Legendary Green Beret | Darrin Beheler | Sniper, HALO, K9, Iraq and Afghanistan Combat Veteran

Summary

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Tier1 Podcast

Legendary Green Beret | Darrin Beheler | Ep. 1 (Nov. 26, 2025)

Host: Brent Tucker | Guest: Darrin “Bo” Beheler — Special Forces Green Beret, 10th Group, HALO, Sniper, K9 Handler, Iraq & Afghanistan Combat Vet

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Episode Overview

This first episode of the relaunched Tier1 Podcast features an in-depth, candid conversation between host Brent Tucker and his longtime friend and fellow Green Beret, Darrin “Bo” Beheler. The discussion covers Beheler’s upbringing, his path to Special Forces, formative friendships, hard-won combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, losses in battle, the unique bond with his military working dog Dino, and his dedication to service through the non-profit "50 For The Fallen." Throughout, Brent and Bo reflect on brotherhood, leadership under pressure, and the enduring realities of service at the tip of the spear.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Upbringing and Foundations

• Arlington, Texas Roots
  • Bo shares his pride in his Texas upbringing, describing life with a single mother and an older brother who became his first heroes.
  • "If you want to start talking about the first hero of my life... it's my mom. She provided us with everything we needed, and she did it without hesitation, without fail." — Beheler (06:22)
• Competitive Sibling Dynamic
  • His older brother never let him win at anything, setting a foundation for relentless determination.
  • "Instrumental. Just in the no-quit of the whole thing." — Beheler (08:18)

2. Sports, College & Early Adulthood

• Football as Formation
  • Bo played wide receiver and defensive back through high school, became “the man” at a small private school after getting in trouble, describing it as part of a path he only understood in hindsight.
  • "There was a path the Lord had put me on... It was for the betterment of my life." — Beheler (12:28)
• College & Setbacks
  • Briefly played college ball after a six-year hiatus, emphasizing ‘no-quit’ and faith in a bigger plan.
  • Couldn’t get hired by law enforcement due to a minor legal issue. 9/11 became a turning point, leading to a visit to the Army recruiter.

3. Choosing the Special Forces Path

• The 18X-Ray Program
  • Bo candidly admits his initial ignorance about the program: “I knew John Wayne and Rambo… John Rambo and John Wayne were the only two.” (21:01)
  • Tucker explains how 18x-ray allowed high-caliber, mature candidates like Bo to attempt Special Forces pipelines straight from civilian life.
  • Discussion explores pros/cons and stereotypes of the program, defending its intense standards and the quality of operators it produced.

4. Pipeline, Selection & Teamwork

• Basic/AIT/Airborne
  • Older than drill sergeants, Bo laughs about being “the old guy” (24:47)
  • Only 4 out of 65 from his x-ray basic class made it through (26:23)
• Brutal Early Training (SOPC/SFAS)
  • Cadre just returned from war, motivated by the need for combat-ready Green Berets.
  • “We made it hard as hell for you guys… the ones that did [stick around] were the ones we wanted.” (32:57)
• Land Navigation & Team Week
  • Critical skills taught, then rigorously tested: “If your batteries go out, better know how to read a compass, jackass.” — Beheler (36:23)
  • Tucker and Beheler recall hilarious team failures: “We imploded worse than any team ever up to that point, apparently.” (41:02)
  • Candid lessons on humility, group problem-solving, and perseverance are woven throughout.

Memorable Moment: “Duffel Bag Drag”

• On hearing trainees quietly quit at night — “People wouldn’t want to quit in front of you... so they wait till everybody’s got their eyes closed.” (43:14)

5. Brotherhood, Loyalty, and Camaraderie

• Stories of cementing friendships through hardship, training, and even off-duty adventures.
• Loyalty under fire: Bo recalls Brent running shirtless through Raleigh at 2 AM in response to a distress call:
  • “He dropped whatever he was doing and hauled ass directly back to where his buddy was in trouble. That was it. The day you hit my circle was then. You haven’t been out since, man.” — Beheler (63:31)
• “We tell these [stories] all day long… That’s what solidified the friendship.” (67:07)

6. Deployment and First Combat

• Assigned to 10th Group, Forward Germany
  • Early deployments were dynamic: Bosnia, Nigeria, then rapid-planned rotations to Afghanistan.
• Day Three Ambush
  • Bo describes his first major contact, driving into an ambush on a forbidden route:
  • “When the ambush starts, I’m trying to figure out what’s happening. I’m driving and I’m hearing RPGs cross the hood… That was the day I realized — be careful what you wish for.” (77:08)
• Impact of Real Violence
  • Shift to deep professionalism and readiness: “That’s when everything switched for me — I’m gonna be the most prepared soldier I can every time I step out of the hooch.” (78:34)

7. Conventional/SpecOps Relationships

• Debunking myths and emphasizing mutual respect between Green Berets and conventional units.
  • “I always found it counterproductive to treat people less than you… Maybe we treat everybody with a little more kindness.” (83:01)
• Bo’s team’s respect for 82nd Airborne "Corelurs," whose actions were “second to none” supporting them in Afghanistan (81:03)

8. Loss, Grief, and Leadership Under Tragedy

• Losing Team Members
  • Detailed, emotional account of losing teammate Pat in an ambush:
  • “We can’t find anything. We roll him over… we saw that little bit cut behind his shoulder blade. This little piece of frag clips his aorta… There’s nothing you can do about it.” (89:55)
• Aftermath
  • “The next three days were devastating… Some guys contemplated whether they wanted to be team guys any longer.” (91:50)
  • Bo’s re-commitment: “You got here by not quitting, jackass. What are you going to do? You’re gonna re-up, stay in the fight, continue what God put you on this earth to do.” (92:02)

9. K9 Brotherhood — Dino the “Spare” Dog

• Becoming a Dog Handler
  • Originally given the dog no one wanted (“the spare… bugaboo with floors”). Bo saw something special in Dino and claimed him.
• Bond, Trust & Combat
  • “I used to think crying was weakness, but it’s not. It just meant I loved heavily. And I loved that dog more than you know.” (105:41)
• Saving Lives
  • Dino’s alert led to discovery of a huge weapons cache (150 DTMF boards):
    • “He’s not trained to smell circuitry… What he found saved our lives.” (112:04)
• Loyalty Returned
  • “At the beginning, it would look like you saved that dog. And at the end, that dog saved you.” — Tucker (128:49)
  • “Absolutely. Perfect way to say it.” — Beheler (128:50)

Memorable Moment: Dino’s Last Stand

• On Dino’s final days:
  • “Put on my multicams, my body armor, my beret… Even under sedation, he tried to stand — he saw dad walking in with that damn uniform on, like it’s go time. That was the best.” (131:40)

10. Post-Military Struggles and Service

• Rock Bottom & Recovery
  • After Dino’s passing, Bo spiraled: “Using the loss of Dino, or whatever it was, to excuse the bad behavior… found myself in a real bad spot. I saw no light at the top. If I continued going the direction I was going, I wasn’t going to be around long.” (136:30)
• Purpose through Service: 50 For The Fallen
  • Found new purpose through a non-profit serving veterans with TBI and other struggles.
  • “100% of it goes to sending guys to treatment… I’ll take 80% better over 0% better.” (141:19)
• Advice to Those Transitioning
  • “It’s not about money… Find something with a purpose. Because that’s what we had. We had purpose, we had family, we had worth.” — Tucker (144:26)
  • Both are forthright about the role of faith: “First and foremost, the only purpose you’re really going to have is God’s purpose for you.” — Tucker (144:29)

11. Reflections, Humor, and Memories

• The Importance of Laughter in Hard Times
  • Stories of playing stickball and football during field exercises, showing how camaraderie transcends hardship.
  • “If you’re with the right guys, everything’s fun.” — Tucker (153:59)
• Final Takeaway: Brotherhood Endures
  • “Even without seeing each other for a decade, didn’t matter. Picked right up as soon as we saw each other again.” — Beheler (66:49)
  • “Best friends for a certain amount of years… We are their best friends [dogs] for their whole life.” (125:52)

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “If you want to start talking about the first hero of my life… it’s my mom." — Beheler (06:22)
• “Instrumental. Just in the no-quit of the whole thing." — Beheler (08:18)
• “Be careful what you wish for. You’re going to get it… you better be prepared.” — Beheler (77:08)
• “He dropped whatever he was doing and hauled ass directly back to where his buddy was in trouble. That was it. The day you hit my circle was then. You haven’t been out since, man.” — Beheler (63:31)
• “At the beginning, it would look like you saved that dog... At the end, that dog saved you.” — Tucker (128:49)
• “We are their best friends their entire life... think about that next time.” — Beheler (125:52)
• “It’s not about money… Find something with a purpose.” — Tucker (144:26)
• “The doors I wanted opened got slammed in my face. Shuffle, right? Dumb, dumb donut. Let’s get you into this other door.” — Beheler (144:58)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Intro & Early Friendship: 00:24–04:39
• Upbringing & Early Adulthood: 04:07–19:36
• Joining Special Forces/18X-Ray: 19:36–24:24
• Selection & SF Pipeline: 24:47–47:17
• Land Navigation & Team Week: 34:19–56:17
• Camaraderie/Shared Hardship: 61:35–67:07
• First Combat Experience: 77:08–80:04
• Losing Brothers in Battle: 87:26–99:10
• K9 Bond & Dino: 104:45–132:45
• Dino’s Passing & Grief: 128:42–134:23
• Post-Service Struggles & Non-Profit: 136:29–146:26
• Funny/Lighthearted Memories: 150:22–156:34

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Tone & Style

The conversation is raw, unfiltered, and at times both deeply emotional and humorously self-deprecating. Brent and Bo shift easily from banter to introspection, military gallows-humor to gut-wrenching loss, portraying the full spectrum of life as special operations veterans.

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Summary Takeaways

• Brotherhood and Loyalty: The highest value is loyalty—to family, friends, team, and dog.
• Resilience in Adversity: Early hardship, failure, and tragedy forge the mindset required for elite service.
• Preparation and Humility: No one succeeds alone; peer pressure, cadre mentorship, and honest mistakes all shape the operator.
• Service Beyond Uniform: The only way forward after war (and after loss) is continued service—helping others, finding purpose, honoring fallen friends and partners (two- and four-legged).
• Faith and Perspective: Running themes of faith, humility before God’s plan, and finding strength in purpose, even after absolute lows.

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For Listeners New & Old

For those unfamiliar with Bo Beheler or this circle of special operations warriors, this episode is both a primer on the Green Beret ethos and a deeply personal look at what it means to forge, test, and live up to true brotherhood under fire. The stories—of training, battle, loss, and redemption—illuminate not only military skill but also the enduring human elements of courage, humor, and grace.

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Transcript

[A]

This footage, we should have got all that. There it is.

[B]

Okay, now that we hit start recording, we should. We should be able to start maybe. Or else we almost just did a two hour trial run.

[A]

Hey, it's all about rehearsals, right?

[B]

It's all about rehearsals.

[A]

Just want to be prepared.

[B]

All right.

[A]

Miss the sand table though.

[B]

You boys ready?

[A]

Ready, sir.

[B]

Here we go.

[A]

Like the kickoff man. Let's go. Welcome to the Tier one Podcast.

[B]

This is amazing.

[A]

Dude, check this out.

[B]

Welcome to the tier one podcast. I'm your host, Brent Tucker, owner of FRCC. We do coffee, cigars, bourbon, go to FRCC shop and use the promo code FRCC15. That's 1 5. The numbers 15 to get 15 off the world's best coffee, cigars and bourbon.

[A]

And I'm Drew Tucker, producer of the tier one podcast. Guys, consider supporting the channel at Patreon the Tier one podcast for behind the scenes content. Exclusive content. You'll be glad you did support us at patreon the tier one podcast.

[B]

This episode is brought to you by HPTRT Human Performance TRT. Go to hp-trt.com for all of your hormone and peptide needs with us today. Episode one. The big. The big anticipated relaunch of. Of a. Of a podcast. And no pressure not, not to sound. Not to sound braggadocious, but we. We really could have had anyone that. That we wanted on here for episode one. We got some big names coming and it was a no brainer to me who I wanted to start this thing out with because this is who I started my whole special operations career with. And if it wasn't for this man, I. I don't know if I'd have made it through anything. I definitely wouldn't have been the man I am today. With us, we have Darren Beheeler. Bo, as I've known him my whole life with. With you.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Special forces Green Beret, 10th group, Halo sniper canine multiple deployments, combat vet of Iraq and Afghanistan. And we've. We've known. Gosh, I was gonna say we've known each other since selection, but actually because that's kind of where. But we pre Selection. That's right, is where we met. We'll. We'll get into all.

[A]

Story didn't start then. Yeah, the good story didn't start then. Oh, gosh. It was like the preface.

[B]

I'm. I'm so excited about this. I consider you one of my best friends. Yes, sir. And I'm about to learn a lot about you and it's. And. And by doing These. These episodes with friends, you kind of realize you don't know your friends as well as. As well as you should. Right. Like, you. You know them, you know who they are, but until. Because it's just not normal. We just don't sit down and be like, tell me your life story. Right. Just not what we do. And every time I get an opportunity to do this, it always makes me feel bad. Like, what I don't really know about my friends. So I'm. I'm excited about this. And as always, let's. Let's start from the beginning. Where are you from? I don't even know what state you're from. You don't. You don't like to talk about it.

[A]

Hey, thanks for that incredible introduction, Brent. Happy to be here, Drew. Thanks for. For the. Thanks for the invitation, bud. Born and raised, Arlington, Texas.

[B]

Oh, Texas.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

You didn't know. I felt like that was something we went over at some point, but. Yeah, from the great state.

[B]

That's actually how you always refer to it, as the great state of Texas.

[A]

That's how I was raised, man. Very proud of it. You know, I like to throw it in people's faces when I can, especially my. My dear friends. Just a reminder.

[B]

Where you from?

[A]

The great state.

[B]

You do. So you grew up in. In Arlington or outside of it?

[A]

I grew up in Arlington, man, with my mom and my older brother, Scott. Gosh, I want to say we moved there when I was less than a year old.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

From. From Waco. You know, I'm. I'm my entire life until, you know, college age and stuff. So I'm.

[B]

I'm always interested. And we do talk about this, and it's. Yeah, people sometimes, I'm sure they're like, get to the combat. But I always want to at least touch on this part of the story because it's interesting to me. Like, I want to know, like, what. Where you come from, what produces a man that goes on and does the things that you've done? And it's never the same story. Although I can argue there's a lot of common threads between all those types of people.

[A]

How.

[B]

How would you describe your childhood?

[A]

Oh, man, I've thought about this a lot, and it's not typical of most childhoods, I don't think. Single mother with.

[B]

With.

[A]

With two kids working multiple jobs, you know, to make ends meet for. For her kids, you know? You know, and I will start with this, that I've had heroes throughout my life. You know, it's not just one. It's not just one hero that, you know, encapsulates everything that I thought of as a hero. But if you want to start talking about the first hero of my life, you know, and someone who set the example the right way is my mom. I mean, probably sounds, you know, odd to some people, but that's, you know, that's the situation I was in. That was my experience. You know, my mother provided us with everything we needed, and she did it, you know, without hesitation, without fail. You know, she would have never let us know if it had gone to that point. But it never. You know, I never saw that. It was. It's incredible. Still, to this day, I'm marveled by what my mother was able to do with two children.

[B]

It's weird when you get to an age that this. This. This flips a switch on you, right? Because at this point, well, it doesn't help that we're friends, but I could look at me like, so. So what are you, a mama's boy?

[A]

I mean, I could be sure. That's not a bad thing, right? I mean, it's a bad thing, and.

[B]

In a weird way, but I. I'm.

[A]

Not ashamed of that.

[B]

At some point, I took that. I started taking that as a badge of honor.

[A]

Like, yeah, absolutely.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[A]

But, you know, especially for the people that know my mother.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, yeah, that's spot on. But I'm like, it is if you know her. So. Having an older brother that never let me win at anything. I mean, you laugh. It's.

[B]

I laugh because my story. I know.

[A]

Always funny to me that, you know, I would always listen to my. My grandparents or my dad telling me. He's like, you know, one day, Darren, one day. One day, you know, it'll be your day. I'll tell you what, My brother made sure it was a long time before that day, you know, and I love him. And that's, you know, that's where Hero 2 comes in. You know, I lived in a house with my first two heroes until I was, you know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

My late teens.

[B]

And again, you want to talk about this? Always a common thread. If it wasn't for my brother pushing me, he didn't let me win, so I had to work harder, you know? So in a weird way, I feel like my. My older brother, Drew, missed out. Missed out on the benefit of having someone push. Push you. You know, and obviously, when you. The next step in. In with sports and. And the next bet after that in the military, like, those are those Are just core principles. That dude.

[A]

Instrumental.

[B]

Instrumental.

[A]

Just in the no quit of the whole thing.

[B]

When. When you got. When you got to high school. We already playing football before high school.

[A]

Oh, yeah, man. I started football. I don't know, third, fourth grade.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Organized football. Football. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Always tackle.

[A]

Where's the camera, you guys? Is this Florida? I'm sorry. Forgot it wasn't. Wasn't home. Apologies. I should have remembered. Nobody. We didn't play flag football.

[B]

Wrong. Okay. Just.

