know, they'd have a formation in the morning like you're supposed to accountability formation, pt, go do your thing. You'd have A formation at noon to come back or at one o' clock rather to come back. And then you'd have a formation at 5pm if you were working garrison, 1700, whatever it was. And you'd stand around.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You just sit around and wait. You'd wait for an hour and then someone come out and say PT06. Everybody already knew that. So why are you wasting everyone's time? Just tell them to go and then, and then address it later.

[A]

But I think I heard someone else say this and, and it's so true. You know, they asked him what's, what's your favorite places? And he said, I don't have any favorite places. I have, I have favorite people. And wherever those favorite people at end up being my favorite places. I think about that with. We talk about leadership and it, how people can, it's, it's not the job per se. You can, you can make a bad job so, so easy to deal with with the right people. But, and, and on the flip side of that, you can make the best job in the world a miserable place with, with bad leadership.

[B]

Totally, totally agree.

[A]

And culture, culture dictates that. And it's, and it's, and it's sad because there's, I'm sure there was a lot of, if you want to call them, let's use this word, lazy people that, that were there that would have done something different had, had they been challenged and in that time in the, in your service could have been much more impactful to you had they decided to be different. But I also say this bad, bad leadership impacts people in a greater way than good leadership does.

[B]

Yeah. Because I think is that the same as service? So if you're at a restaurant bar or whatever and you get service.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you have to talk about bad service. How many people reach out to the manager and talk about good service? Hey, I want to tell you that Julie was really good, you know, and so I don't have, I want to tip her even more but make sure he knows that she was outstanding or whatever, you know. So that's one of the things I tried to do later in my life when I went out, I would, I would tell people that.

[A]

But, and, and I think, I don't know if you've thought about this or whether it maybe. Did it impact you later on when you're in a leadership level like you. You knew that you never wanted to be like that because you knew what it was like to be on the, the receiving end of that. And so it changes you.

[B]

Yeah. 100%.

[A]

Yeah. When you got out, what you. What'd you do after that?

[B]

So I went straight to the National Guard, did some of that with. As a tank unit in the 28th Infantry Division. So the legendary Bloody Bucket. Why are they the bloody bucket? Because 28th ID out of Pennsylvania lost. They were much more than decimated when they left the Hurricane Forest fighting the Germans after the Battle of Bulge. So they got crushed. There's a couple films made about them, but. So I worked with them for a while and then my civilian time frame, I was a. I worked as a UPS supervisor. UPS laborer, then supervisor and a bartender and whatever else.

[A]

Classic, Classic, classic younger National Guard life. You know, when, when you get out of the military, the active duty and you go to the National Guard and it's like, you know, you're just trying to figure, just figuring out what's, what's, what's next.

[B]

There were some good people in there, but mostly it was just terrible.

[A]

They were terrible. Oh, yeah. Did it make you. Did it make you realize, even though the active army wasn't what you thought it could be or should be, did it make you realize how much you did learn there?

[B]

100. And I wanted to come back. I want to come back. So. Especially when the war kicked off, I really wanted to come back. So. Yeah, I worked up in Cleveland for a while and I just. That's when the war started again in 91. Okay.

[A]

I was like 90, I think 91. But yeah, tank, tank.

[B]

Heavy war tank stuff, man. Yeah. So I was like, whoa, what happened? Yeah, at the time too, I was refocusing my whole idea of going back into the army, which I, I was working towards.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But I was Small unit tactics. I was like, this is it. Easy. Everybody can see this. The Dirty wars of the Kings, right? It's going to be Special Forces or it's going to be this. So I was planning to go SF.

[A]

And you were right eventually. Just, just not for the, for a small piece of, of, of that. Of that next war.

[B]

One of the dudes from my basic training was on a CNN interview and he was a tank commander. Okay, I missed it.

[A]

Well, you, you, I think you. And I don't want to underestimate what those guys did because what they did was amazing, you know, but, you know, they. It was, to borrow another term, it was a blitzkrieg. It was a 72 hour. Well, not even they. It was. There was no one standing in their way.

[B]

But did they call it 100 hour war?

[A]

The 100 hour war? That's what, that's what I was trying to think of. Yeah, the 100 hour war. And I don't know if you, if you remember what really kind of stopped that war. And it was, it was kind of the national, I don't want to say outcry because I don't think it went to an outcry, but it was a very, it was very poorly received. I believe they called it the, the highway of death or the death highway. Oh really? Do you remember that?

[B]

I do, but I don't remember backlash.

[A]

So the, it was when the Iraqis were all on that one long highway trying to escape and trying to escape and we just crushed them.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And I think it showed. And it showed the, the lopsided, the lopsided war that it was. But as it should be. No, no one should be able to, to go toe to toe with us. But yeah, that was, that was, that was negatively received. And after that we, we basically said there's not, they're, they're, they're retreating. It looked bad because they were retreating, if you will. But we, we pulled out shortly after that and said we, we did what we came to do.

[B]

The total war concept changes when regular people see it on television. You know, Sherman drove to the sea with the total war concept. World War II, obviously smashing Japanese homeland and smashing the German war machine total war concept. You know, but once Vietnam started, we put it on TV and then you put it on TV in Iraq, but it was limited too. But you're right, I remember seeing the photographs of burned bodies hanging in the, out of their cars or whatever. And yeah, it makes an impact for sure.

[A]

So I think it's a, it's, it's a tightrope. And I don't know honestly which side to be on as, as a transparent freedom of the press, freedom of speech, transparent country. I think our citizens should know what their country is up to and what they're doing. But on the same time, when what you just said about Vietnam and you know, you take that instance and what's going on when we go to war, when they see that and they don't have the stomach for. I say that because I can't think of a better word, but they don't have the stomach for what war looks like and what it takes to win a war and what really happens during war and then their opinions get to start to sway politicians. Then I start to think, well, maybe you don't need to know what's going on during war. And I don't Know the right answer.

[B]

It is a tightrope, but I certainly don't know the right answer. So.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think what.

[B]

It was, the second Gulf War, first Gulf War, or whatever it was, people would be embedded.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And they were allowed to say certain things, are allowed to broadcast certain times.

[A]

But I think that's where it goes a little too far. With. With embedded, you. You get to. Especially, like, live embedded or. Or where they. When they embed themselves and they send information back within 24, 48 hours or, you know, or recently. I think that's where it goes too far. I think you can embed to document it, you know, until that story later. But, I mean, I think that's where Geraldo got got, you know, put his. His name out. Not. Not necessarily in a good way. I have to look into this because I haven't thought about this in a while, but I actually, if I remember right, I think he gave out information that he. That he wasn't supposed to, but I honestly don't remember.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, but it was 101st. I remember. I do remember him saying on occasion how great these men were and all this other stuff, but I don't remember any kind of.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And.

[A]

And have you ever had anyone embedded with you or in your time or any. Nope. Any media?

[B]

Nope.

[A]

We had. We had Oliver north come out one time, and he was. It was pretty cool.

[B]

That was.

[A]

That was fun. You can. Yeah, we'll accept him.

[B]

He's friendly.

[A]

So what. When. What made you go back to the military? And of course, you chose something very differently. What was that?

[B]

Yeah, I was always interested in that anyway, so I get more interested in, you know, like, I mentioned the dirty war stuff, and then more than that, challenging myself that obviously, to me, the armor time didn't challenge me at all, and I wanted to be better. I saw a. I don't know. It was a philosopher's thing. If you. If you can see a task. Sorry, if you can see yourself competing, completing the task, then you're already halfway there. So I saw myself wearing a green beret. I'm gonna go do this. Long story short, of course, it didn't work out that way, but I did get a Ranger contract and. Okay. Made my way that way.

[A]

That's right. You. You went to 19th group for a little bit out of West Virginia.

[B]

Flash in the pan.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Met some great people. There was a good pathway. I thought there was a Bear program thing, and I was kind of trying to hope for that because to your point earlier, I was in E6. And then, then I wasn't.

[A]

That's right. So at this point in your career, you're in E6 for the first time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

All right, you, you kind of, you know, dabble into sf, but. But through the National Guard. But you decide. No, I wanna, I wanna go back to active duty. And, and you go to Ranger regiment. You go to Ranger regiment right off the bat through a contract.

[B]

So I was, I said, can I get back in the range regiment? They were saying, sure, you can. You can be a, a cook or a chaplain's assistant. I don't want that. So I had to wait a little bit longer. Then I got a 11 series, so I jumped in as 11 and I thought I could make my way okay. There was a lot of what ifs. One of the what ifs was at the 30th AG. That's the. What do you call that, the human supply depot at Fort Benning.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Waiting for your assignments. I, I see on a piece of paper that I'm 11 Mike, and I'm like, this is mechanized, right? And I asked this other sergeant there, and he says, yeah. And I said, I don't know if you can help me or not, but I've been there before. I don't want to be mechanized. I want to. I honestly want a Ranger contract if I can get it. And the next thing you know, he helped me out. He took me downstairs, a couple E7s down there reenlisted me. And he's got to say, hey, you got to re. Enlist for six more years or something else. I said, this is my second time through. I'm all in. Okay, so that's, I got the Ranger deal.

[A]

So did you know when you re enlisted, they were going to bump you down to E4?

[B]

That's a good question. I don't know if I remember anybody telling me that, but.

[A]

Because that is a big, you know, that, that is a, that is a, A big, you know, jump. You know, we're not just talking about, you know, a new buck sergeant. I mean, staff sergeants, especially in the infantry, like, you're, you're, you're, you're getting to, to be someone, you got some rank and then to get busted down the special. But it doesn't seem like, if you don't remember, it doesn't seem like it was. That must have been that, that big deal.

[B]

Somebody just said, hey, look, you're going back in. You're going to be D4. I'm like, well, that's a bummer.

[A]

Yeah, that's a bummer.

