#305 AJ Pasciuti - Marine Scout Sniper on Hunting Juba, the Deadliest Enemy Sniper in Iraq

Oxford Montessori School is now Oxford Millwood School. A new name, the same genuine care, academic ambition and belief in every child. Set within a beautiful rural campus, just 20 minutes from Oxford City Centre. Our small classes, personalised pathways and strong send expertise, give pupils the support, challenge and confidence they need to succeed, especially those who may not have thrived in larger settings. Find out more at our open day on May the 21st. Search Oxford Millwood School Open Day. Oxford Montessori School is now Oxford Millwood School. A new name, the same genuine care, academic ambition and belief in every child. Set within a beautiful rural campus, just 20 minutes from Oxford City Centre. Our small classes, personalised pathways and strong send expertise, give pupils the support, challenge and confidence they need to succeed, especially those who may not have thrived in larger settings. Find out more at our open day on May the 21st. Search Oxford Millwood School Open Day. AJ Pashuti. Welcome to the show, man. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. It's an honour to have you. So, you got your new book, getting ready to come out actually by the time this releases, it'll probably be out, Dark Horse. How long did it take you to write that? So, the process to write it was relatively quick. Once we got going on it, we were actually trying to make November 10th, 2025, for the Marine Course 250th. Oh, man, that would have been awesome. We tried super hard and it was a really fun process. You know, writing your first book is kind of like walking into like a dark forest. You really don't know what you don't know about it. You don't know if you're a good writer through the process. So, I was able to link up with a really good writer, Neil McGinnis, and he is a writer who does a lot of work with James Patterson. And so, through that process, the way that we really worked was I would kind of get a lot of stuff on paper and he would help me shape it. And so, I wrote a lot of the book. Neil was the, kind of like the sage wisdom over the top. Since he writes for James Patterson and works with James Patterson, they like to keep storylines moving, sentence structures, how they're able to keep people's attention. And so, I can be sometimes long-winded or long-sentenced, you know, kind of when writing a, you know, writing a long story. And so, he was able to help kind of shape that narrative. But it took us around four and a half months. Typically, what happens is an author is looking to like a professional author or professional writer. They generally try to get 500 words a day. We were under such time constraints that I was going to 1800 to 2200 words a day. Whoa. Very much like going right up. Yeah, dude, I mean, you know the personality type, right? You know, where we like get in, we're like, okay, mission focused, right, here we go. So, I shut everything else off in my life and went into this thing full, you know, full throttle. Because the writing portion is actually one of the shortest legs of the journey. So, then you go to editing, then there's copy editing, and then specifically with military writers with clearances, we have to go through the DOD for pre-clearance. And we submitted it to the DOD for pre-clearance review, and then had a series of government shutdowns that happened, right, and that part of the Pentagon, you know, that wasn't, you know, one of the essential, you know, entities within the Pentagon. So, they had to shut that down. So, we had a couple of things in there. All that to say, the timing of this book, releasing Memorial Day Week of 2026, couldn't be more perfect for it. I've had a great publisher that's been fantastic to work with and very patient with me on this process itself. Man, I'm excited for you. Thank you. Congratulations. Thanks very much. You know, I haven't heard much about this, about your service or you or actually even the sniper. And so, researching you, leading up to this interview, I mean, did you have had a hell of a career? Like, thank you. Wow. Very impressive. Very fortunate. Very fortunate. So, let me, if you don't mind, I'm going to give you an intro, give the audience a little insight into your career. Do I have to sit here for it? I'm going to be like super in there for it. Here we go. AJ Pashuti. You grew up in Sunnyvale, California, the son of immigrants, enlisted in the Marine Corps after 9-11 and became a rifleman with one of the corps most storied infantry battalions, third battalion, fifth marines, deployed to Iraq three times during Operation Iraqi Freedom, serving an OIF-1, and the Battle of Fallujah as a rifleman and a scout sniper. Later, led a scout sniper team in Iraq tasked with hunting high-value targets, including the most lethal enemy sniper known as Juba. Juba killed over a hundred Americans. You went on to serve as a recon and force recon team leader deploying to Afghanistan and North Africa. You were selected for the highly competitive Marine Gunner program, becoming an infantry weapons officer and deploying twice to the Indo-Pacific, retired from the Marine Corps in 2023 after 21 years of service. You currently host the Combat Story podcast, helping preserve the stories of those who have served. You hold a Masters of Business for Veterans from the University of Southern California and a Master of Public Leadership from the University of San Francisco and are currently pursuing a PhD in Leadership Studies at the University of San Diego. You are the offer of the dark horse, harnessing hidden potential and more in life, releasing May 19, 2026. Dude, your podcast is awesome. Oh, thank you. So how long have you been doing that? Not long, as a matter of fact. So the original host is a gentleman by the name of Ryan Fugit. And Ryan and I met when I interviewed on his show in 2024. So I had met him. I was doing a speaking event at a Veterans Gala up in San Jose area. And after I told some stories that we'll tell here, kind of the idea of camaraderie and a little bit of loss and leadership, and he approached me at the end of the event and asked me to come on the show with him. Well, we really hit it off with some conversations through that. It was a really good, really long interview. And at the time, I was running for city council in San Jose, California, so my hometown. So I had retired and then wanted to continue public service. And so after like running the campaign trail one night, I was, I've had a long conversation with him. It was really one of the first times that I had really talked about the story super publicly, specifically surrounding, you know, hunting a sniper and the teamwork that kind of came behind that. Him and I became fast friends through that. And then he was the one, and I owe it all to Ryan. He was the one who had, he turned the microphones off when the interview was over. And he said, Listen, man, I've interviewed at this point 200 veterans. And he says, I've never asked one of them to write a book. And my first thing was, I don't, I don't, I have no interest. I don't want to do that. I didn't want to be like, in the marine culture, we, we don't, it's not, it's not part of the marine culture generally, it's kind of frowned upon, like it's always goes back to the team, right? And so it's very nerve wracking to write a book about yourself, especially as a marine. And so he really helped kind of make those things a little easier, you know, on me, he was able to work and get Neil McGinnis, the, you know, the co-author on the book and started to bolt the pieces together. And then in April of 2025, he had sent me an email and he said, Hey, I'm looking to, to either sundown the show, or I'm looking to hand the show off to you. He has three children, right? He has, you know, his normal day job, prior to starting his podcast, he was an Apache pilot for, I think, 10 years, and then was a CIA officer for another 10 years. And at the time he was working in tech in Northern California. So we had a lot of other lives obligations. And so we just had a really good bond through that. And his first question to me was like, Hey, would you like taking the show? And I said, absolutely not, right? And Ryan's a persistent man and was able to work through kind of what you're able to do here. You give people a space to feel seen, to feel heard, to make them feel that their sacrifices or their service is valued. And it matters. And I think that as the wars, our war has transitioned over. I think a lot of people in our, in our, in our shoes may feel that their, their service or their stories may be forgotten. And so with that, we've really taken a really good liking or an inkling to wanting to be as open and honest with these young men and women that come on here and share some of the wildest things. And it's just like you're doing a sit across from a person and just say, what happened out there? And it's been quite a journey. So about six months is what I've had, I've had the helm. Oh, right on. Yeah, I've used it a couple of times to research some of the guests that I've had on. I was one, I was, I was like, I don't recognize you on that. I haven't listened to it in quite a while. And so I was, yeah, I was, I was like, I don't remember this guy being there. But, but it's, yeah, that's, you guys, there's some awesome people, awesome stories, like just a great record of, you know, recent history on that podcast. So thank you. We really tried. Ryan and I had a lot of conversations on it and what we wanted to do, what his value set was and what, and why he started the show itself. And so when we had the conversations, it was just easy, you know, to say, okay, yeah, sounds good. I mean, and to your point, I still, every single episode that we released, there's still like, you know, a bunch of comments are like, who's this guy? Right? You know, like, where's Ryan at? So we're working to be able to kind of, you know, shape that and change that. We also bring Ryan back from time to time, because it's still his, you know, passion project. And so I don't want to remove him from it. We're actually doing an episode coming up in the next few weeks, we'll be flying to Kentucky, if I'm not mistaken, for the 101st Airborne's, it's called Week of the Eagles, and it's a reunion. And so he is, obviously a pilot, and I was a ground guy. So we like to attach when we go to these large organizations, and he and other pilots can chase each other's watches and stuff, right? And us ground guys can talk about, you know, the realities of what it's like being on the ground. And so we have a, you know, divide and conquer kind of thing. Very cool. Very cool. Well, a couple of things to crank out here before we get going. One, everybody gets a gift. Which one's Lee? Gummy bears? Thank you very much. I might need some sugar, please. Yeah, there you go. And then I have a Patreon. Yeah. And are you familiar with Patreon? Yeah. So we've created quite the community on there. And they're the, honestly, they're the reason that I get to sit down with you here today. And so they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. This is from Stephen Casey. Where do you see our current modern views of masculinity is limiting or ignoring the plight of the voiceless? What fundamental truths should we rediscover to present a comprehensive view of masculinity that is worth passing on? Wow. And what was the gentleman's name? Stephen Casey. Stephen Casey, fantastic question. I wrote Dark Horse to specifically tackle what I feel masculinity looks like. To me, masculinity is, yes, there's naturally going to be a toughness. You have to be tough, I think in some aspects. One of the things that I've seen through my journey is that empathy and compassion and understanding are not weaknesses. They are truths. Dark Horse is really a love letter. It's a love letter to the people who have shaped my life. I don't believe that I would have been in, so I say that I don't believe in the idea of a self-made man or a self-made woman. Now, of course, there's going to be application of putting your nose down, putting your nose to the grindstone, and working through individual challenges. But there were people throughout my life that affected the trajectory of where I ended up. And so I wanted to write a thank you, and not only a thank you, but kind of a call to action to other people. To me, the example of being a man is being, like I said, compassionate and understanding with certain people or certain scenarios, achieving your own success, and then turning around, and then making sure that the person behind you has a better opportunity at success than you did, because that's what people did for me. And so I think of it as this positive feedback loop. Some people, and we'll talk about it today, that have gone through and completely been there when I needed it the most. And they wouldn't have done that if they weren't compassionate men and women that saw a young kid who needed a little bit of help and a little bit of guidance, someone to carry the weight when I couldn't carry it myself and showed me the path. And so to me, I think it's something called a social contract. When I work with team members or when I talk with people about leadership, what I say to them is, if you can focus on making the next generation or your team or whatever, that individual unit is better than you, to me, that's what being a man looks like, is carrying them with you. Wow. Great. Thank you. Great answer. I got to be honest, you have a very unique disposition energy. I mean, for somebody that spent a 21-year career in the Marine Corps, sounds like the majority of it was in combat. I mean, you have very unique energy. Thank you. Very positive. I try. It's not like most of us that walk in there and it's just fucking dark, man. Yeah, you know, I've walked. It's just a heaviness. I'm not, you know what I mean? Like, I have it sometime. You just, yeah, good to see. I appreciate that. Some people have called me the friendly sniper. Right on. So I think that, you know, to come back to the manliness thing or the masculinity thing, I ask some of my guests the same question. And you don't hear the answers that you think you're going to hear is like, you know, be tough, rub dirt on it, right? Don't show weakness, right? Everything I've talked about is, or seen with some of these men and women is- That shit was a fad. Dude. It was all fake. 100%. And, you know, I'm not the biggest guy in the world, right? And so I had to be adaptable, right, in certain, you know, scenarios. But I remember walking down, you know, the hallways of like Second Force Recon Company. And again, I'm not the biggest guy in the world. It was generally the people who chirped the loudest that had the most to hide or had, you know, whatever the things that they were insecure about. So- You mean the loudest motherfucker in the room is always the biggest shitbag? I didn't say it. But yeah, no, you're totally right. You're totally right. And so I just didn't subscribe to that. It wasn't part of my upbringing, but also I think it has to do with really where I'm from or how I was kind of raised. You know, you mentioned in the, you know, in the, in the section earlier, I was raised by immigrants. And people take it and they use it for whatever, you know, venue that they want to, you know, condition it for. But for me, my dad was an Italian immigrant, right? So from the old country, from Puglia, my mom met him when she was a fine arts student studying abroad in Florence. They met at a nightclub. And so I don't like to think about how, you know, how that, you know, transpired, but eventually, you know, little AJ came along. But what my dad did was when he came to the United States, he, I try to look at the United States in a lot of ways through an immigrant's eyes. So he came to the United States because it was this like land of opportunity. And it was this place where he could become anything that he wanted. And he just saw possibility inside of it. And that positivity, that like infectious love of this country was, was imprinted very, very early on me through my childhood. And then, you know, eventually they got, they separated when I was really young. And then my mother met another man. And his family are all Argentinian immigrants. So I'm not Argentinian by blood, but I'm Argentinian by upbringing. They left, they fled their country, that his family fled their country. And Evita Perón helped them leave their country during a lot of their civil unrest. They didn't speak a lick of English when they came to the United States. They were field workers and house cleaners. When they first came in, they didn't know the difference. Again, they didn't speak English when they were refugees to the United States. They didn't know the difference for canned foods. And they told me stories about how they ate canned dog food, because they didn't know the difference when they first came in. So that, yeah, they just, you know, it's part of these things when you are running from somewhere, right? And they live in a farming community in Northern California called Watsonville, which next to Gilroy, which makes a bunch of garlic. And so had that, right? And then I had, you know, my mom was the only college, you know, degree holder in my entire family. And so kind of had this like weird juxtaposition. So had some really good, you know, like a normal American upbringing. And then I had a very like immigrant centric upbringing. But that love of what we are and who we are and the acceptance of who we are from wherever we are, was imprinted very, very young. Wow. Nice. Before we get too far into your store, I got one thing I want to just cover here. Have you, have you been hearing about, there's a lot of stuff going on about, are we going to institute a draft in 2026? Have you heard about this? I've heard rumblings. I'm trying to stay out of that as much as possible. But yeah, yeah, I've heard rumblings of that. You want to stay out of it? Oh, no, we can. Oh, okay. Like I said, airplane conversation. Yeah. Well, Polymarket, ah, you familiar with Polymarket? So Polymarket says there is a 9% chance that we will institute a draft by the end of 2026, December 31st. I'm just, we've got Ukraine war, we've got the Iran war, we've got a lot of conflict going on in the world. What do you think about that? You think there's a chance? So I'll answer, I guess, two questions. No, I don't think a draft is going to happen personally. Um, I don't have enough information on the entire, you know, aspect of it, but we have an extremely large military, an extremely capable military. I think it's, we have the first, second, third, and fourth largest militaries in the world, you know, and, and so the amount of money that we put behind it, amount of training that we put behind it, and education that we put behind it, I think that we're a very capable, capable military with that. This is part of the, the aspect of being a very different than I think what, you know, what we've talked about in the past is I'm not an advocate for war. I have seen it, I have lived it, I've experienced it. I think that the United States military should be as good as it is, but I think that it should be, it should be used as sparingly as possible. Because the wars that you and I were in, and I talk about it in the book and I'll talk about it here, we fought with a gun in our hand and a rule book in our pocket. And when you ask, it's like the Marine Corps is purpose built for one thing, to break the enemy's will to ours. And when you send the Marines forward, they are there to do only that. But when politicians and policymakers get in the way of that one thing, they are endangering the lives of the service members they send forward themselves. The bond that we should, the love that we share for one another in those scenarios, you know, we talk about it. I think there's a, you know, an old quote from like Black Hawk down, right? Once the first bullet passes your head, politics goes out the window. That's, I mean, couldn't be true, no truer statement I've ever found. But that bond, that love that I have for my brothers, the love that I have for, you know, or that they have for me, that is something that I think should be sacred and should be wielded very, very carefully. Because if they're going to send us to war, it better be for a damn good reason. And if it isn't, they're violating the social contract that we have with our country. You know, what do you think about the draft just in general? I mean, would you be for it or against it? I'm just curious. So I would, to answer your question directly, I'd be against a draft. I don't think that conscript service is something that is healthy for a fighting force. I think that there's a difference between being a volunteer and there's something that comes with that. But also I understand that less than 1% of the United States is physically and mentally capable of joining the delayed entry or excuse me, less than 1% of the United States is physically or physically or mentally capable of joining the military for whatever litany of reasons. I mean, there's a we are naturally overweight as a country. There's a ton of mental health issues that are screeners be able to put, you know, before we can go inside of the service itself. But we still have a pretty large swath of people that are still serving. I think it's 2 million people in the armed services currently, whether that be active or reserve, we have a pretty good, you know, function of that, you know, but the challenge is even as a retiree, you know, I've done my service, I've seen my war, you know, my war has passed. And I have a very good friend of mine who's on the precipice of retirement himself. And we talk a lot. He's in, he's in right now. And he doesn't know whether or not he wants to retire because the bond that he has, the love that he has for the Marines that he serves is so strong. And I've talked to a dead man, he's a great man, better than me, but that's just a great man. But I talk with Sarah, my partner, and I talk with her a lot. And I say that if this thing turns up, and we have to go, I would volunteer again to get back in to do whatever I can to get back into the fight, because you and I have a skill set that cannot be taught. You and I have experiences that cannot be taught. Those are learned and only learned by doing. And if I can save one person's life by putting mine in harm's way, I would gladly do that. You know, I think there's an old quote, right? My only regret is I have but one life to give, you know, to my country. I may not agree with our current stance of or our current posture of, of how we're, you know, treating the world or how we're using the military. Those are my personal opinions and not those of the Marine Corps or the Department of Defense. But I would still go. I don't know, man. I got mixed feelings. I was totally against a draft. I mean, I have kids. I want my kids doing what being you had to do by any means. I think involuntary service creates a, potentially creates a lesser, just not somebody that's not a, they don't have, they don't, they're not bought in 100%. You know, they're there because they have to be there. But then I interviewed Joe Ken and he actually brought up a really good point and he was talking about the warrior class in, in the U.S. And I mean, a lot of our parents served, their parents served, their parents, you know, and you get these, these, these, these generational warriors, you know, and it winds up it's coming from the same fucking class of people. And, you know, what Joe said, which I think makes sense and you just said it, you know, at that, I can't remember exactly how you worded it, but that we should be, we should use our, our military very sparingly, be very strategic. We're not doing that right now. And what Joe said, and I have, I agree with him, is if we were to institute a draft, then everybody has skin in this game. Everybody has to do it. And the pressure in DC to send us to war, because right now it's 1% of the population, right? 1% of the U.S. serves in the fucking military. So 99% of the people aren't affected by it and they don't really give a shit. Most of them are at the mall. Now, when we all have to fucking serve, now it becomes a different story, you know, in DC, because everybody's going to have to go. Everybody's going to have a kid. Everybody, you know, everybody's going to have to register. They're all going to have to go within volunteers, you know, with the draft. And so I think that would almost, you know, according to Joe, and I agree with him, you know, that would, that would, that would, that would be a totally different conversation in DC. Now that 100% of Americans are involved. I agree with that. I think I'm like, shit, that's a good fucking point because 1% of the population has been towing the line for a long, long fucking time. And retired, man. Yeah. Now, on the other hand, you know, I don't know if you've seen this stuff. Have you seen, have you seen this Australian SAS guy that's getting persecuted for war crimes? Supposedly, he's the most decorated SAS soldier in Australia. They're doing this. I actually did an episode with this guy, Jay Cowley. He's an SAS guy in UK, you know, and he's getting, he, he's, he's, it's not getting prosecuted anymore, but they were going after him. And this is a huge thing going on in UK. And, you know, I, I actually saw when I was scrolling around looking for something to talk about, uh, other than your story, like we're doing right now. And I saw this, I did a little post on it. I was like, you know, this is just fucking crazy, man. Like, I feel like this, you know, the, the, the, the, the warrior class in the world is just, it's disintegrating. I mean, I think it started with the defund the police movement here in the US. You know, nobody wants to be a cop anymore. Nobody wants to wear a badge. Nobody wants to protect the community. Look what happened to Daniel Penny. You know, that's the guy in New York city that had to choke that dude out, tried to prosecute him. And now it's happening in Australia, you know, SAS, British SAS, you know, there's the Eddie Gallagher case here. I mean, it just goes on and on. And so it's like, it's like, who is, what does that lead to? Well, that, that probably winds up leading to a draft because you see all that negativity online. Nobody's going to want to join, you know, and just, what'd you just say, you know, you deploy with a, with a rifle and a rule book. So I don't know, I got mixed feelings. Maybe a draft would be a good thing. I think that what I would like to see personally, so I come back to service, is I think that service is a good thing. Service to the greater good, service to your country or your community is a good thing. I would like to see some sort of civil service being a leg up in society. So, you know, if I were, you know, in charge, right? I would rather than instituting a draft, because I think that, so I'm a fan of science fiction. One of my favorite books is Starship Troopers. And inside of the books, Starship Troopers, they talk about citizen versus civilian. And so if you are, there, the difference between the two is a citizen who is somebody that has served the government at some level or served the greater good at some level and a civilian is someone who is not. And now in this context, Robert Heinemann, I think it is, or Heinlein, forgive me on that, is citizens can vote and they can, they can make direction or they can vote on the direction of their government because they have served their government. Civilians cannot. Now, while I'm not advocating for that because the United States Constitution prevents that from happening, I look at more carrot versus stick. What I would like to see is a society that rewards some sort of service. So what I would like to say is, if you serve from Peace Corps to Marine Corps, if you said I'm going to volunteer two to four years of my life, then what happens is at the end of that service, just like we have access to the, you know, the G.I. bill, I think that if somebody serves in something like this, whether it be a non-profit or a government vetted something rather in the United States, they then have that same opportunity, whether it be two years of vocational school or a four-year college degree. Because one, that helps change their trajectory. It helps give them a leg up into something. And then two, it gives them buy into the system. They have helped build something into the system. Counter to that, or I would say, alternatively, I would also like to see our politicians or our public leaders, public servants, if I may, not be able to have their children avoid the wars that they send us to. You do that by a draft. Well, I mean, there's- I'm not saying I'm 100% for a draft by any means. I was up saying, as I, you know, that's an interesting perspective that I had not thought about. And it just made me think, you know. Yeah, of course. What Deppy had said, I don't want my kids getting drafted. So, right, you know, 58,000 service members, you know, lost their lives in Vietnam. And the Marine Corps, now I can only speak to the Marine Corps because I know that better than the other services. The Marine Corps had to go through a lot after Vietnam and had to go through. So, the reason you see the Marine Corps drill instructor the way that they are today was because of Vietnam. That drill instructor wasn't like that in World War II, because they had to take a conscript military of people who literally had the choice between, excuse me, the choice between going to prison or joining the Marines, that put a certain demographic of people into the Marine Corps. So, discipline became a huge function, which has now become part of the Marine Corps identity. When we instituted draft, well, let me backtrack, the 1970s and 1980s were a very tumultuous time for the Marine Corps because you had people who were now Vietnam, post-Vietnam, also draft ease inside of the service who had decided to stay. There's a ton of other issues of a culture that happens inside of the service itself. Personally, I think that we have enough people serving in the United States to be able to bring that, but I do get the idea of man, I was angry when I was a young guy, man. I would go to Fallujah and see every kind of carnage you could imagine, and America was at the mall, man, nobody cared. But the way that I learned to be okay with it, there's the way that you want the world to be and there's the way that the world is. And the way that I became okay with it to a certain level was that maybe it wasn't their job to know what happens in combat, where we go. Maybe it's our politicians or our public leader's job to have a better determining factor of where they send us and why. I have a lot of consternation over our war and whether it was justified or whether it was not justified, and that's a very deep and long conversation, and I'm very happy to go down that with you. But I have to look and say 20 years later, so not counting I ran, right? But if we look at the fall of Kabul, right, 20 years later, were we better off than we were in 2001? No. No. And so as much as the military and the service had affected and changed and made my life so fulfilled, so much fulfillment and so much joy and so much happiness and change to I am as a person, I would ask the mothers that lost sons or daughters, I would ask the husbands and wives, is it justified? Was it worth it? Was it worth the cost? And I don't know. And I don't know. And it's hard. I think that that, you know, I'll tell you a story today that I haven't told anybody, and I'll talk about it later on. But people ask me, I got asked the other day, someone said, do you have any regrets over times where you didn't pull the trigger? My biggest regrets come from times that I did, because what America wants or America thinks is that war is black and white. And clarity is the first casualty in combat. And so when we're out, we're asking young men and women, 19 years old, prefrontal cortex isn't developed, the word infantry literally means child soldier. We're taking our youngest people who don't have the ability to, now I'm not saying that they're stupid or untrained or uneducated, but they don't have the higher reasoning of thought that doesn't happen until 25 and men, sometimes a little bit later on, probably later for me, right? But you go into this thing and we're putting these really tough situations and they have to make some judgment calls and judgment calls that have to live with for the rest of their life. And if we as leaders, if our leaders can't come to us and say there were tangible objectives that we were working towards to make our country better, safer, cleaner, whatever it is, if they can't have a tangible directive for that, at the end of all the sacrifice, then I would be much more cautious to listen to them to send us to the next war. I've said this before, but sleep is one of those things that affects everything. If you're not sleeping right, you feel it the next day. For me, switching to a Helix mattress made a big difference. I didn't realize how much my old setup was holding me back until I actually upgraded. Helix has over 20 different mattress models, so you're not just getting a one size fits all product, you can find what actually works for you. The thing I noticed right away was deeper and more consistent sleep. I wake up feeling better, more clear and ready to go. 82% of people saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle after switching to a Helix mattress. It's also simple. They ship it straight to your door for free. You get a 120 night sleep trial and it's backed by a lifetime warranty. There's no downside to trying it. Go to helixsleep.com.srs for 27% off site-wide. That's helixsleep.com.srs for 27% off site-wide. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helixsleep.com.srs. What is the story that you haven't told anybody? Let's do it right now so we don't forget it. It's 2006. I was a I was a sniper. I was a school train sniper. I had graduated sniper school. I was the honor graduate. I was instructor's choice. Did everything right? Did everything I was supposed to do? I was on my third tour. I was 21 years old. Third tour at 21? Holy shit. I was 21 years old. We had just gotten into country and we were south of Fallujah in a town called Amaria. The Zidon is the big delineating factor. You have the Euphrates River. You have Fallujah. The Euphrates River comes south of Fallujah. You have Zidon on the eastern side of the Euphrates. Then you have Amaria and Ferris Town. This is where the rural areas of Iraq start to move into a little bit more of the developed areas. Excuse me. That time frame in Iraq, we were moving much more to the stability operations, much more asking Marines to be law enforcement officers and arming them to the teeth, but asking them at the same time to be combat troops and back and forth. It was a confusing time for everybody. When a unit gets into a country, the local forces, the local nationals, they know when we're doing a unit changeover and they test us. That's just been something that's happened since the dawn of time, where there's a changeover or new unit. They want to test them and see what they're about. Within the first two weeks of us being down in Amaria, I write about it, but I don't go into the detail afterwards. We're in an intersection called Iron and Zinc. It's this main supply route that goes north into Fallujah. We hadn't gotten down to this specific position yet, but India Company's second platoon had taken this small patrol base. They had a satellite patrol base where a squad would be at this intersection. This intersection was riddled with IEDs because we had to pattern. We had to go on these roads and we had to go and resupply our firm bases and all this kind of stuff. On a local patrol on week number two or one and a half of the deployment, a foot patrol goes out with a squad of 13 Marines and an IED goes off and instantly kills a man by the name of Javier Chavez, who was 19 years old from an immigrant farming community in Central California. It was his first deployment. We barely knew his name and he was killed within the first week. Also with him was a person, a Marine named Corporal Ross Smith. Smitty and I met in the School of Infantry in 2002 and then we deployed together in OIF-1 as privates. We deployed together in Fallujah. When the IED happened and I wasn't there, a piece of shrapnel went above his like throat collar thing and embedded into his esophagus. He curled over on the street and I remember listening to the squad leader and the team leaders recount the story to us and how he suffocated drown in the middle of the street because he couldn't breathe. They did everything they could. The problem that we had because we had been put into this position where the infantry was effectively reactive. They couldn't be proactive based on the rules of engagement, based on the timeframe, a lot of civilian casualties, so they couldn't be as aggressive as Marines are required to be. I mean, everybody knows the Marines are there to do one job. Shouldn't be using the Marines Absolutely not. But we had made some strategic errors to put Marines into stability operations. It's just not what we're built for. The infantry can't really be proactive. What happens is sometimes in these scenarios, your snipers are your only proactive element and the infantry is sometimes reactive. A bomb goes off and these Marines are frustrated and they're heartbroken. They've lost, you know, Smitty was like a white guy rapper, right? So he would always like spit rhymes and that was just his thing. We always made fun of him for it, but that was his kind of thing. He was kind of the soul of India Company. When you lose the soul of a group of people, it's a natural human inclination to want retribution and that messes with your psyche. And so now I'm on my third deployment. I'm a sniper team leader, or excuse me, I'm a sniper in a team. And I'm sitting on a position. I can see the intersection where Smith died, his blood still on the street. And I'm thinking about that. And I have to sit and watch and deal with this. And this infantry looks at snipers as their angels on their shoulders do something for us. The sub chapter that I write about is called sandstorm. So what happens is this sandstorm starts to pick up in Iraq or in this area. And I start losing visibility. And I can't really see my visibility is dropping from like 800 to 700. And then over this intersection, about 600 meters away from me, I see two men doing what we call a template match. They are digging with shovels by the side of the road. They check every single box that I need to be able to pull the trigger on them. And I watch them and I talk with Captain Len Coleman, the company commander. And I had a good relationship with Len. He was my company commander in Fallujah. And so we worked pretty well together. And he trusted me. And that trust that a commander has of his sniper, if they trust them, cannot be violated ever. And I call in what I see, we go through the protocol and it gives me the clearance to be able to shoot. And I explain to him that the sandstorm is coming and I'm losing visibility. And my mind is telling me it's wanting me it's willing me do something, avenge their deaths. What happens if they're putting an ID, can a squad get there in time to go take care of this? Because as a sniper, my main goal isn't to use my bolt gun. It's to use my radio, right, to get other people so I can remain concealed in my position. And I watch these two men and I make my choice. And I decide that I'm going to kill these men because they're digging by the side of the road. What they're doing is they're taking a what looks like a 24 by 12 inch, you know, object. Again, I can't see it very well. And they're they're digging furiously, they're looking over their shoulders, they're doing all the things that tells me that they're not supposed to be there, but they're digging furiously. And they're putting this thing in the ground. I have my rules of engagement, I'm cleared, I'm legal to shoot and I'm legal to fire on this thing. And I decide to take my shot. And, you know, I use in the book four pounds of pressure. The interesting thing as a sniper, right, or as a, as a shooter, you know, with all our weapon systems, I think an M4 is like 10 to 14 pounds of pressure to be able to break the trigger, depending right, you know, and then a sniper rifles is four to six. And so what I write is I said, four pounds of pressure to break to break this trigger into end this man's life. And so I go through my breathing exercise and make sure my data is correct. The wind is relatively calm at this point, kind of blowing in my face. So it's real minimal wind call about 600 meters fading. And I take my first shot. I hit the first man in the chest, he spins around, he falls to the ground before the second man can see what happens. I have now moved from left to right. So I'm taking the recoil from my first shot and I'm having it ride into my second shot. So as I'm racking my bolt, you know, it's kind of like a lot of failure drill, but it's, what's the drill was where you shoot multiple targets and then you come back to them. It's like, I forget what it is, a box drill, it might be, I think it's a box. Presidente. Yale Presidente. That's exactly right. So everybody's getting love before you come back, right? So I'm using that, but as a sniper. So I take my first shot, hit the first guy in the chest, he falls to the ground and I'm using that recoil to come to the second shot, hit him in the shoulder, he spins around and then falls to the ground. I bring my weapon system back. I look at the first man, he's now dead on the ground. And then I come over to the second man who's now reaching for something and I can't tell what he's reaching for. Is it a weapon system? Is he trying to detonate an IED? What is he doing? And he's crawling towards the first man and I take my second shot and end his life. And then, and I was alone on this one. I didn't have my spotter, we know, just where we were at, we just didn't have anybody. It was just me up top. And the sun begins to set and part of Sharia law is being able to bury their dead before the sun sets so that their bodies and their souls can have a chance at heaven. So then what happens is a procession starts to happen inside of the small little, you know, village and the civilian population comes out and they load these men up and they take them over to a field in my line of sight. They put a white sheet over these two men and they bury them. And I watch this as the sun setting as the sun is fading. And I realize they weren't digging an IED. They were building a wall. They were building a wall for their family. The thing that they were putting into the ground were cinder blocks. And so when people ask me if I'm an advocate for whatever conflict, for whatever war, the answer is no. Because no matter what, if you're going to send Americans, you're going to send people like me and you into harm's way to make those kind of decisions, I have to live with that for the rest of my life. I was completely justified. I was completely clean with my ROEs and I killed two men that didn't deserve it. So no, I'm not okay with sending people to war unless it is absolutely justified because my story is one of many. And there are many Marine soldiers, sailors, airmen and you know, and coasties, right, and now space force, right? When we go to the next war or are in the next war, many more people will have stories like that because clarity is the first casualty in combat. And so I tell that story not because I'm proud of what I did, because I want people to know the cost is every night when I go to bed, every day when I shave my face, not in it comes in waves, right? I have to think about that. What would, I mean, and their children are in front of them. And I didn't know that, right? You know, like you do what you can, right? You do your best. But these young men below have just lost two of their closest friends and they can't fight back. There's the IEDs killed us because there was nothing we could do, nothing. It was just, it was a casualty that would happen and the frustration that came from this, from these Marines, and they were all looking to me to do something about it, to make it right, to make their deaths not in vain. But I wasn't the person that sent us there, right? I wasn't, and that's the challenge that I have. And I am, I have a friend of mine who said, you know, I was like, hey, I'm not trying to write like a political book. And he goes, no, AJ, this is a deeply political book. It's nonpartisan. I have a very strong relationship, very strong feelings with the politicians that sent us to war, because we went with clear minds, clear hearts, you know, clear minds and full hearts to go and serve our country, right? The red, white, and blue, it's all over our bodies, right? You know, we've lived with it and we love this thing so much. And so that power has a responsibility that has to be wielded very carefully and very cautiously and only send snake eaters when it absolutely needs to happen. Man, I'm sorry that happened. How did you, how long was it until you figured out that they were just building a wall? Then was it the next day they started? So yeah, that's when I confirmed it. You know, we didn't go and do a blast analysis or shot analysis on that because they had buried them. But it was interesting. So I thought it was, you know, they didn't treat, the first inclination was they don't treat foreign fighters that way. You know, the Mujahideen wasn't always, they weren't really well liked by the local population, specifically in Amaria. We worked with them, you know, a lot down there. They really liked the coalition and they were afraid of the Mujahideen. And so they wouldn't have treated them with that reverence had they been Mujahideen. They may have left them or moved them, right? But when they buried them was my first, oh no. And then the next morning I could see clearly, and it was a half built center block wall protecting his family on the side of a road. Shit. And so, you know, there's consternation, there's fear with sharing that, right? You know, I don't want people to think that I'm some, you know, heartless killer, right? You know, that I'm a, you know, warmonger or any of that stuff. So there's a ton of guilt in there. But I think that if people like you and I are able to be masculine by being vulnerable, by showing compassion, by showing those things, we can show the real strength of who we are. So I tell that story and all of this, there is no, there is no one in the world that is, I've told all my secrets, right? Like there's no one going to think that I like, I wasn't a hero waiting for his moment, right? I was a scrawny kid from Northern California who was cut from the high school baseball team, right? Who was, you know, I was a fucking thespian in high school, right? You know, I was the mascot, right? There's all the uncool boxes you could have checked, right? Like I checked them all, right? I did all that. But I tell these stories because I want, if I can have one young man or woman read this book, listen to this conversation and say, it's okay. You know, it's okay that I don't have it all figured out. I suffered from like massive amounts of like low self-efficacy, you know, coming from that immigrant background we talked about, not a lot of money, poverty mindset, that kind of stuff that stays with you for a very, very long time. And as you and I think have walked similar paths is that breeds into addiction, that breeds, you know, into substance abuse, that breeds into dangerous, you know, actions, personalities, whatever it may be, when you're not able to, you know, reconcile that. So I tell these stories and I write these kind of things because I want some young man or woman, some kid who wants to join the military, whatever it is, to understand it, to do it, to feel it, to believe it, to know the cost at some level and what really happens. And I would like some deadbeat politicians to read this book and know what it actually means when you send people like you and me to war. Because the hardest part about going to combat is not just coming home. It's coming home whole. Damn. Well, that got to be quick. Yeah, man. That's the point. I mean, it's weird because that was, I mean, 2006, very early in your career. But at the same time, I think you said your third deployment. Correct. So maybe not so, I mean, I was like salty, but not, yeah. Still young. Yeah. You know, still long ways to go. So what, you're five years then at that point? Yeah, just four. Six, 17 years left. Yep. So we just talked about, you know, that we are, we are engaging in war around the world. JSOC units have already been deployed. Special ops units have already been deployed. It's going to happen again. And so what advice do you have, you know, for somebody that's going to have to make a judgment call like that? So this isn't, I mean, I don't know what to say it. I can't say you made the wrong call. Right? That's the thing. You know, but in retrospect, you wouldn't have done it again. And so when somebody finds himself in the same situation, which they will soon, what advice do you have for them to keep driving on? So I think that what I did whenever I could after that was the lesson that I learned was any moment that I had the opportunity. So snipers just, we're not just, you know, cold-blooded killers, right? We have to, when time permits, you have to learn, you mean, we've heard it before, you watch your prey, right? You watch your target, you get to know them, you get to learn them. The thing that we have to do between, you know, first focal or second focal plane, right, you know, two lenses of glass is try to figure out who that person is. I want them to tell me that they're a bad person or they have ill intent. And so I watch them as often as possible. So whenever given the chance again in the future, I didn't hesitate. I just made sure that they made the decision. At the end of the day, I became a hammer and they were the nail. They were the person that was, you know, they made the choice to pick up the gun, to, you know, implant the IED. I didn't hesitate. I just had to make sure that I was a little cleaner every single time. And those are lessons that have to be learned as you go through that. For someone that's looking to join or people that are in the fight right now, my hat's off to you, you know, like, and again, I'm always, one thing I'm never, ever, ever going to do is ever bash the service members that are forward. Whether or not they go to whatever conflict around the world, they will keep their honor clean. They will fight with a just heart, right, or with a, you know, a clear mind and a, in a good heart, and they will fight for the person to the left and the right. I would say, never lose sight of that. That matters more than anything. And if you are making a decision, whether it turns out to be the right decision or the wrong decision, and the intention there is the preservation of American lives in a bad situation, you've made the right decision. I mean, I've been in that situation more times than I can count. Fortunately, I never wound up in, in taking a shot that I regretted. But it could have happened very easily. I mean, it's, it just did on the side of the road for nothing. And like you said, our guys are getting killed around what, oh five, I think is one EFP started getting introduced on the scene and that was fucking taking everybody out. What do you think that you could have done differently on that specific scenario? You know, I've replayed it a million times in my head. I don't hear anything you could have done differently. I made the right decision, but the wrong outcome happened. And that happens a lot in life. You know, I've taken that to my core. If this book sells four copies, that's okay. Because I didn't write it to sell books. I wrote it because I wanted to put everything into something and I bled on the pages and I tried to give everything I could into telling our story, not my story, our story. And so when I look at any endeavor I take on for the rest of my life, I put everything I can to ensure the best chance of success. But I also know that you can do everything right and still fail. And that gives me a little bit of grace. That gives me a little bit of understanding. I've failed more than I've succeeded in my career. And I continue to put myself out there and fight for something that I believe in and try to change something to, you know, for the better. And I generally fail the first time I do anything as we get into the story a little bit more. You know, I failed at everything the first time. And then I've learned from it and I come back to it. But anything, what I learned from that specific decision was you have to live with every decision that you make, every conscious decisions you make. Part of my sobriety that we can talk about later on was that I was trying to hide from my own decisions and trying to be able to, you know, medicate from decisions that I didn't want to look in the mirror. I had to do some soul searching. I had to go through some steps. I had to go through some conversations with some people, make amends and some of the hardest parts is making amends with yourself and saying, you did everything you could with the information that you had and it turned out like shit. But you weren't looking, you weren't hungry, you weren't trying to kill people, you weren't trying to, you know, put everybody on your back that you could. I didn't think of these people as less than. I thought of them as my enemy. And my enemy was as cunning and as resourced as I was. And the funny thing is, Mujahideen, you know, I've told people and I've said it in the past, I've never fought a terrorist. I've only fought freedom fighters. And so when I put that perspective into mind, Mujahideen means freedom fighter, right? Taliban is student of the Taliban or student of the Quran, right? They are fighting for their own just cause, just like I am. And so I respected them. Now, I didn't give them any quarter when I didn't need to, but I respected them, you know, in that. And so that's kind of how I went through it. And I think that, you know, our young men and women that are going to be forward or are forward and, you know, currently doing their work, I think they're going to make some good decisions and they're going to have some tough decisions. And as long as they can do that and know that they did it with the best of intentions, I think that's the best they can hope for. Thank you for sharing that. Of course. Let's get into your early story. Cool. So you grew up in Northern California. Yeah. Son of immigrants. Yep. Hey, brothers and sisters. No, no. Dog and a cat. My mom was an artist. Sure, she is an artist. She was a plein air pastel and oil painter. And so like, you know, like there's the stories of people who like joined, they're all like growing up in Texas, you know, hunting with their dad or whatever. I didn't have any of that, right? I just had a very, against like Northern, I'm like 30 minutes from Berkeley, like that we just didn't have a lot of military, you know, presence in the area. We didn't like look down on it or anything. It just wasn't at the forefront of my thoughts growing up. But big GI Joe fan, you know, like that was kind of my, you know, I think we're around the same age. So like my formative years were built by that. But I talk about this idea of like low self-efficacy. And I think that part of it, I'll give you another nugget, is part of it comes from a little bit of a poverty mindset. So I'm not saying I'm not a victim. I do not believe I was a victim. I believe that I am the culmination of millions of tiny decisions that have brought me to this position and this place in life. But my mother, when she graduated, you know, college and moved back to, you know, like had kind of come back to the United States and gone through that one of her first jobs outside of college was working for a company called Singer Link. And Singer Link was a defense contractor out of Northern California. And what they did and what she did was they were designing the first flight simulators for the AH-64 Apache. And my mom, as an artist, as a plein air pastel painter, was brought in to this company and worked for this company for excuse me, for a number of years to help with rendering of landscapes. And so that's where it's like interesting where you bring this kind of landscape kind of piece in there. And life was good. I was, you know, three years old kind of at the time frame and from what I remember, life was good. Single mom at the time, my parents were divorced. My dad was a long haul truck driver. I mean, like the most quintessential immigrant cowboy, right? So like long haul truck driver, flannel, square dancing, points, right, you know, rolled cigarettes or rolled sleeves, marboreal reds here, right? A cowboy hat, belt buckle, whole thing. You know, big rig, truck driver kind of thing. But I didn't see him much because he was on the road. And like some fathers, right, they have to love their children from afar. And that was the role that he was in. So predominantly raised by a single mom in Northern California. What happened was a person by the name of Paul Bilzerian came into Northern California. And he was what's called a corporate raider. And if you're familiar with the movie, I'm gonna lose a lot of tough guy points here, but if you're familiar with the movie Pretty Woman, Richard Gears character in Pretty Woman, he was a corporate raider. What he did was he bought companies and then broke them up into parts and then sold them. Well, that Paul Bilzerian was that person. And he came into Northern California and came into Singer Link and bought the company and sold it. And so overnight, my mom drove to work one day and got a pink slip. And we were plunged into financial, you know, like basically destitute. And that kind of stuff like imprints on you young when you see a, you know, I don't understand, but you see your mom at a kitchen table crying, you know, over a stack of papers that kind of imprints on you. But I'm not mad at Paul Bilzerian. I was mad at him for a very, very long time. But I'm not mad at him anymore because what happened was he gave my mom, I don't think this isn't, he was not altruistic in his desire to do this. He sold the company. I mean, the dickhead eventually went to prison, you know, for white collar crimes later on. The name is something that you can probably Google. And there is a family lineage that is public at some level. But I look back and I want Paul Bilzerian at some point to see who I am and the man that I became because he was responsible for that in a large part, because what he did was rip my entire world apart by making a quick buck and plunging us into financial chaos. But in that, what my mom taught me was she turned that loss. She did everything she could, did it the right way, and it just didn't work out the way that she had planned it. And so she pivoted and she ended up, you know, opening up a fine arts and framing studio. And then, you know, got a second job to keep the lights on, but she tried to follow her dream and her dream was being a professional artist. And so we rented this little house in Sunnyvale and the front three rooms of this like super old house was the art studio, a picture framing studio, and where she taught art classes at night. And we lived in the back two rooms. And that was kind of, you know, our little upbringing. Now, again, like it's Silicon Valley, I, you know, it's not, I didn't, I mean, I'm not from the streets, you know, I didn't have, you know, people had it a lot worse than I did, but that imprinted on me pretty, pretty young. And so as I carried that kind of through, that helped kind of shape who I was, because I got a chance to watch her and watch what she was doing and kind of go, you know, from, from that point. And so not a lot of military, you know, upbringing kind of stuff, but I was a rambunctious kid and I saw in the fourth grade, we had, you know, like, what is it like a scruff mograph, you know, comes in and they do their little, you know, they do like the assemblies where they talk about whatever things, you know, don't do drugs. And we had a Boy Scout master come in. And this Boy Scout master came in and like some like ill fitting, you know, uniform. And he talked about, you know, the Boy Scouts, and he talked about camping in the woods and then fire and, you know, being able to make fire. And I was like hooked from there. And so from that point, I, you know, like ran home was like, mom, I want to join the Boy Scouts, right? And this was, you know, what I really wanted to do. I liked the outdoors. And so a very long story short, she couldn't. So there was no, I was, I was too young to be a Boy Scout. I was in the fourth grade and I had to be in the sixth grade to be a Boy Scout. So they have this in between called Weeblows. And the challenge was there was no fathers in the area to be Weeblow Den Leaders. So what happened was my mom volunteered to be our Weeblow Den Leader in the Cub Scouts. And she got other moms to be our little, like our Den Leaders. So for the next two years, they ran us through this like Boy Scout curriculum, a bunch of young boys being taught how to be a man by their mothers, which I thought was kind of, you know, it's really cool. It's like what a parent would do, right? You know, like, they would do anything to make sure that their son or daughter didn't suffer or want for anything. And so she did that. And then eventually I joined the Boy Scouts and then continued through that pathway. And then eventually I became an Eagle Scout. And I never shot a gun before joining the military. I mean, a black powder rifle, you know, like Boy Scout came, you're like, stuff for the, you know, you do that kind of thing. That was the only gun I'd ever shot. But I remember vividly, I wanted to be two things. I saw, we were camping one time and our Scout Master brought this like, I think it was like popular mechanics or popular science magazine. I don't remember which one, but it was like this, they did this kind of overview of the United States military. And they had all these pictures of what like a pilot looked like in all their garb and what an infantry person looked like, right? And then eventually they had a picture of a sniper in a ghillie suit. And I was like, I want to do that. But the first thing that popped into my mind was, or the second thing that popped into my mind, first thing was like, yeah, I want to do that. The second thing was, I could never do that. I'm too small, I'm too little, whatever the thing is that weird mindset that sets in, I never thought that I could achieve those dreams, but it was all I wanted to be that or an F-18 pilot, because Top Gun got me too, right? You know, so, but then I was fascinated with the military and wanted to kind of do that. But in high school, I was like a, you know, I thought I was like Ferris Bueller, you know, we would cut class and go surfing or go to San Francisco. And so I was a smart kid, but I didn't have the grades, you know, and then, and then in 2000, you know, my dad did everything he could, put all his money away into, you know, with an investment broker, and then the dot-com crash happened and my entire college fund disappeared overnight. And it was the second time that I saw my father cry, you know, because, again, as a father, you know, you want to provide a better life for your child, a better opportunity than you had is the only thing that you want, right? And that's what he wanted for me. And that, you know, disappeared overnight. A funny side, the first time I saw my father cry was, and he's like super Italian. So like, again, he raised me to be an American boy. So I played baseball instead of soccer. I don't speak Italian. He didn't speak Italian at home. Like, there's two different types of immigrants. There's people that really adapt to the culture that they're in and kind of force that. And then there's some people that, you know, hold on. So he wanted me to be an American boy and was an avid history reader, right? And like, knew more about American history than really any American I've come across. And we were watching the World Cup in 1994 at a place called Vito's Pizza, where it's like this, you know, little pizza place in Santa Clara, and all the Italian men from the area come and hang out, all the guino, or Guido's, excuse me, all the Guido show up, right? And we're in the back room. We're watching on this big screen TV, and they're in the World Cup final, Italy versus Brazil. And, you know, the prodigal son of Italy, Roberto Baggio, we have to go to penalty kicks, right? And the prodigal son for Italy shows up. He's like their Pele. He's like penalty kick to win the World Cup, to bring it home to Italy. And he fucking sails it. He sails it like over the crossbar. And like I'm seen out of the godfather, like these Italian men are like throwing things in the air. They're like literally weeping, right, you know, for the, you know, their country's loss in the World Cup. And I remember seeing that, you know, kind of laughing about that, you know, later on. But that was the first time I saw my dad cry. And the second was, you know, when I, when, when he had, you know, lost, you know, the, that savings, you know, for us. And then really, 9-11 was the precursor was was the thing that changed everything where were you? I was a senior in high school. And I had kind of blossomed, you know, into kind of a popular kid, right? I ended up being like the homecoming king. And it was I kind of adapted. So being an only child, I learned how to make friends pretty, pretty quickly. Like sometimes only children get like a stigma of being like selfish or being kind of dicks. I wasn't that. I just learned how to make friends pretty quickly. And I remember, so I'm on the west coast. So I wake up at like 6 30 in the morning is like a teenager, right, doing his thing. And then I remember on the way to school, I, I'm driving my grandmother's old car, you know, it's a 1986 Nissan stanza. It's like a chicken McNugget with wheels. It has like four cylinders. It doesn't work very well. And the only radio station that it actually can tune in is the AM radio station for the oldies channel, ironically enough. So it was called the Grammobile. So I'm cruising to school in the Grammobile, usually listen to some sort of oldies in the morning. And it's just a newscast. And they are, you know, the national broadcast is kind of taken over. And they're kind of giving this play by play. Both towers had been hit at that point. And so we knew it wasn't an accident. And I'm listening to all of this kind of happen on the way to school. I get to school. And they basically cancel school for the day. But some of us are there and we kind of just drone into this auditorium. And so we're in our school's theater and they've lives, you know, put a live feed in of whatever TV channel it was. And we sit there for the next, you know, few hours, and we end up watching the towers fall as a group of high school students. I mean, people are crying, people like there's rage, right? I'm 16 years old at the time, you know, and when I was a senior, but