[A]

Just making sure.

[B]

It's flag football's gated popularity, I'll have you know.

[A]

Oh, I'm sure it has. I'm sure it has. But, you know, back then.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I was playing tackle football with my brother and his friends. You know, that's. Yeah, that was just a funny part. But, yes, we used. Mostly football. Yeah, I played all the sports, but mostly football. Yes.

[B]

But before I started playing, like, organized tackle football, I mean, I grew up watching Drew. We had our neighborhood team.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we challenged other neighborhoods. The sandlot football. And I couldn't wait to get big enough to have own team. And it's just a bunch of, you know, a bunch of idiot kids getting together in a field against another neighborhood. No pads, a random ref who was someone's big brother and just annihilating each other.

[A]

Yeah. And no one ever got into fights. No holds, bar. No fights.

[B]

Yeah, and they were great.

[A]

It was. It was normal. It was natural.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Seemed like, you know, but. Yeah. Don't see many of those things happening nowadays, but.

[B]

So you knew going into high school you're gonna. You were gonna play high school football?

[A]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was just part of it, man. You had your seasons, you had your football, then you had basketball, then you ran track. If you're good, you played baseball. But I wasn't. My. I wasn't talented in baseball like my brother. That's kind of what ruined me.

[B]

Well, I can already tell you. I know you didn't run track, so. Did you just really? Did you?

[A]

Did you. What are you gonna mess around with. Go that route with me? Okay. You know, I ran. I ran cross country all the way through 10th grade. And then when I realized, you know, runners. Runners don't get the girls, you know, in my mind, it made sense. It was more along. More along the lines that, you know, I didn't. I hadn't hit puberty yet.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I was still just a little twerpy redheaded kid, you know, that weighed about 112 pounds, you know, it was terrible. What? What terrible?

[B]

What position did you play?

[A]

I played wide receiver and defensive back.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

My entire career until college.

[B]

I didn't know that. I didn't. That's surprising. I didn't know you played those, those two, those two, those two positions because I. Because I know what you played in college. That surprises me.

[A]

You know, when you and I get to the time where, you know, we played football together, we'll get to there. I know. I'm just saying. So it was far different, but.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is.

[B]

I think that. So did you get, did you get recruited out of college or were you out of high school? Where you walk on, Brent.

[A]

This is where things were, were just kind of shifted in my life. A little high school. I started at a public school. I went to Arlington High.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Found myself in some trouble. My mom did, you know, some. She did some, some work overseas.

[B]

You.

[A]

Know, decided to leave, leave her high school age son at home with some, you know, some parental guidance. Just not, you know, overly, overly strenuous. So anyways, I ended up having some people over began, you know, got too big. The next door neighbor ended up telling her about it. I end up going from Arlington High to Pantego Christian.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

End up going to a private school, finishing out my, my time in high school football at a Taps 1 or 2A. I think it was Taps 2A or I don't, I don't remember what a we were, but it was small. Super small. So I go from being like number three wide receiver to the man. Well, yeah, basically, you know, go to a school that had 13 people on the football team.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I was brutal.

[B]

Oh, playing iron. What do you call iron man? Football, offense, defense. No break.

[A]

No. No break. No break.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I wouldn't trade it for the world though, man, because again, you know, we discussed this last night. There was a path that the Lord had put me on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And. And far be it for me to understand or see it at the time, but I always saw it later on. I looked back like was perfect. That was, that was what was supposed to happen. And it. And it was for the betterment of my life. So.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that was one of them.

[B]

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[A]

Yeah, that's the silly part of this story is after high school I had a couple opportunities to play some small football some places, but I, you know, I went to Howard Payne for about two weeks and decided, you know, that Division 3 football, Howard Payne wasn't going to work. So didn't, didn't end up finishing the season, moved back home, tried my hand at going to college, which was not something I was geared for yet.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Just I hadn't matured enough to, to handle it. So end up. Long story short, let's scooch. My old man asked me to move to Waco, live with him and then work at Eminem Mars. So I did that one night at dinner. We're sitting there watching the news and he's, he, you know, he just happened to look up and they were doing an art or they were doing a, A release on the program starting at the University of Mary Hart and Baylor. He looked at me serious as a heart attack, was like, you should go down there and finish your degree and play football. And I was like, I looked at him because he never really pushed me to go to college and play sports. He just, you know, wanted me to go to college and get my degree, whatever. So when he said that, I was like, I better jump on this while the iron's hot. So, man, I didn't get recruited. I hadn't played football in six years. Ran down there and I walked into the, the field house and, you know, ended up meeting a Coach Carmona. And it's actually the, the head Football coach now is Larry Harmon. I met. Met both of those guys and, you know, invited me to come out for. For two A days and, yeah, the rest is history. Just didn't quit, man. That's where the no quit started.

[B]

Yeah, you haven't played football for six years. You go to play at a collegiate level football, something. Something tells me because you're like, no quit. We. You weren't, you weren't training for this, were you?

[A]

No, come on.

[B]

No, I just showed up right into two A days, right in the two days.

[A]

And the bad news, you know, when they're like, hey, what position did you play? You have some tape? And I was like, okay. So I brought them tape of me playing at Pantego and they're like, oh, we got another, you know, defensive back here. They put it in. They're like, which one are you? And I was like, you know, number 44. And they're like, you know, looking at me, looking at the tape, looking at.

[B]

Me, and I was like, about 30 pounds later.

[A]

Yeah. I was like, well, I hit puberty finally. Like, oh, yeah, what do you think you're gonna play here? I was like, what do you think I should play, like, outside linebacker? I'm like, I'm probably not fast enough. They're like, yeah, inside linebacker. I was like, you know, we can try it. Well, the first day we put pads on, we lined up and did some, you know, two on one stuff, and I handled myself well with the, with the offensive lineman, and they're like, oh, you're gonna be D lineman. I was like, I played wide receiver, right. And now and defensive back my entire career.

[B]

Now you're down sure about this?

[A]

Down to the trenches. Oh, brother. That was two years of pain and anguish. But I, you know, again, I wouldn't trade that for the world, man. Yeah, you know, I've still got friends, you know, best friends, you know, from those, from that time. So just another one of those, those doors that the Lord opened, man, it was incredible. You know, after six years, really, again.

[B]

You said, you know, God has a plan. Always, man, always. I think it's real unique you end up doing that because I. You would have to. To tell me. I think that really prepares you for your. For your next step in life. Team oriented, no quit. Very physical. I mean, you're, you're ready. Those are all attributes you can take with you to the next level. But at this time, you don't even know what the next level is. Yeah, it's.

[A]

Well, I had, I had, you know, I Had visions and. And, you know, aspirations, goals and things. Because, you know, I was. I went to get my degree in criminal justice in psychology. So I'm thinking, okay, this is pre 9 11, mind you. This is, you know, 2000. I graduated in May of 2001. So 911 hasn't happened yet.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Man, I. Yeah, I get my degree graduate, and I had been applying to all three large agencies you can think of.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Nobody was hiring. Nobody's hiring. 911 hadn't happened.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Only time I got anything remotely close was the U.S. marshals Service. I had scored in, like, the top 97 percentile of the Marshal service exam. And, you know, got an interview, got a call for an interview and stuff. But other than that, I couldn't get a job. Nobody. Nobody was hiring. You know, I even went to the local PD and so in Arlington, Texas, you know, at the time, this door got shut quick, fast, and in a hurry. You know, I was in. I went and did the interview, and like, man, you killed it. Then they ran my background. Well, I got in a little bit of trouble back in 1997, making alcohol available to a minor. I was 21.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

At a party where there was people that were underage drinking.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Guess who got nabbed. Slick Rick. I end up getting a. You know, they took me to jail for it. Ends up being a class B misdemeanor. Well, in Texas, they had just changed the law that if you got a class B or higher misdemeanor, you couldn't get T. Close certified. So that ruled me out of all things Texas police force.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

All things. So guess what? Door shut. Three other agency door shut. So guess what I do? I go take a job at loss prevention for Neiman Marcus.

[B]

That's right. I remember that.

[A]

My grandfather passes right before 9 11. 911 happens within the year. I didn't know. Like I was telling Drew, I didn't tell my mom, my brother, anybody. So went to the recruiter, I was like, man, what do you got? What do you have for me?

[B]

Right?

[A]

Said, I've got to do something different. So he was like, we just got this program. They started the 18x3 program. And he's like, here, take a look at this. You know, Went home and watched it, like, yeah, that's what I want to do.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

That's what I want to do. So, you know, again, door shut all over the place. Hey, no, you got your degree. Everything's good. You did what we wanted to do there. You made your friends, you got your you know, the experiences being on a football team, a college football team. But, you know, I looked at, I looked at the military and was like, I'll go get three or four years experience, then I'll have the experience that all these guys are looking for. Then I'll come back and I'll do that. No, buddy, we got, we got big plans for you pals.

[B]

It's always so funny looking back what you thought you were going to do. And of course, the, the, the irony isn't lost on me that a city department said, you know, because your background, you're not good enough to come work for us. But at a national level, the green bra are like, come on, bud.

[A]

We'll take, we'll take, we'll take you, big dog. Let's give it a shot.

[B]

Oh, man. Did you know what the 18x ray program truly was by the time that video was done? Or just like, this looks cool, whatever.

[A]

Oh, man, I'll embarrass myself with this whole thing.

[B]

And then when you're done, tell them what the 18x ray program is for anyone who doesn't know. Exactly.

[A]

Okay. So I went in there just looking for something to do to help, you know, because we had been attacked, man, I thought, you know, and that's what we got sold that, you know, and I wanted to do something about it, you know, I want to be part of the response that, you know, hey, I'm gonna take it back to these guys, right? So I told the guy that, and I had a, like an 18 year army veteran in there that was doing my recruiting. So when I told him, I was like, hey man, I'm 26. I don't, you know, I don't need all the fluff or nutter. Just give me the, give me the real deal here. I want to do some stuff. So he gave me this. And, you know, he didn't even really understand it all. He said, hey, take, you know, take a look at this. I mean, the Green Brays. I knew John Wayne and Rambo, you know, John Rambo and John Wayne were the only two. I mean, Green Brays. I didn't even know what that entailed. No idea. I had no idea. I just knew that, you know, the video they put together, you know, started a fire inside. I said, you know what? That's what I want to do. So, you know, what do I have to do to do that? And they're like, well, as an 18x ray, we're going to give you one shot. You're going to sign this contract and if you fail any portion of this, you know, you know, they didn't call it the Q course. I don't remember what he called. He says this, you know, this pipeline right. You know, you will go to the needs of the army. And I was like, yeah, okay, I'm not going to quit anything. You know, what do I sign?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So.

[B]

And, and so the. Again so the 18x ray program is started. It's been on on and off, but it's, it's unique to where usually you had to be an E4 promotable to go to Special Forces selection.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

And you know, every now and again, and especially because we're on terror, they turned it back on and they're like, hey, you can come right from the street right into Special Forces. No experience needed.

[A]

No experience. When I started though, that the, the one difference that changed was the age. You had to be 21.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know. You know, and they ended up changing that because 18. Yeah, sure did you.

[B]

And it used to be 21 with life experience. And that's the tough part about that because that's subjective. You were the prime candidate for that. You played college football. You, you're at a. The right age for this. Like you are what the 18x ray program. I believe so was built for.

[A]

Yes sir.

[B]

And you know we got to meet a lot of people in our, in our Q course we'll get to that were also exactly what. But the 18x ray program also got a bad name because it lowered to 18 and the life experience was subjective and they let some people in true. Who shouldn't have. But I really do. I hate the. Some of the people that just hate on the 18x ray. I've never met a good X ray. They should have never done that. I'm like, Buddy, I've met 18x rays that run circles around you. It was a good.

[A]

I thought it was good. That was really good.

[B]

I know.

[A]

I think you and I both know that there were some that, you know, most times the non hackers didn't, you know, they didn't, they didn't make it through. There were a few that, you know, they had that no quit button in them that they just never quit. They did. They just turned out not to be good Green Berets and that that happens and that that goes regular army guys that came over to do it as well.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

They were, you know, they were just as big a turds as some of these guys.

[B]

So yeah, for sure.

[A]

You know, I think I think overall, I think it was a good program. I think they did very well. I think it was needed. It was absolutely needed. Absolutely.

[B]

And here in a little bit, we're about to go into two wars. We need a Green Beret, but we need a good Green Beret. And, and that, and that is what was produced during our time.

[A]

I believe so as well.

[B]

We'll, we'll stay on, on track here just for a second. You sign up, you go over what. Any, anything stands out to you about, about basic training. Any, any like big culture shock to you, or you're like, this is just.

[A]

This is just a, Being older than a couple of the drill sergeants was tough.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and I, I don't want, I told my mother, I do my best not to use curse words, but, you know, I'm sitting there listening to a 24 year old, you know, up in my business. Yeah. I mean, just right up in my, in my grizzle. I know. Yeah, yeah. Just, you know, calling me stupid, you know, telling me I was dumb as a dog. Peach pits and just, you know, like saying this random stuff like, right, wait a minute. What? Okay. But, you know, it didn't last long for me.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I was one of those guys that are like, he's one of the older ones, you know.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

He's gonna help keep these other guys in, in check. But nothing really stuck out. I, I, you know, of our, of our class or of our, our platoon there, we had 65, 18x rays.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

65 of us. Fran Piasek.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

One of my dudes. Me and Fran were right there together. DB Who.

[B]

Yeah. Who went on to do great.

[A]

That one. Oh, God, one of the best of the best, man.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

I mean, he, he knew what he wanted to do at that point. He was training to do that at that point.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, when we had time off, DB Was doing good stuff, you know.

[B]

And he went all the way to the top.

[A]

Crazy, crazy good, you know, work. Just working his butt off. So shout out to udb. You're incredible, dude. But other than that, I mean, out of that group, four of us went all the way through together. Four of us out of 65.

[B]

That's so crazy.

[A]

You know, DB was one of the only ones that got, he got moved back a class because we had, you know, we were all moving on to airborne school afterwards or whatever.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I don't know if the class was too big or somehow, but he got held back and had to go behind it, so we lost him. At that point, he had to make complete new friends and all that other stuff. We all had moved ahead. Yeah.

[B]

Oh, that's different.

[A]

Oh, I hated it for him because he was one of the dudes, you know, that's who we wanted with us as, you know, as we went through this thing.

[B]

So we'll call him after this and. And see what that story is.

[A]

We have to.

[B]

It was great. Yeah.

[A]

So, you know, man, nothing crazy out of. Out of basic, man.

[B]

You do that and just to walk through the pipeline then. Then you go to the four week infantry training course is AIT Yeah. Or your AIT Yeah. After that you go to jump school.

[A]

That's it.

[B]

Now this is where this is. And yeah, we won't have to this.

[A]

Next level dumb, but hey, it's necessary.

[B]

Necessary. But this is at least the first time in your military career you're doing something pretty unique. Right. You're from Texas. You shot guns before. Plenty of. You're just going through exercise in the woods getting yelled at. But. But not a lot of people jump out of airplanes in their life and things get a little bit real during. During airborne school, you remember, I mean we weren't using.

[A]

We didn't have the new, you know, the new technology that they were using. Now we're using T10 Delta or T10 Charlie's.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean not much. 360 footers that you just. You're hauling.

[B]

But not much has changed since World War II.

[A]

No, it was brutal.

[B]

The. The whole jump school. And it's a good thing actually. The whole jump school hadn't changed since World War II. But it's part of their lineage and heritage and it's a good thing. But how was. Did you get all five jumps in?

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Oh yeah. You have a bad jump?

[A]

I. I survived them all. I wouldn't say. I mean most of them were bad, but I mean you look like. What were they? They weren't bad. You know, I enjoyed jumped out of place. That was. That was the beginning of the. You look like you of the Halo love life. You know, even though it was sad client at the time.

[B]

You look like you load a parachute a little more the than than other people because of your weight. So you may come down faster.

[A]

Hot foot man. You know when they say, you know, grab your risers and you know, pull. I was getting up to the. You know, I was getting up as far as I could on them things to get them, you know, to crank them down because I was like, I need this need to slow down so well, this.

[B]

This is the point where we actually meet. You get done with airborne school, and it's time to actually. And this has been months and months of. Of a process for you that I'm sure you're not that excited about, because you haven't got to do what you signed up to do yet. And so you finally get through airborne school, and it's the pipeline. It's time to go. It's got time to go to brag.

[A]

That's it.

[B]

Like, it's. The journey has truly begun. So what's the first course you do at brag?

[A]

Oh, is it Sopsy one? I made the mistake of. Of taking a Greyhound bus all the way home to get my truck.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I believe is what I did. Yep. I'm pretty sure that's it. Or my. I can't. You know, I can't remember the exact thing. I think my brother might have brought it to me at some point. Anyways, I have my vehicle.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

At, you know, Sopsy. And when we showed up, they're like, hey, everybody show up at this time? Well, yeah, we showed up early. And guess what? You know, that was our introduction to Sopsy 1. Oh, it's brutal. It was a weekend, man. It was a Saturday afternoon or whatever it was. When we came pulling up, you know, they. They. They scuffed us up some. Some terrible. And I'm like, this can't be it, right? This isn't. What. This isn't sf, is it? You know, it was brutal. They took us out on the field. It was freshly cut, you know, and we were doing log rolls, and then we were having to shove handfuls of grass down each other's shirts and stuff. I mean, it was. It was just, you know, the beginning of, hey, we want to see who wants to be here bad enough.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and there were dudes that didn't come back after that weekend. They're like, nah, man, this ain't for me. I'm like, it's like getting hazed by your older brother, man. What are you talking about? This isn't anything. Not yet.