[B]

But it was recruiter, I think, you know, you've been gone for this many months long that they cut you down this. To this.

[A]

But it seems like job was more important to you than rank 100. Yeah.

[B]

This is my new born again career.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm not stopping here.

[A]

So those E7s get you a chance to go Ranger?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And you had to go back through basic training.

[B]

Basic training.

[A]

Did you go back to the whole thing?

[B]

So I was convinced I was gonna do the whole thing. Okay. And so right away I was. Until they make this decision. Somebody comes up and says, hey, you were already a soldier. You don't have to go through the whole thing.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You should just go to ait. But they couldn't find my basic rifleman, basic marksmanship stuff. So.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

They're like, well, guess what? You got to go through basic and advanced rifle markership in a basic training unit. So they inserted me into a real, you know, turtle wearing, marching around. Yeah. Basic training unit. Which actually is hilarious. I had some really funny stories out of there, but I. I swum through it. Got to AIT and. And AIT changed everything because there was 14 or 15 of us that were changing mosses and we had our own bay and stuff, and it was totally different.

[A]

Yeah. Let's go back to basic training. Just. Just for a second. That's so. That's so far. That's so foreign to me that you get, you know, inserted in like, just for that. That time period. And how do drill sergeants treat you? Like a prior service or do they treat you like. Like, like you're a basic training worm?

[B]

So as you know, each company probably has. Each platoon has two.

[A]

Two. Usually two. Yeah.

[B]

I had sergeant first class and I had a staff sergeant. The start of first class completely treated me like a soldier. Okay, Staff sergeant completely the opposite. I make. I wanted to face. Sat around and talked about it. The one guy was a tyrant. The other guy was. The other guy would brief. I don't know, something. Maybe we did AR. What we did M16 takedowns or something. And he would say, hey, Moyer here, he's a prior soldier, so he'll help you out on these things and blah, blah. He knows what he's doing. The other guy would be like, you know, you can't do that to your cover. He'd rip off my hat, make it straight and stomp on it and give it back to me. You know, it was. Dude, we had this drill at nighttime where you had. You stood beside your Your locker was on the left side. Your bed was on the right side. At least for me it was. And they would say, prepare them out. And you'd have to put your hands on the bunk.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Check your locker. And then you have to turn around and go. You have to tickle your locker and make a noise because the lock was locked. Okay, prepare them out. Check your locker, dude. This went on. I mean, are you kidding me, bro? And so I was, what, 27 years old? Yeah, I'm in. I'll do it. So.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But yeah, the other guy was horrible. One guy was great, and I just swum through it, got done with it.

[A]

Yeah. Then you go to your AIT for infantry.

[B]

Yeah. And that was easy to me. The cadre was great. And they asked us to help out numerous times. There was a couple. There was at least one 18x ray pipeline guy in there.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

That went from a commo mos to. I had to transfer over to inventory. And then we went to Airborne and it went to RIP and then on it goes.

[A]

When. Let's. Let's hop into to RIP because I'm gonna go on a ledge here. But I feel like it's a safe assumption that's kind of the first time in. In your military career. And even though you had National Guard time and activity time, but you. You've had some time underneath your belt that you're challenged. It was challenging because I. I know Rip in the 80s was. Was. Was challenging.

[B]

Was. Well, this was. This is the 90s.

[A]

Well, 90s, right? Yep. The 90s at this point. Well, guess what? It was. I wasn't wrong. It was challenging the 80s too. But now that we're in the 90s, the. It was. They were. Was it what you expected, was what you wanted? Like, what was like when.

[B]

When you.

[A]

When you got into that environment, how did. How did you. How did you feel?

[B]

I really liked it. Yeah, I did. I liked it a lot. And I was. I was put in a leadership position. I was actually the honor graduate from my RIP. I was E4 already. I had some leadership under time under my belt. I had some real world time under my belt. I know what it was like to be a soldier, not a Ranger. So it worked out. And not to gloss over Airborne. I was honor grad there too, by the way. So I was on some strange. Strange, like, pathway. Right. I got enlisted on a grad in Airborne. Then I got Honor Grad and Rip and I went to 175. And I was thinking, yeah, I got my stuff together and once you.

[A]

I just want you to be aware if you say you're on a grad or something, you better be, because I've checked people's stories before.

[B]

See, I've heard that. Yeah, that's funny. You can check them.

[A]

Yeah, I'll take. I'll take my bottle back.

[B]

I have a plaque. I have two plaques, actually. That's funny as hell.

[A]

Yeah, it's, it's. It's. It's interesting that you say that because. Because we all know what I'm about to say, because especially when. When you go to. Whether it be SF Ranger. These are volunteer units, so if someone's there, it's because they want to be there. So they. They knew what they were signing up for to some degree. But you. But you get two different type of people. The people who wanted this, and when they found out how hard it was, how real it was, how physical it was, how rude it is, they. They decide, actually, I don't want this. And there's. And there's a whole other set of people that think they want this. And then when they get it, they're like, yeah, give. They can't get enough of it. Like, they. They just. They just thrive in it.

[B]

I really like that. I like leading the men. I really did great time doing it.

[A]

And that's true at those volunteer units, and that's true at war, too. There's people who, who, who wanted war. And you got two different outcomes as well from. From. From men in war, for sure. But you don't know until. And that's not a judgment of. Of sorts, because you. You don't know until you get there.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And, but you got there and, and you loved it worked.

[B]

Okay. Yeah, worked out for me the.

[A]

Your. Your specialist going in. So you. Correct. You go. You go to. You. You go to your first team. What battalion did you go to?

[B]

175.

[A]

175 Savannah. That's. It's a good. It's a good place to be.

[B]

It's a good place.

[A]

It's not. It's not. The army isn't known for putting its bases and. And very good places.

[B]

Tiny base, too.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Hunter Army Airfield.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Right next to an ancient city and a river and a beach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a Navy SEAL thing.

[A]

Did you get to do the St. Patty's Day parade while you were there?

[B]

I did indeed.

[A]

Let's did. I'm assuming you didn't know about it until.

[B]

No, didn't know about it.

[A]

Tell people about the St. Patty's Day parade and 175.

[B]

It's a spectacle. It is. It's awesome. It really is awesome. It's a pain in the butt because the. The battalion is going to march through the streets. So there you go. That's a pain in the butt. So the battalion is going to make you march as an element, and it's going to make you march as an element with a rifle and a bayonet, and it's going to make you starch and spit your. Your boots and your clothing and you got to be perfect. That's really a. In the end, that's. It's a cool thing, but it's also a pain in the ass, right? Everybody knows it. Would you rather be doing close quarter battle or marksmanship training? You bet. So. But it's a. It is a tradition there, and it's pretty cool. And it's like. It's a. It's a legacy thing. So after you're done getting punished with that, you line up. You're downtown. You line up down by Forsyth park. And then. Then you start hearing the really good stuff. You kill babies. You guys suck. You kill babies. Really?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're standing. You're standing parade rest, right? You're standing parade rest. You're not doing anything. And you hear these libs walk up and down, just really, just. Just hacking at you the whole time. But then when you're marching through and you're singing and someone's calling cadence and you're singing, you go around that corner and it's kind of quiet. And then you hear this woman say, we love you, boys. And it's just, like, raw. And then you hear this whole. All the other people just start yelling and screaming, and you're like, man, he's. It's hard not to just beam with pride, you know, when. Just the other day, when Chase Hawk hit Maduro. And I. I told. I told my girls, I said, is it wrong with me? I'm standing in front of the tv, like, just beaming inside, you know, because this is the legacy I came from. It's just so cool. But. Yeah, so then that's. That's part of the parade. Once you're on Broad street, not river, but you're on. On top of Broad Street, I think it is, right? Bay. It's Bay Street. Sorry, Bay Street. The girls, I don't know who they are, where they. What they do, but they go out there and they put a large amount of lipstick on, and then they'll run out and grab the smallest youngest Ranger that's on the outside of the formation and kiss the crap out of him. And he's walking around, right. And he's got all this red lipstick on. I've seen it over and over again. I never got attacked. I was glad of that. Thank you very much. But it was. It's a thing that they do. But it's, it's really cool. And one of the years I didn't do it. Why didn't I do it? I'm not sure. I don't remember. But I remember watching an interview of a man who came from, I don't know, Chicago or something. He came from somewhere else. Thousand. Your thousand miles away. And the interviewer said, why'd you come here? He said, I come here to see the Rangers.

[A]

And I'm like, love it.

[B]

That, that was great. I'm like as a young man. That's amazing. So.

[A]

And, and this is, this is, this is the era of, of high and tights and black berets.

[B]

High tights, black berets, spit shine boots.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, I mean, what do they wear now? They wear the brown boots.

[A]

Yeah, right. Yep. Now they're at the. The tan boots and the, and the tan berets. And I know that was emotional for the Ranger, as it should have been actually. But that's, that's, that's, that's. We actually talked about that before. But that's a subject for another time. But yeah, absolutely.

[B]

So I wasn't there. Some of my. I didn't know them yet. New friends were in Bosnia doing a thing. And Shinseki had already changed all the army personnel to go to a bipolar.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And there was apparently we got some pipe hitters in the car, gonna go do their thing. And you see in front of their, in front of their car, someone moving from left to right is in a BDUs and black beret and it's a female who's pregnant. And somebody said that's a Ranger right there. So that's how that went. So anyway, so that was.

[A]

Yeah. It's funny, you know, how. How time just Knowles thing. It was such an emotional thing back then. I'm sure it was a little bit before my time, but I've talked to many people that were there during it and now it's just normal. And I'd almost say the rangers won out because the tambourines are great.

[B]

Tambourine is cool.

[A]

But no one likes change. Nobody likes.

[B]

And it's. They, you know, during the time frame it was. The rumors were also. They're Going to take away their PD uniform. You won't be able to wear them anymore. It can only be army uniform. It was other things like that that they were just scared to be. It was not necessarily changed, but they were going to be taken away from them. Yeah, that was the big thing.