I was 16. And three weeks later, you know, I had this. So I talk about trajectory a lot. And as a sniper, I believe in trajectory. And part of the things, and I write about him in the book, was one of my high school teachers. My high school teacher was named Rafael Rojas. And he was a Marine reservist and like the super tough, you know, Marine type teacher, right? You show up late to class, you paid in push ups, which is like super illegal. But he had, you know, kind of thing to do it anyway, right? But he'd kind of seen this kind of growing in me over a period of months, kind of my indecision where I was at, but I was always kind of, I had this affinity towards the Marines and the discipline. I didn't really know much about the Marines themselves. I thought all Marines were infantry. I didn't know there were jobs in the Marine Corps. And three weeks, well, about two weeks after 9 11, he introduces me to my Marine recruiter, a gentleman by the name of staff at the time, Staff Sergeant Walter today, they called him tiny. He's this giant Hawaiian guy, and ironically called him tiny. And he handed me a business card and gave me, you know, like the, put his like giant like meat paw out there, right? You know, I'm like 120 pound senior 16 year old. And then I had to have him, you know, go through the thing of talking to my parents, because I was not 18. And I had to wait three, I had to wait another week until I turned 17 before I could even legally talk with a recruiter. And so then he went through the process of talking to my artist mother and my anti war, you know, immigrant father about me joining the Marine Corps. And again, no real lineage of service, you know, my father's grandfather and great grandfather fought in World War One and World War Two, but not for the good guys, right? So there wasn't like a ton of affinity for service. And my dad was a huge history buff, right? In military history specifically. And so whether or not he, you know, he had he had conscripted service when he was in the Italian army. But that was it. There was never any like positive association. I wasn't like inculcated into joining the military. We're part of the warrior class. Yeah. No, I'm not even remotely dude. I mean, like I was not very like the Eagle Scout was like the closest thing to that, right? You know, I did do really well in the Scouts because I liked the idea. And I learned it very early on and I used it later in my career of iterative positive reinforcement, not being a cheerleader, right? But like saying, you know, every once in a while, you know, saying, Hey, you did a good job here, or here's an incremental measure or metric of success or keep climbing this ladder of success towards a common goal that works for me or worked for me. And it also works a lot for the human psyche and being able to bring people towards the idea of self-efficacy. So I had to learn that kind of going through there. Wow. Wow. So you joined at 17. Yeah. Yeah. I turned 18 in boot camp. So like right after I graduated high school, dude, I had like super my hair was longer than it is now. I had it was embarrassing. I have this photo. There's a couple of photos that I like don't want the internet to ever see because you know, the internet's forever. There's this like my mom, I love her to death, but God, I don't know. I have this like glamour shot almost of me. Dude, I wear my Boy Scout. Holy. And I have my frosted tips that I'm like leaning against the wall. I got to find that. Oh, man. So yeah. And then eventually, yeah, joined the Marines went three weeks after I graduated high school, ended up, dude, I, the Marine recruiters, you know, hardest job in military, hardest job in military for sure is the recruiters. I tried to get one over on my recruiter. So they do this thing. I don't know if they do it in the Navy. And I read a little bit of your story as well. You know, I know that you had to do a lot of research before, you know, joining the SEALs. And I know that you went and like checked out a bunch of books to learn about it, right? So that you kind of get an understanding. Nobody else would take me. Right. And wasn't that big of a decision. Well, and there's only so much reading you can do to introduce yourself to what Bud's actually is, right? You know, there's like reading it and experience it or two very different things. But the Marines do this thing where they have like these dog tags, like they're called, you know, identification tags. It's really ingenious is like you pick this thing out. And they give you this like stack of things and it's like, see the world or college or financial opportunities or adventure or whatever. And you like pick the top three. But basically what it is, is you're picking the sales tactic they're going to use on you. And they don't even have to figure it out. They just say like, what are the three things that you identify with? And you're like, I want to see the world. They're like, well, here's all these brochures on how you can see the world, right? So the other services were handing out bonuses. And I was like, I was hip to it, right? Like, I understand, you know, I was a smarter kid. And so I remember I meet my recruiter, staff sergeant today at the office, and I meet this other guy at the time, staff sergeant Milburn. And he is a force recon scout sniper and like an old core force recon screaming high like a horseshoe haircut, right? Super slender, like nearly emaciated. And they were like, Oh, yeah, he's a force recon sniper. And I was like, Oh, cool. Like I had any idea what that was, right? And I'm trying to like feign like nonchalance is like a teenager, right? And I remember getting ready to leave the office. I was like, All right, I've got the upper hand. I'm in, I want to do all this stuff. And I was like, All right, so other services are talking about these bonuses, right? And I tried to get really hip with them. And I said, Hey, like, what can you guarantee me if I sign this contract? And my recruiter looks over my shoulder at staff sergeant Milburn, and they kind of smirk, and he puts his fucking big ass Hawaiian knuckles on the table, right? And he leans in and you can almost like hear like the leather, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like squishing, right? And he leans and he looks at me and he says, I'll tell you what, if you sign those papers, I can guarantee you 13 weeks of boot camp. And then he like hands me this fucking folder. And I was like, and I was like, I am in like I was bought hook hook line and sinker. I was like ready to go. They just tough talked me into joining the Marines, basically. And I was all about it, man. And then yeah, shipped off the boot camp and started that, you know, that wild ride that was the service. Right on, man. Yeah. Well, let's take a break because I know we've got a long ways to go once we get into service. And when we come back, we'll just pick right back up. I appreciate it. Perfect. You have a very easy demeanor as an interviewer. I do appreciate it. You have a uncanny ability to put people at ease. And I appreciate that. Thank you. Everything in life has leveled up. Your phone's basically a supercomputer, your car parks itself, your headphones cancel noise like magic, but your razor still feels like it's stuck in 2008. That's why I switched to Harry's plus the first time I used it, it just felt different, way more controlled. The handle actually has weight to it, not that cheap plastic feel in the blades glide clean without that tugging and pulling you get from the drugstore razors. They've got this advanced pivot system that actually hits every angle in the blades are engineered to cut clean at the root. Plus there's a lubricating strip with aloe and vitamin E. So your skin doesn't feel wrecked afterwards. In the crazy part, it feels like a premium shave, but it's not priced like one. They own their blade factory in Germany, so there's no middleman markup. 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And yeah, my boot camp experience was like anybody else's, you know, going through it. I was, so there's a habitual thing and I get rid of all my cool points. Like I just, I just, I like hemorrhage those things. I was not a good recruit in the beginning. I fail at everything that I do in the beginning. I was like a skinny scrawny guy going through it. And then eventually I have like this kind of ramp up, right? And I kind of turned it on. But, you know, had a lot of leadership, I guess skills or, you know, kind of, you know, bias or prowess for it. But really, like, I've included in the book, like series of letters that I've had for my entire career. So when I tried to write this thing, I tried to write our story like a marine story and then use me as the through line through this entire book. And so I could tell all the people's stories along the way. But I, it's funny. I, my mom's saved everything, right? So I have like boot camp letters where I'm like my third day in boot camp. And I'm like, this place is terrible, right? Like these men are truly, I hate it here. Right. I made a huge mistake, right? And then like week six, you know, I'm like, we did a three mile hump today and people fell out, you know, hopefully more tomorrow, you know, kind of thing. Like, I just fall right into the Marine Corps and totally, you know, catch my stride and then find this organization that I really, really fell in love with. And yeah, had a great, you know, kind of experience through boot camp, a really weird one towards the end. We had this really weird scenario that happened at the end of boot camp. So like my entrance into the Marine Corps was tumultuous. So join up in super normal tumultuous. Yeah. What the hell does that mean? It was chaotic. And so a lot of ups and downs. And so I had a very interesting relationship with the service. And I'm sure that the Marine Corps is not going to be happy that I'm telling some of these stories, but whatever, they could shave my head and send me to boot camp again. But so I go through boot camp and the last few days of Marine Corps boot camp, the families are now visiting, right? Well, what happens is we are, you know, in hindsight, people ask me, they're like, well, why didn't you just not do this? Or why didn't you like, when a journalist director tells you to do something in boot camp, you like, you do it like a million percent, right? So they, all the drill instructors at one point had us, we had to keep our pocket items. So we had to keep, you know, our ID card, our debit card and like dog tags or whatever it was inside of our left breast pocket. And then at one point during the course, our scribe was directed to go down to all the recruits and ask for their pin numbers to their debit card. And literally none of us batted an eyelash because this is boot camp and I don't want to get killed. So what happens is on graduation morning. So what happens is like when you do the graduation ceremony, everyone's like, I saw right, and you like do your reverse step, right? And then like you spin about or whatever the thing is, and like the families come like rushing down from the stage or from the stands. And so I'm, I'm standing there. And as you know, our families are starting to come up to us, we have a drill instructor who like yells at our platoon, he goes platoon 1101, right? And so all of us have to snap to attention because like we're technically graduated, but some drill instructors yelling at us right now that we don't recognize. And it's like this really weird. So our families are like coming up to us and hugging us and we don't know what to do. Other drill instructors start ushering them out of the formation and they have us close ranks and then they march us back to our squad bay. And inside the squad bay is now military police. And this is like, we've now officially graduated, right? We don't know what's going on. People are screaming at us. And as you get towards the end of boot camp, your drill instructors start acting a little different, right? They start acting more like Marines and less like drill instructors. And so now this group of people is screaming their faces off at us. This is super new and we don't really know what's going on. So eventually what happens is a military police officer comes in and he talks about how he's some major somebody and we're all under official military investigation and none of us have any idea what's going on. And then what happens is they have us line up in front of our C bags and our, you know, uniform bags and we're standing at the position of attention. And then they start to go with a drill instructor flanked by two military police officers, like a couple of teams of these guys start going down the line and they're having us open up our C bags and dump all of our contents of everything that we own, which isn't much, but it's like two C bags and a uniform bag onto the ground in front of us. And no one's briefed us in any of this stuff. So they're going through, there's, there's like screaming, you know, like any Marine will understand it's like the three hats are yelling at you from all three sides and you're freaking out, you're trying to get your combination. Well, what happens is this like storm eventually blows over me, right? Like I dump all the stuff out, nothing goes on. And then as soon as I'm done, I see across the squad bay of recruit, well now a Marine technically dumps his C bag out and out of the C bag comes hundreds of stacks of $20, just like thousands of dollars falls onto the ground. And then a MP spears this guy like, like hits him against the wall locker, you know, or the, the, the bunk beds or the racks, right? And then like throws handcuffs on him. And then another one down the other end of the squad bay, the same thing happens. Well, what had happened was two, two cops or two people dump money out to recruits are now Marines empty their C bags and they're filled with cash, which is the oddest phenomenon for what this is. This is supposed to be like your, you know, I don't know, shaving gear or whatever, Marine uniforms. And so there's hundreds of thousands of dollars or I would say tens of thousands of dollars on the floor in front of us. These two Marines have now been speared by the MPs are getting arrested. They like yank them out and they like take them into the showers and we like never see these people again. Well, what had happened, we think because I'm like, I'm private pursuit, I'm PFC, Pachuti at this point. So nobody's telling me anything, right? So what we get told later on kind of comes to the rumor mill is that we, the visitors Thursday and or like the night before graduation, we had our scribe or whoever it was in the platoon was going to the ATM on base near the barber shop and taking out a thousand dollars from every single recruits account because all of our ID card, all of our debit cards were in our left breast pocket and then they had all of our pins. And so they created this list and then we're stealing a thousand dollars or so from every single recruit in an 80 recruit, you know, platoon and somehow this, you know, pings or whatever it is, there was a lot of questions in and around that, right? So we didn't know if the drill instructors had anything to do with it. We didn't know if the recruits acted alone. Nobody briefed me on it, but we, I was out like a thousand bucks and I have really no idea if I ever got it back. But the thing that that really hurt was that was my entrance into the like we're, this is the proudest day of our lives at this point. We are now Marines and we get treated like absolute garbage and then to find out that Marines of some level were stealing from us was like this really weird like gut punch. And then they're like, that's all folks. And then we're released and then we go to our families and then go on our 10 days of boot camp leave before we go to the school of infantry. And so I say that to start this interesting trend in the Marine Corps at the time. I need to tell everybody in the world, I love the Marine Corps. I love my, you know, Crimson and gold or Scarlet and gold, right? My breath, my blood, but it doesn't mean that I can't criticize it, that I can't, that I don't have certain things that I don't enjoy about it. The entry level pipeline for a young Marine is not good. And it wasn't good at this timeframe. So what happens is we go to bootleave right in your, now where I'm walking home, I'm back home in Northern California with a super high and tight talk about how I'm like six foot tall and bullet, you know, telling war stories already, right? Kind of thing. And then I get back after my 10 days of bootleave to go to the school of infantry where now I'm, I am what's called an 0300. I am an infantry contract. That's what I signed up to be in the Marine Corps was an infantry contract. Well, as you go through the school of infantry, what happens is you get your MOS, your military occupational specialty, you get that designation as you go through, whether that be at the time it was 0311 was a rifleman, 0331 was a machine gunner, 41 was a mortar man, 51 was an assault man, and 52 was an anti tank guided missile man at the time. So I'm going through this course and what the drill instructors, they personified professionalism and they were the guardians of the badge and they were really, really good at what they did to be able to create Marines. What we had at the school of infantry at the time was the complete opposite of that. So the school of infantry at the time wasn't a formal billet in the Marine Corps, like at large, you had some people who had like a formal job there. Most of those, I don't know if the Navy has it, but we call them FAPs or is when you're basically like farmed out, you're like a temp basically. And a lot of these guys are like six months left in the Marine Corps, they don't have enough time on contract to make a deployment. And so you're like, go to SOI and become a school of infantry instructor. And they were not, there's like, they're also seen as less than drill instructors. So we didn't, the Marine Corps didn't put a lot of emphasis into these young Marines who were going to be training younger Marines. So the quality of education, well, excuse me, the quality of training that I got at the school of infantry was very, very, very different than what it would become later on. It was more like, you know, we were boots, I don't know if that's a term they use in the Navy much, but boots is like not a term of endearment. It's like you're a fucking new guy. And so they just treated us like absolute crap. And so this is an interesting concept back to the conscript or the draft conversation. A lot of our institutional hierarchy in the service was built on the back of a cons, of training a conscript military or a non volunteer force, the heavy handed drill instructors, the institutional like assembly line production of putting people through very different than Navy SEALs. Because you know, yes, you have, okay, not a SEAL, but I know that there's phases of buds of where you're looking next to weed people out. And then eventually you get to a point of where you have a smaller demographic of people or a smaller group of people, and you start to like train them and work on them. Hours at the time was just an assembly line. We would have 120 Marines in our company who would go to the machine gun range, and they would have an M240, I think it was golf at the time, machine gun, and they would, you know, they would give us the class on it. We would sit in this auditorium of 300 people in this auditorium, and the students would be in like various levels of consciousness, right? So 300 people, one, you know, instructor who didn't really want to do his job in the first place was droning on through a PowerPoint, and the rest of us are like falling asleep, right? We're 18 year old kids who are not paying attention. Thankfully, phones weren't a thing at the time, right? So we weren't super distracted. But the quality of education was super, super, super subpar. And I bring all that up to say is I kind of found my niche and I was doing well in the Marine Corps, and I graduated the School of Infantry as the honor graduate, meaning I had the highest GPA in the class. So I had graduated boot camp as a squad leader. I was meritoriously promoted to private first class. I was also an Eagle Scout, so that helped with the meritorious promotion. But then I go to my next three months of training in the School of Infantry and I graduate as the honor graduate, which makes me a meritorious Lance Corporal or E3, which is not necessarily a good thing for young guys, right? Because now you're showing up to the fleet with like a fleet rank and you're the boot, right? So they don't really enjoy that. So I go through all this training, we had what we called like the machine gun ride is almost what it was like, we would all go like throw a hand grenade, we'd wait in line, 120 of us would wait in line all day for the one moment where we're shaking with an M67, and they're like, right, and that's it. And then you like throw it, you're like, check, move on, right? So imagine like a Ford Model T production line. That's what entry level education was or training at the time was. And we worked to be able to change that very much later on in the career. So then I get to Thurbatallion 5th Marines. And so I graduate School of Infantry, I'm promoted to E3. I was one of the first classes in boot camp to get the new camouflage, the digital Marpat uniforms. So I think it was like for like Mike Company and then Alpha Company to get their uniforms. I was the first or second. But that meant when I got to the fleet, all the old Marines were wearing tri colors, right? And that's what the assaults look like. But all the boots showed up wearing digis. So there was like no hiding. And the worst place you can be in the Marine Corps is being a boot, right? Especially showing up to an infantry unit, especially showing up to an infantry unit as a Lance Corporal, because I was like super hated right off of the bat. But we check into Thurbatallion 5th Marines, which is in Camp Pendleton and a very storied unit, very good, you know, very good, but like a long lineage and a long history. And then we started the preparation. I got there in late December, very early January of 2023, the dates are a little fuzzy. And then three weeks later, we deployed to Kuwait for OIF-1. Holy shit. Wow. Dude, nobody even knew my name. My name was just boot. Hey, boot, come here. I got it. When did you find out you were deploying? So sort of in 2003. Yep. 2003. I think I had gotten there either in December or very early January. And then right after we check in, we like the, you know, the gears of war are turning, right? We can see that there's deployments happening. So now during boot camp, we had already had, what is it, Task Force 515, well, it turned into 515, but it was, former Secretary Mattis was like a one star in charge of the Afghan, where the Marines landed in Kandahar, while the Green Beret and CIA was up in Afghanistan. All this was happening while we were in boot camp. And so, sorry, go ahead. No, please. So yeah, all this was kind of happening when we were in boot camp. So we were already at war with the Taliban, but the Iraq shift was kind of happening while I was in boot camp. Okay. Yeah. So I get a couple of questions, because just about Marine Corps and your experience, isn't every Marine considered an infantryman? So am I wrong about that? It's kind of a hot take. Mine, mine's kind of a hot take. We say every Marine's a rifleman. Okay. And we do train to a marksmanship level that is superior to every other service. We train out to 500 meters with, at the time, with a non, with an iron sights. So every Marine can shoot or qualify up to 500 yards then meters now. You know, as an infantry guy, that has, I have consternation with that term. I have a little challenge with that term because the term every Marine a rifleman, when the Marine Corps says it, my job was a rifleman, but I had to go through training and education and schooling for that. Not every Marine was, was infantry, but when you, when my actual job title was rifleman, and then their moniker was like every Marine rifleman, was like, well, then what am I in this whole thing? Right? Like, like every, like so the, you know, administrator is as good as me at this job. It was almost, I would say it's almost akin to saying like, well, you know, every sailor is basically a seal, right? They all shoot a pistol in boot camp and you're like, no, no, not the, not the same. And I, those are obviously very different. But to, to, to actually go with what the Marine Corps wants with that, we train every single service member to be at the very baseline, a baseline rifleman to have a certain level of fight in them. The reason I was asking is just went to, you know, boot camp and then infantry school, then showed up at the infantry unit, which I'm sure you have more training. Yeah. So I was just, I was curious. I didn't realize there was an infantry school. I thought every, yeah. So second question, you know, those of us me and you that came in right after 9-11, it's just an interesting time, you know, because there really has not been, I shouldn't say anything that's significant, but on a grand scale, you know, warfare, nothing since Vietnam. I ran we had Mogadishu, Panama, Desert Storm and some stuff in Columbia. I think that pretty much covers it and those were all relatively very quick conflicts. So it left a vacuum of experience, you know, within the U.S. military and guys that actually, most of the Vietnam guys were gone. Yep. You know, had retired at that point. And so it was really a very, I would say the military was very inexperienced at that time. And so I'm just curious, you know, what, what are these guys saying that probably most of them have not been to war? Yeah. And they're training the next generation to go do something they've never done. That was tough. So you have this. Was that apparent to you? Yeah. What are they telling you? Are they pretending they'd been there? Yeah, they're kind of playing tough guy. Okay. I don't like bullies, right? And I've, and I've, you know, as a kid that probably what, you know, I was bullied as a kid, right? I don't like bullies and I recognize that. There's also a tough position for them to be at. Very, very, you know, they, I mean, they, with zero experience or trying to train, you know, the generation that is, they're not going to have that, you know what I mean? They're wildly different experience. It's, it was tough for them. We are in that same position now as we are ramping up or are at next, you know, our next war, we have atrophied a ton of the experience from OIF and OEF. I think a lot of it's still in there though. I mean, we just, you know, that was a 20 year war and that just ended what, 21? Well, think of when the major kinetic things happened inside of that war outside of special operations. So conventional. I see, which is, yeah, that started to peter off in 2011. And so you have 10 years. And now, again, like you have a point where we have at the end of my career, I was an infantry weapons officer and I had young instructors who had not seen combat. They handled it much differently than my instructors did. There was a level of professionalism. Our service has really developed professionally on how they handle that. I think that again, there was an atrophy of service or of combat experience after the Vietnam era. And then the Marine Corps had to go through a total rebranding, like an ideological shift. General Gray was one of our commandants who was instrumental in changing the way that the Marine Corps functioned. Drugs, racism, sexual assault, sexual abuse, like the Marine Corps was not a good place to be in the 70s and 80s. They had a lot of work to do, you know, post to Vietnam. And discipline was the tool to fix that. And so what happened was when you were in a school of infantry as a student, you had an instructor who didn't have a ton of experience. I'm talking like maybe one deployment on a on a mu, right? So like, it's kind of like first graders teaching kindergartners, right? And again, very young people with now a very large sense of authority, a lot of power. Again, I don't have, it's not a total negative experience. I just look at it as being it wasn't, it will come to fruition as we come through the next story, it will come to fruition of showing the failures of the system. Because when you have a, you know, stamp rubber stamp model or an industrial line model of getting people through the goal is production. And they literally talk about Marines as production, not as Marines, which is when you dehumanize the educational, it just gets, I mean, we've seen it, right? We've got Bud's helmets, right? We have BRC, we have numbers, they do that for a purpose, because you don't matter until a certain phase, right? When you, when there's a bandwidth that they, you can matter. And so yeah, check into Thurbertine 5th Marines. I mean, it is interesting, you are right, because another aspect, even though there is all this experience, like a guy like me, but I haven't been in, you know, when my last deployment was with 2015, 10, 11 years, and warfare is completely, I mean, it's, it's completely changed. We didn't have FPV drones. We have Sharks with lasers, right? Basically the battle, you know, the battlefield is completely changed since my dad probably wouldn't even fucking recognize it barely at this point, than the actual carnage, you know? And so you put a guy like me in there to teach, and what, how fucking relevant am I anymore? Not very relevant. That's, you know, with all the new tech that's out and the, just look at what's going on in Ukraine, Russia. I mean, it's just totally, totally different. It's like this total future fight. You're seeing a, you know, I'm not one of the guys, it becomes kind of generational, where they're like, the next generation's a bunch of pussies or whatever. Like, I'm actually really impressed with the generation that's taken the helm from us. And I think that they're going to do some incredible things because they are a generation that was raised with information at their fingertips. And so they are quintessentially different than we were. So I, you know, and I don't want to speak for you, but like, when someone told me to do 100 pushups as like a private or whatever, I just did 100 pushups, right? Now, and I'm being a little facetious here, but like a young marine will want to know why he's doing 100 pushups. Now they won't question it. It's still the Marine Corps, right? It's not like, you know, flowers and pancakes, right? Like still the Marine Corps, but you, as a leader now, there is a heavier requirement to explain the reasons why they're doing something because they're just curious and they want to know. And so that adaptability, that like their idea of, of curiosity is actually going to be very beneficial for us when we're fighting drones, when we're fighting like fucking sharks with lasers or whatever, then the next thing is, right? Ours was very much training for a Russian Warsaw Pact, you know, T-72 coming over a hill and that is what we trained for. Now that happened to be very effective because that's who we fought in OIF-1. But you see how the war that you and I entered in in 2004 and 2005 and 2006 was not T-72s coming down, you know, a mountain pass. It was non-standard, asymmetric, you know, fourth generation warfare where the uniforms fall away. But our training and education system refused, didn't fail. It refused to adapt because that was the challenge. So you are already having a leg up now. If you were to go to, let's say, be an advisor in Ukraine, you've already answered the best question that you can of saying, I don't know if I'm relevant anymore because war has changed so much. The challenge that we faced with a lot of older generation, you know, particularly, particularly Marines that I had come across with, was assuming that their past victories would guarantee future successes. Well, in the world now, it's not a dude with a rifle, it's a dude with a computer or an autonomous drone or whatever. And so you can't just like tough guy your way through that, that's going to end very poorly and very quickly for you. And so I think that you have that ability to say, hey, man, I have some experience that can help in this thing, but I'm not sure I have all the answers. That's a very good sign. And I think that our younger generation actually has a lot of that because people our age generally, you know, I don't know, just make generalizations, but may not always have that same mentality. And I think it's probably because of what you do now is you talk with people and you're willing to change your opinion based on what they say or your assessment, whatever it is, and have a conversation. That's not necessarily the Marine Corps or maybe even the Navy that we were raised in. It was like, this is the fucking way to do it. And that's the only way to do it. And you don't fucking ask questions or you're not here. Right, you know. So you show up at third, fifth? Yeah, third, but time fifth Marines, three, five. And is a great unit. And we do, we go to OIF one, or we go to Kuwait immediately. So like we run, I run like three patrols with my squad in like the backyard. I mean, I know nothing, right? And I graduated on a graduate, but the school, the skill sets were not there. I was super green. So hold on, what do they tell you? I mean, do they tell you you're deploying? Yeah. I've never done anything in a conventional unit. So I don't, do they tell you? Or is it like, hey, we're leaving tomorrow. Get your shit. Kind of. So it was like, we knew that we were deploying. We