[B]

So we.

[A]

But yeah, that was.

[B]

I'm sure you remember the introduction to it. We had a guy that was a SEAL before 9 11, got out, came back in.

[A]

I want to call him Jeff. Dardia.

[B]

Well, Jeff. Derek was. Was. Was another one. That's right. We actually had two. And then we had four rangers that had gotten out, and we're coming back in, and we. And guys that were brand new like you and guys didn't have much Military experience like me, just a plethora or just a. A, A. A wide variety of guys. But to hear those older guys or the. The experienced guys that have been in special operations, like, look at each other and look at us and be like, this is the worst thing I've ever done.

[A]

Right.

[B]

No, we haven't got this election yet.

[A]

We hadn't done anything SF related.

[B]

No, it was.

[A]

It was testing our metal, which, you know, I get it now, the time. I was like, what is this? What are we accomplishing here? You're just making everything suck for us. So.

[B]

Well, it was. It was unique because things. Things that. Things have just got real serious. Right. We're at war. Our instructors.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

Our instructors had just got back from war.

[A]

That was. I've got a story about that.

[B]

Yeah. And. And, you know, kind of explain, you know, probably what you think the mentality is of why they were so hard on us.

[A]

Oh, yeah, man.

[B]

You know, Absolutely.

[A]

So. Oh, my cadre, we call him Scary Terry. I'm sure, you know, some guys that are going to watch this will know who I'm speaking of. Well, I ran into him on one of my first deployments, and I just couldn't stop, you know, I wasn't, you know, eyeballing him hard. I just kept, you know, making it obvious that I knew who he was. And, you know, we kind of stopped the briefing. I was talking about the comms plan, and he looked at me and he's like, you. You're one of mine. Weren't you? I was like, you bet I was. You bet I wasn't. You know, and he's like, man, I'm sorry. He's like, let me, you know, and I got to come over and talk to him about it. And he explained. He's like, man, here's the problem. Because they took us out of a rotation, you know, I'd been. Twice. I had just gotten my feet wet, and they pulled me out of the combat rotation and put me back. You know, at Swick. He goes, the last place I wanted to be was training new guys. So guess what? We made it. You know, we made it hard as hell for you guys.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To stick around. He goes, and, you know, the ones that did were the ones we wanted, so it's pretty cool to hear him say something like that.

[B]

Yeah. So. Absolutely.

[A]

Especially downrange when we're about to go get our gun on, so.

[B]

Boy, did they put the screws to us. Oh, boy, they put the screws.

[A]

It was brutal, man.

[B]

And it was brutal and. And it was a blessing because if you were lucky enough to make it through SOP C, they prepared us for the next phase.

[A]

There was. Yeah, there was no question about which was selection. Yeah, there was no. There was no. We basically did. We basically did selection and then we went and did selection.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Without getting scuffed up so much.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

But we were, we were peak performance. You know, it didn't matter how far, you know, the unknown distance. It didn't matter. No, we just knew to go. Just go. It didn't matter if it was with a work, with a work with a ruck or without a ruck. Yeah, we went balls out the whole time. Just because that's what we'd been trained to do. We had learned to do that. That's how we. That's how you made sure there was no discrepancy. Hey man, there's no. Yeah, there's no ifs, ands or buts about this dude. We got to have this guy. So, yeah, we killed it until you and I got together for the end. I don't want to fast forward to that, but gosh, yeah, that's where, you know, this, this friendship solidified itself. So in pain and suffering and in sheer embarrassment. I'll.

[B]

I'll, I'll fast forward us there. Yes. Rocks, runs, land navigation, sleep deprivation. Random. Random. We're crushing it. We're crushing selection. We're at the very end of selection and we get put on what's called a team trek. This is a team of guys have to go like 40 miles, 50 miles over two days and you go to one event ruck there and then you have some problem solving, whatever down pilot.

[A]

Or some stuff like that.

[B]

Take it from there. Well, you know about what a team track is.

[A]

I hate skipping over. I hate skipping over land nav because it was so important.

[B]

Yeah, then don't.

[A]

They made it so important that we knew how to land nav. And there were some. I thought there were some good stories about it. Did. Were you first night pass?

[B]

Yeah, sure was.

[A]

You remember us linking up after night one and you were in the roped off area and I was on the other side and I was like, dude, I was within 100 meters of my last point and all I had to do was go over the crest. But I kept running this direction for the last 45 minutes. I'm running. Just never dawned on me to walk over the hill. I hear the horn blast and I looked that direction as I walked over hill. There he was. I'm like, oh my gosh So I had to do it two nights in a row. And you remember which point I got that next night? I remember I was the guy that got started Bones Fork Creek. And my first point was at the very top of the map. I had to walk all night to get one point. Then my last, my last ones were all close together.

[B]

But yeah, that's a heartbreaker to get too, because it makes you think they're all going to be like that.

[A]

Well, I hadn't had to unfold my map. I had to get to the top. I was like, you got. And my string almost didn't stretch that far going, this can't be right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But ended up walking it anyway. Anyways, that's when I, I got caught on that turkey farm and yeah. What shocked myself. That was always great. But no, that was, that was one of the most important things that I think, you know, is overlooked because, you know, it's just not this, you know, super sexy skill, but it's, it is incredibly important.

[B]

Why?

[A]

Well, if your batteries go out, guess what? You better know how to read a compass in a map, jackass. You're gonna be. You're gonna find yourself in some trouble. You know what I mean? Am I kidding? Yeah, I mean, that's exactly it. Like they always say, batteries will, will fail you at the most inopportune time. You better know what the hell you're doing, especially in the air. You know, when we started flying with our nav boards and stuff, that stuff goes out. That's why you have a compass there, dummy. Yeah, well, don't ask silly questions, you know what I mean?

[B]

Of course, later on it got, got very real, you know, when I was. We'll just say certain areas of the world and our GPS is getting messed, messed with. You better know, you better know.

[A]

You better know how to use that thing. So.

[B]

But it's more than just, it's more than just the basics though, don't you think? It's, it's, it's, it's a problem solving.

[A]

Exercise, dude, is absolutely problem solving. Yeah, absolutely. Because they give you a set of, of, of rules and things to follow. You can't run the roads. You can hand roll. You can handrail them, which they gave you the, the, the keys to the, the, the test. Right there. They gave you the key to the test. Hey, man, look on your map. Follow the roads, handrail them. Don't get within 50, 50 meters of them. Easy enough. You know who taught me that was Fran. Yeah, Fran was like, you know, I was kept Asking him, I was like, how do you get back unscathed? Your pants still intact? You. Your blouse still looks good. You're not wet. You hadn't. You know, you hadn't immersed yourself in anything. I was a straight liner. I draw a straight line, and I don't care if it was the draw monster, if it was a swamp. I just walked right through it. I was just that big lug dude, that. Right, man, I ain't going right. Eleven, right. And Fran was like. He's like, man, I'm not getting my boots wet. And he taught me how to, you know, how he looks at the map. And, I mean, that was a big. That was a big help to me. But, yeah, I think it is about basics, core basics, and knowing what you're doing and problem solving. Absolutely, man. Absolutely huge.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Got to have that skill.

[B]

It is perishable. I. Gosh, you think. You think I give you a map, a protractor, and a compass right now and you could plot grid coordinates and go, absolutely not.

[A]

I mean, I could. I could get really close. I could. I could possibly. You know, I. Yeah, I probably could. I probably could. You know what? You give me that and give me.

[B]

I agree with that.

[A]

Pull that out and I mean, give me 20 minutes.

[B]

I just got to figure out, is it left and then up, is it down and then right? And I'll figure that out. Yeah.

[A]

Yes, absolutely. I get it figured out.

[B]

Absolutely. Guys, if you've ever taken one of my tactical classes, you know I'm a huge fan of white lights. You can't hit what you can't see. And the same goes for the bad guys. Why wouldn't you want to put hundreds, if not thousands of lumens into a bad guy's face? Why would you want him to get a good sight picture back at you? And because of this, we've partnered with Cloud Defensive, the best in the game for both quality and. And pricing on weapons and handheld flashlights. Their products set the standard for excellence and illumination, ensuring that you're always equipped for success. So go to clouddefensive.com and use promo code tier1 to get 15% off your next purchase.

[A]

But so, I mean, I digress back to land now, because that was just a very important part of. Of the selection process, because a lot of guys that didn't make it, you know, you had four shots at it.

[B]

And, you know, it's crazy. They teach you everything you need to know. They teach you everything you need to know, and then they'll give you practice runs and make sure that you can apply it. And then to have people, still. Good dudes, good dudes go out there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Some guys would go out there and never find a single point. And it's just, it really is between the physical aspect of it, the problem solving, the mental aspect of it, it really is a good indicator of. Of who, who they are as a man.

[A]

Yeah, that's it.

[B]

Really.

[A]

That's it.

[B]

All he's got to do is do it long enough and you'll, you know, put them out there in the woods long enough to really separate the men from the boys.

[A]

What you explained about them teaching you everything you need to know, letting you, you know, giving you examples and letting you, you rehearse it. It's going to come into play here in the story we're going to tell about our team week because they taught us everything we needed to know to be successful.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And we imploded worse than any team ever up to that point, apparently. And that's what our cadre told us.

[B]

And that's.

[A]

That was. We didn't know to be embarrassed yet until the second time. He was like, you guys have got to be the worst track team in the history of sf. And we were like, I mean, we can't be that bad. It's Brit and Paco. It's Bucko and Bo. It can't be that bad.

[B]

It's so funny. But between the two of us, we did everything in the military. We did it. We did it all. And people do come to us and ask us questions to some degree, as you should. But I think it's always ironic that you, you don't need to know anything to any school you go to. In fact, it almost doesn't do you any good. It might actually be detrimental.

[A]

Yeah. Don't g to it.

[B]

Every school I've ever been to taught me exactly what I need to know. The only thing I had to do was listen, understand it and apply it.

[A]

That's it.

[B]

And you'll, you'll pass every school in the whole military. That's it. It's not that hard set up to do that.

[A]

It's set up the way it's set up.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, yet it's astonishing.

[A]

Yeah. The failure rate is astonishing. Especially when you've already, you know, especially when you're already Green Berets and you go do schools. That's even, that's even tougher part. I was part of that. I failed a Sodic MTT in Germany and it was. Couldn't believe it, you know, it was, I was, you know, I was destined to pass that become this great sniper. But yeah, Lord didn't see fit for me to pass at that time because I went to soda. I think did it the second time.

[B]

I think the, the ironic thing to. Was always this in. In selection or sopsy or anything difficult is getting through of a really hard day. Like call it like log PT Day. I mean log PT Rifle PT Day. People throwing up in the pit. Pick up, pick up your throw up. Put it in your pocket. You know, it's a horrible day that was brutal. And then at the end, someone suffer through that whole thing and then wait to the very end and be like, I quit. I'm like, well, the, the day's over hard. If you're going to quit, quit during the middle of it or at the beginning. Like it. It. You. You've survived to. To another day. It's just.

[A]

I mean, it was the nighttime where we'd always hear the duffel bag drag across.

[B]

Oh, I forgot, man. I thought about that.

[A]

People who would.

[B]

Wouldn't want to quit in front of you.

[A]

That's it, man. They. They.

[B]

Yeah, so they do wait till everybody got in the hooch and yeah, I'm out. You wake up next.

[A]

Yeah, wait till everybody's got their eyes.

[B]

Where'd that guy go?

[A]

You go, duffel bag drag. That's where he went.

[B]

So we get, we get to the end of selection.

[A]

Yes, sir. God. We start the TR.

[B]

With you, man.

[A]

You know, I wanted to make sure we take. Take our time and walk through this thing because I, I specifically remember when we got that down. Pilot. They had told us how to tie the lashings with the, with the, with the poles. But what did we do? We tied the lashings. The lashings were loose, but instead of it being long ways where we get three people on each side, remember we did it this way, like in a line. So it was. You already had 160 pound rock or whatever, 140. Whatever it was, it was over 100 pounds and stupid heavy rugs, right? And this guy allows us to continue carrying this down. Pilot. And you got some of the bigger guys, you know, all on one shoulder instead of having across your back the way you're supposed to carry, like a squat, right? We did it the wrong way and he allowed us to suffer immensely. And before he finally was like, guys, what the hell are you doing? And this was just the first. This is just the first.

[B]

It was just the first event.

[A]

We hadn't even got far. Car. I don't See, within the first 10 miles or so, we hadn't even got close.

[B]

I don't remember what. It was brutal, exactly what we decided, but I do remember this. We were like, all right, we're every mile we're gonna switch out. Oh, but our plan was so bad. Like, 10 minutes into it, some, you know, the first person caves. Like, I switch me out, and everyone's like, switch us all out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we're like, oh, no. Oh, no, this is bad.

[A]

Oh, it's horrendous. We just started, you know, at that point, we don't know anything about anything. You know, we're trying to problem solve.

[B]

We're trying.

[A]

You know, unfortunately, we had. I remember we had a decent captain at the time. Even, Even with him, though, you know, we just didn't have a good plan. Our plan was never good. The examples that they allowed us to do. I remember tying the lashings. I remember exactly how they told me to tie them. Except when we got out there to do them, I couldn't remember how to do it. Well, I'm like, wait, why, why is it. Why is this not working? Why are these pole sign. And he kept saying, hey, you got this much time. Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. So when he put us under pressure, then we just made terrible decisions even worse.

[B]

Well, everything in the military up to that really is pretty straightforward. When you're in the infantry, a plan comes down to you, and you just execute that plan. And even if that plan is going bad, you just execute that plan harder. I mean, that's a. That's essentially how it's set up. And that's not a hit on the infantry. That's how it should be. That's how large scale wars, you know, gets done. We need someone just to carry out the plan. And the American infantry does it better than anyone in the world.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

But when you get to this, it's just different. And now everything's. Everything is in special operations is this. This is my end goal, this is my intent. You figure out the best way to get there, really separate people.

[A]

That's how you do it. Yeah.

[B]

Really separates people. And we, and, and we showed early on we needed help with that.

[A]

No, absolutely, man. That was, you know, I remember he allowed us to do it, and we ended up suffering through that portion of it, which, you know, it completely deteriorated us for, for the next event, you know, we kept walking, did all that bull corn, you know, did all that. Well, here comes the, the. The coup de gr.

[B]

It's actually a really good Point because as we get to one of, one of the final events, we were, we were set up for failure by ourselves.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

Because what should have been an easy event that got progressively harder. The first event crushed us so hard right off the bat. We had nothing left in the tank. All, all, all, all due to our.

[A]

Our own fault that we're barely making hit times, remember? I mean we were making it by minutes.

[B]

Made the rest of the trek so much harder.

[A]

It's the worst. We were, we were absolutely exhausted going to that final event which was, gosh, I wish it had been the three wheeled jeep that have been great for us.

[B]

More simple.

[A]

Yeah, easy. Could have messed that up too bad. Could we have? Well, it was the telephone poles and the tires.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Get the telephone pole back with the four tires and the pipes and go back to what we were talking about earlier. They told us and trained us how to do it. How do you tie the tires together? How do you use the lashings to get together so they don't flip flop? You know how to, how to construct this contraption that's going to carry the telephone pole and your rucksacks if you're smart and, and get you back with, you know, minimal exertion. Well, we decided, we didn't want to go that route.

[B]

We decided to make a plow.

[A]

We did, we made, you know, I'm from Texas, I know what a plow looks like and we made one a hell of a plow. And it was the worst.

[B]

A telephone.

[A]

It was the hardest damn thing I think we've probably done together for sure. We've done some pretty rough stuff. But this thing, you know, from, from the lashings not being tight enough and the wheels know. So you put two wheels together and you lashing, you know, you lash them together so they roll as one.

[B]

Well, in theory.

[A]

On paper, that's how it looks. What we constructed was just, just a discombobulated apparati that just had no function whatsoever. I mean it literally rolled one rotation of the tires. Before the tires fell, they stopped rotating together and then just turned sideways where you, they wouldn't roll. And we were pulling this thing, you know, eight of us with the, with the beams across with, you know, on our arms like this. Just walking it through this deep, deep North Carolina awful McCall sand. Do you think plowing the road.

[B]

You said eight of us were, were doing that. That's right. You think all eight of us were doing that?

[A]

Of course not. You know that. You remember that? Goodness gracious, man. Brent, I, you know at this one point, we're on one of the back beams, and we got these beams dug into our arms. I mean, it is. It's painful, you know? And we have this little guy to my right. Brent's on the inside. I'm in the middle, and this little guy's to the right. And I'm looking at Brent, I'm like, yo, man, look at this guy. And he's got gaps between the bar in his arms, but he's making his face. Oh, he's just. He's making these sounds like he's exerting his full force. And, man, once I'd sewed. Once I showed.

[B]

So disgusting.

[A]

I said, man, what am I supposed to do? You know? I was like, dude, what is it?