[A]

And, and not like that either. I, I do. Special units deserve certain special things. It's my. One of my first team sergeants, Sean Keane, used to call it SF candy. He's like, get to wear that baseball cap every now and again. You earned it. It's a little bit of SF candy. You know, you get to wear these pts. That's SMSF candy for you.

[B]

I dig it.

[A]

You, you, you separate yourself. I do believe you. You deserve a little bit more.

[B]

You earned it.

[A]

You earned it. Absolutely. When you get to your. Your team, tell us, tell us about the OR squad. You know, you're the, the beginning of Ranger regiment life for you.

[B]

First squad was where I was first assigned. Excuse me again, before I was assigned that squad. I think I was probably assigned it anyway, but they were smoking us in the hallway and, you know, their protocol was to ask Ranger history questions while you were counting the tiles on the roof or doing starbursts or whatever. And I was answering all the questions correctly, and some sergeant pulls me out of the room and says, how do you know all those questions? That's your, that's your. What's Force Gump. Your Force Gump. Because they told me to. I love history. So I, I just ate it up. Right, Right. And then they did. That's when they found out that I was a prior service E4. So I wasn't an import. I did the whole pipeline. So not as an import, but yeah, first squad was great. And then I went straight into a machine gun team position. We were doing. We went to Fort Benning for a dog and pony show for then Secretary of Defense Togo West. I think that was a Bill Clinton administration. Pretty sure it was okay. And Sergeant Paul Johnson walks into this old World War II barracks where we were saying, and he's got a mag 58, the. The old school 240, has the wooden stock on and everything. And he goes, who knows anything about this? Well, I do because there was a coaxially mounted machine gun on, on the tank.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It just didn't have a stock. I said, that's 240. I know all about it. He said, give me a class. Roger. That's all right. So I give him a class. He goes, you are now a Michigan team leader. So I, if I'm not, if I'm not, I'm pretty sure I'm correct. I, I was the first Ranger to shoot a 240 in the regiment. And it was at this thing because they just, they just brought it up, said hey, this is new. So that was cool. I love the 240. I became a 240 machine gun team leader for a while.

[A]

So how long did it take you to, to get to Ranger school?

[B]

I went to the class that was tragically the. Where we lost what, four guys, three guys in the school. Do you remember this incident?

[A]

Was that a winter class where they essentially froze to death? Crossing and wet and hypothermia.

[B]

Yeah. In Florida. Yeah, but what year was that?

[A]

I don't, I couldn't tell you.

[B]

I'll say 94, 95. Do you know, it's okay.

[A]

It's not, it's not, it's not a, it's not a trivia show. You can just.

[B]

Somebody else, somebody else is gonna say it. They're gonna, somebody out there is going to call it all. Yeah. The listeners will Google it.

[A]

Yeah. The comment section will let you know.

[B]

But I wasn't honor grad. I was not autograph. Somebody else was somewhere now because I.

[A]

Put the fear of God in you.

[B]

But I went before that and I failed not school. I went to pre major and failed like I went to pre major and I failed the swim test because it was, I don't know, 9 degrees and I couldn't swim worth of shit anyway. And the second time I had a heat stroke on the five mile run that turned into a six mile run because we had to go pick up stragglers and so I didn't make it from there. So I finally made it my third time. So. Okay, so I don't know what year, I don't know what. When they asked me to go the first time, I can't remember, 94, 95. And then I made it 95 or whatever it was.

[A]

Yeah. I think people underestimate, I feel like partly do because just no, no sane person normally jumps into freezing cold water. It's just not something you do as a civilian. Why, why, why would I. But the, the first submersion will completely disorient you and take your breath completely away. And it takes a good 10, 15, maybe even 20 seconds to kind of settle into it. And again, if you're not a strong swimmer to, to begin with, you don't have a chance.

[B]

I wasn't strong swimmers. There's a funny story Later. Later we can talk about. Too. But about the whole swim test. But did.

[A]

If you've ever been to any of my tactical training classes, then you know how adamant I am about the use of white light and the importance of a quality high powered tactical light. That's why I use Cloud Defensive tac lights. You can't hit what you can't see and neither can the bad guys. Clearly identify your target and simultaneously overwhelm his vision with hundreds of and even thousands of lumens. Get serious about defending yourself and your family. Go to cloud defensive.com and use promo code tier one to get 30% off your order. That's right, 30%. You won't find a better light than this and you won't find a better deal than this. There were. There would have. There would have been a swim test and rip. Correct. Or. Or not at that time.

[B]

No.

[A]

Really?

[B]

No, there wasn't.

[A]

Okay, then. And what did. Did you know there is a swim test? Or is it just one of those things like you're like, I know I'm not a strong swimmer. I'll just do it when I have to.

[B]

Man, I wonder. I'm thinking back now. Maybe there was one rip and I got through it because it was.

[A]

I just got through it. Yeah.

[B]

There I. That's a great. That's a great question. I wish I could remember that. But I knew there was one. I was busy doing other things.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Wrong mistake. Once I failed it, I went back and I got a rubber duck and I put boots on and I swam it over and over and over and over again until I got it right.

[A]

So that's.

[B]

Which dovetails into another story later.

[A]

But that's what I love about that story. I mean the. We say it all the time. It's. It's not, it's not that you failed. I. I failed at things in my military career. In fact, you know, selection at the unit was the first. Was the first thing in. In my life or my. My military life that I failed at. I'd crushed everything up until then. I wasn't really challenged up until then. And when I failed that, it just. It flipped. It flipped a switch. I just. I just came back a man possessed. And I was like, no, this. I also felt like it wasn't bigger than me. So like I felt like, you know, it's one thing. We just get absolutely crushed by something. And you're like, that's just. That's just not in the cards. But there was. There's an inkling of hope there that Made me go back and say, that's. That's on you. You. You could have been better.

[B]

What you do first, Summer or winter or. Sorry, fall or spring?

[A]

Fall.

[B]

Okay. I did spring first and failed.

[A]

But I love the fact, even at a. At a. I wouldn't say a young age because. But I would say young in your career, that you met failure. But it's how you met failure and your response to failure and you're like, well, then I will get a rubber duck, and I. I will make this right.

[B]

I had to. There's no way. I couldn't stay here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I couldn't stay in the regiment without being a graduate of Ranger School anyway, so.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Which.

[A]

Which. Which goes into another funny story of. Of when. When. When you went to Ranger School, you. You went at a. At a peculiar rank, did you not? A peculiar rank within the regiment.

[B]

It's not peculiar rank.

[A]

Yeah, there's plenty of sergeants in the regiment. Yes, they are.

[B]

But what you're referring to is that I was promoted to an E5. So as a leadership position inside the Ranger Regiment, before having a Ranger tab, I was promoted to 5.

[A]

I've never heard of that.

[B]

That's what I was told. I don't think that's ever happened. I don't think it. I don't know if it's ever happened since me or not. I have no idea.

[A]

Right. And part of it has to do with you. Explain. Explain how it happened.

[B]

Happen, sure. So, yep. On your avenue of approach here, I think it happened because I was older, and it happened because I had time and service. And then, like I said, I went earlier and I screwed those times up. And all of a sudden, my clock was running, and my platoon charger says, look, we gotta hire this guy. We gotta go make him an E5. So before he goes to Ranger school, I. I wonder how much risk he took. I don't know. But John Spizo, God bless him, which, by the way, is from a leadership perspective, he was a very good leader to me in second platoon 175. And then so I get promoted. Nobody wants to shake my hand. I don't blame them. I didn't want it. I didn't want to be that guy. But long story short, I get promoted, we end up going to Haiti. So when was that? December 40. December 44. December of 44. It was December of 94. Right. Haiti. So we went to Haiti. I'm a line teen leader for some time before I get a chance to go back to Ranger school again. And so we're on the USS America doing our thing, getting ready to invade Haiti. It didn't work out so well, politics and all, but then came back from the Haiti deployment successful, and then finally went to ranger school. So do we go for. You want to go further to Dahlonega?

[A]

You know, actually, we'll, we'll. I got a random question and I've never really thought of until this exact moment. And of course, I'm asking to look into a crystal ball. How different do you think Haiti would be had. Had we done that? You think that had given them their chance?

[B]

Dude, that's a great question. Great question. Aren't they one of the great welfare countries that we spend tons of money on?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Go nowhere.

[A]

And, and I'm not. I'm sure a lot of people do know this, but there are people out there that don't know this. Yes, that is true, but it doesn't have to be that way. The Dominican Republic's on the same island that Haiti is. And, and the doctor is doing just fine. I mean, you could, could. You can, you could argue that, but you can't argue that they're not doing much, much better than Haiti and Haiti. Haiti at one point was the number one supplier of the world and in coffee and coffee beans.

[B]

I didn't know that. Yes, you know that because you're a coffee guy.

[A]

I do. That is actually why I know that.

[B]

How about Yemen?

[A]

But it's.

[B]

Back in the day, Yemen was a big coffee supplier.

[A]

It's, it's another biggest export is.

[B]

You see that.

[A]

It's terrorism. But yeah, it's. There's so much potential in Haiti, but they just can't get it together. And, and as always, you. You can't, you can't outspend this problem. Doesn't matter how much aid we give them. You can't outspend the homelessness problem. California is a great example of that. But I do believe at some point when something gets so dire, you do have to step in. And I know that's another subject. Should we be the world's police? But at some point when, when there's more. When there's an overwhelmingly amount of bad people over good people and the good people really don't have a voice or, or a possibility, then someone does have to step in. Of course, that's, that's, that's the question. When, when. Why us? Should it be us? But, but just. I forget that. That the. Until you said that, that we, we almost, we almost did it in the 90s.