knew that we were going to Kuwait, right, for the potential invasion of Iraq. And so a lot of these things were happening on the geopolitical scale. I'm also 18 and the lowest man in the totem pole. So this may have happened. At that time, a lot of stuff was pretty isolated and not like classified isolated. It just wasn't important to tell the younger guys what was happening. We knew we were going to Kuwait for a potential invasion of Iraq. And then we were told to be places at certain times and wait for that. That was kind of the, you know, the existence that we lived. And there wasn't, you know, ours is not to reason why, right? Ours is but to do and die. And so that was kind of how we lived. And we were just kind of okay with, we didn't know any better. We didn't know any different. This was just the Marine Corps. And I immediately meet and befriend a guy named Charlie Graham, who him and I became best friends and still remain extremely close today. And I've got some great stories of us and OIF one together because he is 19 years old from Tampa, Florida, who worked at Target. And then 9 11 happened, he dropped out of college, right? And then joined the Marine Corps. And now from Tampa and San Francisco, and now we become like we're in the same like fire team together. And the fire team is like four man fire teams, and we become super, super close friends. But yeah, we deploy to Kuwait. And there's just no, there's no like information, we just go and we go to these large tents, these and they're all you have to think like, they're all building it as we're getting there, you know, like the Iraq that we knew later on, where there's like chow halls and firm bases and helo pads, none of that stuff existed. It was just like flat desert and like moon dust. And then these circus tents that we would live in. And we would go into the circus tents. And we had it's kind of like Generation Kill Generation Kill did a pretty it's so fucking weird. You just brought that up. I was just going to bring Generation Kill up pretty accurate. You know those guys? Actually, I know. So I know Jason Lilly. And then I know another guy named Taren. And I think I won't say his last name because he's still in the space at some level. But he I know Taren, the black guy in the TV show. And then I know Rudy Reyes, but we're not like super close, but I do know of him. Did you know Tony Aspera? Maybe. I mean, he's so also a very different generation of recombinants. I didn't become a recombinant until like eight years later. So there was generationally, we're in the same club, but we don't really know each other if that makes sense. Like we would like shake each other's hand and that would be kind of you know, kind of it, but generationally no. Jason Lilly, we had a pretty good story as well. He's pretty pretty solid dude. And then so ironic about the Generation Kill. So the gentleman, the black guy in Generation Kill is super not who the actual character is in real life. So Taren is his name and him and I were in Japan together many, many years later on. And is the one of the best operators I've ever like the best Marine I've ever met in my entire life. Like we call it a triple threat, like jump, dive, sniper, seer, like she's done it all right. And he's like six foot three, super quiet professional, super well educated. And in the TV show, they like portray him as like this like really hood kind of black guy. And so we were terrible to him and ok now again, very close friend of mine, but like, we would like go to the PX and like buy do rags and like leave do rags on his rack and stuff. And he's like, you guys are fucking racist. And we're like, because he just acted nothing like the TV show portrayed, you know, and that. But again, fantastic man. I love him to death and he's doing really, really good things. But yeah, so we get to Kuwait. It's a lot like Generation Kill is we live in these like plywood floor fucking sand stormy kind of places. And we have one boombox for our our platoon has one boombox that somebody had brought. And they have three CDs. They have Red Hot Chili Peppers self titled album, or no, California self title album, and then by the way, and then the blow soundtrack. I don't know why he brought those things. Excuse me, the fourth one was audio slaves self titled about self title album. And that was it. So that is my like, for all of OF1, that is my soundtrack that was always going through my head is any of those any of those specific songs. But we basically just waited and we would do gas drills. And we would do, you know, what wasn't called T triple C at the time was just called first aid, we would do like, you know, atropim and two pan chloride. And we had like fucking pigeons that they trained us on these like pigeons that we were going to take with us because they're like the canary and the coal mice, we had like one pigeon that we had to have per squad that was going to detect gas for us. What? Are you fucking serious? I think it's a stack up engine. Is that real? 100% real. Ours was named, or second platoons was named, Private Petey Stenenko. What do they do? What do they do if there's gas? I've never heard of this. They would just die first. Like, oh, Private Stenenko is dead. I guess we should get our gas masks on, right? Like this is people like the war machine in the United States, we were not like we we had atrophied a lot of experiences and it was again a very different time. We did the best we could. But that was like wild. And then we would go and we had to like march out to the desert to fall into the division's line. So the Marines are, I love Marines, man, but we do some marine things sometimes. So we basically established a defensive perimeter into the desert facing the desert north, right? The berm, if you will. And it's like, you know, we've been combing the desert for hours, right? It's like that. So we go out to like nondescript piece of desert and like plop in. And then we start digging fighting holes. And as a boot, my job is to dig fighting holes. That is what I am put on this earth to do is dig fighting holes and burn shitters. That is my only job in life. And so that's what I did for the first like four weeks of OFF one before we actually go into Iraq. I dug fighting holes. And then we stood in the fighting holes and like shivered every single night and like stared into the desert for hours. And then we would do that for a week. And then we would pack up our stuff. Another group of Marines that I didn't know would like take our position at the front. And then we would come back to, you know, the base and then like lay around for a week and do classes. And then we did that back and forth. And so I met a lot of Marines and we hung out by the shitters. And that's what my job was, was to, you know, play Jimi Hendrix, smoke cigarettes and burn human feces for hours on end. Nice. It felt fitting. It was like very Vietnam. Nice. So were you fired up to be there at the beginning? Was the adrenaline pumping? And yeah, how long did that take to go away? Funny you should ask. So really fired up. Honestly, honestly, honestly, like we believed that we were fighting a just cause. We were here. We were America. We were on the foot. America was attacked, right? Our Marines were fighting in Afghanistan. We had combat experience from that. We had people talk about that in boot camp and train us up. We were 100% excited to be there. Now remember though, there was a very small swath of people in that time period who had joined because of 9-11. There was a larger demographic of people who did not join because of 9-11. They had joined for whatever other reason, not saying they're bad or less than. There was just a very small, so 9-11 was like, I think your catalyst, right, of like why you joined the Navy and eventually went in, right? No. Oh, it wasn't. I'm sorry. I joined before. Oh, you did? Yeah. My mistake. I'm sorry. That's all good. Okay. So that, so that, my mistake, I'm such an asshole. No. Don't worry about it at all. Because you were in Haiti in 2004? Well, I joined in July of 01. Oh, shit. And then as I left boot camp as well, 9-11 hit. Holy, okay. And then right when you started Buds? Well, then I went to A school, then I went to Buds. Okay. What was your original A school? OS, Operation Specialist. What's that? Is that a radar guy? No shit. Yeah. That'll make you want to get through Buds. My mistake on that, I'm sorry. And so you had guys that, again, not bad, but they had joined for whatever reason, and then some of them were stop-lost. So once we went to war, they were stop-lost and couldn't get out. So you had a weird mix of people inside of there. And so, yeah, it was a really weird kind of time for us. But I do remember like seeing, I got a chance to meet at the time, it was two star General Mattis and then General Conway, who became the combatant of the Marine Corps. I misspoke earlier on a different show. I was, I didn't really know much. I was a fucking private, or I was a Lance Corporal, not really knowing anything. We had like the coolest experience before going into Iraq. It was General Conway, who stood up on an M1A1 Abrams tank, and he had like the fifth Marine Regiment. And a regiment in the Marine Corps is, each battalion is around a thousand to twelve hundred. I don't math in public, but a regiment is like four plus battalions, depending on how large. So you're talking like seven thousand-ish people. And they get us in this like school circles, what we call it, around this giant fucking tank. And then this guy hops up with like Marine Corps flag and like an American flag. And he's, I mean, because like, what is a badass do? He stands on a tank, right? So he stands on a tank and gives us this speech. And it was the most fiery fucking ready to go, you know, speech ever, because he's talking about what we're going to see over the berm. And this, this is, now all of this is happening when geopolitics is like, President Bush had given a number of deadline ultimatums to Saddam Hussein to release his weapons of mass destruction or whatever, whatever his demands were at that time. And they were like crossing those things. The final one was, I think it was like March 19th or March 20th or something like that. Again, I was in the desert, nobody told me shit, but all of this stuff was happening. So we're ramping up. We're seeing that Saddam's not budging and we're about to go in. So this is like three or four days before the invasion actually starts. So General Conway gets on this tank and he gives us this fiery speech and he goes Marines, right? And he's like, over your left shoulder, you're going to have marine aviation. And he checks his watch. And then all of a sudden, CH 46 is CH 53s, right? All of our transport helicopters like flying over and then cobras and Huey's start, you know, like, doing their thing. And then he like looks over his right shoulder. And then he's like, and then you're going to have fixed wing and these motherfuckers do like this like sonic boom F 18s and Harriers like and the and 7000 Marines like you should be like about as motivating as it gets right there. We would have taken France, you know, like, fuck it, let's invade France next. Right. We would have done it. We would have gone 100% down that. And everyone was super fired up. We were really happy to be there. Now again, people were scared and nervous. We all do. We all thought we're going to get gas to high heaven. We did a bajillion gas drills and wore those fucking mop suits, which were the mop suits over our camis. So we had cotton camis and then we had mop suits over them. And it was just a cesspool of sweat and grossness. And then we go to our final, you know, positions. Again, the first Marine Division General Mattis gave every single person in the division a letter. And I actually spoke with him many, many years later, he said he took him, it took him only 45 minutes to write this letter. And it was a letter to the entire first Marine Division. And I have it verbatim in the book because it was profound to me. And it was telling us about who we were no better friend, no worse enemy, right. This is what we're fighting for. We're fighting to be, you know, the might of the United States. But when they surrender, we will, you know, show them that we are a compassionate people, right. And all this like really, really good, you know, warrior poet type stuff. And I saved it. And I took it in my flak jacket. And I put it in my flak jacket inside of my little, in between my, my sappies and my, my little velcro thing. And I kept it for the entire invasion. And I still have it at home. And it has a little, you know, the sappy plates have like a honeycomb pattern. So the honeycomb patterns like built into this little thing because it sat in my thing the entire time. But then we go out to our assembly area or our attack positions and we can sit and wait. And then we wait there for, I think a day or two. And we have a little wind up radio, little survival radio that like one guy in the squad has. And we're listening to the BBC. And then we hear Tony Blair from, he was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time. And he talks about that Saddam's missed all these things. And we're going to war. And that's how we knew. What do you think you'd never release the weapons of mass destruction? What? That feels like it's a loaded question. Well, I told you I'd answer any question you asked me on this show. I don't think he had them. And all of the evidence to show hindsight being what it is. Now, they did have scuds, right? They did have these things. He did gas, you know, but what I had learned later in my career is that, especially in the intelligence field, is we do not normally act on single source reporting. And I think for OAF one, we very heavily acted on single source reporting. And we committed an entire war to it. And I have my own consternation with things, you know, they had another source. But they just decided not to. Really? Yeah. Really? You know that source was? No. Pete Blaber and his guys. What? That's really? Because I remember he was, I'm trying to read, I read his book many, many years ago. It's like 2012 when I read the book. He was in, was he in Western Iraq? I can't remember exactly where he was at, but they sent the imagery to his team at Delta. To verify. Really? Yep. Oh, man. And the missile was a water truck. The air purification system that was on top of the building that was producing weapons of mass destruction was an air conditioning unit. And the sentry guard that was outside the door wound up just being a guy taking a piss. It's like smoking a cigarette. Jesus, man. Sent it back to him. They fucking ignored it. We went in. How does that make you feel? I don't want to like, you know, like, like, in through this whole thing, you know, after everything that you've done and experienced and where you're at, you know, like, I can't help but feel pretty lied to, you know, about all this. Me neither. Interim rages me. At the same, it's really, it's kind of like a dichotomy in my head, you know, it's, it's, I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade the experience for anything other than, you know, my family. But I sure as hell don't want my kid going through it, you know, as I mentioned at the beginning, and yeah, they fooled us. Yeah, it's hard. I talk about this with, you know, the gentleman we were talking about off camera. I was talking about this with them. I think our generation of guys has an interesting kind of, at least the ones that I'm, I'm, I'm talking with. There's like this, we want young Marines, young soldiers, we want them to get it. We want them to go. We want them to do the thing, you know, but fuck the cost that comes with it. Like I said, the, that trust, that, that social contract, you and I don't know each other from, from anybody, right? But if we have to go out and something goes down, like, we're going to fight for each other. That's who we are. You know, my best friend that I lost in Afghanistan in the weird world that we're in right now, I couldn't tell you if he was a Republican or a Democrat. It just never came up. It didn't matter, right? It didn't matter. It didn't fucking matter. We were there, right? And we were there for each other. That bond, that, that, that sacred bond between you and I, between the people who have worn the cloth of the United States and written a blank check to the United States, payable with our lives. I, I wish, I hope that any person who was calling for us to go to war or sending us into harm's way, they have to wield that relationship, that power carefully because it's something that is so, it is so pure for us, that, that love for one another, that love to protect your brother, right? It's written in sacred texts, right? Like it is all through our, you know, our lineage and our history and it has to be protected and used by people who understand it. So to your idea of a warrior class, what's the saying? Any civilization that separates its warriors from scholars will have its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards, I think is the, is the quote. And so, good one. You know, I'm not, I'll be, you know, open with this is, our country has become much more militarized since the onset of the global war on terrorism. The military has become much more pop culture, much more center of, of everything that we do. And there's goods and there's bads with that. But I am appalled that, I don't know, I'm not appalled. I would be, I just wish that some of our political leaders understood this cost, understood a little bit more because again, if, if I were to have to make a decision to send men and women into harm's way, I would know the cost. I, I'm not saying I wouldn't send them into harm's way if that, if it was a just cause, if it was a righteous thing to do, if the United States military is to be able to, well, unfortunately, if we look at our history, the United States Marines specifically have not always been used for the best, most altruistic means. A gentleman by the name of Smedley Butler is one of our most famous Marines. And he is the recipient of two medals of honor, which is, I think there's three people in our United States history have them. The first medal of honor he has is from the banana wars, if I'm not mistaken, which was, the Marine Corps was sent to God, I'm going to mess this up, but I think it's, I think it's Honduras because there was a price fixing kind of cartel, if you will, that was not wanting to be able to sell bananas to the United States at a specific price. And so they sent the Marines to break the back of this corporation. And that's where he won his first medal of honor or received his first medal of honor. He received his second medal of honor in World War I. And interestingly enough, he is one of our most famous Marines all over hallowed ground at the National Museum and the Marine Corps. He was, he ran for, he was a senator from Pennsylvania while he was on active duty, which is a weird thing, was a two-star general. He was actually approached, and I'm going to fact check me on this a little bit, he was approached by, I think it was by the Rockefellers or the Vanderbiltz to like overthrow the United States government at one point, because when he had gotten back from World War I, the United States government refused to pay their veteran salaries that they had guaranteed them during World War I. And he also wrote a book that nobody really talks about, and it's called War is a Racket. And it's a very small pamphlet, and it's talking about how he was effectively a corporate, he was a thug for corporations. Interesting. War is a racket. I've heard this by Smedley Butler. I gotta get that. It's very, it's a small read, and it's written by a man by, who was very upset. Now, interesting, so it's history is always not, not always fair to people, right? When we look at War is a Racket, I actually disagree with Smedley Butler, because he was an ant, he was an America first, that term America first, which meant he did not want to interfere in foreign wars, period. If it didn't have to do with the United States, don't get involved. So he was actually a very large anti United States entering into World War II, advocate. He did not want us in World War II, and he advocated publicly against it. Now, I, I think that there was a lot of justification for us entering into that war. So I guess- We are sinking up very nicely here, because I was going to ask you, when is the last war that we were involved in that you think that we were fighting for ourselves? Well, I mean, if we put our tinfoil hats on, what brought us into World War I? It was the sinking of the Lusitania, right? So a German U-boat hit an American liner in, you know, in, you know, in the Atlantic, and that brought us into the war. And we came into the war very late. I think we joined in 1917, the Marines specifically, right, the battle of Bellowood, which is like sacred, hallowed ground for us. We came into the war very, very late. And World War II, we were very, you know, very, very interested in staying out of the war. We had an embargo on Japan. We were, we were suffocating or strangling Japan's economic and industrial ability to make war. We had brought them to the, you know, to the point of where then they attacked Pearl Harbor, of which they knew was a mistake at the time. But we were, you know, I'm sure that the internet's going to go crazy because I'm not a hit. I'm like, I'm, I'm surfing around the right kind of history, but I'm not a history major. Like I'm like a PhD student in leadership, right? So I could talk on that, but I know my history to a certain level. And so there was a cause that brought us into World War II. The Korean War was fighting communism through a, you know, through the expansion inside of the, you know, the Korean Peninsula. Vietnam was the same thing. We're doing a documentary about reconnaissance marines right now with combat story and we're, we're finding out about the history of recon and where it came from. And our first interactions in Vietnam were actually in 1961 as advisors with SOG at the time. And it's interesting, the stuff that kind of happens of what we actually, what kind of percolates to the top and what we get taught and what really happened is very, very different. To answer your question, I think Desert Storm was, was a just cause. I think it was a military victory that happened, you know, 96 hours. It was a strategic air campaign. We had a neighboring country invade, you know, so Kuwait had a lot of money. Saddam was broke and wanted to, you know, steal Kuwaiti oil or, you know, repurpose the land to make it, you know, Iraqi oil so that he could pay off his international debts. So he invaded Kuwait, which is not okay. So we, you know, you know, did Desert Shield and Desert Storm. But World War II and Desert Storm are the two things in Afghanistan. I think for us, Afghanistan, what I tell people is I think we, for our generation is we fought one war of necessity and one war of choice. And that's kind of my like political answer to kind of, you know, dance around that. But it's super tough. It's, it's, we look at our history with these kind of rose colored glasses and we think like, you know, raving the red, white and blue, and we're only fighting for just causes and things like that. And that's not super true for our history. This kind of thing that we're seeing right now with, you know, Venezuela and with Iran and with Ukraine, this is kind of par for our, our par par par for the course for us. Now we have a decision of whether or not we want to continue down that pathway. But again, like you said, you know, a national draft puts people with skin in the game. Maybe more of our politicians need to have the have walked a mile in our boots. That chance. Speaking of Iran, I got a hot question. You ready for this? AJ, before you came on, we had Claude and Thropax AI scraped the entire internet and run a full background on you. And here's what came back. Oh God. Three tours in Iraq, the invasion, Fallujah, the Ramadi corridor, the whole time Iran's Cudge Force was arming the Shia milit, excuse me, the Shia militias killing Marines, the FPs that punched through armor and killed hundreds of Americans were Iranian supplied. You fought Iran's proxies for 20 years without ever officially being at war with Iran. Now it's April of 2026. Operation Epic Fury is in its eighth week. 15 US service members have already been killed. 5000 Marines from the same new pipeline you deployed with are sitting off Iran's coast. The ceasefire lapses today. Trump has not ruled out ground troops. Here's the question. You fought Iran through proxies for two decades. Now we're openly at war with them. What are you saying that American people are not? And are we about to make the same mistakes all over again? Yes. I would never argue that Iran was, I'll say this a little clearer. I am not an advocate for any war. Knowing what it costs, knowing what it physically costs with budgetary requirements, with inflationary, you know, with inflationary, I would say, causes and effects that happen from there, what that does the American public people, what it does to the people that actually deploy. I think that we have taken the playbook off of the shelf from 2003, blown the dust off of it and are playing the same hits. However, I do believe that Iran has always been and will continue to remain at that time their regime a threat to the United States. I'm not arguing that they're not a threat. I'm not arguing that they haven't fought us, that I have not literally fought with Shia militias throughout my entire career. But I think that with our dominance, and dominance is the right word here, right? In Iraq, we didn't have air superiority. We had air supremacy, right? With the United States military dominance, that is already enough of a deterrent to me. We have a first option, which is always peace, debate, deliberation, maybe sanctions that come inside of there. The second option is breaking an enemy or a country to our will through superior firepower or willpower. But there's always a third option. And the third option, I believe, comes from an organization that you used to work for, for a long time. What if we did not have to commit thousands of troops to something that we don't really know what the endgame is? What are the objectives inside of this? What were the objectives for Iraq? We saw this, and I love, I love my country, and I love the Marine Corps with every fiber of my being. But we raced to Baghdad, toppled the regime, and then didn't have a plan once we caught the car. We've ever seen a dog catch a car, like they don't know what to do next. And then we went into 20 years of nation building. If we want a free Iran, and we want an Iran that pre the Ayatollah, pre the revolution of but 1979, they were considered- The days of the Shah. Right. They were the Paris of the Middle East. But a revolution cannot sustain and remain if it's not born and bred from within. We saw that in Iraq. We saw that in Afghanistan. How much blood do we have to spill to nation build and build this for a country that couldn't or wouldn't do it for themselves? It's hard for me. I will never. My old unit, Thurbatay and Fifth Marines, is deploying. And I don't know where they're deploying to because I tend not to ask questions. I don't want to. I'm not going to implicate them or myself. I'm sure they're just going to pay cost. I talk with those young men. I actually stay very close with that unit. And their company gunnery sergeant, their E7, keeps like an old guard of people to kind of mentor the new guys, right? Because there is no real combat experience. And so they talk. These guys are good Americans, and they want to fight and they want to serve their country. The challenge that these young men face, we bring them through an organization that tells them that their one source, their one moment to shine is to go to combat. Our entire organization's reason for existence is to go to combat. And so they want to go to combat, just like I wanted to go to combat, just like you wanted to go to and eventually left the seals to continue down that pipeline because you want, that is natural for our type of person, for this warrior class, if you will. We don't want to be on the practice squad forever. We want to play in the game, right? So I will never, ever, ever fault the young Marines for wanting to do what they believe they were put on this face of the earth to do. Again, I will go back to the politicians who will know, who will not commit their own sons and daughters to the same fight that we are willing to do so. It always comes from the same class of people, predominantly, you know, it's changed in recent years, but predominantly lower socioeconomic status people. The draft proves that. The draft in the 1960s proved that. Who got deferments to go to college, right? That became our, you know, our middle and upper middle class. While the people who couldn't get into college, afford to college, they were the ones. That will still happen if we go to a draft today. Everyone will every person with some sort of influence or affluence will hire the right attorney to be able to doctor fabricate whatever the thing is to get their kids out of that, out of the thing. But my broke ass and my friends, whatever it is, don't have those resources. So at the end of the day, a draft to me has a specific band of people that it will send. The people who cannot advocate for themselves, cannot organize themselves, who then if you disobey that draft, you go to prison, right? You go to, you know, federal, you know, penitentiaries. So it puts us in this like catch 22. Our leaders should know that. They should know that. They should know the difference. They should know what they're asking these people to do. But again, you know, and I know that the secretary of war is a veteran himself. And maybe they have access to information that I don't. My clearances lapsed, right? You know, I don't go into the secret rooms anymore and have these conversations. Man, I don't know. I don't know. My direct answer to you is no, I don't think that we should be at war with Iran and an open war with Iran. And it hurts to say that. Yeah, I don't either. I don't either. I'm not buying the reasons that we're there either. Give me an objective. Give me a weapon of mass destruction. Give me the thing. I mean, they said, you know, they've been our, what, 47 years? They've been our enemy for 47 years. Yeah, you're right. They have been our enemy for 47 years. Why are we doing it now all of a sudden? Yeah. Second of all, when you had that flag right there, do you know about that? Yeah, they told me a little bit about that. So he brought a guy legend on. Afghan American served in U.S. Army as an intelligence guy. Yadoud went over there, works with the resistance. Taliban was burning that flag and calmly brought it back. And he unveiled, uncovered the fact that we're sending 40 to $87 million in cash to the Taliban every single week. So we got introduced to Congress. They actually passed it. Now it's sitting at the fucking Senate floor. It's been over two years now, I think. How long have they been our enemy? And we're funding them. Yep. We're funding our fucking enemy. Who we funded in the beginning. But then at the same time, the messaging about Iran as they've been our enemy for 47 years. At the same time, we're bringing in the, what, the new Syrian prime minister, president, whatever he is, who is chopping our fucking heads off, parade them around Congress in the White House. That guy's not our enemy anymore. It's interesting how fucking people will just buy right into this shit. You know, I joke with people. I think that, you know, people ask me about war. I joke. And I say it flippantly. I'm like, well, I'm a pacifist now. I'm not really a pacifist. The pacifism doesn't work, right? Because as soon as you meet one person who's not a pacifist, they take what you want or they take what, you know, take your resources. That always comes down to resources at some level, right? Whether that be monetary, whether that be energy and energy being the primary, you know, fuel behind this. I just, I just struggle with it, my friend. I struggle with it because these, and why I feel so hard about talking about not wanting to go to war with Iran is because any young American who's in the active armed services will think that I am a traitor to them. No, I don't think they think that. Because I don't know. So what happened? Okay, here's a, here's a hot take, right? So like now that we're in this, do you remember when John McCain, Senator McCain was actively advocating against enhanced interrogation techniques? No, I don't remember. Oh, he was a huge, so, and I won't go into too much. He was a, there was waterboarding basically, and he was like, no, fuck, no, like not something the United States is going to use. That's not our technique. We're not, we are, you know, trying to be a more moral military, if you will, right? And he was like, advocate, fervently against that. Well, he was fervently against that because he had his fucking arms, you know, ripped out of his sockets inside of a pit in North Vietnam, right? When he was, you know, a POW. He had seen that technique. He had seen the worst of the worst and didn't want us to become our own, like, didn't want to degrade ourselves to become that type of enemy, that type of person. I was active duty at the time, and I was of that political party. And I fucking was so mad at John McCain, because what I thought was John McCain doesn't want us getting information out of people to save American lives. Now I'm laughing because I'm sitting back after retiring from shooting people all over the planet for the red, white, and blue, and wondering the same thing, like, why the fuck do we continue to do this? How are we better off today than we were yesterday? And the answer is, I don't know. And I can't quantify that. I'm heartbroken. I, you know, I'm sure we'll get into it eventually, but I have a mother that I stay in contact with from a friend of mine that I lost in Iraq. And I stay in contact with, I talked with her two days ago. So I actually haven't seen the real hard cover of this book. I've only seen the advanced reader copies. I have a copy at home that is sealed from the publisher. It's the very first copy. I called her up and I said, Jane, I want to be able to send you this book. I'm going to open this book up. This is the author's first copy. This is like a special thing to them. You gave your son to this country. The least that I can do is give you a fucking the first copy of my book. It's something so stupid, but it's the only thing that I can give to this woman to tell her how fucking sorry I am that her son didn't make it home. And I don't know why we did it. And I don't know why. And I wish this fucking guy survived Columbine. He was in Columbine, locked eyes with Dylan Klebold and the other dipshit that shot up the first fucking school in America and started this epidemic of killing people in our schools. And then he goes to Iraq and he fucking goes into a house knowing there's bad guys in there, but a Marine's inside. And he makes a fucking decision to go inside this room when he knows he's probably going to die. And he gets shot, falls to the ground, continues to fight, and eventually succumbs to his wounds, earns the bronze star. What the fuck was it for? How do I tell Jane? What the fuck happened? Is Iraq better off now than it was before he went? Well, yes, in some ways and in some ways, no. Is Afghanistan exactly the same as it was now before he went in? Sharia law, Taliban rule, right? You know, fucking stoning women in the streets for trying to get an education. What did we solve? So unless we get an idea, and I was told in no uncertain terms, try to stay neutral, AJ, but fuck, man, you got to have an opinion about something. And I don't have an opinion because an opinion is the lowest form of human consciousness. I can have an opinion on anything. But I have an assessment. An assessment comes from being in the arena. You and I can look at each other and be like, what the fuck just happened? Why are we doing this? Give us objectives, give us a reason, give us a just cause, and I will sign up myself. And I will fight on the front lines. But until you give me that, I cannot, I cannot in good conscience, will another generation to suffer the same outcomes and the same consequences that you and I went through? Yeah. I'm with you. And I'm sure that there's like, half the internet's like, yo, fuck this guy, right? And like half the internet's like, yeah, man, but like, there's no winning in this thing. But I say to anybody that's an advocate for war, hey, man, the recruiting station's open to all of us. Yeah. Yeah, I fear we have overplayed our hand a little bit here. And a lot has been exposed. Yeah, a lot has been exposed. I ran China, Russia. That's the issue, dude. We're over here chasing our tails. Chinese probably fucking listening. Sun Tzu, right? Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake. They're just following their own doctrine. Now, again, even if we think of, I'm also of the mind, and again, I surf a lot more, I ride mountain bikes, right, like I get to chill out a little bit more, walks on the beach, my mindset's, you know, shifting since retiring from the military. I had a very good friend of mine, worked for some, he was a JTAC, Save My Life in Afghanistan, was a Marine artillery liaison, worked with Recon, and then eventually was pulled up to National Mission Force. And then after he retired, he was a JTAC for them, he retired for them, he worked at their one of their locations as a civilian, running the same kind of thing. I call him up, we chat all the time, I fucking love this guy, just Marines Marine. And I was like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm coaching high school wrestling. And it had been like four weeks since we had talked, like not a substantial amount of time. And I was like, what? I thought you were ex-place with ex-unit. And he goes, you know what? I just got tired of it all. Every day I would come to work, and there was someone new to kill. I just got tired of it. I wanted to hang out with my kids and teach wrestling. I was like, fuck, dude, like, are we always just looking for enemies? Now, again, we are the American superpower. We have chosen our own obligation to be able to be like America, world police in some aspects. And I get it, right? There's democracy, the petrodollar. I understand a lot of those reasons why we do those kind of things. Never advocating against that. And having, you know, snake eaters around the world, making sure that American influence is in the right way. I'm not naive. But I understood his point when he was like, man, I just got tired of killing. There was always somebody else. So I'm not saying China's not our enemy, right? I'm not saying Iran's not our enemy. I'm not saying Venezuela wasn't our enemy. What I'm saying is there's a lot of problems that we can fix at home that I'd be very interested in having some conversations with, especially with the $1 trillion annual budget to a five-sided spending machine. And that's not a good take for somebody who, you know, comes from this. But I'm sorry, it's just the way that I feel. I love what, I love who we are. I love what we do. But I think we've kind of lost the plot. Yeah. Me too. Me too. Let's take another break. Yeah. We've hired a lot of people over the years. And one thing you learn pretty quickly is the best candidates aren't just qualified. They actually want the job. You can tell when someone's done their homework, when they're engaged, asking the right questions, and you know they're going to be a good fit. If you're hiring, you want a candidate who's passionate about your role, but you can't get that insight from a resume unless you post your job on ZipRecruiter. And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com. What I like about ZipRecruiter is how fast it works. The matching technology helps you find qualified candidates quickly. And now they've got a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates first. So you're not wasting time sorting through people who aren't that serious. And candidates can actually tell you in their own words why they're interested, which makes a big difference when you're trying to find the right person. Find candidates who really want your job on ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash SRS. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash SRS. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. All right, AJ. We won a whole new segment and get into the invasion. So let's talk about the day the invasion happened. So March 20th, 2003, I'm on air sentry. So air sentry is we have the AAVs, the amphibious assault vehicles. The Marine Corps conducted the largest movement of an like technically amphibious landing, right, but like largest movement of amphibious vehicles inland in our nation's history, I think world history. So basically coming in from the ports of Kuwait and then driving these vehicles up to Baghdad. But we get word, you know, from the, you know, wind up survival radio and we're like, we're going to war, right? So I need to preface all of this with I swear I got better, right? So all of these stories are going to be super self-devocating, right? And I'm going to tell some funny ones along the way, but I think that there will be eventually, you know, a point to it. So I am Lance Corporal Pashuti. I am 18 years old. I am on my first deployment. I've been in the unit for six or seven weeks at this time. Four of those weeks have been me in Kuwait. So we got into Kuwait on February 11th, 2003, and then March 20th, we're crossing into Iraq. Most people don't know my name at this point. But at least I have the trike. I went and bought the tricolor camis, so I at least looked the same as everybody else. But so we're cruising up there. Now I've got this fantastic team leader. So the way that the Marine Corps works is we at the time, we had a four man fire team with a fire team leader. So it was a fire team leader, you had a machine gunner or automatic rifleman, you had a grenadier, and you had, you know, like a point man, if you will. And then we had three fire teams per squad. And then you had a squad leader separate. So you had 12, you know, 12 Marines that were three independent elements, and then one squad leader. Corporal Olson, Eric Olson was my fire team leader. And then Sergeant Pryor, Josh Pryor was my squad leader. Now they were actually really, really good to me. You know, like, they didn't really hold it against me that I was a boot. They didn't give me, you know, they were, I was a human being to them, right, you know, and not like just the guy who dug things. Not everybody in the squad was that way or the platoon was that way. And there were some people, especially at the time, is being a boot in the Marine Corps is not a good place to be. And especially in the infantry. And so they just didn't treat us very, very well. In fact, they fucking hated us, right. And they treated us like such garbage to the point of where you've ever heard of like, now, I'm not going to go to that path. But like, we would question our all the young guys would question ourselves. I'm like, I'm not fucking doing anything for that guy. If he gets into whatever is, you know, like, fuck that, dude, he's terrible to me. So we go and we're starting to like cross the berm. It's actually really, really cool. So I'll backtrack for just one second. When I was going to my first Boy Scout camp as a kid, I was, I don't know, 10 years old, 12 years old, something like that. I had never spent a week away from home. And I was going to the woods for the first time for a long period of time. And I had at the time what I considered a very reasonable fear of werewolves, right. And so as a, you know, I think I was 10, let's just say I was 10, right, for at least a little bit of fucking credibility. And my mom took me outside and she walked me into the front of our house, you know, in Sunnyvale, front of the studio. And she brought me outside and she had me look at the sky. And above us was a specific constellation. And the constellation was Orion. And you can tell Orion, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, it's really generally where it's at, is the Orion's belt, the three stars in a row. And what she did is she walked me outside and she said, Angelo, you know, it's also one of my, I have three first names that are all the root of one name and no middle name. But she said, Angelo, you know, why don't take a look at Orion. She says, that's where our family goes when we move on from this earth. What I want you to do is anytime that you are afraid or you're alone and you miss home and you want to think of your family, look at Orion and we'll do the same. That'll be how we connect with one another. My mom's an artist, so it's a little, a little spacey in that, but I get it. So we're in now Iraq, we're technically Kuwait. And we hear the BBC going off, now we're like loading up and we're starting and I'm on air sentry. So in our tracks, our air sentries are, we stand on a little bench that has a quarter inch piece of foam on it. And we're on the left side of the track. And our job is to look out the track to cover our flanks, basically. So one guy's facing right, we're facing left. And there's like, basically, you'll see a track and you'll see like three little helmets sticking out of the back of it. Those are air sentries. And that's where the boots go in the, in the infantry. The younger guy, because you're just on air sentry for a million years. And all of a sudden, I'm up, we're starting to move up, we've got rooster tails of dirt, it's the middle of the night, right? And I'm looking for Orion, and I see Orion. And then all of a sudden off to my right, I see three arcs coming through the sky. And then I see like an igniter hit behind it. What those actually turned out to be was called wrap rounds, rocket, rocket assisted projectiles from our artillery battalions or batteries battalions. And so they were shooting wrap rounds into soften targets that probably Pete Blaber and First Force and Navy SEALs were all like, pick these targets for us. And so now they're softening targets for us as we're moving in. And then all of a sudden, I start to see this own like night skylight up with like afterburners of the entire coalition air campaign kick off. So I'm in the desert as Holy shit. Yeah, just watching afterburners and, and, and artillery projectiles flying through the air as they're all going north towards the berm. And the berm is the separator between Kuwait and Iraq. And it's like a 15 foot berm, right? Nothing super crazy. And so what we have is, boy, I'm going to get some of the units a little wrong here. I'm not a historian. But you have first light armor reconnaissance who are driving around in our LAV 25s. They're the wheeled reconnaissance vehicles. They have a 25 millimeter bushmaster, beautiful, beautiful weapon system, great, you know, you know, team. And they call themselves a lot of times like wolf packs, and they hunt like wolves. And so it's almost like how Apaches cavalry fights in a certain way. The LAVs are in that same. So they're very mobile. And they oftentimes work with tanks or adjacent to M1A ones. So we've got first LAR, first recon and first force. First force is doing a helo insert into what's called Safwan Hill. And Safwan Hill is this hill overlooking the breach. So first force flies over, we've got first LAR. And then I think it was second tanks, and they're working to blow the breach. They have this like thing that blows through these things. It's called a Mclick mine clearing lane charge. And it's like this basically a tank drives up, and it like shoots this shape charge on a line. And it flings this thing through the air, and it lands on whatever it needs to, and it's a mine clearing line charge. That's what it's right. And it blows to clear off any mines in the area. So we have a clear way through. So engineers have helped with this whole thing. They're detonating all this stuff. And then first LAR and first tanks, and then portions of first recon who are driving around in like Mercedes G wagons, like the tripped up or the tricked out G wagons are just hitting targets, just crushing the 51st mechanized brigade, I think was the Iraqi mechanized brigade south. And they're just getting work. So it's called like hammer and anvil. So you like set the anvil, right? And then you have the hammer swing around. And then it's a also something what we call is a horns of dilemma. Basically what Marine Corps combined arms tries to do when we use aviation, artillery, tanks, is the enemy gets to choose how they want to die. They're in the horns of equally bad options. And so the hammer and anvil is kind of that action. And so first tanks and first LAR are just crushing T 55s, T 72s. And we're hearing this as we're coming forward. And then the rest of the division is in basically a ranger file in these tracks, following these cleared mine routes that they've gone through. And we're just like a big dragon. Remember seeing the 13 warriors or whatever or 13th warrior with like Antonio Banderas, and they have the dragon coming down? It's kind of like that. So we're in this just big dragon, all of us with like pvS seven bravos, right? Dude, my M 16 a two was older than I was, right? And I had an M 203 on the bottom that rattled like I was afraid of us going to shoot it was like fly off, right? And so we're cruising through and I can't believe I'm about to tell you there's no I have no shame anymore. There's no any cool guy points are going to get erased with this. So in the Marine Corps, actually in the Navy as well, combat action ribbon, right? So that is a big thing for Marines. And in the army, they have the combat infantry badge, and then the combat non infantry badge, it's like a dagger, instead of a rifle, I think it is. So the combat action room is like a big deal for us. Here's how I got my first combat action ribbon. And this is something that a lot of young Marines will will weigh themselves if they have a combat action ribbon, if they don't. And they see themselves as less than because remember, our service is about fighting. And if you haven't done the thing, then you are, you know, not openly talked about, but you classify yourself as technically less than. I believe that's all bullshit. And I tell this story to give people a little bit of to give themselves a little bit of credit. Here's how I got my first combat action ribbon. We are, I know that you have a lot of non military listeners. So I'm going to mansplain a couple of the things as well is we are condition three, when we are driving in the track in Kuwait. So condition four is no magazine inserted, no round in chamber weapon on safe, bolt home, ejection port cover closed, it's just a completely dry weapon. Condition three is magazine inserted, bolt forward, no wep, no round in the chamber weapon on safe, condition two does not apply to this weapon system. Condition one is magazine inserted, round in the chamber weapon on safe, ejection port cover closed. We are supposed to transition from condition three to condition one, when we cross the berm and technically enter into Iraq. So we start that. So when we like, I'm on air century, and we like drive through this berm, and it's like non descriptor, just like a fucking wall of dirt, and I'm like crossing the berm, and I'm like yelling into the track, or we're like whipping around this kind of desert thing. And so everybody starts going through their process, right, and they're like racking their bolts, they're loading their 203s, you know, some guys have nine mils, they're just getting their weapon systems from condition three ish to condition one. Charlie Graham is a private first class from Tampa, Florida, right? He is another boot. And one of the things that we used to do in the service of which I advocated fervently against later on in my career, is we give the automatic rifle or the squad automatic weapon the M249 saw, we would always give that to the junior Marine in the fire team. But the problem was we gave it to him because like it was the it was like the pig, it was like this heavy cumbersome thing. And a lot of people used rank to be able to say like, I don't want to carry that it's in the way I got to carry a billion rounds on my, you know, chest, it's not easy to use. But the automatic rifle is the most important weapon system inside of a fire team because it's what's establishing your base of fire. When we get into a, you know, troops in contact, we need immediate massive amounts of volume to get the enemy to stop what they're doing and allow us the opportunity for some form of engagement to be able to assess and then react. But at the time, the boots get the broken weapon systems or the non working weapons or the shitty weapon systems and the saw. So Charlie Graham then goes to load his saw into his version of condition one, which God, someone's going to roast me if I get this wrong. Basically, he's putting rounds on the feed tray, the charging handle is forward, and he's ready to go. All he needs to do is rack the bolt to the rear because it's an open bolt weapon system, place it on fire and he's good to go. So he puts his round on the rounds on the feed tray, he's ready to go, we're loaded up. I load my 203 first, I don't know why I did, because now, you know, we load our primary, I get it, like I totally fucked all this up. But I load my 203 first and now I have my magazine inserted and I go to rack my bolt to the rear to go from condition three to condition one. And I rack it to the rear and it stalls on the way back, right? And it's like the charging handle kind of like wiggles behind it, right? And I don't know what to do at this point. Now, I say all this to say, I know now, right, I got better, but I was a Lance Corporal on my first deployment six, seven weeks into the fleet, and I basically had a weapon system that was conditioned three and a half, right? So I had a failure out of battery, right? So it just all I needed to do was rack the bolt to the rear one more time or have a cleaner weapon system that would have helped. And the bolt would have been, you know, sent home and I would have been completely fine. But here's how the culture worked at the time. I was so afraid of my seniors. I was so afraid of certain members of my squad that I was unwilling to ask for help. And so I looked down at the squad, I looked down at this person, he was a Southerner with a particular disdain for boots. And he was the only one, it was the closest one to me. So I had a choice. Ask him for help, or conceal my mistake. I look at Charlie Graham, who's not carrying the same weapon system. And I'm like, what do I mean? You know, we have this track, we're like whipping through the desk, what do I do? And he goes, I don't know, man. And so we just have a choice at that moment. So what did I decide to do? I close my ejection port cover, and I conceal my mistake, and I enter into Iraq, now gaining my combat action ribbon, by entering into contact or whatever it is, with a gun that wouldn't fire. Wow. And I was like that for an embarrassing amount of time. Really? Yeah. Charlie Graham and I had to wait until we stopped. And all of it becomes a blur at this point. I don't know if it was a day. I don't know if it was two days. We waited until we stopped. And then him and I went around the track away from the squad, and then like, MacGyvered my gun together, so that I could take the magazine out, clean it, clear it, and then rack the bolt and now make condition one. So here's the challenge. What all of this comes to play. I was a squad leader in boot camp. I was meritoriously promoted to private first class. I was the honor graduate out of the School of Infantry, and meritoriously promoted to Lance Corporal or to E3. And in my first opportunity for a gunfight, the very first thing I do is cause my own malfunction and not know how to fix it. If that's not an abdication of the training continuum that I entered into, I don't know what is because I was the best, if you will, right? And I couldn't solve my own problem. Now, eventually we did, right? And this is, and I tell this to people, because I need them to know that it's okay to fail. It's okay to ask for help. And as a leader, what that corporal, who I don't name anymore, all he had to do was be a better leader, and less terrible to me, and I would have asked him a question. But instead, I thought the 51st mechanized Iraqi, you know, Army Brigade was less of a threat than the fucking corporal sitting inside of my track. Now, again, I wasn't near my team leader, I would have asked him, but all that to say, nothing happened. But it was an embarrassing moment that I used to highlight kind of where we were at. So the first few days of OIF-1 are relatively, I would say, limited for us, you know, people were surrendering in droves. We didn't have to shoot a lot. It was a lot of like search, silence, safeguard, segregate and tag, right? Like five S's and a T. A lot of people were surrendering. Our first place that we went to was the Ramalia oil fields. And the Ramalia oil fields were, excuse me, were famous from the Desert Storm invasion, or the Desert Storm, you know, war, was because Saddam Hussein had lit the Ramalia oil fields on fire during that timeframe as a way to slow us down, to waste, you know, a ton of Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil. And so that was something that we wanted to prevent, the gas oil separation plants or GOSPs, we had to secure those firsts, first. So the first few days of the invasion was just that, riding around in a track for like a million hours a day, standing on air sentry, black exhaust coming out of the side of half our face was black, right? You know, breathing in whatever we were at that timeframe, right? And then just literally on highway one, driving north. So these tracks just driving north. And General Mattis was the division commander at the time. And his, now an incredible tactician was his thing was speed and violence of action, which is really great for Marines, because that's what we're purpose designed for. Get to Baghdad as fast as possible, topple the regime. This is what would be classified as third generation warfare. We use our supporting arms to limit the Iraqi army's ability to make war, while our combat troops blow past less tactically advantageous units and go for the heart. And so we're on this like bull run, trying to get to Baghdad. Now there wasn't a ton of contact here and there. Well, then what happens is we are four or five days into this thing, and then the sandstorm hits. And this is pretty big for Iraq at the time, because I actually write in the book, it was interesting, like I'm a very, very, very, very proud Marine and very proud of the Marine heritage. That is one thing Marines are taught very much is the lineage of which we are joining, right? We get to be Marines. We have the privilege of being Marines. And so we want to hold that, keep our honor clean, right? And live up to the legacy from, you know, the Marines before us. And so I write in the book that we face this, the wind starts to swirl. And then all of a sudden we enter into this like near Armageddon kite type sandstorm, we're cruising along and then eventually we start slowing and slowing and slowing and slowing. And then what I write was then nature accomplished what every adversary in the world had tried and failed to do, stop the advance of United States Marines. So we trickled basically to a stop. Earlier that day, 3-5 got some pretty, pretty heavy contact with what was called a cat team or a combined anti-armor team. Those are heavy machine guns and then anti-tank missiles. They were led by a then unknown Lieutenant Brian Shantos. And Brian Shantos and his, in his cat section had entered into heavy contact of an entrenched Iraqi army outpost. And they were outgunned and basically ambushed by this group. What Brian Shantos and his unit chose, like one of the Marines, we took our first casualties that day, an RPG came through, these are soft skin humvees at the time, but it was a four pack Humvee with a gun on top, came through one of the windows or, yeah, one of the windows of the Humvee immediately killed a corpsman that RPG came in, didn't arm and detonate, but it came through a corpsman's head and then lodged in the gunner's stomach. And it stopped in his stomach. And so there was, in this firefight was massive carnage happening four days into this, into this conflict. Shantos had to be able to triage all of that, all the while trying to break the back of this enemy resistance. They were so engulfed in, in gunfire that what they did was they ended up turning the Humvees into the trench line, driving the Humvees into the trench line of the Iraqi army, and then exiting the vehicle, and Shantos and two other Marines cleared down this trench by themselves. And when they ran out of their own ammunition, they took dead Iraqi army soldiers, AK-47s, and continued to clear the rest of the trench. Brian Shantos was eventually awarded the Navy Cross for this action. Hopefully it's up for reinvestigation for a Medal of Honor, because what he did is literally classified as a Medal of Honor on him and the two Marines that went with him. These three Marines decimated like 20 to 30 Iraqi army soldiers by themselves and didn't have a scratch on them. They just went through this trench line. And this starts to percolate through the battalion. We hear, you know, actions, we're on radios, we can hear certain things as it's going on. And then the sandstorm stops us dead in our tracks. And we go out and part of being a boot was like digging a lot of fighting holes. So every night the thing was this, we would drive all day and then at night we would stop and we would get out and set security. And I would have to dig my fighting hole. And then my squad leader was having to go and get like the brief, right, and go get the plan for the next day and updates. And so we had to dig his fighting hole too. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But when people were like, what'd you do when I, I was like, I dug mostly. That was kind of what my experience was. And so now we get in the sandstorm is set in, it is, I'm talking hand in front of your face, not visible, orange dust, Armageddon. And then we hear movement, we hear mechanized movement off to our flank. There is a column of T 55s moving on one of our flanked companies, one of our companies on the flank. And now our aviation assets and our artillery and mortar forward observers have to fight through this obscurity of the sandstorm and bring in artillery and, and aviation assets to kill this T 55 or column of like T 55s. And so all through the night we're hearing this massive, like what's called DPICM dual purpose incendiary munitions, some cluster munitions. So basically it's a canister that fires out an artillery shell, it pops and then sends, it's an anti material shape charge that sends like, I don't know, like a hundred of these shape charges down. So it goes pow and sprinkles down on the ground, right? And then kills all these things. So our forward observers had to fight through all of this, you know, literally fog of war, right, to be able to save this company on the left flank. So all this is happening. And then we sit for another two days as we wait through for the storm to subside. And then one of the things that I write, as I said, and then to finish off with the storm had started, it begins to rain. And now it rains for the next two or three days. And all of that sand and that storm that everything brought in turns to like peanut butter mud. And so that's, and then we continue to move north. Part of all of this is we start moving so fast that we are out running our logistics trains. So the fuel, the food, the water can't keep up with us because we're, as soon as it clears, we're driving to get to Baghdad. And ironically enough, we're taking what's called Highway 1. It has letters in English that says Baghdad. So we just like all know we're just driving towards Baghdad. And the 1st Marine Division had two regiments or three regiments that split. And so one went to Nazaria, I think it was 7th Marine Regiment went to Nazaria, gotten some hellacious firefights in Nazaria. And 1st Marine Regiment and 5th Marine Regiment, which was I was a part of, continued up Highway 1 heading towards Baghdad. Our biggest firefight was April 4th, 2003. And it's what the, what 3-5 eventually called the killing fields because it was a Republican Guard and Fedayeen training camp. And so the Republican Guard was Saddam's elite, and they were marked with a red triangle on their shoulder on their, they had a green fatigues and like a red triangle. Well, they also had Fedayeen and Fedayeen were Islamic militants at the time before they had become whatever they became during our time. And so we're cruising up there and there's not much. So like the movies don't really tell it very well. As a low guy on the totem pole, you just sit in the back and you just wait. And if you're not on air century, you're just, you're just sitting there in some semblance of falling asleep. A track is supposed to hold anywhere from 13 to 15 combat loaded Marines in the back. But since we were driving so fast and so far, we started losing tracks along the way. And so what happens is we have our bump plan, just like we brief in everything else that we do a bump plan, our track ended up having something like 24 or 27 Marines inside of the back of this. Now the way that a track is, is you have two benches along the wall and you have one bench in the center. And that is a metal, just a metal bench with a thick or a thin foam, you know, kind of like rubber foam kind of thing. And that's your, you know, comfort, if you will. And we are strewn everywhere inside of this, all of our kit in equipment. So like all of our packs are on the outside of the track because we don't have room for it on the inside. So all of our like chow and extra ammo and sleeping bags that we never used, right? They're all on the outside. So we're just sitting in this like, you know, sweat box, right, with a giant diesel engine. Ironically, ours was called the Higgins boat. And we called it the Higgins boat for two reasons. Our driver, his name was Lance Corporal Higgins. But also some Marines are big on history. When Marines were landing in the Pacific, they were, they were ferry to shore by things called Higgins boats. In Norman B&D Day, they're called Higgins boats. So we had this kind of like moment of like, you know, irony or, you know, lineage of we were driving a Higgins boat up to, up to Baghdad. So on April 4th, relatively early in the morning, we're cruising up Highway 1 and I'm on, you know, not on air century. So I'm like sitting there, I'm kind of falling asleep. And then all hell starts to break loose. We drive in, I mean, you know, the tactics aside, we, the movies make it seem like it's something like we all know what we're doing. And everyone's got like an idea. It was not that way. It was literally like drive the bus down the center of the street. And when someone shoots at you, we all get out and then we go and like locate, close within destroy. And that's