[B]

I just.

[A]

I don't know. I don't remember exactly what I said. I'm sure it wasn't, you know, very kind, but it was. It was enough to let him know, hey, we see you, jackass. You better get on this bar. I'm gonna. I'm gonna binge over, put you in my rucksack. You know, we're gonna be one less jackass on this track.

[B]

He wouldn't do anything anyway.

[A]

He was making hella. Hella good faces, you know, for someone who was struggling.

[B]

But, yeah, he. He was. He was putting on a show.

[A]

Oh, he did.

[B]

He was putting on a show. I mean, he looked. If you. From. From afar, he looked like he was just like the rest of us.

[A]

Had you been doing it, I would have laughed my ass off.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

Had I been doing it, I'd have been laughing at you for allowing me to do that. But because this guy didn't know who he was, and, you know, he wasn't part of it, I was like, no, and that's. You better get back on it. And that's.

[B]

That's where.

[A]

That's where you learned who's who in the zoo, especially in. In that setting. And. And he was definitely not.

[B]

And I'm. I'm not too proud. I think I'll. I'll make fun of myself. I got a lot of things to make fun of because not everyone was pulling their weight. It caused us other guys to literally put 110. It was breaking us.

[A]

People were.

[B]

You know, we were dehydrated. We had to stop because people were cramping up. Like. Like, we. We were. We were falling apart.

[A]

People cramp you up. I mean, there was one I remember specifically, but. Well, if you want to. I refer to you on that. I remember that part, though, specifically. It Was.

[B]

I got, I got no pride here. What, What. Yeah, what happened, happened?

[A]

Well, you know, most people, you know, most people that were there thought that the first female was going through selection. You know, when they heard, when they heard this, this, this unmanly noise, and I don't want to do it into this microphone, but it was like a 13 year old high pitched squeal of a girl who might have seen, you know, her favorite pop star. It literally stopped the entire group because we were not sure if we had just ran over opossum. What did we just do? Who did we hit? Who did we kill? And little did I know, I look over, Brett's grabbing his leg because apparently he's had a first. He's had his. Was it a hamstring or calf? His hamstring balls up on him and he lets out scream. Oh. I said, you should have been immediately kicked out. Right then. Just. It was in fun though, you know, it was. There's no that.

[B]

I'm, I'm not, I'm not doubting the story. Okay, but, but I do feel.

[A]

You can't doubt that.

[B]

I feel like that I did something less than manly, but I do feel like over the years it's. The story's grown a little bit.

[A]

But do you, do you not remember the high. Do you not remember people thought the tornado siren went off? I mean, come on, dude.

[B]

So bad.

[A]

But again, did you quit? Did you, I mean, did you, did you succumb to it? No. You know, you muscled through it, which, you know, I, I do what it was expected at that point because a lot of people were having problems. It wasn't just you, man.

[B]

I remember that.

[A]

You know, you weren't the only one that was cramping.

[B]

No, I do remember that. It, it was one of the hardest cramps of my life. I still remember it because you won't let me forget it.

[A]

I mean, what are friends for, man?

[B]

I, I said put it down. Put it down. And I hobbled one legged over to like the, the little bit of embankment.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And I just sat there and stretched out like, like, and, and now I don't think I was the first to do it. Maybe it doesn't matter, but sucks because this, like now we physically can't move forward. No. And, and so now you feel like, well, we're having a hard enough time with the amount of guys we have and you literally just have to sit there and stretch out while everyone's looking at you and be like, we can't move forward because you're because you're weak.

[A]

Well, you also remember we had the ammo cans and we're like, hey, you know what?

[B]

Oh, the ammo. We're letting God about the ammo cans.

[A]

So that's why there was only eight dudes on the pipes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because we were letting dudes, letting guys take the easy route, just carry ammo cans.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, you know, we finally were like, hey, we'll just throw all our rucksacks on this contraption. We're gonna, we're plowing it anyways. We want to just put all that on there and make it easier on us.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So the people that weren't plowing were, you know, just carrying ammo cans. Very simple, very, very simple task. And that was kind of where we were letting him catch the breath. Some people caught their breath longer than others.

[B]

But hey, this, I, I, I'll. You wouldn't have to remember the name of that cadre, would you? I have no idea.

[A]

I guarantee I'd know him.

[B]

He did.

[A]

He was so disgusted with us.

[B]

He was. And he, and embarrassed and he really, his job is just to assess us and let us do whatever, whatever ridiculousness we're going to do. I think he'd been with us for like 50 hours now we're towards the end and at some point he had had enough, which I'm sure, I don't know if he's probably would have ever done before.

[A]

He's like, you guys are never going to make it by the hit time. You're never going to make it back.

[B]

Right. He goes, come here. You want me to show you how to do it? Just discuss it like.

[A]

Yes, yes.

[B]

And then when he showed us how to do it. Have you ever felt dumber in your life?

[A]

No. Never. Never. Because it was so simple. We all knew how to do it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Just in the, in the circumstance.

[B]

No problem solving abilities.

[A]

No. Couldn't bring it, couldn't bring it back.

[B]

Up to the front man not working. Stop reassess. When he showed us that doesn't work. Stop reassess.

[A]

He was like, guys, like, he had.

[B]

To be so frustrated with us.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He wasn't real kind verbally to us, nor should he have been. He was very honest with us. What'd he say to us?

[A]

We were his worst class ever or we were his worst team ever. Worst team the entire time he's been there, which was almost three years. I mean.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

Which tells me, okay, so he's upset. A he didn't get on the initial, you know, deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan. Now he's. He's disgusted so much he doesn't want any of us to pass because he didn't want to see him as down rage. He doesn't want to deploy those no problem solving capabilities. But no, he did say we were the worst. Gosh, there's up till then. So that was 03.

[B]

There's, gosh, this could be a four hour episode if we just because we had so much fun during the Q course.

[A]

It was great.

[B]

So much fun. Even what we just said was sounded horrible. We had the time of our life doing it.

[A]

That's what I'm saying. That's what solidified the friendship.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We both knew, you know, when everything was down, all, you know, all the chips were on the table. Guess what? I knew Brent was going to pull through. I knew Bo was going to pull through.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

That's what we did. And we knew that about each other. And that's, you know, that's what's again, continue to keep this friendship as close and as tight as it's been for so long.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Even without seeing each other for a decade. You know, talking every now and again, texting, you know, checking in on each other.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But, you know, not seeing each other didn't matter. Picked right up as soon as we saw each other again.

[B]

So you got, you don't have to just anything that jump out of you. You got any phase two stories?

[A]

Let's think here. Phase two, man. I've got a good one about Casey Hildreth because I love, I mean, he's one of my favorite dudes. And I know you've, you know, you've had him on a podcast or two before. You know what solidified him and I is that, you know, we were in a, you know, we were in a phase two team together and we were out there freezing in a foxhole together on security. You know his SIP accent that he has now, he's like, hey, Bo, have you ever heard of the most ferocious animal in the animal kingdom? I was like, yeah, buddy. Most of us heard of a lion. He goes, no, no, no, no, that's not what I'm talking about. I said, well, I don't know what ferocious animal you're speaking of. And this is, you know, he's dead serious. I'm, you know, looking at me with this, this look of, hey, I'm about to tell you something that you don't know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, I'm kind of side eyeing things like, what in the hell is he gonna tell me? He says, in the swamps down south, there is something called a gator snapper. That's exactly how he said it to me. I said, all right, Peter Pan, what are we talking about here? Peter Pan, what are we doing here, man? And he goes on to tell me about this alligator snapping turtle he calls the most ferocious animal in the animal kingdom. And so this became this thing with him and I. Yeah, from that point on, as we always talk about this gator snapper. So we got out, you know, a phase two and go back to the Internet. We got on the line and he showed me one of these things, and I'll be a monkey's uncle. You come close to one of these guys, it is going to be the most ferocious thing you've ever seen. I want to say that he found a. He found a video of this thing. They put some chicken on both sides of a telephone pole, okay? And this thing just took it right in half. So I've always. It's always been the funny joke with me and Casey. I'll tell everybody now that I know the most ferocious animal in the animal kingdom. So that was one of the great things that came out of Phase two.

[B]

It's so crazy, the things you talk about when you're in a security position for hours and out in the middle of the woods with nothing else to talk about with a man that you don't really know yet. Well. Well, you're about to get to know him.

[A]

You know, that's one. That was the beauty of, you know, out there with Casey. So this, you know, it was pretty much the same time. I get the whole spiel about the X rays. He's like, man, what do you think about these X rays, Bo? I'm like, oh, man, they're the worst. So me and him go on this long tirade about the X rays. You always do that.

[B]

You pull people in. Well.

[A]

How did he not know I was in. I was an X ray. How did it look? I'm older, right? I'm older than him. You know, he just thinks I came from the regular army. And that's the way it is, you know, because I didn't meet Casey till we got to. To phase two. And, you know, we're sitting there forever, man. I'm just letting him just dog us out. I mean, he's dogging us out. And I'm laughing like, oh, man, those turds, you know, these little droids, you know?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I don't remember at what point it. It got to.

[B]

But.

[A]

How, you know, I had asked him A question that kind of tipped him off. And he's looked at me. He's like, no. He's like, no, you' one of them.

[B]

He's like, you're one of them.

[A]

I said, yeah. But he goes, no, no. Yeah, man.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So that's, you know, that's another dude that I met during. During, you know, the pipeline that to this day, if I called this guy or if he called me, I would be there in. In two seconds, wouldn't ask any questions like, hey, man, where do we need to bear this thing?

[B]

Just classic case of whose car we take.

[A]

Incredible dude, man. Loving to death. Got to see him a couple other schools after that. You know, I caught him at sniper school at Sodic. What else did we hit? We had something else together post pipeline. But, you know, that was great stuff, you know, And I'll end the pipeline piece before we get to the, you know, the seer piece of this. One of the things that. One of the stories I'll tell that also really nailed down in one evening who Brent is to Beau, you know, as we were in Raleigh that night, and I got jumped. Brent and I had been hanging out that night with Teddy P. Teddy had gone back to the hotel. He went back to the hotel early. You had disappeared, like you do sometimes, which was awesome back then, because that's what.

[B]

I mean. That's.

[A]

That's what we did, man. We just, you know, long story short, I'm walking back by myself. These three guys approach and, you know, said. I said something to them, which I didn't, and end up getting into a tussle. One of them ends up kicking me in the side of the head, knocks me out. And, you know, guys from across the street see it come over, break it up. Well, we text Brent, because back then, that's pretty much all we had was. Was cell phones at text. It wasn't, you know, we didn't have the good ones, I think, you know, the Nokia 901s or 903s. But in this story, what I want you to focus on is I'm sitting outside, you know, I've got these claw marks with. This dude had scratched me because I was dropping bombs on this guy on the ground until, you know, I tried to get up. And as I got up, that dude, you know, boost me from the side, sit on the curb. And we had text Brent probably two, three minutes prior. And you look down this main street, and there's a dude without a shirt on, looks like he's barefooted, hauling ass I mean, he looks crazy. Looks like a crazy person. We don't know who it is at the time, but as he got within, you know, eyeshot of me, I was like, that's Brent. All we did was say, Bo just got jumped, need help, whatever. Where. Whoever he was with, wherever he was at, whatever was going on, I have no idea. He dropped whatever he was doing and hauled ass directly back to where his buddy was in trouble. Said that was it. That was it, man. The day you hit my circle was then. You haven't been out since, man. That's just something that not every person does. And to me, again, that was a monumental point in, in, in our friendship. That's, you know, just solidified how important you are. So again, you showed everybody, especially to me, who Brent is. And, you know, all the funny and nonsense stuff aside, it's. That's. That's beyond serious, man.

[B]

That's. That's what.

[A]

That's next level to me. So, yeah, awesome, awesome stuff, man.

[B]

I remember that. And I remember the pressure I put on myself. You know, I. A haphazardly, you know, see the text message, throw some clothes, and I'm gone. And I run as fast as I can for as hard as I can. And I'm in the probably best shape of my life. Oh, yeah, but you can only do that for so long, you know, I don't run a four minute mile, you know. And so I remember my. My heart like, not. I can't. I have to stop and walk physically. And then I remember stopping and walking and being like, bo needs you, bonita. Like, you can only walk for as little as possible, and it's time to. And it's time to pace yourself to get there. But I couldn't pace myself because I wanted to get there so bad. So it was just.

[A]

I never saw you walk, man.

[B]

Run as fast as you can walk for about five steps. Run as fast as you can for however long it took me to get to you.

[A]

Wasn't long, brother. Wasn't long. That's. That's kind of how you draw it up, you know, Boys like News Team assemble.

[B]

Oh, gosh. We.

[A]

But that was it, man. Those are. Those are the stories that, that, you know, encapsulate the time we spent together in. In what we call the pipeline, you know, before, you know, became who we. Before we became who we were.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, that was terrible. Say it again. That's. I mean, that's who. That's how we became who we were is at that time.

[B]

So for sure it. The Q course is so. Because it's so long and there are some of the most physically demanding things. Some of you know, up for 48 hours, this, that. Then there's the academic times.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[B]

And the academic times are tough like they are. They're collegiate level classes that you were taking on antenna theory, wave propagation, all these crazy things. Yet you also have make time to do it. Do it right.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And party really hard. Free time.

[A]

Free time, you know, that's what you and I worked for. It seemed like.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Hey man, let's get this done.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

4:30 trains leaving.

[B]

That's right. Big boy rules. It's the beginning.

[A]

It was Big Boy rules. Absolutely.

[B]

Do whatever you want on the weekend part. As hard as you want. Don't get in any serious trouble and be prepared to do it all over again Monday.

[A]

All the trouble that you and I created was. Was self inflicted. That you know, it wasn't anything. We never got into trouble. We just, you know, we were trouble basically.

[B]

Yeah. I'm 45.

[A]

No, we, you know, I think you and I talked about this the other day. It was. It was a four day weekend. We're supposed to be back for you know, formation Tuesday morning 06, ready to PT and you and I are driving home from Myrtle Beach. 4:00am you know, like I said, we showed up. No once, you know, missing a sock on one foot. You know, maybe had two different shoes on. Faces bleeding because we were dry shaving in the truck. You know, just wearing nasty old pts. But we made it.

[B]

We.

[A]

That's what we did, man.

[B]

Literally. Straight to formation.

[A]

Straight to formation. Speeding the whole way, the entire way.

[B]

Cuz we left at the last second.

[A]

You couldn't have left one minute later. We would have made it.

[B]

You parked, we ran to formation right at fall in, was it?

[A]

Man.

[B]

And everyone looked at us like what.

[A]

Smell you two Tasmanian devils. What is that been doing? Pay Pay no attention to whatever that is that cloud of bourbon film or Miller Light, whatever it was.

[B]

Gosh.

[A]

Oh man.

[B]

Best I truly some of the best times of my life. And it makes the best friends. Yeah. Of your life.

[A]

We tell these all day long.

[B]

And that was language school. Language school was a blast. And then last part of the last thing we have to do to go to our teams go to war. Which all we wanted to do. We didn't want to party in a weird way.

[A]

No.

[B]

I mean.

[A]

But not at that point.

[B]

We did. Because there's nothing else you could do. Yes sir. But hey, we. I think we would have. We would have worked Seven days a week in the Q course to graduate sooner to go to war.

[A]

No.

[B]

Absolutely agree with that.

[A]

No, but.

[B]

Yeah, not even if I didn't have.

[A]

To wait two weeks to go from, you know, three to four.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, hey, give me the weekend. I'll be ready to go on Monday.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Don't give me two weeks off that. I don't need that.

[B]

So Sears, the last thing we have to do. And. And. And I remember you telling me that, you know, that why Seer was important to you.

[A]

Very important.

[B]

Why important?

[A]

So my grandfather and his brother, they were in the 143rd Texas Infantry, Company M when World War II. They both got captured in Italy, marched up into Germany and were both POWs for, you know, his younger brother, I think it was 20 months is what's on record. And my grandfather's was 22, almost 23 months. So there was a lot of meaning there. I mean, that man was one of the reasons that I ended up looking into the military. Nobody knew that he had pulled me aside twice in my life and said, darren, I see in you what it takes to be a soldier. That's what you should join the Army. It was at my high school graduation. It's when the first time he told me. The second time was my college graduation. The third time we discussed it was the last time I spoke to him. He fixed my SUV so I could drive out to Virginia for a job, and he died a couple weeks later on the operating table. But it just. I have so much. You know, I don't want to call it regret, but I wish I had been more inquisitive about things that he experienced. And it didn't make sense until I got out of there and was like, man, I have got eight of his handwritten POW letters at my house.

[B]

That's crazy.

[A]

No, it's. It's. It's incredible. I mean, I read them probably, gosh, every two, three months. Maybe I'll just pull one out just to read it. Just because, man, that's. I mean, that's. That's true life history, you know, and that's. That's, you know, when.

[B]

American history.

[A]

No, it's great.

[B]

Not just family history. That's American history.