[B]

So just so some podcast outfits, you know, somebody's on a computer doing research, does that. What does Drew do that.

[A]

Drew is capable of doing that.

[B]

So, Drew, is it possible to find out what's the main. What's the main religion in the Dominican Republic and juxtapose that. What's the main religion in Haiti?

[A]

You know, it's. I know this through. Through work with the Sentinel, and I'll tell you this. Does. This has surprised me in the. In the times I've been. Of course, I don't. I don't go all over Haiti because we. You can't. But it was very surprising to me, the amount of Christians in. In Haiti. But then again, of course, that's. That's why I'm there. There's. Those are. Those are the people, the good people. Working with orphanages, working with the needy, working with kids. But I was surprised the amount of Christians in Haiti, but I'm sure they're not the majority.

[B]

And Bo. In both countries, it's Roman Catholicism. Both. Yep. Majority. Yep. So what else is prevalent in Haiti? That's what I'm just trying to find out. What's really different. Well, I know there's a lot of witchcraft.

[A]

Yeah, a lot of witchcraft.

[B]

That's what I was thinking. That's what I was going with.

[A]

That is animism.

[B]

Yeah. And what else? What's the. Not Santeria. Is that right? Is that it? Santeria? I don't know. Whatever. The voodoo.

[A]

Yeah, the voodoo.

[B]

Voodoo.

[A]

The.

[B]

You.

[A]

But to get back on track, you come back, we can. We can.

[B]

We're talking about voodoo.

[A]

We talk about voodoo. Oh, hell, you lay down, you come back, you come back from 80. That. That's when you said you get to go to ranger school, but. And you go to ranger school as. As an E5.

[B]

Yep. No, just.

[A]

Just telling you. It's just. It's just people within the community will. Will know what a. What a crazy story that that just was.

[B]

Yeah. So.

[A]

Just unheard of.

[B]

So E5. I'm doing great. Things are going out. Things are working out well. Right. Bending was fine. It's a winter class. It's very cold. Benny was cold. And we. We had a desert portion, so we went out to.

[A]

Oh, that's right.

[B]

We had desert portion still. That was very cold. I was in charge of the group. There was a bunch of child thieves there. I was able to be in charge of my group of people, whatever. But then the mountains, and it was snowing its head off in the mountains most of the time. And I'm Going on a patrol. And one of the R's looks at me and he's. He starts assuming I'm somebody. Because back then we wore. Can I help you? You feel like you've been left out? You got some FOMO off a legend.

[A]

Please, dad, you can talk and throw the ball at the same time.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, ball's not over here, it's over there. So, yeah, so back then we wore BDUs and we had, we had fabric rank instead of this stupid rank we have now here and on the callers. And of course, everyone in Ranger school, it's a no rank school. Everybody's the same, supposedly. And those fabric squares are different shaped for private and private first class than they are for sergeant and specialist even is different. The sergeant is larger and so it makes a much more prominent square on my, on my collar. And this, this ri. And Delano goes looking at me and he goes, oh, you're a medic. No, Sean. He goes, oh, you're a common guy. No, Sean. And then you can just see his face immediately raised. He ramps up, he goes, oh, you're the one. Like, holy crap, I've been spotted. Right. It's over for me. I swum through it. It came out to be okay. But yeah, yeah, it was a funny moment later on. It was funny. It wasn't funny right then because now he knows I'm this weird anomaly that came out of 175.

[A]

Yeah. And he could probably. You can see the scroll stitching that was left on your uniform.

[B]

Probably could. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure he could. Actually. That's probably why he said all that.

[A]

Yeah, that's, it's, it's. That's such, such an anomaly. But you come back and now all is right. You graduate and now you're a tabbed sergeant back in Ranger Regiment. How much longer did you say in Ranger regimen after that?

[B]

I got my six the second time in 99. The second time. And I got. Does that make it a 12? No.

[A]

Yes. We add up all your promotions to.

[B]

Get your actual rank and then, yeah, in 99, I. I decided to, to go do my thing.

[A]

So what was it that, that made you want to go to the unit from, from Ranger Regiment at, at that time? What was the decision point?

[B]

Well, you see, while you're there, you see other men do it and there's, there's a, there's a mystique for sure. But in the end, like we talked about, whether we talked about it earlier or we talked about it offline, there's these men that want to test their metal. And I wanted. I wanted to test my metal. I wanted to see. It looked like the. It's a natural progression. Yeah. And it looked like that was clearly a natural progression to me, much to the dismay of some of the command. Which is funny, right? People think you're abandoning them. You'll get that whole impression, oh, you're just quitting, you're abandoning us. So I saw it as my next chance to do something else. I don't know.

[A]

Yeah. It seems as if that mentality has come and gone throughout the years with Ranger regiment supporting guys going to the unit or not. And I've never understood it, why, why you would ever want to keep someone from serving this country in the absolutely best way they could, the highest capacity you can, so. Right.

[B]

And it is interesting. I remember my. My failed. Like I said, I failed in the spring. And my exit interview was General Miller. Wasn't General Miller then. And he asked me right away, what's the climate of the command? Were they supportive in you doing this? And to a degree, my company commander was very supportive. Very supportive. Chris Vanek. But senior command, not. Not really happy. And other people will just think that you're just quitting on them.

[A]

Was there, was there any fallout to you coming back as, as a non select. They take away your squad or. You know, I hear those stories.

[B]

Well, my company commander thought I was going to be successful, so he hired somebody else and put them into my spot and I went somewhere else. So I went to, like, I did a small stint as a headquarters platoon storm.

[A]

So. Okay. How long did it take you to go back?

[B]

I went back the next. Next session. Was that six months?

[A]

Yeah. Nice.

[B]

Right back. Yeah. And just like the swimming thing or just like you mentioned that whatever it is, you're just going to hammer until you get it right. I just, I think I was too tired the first time and I got smarter and I was more patient the second time.

[A]

Good.

[B]

And so I just, I trained, but I didn't train super hard. I just trained enough. Mike hall used to say, look, as a Ranger, you're training probably as much as you need to. You're doing a road March every Thursday, 12 miles. You're doing this, you're doing that. And I took it back to heart and I said, well, maybe I'll. I went too far. And most of the time what I made was navigational mistakes anyway. So.

[A]

Okay, what. What was the impression that, if any, that that selection had on you?

[B]

Amazing course. Professional. I learned a crap Ton. You learn a lot about yourself. It's super professional, and certainly to me right now that one of the hardest, if not the hardest, physical thing I've ever done, I think harder when you see a good friend of yours being buried hard, when you're, you know, you have somebody between your legs and you're intubating him and you think he's gonna die. The hardest physical thing I did was selection.

[A]

So would you say that. What. What. Especially after going through the first time and failing when. When it came out that you were selected. What. What'd that feel like? Who.

[B]

Who'd you call a giant weight over? I. That's a great question. I don't remember calling anybody. I really don't.

[A]

Yeah. Did you sit there at some point and almost feel like it wasn't real? Because I don't think people realize once you're in the military and once you're within special operations, you already hinted at it. It's this. It's this mythical place almost. It's this place that you know exists, but it's so. It's so distant. It's. It's not a place you're allowed to talk to. It's not a lot of place. It's not a place you're allowed to go. It's where friends leave and you're. They're never heard from again.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It almost doesn't feel real to be a part of it.

[B]

And earlier you mentioned. I don't know exactly what question was, but I didn't know anything about it.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I didn't know anything about it. You know, the. The psych is asking me, hey, what about this one? I don't know. I don't know. I was doing ranger stuff. I just. I never really studied this at all. I don't even know. And then, like, you say this mystical thing when you're on. You're on a task and you have to go a certain distance, and then when you're at the end of it, which you don't know, it's the end.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And then when you. When it's the end. Yeah, I can almost feel it right now when I get up there and he says, congratulations, you finished this portion. And I'm like, are you kidding me? And, you know, go over here and, hey. And hey, how are you? Everything's changed now. So I don't.

[A]

I don't care how much is. Is out there already. If it's out there and you guys can figure it out, then you can. But there's, you know, obviously the, like, any selection, there's the end of the physical events. And just like you're talking about, I remember thinking at the. What I believed to be the end of the physical events, sitting there and saying, regardless of whatever happens after this, they can't take this away from me. I physically completed the hardest course in the military.

[B]

I totally agree with you there.

[A]

Yeah, you know, no, I said that. I said that to myself, which ended up being a lie just several hours later because. Because that happiness went away. I was, no, no, I won't. I won't truly be happy unless I see this thing through. But that's. But that was still. That was still true to, to some degree. Oh, yeah, I was just completing. It was just. Just to sit down and being like, I, I, I did this.

[B]

This has got to be a. Oh, it's still emotional to me, without a doubt. I'm like, are you kidding me? I could see it. Army sear School. That was, you know, being beaten down and thinking that you're gonna get rescued. And then you turn around and when they say, you know, you can't. What. What was they saying to me? They're saying, everybody, they're saying, you got. You can't treat our flag like this. You can't treat our flag like this. Turn around and respect our flag. And you turn around, right? And there's all these people to watch you graduate, and there's the American flag. And they immediately started doing the. The national anthem. And you're like, yeah, you got all soupy right away. I'm like, man, I cried. So, yeah, big time. I'm looking. I'm getting emotional right now. So it's that kind of thing. You did that, and you finished that. It was. There was a lot of inner. It was, it was. I was exhausted. Of course. I was relieved again, Certainly the hardest thing I've ever done. Very satisfying.

[A]

This is cool for, for me and you to get to talk about because. Because we experience something that's so similar. So when, when you say this, it's not very often I get to listen to a guest and truly go, I know exactly what, what you felt like, what you experience, because I also failed my first selection. And then you have this, you know, this, this buildup of, of. Of having to go back. And then all the nights when other guys are going out that you decide to, you know, stay home and train for this, this, for this one last chance at this dream. Then you go back there and it already beat you once, and you get this monkey off your back by Saying like everything. Every. All the sacrifice I made, all the naysayers, my own, you know, the own, My own naysayer, you know, inside of me, you know that, that you have to beat down every day and say like, no, we're still going out because you got this.

[B]

That's cool.

[A]

And, and to sit down when it's all said and done and be like, I did that. It's just it. And you're, you're, you're mentally exhausted, you're physically exhausted. You gave it everything. It's just a euphoric feeling. In fact, I haven't really thought about. For whatever reason, I have not thought about that until you just brought that to me.

[B]

It was.

[A]

And I can't stop smiling, thinking about.

[B]

Right, you finished a marathon or whatever. Whatever it is you do. You just, you're like, gosh, man, I was. It's. This portion is over. And immediately the. Everybody is different. Everything is different.

[A]

And so few men in this world will, will ever see what, what we were, what we earned. And also, it's also true what we earned and what we were lucky enough to see.

[B]

Very fortunate.

[A]

There is some. There's some luck involved, certainly.

[B]

And certainly earned, without a doubt earned. But yeah, I was very fortunate. And then, you know, you look back at this, I just, My girl and I just saw this thing. It's like, it was like a five minute businessman guy saying, everything in your life that happens to you is your responsibility. Everything. And he said, oh, his example was, but wait, I was going through an intersection with a green light and I got t boned by a guy in a red light. Still your responsibility. You. You put yourself in that car. You put yourself down that road. You, you didn't look to the right or you didn't stop and you. All these things are really your responsibility. So just to think about that. The opportunities and the opportunities I've had after succeeding there, the opportunities and places I went and things I did were absolutely amazing. And I just, you know, the best part of my life was all through that time frame. So.

[A]

Right. And the, and back in the day. Yeah. What, what you just accomplished. Which. Which is true. So. So men. So few. So few men have. But even that. You'll sit there, you'll. You'll rest on your laurels for just a little bit. But it's, but it's far from over now. You just get an opportunity to see what's the other side of the fence.

[B]

Totally agree.

[A]

But you are. You've just earned a right to see the other side and you earned that. But it's, it's far, far from, Far from over. As, as, as, as. As we both experience, not everyone that. That gets the opportunity to go over there gets to continue to, to work there and be assigned there if, if, if you will, what was.

[B]

But to be assigned there too, in the. To me, in the most important position. Your. Your position. My position was the most important position in that, in that organization. The whole, the whole rest of the organization is built upon that.

[A]

So that is what I loved about that. It really is. I think there's very few places and really, especially in the military, this may be an unpopular opinion, but, but I've said it before and, And I stand by it because it can be. It can be taken to an extreme. That's, that's not meant. But that place revolves around the operator. The operator is the rock star. The building is only there to support them. But really that's true in every. Shouldn't say every, but every line company. The infantryman is the main effort within an infantry company. But it doesn't get treated like that. And we get told, hey, the support personnel are just as important as you. And this is where it kind of becomes hard to verbalize because even though I believe that's not true, people take that and then they. And then they kind of run with it and they go, oh, so you think support people are beneath you? Nope. In fact, I don't think I would like to believe no one treated support people as good as I did. I loved them. And if you don't treat them well, you can't do your job without them. But let's make no mistake about it. When, when, when bullets fly and some and a. And a hill has to be charged or high value target has to be taken, they're. They're not the ones that have to put their life. And there has to be some sort of recognition for that.

[B]

It's the, it's the. It's the grunt. It's the doughboy, you know, it's the 82nd Airborne guy. It's the 101st Airborne guy. It's. It's the third ID, kid, and it's the fourth ID. It's you. To win, you have to take and hold ground. Yeah, well, you're not taking a holding ground with a cook, okay? He's just not. Don't get me wrong, I love my cooks, baby. You know, I love. You're exactly right about the support personnel. The thing doesn't work without it going Back to the F1 movie again.

[A]

Why?

[B]

Because I just saw it again. But one of the guys is Jackman. He goes, I was a five time. The principal, the team principal for the, the team says I'm a five time world champion for. With Ferrari as a rear jackman. And you know, Brad Pitt's character says, my pop was too. You can't win without them. And so they're not the driver, but you can't win without these other pieces. But yeah, you can't take a whole ground without the image room. And that's why they get a little. Would you call before flare? Not flare. Would you call it. You can wear a ball cap today.

[A]

That's a little SF candy.

[B]

Candy.

[A]

Yeah. And when it came to support personnel, the support guys that I love the most are the ones who love their job. And what I mean by that is everyone's had the support guy that's like, hey, you know, can they want to go shooting with you and they wanted to go to shoot long guns with you or do things that, that weren't their job. And usually the ones that wanted to do that really wanted to do that weren't very good at their jobs. And so it made it difficult to want to bring them. But in fact that's. We had a cook, it's a perfect example. But a cookie just loved being a cook. Never asked to come to the range. You know who I asked if he wanted to go to the range? The cook who never asked. Now I want, now I want to take you to the range. You know, it's just this is how life, this is how life works. You know, the guys that are really good at their job, that's that, that's actually when you get the invite and we, and we want you to be here. But guess what? He's only be there long enough to, to enjoy it. And he's a master of his craft and he's got to get back to it. Just, just really. And you said it before, the operator there is the rock star. And, and, but just everyone there just lives to do their job.

[B]

The, the vast majority, I think we talk about this offline. Right. The vast majority of people that work in that building really want to be there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they want to make a difference and they want to be masters of their craft. No matter what that craft is. With every organization there's problems and because, you know, guess what? We're more humans. We're, we're fallible. But yeah, it's. I don't know how you explain it. I'd say the greatest place I've ever been professionally. The best professional times I've ever had in my life have been in that building.

[A]

There's only one downside to it and that it's ruined me any, any place I will ever work at or with. After that. I have, I have to look at through a different lens and hold to a different standard because it. There is. I've never been a part of an organization like that before and I never will again.

[B]

You jaded?

[A]

You will. Jaded.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

This is. There's just no, there's just no way to get a group of people like that.

[B]

And it's hard. It's hard on personal life. It's very hard. It's very difficult and I applaud the men that do it. It's very difficult to, to stay even keel throughout both of those circles of life. I wasn't good at it. So.

[A]

That'S a, that's a, that's a whole another subject. Let's, let's talk about it. Because it's, it's true. Once you get brought up to a certain standard that is now a standard in your life and that, and that standard does bleed over and into other things and it's hard to expect, if not demand out of other people, including yourself, perfection or at least the. Or excellence you're striving for. Excellence and then go home or, you know, go have to interact with other people who cannot meet that standard and then, and then change, you know, and then change. Change gears in and out of work.

[B]

Yeah, for me though, too. Right.

[A]

Some people can do it, but. Yeah, but I think it changes you to some. To some degree it changes you.

[B]

No, it does. The whole thing changes you. The, your exposure, your operational tempo exposes you to change and you're, you're losing mates to change and you're. The high stress environment changes the, the potential for tbi. The, the constant explosions you're around, whether it's training, breaching, real life breaching, subterranean breaching is a worst or even now as a shooting instructor, I see it all the time now, standing next to someone who's just shooting a regular Glock and you can feel it hitting your. You just feel it. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Chris Free talks about that in the operator syndrome book. But the, when you expect excellence, like you said, I want to go back to that because I wasn't excellent. You know what I mean? I was excellent at a couple things, but I wasn't excellent at doing like the regular normie life thing that I should, that I should have tried to be better. At. But I wasn't. So it. Yeah, I just wasn't.

[A]

Do you think it. What do you think does. It's a personal question, but what do you think it does to your marriage?

[B]

Oh, definitely. It. It punishes it. It really puts a really good way to describe. It puts a really high stress on it, for sure. Marriage in itself is not easy anyway. Relationships aren't easy to keep. I want, you know, I'm in a relationship right now. I want to really keep. I think she's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. But to be, you know, that covenant that you go into with your wife and it's difficult in that. In that realm. It's really difficult in that realm if you want to do really well. So there's a. There's a battle. I think that men are under a little bit more stress than women. I could be wrong, you know, by all means, tell me. I am. But there's a, There's a. To me, there's a, like a ladder of protector. You want to be protector provider, the expert, the one to go to. You want all that on you? I want that on my shoulders. I want the ball, you know, I want to. I want the puck, I want the ball, I want the bat, whatever it might be, whatever sports you're in. But gosh, man, it's that life, especially when you deploy constantly, that was the most trying times. In the beginning, it wasn't. I don't think it was that hard. And yeah, later on, what got much.

[A]

Harder, you know, I actually think I can describe it maybe in a better way, but. And again, it's. I think it's personality dependent.

[B]

Obviously.

[A]

For me, I think one of the things that became very hard to navigate and manage was of sorts of a lack of, A lack of sympathy. Because in the jobs we were doing at the time, not to be dramatic about it, but it's just true. Everything was life or death. Everything was life or death. The daily training we were doing to the next deployment, that was just right around the corner to, we'll call it a surprise deployment. I just got used to dealing with very high risk environments and then to go home, I'm just being honest here and hear about a problem at home and go, that's not a problem. That's just. I'm just, you know, I wouldn't say that, you know, but, but that's, That's.

[B]

You wouldn't.

[A]

Well, I might have said it. I might have said it.

[B]

One of the things, One of the things that I said and I will say on occasion, still is. It's all right. No one's shooting at you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And is that callous, like you said? Is that lack of sympathy, empathy, callous?

[A]

Right.

[B]

Probably all the above.