[A]

I have reached out to the POW Museum and in Tampa.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they would. They're like, hey, you know, if your nephews don't want to. To remain in. In custody of them, we will put them on display, you know, at our museum. So I'll probably end up doing that at some point, but I circle Back to my dad and his brother, both Texas National Guard, Airborne troops. You know, my mom's dad was in the Navy. My mom's brother, my. My Uncle Wayne. Big influence. My big hero of my life. Yeah. Two deployments to Vietnam. Then you have my grandfather and his brother. And, you know, then you have his great grandparents, his great grandfathers who were in the Civil War. I mean, just. I had this all the way through my life. He saw it, and I never saw it in myself until he's gone. 9, 11 happens, and it's like, okay, okay, Lord, I see. I finally see what you're saying. I'm, you know, little slow, you know. You know, thanks for making it abundantly clear now that, you know, this is the direction I need to go. So that's kind of, you know, I know we were talking about Sear, but the. The. The reasoning behind me joining solely lies on conversations that stuck in my head from. From my grandfather, who was a, you know, POW during World War II.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So, yeah, it was a. The experience I think we had was. Was. Was different. I remember, you know, some of the. The intimate portions of it that were terrible for us, but, you know, in. In contrast to what he endured, it's. It's nothing. It's absolutely nothing.

[B]

He endured it for real.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, they made it as realistic as possible. They did a great job of that. But you can never.

[A]

No man duplicate it.

[B]

No.

[A]

Not like that. So, yeah, thanks for letting. Let me circle back to that. That was a big reason. I mean, that's the ultimate reason, you know, that I decided to move that direction and, you know, without asking. I didn't ask my dad, my brother, my mother just did it. You know, similar story is. Yeah, I knew what needed to be done, and I was like, you know, it's funny.

[B]

You can fight something again. You can fight something for a long time, but. And if you're fighting it to some degree, maybe it's because you're still not ready for it. But it is. It is really unique that. That. Just that clarifying moment that when you know, you know, and now. And now there's no fighting. It's. It's. It's. It's time to go. And it usually. Usually seems the answer is so clear, and then it makes you wonder, well, why was I fighting this the whole time? But it's true. Because. Because it wasn't God's time yet.

[A]

Yeah, that's right. Right. It's timing. It's always perfect. Not ours.

[B]

We got our Green Berets and We.

[A]

Got pictures, Drew, pull those pictures up. Don't show anybody that.

[B]

We got pictures of me and you.

[A]

Oh, it's great.

[B]

At our grand gray.

[A]

Absolutely. Graduation dawning ceremony.

[B]

Looking. Looking young, innocent, naive, proud, all scared. All those are true.

[A]

Just. I mean, almost yellow, man. Just so, so young.

[B]

It's crazy. And. And we were about to get what we wanted, which is we were like a dog chasing a car. We're about to get what we wanted. And it didn't take you long. You. You got assigned a tenth group.

[A]

That's right. Tell you how that worked. Jamie Vanoy. You remember Jamie V. I do remember Jamie V. Supposed to link up with him here. Excuse me. In November, he's gonna be in Austin. I'm gonna shoot down and see him. He had 110, and, you know, he had just had, I think, his second daughter. He didn't want to go. He's like, bo, is there any chance. I was like, yeah, man, if you can get. If you can change it for me, I'll go to 110.

[B]

So that's how. I didn't know that's why you went to 110.

[A]

Jamie Vanoy had a friend at whatever level sergeant major somewhere that was able to switch our assignments. So that's how I got 110. And I did not know that.

[B]

And so. And so tell them. So tell them about 110, 210, 310, and.

[A]

Okay, so 110 is the board deployed. It's the Ford deployed battalion for 10 special forces group. Second and third were, you know, back at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs.

[B]

Right.

[A]

At fourth. Fourth battalion Ford deployed at Stgart, Germany.

[B]

Y. Okay.

[A]

Panzer concern the great. Loved it. Incredible.

[B]

Of course, the GWAT changed a lot of things, but what's 10? What's 10th Group's traditional mission? Heyo mission. What. Why the injury? What are we?

[A]

Eastern Europe and the stands. I mean. But when I got there, I mean, I went to Bosnia a couple times. We finished out some stuff out there.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But, I mean, my next deployment was Nigeria. Was never on my list of 10th group AO, but things were always evolving the entire time I was at. At 110.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, I got called back early from Niger because we were supposed to get into an Iraq rotation.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Within the train up for that, our depth orders came back, and it's Afghanistan.

[B]

All right. Yeah.

[A]

So wars. War. Hey, man, that's pretty much it, you.

[B]

Know, but that being said, Iraq at the time was the sexier war. That's a weird way to describe it, but It's.

[A]

But we know five. So, I mean, that was early on. That was, you know, hot potatoes. But I got all I wanted the amount of times I went. So I got all I wanted. But at the time, you know, I just. I didn't know what I didn't know, you know, that first. That first trip to Afghanistan, you know, I had come out of the team, had deployed without me. I was coming out of sniper school, and I mean, I literally flew into Germany, grabbed my gear, what I needed, you know, with me, and flew into country and I mean, day three, we're taking a route, you know, that hadn't been open in two years just because it cut so much time off. But, you know, I guess some Frenchies got scarfed up and a couple dudes got beheaded and whatnot. So they're like, hey, route, let's say Georgia, it's closed. We're not messing with it. Well, our team sergeant with the. The Charlie Company guy, and I say, guy, that's a terrible way to say this. I. I don't like using their names. But, yeah, you know, this dude was one of the best. The best. Dan, I'll call him. And Ted was my team sergeant who became one of the highest ranking NCOs that you can get. I mean, he was the Command Sergeant Major of the 1st Special Forces Regiment, and that's what my team sergeant turned into. So these two guys made a decision, hey, we're not driving five hours around this thing. We're driving through it. So day three on country. We're driving down the trail, man. We got. We got shellacked. And I'm driving the first truck. So guess what? When. When the ambush starts, I'm trying to figure out what the hell's happening. I'm driving and I'm. I'm hearing those RPGs across the hood underneath, you know, into the tire. It was like, you know, and then the. The side of the mountain was right there on the side of the. The road, and it's blowing up. So all the guys behind us, they're slow rolling it, thinking that we're down, right? Well, I just pulled the Jake. You know, it's not the Jake brake on the inside. It's the Jake gas pedal. You pull, and it just keeps a consistent movement, right? So I could, you know, try to, you know, get my feet squared, squared away and make sure everybody was good in the truck. And that was the day I realized, you know, and I don't want to say be careful what you wish for. You're Going to get it. You just, you don't know when, but you better be prepared. So you need to train. That's when everything switched for me, was I'm going to be the most prepared soldier I can be every time I step out of the hooch or walk this gate. Because you'd never know when this is going to be one that, I mean, it didn't end up ending, you know, badly for any of us. Took a little damage to the truck, not a big deal, but it was, it was just super slow mo like you see in the movies for me. You know, the, the, the tree limbs were breaking out of the little orchard, and I'm like, what the hell? You know, then my gunner sitting there just letting it rip.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, then, you know, the guy we talked about earlier, Gabe, he's back there letting it rip. You know, we just got this, you know, this was the first time that some, some meat eaters had come back down this thing and said, hey, you know, whatever you got, we got something better. You know, Ended up doing some, some bda after we, we got through the, the ambush. There was seven or eight, you know, dead Tom back there. But that's when I knew, man, that was day one, I knew and. Or day three, and it was, okay, man, here we go. I'm going to be ready for this.

[B]

Two things about that. One, I hate when something bad happens in an area and they go, okay, off limits. That's great.

[A]

That's a win for them.

[B]

That's right. You can't, you can't secede territory to the bad guys. That means they've won. That's right. That's. In fact, that's where we need to focus all of our resources that you know as well as I do how hard it is sometimes we go looking for bad guys and then we find them. Someone above wants to go, nah, let's, oh, yeah, look for them somewhere else. Yeah, like, that's, that's crazy to me. So I love, I love, already love the mentality of your team. Like, no, no, no surprise there. But the reality of, of combat, which I think is this. When we're in the Q course and we're in training, in our minds, the only thing you ever think about is coming out on top, like getting hurt, losing, like, that's, that's not an option. Just, just the glory of combat and the, and, and coming out on top is the only option in your mind. And then it happens for real. And you realize, yeah, well, the enemy gets a vote too. Yeah.

[A]

And unfortunately, they do.

[B]

And of course the good guys, they got their own variable now. Accept that and continue to move forward. But we've all seen guys who have seen, who have come to that realization and have decided, no, maybe this isn't for me. Doesn't mean they quit. They should, but they quit. They quit in combat. They quit pressing the enemy.

[A]

You know, I'm going to leave this story for us post podcast. But you know, we can move forward into the, you know, where we settle down. So what we were doing, we were driving around looking for places to affect, hey, we're going to move somewhere. Because we were up in Kabul without a home, like, hey, let's go find somewhere we can co locate with. So that's when we ended up getting into the tagob with some of the. Listen, man, I'm going to take a few seconds to boast on these guys from the 82nd Corollerc. They were already embedded down there. They had set up a place called Pathfinder, which after we got there and started laying the scanion, we changed the name to badgefinder. Yeah, I hope, I hope those guys like that because that's exactly what happened. But these 80 second core alerts guys, you're talking P2s 3s specialists.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Then you had a handful of E5s and 6s. Then you had one, you know, E7 that was just a stud. Then you had a first sergeant or two and a commander. And I don't know if I can use this guy's name. I get really, you know, hesitant to. But at the time, this was almost 20 years ago, so he was at the time, Captain Hollis and the scoot. This guy had no. He had no business being there. He should have been with us on our side of the fence. I mean, not that our captain was bad, but this guy, you know, he wasn't afraid to put his initials out there and let's get after it. Yeah, and it was. It was a thing of beauty. I mean, these guys came and I don't want to say rescued us, but anytime we call, man, those guys were there in a heartbeat and they were getting their gun on.

[B]

Love it.

[A]

Oh man, it was incredible. So all you 82nd Core Lurs guys that were on that trip, 078.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We. We still talk about what you guys did for us, so I'll be forever grateful for that.

[B]

I love that you said that because you're incredible. There's. There's some people out there that want to. It seems like they want to start a fight that just isn't there this, this Special Forces versus conventional, like, like we look down on them and, you know, and, and, and they don't like us because we're, you know, we talk about we're glory seekers and they're like, hey, like, you weren't the only ones in combat, buddy. Which, which, which. But the truth is most of us, not you, you're an 18x ray. We came from the conventional army. We respect it. It's what they gave us in the conventional army helped us out so much, and it's to some degree, just a different, just a different role in combat. And we absolutely respect them and what they can bring to the fight.

[A]

I always found was counterproductive to treat people less than you. How I went at it. You know, the cool things that I would do is, you know, I look back on him was like, you know, you know, call me Beau, don't call me Sergeant. Don't need that bull crap. But they had, they had to keep their bearings about them. And I was like, oh, man, don't do that. Well, I should have been the one that said, you know, hey, that's cool, you know, call me what you will, you know, if it's going to help him stay in line. Because if, you know, he goes back to the, to the chow hall and he starts calling people by their first name, he's gonna get scuffed up, right? So. Oh, these guys, man, just the amount of. Of experience they had for some, you know, you know, for guys to call them regular army guys, like, yeah, they've got far more experience than you, and you're an SF dude, so, you know, shut your pie hole. You know, you may want to ask them some, some questions about this place because guess what? They've been here and they've done that. So, yeah, you know, maybe. Maybe we. We treat everybody with a little bit more respect, a little more kindness. You know, I just found that in the military world. Yeah, that's. That's what gets things done a little better than being. Being that a hole that comes in and just obnoxious and dumb like, man, right? Do you know you watch too many movies? Get out of here. You know, you're not right. You're not drill structure Hartman. Get out of here. Goon.

[B]

And we're our best recruiters and we know who we want to come work with us. So that's. Why would, why would you have these guys with a lot of experience who clearly are wired right, if you want to, you know, say it that. And if you jerks to them why would they be like, I never want to be with, I never want to be that guy. Why would they, why would they ever want to be a green?

[A]

You nailed it. We had, we had several guys from that trip, from that unit come to our side. Love it because of it, you know, and I'm, I've talked to several of them. You know, still great dudes, just, you know, got into SF and same things, man. You know, it was because of the trip that they got to do with us. You know, we didn't treat them terribly. We shared our. So my mom would send us all kinds of care packages. We had a half of our hoops that was just full of stuff. Yeah, you know, these guys weren't getting anything. I'd run those guys through there like, get what you want, man. Take what you want, get out of here. You know, this is great, you know, but again that's, I, I think it, you know, they deserve far more than the two minutes we just gave them. But yeah, you know, they're incredible dudes and yeah. Treat people with, with the same amount of respect that you, you expect. You know, I think there's something in the Bible about that.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

So let's fast forward man, to, to you know, one of the bad days. You know, it's one of the, the good guys. You know, we lost one of the good guys. We had done something called Commando Fury 1. We linked up with third group. That's when I ran into Scary Terry and man, we, we started at the north end of the tagob and man, we wish we just drove south I don't know, 20 something clicks and just destroyed. Dudes gotten ticks all day just you know, taking them out, you know, left and right as long as we could. Nobody gets hurt, no one gets injured. A couple of a, a may have got, you know, you know, scuffed up a little but you know, the third group got to come in with some, some pie pitting commandos. Yep. No, that's not, that's not who we inherited. Yeah, we inherited a handful of guys that, you know, could, could hold their own. But it wasn't everyone. You know, some of these guys were scared to death. You know, we got in a gun fighting. Yeah, they're hiding behind the vehicle, you know, you know, looking around like what do I do? You know. But these guys, these commandos come in and they're legit. These guys were all over it. So again, you know, three days down, we turned around to come back and I mean we're in a 29 vehicle convoy the front of the convoy was already breaking gate before we had made that turn and got ambushed. So these guys waited for the very last vehicle, which was Pat's vehicle, and we came to a horseshoe. And as they got into the horseshoe, you know, I'm going to tell this story the way I remember it now, if it's, you know, chronologically off by minutes or something, okay. But my gunner, Destin, he thought he saw somebody on this building. So what he thought he saw was head come up, head go back down.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And he's focused on it. And about two seconds later, an RPG got. Got off. Nobody knew what had happened because we were turning the corner, going straight, and they didn't make the corner. And they went this way through a field. So when we stopped to go find them, they're not behind us. Took us a bit to find them. It's an absolute no, no. As a driver, put the thing in park, grab my gun, dismounted, told the guy in the backseat, get in the front. You know, you drive this where it needs to go. And then me and. Let's see who was there. Adam. Adam Jennings. Jdam, as I call him, and I linked up, and then we run into our team sergeant, Ted, who's in. In bad shape, and Tom, who was the gunner at the time. We don't see Pat. They're telling us where this thing is, and we're like, that can't be right. Be a monkey's uncle.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

It was about 50 more meters across this. This field, you call it like, you know, a farmer's field, but you know how they have those divots that help run water? Well, this thing made it over those things and. And hit on the embankment, get there and pull Pat out, and he's obviously in distress. He's. He's unconscious, Adam. And I'm working. We're in a gunfight, but kind of want to encapsulate, you know, everything. So when I get back to the truck, at one point, I'm looking at Tommy's injuries. He just took shrapnel from his waist down. So the RPG comes in over the passenger side door. You know that small piece of thin metal.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Boom, right through it. It's the middle console. So Ted takes the brunt of that in his face. His nose is laid over on his cheek. Beer.

[B]

Beer.

[A]

Just pouring blood. Pat is out there being worked on. You know, Ted's asking me to look at his face, you know, at this point, because he had wandered back to where Pat was. And I swung my gun with the Light on up by his face. And I didn't recognize him as a human. The way his eye was so swollen, I could barely see the slit. I'm in the. I'm in the truck trying to find all the sensitive items because I'm gonna have to Z this thing and, you know, we're gonna thermite it. And I find his nods, cup up full of blood. And I'm thinking, man, maybe his eyeball's in there. Yeah. You know, so I, you know, did a little. A little finger job in there, you know, obviously wasn't there, thank God. But just the man, the absolute mess that happened to his face and arms and chest and everything from. From that initial explosion was insane. So you'd have thought he was the one that was probably going to be in dire straits. Pat, we can't find anything on him. We can't find anything. We roll him over, we cut us, you know, we cut all this stuff off. And when they rolled him the second time, you heard a little bit of gurgling like he had some blood in his lungs or something. And that's when we saw that little bitty cut behind his shoulder blade. So what ends up happening is this little piece of fragmented radio shoots behind his shoulder blade right through, clips his aorta and comes out, you know, right over here, and he bleeds to death.

[B]

There's nothing you can do about it.

[A]

Not a thing. If we would have had a heart surgeon on the, you know, on the objective with us, you know, we don't know that he could have saved him, but, you know, for a young team, we're all young E6s. It's our first actual combat deployment. You know, most of us are Sixes. Destin was a seven, Ted, obviously an eight. But none of us had been to combat. None of us had experienced that. We had experienced a lot of. A lot of gunfights where we kicked the crap out of some dudes, you know. Yeah, this one was. This one was backwards. You know, we ended up losing Pat. Just, you know, there was. The next three days were devastating, man. You know, you had guys contemplating whether they wanted to be team guys any longer. I mean, there was just, you know, I think that's normal. I think you. You think about, hey, this has now become absolutely real. It be. It is, it is. It has hit us closer than it's ever going to hit us, right? And now we have to make a decision. You know, about 24 hours later, you know, my questioning of things turned to, you got here by not quitting. Jackass. What are you going to do? You're going to re up while you're here, and you're going to stay in the fight and you're going to continue doing what God put you on this earth to do. So I made the decision there, and I think several other guys did, too. But I know it was hard. It was hard for a lot of us. You know, I think some other guys, you know, decided maybe this isn't for me. Maybe, you know, coming out here and maybe I don't want to put my family through this because, you know, I don't know. And, you know, I've been on that side of the receiving end of someone coming to my door and telling me that a loved one has. Has been killed in action. I. I can't imagine the devastation that happens when that happens.