[A]

Because everything's subjective. And, and I look back and I go, well, I mean, just. Because it wasn't. It was a, it was a problem to her, you know, and, and in my, in my poor attempt to, to bring things down, you know, it, it had the, the opposite effect because I had no, had no sympathy. And I think she just wanted to be heard and she just wanted to be helped. But I was trying to let her know, like, hey, well, you know, you're making this a bigger deal than it is. It's actually not that big of a deal when, you know, I think I could have done a better job of stepping back and just kind of trying to understand this was a big deal. But it's, But I'm not making excuses for it. I'm just saying that it's just true. In the reality of the time, it was really hard for anything to be a big deal to me because it would have to be a very, very big deal because of what we, we were used to in our everyday lives.

[B]

I like what you said just a minute ago about you have to put your, you have to have, you have to. Let me see if I. Let me see if I can say this correctly. It's really important to try to put your partner's shoes on. Yeah, it really is. And that's. Even, Even now. I did. I didn't. Recently, I didn't do it. I try to fix it. So hopefully it's fixed, but that's, it's a. Well, selection is an ongoing process. Right. This is ongoing thing, man. You know, and my. I'll tell you right now, too, my faith journey wasn't very good during the g wat I got much better later and it's even stronger now. But my faith journey with Christ is much more powerful now than it ever used to be. And, you know, that's another thing.

[A]

So that's something I think we're going to talk about later because it's actually a, a good segue again to something I want to talk about, which I haven't told you this yet, but I feel like to some degree, you know, or you should know, but you were the generation right before me, and I'm, I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan because you and the men you worked with at that time were the surge generation. And I don't I don't. I, I'd like to think you guys have to know this, but like you guys were, you know, especially when I got, you know, into the unit. Like you guys were put up on a, on a pedestal for the things you guys did during the surge.

[B]

There's a lot of stories from there. Astro. Sure.

[A]

It was just unbelievable. It was unbelievable what the smallest unit in the military did to have strategic and national effects in a war that wasn't perceived as going well at the time.

[B]

Who started that surge? Was it. It wasn't amazade, right? Was it amazing?

[A]

I, I can't remember. I did surge. I surged as an SF guy and it, but, but for us to get busier, which, which you only know what, you know, it seemed a, it seemed really busy for us. And then, then you go across the hall and you, and you realize what, what the surge meant to you guys and you're like, oh, we weren't busy. Those, those boys were busy.

[B]

Did you. Were you in a criff Sif?

[A]

No, I was just on a, a line oda.

[B]

A, A dive team that, that could, that could be. All right, so different pressures are here and there, perspectives wise. But your deployments may have been longer, right? Traditionally they are longer, right?

[A]

Yeah, they're six months.

[B]

Okay. Ours weren't right, but our operational tempo.

[A]

Right. You guys are coming right back almost.

[B]

And I tell people all the time, so if it was 150 days or 120 days, it usually was 120, I think 120 and change and you're out the door 120 times. Almost every day you're out the door. There were some times you weren't. But surge time frame that I remember, we were, we were posted out of El Assad for a long time. This one particular portion, and I've talked about it before, being the best of times and worst of times. We could do what we wanted to do with almost impunity until we didn't have impunity. Until, you know, vehicle gets blown up until helicopter crashes. Until, you know, then you're like, well, you're not invincible. We had some really great luck though again too. I remember being on a Hilo before infill and a giant amount of hydraulic fluid started pouring out all over top of all of us and. All right, get out bump land. What if that happened when we were at 5,000ft? You know, that would be bad. What if that happened when we were screaming over the sand tops of the hills or whatever? So. Yeah. But back to what you say, we did an amazing amount of work and there's a lot of. A lot of cool stories, a lot of great dudes.

[A]

Do you remember essentially the time where you guys started to realize this? Things. Things just got different. Did it kind of slowly surge up just kind of operationally, or was it. Was it a time you're like, things are now different? Do you remember that?

[B]

Sort of, I guess. I mean, working out of the mss, we were busy and. But it wasn't always. It was a whole lot of dry holes, man. You know, we did a whole lot of stuff that there were. That was like, that's no big deal. Out west, it was much different. Much different. It was. There was something going on almost every night. I mean, something really going on. So, yeah, probably when we moved out west. So what was that? Five. It was five. Sometime frame.

[A]

Yeah. Was. At the time, was everything centered? I shouldn't say centered, but at least connected to Saddam? Was Saddam still just the driving force of. Of everything you guys wanted to do?

[B]

Right. Because he was done in four. So now it's. Now it's foreign fighters infilling all through the western EU Freddy River Valley. So that was. That was the primary mission, was just crushing things that came in through the. The worv. Right.

[A]

With this type of operational tempo. Did it ev. Did it ever get to a point that as. As it continued that, that. That it wore you down, like, I don't know how much longer I can continue this. This.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

This tempo.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes. There was times when you were just like, any chance we could take a break? Just tonight. How about tonight? How about, you know, how about. All right, how about tomorrow night? I mean, you manufacture your own stuff. Guys would blow off steam by playing Halo and stuff. That wasn't my thing. Yeah, but we had dogs to look after, so we were working with them. Another partner of mine, Rob, would. And I would, gosh, he's awesome, dude. We'd sit up on the roof and smoke cigars. What cigars? And we made it a point to go up on the roof and just sit up there. And. Yeah, only a couple people come with us. Maybe. Maybe just ourselves. And we just talk about the day, talk about different points of this or that. And we'd sit up there and watch the sky.

[A]

Would it also. Would it affect your. Your physical fitness by the end, too? I mean, just making time for the gym, getting in the gym, recovery, or is that. Was that something that was always prioritized and. And you had that because you. You knew what, you knew what was coming up.

[B]

I remember being in pretty good shape back then, but certainly, certainly don't, you know, can I squeeze in 60 minutes here? Can I get that in here? But yeah, it was. Again, if you hang out with the right people.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

They're pushing it, too.

[A]

They're.

[B]

You're getting work on.

[A]

Did it get to a. I just have a lot of questions. When it. When it comes. When. When during this time frame. You're on, you're off, you're on. Was there a point when it was time to go again? I just want to make the difference. Yeah. I can see how you can get really tired after going out every night for 120 days straight. But at my time there, we had a big enough break. I was always excited to go on to the next deployment. Just looking forward to it. Did it ever get to a point because the op tempo just during deployments and in between deployments was shortened, that you're like, really? It's. It's time to go again? Like, you know that it took the excitement of deployment out? No, that seemed a weird thing for other people to understand, like the excitement of going to war. But we. We did. That's. It's what we trained for. It's what we wanted to do. Did it steal that joy a little bit?

[B]

I think it certainly stole joy. I don't want to knock that over. Sorry. Joy. I'm not sure I ever had a lot of joy about it, but excitement.

[A]

Is probably a better word.

[B]

Okay, let me take you back to one of your. One of your. You're a senior dude in whatever organization you're in, and somebody makes you do a PT test. I don't know if this has ever happened to you or not, but it's happened to me. Okay. And so we line up and go, okay, well, you know, you're gonna do push ups and what's the minimum, whatever it is. 52.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Say I'm making numbers up, right? So I would say to somebody, I was not in a good mood or I'm not motivated. I said, I'm only gonna do 52.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Did you ever experience that at all? Ever?

[A]

Never.

[B]

Okay. So. But as soon as you start doing them, as soon as you start doing them, and your partner's gonna do 82.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Well, you're gonna go better.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

So. So this is my equation. So going into another night. Oh, yeah, right. Another night. Another night. And. But as soon as you start doing it, all right, you're back in you're good now we're good now we're good. And you gotta always watch. You can't be complacent. You can't be. You can't go. Well, I'm just not gonna pay attention tonight because it's, it's not something for you anyways for the guy next to you.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So.

[A]

Yeah. And this. And in that environment. And that's. And that's just another really good point. You're expected to do everything right. And it's, it's. It's what tier one organizations do. They do the big things right, but they do the small things right. But usually it's, it's. It's a little bit of complacency and it's doing one of the small things, not right, that. That snowballs into something bigger. So when you're on this, you can't, you can't afford to get in that type of rut that you'll allow, you know, the small things to start. Get away. To get away from you because it turns out tragically. So it's very hard to stay turned on mentally that the whole time from. From start to finish and then, and then do it rotation after rotation after rotation.

[B]

One of the cool memories to me is flying back with the sun coming up. And sometimes the sun is fully up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But it's still early morning. And you, you could just relax because you're on the helicopter, you're on the airplane, man, you're going back, take. Take a breather. You know, that was. To me, that was really cool. And I could just see us in, in the door watching the, the terrain go by now. They're, they need to be switched on now. But you can, you can relax a little bit now.

[A]

Right? It's time to take it in.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I don't think I did enough of that, to be honest with you. But I do, I do remember doing that occasionally on a mountainside, on a. On a Hilo road, on a Hilo ride back. For me, I don't. It's. It's odd. The man. I don't think it's that odd, actually, because that's not all at all. Yeah, it will is. Which is this. Usually what went on in my head when I'm taking it in was I wish my dad could see me now.

[B]

That's cool.

[A]

I thought about that all the time. I wish. I wish my dad could see me.

[B]

Oh, that's cool, man. Yeah.

[A]

Thought about it all the time. Well, the gosh. Yeah, he's still with us, so it's okay. I could. I can tell him about it. Good. For now.

[B]

I tell you what I tell you, all right? My dad. Emotional story about my dad. He. He joined for Vietnam and he got removed. He got rejected. His buddy went. He didn't go, but he came back alive, thank God. But, you know, is it possible that I wouldn't be born because my father, you know, or whatever that was 64. I was born, so never mind. So maybe that wasn't. Maybe it was after that. It doesn't matter. But he bought me a book one day, and it's like quotes, military quotes or something like that. I can't remember exactly what the book was, sadly, but he. When he gave it to me, he's like, this is what I always wanted to do, and I could never do it. And he's like, I look up to you so much. I'm like, wait, what? What? The father I love and look up to is your. Are you telling me that you. You know, you looking up to me for doing this? You know, so it was really, really cool moments like that. Yeah.

[A]

I grew up in a. In a household. My. My dad was drafted for Vietnam, but he didn't have to go. It was the very end of the war. He always wanted to be a. A fighter pilot, but when he tried to enlist, his eyes weren't good enough. And so he went on the rest of his life just being a spectator and a fan of the military and fighter jets specifically. So he'd take me and my brother Drew to air shows all the time, and we'd watch military movies. And I remember my dad reading Tom Clancy books growing up, But I didn't. Just didn't say a whole lot to us. So it wasn't until after my military career, even during it to some degree, that my dad started opening up and was really impressed. I don't know if the word impressed is what I want to use, but Proud. And start saying, I'm proud of you. He got softer in his old age. He's a big softy now.

[B]

Oh, I'm. What I remember we were watching Band of Brothers. Before or after? Had been after. Right after the first Strike Back or what? We're in where Jazar Masira off the coast, and we're watching Band of Brothers because it started right before 911 hit, so. And he's like, what did he say? He said, you get older and you're gonna be crying about one thing or another. We're all sitting in this thing. And he's so right I'm like, you're spot on, brother Pat. Because I get. I get. I get all soupy about all kind of stuff like that, man. And it's funny, too, because, oh, it's a whole lot of stuff in Band of Brothers. If you go back now and after my combat career, I'm like, I saw that. Oh, I saw that. Oh, that. I remember something like that, too, just a different person.

[A]

I. I don't know what it is. It's only happened recently to me in the. In the last few years. I. But when I. When I watch war movies where. Where someone dies, even though I. I don't think about my fallen teammates a whole lot, and I don't. You know, I don't usually cry, you know, when. When I think about them, if. If it's on their. Their anniversary, I may think about them a little bit more. Then I put it back in my box, and I put it in the back of my mind.

[B]

Mickey's on tomorrow, by the way.

[A]

Thank you. But when I. When I watch it in the movie now, it just tugs at my heartstrings a lot harder. And I'm like, I don't do this in real life. Why, why. Why is it when I watch this movie, you know, I'm. I'm having to hide crying, and I don't even do that in. In real life. And another one, it's just. I don't know. We're getting these. These odd rabbit. Rabbit trails, but. All right. A rabbit hole is.

[B]

Is a trailer a hole.

[A]

It's a hole. It's a hole. Sports movies like you. You want to watch Miracle on Ice?

[B]

Oh, dude, I'm in.

[A]

Done. I'm in on every time they beat the Russians like you son of did it.

[B]

It. I watched that. I watched that game in my basement, bro. I watched that game. I heard how Michael say it. Live.

[A]

Yeah, those movies will do it, dude.

[B]

I'm a huge hockey fan, too.

[A]

Very different movies, but. Oh, they get me. Oh, they get me.

[B]

You. You. When Fury. When. When they start quoting Isaiah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

No, you say you. So. Yeah, I mean, it's. It's okay. My friend of mine said you're getting gay because that's what happens. That's what happens.

[A]

As long as you're not wearing Crocs. And that's an inside joke if, you know.

[B]

You know, from Indiana, tactical Officer, the.

[A]

The end of your career. I mean, 31 years, you. You. You put in enough time, but rarely, I think this is so true. I think no matter how high you go and and how far you go. I don't think anyone's career ends exactly the way they want because there's always something else that they want to do. I don't care if, if you were the Sergeant Major of, of USASAK and you wanted to be the Sergeant Major of jsoc, you know, there's always something else, you know, that would have, could have been. And people from the outside look at that and like 31 years Ranger, the unit, like you, you were, you were good. But something tells me, or maybe you're lucky enough how you weren't. That's right. Neither was I. I, I medically retired for, for a reason. Had, had, had the end of your career go.

[B]

With, without fanfare. My, my retirement service, by the way, at the organization was absolutely awesome. And I'll never forget it. What forced me to retire medically? I had four back surgeries in my career, but two at the unit, one after that when I was working for the agency, and a fourth one after that, but it was cancer in 2009 that pretty much stopped everything. 2009? Yeah, pretty sure it's 2009. We had a. I have to look at my calendar, but it's not funny. It's either Veterans Day or Memorial Day time frame. We had a cul de sac party. I had, we had guys from the organization over here, some SF guys, and other guys on the other side of the cul de sac. We all got together, we walked around, had, you know, know, drank whiskey, beer, ate great food. And then late at night, I'm like, I got some gastrointestinal problems. So what? It makes sense. About 4 o' clock in the morning, I wake up with intense pressure camp. I'm just all jacked up. And finally I say I have to go to the hospital. So I go to the er. They can't determine what's wrong with me. They think it's kidney stones. I go back to the house, I drink cranberry and water, and I take a bunch of Percocet for the pain. And it gets worse and worse and worse. And Monday I'm like, I'm fine, I'll be okay. But I look in the mirror and I can see my back is distended. I'm. I know I'm bloated from all the liquid I'm drinking, trying to pass these stones, right? But my back is distended and I go, that's, that's not right. That's not right. So, so I'll go in tomorrow. That's exactly I'm like, you're an idiot. I look back on it. Craig Taylor told me. He said, it's a great story because I was dying the entire time, but we'll just wait till tomorrow because.

[A]

Right. Yeah.

[B]

I mean, the clinic's not over anyway. We'll just wait until tomorrow. So I went in, and they were like, hey, yeah. An hour later. I don't think. Something like that. It was emergency surgery. You could see my cavity grow like a second hand on a clock. Jason Hiles was a JMail internal surgeon. He was awesome, saved my life. And he took me out, he took me back and carved it all out. They had to pull everything out and clean up twice. They removed almost 12 inches of upper GI. The. The gastrointestinal stromal tumor exploded. That's what had happened. It had been there for a while, and apparently it exploded. This led to a lot of other things. Like, you know, how do we. How do we do preventive medicine for the dudes? Yeah, Should. Should he go. Should you go get a CT scan with contrast every six months? Should you do one every year? Or should you get internal stuff, more colonoscopies? Because they probably could have found it if they did more tests on me beforehand.

[A]

Especially all the things you've been exposed to and all the places and who knows, right?

[B]

Who knows? And it's. Their variables are pretty much out of the. Out of the roof.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Five years to live they gave me.

[A]

So what year is this when they give you five years?

[B]

Nine.

[A]

2009.

[B]

Yeah. And so I left the unit in 13 after this second back surgery. The doc was like, you shouldn't jump anymore. So now I had. I'd come to a place where I'm supposed to be five years to live. I'm not supposed to jump anymore. He. He told me I shouldn't wear my kid anymore because of stress on my back. I'm like.

[A]

Like, man, come on, what can I do?

[B]

And so I wrote. I wrote the unit star Major. I wrote him. I said, listen, I feel bad about this, but I think I need to make a decision here. And what you just said earlier is what he wrote back. And I wish I could show it to you. I have it somewhere, but I'll show it to you later. But I don't have it with me. But he said, you've done enough now. I don't think I did. Yeah, I don't think I wanted to do much more. Ended up finishing as the. The canine troop thing. Sergeant Major. Which was important in itself. It was plenty of important things to do there, and we made a great ground and blah, blah, blah. But I didn't. I wanted more. Yeah, I did. I didn't want more. So I'm guilty of that. Had a third back surgery, like I said. Had a fourth one. And the fourth one was like, genius. It was the. The fusion. I'm like, why did we do the fusion in the beginning? Well, it doesn't work that way, but I can do all kinds of stuff now.

[A]

You know, it's funny, when it comes to. To back surgeries, luckily I've. I've not needed one yet. But I always get really mixed reviews on. People have back surgeries. They either say, I don't know why I waited so long. I've. I've had a fair amount of people say it. It's. I wish I'd never had this back surgery. It's. It's worse. And. And it's just. It's always. I guess I don't have. Interesting sort I want to use, but interesting to me. Everything we know about the body and when it comes to something as intricate as the back that we're not a hundred percent on. On fixing it was. What was your first back surgery?

[B]

2000. Laminectomy, discectomy, lower.

[A]

Lower lumbar wear and tear or something? Specifically wear and tear.

[B]

I needed it in ranger battalion.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And you know, like they say, well, you need to stop what you're doing. I'm like, I'm a squad leader. Thursday we have a road march. I'm not stopping. What are you gonna do? Yeah, you lose your job or you're gonna keep going. So there was that. And then the Dr. Manachi and Walter Reed said, Seven years are gonna need no one.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I'm like, why not now? He goes, doesn't work that way. Yeah, but you're gonna need another one seven years. Not to the date I got another one. Same kind of thing. It was a lower lateral laminectomy, discectomy, same kind of thing. And so. And then the third one was later on, and fourth one was fusion. So I got hardware in my back big time.

[A]

I don't think. I think it's easier for me to say this than for you to live through it. And in your case, it was something kind of outside of your control that caused your departure from the military. And I don't know if that helps, because you can say, hey, it's not because of me. Is that outside of my control?

[B]

Thanks, Brian.

[A]

Or it's just as frustrating because why did it happen? To me like, how did you deal with, with that part of your life?

[B]

Getting off the train is the hardest part. Offline we talked about. One of the commanders saw me in Irbil, northern Iraq and said hey, you need to stop by. I can't just stop by. I don't have a badge. I can't just use. I can't just walk in and use the multi million dollar strength training facility. I can't just go to ASP and get some ammunition and go shoot on fox. It's just impossible. So. But missing that. It was so cool to come back to be able to see dudes working. That was cool to be able to be part of another organization. I could just kind of peek in a little bit and see faces that I knew, friendly faces. It was always a great reunion. Always good to say, hey wanna one of the times when one of the elements was gonna do a surprise big time piece of work and they all flew in to ear Bill and I'm like, wow, they're locked in there. They're locked down. I'm gonna go see them and I'm gonna bring them some booze. And dude, they loved it. They're like this, you know, here comes Dutch with some maker's mark, you know. And they, they ended up. I said keep it for the celebratory drink when you're done.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they ended up staying there like three weeks or something. Ridiculous. Whatever it was.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I missed it. Yeah. Big time. And I still do. I missed the camaraderie. If I'm able to go back there on occasion and say, hey, I do. But now my job is down in South Carolina so I'm, I'm just farther away.