[B]

But as long as, as long as they do what they're supposed to do during, during that day and if they want to come back home and make that decision, I'm fine with it. And I. And in fact, I encourage it because I, I want to know everyone to my left and right is. Is bought in. Yeah.

[A]

No, no.

[B]

Yeah. So there's actually no shame. I, I really. I've seen that happen before as well, and I've never thought less of those people unless they quit on the objective.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Well, that's. Different story. But, but hey, that's. It's just the re. It's. It's the reality award. You don't know it until, until it happens to you.

[A]

Absolutely. Absolutely. The rebound portion of that was tough, man, because we lost our team sergeant, we lost Pat, we lost one of, you know, our senior Charlie. I say senior. So Tom was an East E6 like Joe, but I think Tom had more time in the military. So that kind of. Not that we ever use junior, senior type stuff. Not, you know, I think that's one of the, the dumb things that, you know, that was, you know, something we had to navigate at times. I wanted to call my junior my Junior, you know, unless I was messing with him. You know, it wasn't like, right. Everywhere we go, you're, you know, you're. This is silly.

[B]

Yeah. Junior, that's more messing with them, too.

[A]

But now Tommy's gone, team sergeant's gone, and Pat's, you know, Pat's dead. So the rest of the trip was.

[B]

Was, you know, brings you down. You kind of brings down guys to a skeleton crew.

[A]

Oh, man. Well, they, they, they plus it back up. Oh, yeah, okay. They sent us, they sent us some, some Actually, some. Some decent pipe hitters, man. To be honest with you. They sent us some good pipe hitters. You know, Chris came or Christopher. Let's see, we were. We replaced Pat with a, you know, guy. That's one of my. Still this day, dear friends, who I went into business with at one point, Drew White. Funny story about that guy. He shows up just out of Ranger school. He's tiny, just looks. I'm like, what is this guy doing here? You know? But new guy came from Ranger school. Didn't ask him about that growing up, his dad and General Repass were tight roommates in college. So Drew grew up going on father son camping trips with General Repass. Right, right. So funny story. Let's fast forward to we tell Drew, hey, man, shut up. Don't say a word. Just, you know, listen to Destin, what Destin tells you to do, that's it. That's all you do. So we're about to be in formation. Guess who's coming to see us. Shouldn't rebuild because we don't let Drew talk. We don't know this, so we're like, stay out of sight. Don't say anything. Great story, man.

[B]

Great story.

[A]

So there we are all standing tall, waiting for the man, you know, and he's asking for Drew. We're all like, who the hell is Drew? So Drew's duffel bag comes flying out, and all I see is D W H I T. So I'm calling him Dwight. It was D dot White. I'm calling him Dwight, calling him Dwight. And I'm, you know, we're looking around for a Drew, right? And I think everybody else probably knew by that time, right? Well, here comes Drew out of the bathroom, hair a mess, he's got his fleece jacket on, Ranger panties, flip flops.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because he just went to the restroom. General Repass looks over and it's like, hey, Drew. Drew goes, oh, hey. Yeah, it's a General Repass.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We're all sitting there going, you gotta be kidding me. So after they do their hugs and handshakes and all their cool guy stuff, we're sitting there going. And I walked over to him, I said, dude, you gotta tell us that.

[B]

You can't.

[A]

You gotta. You gotta send a pigeon. You gotta send us a note. I don't care. A tattoo, something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, it's been one of the best stories that me and him get to.

[B]

Share every time we get email worthy.

[A]

If you.

[B]

If you feel like you really can't.

[A]

Talk, I mean, buddy, write it on a target I don't care. But that was one of those cool times that, you know, kind of solidified Drew and I's relationship out of that. But we had the end of the trip, man. I ended up going home early. I went to, I went to free fall school. So I ended up leaving in February, and I re linked up with everybody back in Stuttgart after that.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Got to go home and see Pat's family and stuff and discuss everything that went down. And, you know, I don't make this a turn it negative, but I think the army has a way of, of explaining things to parents and spouses. Not deceitfully, but not getting the story correct. It is incumbent upon you to get this thing absolutely correct. So when you tell them, they understand what happened. So when I go there to tell them, you know, they asked me what happened, and I'm like, you know, what did they tell you? And I listened to the story that they told. I'm like, oh, man, now I'm going to be the bad guy because I have to explain that. No, unfortunately, that's not exactly how it went down. Did that event happen? Yes, but not when, not when he was, when he was killed. That is not how it went down. He said he did not get to fight back. He was driving the vehicle and he didn't get to get back up in the turret and return fire and smoke dudes. But that was the story that was relayed to them. They took a couple of stories. Basically, the way that they explained it to me was that, you know, hey, here's what they said happened. And it, the way I took it was okay. They took an event here, an event here, an event here, and they put it together to make it really, it was a really nice story, what they told him, but it wasn't how he passed, unfortunately. I think the army got into a, a bad habit of telling bad stories.

[B]

To parents when we owe him the truth.

[A]

No, that's absolutely, that was.

[B]

No matter how good or bad, they just want the truth.

[A]

You do understand he died a hero. No matter what you say is going to make it any better or worse, he died a hero. So don't, you know, don't muck it up.

[B]

Right.

[A]

With, with a lie.

[B]

Right. Because now they're gonna have to live through it the, the death twice. Yes, man. What they thought was the death the first time, and now they have to relive the death with new information and.

[A]

You know, yeah, tough man. Tough stuff. I, I, you know, a lot of things about, you know, military I loved and there Were a lot that I didn't. Yeah, that's. That's one of them, you know, so.

[B]

It was good that. I remember that. I don't remember why I was at Bragg at the time, but I got to. We got to meet up at. At Anthony's house because he had you guys over.

[A]

That's right. That's right.

[B]

Yes, sir. Met you over there. Got to. Got to see you. Yeah. During that time, that. That meant a lot to me to be able to at least see you and be with you.

[A]

During that was a tough one.

[B]

During that. Yeah, I. It was tough. It was tough watching your team, to be honest, because you know what a team is supposed to act like and look like in the brotherhood.

[A]

Yeah, man.

[B]

And teams get together and they just have fun, generally speaking. And that the team was. Team was going through a lot.

[A]

I was a tough one. It was. It was a brutal. It was a brutal time. You know, timeline there, you know, re. You know, relinked up with everybody. After I got back from HALO school, we're getting back into training up for the next rotation. This is where army gets me for the first time. Good.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

New sergeant major comes in. I'm not going to use his name. I will not say his name. They send me to Carson for broken axle.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

At the time. Whatever the hell it was. While I'm there, he pulls all the senior dudes off of all the teams that are about to deploy and makes a. A badass B team is what he did. So he took me off of two one. He took Adam Jdham off of two one. He takes two of the best guys off of two three, Josh and Adam.

[B]

That's crazy.

[A]

I'm sorry, Josh and Robin. Sorry, Josh and Robin. And then Timmy P. So funny story. We're sitting there looking at all of the odas and, you know, all the capabilities each of them have. So you go through two one, now that they don't have anybody. They don't have any schools, barely 222-324-2526. And they get to the B team and we are schooled out. And the team sergeant's like, whose bright idea was this? Well, the B team. The B team sergeant had a bad trip the first time and didn't get a lot of comments because he had new guys that couldn't help. So he thought, hey, why don't I get some guys who know what's going on?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Well, we ended up becoming the fighting B team, the combat B team. You know, it was a long deployment. We were the B team. We, you know, we were, yeah, you.

[B]

Want to put an over correction, Just an over correction.

[A]

But, you know, I went and worked for a guy that I didn't mind. Tom was a good dude. It made his life a lot easier. I mean, he didn't have to go with us on many things. We were, you know, we were doing things on our own, that kind of thing. We still got to go help out, do some operations with some folks. But where it got me was I was told when I got back from that school, I would go back to 2:1 because I extended a year to stay on 2:1 and go back down range and get, get some. Get my gun on again, you know, and, and, you know, try to make things right in my mind. But while I'm there, that'll. That happened. And I called Ted and I was like, ted, you know, the only reason I extended was, you know, because I was promised by the sergeant major that I would, I'd stay on two 1. And then after that, you know, I'd come back to Carson. Ted calls over there, and the guy was like, nah, man, all bets are off. What's happened's happened. So then he said, I'll. I'll make it easy for you, Bo. And this new sergeant major says, I'll give you any school you want at the end of the trip. I said, okay, what do you think I got at the end of the trip?

[B]

Whatever you wanted.

[A]

Nothing. Nothing. Because you know what he said at that point?

[B]

What's that?

[A]

If I give you the school, you're gonna owe 1 10, two more years. I said, okay. So he's one of the guys on the list of people are gonna get punched in the nose, you know, like, you know, and it's, it's like you and I talked about, you know, why.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, why. I don't have to say anything.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Yeah, you did absolutely the opposite thing of what anybody in a leadership position has taught me to this point. And he didn't care about it. He didn't care. Just, you know, that it's, it's things like that, that, that trickle up into the leadership positions that just. It's cancerous for, for sf, man. It is cancerous. I wish it hadn't happened, but it did. And that's, you know, long story short, that the best thing happened to me on that trip, good friend of mine from, from my early days on two one, Andy Mayer, is doing a rotation to find people to come work for the dogs. Worked for, on the canine team, and I had one of two options after that trip. Go stand up 4th Battalion. No, thanks. Or go to SWIC because I had enough deployments in time, you know, 36 months at 110.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Well, not doing that one either, you know, and thank God. Like. Like, it always works out. The Lord says, you know, I've got it. I've got these doors that I'm going to close for you. Here's one that's opening.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Go be a dog handler. I'll do it. So totally my sick. Yeah, man. When do I show up? Let me know. That was the introduction to me and the dean of mean. It's the best thing in the world, bro. Best thing in the world. And the way that it happened is, you know, I'd like to. If we could stop here so I can gather myself because it's kind of hard to talk about the.

[B]

Take as much time as you need.

[A]

The hard part, Brent, is at the time, I didn't understand because I walked into the kennel when I got to 10th Maine, and there was a dog, a spare dog sitting there that nobody wanted. He said he had a bugaboo with floors. I said, okay. So, you know, I ended up taking the dog that nobody wanted. At the time. I didn't know what it would mean to me at this point. You know what I mean? You know, it's.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I used to think, you know, crying was weakness, but it's not. It just meant I loved heavily.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I love that dog, man, more than, you know. And just the fact that the Lord.

[B]

Said.

[A]

I'm gonna allow these guys not to see the potential in this dog for Darren to get there and take him. Meant a lot, man. A lot. You know, I didn't see it. Like I said, man, I never see it at the time, you know, Never saw it, you know, not until later on in the. In the progression of our. Our time together.

[B]

But you're with that dog for years, weren't you?

[A]

The decade, I think for a decade, man.

[B]

And as. As a green beanie, you were. You had that dog three years.

[A]

I had him for three years. We. We did a.

[B]

Did everything together. Yeah.

[A]

I mean, we did one of the most incredible deployments, you know, with. With, you know, the unit.

[B]

If you have combat rotations. You jumped out of an airplane.

[A]

You jumped out of an airplane together.

[B]

I mean, at what. What missile strapped to your chest?

[A]

That was one of the good ones.

[B]

And he didn't care, did he? He was with dad. He didn't care.

[A]

Didn't care. You Know that again, CS back to. Nobody wanted him. Like, yeah, if you'd gone out and spent two minutes and this is what happened, one of the handlers said, hey, we'll just get you working with the spare. I said, what's a spare's name? You know, Dino. Okay. So I took Dino out in the yard, started doing OB with him. It was five, 10 minutes. I walked inside. That's my dog. Said, I don't need a spare dog. I said, that's my dog. Me and him, that's. We're gonna. We're gonna run this. We're gonna run this thing.

[B]

You could change that moniker right now.

[A]

That was the name of it. That was the end of it. The name of the game then was, we're going to become the best, and I'm going to show everybody you're not spare. You weren't. You didn't have a bugaboo. Which he did. I mean, I finally saw it after a long time of them telling me. So what happened was he went from one surface to another that he was unfamiliar with. So he'd get down about an inch off the ground. Just kind of low crawl.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Said he just. He's just making sure he knows what he's doing. That's all. You know, making sure he's got sure, sure footing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, but I saw it twice, you know, once when he got on a C17, he got hurt in Afghanistan, and we had to fly out and getting on the back of it, I guess he put his foot on a couple of pieces of sandpaper and he.

[B]

Was like.

[A]

Did the dino low crawl. But it wasn't ever in a. At a point where, you know he's gonna get anybody hurt. You know, I just think that again, you know, Lord allowed all them to see a dog that wasn't worth their time or, you know, didn't have what they thought it took, but turns out became one of the best of the best.

[B]

So would it.

[A]

It's best time ever.

[B]

Would it be a. Would it be an accurate statement to say that at the beginning it would look like you saved that dog. He was a spare and you saved him from being a spare. And at the end that. That dog saved you?

[A]

Oh, Brent.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

It's perfect way to say it. Perfect way to look at it. The things that he helped me deal with, you know, not just during deployments, but after, you know, I took him home after, when he got hurt in 20, 20, 12, could never figure out why, couldn't figure out what happened. He just had a A limp that, you know, we always said, hey, when, when a dog's, you know, when a dog's life has gone from this level to this, that's it, that's it. We're not, we don't mess around at that point. Either retire them or you send them to one of these, you know, sheriff's departments or, or you know, turn them into a single purpose dog, right. For a police department. Because they're NPCs, we're multi purpose canines. We do everything, they do everything. Tracking, bomb sniffing, you name it. Everything you can think of, man. Biting. All of it. You know that they encompass all of it. So this wasn't just a, a one trick pony, this was an all trick, you know, up and including jumping out of planes, fast roping into combat, things like that.

[B]

Yeah, dogs done more stuff than most, than most people.

[A]

The military had more jumps than some SF guys.

[B]

Yeah. That's crazy.

[A]

You know, Insane, you know. Yeah, man, he, you know, I don't want to really. The deployment was great. You know, one of the best stories from, from our deployment with, with you guys was, you know, we were following known ID facilitator. We're hauling, we're hauling ass after this dude. He parks the truck, you know, runs inside. Well, Dino's, you know, 30 meters ahead of us or more. This is the first time that he actually alerts, I'm sorry, he alerts outside of, outside of training. And it took me about three seconds to realize what he was doing because this is the real deal, man. You know, A, this truck could have been rigged to below.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But B, he could false sit, which wasn't a false sitter.

[B]

Not a false sitter.

[A]

So when he sat, I knew it meant something. Well, he hits his butt, I mean, a long time before he gets to the back of the truck because the odor was so hard and the wind was blowing into his face. He pinpoints his nose right on the corner of the tail light. Well, we call an eod and EOD comes in there like, man, we can't find anything. I said, there's something in there, there's something in there. And I'll show you some pictures after this, if you haven't seen them, of EOD pulling this, this, the bed of this truck apart, take some screws off, they pull this, you know, big steel piece off of the back. They look down in there and they're like, holy. There was a, there was a hidden compartment down there with 150 DTMF boards, dual tone multi frequency boards, all Ready to go. Taped up, exposed wiring. All you had to do was put it on the ammunition, dial the number, boom. And I looked at everybody, said, you know, he's not trained to. To smell circuitry, Right? You know that, right? You know, and everyone's like, no, this was after the fact because, you know, they got to a point where they're Start talking about awards.

[B]

Yeah. That's so crazy.

[A]

All in all, in the days. All the days work for a canine, right? But I said, but he doesn't smell circuitry.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That's what he found. But there was. There were small amounts of probably HME or something in there that he smelled that saved our lives and say, you know, we ended up scarfing this dude up. The assault team goes in there, grabs this dude. All the munitions were in the house. I mean, this was. It was a huge find for us. It was a huge find for. For me, for Dino. It was huge.

[B]

It's one of those classic things. Not only was it. Was it huge for now, but I'm sure you do. I mean, everyone has to realize, like, if those things get out into the hands of the people that they were going to. The amount of lives that dog saved.

[A]

I tried it. I try to explain it, you know, I just don't. I think it falls on deaf ears. You know, I'm like, that's a lot of DTMF boards. 150. Before we went out, every time, you know, we would look at that map and it would have pins all over it to where you couldn't. You shouldn't. Shouldn't go. But there was nowhere in Mosul you could go. It was all. Everything was colored. There was no. There was no good route to take.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I mean, it was all. I was like, right.

[B]

The SIG acts were everywhere.

[A]

Well, get. Listen, man, here's the deal. This dog just took 150 of those.

[B]

Off the map, you know? Wow.

[A]

You know? Yeah. So, yeah, again, there was another part of the army that kind of miffed me at one point or two, like, okay, I get it. These dogs don't deserve awards, but they do. They do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No, don't tell me it's only days work for dogs.