[A]

Let's talk about what you do now.

[B]

So you may see this very cool shirt I'm wearing.

[A]

I see the shirt. I've been there.

[B]

The sawmill.

[A]

You weren't there. You weren't there when I went.

[B]

Not there when you were there.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Sentinel work.

[A]

Park Sentinel.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We did a fundraiser for the Sentinel Foundation.

[B]

Those are good people.

[A]

Yeah. It's a great facility.

[B]

Appreciate it. It's. How long ago was that for you?

[A]

End of last year.

[B]

It is way better now. Way better.

[A]

I don't, I don't just say this. It's. It's true. I've. Because I, I continue to train at various places. I'm usually let down at, at, at training facilities. They're just, they're just usually older. They're run down. They don't keep up with it. Just. Or just lack of ability. To go to, to, to range or just, or, or lack of steel to be able to do what you want to do. I just, it's, it's very underwhelming the options out there. So when you go to a place like Sawmill, it's refreshing and you're like so glad and you're like, like good. Some. Someone reinvests into their company. Someone cares. Someone keeps something clean. Someone has all the options.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

I love, I love the trip. I went there because it was refreshing.

[B]

250 acres, big pro shop and stuff like that. Who cares? Tactical base. We have a 1400 yard all steel long range position range 48 person capacity. Lodge, full kitchen. Gym. The gym's gonna be outfitted by Sorenex really soon. We got all new steel everywhere. We've got new bays. We got two big obstacle courses. Sort of like the Big O, the Big O and the cto. Kind of like that. It's. We have a Mount city. We have a little sim house. Big sim house. And now, now we put in like a six building complex. If you know, you know. And we're just. Eric Carr came on board. So we have four core dudes, all military guys. Mike Carter, Tommy Flynn, Eric Carr and myself. And it's just been. We, we have partnership with Fabric Nationale right now. FN America. The shirt I'm wearing is born primitive. We got a relationship with them. Superville ammunition. Black rifle. Coffee. Sorry. Mark Schmidt's is running black rifle right now. So we're trying to get on board. More exposure is what we want. Right. We want to work with them. Who am I missing? I'm sure I'm missing someone. Pharaoh Concepts. Gosh. But it's, it's first form energy and stuff like that. First form supplements.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's Wiley X Gators. Those are some of the folks who are gunfighter gun oil. Gosh, I forgot about Mickey. It's really been a cool journey in the last even seven or eight months. Eric's got great energy. He, Mike's excellent with the skid steer. We got, we got the equipment we need to, to make the places we need. We're just, we're doing an archery thing now. It used to be Sawmill tactical training complex. Now it's Sawmill training complex.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Where they're putting in a, a platform for skeet. We're doing an archery course. We have, we have sawmill outdoors. We used to call it Bushcraft. And Mike's like hey look, Bushcraft just means one thing. Outdoors means all this stuff. So it makes more sense to do that we're bringing in some experts to help train the trainers. Gosh, I'm telling you, it's, it's, it's off to a really good start in 26 from the shot show. So we're looking forward to a really healthy 26. 25 was really healthy, especially the back end of it. The last two quarters were really good. So we have a membership program now. We didn't used to have like we do. So it's been, it's been really cool.

[A]

Got any courses coming up for, for 26 that you are teaching?

[B]

I do. So I have like 13.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

They have 13 on the board right now. I will touch more than 13 in a year. Last year, I think I touched 41 different things, whether they're personal or law enforcement or military. We had seventh group come out. We had Catawba county swat, Anderson County, Greenville, Clinton, Lauren City. So yeah, we had a lot. We have. I had a lot of interaction with local law enforcement.

[A]

I assume you guys have all that in the calendar on the website.

[B]

All on the calendar website. Thanks for saying that.

[A]

Yeah, I will, I will put the, the link in, in the description of, of this episode. So then go down. Just click right on it.

[B]

The like three things I say that were really focused on for me is evolutionary gunfighters. My more key thing, two days worth of shootings. A whole lot of shooting. It kind of mirrors a shooting program. And then couples therapy where you can bring your wife, girlfriend. And that's a really good time. That's a lot of fun time, man. And then bullets and bourbon. We do bullets and bourbon twice a year. Once in May. Once in. Once in May for Veterans Day. No, no time frame. And then November for Veterans Day time frame. We do six or seven USPSA type stages plus steel stuff. And then we get together and we honor those men and women who gave the last full measure of devotion to their nation. And it's so cool. This year we, the Green Beret foundation reached out. They want to do a collab. I think last. My last bulletin bourbon was 45 people. So I know a guy who does. Has a casks company maybe.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

Maybe we could get together and do something. I don't know.

[A]

I think we can.

[B]

But we're. We're looking forward to a really good 26. And the guys, the guys are amazing. Tom Flynn, he's a former Marine commission officer, air car, former non commissioned officer Marine. And Mike Carter, former Air Force guy. Plus he did EMT stuff. He's done all kind of stuff. Heavy equipment Operator. So it's, it's been real fun.

[A]

It's one of my favorite places to go because I know it's a place I can go shoot and, and smoke some FRCC cigars at at the same time. It's just. It's just a special place.

[B]

You may not know this, but there's a. There's a humidor, there's some guy named Brett Tucker helped us out with, and we have FRCC cigars there on property. Yes, sir.

[A]

The Dutch. I can't thank you enough for, for coming down here. It's. It's been, it's been a long time coming. But you got a funny story for me?

[B]

Well, we, we talked about a couple funny stories already. Right. But here's one stupid funny, but maybe tragic funny. I don't know. Whatever. So. All right, so I made the most important course in my entire career.

[A]

Okay, right.

[B]

The most. If you know, you know. And one of the first things you do is this large obstacle course. And this one obstacle, I can't remember exactly how it looks, but it's got like a rope that goes up over and over again. And then you gotta dismount the rope, whatever it is. So I go up here and I'm. I'm all confident. I'm gonna just run up here and do it. And I run out of gas at the tall one and I'm. I'm out. My hands are out. I'm not doing it properly, so I'm just muscling it over and I'm smoked. So I release my hands and I'm locked in like a bat with my boots. And they were all kind of laughing at me, but I don't know what to do.

[A]

I've never seen that.

[B]

And they're gonna, they're, they're gonna try to catch me. And I'm still eight feet off the ground. Yeah, they're trying to catch me. Long story short was I fall. I smashed my head a little bit. They catch me a little bit because I'm still, you know, then I was what, 200? Still 205 pounds.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And so I recover. But what's the next day? The next day is this 100 meter swim test, which bolt, the aforementioned Dutch, doesn't swim very well.

[A]

We already covered Achilles heel of the swim test.

[B]

We already covered that crap. So I got to do the swim test. But guess what? I'm wearing this medical collar. I don't have to do it.

[A]

That works out.

[B]

So I go through the whole course, the most important course of my entire life. I get done through all the really important stuff, and we're close to the end, right? And everybody's assigned a counselor. Everybody's got one. And he. He comes up to me and says, hey, swim test. You got 45 minutes. You know, I'll meet you at the pool.

[A]

Are you kidding me?

[B]

I fail.

[A]

Months and months later, they come back at you with the swim.

[B]

Months and months, months and months. He's like, we got, like a week. We got a week to go before it's Uber. And he goes, 25 minutes. I'll see the pool. I fail immediately fail. And so I get two of my good friends. One now is a general. The other one is. I don't know what he's now, but he was a best Ranger competitor and winner, so no joke. I think it was a Olympic swimmer, too. I think it was a collegiate swimmer.

[A]

Jm.

[B]

Yeah, JM Was a collegiate swimmer, Pretty sure. And James.

[A]

I worked for him. Yeah, you were.

[B]

You did work for him.

[A]

I worked for him.

[B]

Good or bad, right? Good.

[A]

Great.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

Great.

[B]

I Love me some J.M. jimmy. I can say that.

[A]

One of. One of my favorite people that I ever worked for. Awesome.

[B]

So, yeah, I asked for help, and they were. I think they even volunteered to help, to be honest. And we went to the. Did a gym in the Olympic size pool.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Every night after work. Every night after work, every night. And then because they gave me. They looked at me and said, well, you got. You got. Well, you got. You got about a month. You got about. No, you got about a week or so.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Then you're. You're done.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I made it. I passed, so.

[A]

Oh, that. Yeah, that is hilarious, that. The swim test. It almost. It almost like. Like bookends to your. To your career. It haunted you at the beginning, but even. Even towards the end of it, it still reared its ugly head and let.

[B]

You know, I'm much better swimmer now than I ever was before.

[A]

You know what?

[B]

I have to be that which I.

[A]

Wish I could redo the beginning of this episode and let you know that there was. There needs to be a swim test for. To get on the episode or say, don't worry, there's no swim test to get on the episode.

[B]

That's what you should have said. Well, apparently, it's never too late to give him a swim test. You got 45 minutes. No.

[A]

And you're a strong swimmer now it's too late to correct it.

[B]

There's no.

[A]

There's no more swim test.

[B]

I wouldn't say I'm strong.

[A]

Anyway, I added that. Okay.

[B]

Dan Taylor used to say, I'm a survival swimmer. If I have to survive, I will swim. I'm not a Navy seal, guys.

[A]

Obviously. Obviously. Because you haven't written a book. Guys, thanks so much for watching. It's it. It won't happen that many times just because of sheer numbers, but to have a Tier one guy on the Tier one podcast is special. Let's go out. Let's smoke some cigars some. Smoke some cigars and tell some stories that we couldn't tell. Can do. All right, thanks, guys.