[B]

That's.

[A]

Shut up. You know, I know we train to do that in everything. I just. Maybe I was too close to him. Maybe I felt too much, you know, for the animal, as they called them, you know? I mean, you guys use them far differently than we do. You know, when. When he almost died one day, and the sergeant major, like, I don't care he's got to go back out. It's like, you know, okay, so we had to go back out, you know, after, you know, 10 hours on target, you know, all night and into the day. You know, there was another one that came up after that. Yeah, you know, I didn't come from a place where that dog gets replaced in a day. You know what I mean? So it just, it was just very difficult, very difficult to hear, you know, just, just different thinking, just different things.

[B]

It's, it's a fine line and very, very, very. And it's one of those weird things. Both are right to, to some degree.

[A]

No.

[B]

And like anything else is, you know, I think if both parties talk it out, you come to the, you come to the right, to the right answer.

[A]

And at the time, at the time, I, I trusted. He was a sergeant major right over there. So guess what? There was no questioning. I said, yes, sir.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Grabbed him, we went.

[B]

But in the day, you lose that dog. We're not getting another dog tomorrow. And we'll get another dog.

[A]

We definitely are.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

10Th group was definitely not.

[B]

We'll get another dog as soon as we can. Yeah, but it's, but, and even if we do that is going to put stress. You know, we're just, we're just pushing the problem down the line and we've realized that at some point we're a little bit more judicious.

[A]

You just have to be, you know, what they bring to the table is just, it's immense.

[B]

It is.

[A]

You talk to most guys who've, who've, you know, had their lives saved by one. They will say, we won't break the gate. We won't, we won't let them not come with us. We will not break the gate without one. It's like, that's what it should have been. It should have been like that for a long time.

[B]

It hurts my heart when I go train SWAT teams and not every single SWAT team across this country has a dog because they don't. Most of them don't. Almost none of them do. And it, I'm sure I don't have.

[A]

To tell you, but that capability is, it's invaluable. It's invaluable. It's immense, man. It's, it is invaluable.

[B]

What?

[A]

We had a great three year run, Dino and I did. We did an Afghanistan rotation, we did an Iraq rotation. And funny enough, we were actually in Athens, Greece when Magazi went down.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Yeah. Didn't. Didn't. Are you familiar with it? And what happened in Magazi around that.

[B]

Time, I've heard stories.

[A]

It's kind of bizarre. I tell a lot of people this. We were contacted and asked to be removed to a skiff to learn what was going on, because we were possibly going to be picked up and gone, you know, picked up and go with a, a unit who was going to go in and try to help. So guess what? They picked us up and they said, hey, what do you need? Because I was on a training mission. I was helping stand up the, the Greek hostage rescue team with their first canine. I was helping them develop their canine. And I didn't have all my good gear, you know, I just brought practice stuff, you know, and his stuff. And they're like, hey, can, can we get whatever you need from Germany? I said, absolutely. So they got a canine section there. I said, you know, you know, I've already got my M4. It's suppressed. I said, you know, I just, I need my good kit because I didn't bring my good kit with me. Yeah, and here's what it looked like. Showed him pictures. So anyways, they started ginning up all this stuff. You know, obviously what happened there. You know, none of us were sent.

[B]

You know.

[A]

There was something that came out where, you know, there was nobody within 12 hours reaction time, which is I, I, I, I shudder at people who, who regurgitate that to me, knowing where I was, you know, like, yeah, there was absolutely people that were close enough to react and you tell me if I'm crazy or not, but I, I'm, I had friends that were, were even closer than me, you know, ready to, ready to get going. And I just, the story that was put out there, I find it disgustingly tragic is what I will say. I just, it was not, yeah, it wasn't what I, it wasn't how I came to understand this situation.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And being a person who I felt like was, you know, I was told pretty, pretty good detail on what was going on and what was available.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

To, you know, to hear that. I just thought, man, what do you do?

[B]

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm not a, you know, the government is evil. I'm not. But let me tell you, the government ain't about, in a thousand percent.

[A]

Well either some evil people there, though, that's for sure.

[B]

And to think, and I know this, and to think that Americans were in trouble and we could have done more and didn't have a problem with that. I have a big, big problem that Americans were told to stand down don't go. Help. I could go into a lot more detail about, you know, what happened that night and what, and what could have and should have happened after that. And. But we just didn't. We just, we wanted to sweep over the rug and we politically wanted to go away as fast as possible. There were some, there were some pipe hitters ready to do some bad things that, that went plenty. That went home.

[A]

Yeah, dude. And I kind of want to leave it at that. I just reminded people when it came time to vote, like, do you want this person, you know, in a position that I'm in where I don't get the help I need because they decide it's not politically, you know, prudent for them? I said, that's absurd. I said, you can't be that close sighted. You have to understand, I'm not telling you this from a political point of view. I'm telling you this from fact. I experienced it. I experienced it. I was in the formations of plans to go do something about it. So don't tell me that they didn't know what was going on or nobody was in response time. That's the silliest thing in the world. That, that just tells me you regurgitate what you hear on whatever news channel you decide to listen to, because that's what it was.

[B]

But of course, how. Well, how else would they know? And that goes. And that. Shame on the news channel.

[A]

Oh, man.

[B]

For doing that. Because they're swaying the, the audience that trust them to put it out.

[A]

It's tough, man.

[B]

And I, I try not to be petty. I can be. I try not to be. That may have been one of the very first times. There's only been a few more times since then. But that might be in the very first time that I was. I'll. I'll never forgive them for this.

[A]

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

[B]

And I'll. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, that's. I mean, the buck stops there for, for the Benghazi thing. And I'll give credit where credit's due, but we're talking about this. I'll never forgive them for that. And the American people shouldn't have either.

[A]

I agree, man. It was, that was tragic.

[B]

And I don't say statements like that a whole lot.

[A]

Well, you know, there I, I had one more incident. I called it an incident, but it was, you know, towards the end of my career. So I want to finish up with the, the Dean area. You know, after Dean and I got done with Athens. That was kind of the point where, hey, Are you going to stay a dog handler? Well, Dino can't deploy. Well, guess what then. No. They're like, well, we're going to keep him here. I said, well, you're not going to keep him here. Hey, I'll shoot him in the leg or shoot you in the leg or whatever. Said, you know, here's what's going to happen. We're going to. We're retiring. I said, nobody, really. I never got any real pushback from that, you know, wanting to take him home. So we did the dispo videos and, you know, from January 10, 2013 till 2019, he lived with Darren. He lived with Bob the rest of the time, living a life of luxury.

[B]

He earned it.

[A]

He sure as hell did. Sure as hell did, man. Amount of stories I could waste time on telling you, man. Incredible.

[B]

I got questions for you.

[A]

The guy was. I just ran out of brain capacity to figure out what else I could do with him. I just. I couldn't. I couldn't. I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know what else can I train him to do, you know? I was like, hell, here's your gun. Shoot it. It will turd. I don't know what else to say.

[B]

I don't. I don't know how to, I guess, correlate this as. As good as I want to, but we guys like us, we get together, we talk. We. We miss. It's weird. We miss war. It was great. Dogs are smart. Dogs are just dogs at the end of the day. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, but they're a little bit more than an animal, but. Yeah. So they're this weird element to them.

[A]

No, absolutely right. Do you think.

[B]

Do you think Dino knew he was in war? Do you think it was a game? And at the end of the day, do you think he missed war because he experienced everything we did? That's a weird. That might be a weird question at all.

[A]

I often thought about it, and I often took questions of, you know, do you think he would have chosen that? Do you think he chose that life? I was like, no, but I thought, you know what? The things that he did. I said I was the most intimately familiar with his mannerisms and his characteristics. I knew when he was happy. I knew when he was sad. I knew when he was mad. I knew when he was, you know, he was being a butthole. Dogs can do that. Dogs have bad days like humans, man. But the times we were at war, doing things that he knew to do, the tail was always doing something, you know, that throws People. So if you see a video of him, you know, in a training scenario where he hit somebody in a bite suit, his tail's wagging like crazy. When he's out searching for a man, you know, doing a tracking exercise, his tail's wagging like he's happy, you know, it was the happy wag.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I always knew. Always knew. And when was he his happiest? Every time he was with dad. Every time we were outside doing something together. It didn't have to be war necessarily, but guess what?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

During those times, tails wagging like crazy. Yeah. You know, sending him in a house with a camera on his back, you know, while the team from the roof's coming down, and he links up with them, you know, and gets his. Gets his gnarl on, you know, his tail's wagging the whole stinking time. That's not because he's scared. That's not because he's. He's. He's afraid.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He's enjoying what he's doing. So I think I can answer that with a. Permission to say yeah, I think. I don't know that he missed it, but he was. He was sure as hell comfortable in it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, beyond comfortable.

[B]

Yeah, it's amazing.

[A]

You know, we got to the point.

[B]

Where.

[A]

Wherever I pointed the muzzle of my gun, that's where his head would go. He was scanning because he knew somehow the dad's gun is aiming at bad guys. And that means if he's pointing it that way, that's where my bite's coming. That's when we'll get my gnarl on. So I think he was completely comfortable in it. And I think if he had an option, he would have much rather been with dad doing dad things than sitting at home doing Dino retired guy things. Million percent.

[B]

What'd you tell me last night about my dog? Do you remember what you told me?

[A]

You said, oh, no, this is the absolute truth. You know, they're. They're our best friends for a certain amount of years, but we're their best friends for their whole life.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We are their best friends their entire life. From the day we get them to the day they die, we are their best friend. You know, that's not the case for us, so think about that next time. You know, you have. You know, people. I always.

[B]

That hit home.

[A]

It crushed me a little when people call him a pet or what, and I'm like, listen, nah, man, that's not how that works. The pets you go pick up down at petsmart or the pound or whatever. This dog was trained for war. He did war. He saved lives. He did far more than a lot of people get to. And I think some guys want to go and do their thing, get into war, get into battle, do that, but they don't always get to. He got to. And he performed flawlessly with, with a.

[B]

Hot topic of today with everything that dog. Everything that dog did, which is more than. Than most people have for this country.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Do you think he should have been able to vote?

[A]

Absolutely. He's smarter than some people that vote. I know that. I promise you that. Promise you that.

[B]

You know, I don't.

[A]

I wish.

[B]

I don't know if I'd argue with that.

[A]

I think you're right, man. A lot of things, man, a lot of things that went on between him and I and, you know, there were times where I was like, he's looking at me like he knows more than I know. And I felt like half the time that's probably correct, but he just didn't have a way to explain it to me. You know, he didn't have plausible thumb so he could write it out. He didn't speak English. You know, our commands were in Dutch. Dutch, you know, so I mean, he, he understood Dutch commands. He understood me speaking English to him. He understood everything I was saying to him.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Anytime I needed him to do something, we got down to where I was just giving him hand in arm circles. You know where I learned that training with you guys? When I got to go hang out with, with your dog handlers, they're like, there's times where you guys can't be screaming. You got to shut up.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I said, man, I got into hand and arm circles with him. How did, how long did it take him to learn that? Two, three days. That's awesome. It's like, hey, dude, relax. I know you're smarter than me. Okay? It's over. Enough's enough. Okay. I got it. You know, I know, I know you know you're mad at me because I had to get your ear testiculars clipped, but hey, it wasn't because I was mad at you. Had scrotal dermatitis get you.

[B]

I have mine.

[A]

Sorry about. That's just the way it goes. But no, man, he's.

[B]

I kind of want to.

[A]

Sorely missed, man. Sorely missed.

[B]

Stay on. On this. On this subject and as one of my best friends, I, I know what this is going to do. So. Yeah, I almost hesitate talking to you about it, but. How long, how long did you get to spend with them before you realized, hey, this, this, this rides.

[A]

This ride's about, you know, Brent, the end. It was, it was, it was pretty abrupt.

[B]

He.

[A]

He was doing well, doing well, doing well. And then all of a sudden, one night, it was, it was just not. He was not doing well. So he had a. He had an infinity to go out and eat grass. Not always, but every, you know, you find out reasons why dogs eat grass, for certain things to clear out their digestive system and stuff. Well, he had gone out and he, he had ingested some grass that had some bacteria on it. It's called leptospirosis. It's carried by nasty heathen animals like possums, armadillos, squirrels, things like that. And it just. His body, come to find out, you know, had taken a toll over the years, but he was still, you know, he had been fighting it for a long time. Well, this was the thing that kind of just tipped the bowl over.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Got him into the, to the clinic probably three in the morning. I mean, I ran out so fast, I left my front door open. You know, got him in there. They, they started giving him IVs. Kept, kept him watched. I thought he was, you know, I thought he was dying. And they, you know, they just x rayed his entire insides and his stomach was. Ate it with cancer. His organs were ate with cancer. There are spots everywhere. Everywhere. They're like, we're frankly surprised that your dog's still alive. And then the, you know, the, the vet comes in at one point and was like, you know, Bo, you know, the best thing, you know, for Dino is for us to probably put him down. I said, okay. She goes, but here's the, here's the problem. It's like, I've been doing this for 30 years and I've seen, you know, a lot of dogs come in and out of here, you know, throughout the years. She was over my 30 years, she's like, I've never seen a dog that's got as strong a heart as Dino has. And true to form, I'd gone home. I shaved my face, Put on my ACU or put on my multicams and put my body armor on. I came back with my beret, And when opened Dory, he tried to stand up. He's already sedated. He was already sedated. My mom's crying. Gosh, the ladies are crying. He's already under sedation, and he sees dad walking with that damn uniform on like it's go time. That was best. You Know, I. I cried because I could. I could just see in his eyes that that was it. He's like, okay, we're going to battle this last time. Let's go. And we went, you know, yeah, the end was the end. But, you know, in his mind, I think he saw dad and he was like, oh, my God, finally, I'm gonna go do it again, you know, and, you know, he didn't know that he was. He wasn't gonna wake up from. From that deployment. But still, yeah, you know, the fact that, you know, under sedation, he's about to take the. You know, the. The green's about to go. He rolls over and tries to stand. He had lost use of his back legs at that point. You know, he. He. It had gone down significantly, you know, very quickly. But that, you know, that made me stop for a half a second. It was like, wait a minute. Am I doing the right thing? Yeah, but it was absolutely. It was the right thing. But, you know, it gave me that. That little, you know, glimmer. But it, you know, it quickly changed to, this is the right thing. Let's, you know, you know, grabbed his head and got to feeling. Breathe his last breath. And still. I still smell him. I'll never forget that. It was a devastating time.

[B]

It's.

[A]

It's.

[B]

I almost want to say, I mean, you've. You've lost teammates, you lost a dog, but that. That. You think that dog hit you harder. It was. It was more like family and. And a best friend or family and alarm cloth. Even though it's a dog, that dog hurt. Hurt worse.

[A]

It was. It was. It was just different. It was just different.

[B]

It's almost an unfair question to ask, actually.

[A]

The loss you feel when you lose a teammate is. There's nothing else like it. You know, that's. You know, I spent more time with. With Pat and those guys than I did with, you know, my own family for years. You know, but the same thing with Dino. It's just a different loss. It's a different feeling of loss with him. It was every day for a decade I was with that kid. You know, now I say it like that. I did deploy after I got Dino retired, and at my house, so I'd drive him to Arlington, he would hang out with Margaret, pretty much ruled the roost while. While I was away, you know, kept my mom's life on hold while, you know, I was deployed. But that being said, I just. I just spent so much time with him. We did so much together. Just the impact he had on Me, as a person, post service was, Was. Was, you know, he just kept me from doing a lot of things that I would have normally done that probably would have ended up, you know, me being in. In bad shape or worse shape, you know, with.

[B]

Right.

[A]

With his passing and not having my dudes around to go do another deployment with or train with or any of that, I just found myself in a real bad spot I had put myself in, you know, using the loss of Dino or, you know, whatever it was that I used to excuse the bad behavior. That's what I had done. So I think it hit me harder in the fact that, you know, it was more fresh, you know, the, the difference between, you know, a human and a canine, significantly different. You know, Pat's life, far more valuable. You know, I can say that as honestly as I can, it's. Pat's value on this world was far more than Dino's. Yeah, so that's just. That's just the way that is, man. But, you know, when you come down to how did it personally impact me, you know, they were both very. They were both, you know, catastrophic losses to me, man. Just with, With Pat, I had the guys around. I had. I had, you know, the support and everybody in place that helped get you through it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, you know, I, I, you know, it's still painful to talk about at times, you know, because you don't want to lose a guy in combat. You don't want to do that. You don't want to be part of that team that was, you know, you know, we got got, you know, they had their. They had their input on that gunfight. Guess what? You know, we ended up taking a black eye. But with the loss of Dino, it was just. It took this constant from my life that, you know, I haven't. There's no void that. There's nothing that can fill that void. There's nothing, you know, I mean, there's not a replacement dog. There's not, you know, somebody or something that's going to come along, you know, and I think as true throughout this entire, you know, podcast that we've spoken, you know, it's back to the Lord having a plan for me. And, you know, lo and behold, it was, hey, you're going to hit rock bottom. And then when you're there, you're going to. You're going to hit a little bit further rock bottom.

[B]

When you're there, you're going to start digging.

[A]

Yeah, that's exactly what I did, man. I just. I just put myself in this Awful, awful, awful hole that, you know, I, I saw no light at the top and just, you know, if I continued going the direction I was going, I was, you know, I wasn't going to be around long, nothing. I was going to kill myself. I just think that I was on a course to slowly kill myself, you know, drinking.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, just everything I could get my hands on. I was just doing things that would numb me from, from dealing with, you know, the ever days.

[B]

Yeah. You, you weren't going to kill yourself directly.

[A]

No.

[B]

But you were going to take care of yourself.

[A]

Oh no.

[B]

And it wouldn't have bothered you?

[A]

No, not at all.

[B]

What, what the end result is?

[A]

No, I didn't, it didn't because I did it for years, man. After that. Fast forward to a guy that I had met in 110, Chad Connolly. Came into 110, I don't know, a year, year and a half, two years maybe after I had gotten there. We were never teammates. We deployed, you know, to, to Afghanistan. 07889. I think he was still on 2 4. But then we did again and I think 13, when I came back from the dog team, went with Ted and 3rd Battalion back to Afghanistan. He calls me out of the blue and he's like, Bo, I'm tired of our guys not getting the help they need, killing themselves, things like that. Will you help me start a non profit? At the time I was like, yeah man, absolutely. It ended up being one of the things that pulled me out of that hole. We were getting geared up to do the 20th anniversary of 911 and he had started planning all this stuff out and asked me if I'd help him get some money together, get some people together and get up here and do this thing. Well, Chad has a lot of contacts in New York and one of them was the head of the joint task force up there. And this dude had NYPD ready for us to escort us through the boroughs. We had up, up close access to the memorial that morning. I mean we had access to everything through the sky. So this was kind of a big deal. And that was the formation of 50 for the fallen. You know, we raised, which looking back on it now is kind of painful. We raised about a quarter million dollars. But we weren't a non profit yet, so we had to go through a couple of other nonprofits, you know, so we just, all the money that we would get, we got went to Special Operations Warrior Fund and then the Ray Pfeiffer foundation, which both great organizations.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Looking back on it, it had been nice if we had been, you know, 501 through C at that, at that point, because we could have kept that money and we could have started, you know, the, the treatment that we've been sending people to ever since. So. But man, fast forward to, to now. We've, we've been doing it since, since the 20th anniversary, 9 11, man. We put on a couple events a year. One year we did too many, One year we did too little. We do that, you know, the anniversary of Pearl harbor. That's been great over in, in Hawaii. That's been fun. We've done that a couple times, as you know. This year we started our annual slay the clays event which, you know, for year one, I think we raised $88,000.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Not bad for year one. But this next year we're really gonna, we're gonna bring the heat.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Coming up, probably April, May timeframe 2026, we're gonna put it on again at Alpine shooting range of there in Fort Worth and we're gonna blow the doors off. We've sent with that money already. We've sent two guys who've gotten help for their traumatic brain injury, which is why we send them to resiliency Brain Health. Those guys over there are, they're just, they're second to none, man. They focus directly on the issues with each veteran individually. It's not this cookie cutter treatment plan. They bring you in, they, you know, they run all the tests they need to run. They get a treatment plan put together for you and you follow it to a team. By the end of it, man, the way I describe it is when they opened my brain up, it was this room with file cabinets that had been dumped over and there are files all over the floor, man. Nobody can access them, can't find them. There's just, there's just no way for someone to go in there and category, categorize these things correctly. Yeah, well, by the end of it, 85% of those files are back up. They're back in their tr. They're back in their, you know, in their drawers properly, you know, labeled and put into, to, to order. You know, there's a few things down there on the ground so that you can't always access. But I'll take 80% better over 0% better.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

You know what I mean? And that's what they're doing over there, man. They're, they're, you know, Chad just went through, Chad just finished going through Resiliency Brain Health and you know, albeit he had a Tough time at the beginning. Because it is tough, man. It's a challenge you got. There's a lot of things that are, that are, that are happening. And you know, after a challenging week one, he blew through week two and man, he goes back and he tells me, you know, it's the best thing. It's what he needed. He went home a better father, better husband, and his brain was quiet for the first time in seven, eight years. Man. I mean, that's incredible.

[B]

It is incredible.

[A]

How many times have you been sitting around and just things are going, you just got stuff whirly burden up there and you can't get it to stop. No matter what you do, one thing turns to another and then guess what, you got six whirly birds up there going. So for, you know, for the mission, for 50 moving forward, that's what we're going to continue to do. We're going to continue to raise money. 100% of it goes to sending guys to treatment. We'll pay for your flight, we're going to pay for your, your, your hotel, all that stuff. You're going to get your rental car, whatever you need.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, and then all the treatment, it's all on us, man. And we're just going to get the guys there. I don't know how to explain it better than, you know, the way I did. It's, it's reorganizing your brain to work more efficiently and just, it allows, it allows for your day to day to be far less stressful. Because when your brain's not acting right, when it's not functioning efficiently the way it should, things get stressful real quick. Real quick. And if you can't handle stress very well, then things get from bad to worse. And it's not just brain stuff that they treat. They're talking to you about the stomach being the second brain. What you put in your gut directly affects how your brain works. If you're sitting here eating, you know, all processed foods and, and stuff that's, you know, got preservatives in it for, for days and days, you're not going to get the best output from your brain. You know, you want that capacity to run full tilt with good fuel so you're burning it clean and everything's working, you know, successfully, if you will, like I would imagine, 42 and a half pound injectors up there, you know, dude, I cannot know that you know what you're doing. Injected it wrong place.

[B]

You know what you're doing with that? That is, that is an Inside joke.

[A]

I had to, I had to say it at some point. I'm sorry. It's an inside joke.

[B]

He hasn't, he hasn't let.

[A]

Let it go.

[B]

Let go for 20 years. I mean, I'm, I love that you're doing this. I say it all the time. When it comes to. This is my advice to, to everyone that's, that's getting out. It's, it's not about money. Some guys who got out and done really well for themselves. Absolutely, absolutely. And, and still have, have given up on life. Find something with a purpose. Yeah, because that's what we had. We had a purpose. We had family and we felt. We had, we had this worth.

[A]

Yeah, that's right.

[B]

And first and foremost. Yeah. Not to. Well, I don't care if people like it or not. First and foremost, the only purpose you're really going to have is, is, is God's purpose for you. So you won't be, you won't be happy outside of that, regardless. And then once, once you, once you have that purpose, filter it down. Find another purpose that, that brings meaning to your life. And you found that. And it, and it, and it's, it's proof that that advice is, is what works.

[A]

Again, from the very beginning of this conversation, you know, doors open, doors close. And that's. The Lord pushed me down the path that I have been on from the get go. Whether I knew it or not, this is the path I've been put on. You know, he continues to open doors and lead us in the right direction. And you know, I'll be the first to tell you, that's exactly how it goes. I'm not the one sitting back here deciding this, that the other. Yeah, you know, I'm, I'm taking direction from the Lord, man. That's it. And let's, that's how success happens for me. That I found throughout my life, you know, the doors that I wanted to open. Guess what? And got slammed in my face. Shuffle, right? Dumb, dumb donut. Let's get you into this other door. Oh, yes, sir. Roger that. Sorry, I was, you know, way off again. Sorry about that, boss.

[B]

Yeah. Between, between Dino and the, you know, the heavy mission of, of 50 for the fallen, which, which I'm, I'm gonna come out there and support one of those events, I guarantee.

[A]

I'd like to send you through treatment at some point.

[B]

It's gonna be fun.

[A]

I, I know you can't do it. I know you don't have time for it, but I'm just telling you at some point.

[B]

At some point, I'm going to make.

[A]

Stop for 10 days.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I'm telling you, it'll be at the end of it. You're like, I can't believe I waited.

[B]

I can't believe I already know that's how it ends.

[A]

I'm the butthole.

[B]

This is.

[A]

Even told everybody. I'm good, man. I'm good. What do you need? I don't need to go. I was like, I'm going to get all these other guys.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

As soon as I went, I was.

[B]

Like.

[A]

Is this thing on? I should have gone earlier. So I'm just telling you, man, when, that, when you decide that you have time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The money's already there for you, man.

[B]

So I appreciate it. Just appreciate it. I do.

[A]

Brent, there will be a time. You will have had enough of not having the recall. Can't think of the word in the middle of a sentence. You just stop. Because you don't have everything put together and it just, it just stops coming as fast as it used to. You're getting tired of it. You know, I'm not saying that's how it's working yet, but. No, that's, you know, five or 10 years maybe, you're going to be like, okay, Bo's right. I need to get this thing fixed. And they, that nothing they do hurts. There's no pain involved. It's, you know, you know, doing the injection of NAD now that's not fun, but it tells you where your problems are. So, I mean, it's something that I'm going to continue to pray that, you know, my friends that have banged their heads, which I know you have, you know, realize that there's a time where I need to stop and take two weeks for myself and get this thing, this thing realigned. So.

[B]

Oh, I will do it. And, and some people may just be real transparent here for a second and. Well, yeah, he has a podcast. He talks all the time. He, he may not use big words because he's not smart, but he doesn't have, like these word finding problems. The thing that you'll, you'll find. In fact, I, I, I, I heard this when I went to the, the TBI clinic in Tampa, which is, you know, guidance is like, us are still quick thinkers and we're problem solvers. And I, and it still, it happens to me all the time. I just get frustrated and there's a word I want to use, I want to use it so bad, but I can't think of it. So I have to Use another word. And it wasn't the word I wanted to use.

[A]

Doesn't satisfy.

[B]

It. It doesn't satisfy. And then that kind of creates this domino effect of a frustration. That's not the word. And it. And it affects my whole thought process off of that one word. But if you just looked at me, you'd never. You'd never know that's going on and that I'm really frustrated about what's going on in this stupid head of mind. And it gets. You get real hard on yourself over.

[A]

You just explained it to a T. Exactly what happened to me, you know? Exactly. I just finally got to the point I was like, I'm tired of not being able to pull that word up a B. Now that I thought so hard on the word, I can't remember what the hell I was talking about. What were we even talking about just now? Now I'm gonna find the word be like, well, hey, it doesn't matter. Scuttle butt. That's the word you're looking for. Scuttlebutt. I don't know how I was gonna use it in one sentence, but hey, I thought of it finally. I mean, that's you. You nailed it, man. That's exactly right. Whatever they told you at that TBI clinic is a million percent correct.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it is. It is frustrating as hell. I mean, because you're. For me, it was. I was about to get. I was about to say something very witty, and I was waiting. That word was sitting there, and I could see it across, you know, the front of my, you know, my frontal cortex. And you're like, it wouldn't come out. I can see it. And I'm like, yeah, just terrible.

[B]

So, you know, I'm. I was. I was debating this, and I'm gonna do it. I'm not. It's a. It's. It's. It's a new platform. It's a new day.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

But there. There's some things I. I want to share.

[A]

Butter. Brother.

[B]

What's that?

[A]

Did you just say butter or brother?

[B]

It's a new platform. It's a new day. But there's.

[A]

Oh, but there.

[B]

But there's. Thank you.

[A]

So. Butter. But there's. Butters.

[B]

Butters. No, no. Dang it. Jeez.

[A]

Yeah, it's been going a minute. I. Oh, no, I'm.

[B]

I'm. Leave that.

[A]

No, I'm going.

[B]

Leave that in there. I'm going to leave that in there. There's some things I want to keep from the last. From the last chapter of my Life. Which is. Which is gonna be tough because. Because you just told almost all your stories almost with some of the heavy stuff of this. End it with a funny story. So. So people driving home from work don't have to walk into their. And walk. Don't have to walk home. Walk into their house.

[A]

Brent, what kind of. What kind of funny story can we tell? I thought we've told them all, man. Oh, all the good ones. Okay, so one of my favorites.

[B]

I knew it wouldn't take long.

[A]

Well, this one. I don't even know that this is really funny, but, you know, we were talking about football earlier. We had gone to. We had gone to Oklahoma to play or to. To do something called. Was max game. Max game.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So. And I think we. We've discussed this ad nauseam, so I'll. I'll make it quick. So for. For 10 days we were sitting, you know, 100 meters from a lake where people were partying. It's July 4th. Plus our cadre brought their motorcycles and left us out in the middle of nowhere. Remember, they couldn't get us resupplied because the storm came.

[B]

A tornado.

[A]

Well, they told us it was straight line winds until they drove us back and they were like, that's not straight line winds. That's called a tornado.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, but so we got back and we had a couple of days to burn. So we're going to play this. We're going to play football. We split up the teams and I think it was north versus south or something like that. It was. It was something like. It was Texas and a couple. Couple of states. And then we had enough people and then it was like the east Coast. Yeah, because I remember when Colin Thomas from Connecticut or something.

[B]

That's right, he was.

[A]

Anyways, so we get into this game we're playing, and for some reason, our good friend Don Gandalf Scully is guarding Brent and he keeps guarding, getting burned. And I mean burned like super toast while I'm playing defensive and I'm rushing the quarterback and I'm yelling at Donnie.

[B]

Just.

[A]

I'm just belittling him. And, you know, it was very uncalled for, but I was, you know, just, you know, joking around about it, but I was really getting into his business. So Tony's like, all right, Paul, if you're. You're so calm, why don't you come and guard Brent? I said, fine, I'll come guard Brent. God say, he's not that good. Well, I get over to him and at the foot Fred, the very beginning of the snap count. He's standing on the line. So I'm like, oh. As soon as I get my hands on him, I'm gonna jack him up. Well, it was like he knew it. And he took two steps back. I said, oh. As soon as they said, honey. Took one step inside out. And he. I mean, he wasn't around me before. I'm screaming, help, help. And literally the whole half of the team dying. Donnie's yelling. He's like, what are you doing? The same thing you should have done. You should just call for help. But Paco took off so fast. I mean, it was Speedy Gonzalez stuff, man. It was one step in, out. And I was like. My feet hadn't even moved as I'm turning my head, screaming. Do you remember that, Shirley?

[B]

I. Of course. Sorry about.

[A]

I'm pretty sure you were the. You didn't even continue your route because everybody just fell over.

[B]

We had the best time.

[A]

It was great.

[B]

We had the best time in big cities. We had the best time in. In. In Oklahoma during tornadoes.

[A]

Oh, yeah, it did.

[B]

I don't. I'll just add on the stories. I don't know if we were in different camps. They couldn't resupply us.

[A]

We weren't far apart, though.

[B]

They couldn't resupply us.

[A]

The told us to pull the antennas out of the trees so they couldn't talk to us.

[B]

Remember, get all your stuff out was at a halt. And I pulled out a sock and a piece of tape, and I made it into a 100 mile an hour tape. I made it into a ball. I went out and I found a branch and my. My side of the camp. We played stickball, you turds, all day long.

[A]

Of course you did.

[B]

We had a blast. Like, we guys, we just. It's. It's just fun. We. If you're with the right guys, anything, everything's fun.

[A]

Who. Gosh, I want to. I can't remember the name of the guy. I keep. Want to call him. It was a Tad. Craig was Tad. One of our rock and rocks had.

[B]

Sergeant. Sergeant Craig. Absolutely.

[A]

He was one of our instructors. Right?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

And remember, we had a. We had a cadre that I had. I had a hard time with one of the shots and I said, man, I'd have a. I'd have an easier time if I stuck that balance up my butt. And, you know, was it L14? It wasn't lots? No, hell no. I remember the launcher, but this guy goes back and tells Craig, and Craig comes out there and smokes me. Remember, he Drops that index card underneath me as soon as you get a drop of sweat on this index card. And he smokes me until I. I'm not a good sweater. I mean, I was doing mountain climbers, flutter kicks. I mean, just killed me. It's like. I mean, I thought it was kind of funny.

[B]

Really? Yeah, really.

[A]

Come on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I didn't get to play no stickball. Scuffed up. Scuffed up by dad Craig. I enjoyed that guy. He was a good dude, man. He got us in great shape, dude. He got some great shape.

[B]

I love it because it just seems so funny when we tell those stories sometimes, even though we're at the same place, my experiences sometimes are different than yours. Like, you're getting smoked. I'm playing stickball, and you get so bad.

[A]

The only reason that they even knew you were in the course was because they saw your name on the roster. They never had anything on you ever. Not ever. Like, man, we don't know this. Brent Tucker is like, well, he made it again.

[B]

Come on.

[A]

Right? You were notoriously what we call the gray man.

[B]

It's. It's true. But I don't.

[A]

I mean, in the exercises every. You were far from the gray man. I was the life of the party, the funny dude. I mean, always saying stuff. I mean, yeah, it was almost like Eddie Haskell, you know, all super nice and sweet in front of Mrs. You know, Ms. Cleaver. You're this loud, crazy dude. It goes nuts and does everything you know you're not supposed to. But yeah, yeah, good stuff, man.

[B]

Well, we'll. We'll finish this episode, and we're gonna. We're gonna. We'll go tell some more stories. I forgot you told me. Of course, you probably already forgot about it, but, hey, I'll tell you that story offline. We'll. We'll figure that out. And then you guys would have already seen this or at least seen Bo because we're about to get ready and do the live tonight.

[A]

All right. Looking forward to that, man. Before that, big time. I appreciate you having me on. Anytime I can talk about Dino.

[B]

Heck, yeah. Love you, brother.

[A]

Love you, too, man.