exactly what happened. So I'm sitting in this thing. I think I'm asleep. And all of a sudden I hear contact, contact laugh, right? And then Rax, Charlie Graham racks the saw and just starts ripping. So that's how I get woken up, ripping the saw to the left, because now we have green tracers coming in. I look up through the air century, we're like in between the guys who are now shooting brass casings are kind of falling because there's three people who can understand what's happening and 20 some odd of us who have no idea and are inside of an armored light armored beast. RPG, you know, streaking across, you know, wobbling over like across the sky. The track in front of us gets hit with an RPG, but they didn't pull the firing pin out of the RPG. So it hits the RPG, hits down, doesn't detonate, but a side hit from an RPG would have decimated the inside of the track. So all of a sudden what we hear are the things that kind of splits all of us into action. It's a clink, clink, clink. And it is of this hydraulic hook at the back of this one ton ramp. And that is letting us know it's like click, click, click, we're opening the ramp. And now the ramp starts falling down. And we're hearing machine gun fire on top of the track, we have a mark 19, which is our grenade launcher and a 50 cal that looks like a, it's almost out of like Star Wars. It's like all this little turret and this like the gunner turns it goes, and he's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And like, so both guns shoot simultaneously. So they're all shooting off to our left. And this track ramp starts to go down. And I've been inside this like dark, cramped track. And all of a sudden, you're getting dust and sand and light piercing through the opening of this track as it's coming in. And I remember looking around and taking inventory. This was all of our first like big firefight. And I see people praying, I see people sipping water, and then I see Corporal Eric Olson, son of an LAPD SWAT officer. He was born for this. This is his moment. This is what he was put on this earth, red haired, you know, Viking warrior kind of guy, right? My team leader. And he's leaning on the edge of the ramp, not that he's going to be able to help it, but he's like pressed in, ready to go. This is his moment. And he's going out, the ramp is now barely level. And we start pouring out clink, clink, clink, clink, like our hard sold rubber boots clinking on the outside of this track. And we pivot and we start making our turn to the right. So we have a term that we used a lot. And I've adopted it for a lot of like leadership philosophies later on is what we were supposed to do then was the tracks would normally pull to a position, they would open the ramps and the squads would peel out on opposite sides of the track. And then the tracks would turn into the contact or into the engagement we would get online. So the saying is get out, get online, make a decision. And that was what we always wanted to do. So the tracks turn, we start peeling out. And now Eric Olson is, you know, moving into his position. I swear I got better. The very first thing I do when I step on the track is I pivot, I come out of the track, I step into the peanut butter mud that has been, you know, now developing over the last few days, I trip, I fall forward. And what do I do? I jam my muzzle of my rifle into the mud. And I fall over myself very first gunfight, right? Not only am I like a dip shit when we cross the border, my very first gunfight, I fall over myself, bury my muzzle into the mud, and all hell is breaking. There's a PKM, I don't know, I fucking don't 300 meters, right? In a specific direction that's like peppering us, right? RPGs are swirling, the tracks are now, it's chaos in the beginning. Get out, get online, make a decision. Now what happens is we start to gain a little bit of like wherewithal. The tracks have turned, the Mark 19s are ripping, they're starting to get into crescendo, they're starting to get into a rhythm with each other. They're holding them back. And then all of a sudden I look, I mean, I'm like, fucking straight panic mode, like on my knee, you know, like I'm trying to like struggle while people like running and I'm like trying to get my fucking cleaning gear out like an idiot, right? You know, it was, it was like Mr. Bean goes to war, right? It's like I'm this fucking idiot, right? And I'm on my knee and then all of a sudden I look up and I see two men from a different track and these guys cool as ice. One guy has got an M40A1, a Marine sniper rifle, tucked underneath his arm. One guy's got an M16A2 with a, at the time it was an ACOG scope mounted on top of his, on top of his rail or his carrying handle. And they're floating across the battlefield. Their eyes are narrowed. They're looking out into the distance, not phased by anything. Remember, I'm in like sheer panic mode, so it's like figuring my life out. And I see these two guys just sprinting and they've got something in mind. And I watch them like careen past us, but like eyes of a predator. And they get into position. I watch the shooter take his butt pack off because at the time we wore like H harnesses and we didn't have bipods on the sniper rifles at the time. And so the shooting platform from the snipers was always a butt pack. And they would take like a piece of, of isomat and foam and they would build a little shooting platform on their butt pack, takes his butt pack off, lays it on this little berm. This is happening very fast. His spotter gets up behind him near laying on him. And I see the spotter pointing, he has his binoculars out and he's pointing and guiding the shooter onto position. And then I see this break in this berm where we're getting contact. There's like PKM, there's RPGs, and they're, and they're, and they're eating our lunch at this, at this moment. And I watch this guy like just they communicate very, very quickly. And I watch the shooter wait for somebody to cross in front of this space in this berm of where they're getting ready to shoot again, crosses in front of this space. He pulls the trigger, drops this dude, falls down, right? Silences that he racks the bolt to the rear and they just nonchalantly grab their equipment, put their butt pack on, and then keep moving, looking for the next target. And I was like, what the fuck was that? Who are they? And that was my very first moment of seeing an actual sniper in action and not just the movies. And then all of a sudden snap back, right, shit's going crazy and I'm, Pashoudi, get the fuck up here, right? You know, like that kind of thing. So now the squad is moving, right? And I'm still here like, like private dipshit, right? Trying to like figure out, I'm looking for a rock, anything. I don't know how far this thing is jammed into my weapon, because if I pulled the trigger on, I have the wherewithal to know, if I pull the trigger and my muzzle is jammed, there's a strong potential that I could blow this gun up in front of myself, right? And not have a good day. So eventually I get my cleaning rods out. I have to break this thing down, shotgun style, all while running and people are shooting and I'm like, freaking out. I'm like jamming cleaning rods down this thing to clear this obstruction. And I turn around and I can call him Eric now because he's not my corporal anymore, but Eric Olson, man, like, Pashoudi, get the fuck up. He's like mad as all hell. Imagine him. He's like, this fucking idiot, right? You know, laughing at me. So we start catching up. Now the tide starts to shift a little bit, right? We have a bunch of Marines kind of getting online, get into a wadi. We're moving up and we've got now our platoon, first platoon is starting to be able to move. We get three platoons online and we're going to do what's called a hammerhead left, is we're trying to flank the enemy's position. So we have two platoons going forward and we have first platoon, my platoon is going to come up here and eventually close the door and flank the enemy position and run through their trench on the side. Base of fire, maneuver element is what we're looking to do. And I've been dicking around with my fucking M16, right? For way too long that now I'm falling behind, but Charlie Graham stays with me. But we're kind of like tail end Charlie on this thing. As we're cruising up towards the right hand side, Charlie and I get zippered up big time. A PKM has a beat on us and is peppering the top of this berm, this wadi, because we're having to kind of run up and down, we're sprinting as fast as we can. A lot of it's a little fuzzy too. And all of a sudden, I feel the heat and the pressure. I don't hear the machine gun, but I hear feel the heat the snap, right? And all of a sudden, I know like it's close. We fall to the ground, we get down, we hunker down, and the squad has now made it past. There's like this gap, and they're shooting at this gap, and we were about to cross this gap. And now we're stuck on the other side of this gap. And this machine gun has a beat on us and is eating away at this berm of like loose sand that's protecting Charlie Graham and I. We're fucked. We're like super fucked. Like we don't know, can I cuss on this? I'm sorry. Okay, cool. Sorry. And we're looking at each other. And Charlie Graham, I love that man to death, he has a nose that tells the story. He was a hockey player growing up like rough and tumble lifestyle. His nose is like crooked seven different ways. It's like a big old parrot beak on him. And I remember looking at him and he's got like the sweat streaks, the white around his, I just remember this image, you know, people talk about combat and how it like blurs and then there's flashes of moments of you know, real clarity. This is a clarity moment for me. I look at him, I look at his eyes, right? His helmet's kind of crooked. And he's got like the white around his around his lips, right? And we're, we don't know what to do. We're like, we don't know what to do. My platoon sergeant, Staff Sergeant Jorge Gonzalez is just the Marines, Marine of all Marines, right? Super, you know, super disciplined, doesn't ever give me the time of day. Like I'm wet, you know, but like, he's just like the old core kind of thing, you know, you've kind of seen those guys before, right? He notices our predicament. And as a good platoon sergeant, what he does is he gets on the hook with aviation assets. And he hucks a yellow smoke into the middle of this field. So how it sits is like basically a big, I would say rice field, if you will, and they're on the other trench and we're trying to maneuver around the square to get to them. And he throws this yellow smoke into the field. And in the moment that truth is stranger than fiction, Charlie Graham are laying there on our back, not knowing what to do. And this yellow smoke is billowing in the air. And I see two AH1 cobras who were operating very different at the time. What the cobras did was basically just follow our convoy and wait for us to get into contact. And then they would just go hunt. And so they see this thing happening. These guys are 30 meters off the deck. Like I can feel the heat from their engine. They come in, streak over the top of us. And the way that cobras and Apache cobras specifically like to attack is they kind of come in and then they come into this pop. They shoot up, they gain an elevation, and then they fucking streak down. This guy comes in over the top of us, right? Dash one comes in, streaks up. I can see his chin mounted cannon, right? It's a three barreled cannon. And it's chin mounted. I see him looking for the target. Now we start getting a little bit more, you know, because the cobras on our shoulder. So we stand up and we start like, you know, like shooting, I have a 203 and like lobbing smoke grenades in that direction, like wildly, you know, in that direction. This guy then is like, and just starts just way laying this position. Hydra rockets, white streak, boom, boom, boom, just hitting this position. And then he ducks out. And then dash two comes in, does the same thing to finish the fucking job on this PKM that had us completely pinned. Hand to God. They come back around and they're like looping on their, you know, now dash one is coming back to a holding position. They're coming back, comes back over Charlie Gramanite and hovers and allows us to be able to gain our footing. And he's like, I've got you little brother, right? Halber's above us and allows us to get up and start moving. He fucking looks, I see the pilot look looking outside. I make eye contact with him. Charlie Gramanite, we make eye contact and he fucking throws us a salute. And then, and then we're like, we're like freaking out. Like, yeah, like doing this right. And then we start running. And then I just see Marines emblazoned on his tail fuse or on his fuselage flying away. It was the most epic thing I think I had seen in my career at all, right? Like all account everything altogether. Seeing that guy tilt, throw a fucking salute. Like it was the most marine shit ever, right? We get back to our squad and Corporal Olson is pissed. What the fuck? You dumb motherfucker? What the fuck are you doing? Right? And so then we continue to, you know, finishing the flank. And then at that point, what I do is what I talk about how I'm not supposed to be here, right? I'm not supposed to be in the position that I am. It's because of other people. I see Olson and I start emulating Olson. I'm like mini me to him, right? And I start following everything that he does. His weapon system is the same as my weapon system and M16 with an M203. We move around, we eventually see the carnage that was created from the Zoon or from the hydro rockets and the, you know, the chain gun, right? And we see these guys just like just decimated. And then we get into a position and now we're clearing through the back end of this trench and we're on the back side of this trench looking further, you know, deeper into the field. And we see eight reinforcements, right? Like a squad minus running towards us of Iraqi army and they're running towards our positions. And so Olson and I get down behind, you know, a little berm and he starts calling out ranges and he's like 300, right? All right, sounds good. 300. When we put our 203 up on my like leaf side up on my 203, which is super not accurate, but put my leaf side up on my 203 and we're like, and we send these little Easter eggs of, you know, 40 millimeter grenades out towards these guys. And they're running towards us. So it's kind of an interesting shot. So as they're running, it crunches in front of them and he's like, fuck, wrong range, give it 350. So now we're like max effective of the 203. But I do exactly what Olson does. I'm holding it the way as I'm watching him as we do it. And then clunk clunk, you know, we fire two more of these things. And we land these grenades right in front of the eight Marine or eight Iraqis that are running towards this fight. And then they're effectively pinned down. Now, like, you know, the movies, there's not like a big explosion. There's not fireballs, right? The dude just like, they just like fall over, right? But then more of them continue to kind of get up and are charging towards us continue because they know that aren't a kill zone. And so they're charging towards us. So then Olson and I fire like eight more 203s at these guys as they're moving towards us. And eventually what happens is the final two of them get into a position where they're, they're about to start breaking contact at this point. And we already fire our two, two more lob, you know, a volley pair is flying towards them and they get up to break and run away and it lands at their feet. And we, you know, kill both of them. And then the fight like literally picks up. So now what we've done is we've got online, but so those are your first kills. There they are with a 203 at 200 to 350 meters in around that timeframe, very different than future ones. That was very, I was like elated, right? Because again, I'm doing my job, right? I'm in this, there's, there's adrenaline, nor nepernephrine, right? And chemicals are flying everywhere through this whole thing. And so I'm like high five in him. I'm finally getting like, great job, you know, fist bump, nice job, right? Like I'm finally getting this, I'm just mimicking, right? You know, what this guy's doing. And he's like taking me under his wing. He's making sure I'm safe through this thing. And I'm rising to the challenge. And so we've done this, we've come up to this flank, we've kind of come down here. Now we're coming back and now we're making almost like a, almost like a final move to get back. We've cleared almost all, and this is over hours of timeframe, right? Of like different, you know, there's lulls and there's, you know, pickups through the whole thing. Well, we're moving back. And we're coming back towards the road where we started this little adventure. And third squad and second squad, I have already moved through and they've killed or shot a few Iraqis that are in different trenches along the way. And first squad, my squad is the last squad to move through in this like move order of movement. And as I'm coming up, Olsen's in front of me, I'm not telling Charlie anymore. But what happens is I see a Iraqi guy on the ground and he's on his stomach. And he rolls from his stomach to his back and that catches my eye. And I stop and I look at him and I come over the top of him. As I'm like, again, all this is happening very fast and I'm running and I see him reach for his gun. And I'm five feet away. And I'm 18 years old and I just fucking unload on this guy. I don't remember what I yelled. I remember what happened. All I know is I shot this guy a bunch in the chest. And then I remember, I remember, I remember his eyes. And it was very different because moments before, you know, half an hour, hour before, I just, you know, presumably killed people with a 203. And now I've shot this guy in the chest. And I remember his eyes. And I remember he had tears. And he had, you know, dirt and mud and blood coming out of his mouth, right? And I remember he had tears that were streaking through the brown dirt. And I never forget, I'll never forget his eyes, because his eyes were almost like gray. They were like searching. And you can see, I've seen it before on a wounded animal, when an animal is laying there and it knows it's going to die. And it's looking for anything. And I remember looking in his eyes and not being able to see anything other than panic. He didn't look at me with rage. He didn't look at me with anger. He looked at me. He was like pleading with me, like do something. But he was already dying and I, and was like on his way out. And we're in the middle of a gunfight, right? And so there's no chance for me like render aid, right? And all this. And I just watch him, I watch him die. And I'm like 18 years old, fucking going, what is happening? And then all of a sudden, let's fucking go, Pashota, I'm just getting yelled at again, right? So I'm just getting yelled at through AF1. And I get yelled at and I pick up and I start running with my squad. And in front of us, third squad of first platoon is in contact. There's another trench out here. And as they're in contact, there's a man by the name of Joseph Perez, who was the point man of the squad, of third squad. So he's the first person in our entire platoons movement is super pinned down. There's a couple of different bunkers that are just, I don't know what type of weapon systems they're shooting, but they're shooting at him, right? And now he's like laying down in the prone, and he's got this giant fucking AT4 on his back. As a boot, like me, that's what the boots do, is they carry the fucking rocket as well, right? So I remember watching this happen. And I may be 100 yards away from this whole thing. I watch Lance Corporal Joseph Perez, who was also an honor graduate out of SOI, you're watching two different types of honor graduates from school of infantry, right? Lance Corporal Perez is fighting with his M16, he's shooting forward, and then he gets up on a knee, takes his AT4, somehow pivots this thing around, puts the right, puts the missile on the right door, the rocket in the right direction, fires this AT4 into a bunker, destroys a bunker, and then the other bunker is now, because he's on a knee, not in the prone, like zippers him up, right? He gets shot, he's like standing up at this moment, right? He gets shot, spins around, I'm watching dust kind of fly off him, he spins to the ground, he's been shot, I don't know, three or four times in the chest. And Sergeant Nicknor Galvan is five foot nothing, right? Love the man to death, hated soft, what he called soft ass Californians, right? And was the squad leader, and is now incensed. This was one of his squad members that just got shot by this, and he's freaked, I got that, and so he's bringing all this hate and discontent forward. The squad, and now our two squads are pushing forward to get to Perez, to get to this other trench, to put this enemy out, and fucking Perez will not give up. Now he's on his stomach with his M16, still shooting back, grabbing a grenade out of his pocket, and like sky hooking a grenade into the trench, while all of us are still trying to get to him, a corpsman's trying to get to him, he's still holding their heads down so the rest of us can get there and eventually clear the trench. And so we've now made this kind of almost big square as we've gone, kind of gone through this thing, and we've killed or captured most of the Republican Guard, and again this is many, many hours. Perez is still alive, and there's Medevac birds that are circling around, they land in the middle of the freeway of Highway 1, we get Perez to the bird, we have no idea if he's going to live or die, because he's shot up super, super bad, and then he takes off, and then that's it, we don't know if he dies or not, that's just the end of Lance Colbert Perez for us. And then we get back to the road, and there's still pockets of resistance that are shooting at us, and then we have a lot, a lot of the other assets have kind of come into play, and we have, I'm going to get the terminology wrong, but basically a battalion of artillery, I think is 18 cannons, and 18 cannons when they open up a fire for effect, I think I'm going to get this wrong, each one of these cannons fires six rounds, and each one of these projectiles is 110 pounds, and they do what we call a shake and bake mission, right? So it's HE super quick, so it blows up on impact on the ground, and then they also have white phosphorus, and white phosphorus is generally used for marking, marking targets, and so they're doing a mix load, it's a battalion, and again I might be getting this wrong, but eight, they're not super far away, but now they've established, there may be a click away, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, I don't know how, I don't math in public, but how many rounds of that is now crunching into this field in front of us, and it's like the earth is vomiting its own entrails, just screeching, just the, you know, you've heard artillery, right, and just geysers of dust and blood and people's souls are flying into the sky out this thing, and they just decimate this entire field, because on the left side of the road, India Company, my company is fighting, on the right side of the road, Kilo and Lima Company are fighting, so they're trying to get as much, because it's a huge kind of, you know, terrorist training camp, if you will, and they're trying to kill as many things as possible, but you've brought the Marine Air Ground Task Force full, too full bare, this is Marine Corps fighting on Marine Corps terms, locate, close with the destroy the enemy by fire maneuver and repel the enemy's assault by fire in close combat, the artillery, aviation, mortars, tanks, 50 cals, infantry guys like myself are all in unison, it was one of the most impressive displays of American firepower, because we were fighting a war at that time that we had trained for, for the last 30 years, fighting a Warsaw Pact enemy dug-in and entrenched position on our terms, they pick the position, we pick the time, and that was April 4th's kind of big gunfight called the killing fields during that time, it was my first big firefight. Shit, it's all the first of firefight. I was basically a fuck up through the entire thing, so I don't know, you know, how we go through it, but again, I had you process that afterwards. So a lot happened, buddies got shot, Perez, the first kill, got your first close combat kill. So Perez ended up living. He did. He did, and after the war, he was awarded the Navy Cross as well, of which I have consternation with, because from what I saw, that was not Navy Cross, that was fucking Medal of Honor worthy, watching what he did after getting shot. Again, it's, the Marine Corps is very well known for not being good at giving out medals. That is just part of, that is part of our culture, I don't agree with it, but two Navy Crosses came out of OIF-1 for 3-5, Lieutenant Brian Shantosh for the day before or the Sandstorm Day, clearing the trench, and then Lance Corporal Joseph Perez, both of them lived, you know, luckily. And then we, processing it was different, right, because did you have time to process, what was the next day like? That night, we had to dig in again. So like fucking white phosphorus is like blown around, right, there's fucking dead people everywhere. But here's the thing, I became so desensitized to it so quick. We had been, at that point in Kuwait, we got one shower, I think, in the entire time we were in Kuwait, at that point it had been 40 days without a shower, and we only had two or three pairs of socks. And remember, we outran our logistics trains, so we didn't have food, we didn't have water, and I didn't have socks. And so when we were doing our post-casualty analysis, we went through their stuff and we were like, you know, make dead checking, making sure that it was no intelligence and maps and all that kind of stuff. And I found a dude who had died from, I mean, it was fucking ugly, dude. I saw what marking targets looks like for the Marine Corps, what white phosphorus does. And white phosphorus comes out in little like sponges, and white phosphorus cannot, it's activated by oxygen. So when it comes out of this, it can basically melt through anything. And it's a very good way, it burns white, it's a very good way to literally mark a target so we can see something. Also very good for obscuration. Also, in that instance was used for killing enemy combatants. And so you just see, watching a person kind of go through their last minutes, and this mattered to me later on as a sniper is you can watch this like CSI kind of thing, is you see this person who was like trying to render buddy aid or self aid gauze ripped open, fucking open, burned wounds, tears, blood everywhere, right? But I didn't care. I needed to spare socks. And so I went into his pack and I grabbed his socks because mine were wasting away, they were melting away on my feet. I had trench foot, you know, like the pockmarked feet and things like that, because you can't take your boots off, because you never know when you're gonna get in context, we never took our boots off. So for like 30 days, you take one boot off for 10 minutes at a time and put your other boot back on like that was, OIF one was miserable. And then I had to dig more fighting holes that night. And then we put then the fucking mosquitoes set in because it's like April springtime in Iraq and it's marshy and the rain had just happened. And the mosquitoes just eating all the corpses, the flies hadn't set in just yet, but the mosquitoes were there. And then the mosquitoes would eat the corpses and then they would fly over to us. So we had this like 100% deet, you know, like little green tube of deet. It literally says like, don't put it on your skin, right? And I'm like, and the mosquito, I'll put it on my gloves and mosquitoes like, oh, a little bit of pepper, right? You know, like, thanks, right? I had that all over my face, my lip, my lips would go numb, it would eat through your watch band. I'm like getting all the cancer, you know, whenever that comes up, I'm getting it all from from that deet, you know. And then we just didn't really have time to process it because that next morning we picked up and kept moving. And then we eventually moved into Baghdad. And Baghdad was more chaos and more, you know, less carnage at that time because we had really worked like the military had kind of folded pretty quickly once we had gotten through some of the major units. Baghdad started to fall. And so Baghdad became a lot of patrolling, a lot of stability type stuff, preventing from looting happening or looting from happening. What? Preventing looting. Yeah. What? Because the military was decimated, the police force didn't move out. There was a lot of cultural stuff. So Iraq has a ton of history and a ton of history that goes back to like biblical times, right? And they had museums in Baghdad. And so people were looting. So think of like the Watts riots in like 1992. Oh, man, I heard the soft guys were going in there fucking taking Picasso paintings and all kinds of crazy shit. We weren't stopping like we didn't I didn't see any Americans looting stars. Everybody was looking for denar. I'll say that, right? Yeah, the gold bar and things like that. But we were in like the outskirts of Baghdad and like moved in. And we were stopping that now all of a sudden like two days earlier, we were like, you know, the Republican guard, you know, Fedain training camp, and then we're like stopping people. People are now asking us for gas and money and food. And we're just we're we're Marines, man. This is not our job, right? Not our space. And so it was a really, really, really quick transition. And then it really turned into stability operations very quickly. We were in Baghdad for a week or two after setting up at some like, like a soda factory or an electrical plant of some sort. And then we went to Samara where that spiral tower is at. And then eventually what started to happen was now that Baghdad had been secured, we had to send out the military or the units to different locations to secure the rest of the country. Because the problem that we did, the strategic misstep that we made was, yes, we had to decimate the Iraqi military. But the Iraqi militaries was tied to the country's national pride and ideology. They were also run by the, you know, I think it was the Sunni god, I don't remember. Like Saddam's, you know, the Bath Party, right? They were pretty much run with the Bath Party. And so once that fell, the entire ecosystem of civilization in Iraq fell apart. And so very quickly, we had to get all of the supporting agencies, all of the engineers, all of the, you know, whatever's into the place to now like, not nation build, but stabilize the region. So we're not causing tons of chaos, water purification, plants, food, jobs, cops, like all these things, then came up highway one, we were just the tip of the spear, if you will, kind of going through there. And then we settled to a town called Adi Waniah at an old army Iraqi Air Force base, if you will, which was like had barracks and shit like that. And we stayed at Adi Waniah for the next four or five months before we rotated out. And the posture there was so different. Because OAF one, at the fall of OAF one, before the awakening, before the insurgency, was docile. Here's what I've learned, right? We say it's the American dream, right? In fact, I think it's like a global dream is we have, you know, life, liberty and pursuit. That's just a human dream, right? People want to feed their family. They want to make sure their kids are safe, and they want to get their kids to school, and whatever that thing is, and make sure that they have their normal life going on. People just wanted that happen. They were very happy that Saddam was gone. Bush, good, Saddam, donkey, right? You know, Mr. Give Me, right? Like the kids wanted chocolate, and they wanted, we had to secure all these banks because the banks were getting robbed. The dinar was collapsing because was that the currency? Was it not the currency? It was this weird kind of time. So we basically went to a lot of banks and secured the banks themselves that were looted pretty heavily, or people tried to get into the banks to loot whatever cash they could. It was a smash and grab that a lot of the locals did to be able to, you know, fend for themselves. I remember driving around D'Uanilla by myself in an open back Humvee, like a four pack Humvee, no armor with a fucking boombox with my M16 by myself, driving supplies from one place to the next. Could you imagine that in our timeframe too? It was walking wild. Wow. When is the first time you get to Deacon Press? Was it that, where did you stop? D'Uanilla? Yeah, that was, it was, the, oh, I have, one was very different than anything that you and I saw. Like I said, for me, I was, again, I was very low on the totem pole, very chaotic. I didn't know what was going on. I like ran out and shot where they told me to shoot and tried not to die. That was my goal. And so the Deacon Pressing, like we got to live in squad bays later on, and Marines fall into squad bays pretty easily, you know, smells like butt, crack and feet, you know, and we kind of, and then you fall into this normal thing. But then what I like to call is a fate worse than death. And this will transition us into like, like a trajectory type change. So we're in Deaconia. I have just completed a wife when I'm like, hi on the hog, I'm feeling really good. I've written some really good letters back to my family because I had, not consternation, I had confusion of how we were in Iraq and not Afghanistan. I'm like, I wasn't naive, but I was like, well, this doesn't make sense. How are we here? But then like the fall of Saddam, we got a chance to see how bad Saddam actually was, murder rooms, rape rooms, you know, all these palaces, fucking bodies, women, children bodies, strewn, like, not goods, like in various stages of Deaconia. That's the island in Iraq. Seriously, dude, seriously, that was like seriously. And just, just gross. So we were very happy to get rid of him. And the Iraqis were very happy to get rid of him too. So I remember writing a letter being like, I finally understand what this is for. Like this man approached me in the street and he was like wailing at me and I'm like a kid. So I don't know what to, you know, back off, right, kind of thing. I racked my bolt that works this time, right? Like, yeah, fuck out of here, right. And like the interpreter comes up because he sees some kind of commotion and this Iraqi man is like not yelling at me, but like talking very vividly. And the interpreter, and he's like crying, he's like bawling. And then this interpreter starts bawling. And then the interpreter's like explaining to me, right, what he's saying. And then I start crying because this man is literally kissing our feet. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. You've shaped our life. And we have been waiting for, he says, we have been waiting for you for so long. Thank you, America, for coming here and freeing us from Saddam. And I'm like watching this guy's reaction. We have now hope. We have a chance at life. And like three of us are like, and I write this letter, it's in the book, I'm writing home about it, about this moment in time where I'm an 18 year old kid watching this grown man cry to me about how he now has a second chance at life because we were there. And I'm like, I finally know what all of this is for. And it was for a good cause because we freed the world of evil. We gave people a chance at democracy. So like my theme, people ask all the time, and I don't, I try not to tell them, right, but political affiliations, that doesn't, that's not important to this conversation. Democracy is important to my ideology, to what I believe that I'm fighting for. If we are going to give democracy a chance for free and fair and people to make their own choices, sign me up. I will go there. I will fight in any climate, any place to do that. And we did that in Iraq. We had it. We had it in our hand. And then we let it slip through because we couldn't finish it. So to your point of decompression, we're in D.W.A. Nea. And I'll tell you a story about a guy that changed my entire life. His name is Gunnery Sergeant Ricky Jackson at the time Gunnery Sergeant Ricky Jackson. And I owe this man everything. Everything I am today is because of Ricky Jackson. Born in the depths of poverty in Southern Georgia, black man from Georgia, I joke with him. I don't know that I joke far away from him. Looks like cheeseburger Eddie, right? You know, like big traps, right? You know, right up all the head, pencil thin mustache traps. Everybody's bigger than me, but Gunny Jackson was like larger than life. First time I saw Gunny Jackson. Before we go into Iraq, I am, you know, we're in Kuwait and I'm like sleeping next to my fighting hole while we're staring into the desert looking for nothing, right? We're maintaining our posture. We have all these gastrels like we talked about before. First time I see Gunny Jackson, Corporal Olson wakes me up, he goes, hey, shooty, you know, it hits my leg. And he's like, hey, put your gas mask on. We're doing a gastrel. And I'm like, okay, cool. And I hear, and I'm like, I roll over, I like open my gas mask and I like put my gas mask on. I'm on my like hour of rest, right? So I get to like go to, I'm going back to sleep. And then I hear, no, Gunny, I won't do it. And I'm like, what is this? And I'm hearing somebody yell kind of, it's kind of like ethereal, right? I'm kind of half asleep. And I'm hearing somebody yell. And I'm like, no, Gunny, I won't do it. And I see Gunny Jackson, not the tallest man in the world, but to me, again, very big, right? Probably 510, big dude, right? And he's standing over another PFC who was just crawled out of his fighting hole. Part of our process for decontamination or scaling back our mop levels from having our gas mask on is that we'll go through certain layers of what's called selective unmasking. The final stage of selective unmasking, if you know, the pigeon's still alive, right, and all this kind of stuff. Now this is before the war kicked off, right? I look over and I'm laying on my side and I see off in the distance, this guy standing nose to nose, gas mask to gas mask with Gunny Jackson, white guy, big black dude, putting gas masks on each other. Part of it's called selective unmasking. And the last thing that we do in the final stage is we have one Marine take off their gas mask and they have them sit for 15 minutes to make sure that they are not going to die. Part of that is, are you kidding me? 100%. Wow, will you draw straws? So, well, this Marine wasn't the best Marine in the platoon, if that says it. Obviously less shitty than I was. Take a vote. Seriously. So, he's standing and he's like standing up for himself and part of that is taking your gun away. So, when you take your weapon away, in case you go like freaking crazy with sarin gas, you're not shooting people. And so, Gunny Jackson, it's hard to find a visualized, but Gunny Jackson is standing toe to toe with him. I'll be good because I know there's a mic and he's like, give me your fucking rifle and take your mask off. He's like, no, Gunny won't. So, Gunny Jackson does this like sweep and I'm trying to remember it. He takes this sweep, grabs the rifle with like his right hand, right, snatches it out of this guy's hand, passes it behind him, right, behind his back. And now, the weapon is in his left hand. The Marine goes to grab for the rifle. Gunny Jackson places his hand on the forehead of the Marine and then leans back and Spartan kicks this guy back into his fighting hole. And then Gunny Jackson turns around and he's got an M16 in his left hand and a fucking gas mask in his right. And that's my first introduction to Gunny Jackson. And Corporal Olson, I was like, because I'm a fucking boot. I don't know who these people are. And I was like, who is that? He's like, that's Gunny Jackson. Don't fuck with Gunny Jackson. So now, fast forward, we're in D'Wenia after, you know, the major conflict is done. And I'm in my squad bay. I'm in with my squad. We're just bullshitting whatever playing cards, right? And Gunny Jackson comes in and cannot pronounce my name. Nobody can pronounce my name, right? And I'm fine with it. And he was like, fuck, oh, fuck it. Where's P-shoot at? And so he has this like interest and he's like, come here, P-shoot, right? And I'm like, I snap too, right? Because he thought I don't want to get eaten, right? So I like stand up. Yes, God, we're sorry. Right. And then I like sprint up to him. And then like the weirdest conversation in my life ensues. He goes, and I won't do it in his accent because I don't want to be super rude. But basically what happens is he asks me where I'm from and I go, California. And he goes, no, you're from Silicon something, place all that Silicon shit, right? And I was like, I was like Silicon Valley. Yes, Silicon, Northern California. He's like, good, that means you can type. We need a new company clerk at the company office. You're now out of India Company, you're India Company's company, you're out of First Platoon, you're India Company's company clerk, which is a fate worse than death for an infantry Marine. I am now out of the line company and I am a, you know, a non-admin bitch. I'm an admin bitch. And then I finish out the rest of the deployment as an admin bitch. And then eventually we go back to California and then Gunny Jackson is there to help change the trajectory of my career. Oh man, what a miserable ending. Admin bitch. A hundred percent because I could taste. Yep. Oh damn good taste. And then. Right. I had just been like promoted to fire team leader. Like I was moving up, right? And they're like, you can type probably. You're our office guy. So I get pulled back to be an office guy. We redeploy back to California. And then what happens is. Hold on. Hold on. Sorry. When do you call home for the first time? Back in D.Wenia. You've got an artist mom. Yeah, dude. And a dad that doesn't want you to join the military. You just took part in the invasion of Iraq. Got your first kills. But he's got shot. What do you tell your parents? What do you leave out? Good question. A lot at that time period. Later on, I was a little bit more vivid, not explicit with them, but I was a little bit more vivid, I think with it. There was a little bit of like boyish pride, I think, in some of these things. In my letters, what I tried to do was not write, hey mom, chow's good, my feet stink, right? I tried to write stories. My mom was an artist. I considered myself, I don't know, maybe a writer at some level. And so I would write these long stories of things that I had experienced over there. And I've included some of those in the book as well, I think that were more poignant. But the first phone call back was on a DSN line. So the DSN line has a 10 second delay. And you're like, right, and you have this little, it's a green phone, right? And so you called like once or twice to let them know that you're alive. But there's a 10 second delay, so the conversations are kind of broken. And if they answered, right? Because we didn't have a lot of cell phones at the time. So you had to call the home number and kind of try to gauge it. But I was pretty, you know, I was pretty okay with it. My mom's a very, very proud marine mom. I love her to death, absolutely love her to death. My mom is a proud marine mom. To the point where I'm like, mom, keep it to get a pipe down, right? She's like, well, my son, right? I love her, absolutely to death with that. And my dad was not distant from, you know, being disappointed, but distant from not being able to relate, I think, in that, you know, part of the process of joining the Marine Corps is every boy has a moment where they have to cross their father and stand up to their father and mine was joining the Marine Corps. He was vehemently against it. And didn't want me to die, you know, for this thing, he had his own views on the war. Didn't want me to die for it. And so I had a lot of, a lot of consternation with it. And so I said, dad, I'm going to do it anyways. And so he was, he had made come to terms with that to the point of where he shaved his head when I went to boot camp. To shave his head in solidarity, right? So good. I just, again, what I've seen as fathers go, and I'm not a father, but what I've seen as fathers go is, you know, you want your children to do, sometimes you have their own expectations, and then sometimes there's recognizing that your children have their own identity and their own way that they want to be in the world. And it's finding a way to best support them. So he found the way to best support me. Right on, man. Yeah. Right on. See you back in California. Back in California. And I am an office, India Company clerk. And then, you know, we all kind of try to move through this relatively quickly. But we have a, I see a flyer on a, on the Chow Hall door as myself and another guy named Gregorio Sanchez from Houston, Texas. He is what's called the police sergeant. So he had another fate like me. He is the gear and equipment guy for the company, right? So we have 120 Marines and he's in charge of getting Chow and ammo and water and things like that. And I'm like the admin guy, Excel spreadsheet guru. And so we're back at Camp Pendleton. I'm miserable. I have no desire to be in this kind of thing. But we also didn't know the war was going to continue, right? So I see a flyer on a, on a Chow Hall door for something called the scout sniper indock. And the scout sniper indock is, you know, it had like them like hastily drawn like Reaper, you know, like Reaper is kind of the scout sniper thing. And it was like February 4th, show up at the pull up bars at 0400 with this gear list, right? Do you have what it takes kind of thing? And I was immediately like, I was drawn to it, but I was again, low idea of self efficacy, right? You know, like I, I did okay in OIF one, right? But I was still, I was like 115 pounds after OIF one, we didn't eat much, right? So like small kid, right? You know, that kind of stuff. And was still 18 years old or just now turned 19 years old. And so we're back at the company office after Chow and fucking Gregorio Sanchez, Gunny Jackson walks in because now he's at the company, right? So he works at the company office because he works for the entire company. And I get to see him more and more often. And he kind of takes me under his wing. And he was there for me when I was struggling, what would eventually be called with post dramatic stress. I didn't know I was, I couldn't drink at the time, right? But I didn't know how to handle all these things. I had presumably killed eight, eight men in the grenade thing, know that I killed one in, you know, five feet in front of me. And then the rest is kind of a blur. And so I was kind of working through that with him. And we would have long conversations and in his own way, you know, was there for me. But Sanchez as soon as Gunny walked back in the door from that Chow Hall thing, Sanchez fucking dick betrayed me. And he was like, Pashuti wants to take the end dog takes the the sniper and I was like, right, you know, and Gunny Jackson was like, Oh, you want to do all that snooping and pooping stuff, right? And he looked at me, he was the first person in my life to see my dream or my desire for that and not laugh at me. And he says, Okay, and he says, Pashuti, when he called me, he always called me P shoot. He says, P shoot. Is this what you want to do? And you're like, Are you sure you want to do this? And I said, Yes, I want to try out for the Scouts Library doc. And we had like six months before it happened. And he says, Okay, he says, every, every after every morning, right, from 11 to noon, your lunch hour is mine. And then we're going to PT after, after, you know, we shut we closed closed shop. So for twice, twice a day for the next six months, he says, your ass is mine. And he says, and I said, and he's like, Are you sure you want to do this? And I said, Yes. And he says, Okay, we'll see. And that was it. And for the next six months, Gunny Jackson and his wife, another Marine, like a fiery ass Latina, right, they just ran me up and down Camp Pendleton sprints, you know, lift, he would lift big weights, I would lift little smaller weights, right, you know, we would sprint, I would vomit for the next six months, they got me ready. But the challenge was, I was, I did not work for the gunnery sergeant, the police sergeant worked for the gunnery sergeant, I worked for what's called the company first sergeant. So he would be an eight. And he was the lead administrator, if you will, for the company. And he was not a good man. And I'll be brief when I describe him, but people will often forget what you say, but always remember how you made them feel. And that man made me feel worthless. He didn't call me by my name. He called me OB one, and he called Sanchez OB two. And OB one stood for office bitch one. And OB two was office bitch two. And so he'd open up his little window of OB one, get in here. Like, I didn't even have a name with this guy. And he was, you know, with the, I won't go into too much detail on him, because I try to forget him. But one of the things that kind of like marked my career, ultimately what happened is after six months, I go inside the company office, gunnery sergeant Jackson is sitting on the left hand side on this little couch. The first sergeant is sitting where you're at at his desk. And I go and I stand six and center. I bang on his hatch. Lance called me for shooting request permission to speak with the first sergeant. Right. And he's like, get out here. Right. You know, and again, which is super demeaning, but whatever. I go in and I stand at, you know, position of attention with him. And I was like, so at the time we called the sniper platoons, the staple tunes surveillance and target acquisition, eventually a transition to scout sniper platoon that had to do with putting ground sensors, listening devices, all kinds of that was the thing also sniping was, it was, you know, encased inside of that. But it was called the staple tune. And I was like, request permission to take the stay in doc. And he says to me, and he looks over at gunny and he says, I got your stay in doc right here. You're staying the fuck here. Get out of my office. And I have to, you know, six, whatever the turnaround thing is, right? And I turn around, I leave the office and I'm like looking at gunny Jackson. And I was like, betrayed, dude, he had got me ready for six months and he sat there quiet. Didn't say a word, didn't defend me. And I was so mad at him. And I go back into the company office. And now it's like the end of the day on a Friday, right? And I'm like cleaning up, I'm like fucking vacuuming, I'm just being an office bitch, right? You know, I'm cleaning up, doing my thing, everyone's gone home for the day. And gunny Jackson walks in the office. And he says, don't speak, puts his finger up, just don't speak, sit down. And I sit down. And he brings up like this faded, you know, shitty red marine chair, office chair, he rolls it up and he gets kneecap to kneecap to me. He breathes in. And he's choosing his words very, very carefully. And he says, P shoot, every man is in charge of his own destiny. If you're not here on Monday morning, I'll know where you're at. So what he was doing was giving me an order that he couldn't openly give. He was giving me an order to follow my dreams. Monday morning was the sniper endoc. I had requested permission on Friday afternoon. The first sergeant, my boss said no. And gunny Jackson said, you have a choice here. Choose your destiny. And so Monday morning at 0730, when I was supposed to be in my company office, the chair was empty. And I was at the sniper endoc, getting my shit pushed by a bunch of snipers. Go through a long kind of thing, right? The next on Monday morning, I have to make this decision. This is, I'm an E3, right? This is not like an E8, right, is like a God, right? To an E3. This is not something people do, right? Especially in the Marines. I don't know how it is in other services. It's just not something that we do. And so I go and now eventually we run two back to back back PFTs, like there's extra training that they put in because you know, why not, right? And then we go to the pool. I had no idea snipers needed to swim, but someone was like the great equalizer, right? And like we go into the pool and I'm like, what the fuck? I, like, I grew up like boogie boarding and Santa and Santa Cruz, right? I'm not a fish, right? By any sense of the imagination. And so we get in this pool and we're doing the, we're in formation, like a formation kind of tread, right? In the deep end of the pool and the thing's fucking freezing, the heater's broken, like some Marine Corps, right? Everything's broken. It all sucks. And we're treading water and I am not doing well. Now they're passing bricks around and they're sharking people, right? Like I am not a Navy SEAL. No, did not want to be a Navy SEAL. Didn't think I could be a Navy SEAL, right? And I am treading water in the deep end and I'm fucking losing it. So I get yanked down to the bottom of the pool and I'm like clamoring up and then I come up for air and I see the first sergeant enter the pool deck and then I see the gunnery sergeant enter the pool deck and I'm like, you know, like, you know, trying to breathe my lips above the water and I'm watching the scene unfold. Gunny Jackson saw the first sergeant coming down to pull me out of the end dock because he was pissed where I was at and he was going to pull me out of the end dock right there and Gunny Jackson went down there to defend me and E7 yelling at an E8 telling him to get the fuck out of here. Now the E8 was not an infantry marine and Gunny Jackson was an infantry like a Marines Marine. But during this whole thing, I'm trying to watch this with like my one eyeball like above the water, right? I'm trying to watch this thing. What was the other guy? What's that? Was he an OB3? Yeah, he was a what's called a MIMS inspector, which is he is an administrator who inspects administrators to make sure that they are functioning correctly. It's a weird thing the Marine Corps does where they have non infantry Marines inside of infantry units in certain levels. It's like a they try to do cross pollination. I don't really agree with it sometimes, but it's the thing that they do. So I had a non infantry guy in charge of my life. Oh, great. So within their lives of massive ego. That's exactly correct. And so, you know, I was not necessarily kind to him in the book and I'll never give his name. I'm not here to like, you know, blow people up, but he was trying to hold me back from the thing he couldn't do, which was follow his own dreams. And so like crabs in a bucket, right? So I thought this a lot in the military. It's a weird, I mean, we it's an eclectic group of people, right? We have people from all walks of life. Not all of them are good. You know, it's a cross section of America, right? So I've get sharked down to the bottom of the pool and I'm, I'm fucking done. I inhale water, I come up hacking, right? And I'm about to DOR. I'm swimming towards the side of the pool. I'm done. I can't do this anymore. I can't swim. You know, you know that when the water hits the back of your throat, right? You, your mind makes a conscious, a subconscious decision that you're like, I'm fucking toast. So I'm DORing. I'm swimming to the side of the pool and like a fucking, a sailor marooned on an island. I like come up to the wall, right? Right. And I see two tan combat boots and I, I'm like this, right? And I'm like, and I look up and I see Gunny Jackson standing like a fucking drill instructor going, what in the hell are you doing on this side of the pool, Pashuti, right? And I was like, I can't do it, Gunny. I'm not going to make it. You know, and he's like, like hell you are. He's like, swim your, I mean, it's like, you work too hard for this. Swim your little scrawny ass back out to that pool and finish what you started. And then he paces off talking about how something like wasting his damn time. You know, like a black guy was like, where's my goddamn typewriter? That kind of thing, right? Like pacing away this whole thing. And then I knew like, I, I didn't, I couldn't do it on my own. I had to do it. At that point, he was carrying the weight for me that I couldn't carry myself. He saw something in me and gave me permission to believe in myself. So I went out and I finished the swim portion of the Indock because I couldn't quit because I wouldn't be quitting me. I'd be quitting him even want to let him down 100% and he just stood up for me. So when I go through the rest of the Sniper Indock and I'm, you know, and I'm pretty open about, I'm kind of like a runt, you know, through that thing. I didn't do super well. I have this thing where I like, again, I curve up later on, but I was not, I was the slowest PTR. I didn't know how to do land navigation super well. I didn't know what a protractor was, right? Like again, honor graduate out of school of infantry, when they asked us to bring a protractor, I literally went to office depot and brought a protractor, not like a pro, like, not like a MGRS protractor. And they're like, what the fuck is this? It's a protractor? Like, I was that smart, just untrained, right? And then I, I eventually go through the week long Indock, which is basically to weed out the weaker faint of heart, right? And then we enter into a probationary period of being what's called a pig, a pig in a sniper platoon is called a professionally instructed gunman. And we are snipers in training. And then you have a hog who is a graduate of Scout sniper school, which stands for Hunter of Gunman. So you have very few hogs in a sniper platoon and a lot of pigs, but their job is to get us ready to go to sniper school. And so I enter in as a pig, and then, and then the awakening happens, the Al-Ambar awakening, and all of a sudden, all of these things start percolating. And we have this Iraqi insurgency start picking up while I'm training to go back to Iraq now. So you, you're training to go back to Iraq before sniper school? Yes. So I don't go to sniper school until 2005. I go back to Fallujah. I deploy to Fallujah as a pig in a sniper platoon. So this is now February of 2004, is when I take the sniper index. So February to like, I don't know, June-ish, we are now, like the insurgencies waking up, right? All these things are starting to happen. And then we, 3-5 gets orders, we're going back to Fallujah or going back to Iraq and we're going to Fallujah. We know the battle of Fallujah is about to happen because in April of 2004, four Blackwater contractors were murdered and their bodies were hung and lit on fire from what eventually was called Blackwater Bridge on the outskirts of Fallujah, letting the world know America was not welcome in Fallujah. So here's where some consternation comes in with politicians. And there's a little history for, you know, some of the audience here. The Marine commanders in 2004 and April didn't, not that they didn't want to go into Fallujah. So after the Blackwater contractors were killed, politicians in the United States wanted blood. They wanted like, this is not acceptable, we're going to take the city. The Marine commanders were the ones who actually urged restraint. They said, if you want us to go in, we're going to need more people. And the only thing that we ask you to do is if you send us in, do not pull us back. They enter into Fallujah with 2,000 Marines, so like a regiment minus 2,000 Marines, and they start clearing through the city like wildfire. They're entering into like the first few blocks, they're decimating Muza Hadeen, right, at this time frame. The insurgency is falling apart. A guy by the name of Ethan Place is a Marine sniper. And so I'm a pig in a platoon, so we're getting all these after-actions as they're happening, right? The platoon sergeants, we're really, snipers are really good at sharing information. So the platoon sergeant of the deployed unit wouldn't go home or wouldn't go back to base and call his family. He would send up intelligence reports to get back to other people who are getting ready to deploy, right? So it's almost like a SEAL team, right? Like, hey, this is what we're seeing right now. Start training for this. These are the things that are happening. So Ethan Place, Corporal Ethan Place, had 34 kills in Fallujah, 21 of them on a single day. Holy shit. Because he was taught to ask why. The difference with snipers inside of the military, they're taught to think outside of the box. And so what he did was he moved into a position of advantage and he found a long axis down a very long road. I don't remember which road it was, but he had a long axis and a, you know, and a concealed position. At the time, Mujahideen started to use amphetamines when they were fighting, right? This was kind of a newer thing for us. The Iraqis didn't really do it before, but these guys get like, hopped up on speed or whatever it is, and then they would come and fight us. Our ammunition, the 556 with the hardened steel core penetrator was meant to fight the Russians and defeat body armor, right? We're blowing through people's bodies and we're not getting a permanent wound cavity. We're not even getting a temporary wound cavity. We're shooting lasers through people, especially people who are hopped up on speed. They're not doing anything. Unless you hit, unless you lights out somebody, right? Or you hit their heart, they're going to keep charging. So what Place started to do was he started to move towards the pelvic girdle. And so with the pelvic girdle, no matter what amount of amphetamine you have, if you break the pelvic girdle, two liters of blood sits in your pelvis, right? Also, if you snap the pelvic girdle, there's no movement. You can't get up and run away. Like we'd plug a dude, right? And he'd fall and like, and then like a zombie, he would like take off running somewhere else, right? So what he pioneered was shooting them low, breaking their hips and then allowing them to, you know, either they would bleed out from that, right? Or they would continue fighting and he would have a follow up second shot. But he had a position of advantage over a long axis of a road and killed 21 people on a single day. And then got out of the Marine Corps as like a sergeant and became like a high school football coach. Nicest guy of all time, right? Absolutely savage. So yeah, it was an interesting timeframe to kind of have all this start to percolate. And then in June of 2004, my platoon sergeant brought us in, so our sniper platoon sergeant brought us in. And he gave us an after action. It was June 24th, I think it was. A Marine sniper team had been in Ramadi, had occupied a hide site on multiple occasions. It was an overt position that was a forced overt position by their commanders. And was, you know, again, like I said, in this hide site, they occupied a number of times and was somehow ambushed and killed. And with them, they lost when they were killed, the Mujahideen took their, all their equipment to include an M40 A1 sniper rifle. Corporal Tommy Parker was the name of the team leader who was killed. There was like a scuffle on the rooftop. Nobody really knows what happened, but basically a number of people got inside of the building. There was construction on the front, on the bottom half of the building. So entry couldn't be controlled in an overt position in Ramadi. Some people got in, ambushed the four Marines on the rooftop, killed all of them within seconds, and then decimated their bodies and then took all of their equipment and then put all of it on the internet to include, you know, M203 radios and an M40 sniper rifle. And then that sniper rifle fell into the hands of a pretty bad person that ended up hurting a number of Americans. And so that was not lost on us. That was, the IEDs had now picked up and now there was a sniper threat using our own weapon systems in Iraq. And so we took that pretty, pretty seriously. Man, are we moving into, let's take a break. Cool. When I first got out of the teams, one of the biggest shifts wasn't just the schedule, it was how easy it was to let things slip. In the military, everything is structured. You've got routine, accountability, and staying in shape is just part of the job. But then life fills up. You've got work, family, responsibilities, and it gets harder to stay at that same level. And then you hit your 30s or 40s and something just feels off. Your energy isn't the same, recovery takes longer, and even when you're doing the same workouts, doesn't hit like it used to. So you start looking into it. And honestly, the whole space can get confusing fast. A lot of it sounds extreme or like something you're locked into forever. That's what led me to Marsman. What I like about it is it's designed to help your body use the testosterone it's already producing. Because as you get older, more of it gets bound up and isn't actually being used. And since I've started taking it, I've noticed more consistent energy, better recovery, and just a steadier drive throughout the day. It's not a spike like caffeine, it just feels more dialed in. I also love that it's made here in the USA, third party tested, and they've got a 90 day money back guarantee. For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off for life, plus free shipping and three free gifts at mengotomars.com. That's mengotomars.com for 50% off for life and three free gifts when you check out. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. All right, AJ, we're back from the break. You're in Fallujah. Are we still in Fallujah? Haven't gotten there yet. We haven't gotten there yet? No, you're going to Fallujah. We are. Okay, you're going to Fallujah, Juba as a sniper, as a pig. So Juba's 2006. So I have Fallujah first. Fallujah first. And then I come back. So you're going in as a pig. Okay. All right, let's pick up right here. Yep. So June comes right after we lose Tommy Parker and his sniper team. Remember, I said I was kind of the run to the litter, right? And again, I tell these stories because I want people to know that failure is part of the process of success. I got brought up to the Scout Sniper Platoon loft where we all worked. And in front of me, part of my trainers were the two snipers that I had seen on my first day in combat, right, in OIF-1. Sergeant Jimmy Proudman and at that time, Sergeant Blake Cole. And I have to face this effectively, a performance review board. I was falling behind. My physical skills just weren't there, and they considered me a liability. So my tactical prowess, my tactical prowess was there, but I was last on Ruck Runs. I was last on any of the PT stuff. I just wasn't keeping up physically. And so I faced a performance review board and I had an opportunity to advocate for myself. And the one thing that snipers don't allow for is weakness. And I understand it, and I totally understand it. And so I was kicked out of the sniper platoon three months before we had deployed to Fallujah. And so, and I was heartbroken, right? Because this is what I'd worked for. I felt like I'd failed Dunny Jackson. He and that first sergeant had now moved to different units. So I was really isolated, super alone. I was drinking pretty heavily at the time, you know, illegally. And then not only did I get moved back to being a company clerk, I got moved to being a company clerk in headquarters and support company, which is even further from the fight. And we were going into Fallujah. So I was absolutely like destitute. So now fortunately, what happened, so back to the Silicon Valley thing is about two months later, now we're like maybe four weeks or four weeks out from deploying to Fallujah. And we know it's going to be a fight. Because in April of 2004, when the Marines pushed in, the general said, just don't pull us back. 48 hours after the Marines made entry into Fallujah, a lot of reports started surfacing on like Al Jazeera or any of these other networks that weren't, that were kind of not loyal, and that's not loyal is the right word, not necessarily accurate. They were producing false reports, I'll just say that, of a lot of, you know, human casualties, a lot of civilian casualties, they were producing all these false reports, and the same politicians that advocated for the Marines to enter into Fallujah, when the generals advocated against it, then all of a sudden lost their nerve. And within 96 hours of entering into Fallujah, all the Marines had to stop their advance and pull back out of Fallujah. So that did two things. Technically did three things. It gave the Mujahideen an unearned victory. We gave them Fallujah, they had ceased the advance of United States Marines. Two, it broke the heart and it broke the spirit of the Marine Corps and the Marine generals themselves, because they had advocated against it, and then they, again, the same thing, a weapon in our hand and a rule book in our pocket, and the politicians lost their nerve. And then the third thing that that happened with that is it gave the Mujahideen an opportunity to claim a jihad. And so any single person, they knew we had to retake the city. We told them we were going to retake the city. And so what they did was they riled up every single person from the Muslim world who wanted to go and fight in Infidel. We made it the okay corral. And so they reinforced for six months, for six months, dug tunnels, dug booby traps, you know, IEDs everywhere. And the, there is a direct line between the blood shed by Americans in Fallujah in November of 2004 that goes straight back to the spineless politicians that advocated for blood, and then pulled the Americans back. And that's one of the distrusting things that we have for these kind of public war hawks in this space. If you're going to ask the Marines to do something, let them do it. Now, again, now, I'm not saying Marines are going to go out and be absolutely crazy. We have our own rules. We understand that. But this playing politics with warfare is not, we saw this in Vietnam, right? And we're repeating the same mistakes in 2004. So April 2004, I can do this everywhere we go. It's, it's the American way. So the American is apple pie and baseball politics getting in the way politicians starting wars and then trying to control the war from Washington. So April 2004, they pull out June of 2004, we lose a sniper rifle and four snipers. I get kicked out of the sniper platoon. And then Abu Ghraib happens and Abu, I'm not, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but Abu Ghraib, the prison scandal happens, which again, when you don't have good leadership, when you don't have good leaders and you let people run a muck, the American soldiers or service members that cause that to happen, again, just like the politicians, the blood of Americans is on their hands. A direct line can be drawn from Abu Ghraib to the amount of American deaths and the loss of the coalition's moral high ground during that timeframe. And so in September, we're getting ready to deploy back to Fallujah. I get a stroke of luck. A shadowy figure enters into the, you know, you know, the doorway of the HNS company office. And his name was Guillermo Sandoval. I called him Memo. He was in the sniper platoon and was, had just come from the Marine Corps shooting team. Now there's a little bit, you know, here and there with that. Memo technically wasn't a sniper. And I need to clear the air on that. But he was acting as a sniper inside of a sniper platoon. There's a lot of consternation of how that happened, but that's not my fight to fight. But Memo was acting as a sniper at the time. And part of the deploying kit that we had was a new technology that came on called M-SIDS, Maritime Secondary Imagery Dissemination System. It was basically our, tough book computers and our reconnaissance cameras that we could transmit pictures instead of drawing field sketches, we could transmit pictures through radios and give real time information back to any gaining unit. So it was a tool set, but had a lot of computers in it. And the cool part about being for Silicon Valley was they didn't know how to manage all the stuff that came with all the computers. And so they decided to bring me back into the sniper platoon as, again, as a probationary period, as a pig to manage the communications and the M-SIDS systems. So technically, I got a second shot at this. But I was a marked man, right? So I came back into the sniper platoon, but I got in on like an asterisk, you know what I mean? Like, so some of the other pigs were fine. A lot of the other pigs, you know, eventually hogs, whatever it was, never forgave me for that. Never looked past that, that I got a second shot when they didn't think I deserved it. And rightfully, I don't think I deserved it either. They dropped me from the platoon because I wasn't performing. That's okay. But I got back into the platoon under that, you know, that, that reason. We deployed the Fallujah. And how it worked was as we're getting ready to go into Fallujah, we knew we were getting into a fight. Everybody knew this, right? The, the, the taliban, the Mujahideen knew, we had dropped flyers, the city was starting to evacuate. Everybody knew when ish, we were kind of going into the city, and we knew it was going to happen. So November 7th, I'm back in the sniper platoon, I'm in what's called general support. So we have the way that we liked at the time, we would attach a single four man sniper team to an individual line company. So the infantry had their own snipers, and they came from those companies generally. So India company generally got four school train snipers that came from India company. There was relationships with squad leaders and platoon commanders. And so they, they kind of like knew each other. Didn't always happen that way, but each line company, India company, Kilo and Lima had a four man sniper team attached to them as they pushed through the city. And then we had one team, which was called general support. We would either go to weapons company, or we would stay in headquarters company and be an asset that could move freely throughout the battalion, wherever they needed sniper support, the general support team would move to that. That makes sense. Kind of like a linebacker. So I got placed in the team four with memo Sandoval as general support. November 7th, I wrote a letter, you know, what we would consider a death letter, I write a letter to my family explaining what we're doing, explaining why we're going in. We have to take Fallujah, because Fallujah is one of the epicenters of the Sunni triangle. Also, in what we're hoping is January timeframe will be Iraq's free first and fair elections, their first chance of democracy. And Fallujah has to be taken to be able to make that a possibility to be able to have polling stations and all these things. So Fallujah has to be taken. There's no, no ifs, ands or buts. So November 7th, I write this death letter. We're, you know, getting, we're getting ready to go. We have PSY OPS, right? The PSY OPS Humvees, they have like these big speakers on top. They're playing like Pantera and Metallica and everybody's like, we're in this like, we're in a place called Camp Bahri and we're in this big square and there's a thousand plus infantry marines and navy seals, specifically from team three, if I'm not mistaken. And we're all getting ready to get force recon's there, the seals are there, right? We're getting ready to go in. And we're all loading magazines, we're having the final briefs, taking pictures together, right? The last company, resmoking cigarettes, all that kind of stuff going through these final kind of final checks. And then we move out to our attack positions. And my role with Memo on November 8th in the morning is we attack the city from north to south. And the way that 3-5 is getting in is we are on the furthest western flank of the city covering what's called the Jolon District. And so it's split. Fran is the, is the horizontal MSR that splits the city in half. So what we're going to do is we're going to push as I may get some of the units wrong, forgive me. 3-5, 3-1, Thurbatay and First Marines, second Cav from the army. And then I think it's 1-3 and another army unit. And so we're basically squeegeeing our way down through the city, just a mop up operation. We're just going straight north to south. Our first objective as the general support team is with Kilo Company to take the apartment buildings over the northwest section of the city or these like, I think it's eight story tall series of, think of like projects, but like apartment buildings, like high rise apartment buildings outside of the city. But they have an incredible vantage point over this thousand yard by 10 kilometer wide open field that the infantry has to cross to get into the city. It's a huge danger area for us to cross. So we have to get into position to cover for them. So Memo and I start this thing off, you know, November 8th in the morning, the rain's falling. It's super cold. It's like winter. And just like clockwork, we have, you know, F-18s are screaming in, Cobras are striking, we're doing all of our preparatory artilleries hitting the city. Most of the civilians have evacuated at that point or have been told to go to ground and to stay in their buildings and the place is teeming with insurgents. And so we come up and the very first thing is we're in this Humvee and all of a sudden we come and we park next to this apartment building and we're trying to make it in this building and we get like zippered up, right? Like our Humvee's getting hit and we're trying to get in this door and we don't know where we're taking fire from. It's not really our concern right now because if we can get into cover, we can handle that problem later on, but we're super exposed. So Memo is carrying an M40 sniper rifle. He's carrying an M16A2 and he's carrying a Benelli shotgun because this was what Fallujah was like. We did not know what we were, we had to have the M4 to fight. We had to have the, you know, the shotgun to breach the doors and we had to have the M40 to be a sniper. So he's just like, and probably a pistol. I don't know. He's like just, he's like a video game, like running through, right? And I have a Barrett 50 caliber special application scoped rifle. So as a pig, I'm also carrying the biggest gun for some reason. So I have this like 50 caliber, you know, it's not technically a sniper rifle, but we use it as a sniper rifle. The delineation is minute of angle. The 50 cal has what's called a three minute of angle, you know, tolerance and a sniper rifle to be a sniper rifle has to have a one minute of angle tolerance. And for the audience at home, basically it's one inch at 100 yards. I'm oversimplifying this, but it can hold a group at one inch at 100 yards. The Barrett doesn't do that. So even though it's an anti material, but it shoots a lot further than our other stuff. And it has the raw fist round, which is this really, really cool incendiary, you know, munition that we use. So we're getting zippered up. We eventually break into this building, right? We've got a squad. It's this huge apartment building. The power's been cut. So imagine this apartment building that probably holds like 1000 people, maybe 500 to 1000 people completely empty. All the power's cut. Super, you know, like you can hear like shit dripping, right? Just empty. Also, windows are all blown out from the barrages and things like that. We go in, we see a couple of dead guys at the infantry squad that's clearing the first floor. And then it's super quiet. Memo and I need to get to a position of advantage. And so we start the very first thing we do is we have this like, wrap around kind of staircase, right? A quintessential like Iraqi staircase. And it's like five or six stories up. And so we start climbing, we're like pying our way up there and like tiptoeing because we don't know who's in there. That we like, everything is like Indian country at this point. So we're having to clear everything that we do. And we're bypassing floors because we don't have time to clear all these things. We don't have the manpower, we don't have time. We got to get to like basically the top floor as fast as possible so we can provide coverage because India Company is about to cross. So we get up into the position, we have this small apartment building that we find. And we're, you know, first up there, Memo sets up the M40 in one room kind of looking south, southwest, right? So he's covering like the western flank of the city a little bit south. I'm covering south, southeast. And I can see, you know, portions of our sister unit 3-1 going down, right, you know, making their way. And now we're in tracks like moving across. We get into position and immediately targets are presenting themselves. Because what had happened was the day before we can, the Marine Corps conducted a faint, like a fake attack on the eastern side of the city. So all of the Mujahideen assumed we were coming in from the eastern side of the city and we're going to be going from east to west. And so now, now that we're coming from north to south, they're scrambling to get back. So people are in the streets, there's technicals with like dudes with AKs, ever like, like wet dream kind of shit for snipers, right? And the very first thing I see is I see a memo is spotting for me because I'm on the 50 cal. He puts me in a really small room thing. It's like tons of percussion, right? And he puts me in the small ass room and he starts spotting for me because I can reach out and I can also break through a lot of material. So he sees a guy that's like over a wall and he's like shooting, you know, like the typical at the time, like spraying and praying, right over this wall. And memos like, shooty, I want you to hold at this position, right? Hold, you know, I don't know, six, go to the top of this red gate and it's a flush metal gate, right? Hold six inches to the right and six inches down or whatever the hold that he gave me was. And he's like, I want you to, you know, take the slack out of the trigger and fire when I tell you to. And so the guy's like shooting, I really can't see him because I can't directly see him. All I see is the gun. And he's like, now, and I ripped the fucking 50 and the 50 does exactly what it's supposed to do, especially with the raw fist round. It rips through this fence, detonates on the fence, and then sends the comp B and whatever classified mix of explosives go through the wall and the penetrator. And I see an arm fly into the air and AK fly. And so he's able to help spot me to take a second or take a shot into this thing. The next shot I take is to break the lock on the door. We're talking four to 500 meters, like nothing, nothing super hard for us, but especially, we can blow the door open. And then I'm eventually able to see that there's a dude laying on the ground and memo was the person who helped spot and get that on. After that, we had a couple of hairy situations come up. The first thing that we saw was a technical coming across this large, open danger area. And they were in a, you know, like a Toyota Hilux, right? And a bunch of dudes in the back of the truck, like, like I said, like wet dream for us. And I have the anti-material weapon system. And so memo can shoot the 40 and he's like shooting the 40 into this. And they're, they're literally driving towards us. They don't know where we're at because we're depressed back inside of our hide site, right? And so it's just open windows that they can see. And I'm just sending, you know, rounds out of this thing. Eventually what happens is I shoot the engine block of the Toyota Hilux as it's coming down. And then it like engulfs in flames. So I kill the engine, it engulfs in flames. And then we think everybody inside is dead, inside the vehicle is dead. People jump out of the vehicle and memo is hitting those guys with the 40, right? As they're, because again, they don't know where we're shooting from. And as this thing's coming down, it starts moving again, right? And now there are people inside, you can see them kind of like freaking out because they're on fire. And then the driver gets out of the door or out of the, the driver's seat, the vehicle is now still moving. The dude is engulfed in flames, but he has an AK and he is spraying towards our Marines who are making this advance into the city. And so he's still trying to fight, remember all the drugs and all that kind of stuff. And so what happens is the way that the vehicle ends up stopping is he's standing in front of the vehicle and he's shooting wildly. Again, he's on fire. And I remember vividly, we laughed about it later on, you know, hindsight being what it is. And he was like, shoot, he hit him, right? Because I think he was like out of ammo or whatever it was. And I was, and I remember he's like, shoot him. And I remember yelling back, but he's on fire. And he's like, fucking shoot him. Right? So I, like, I know it sucks over like laughing, but like, I'm the same way, right? I shoot. And the projectile does exactly what it's supposed to do. But the projectile doesn't detonate on the body. It goes through him, hits the truck behind him, and then detonates, literally blowing the guy in half, right? And like two pieces. And I'm like, what the fuck? Like, you know, these moments, you're like, what the fuck just happened? Right? So all of this is happening. We're ripping with the 50. My ears are ringing, right? You know, because no ear pro, right? Or whatever it is. And then we hear footsteps. We have like this creaky metal door at the very bottom of the stairs. And we had broken glass on the stairs on the way up. And we start hearing the creaky door open up, it's like in between kind of a lull. And then we start hearing footsteps. And they're coming up towards us. And so I jump off of the 50, I leave the 50 words at memo and I post up, we're on the door, I'm getting a grenade ready, we're holding on the top of the stairs. And I'm waiting for whoever this is to come up the stairs. And because we don't know who it is. And then all of a sudden, I see an camouflage spray painted M four. And then I see a Mitch helmet come above that. And we're like, I friendly, friend, you got friendlies up here, friendlies. And it is none other than at the time, unknown, two Navy SEAL snipers, one of them by the name of Chris Kyle, comes up the stairs and then is looking at it. And we were like, Hey, what's up? Nice to see you. Like, we're working, right? And they like, the funniest part about this entire story was they were pissed because they come over and we've got like the dream sniper hide, right? We're in this thing, we're recessed back, everything's we got a great vantage point. And they come over and they're like, you think, you think we can get into some of these and some of this high site and memo was the consummate politician. And he was like, sorry, bubba, you know, this, this, this apartment's full. And he's like, but if you go across the hall, which the hall is not big, if you go across the hall, there's another room, there's a crib and a good position advantage that will cover our Western flank. So then what happens is Chris Kyle and his partner, and he actually writes about this in his book, American Sniper, Kevin Lace, I don't, I don't know the gentleman's name. I don't know. He probably said at one point, but I think it was his partner at that, at that time, they set up on like a crib on the side and they have like a bed and they're in position. But the problem with Navy Seal snipers is they have 300 windmags, you guys have way better gear than we did. So then what happens is now we get into position and Marines and seals have to compete with one another, right? So now we have three actual snipers and then one pig are now covering the northern flank of Fallujah as we have the Marines starting their advance in. And so Chris and his, you know, and his partner are just ripping rounds because they can go like 1800 Rs at the M40 was like a thousand, right? So they're ripping rounds in the city and they're like, Navy won. And then we would shoot like, Marines, once a rabbit. And we're fucking yelling at each other about this thing. And you know, all of this to say there's always a joke about competition between Marines and seals, we were very happy to have them there with us because we needed their guns. And at that point, the, the Seal teams were completely integrated with 3-5 at that time frame. And so for the next, I think it was six to eight hours, they were with us until like sundown and they stayed with us. And then eventually they were like, Hey, because they were operating super independent. And they were like, Okay, hey, we're done here. We're going to go link up. And that was it. That was the last time that I saw Chris Kyle in, you know, Fallujah, I was around him for like six hours or whatever it was. And we would all take turns on the gun, you know, and spotting for one another and confirming each other's kills as best we could through that. And it was an incredible opportunity to have like the teamwork through that all the other again, all the politics, all the whatever, you know, bullshit goes out of the window. It was just for Americans trying to save a bunch of other Americans crossing a large open danger area. And so after that, man, that is fucking cool. It was wild. My only challenge with Chris was, was in the book, American Sniper, I was a little perturbed that he didn't mention us there. Because I read that section and I was like, Damn dog, you know, we were right there, right? And first, right? But there's another book called Hogs in the Shadows was written by a Marine sniper that told other people's stories. And Milo Afong is the author of that he wrote about that story, covering memo, sand of all's exploits. So memo was the center of the story. I was a an additional character in that, but it was about memo. But we also write that we were next to, you know, Chris Kyle and his, and his partner during that time frame, but kind of an interesting crossing of paths for sure. It was, it was a wild experience. You guys were on each other's guns? Okay, I'll touch you, man. No, no, steel's gonna let me touch their 300 win bag. We were just spotting for each other. Right on. They did have some nice, nice equipment, though. We were always jealous of that. And so that was the first day of Fallujah. And then we continue down for the next, you know, couple of weeks as I moved from general support. Remember, I had, like, I had a bunch of kills from there. And I was a bunch of kills as a pig, which is also not something that Marine snipers really enjoy because there's kind of a pecking order. And I had the Barrett and I was just in the right place at the right time, and then was able to, you know, you know, prosecute a number of targets there. And then what happened was on, I think it was November 10th, the Marine Corps birthday, there was an India company got in a huge, huge firefight. And our corpsman, HM3 Pell, who was with our platoon call sign was Banshee. And so I was Banshee 4, general support. But then Banshee 2 was with India Company, and they got in a big, big firefight, a ton of wounded, excuse me, I think a number of friendly KIAs as well. And Doc Pell, so we have a sniper platoon corpsman who's like a higher level corpsman that we train up to be a sniper and work with us. So again, when we're forward of lines, we'll take a corpsman with us. And that was Doc Pell. One of the best sailors I've ever worked with, and was really, really beloved by the platoon. He got shot up pretty bad. He was crossing from one building to the next, almost like over an alleyway. And there was a Mujahedin across the street, and it was this huge, huge firefight that I was not a part of. And he got injured, you know, really, really badly, survived, thankfully. But that team then had a gap in it. So Banshee 2 was now down a man. And so what happened was the general support team then got broken up. And I was a combat replacement for Doc Pell. This was my shot. I had a shot to join a line company sniper platoon, or sniper team as we continued through the rest of the push south into the city. And I remember getting to Blake Cole, who was the, who was the sergeant team leader. Blake Cole had advocated to kick me out of the platoon. He was one of the first people that I saw in OIF-1. He was the shooter on that sniper team in OIF-1. And he had advocated to kick me out of the platoon because of- You mean your inspiration for becoming the guy that- Yep. Brand took out the PKM and then- That's exactly correct. So he was the sniper. He was a corporal then. Strawberry-haired and cocky is what I say about him, right? Kind of like a surfer, kind of, you know, almost like a seal out of Coronado, right? Kind of has this like long hair, right? You know, a little like self confident, right? Very much, you know, truth to your face. You always know where you stand with Blake Cole. And I sat with him in Fallujah when I checked into his team and he says, listen, I advocated to kick you out of the platoon because you weren't up to the, up to the task. And he says, Doc Pell getting hit really fucked us, but you're here now. Stay tight and I'll teach you everything, everything I know. And he took me under his wing. He put all that bullshit aside. Now, whatever the thing was, whatever the pass was, he says, you're here now, you're in my team, I'm going to take care of you. And so he did. And so myself, Tony, Tony Scardino was another, so Blake Cole was the only sniper in the team. He had three pigs in the team with him. He had James Powers, myself, and then Tony Scardino. And the three of us were a four-man sniper element. And that's kind of how the Marine snipers work. We have very few numbers of snipers and teams. And so you have like one actual sniper, and then you have two or three other school-trained snipers and a sniper team. Sniper school has an incredibly high attrition rate. It's not easy for us to get through. One of the reasons why snipers went away in the conventional infantry in the Marine Corps, of which we can talk at a later date, or a later timeframe about, is why that happened. But he took me under his team. And so for the next two weeks pushing south, every single night, what the infantry would do is we were all on this like squeegee, if you will. We would stay online with Lima Company and Kilo Company to our east. And then 3-1 and 2-7. So all of us stayed online, and all of us pushed down and would gain house to house, block by block, street by street, clearing every single house along the way, fighting every single insurgent that they could along the way. And it was absolutely brutal. And so one of the missions that we would run is since the Muge had plenty of time to do reinforcements and all the battle preparations, they would have fallback positions. So they would fight us from a house, incur a ton of casualties on us, and then they would squirt out through a tunnel, or they would come out through the back and move to ancillary positions and continue to fight from further down the street. So one of the techniques that we developed there was Blake would lead us out. So the infantry companies, it was almost kind of comical, is the infantry would fight from like 8am to like 6pm, pretty much like clockwork every single day. We didn't really do much night fighting. It was almost like people like checking in, you know, like, hey, we know, checking into work, right? Sun comes up, Harriers, Cobras, Arte, and then we would fight all day, and then at night we would all bed down. Now we would keep watching all these things, but they wouldn't really attack us at night. We wouldn't really attack them at night. But the thing that Blake did, and he was a pioneer of this thing, and Balzy is all hell, is he would take us and we would move a block into enemy territory every single night, and we would set up on a position, remember like Ethan Place, who shot down a long axis, we would find a position in a building in enemy territory covering a long axis. So when the infantry would push the Mujahideen and they would break position and fall back, we would cut them down as they ran across the street to their next position. And so almost every night for the next two weeks, we would run, at the time it was only like 500 meters, but we would push 500 meters, you know, past the forward line of troops, we would gain Saraptitious Entry into the house, and then set up in these houses where we didn't, it was four of us clearing a house in the middle of the night on nods, PVS 14 bravos at this time, right? And clear these houses and then take up these positions, and then wait for daybreak, and then the ensuing fights to occur. And we did that all the way up until December. And then in December, we had to make a second push. What we did is we fought down to Phaseline Fran through the Jolon District. And then in December, there were still tons of pockets of resistance in the city, so they moved our unit further east and had us push back north through different areas of the city. So we conducted a second push into Fallujah to be able to clear it in December. Shit. Yeah. Dude, it was, it was, it was how long were you in Fallujah fighting? Fallujah was basically four weeks of like fighting every single day. How often do you guys need resupply? Every day. Every day. How are you getting resupply? So what we would do is we would own, god, the amount of bravery. So I think this is my, this is like one of the probably the bloodiest fucking battle since Ways City. Since Ways City. Yeah. Since Ways City. We lost 100 Americans in that, in that specific fight. And then, you know, hundreds more wounded. So we would push down and we would have avenues of escape, right? Where our resupplies would come back in. Camp Fallujah was like Bravo Surgical, where anybody that would be seriously wounded would go back and we were constantly flooding, you know, resupplies in the infantry guys. So. Four fucking weeks. Every single day. Killing every day. Every single day. And again, I was a pig in a sniper platoon. I did clear my fair share of houses through this thing, but I cannot express to you the amount of bravery that these 18 and 19 year olds had. So existing in the, you know, podcast, right, space, I am cognizant of the algorithm as much as anybody else is, right? And so I interview people as well. And this is the thing that breaks my heart. It breaks my heart is, I know what hits in the algorithm, right? If I put Delta Force, if I put sniper, if I put seal, right, the algorithm picks that up, right? And it spreads that and more people get to see those things. And I think that those are fantastic stories. But the term hero gets thrown around an awful lot. The men that I have found to be the most heroic are the motherfucking infantry Marines, whether they be Army, whether they be Marines, or infantry, whether they be Army or Marines, because they have terrible weapon systems, terrible gear, right? They have, they have, they're living on cigarettes and adrenaline, right? And they, every single day would soldier up, soldier on and kick down a door when they knew somebody was on the other side. You know, I've spoken and I've trained and worked with a ton of the whatever, you know, you know, major entities across the world. And they are so kind, they are so kind to the infantry Marines and soldiers, because, and this is never to discredit them, when a D-boy or a team sixer, right, when they're going on to something, there is a ton of other assets that are helping them engage their mission. Now they have a very high fidelity, high probability of success, sorry, high probability of failure, right? They have to snatch and grab, hostage, totally get it. But to a man, every single, what's so great about those guys is every single one of them, the reverence they have for the 11 Bravo or the 0311 infantry Marine is beyond reproach. You know, December 11th, I told you a story earlier on about this, about the book and who I'm giving it to. December 11th was when we lost Greg Rund. And Greg Rund, I said, was in Columbine, right, as a high school student and then joined the Marine Corps. And he helped me out when I was going through a really rough time. I was going through like my first divorce at like 19, I was doing like all the Marine Corps things, like at least it wasn't a stripper. But I, you know, like I had done all the Marines. That was the next one. Truth is, Treasure of the Fiction. And he helped me, man. I was in a dark place, I was dealing with post-traumatic stress or whatever it was at the time. And I remember he'd smoked Parliament cigarettes, right? And he'd helped me out with that. We drive around something. The best. Dude, I don't like. I fucking love Parliament. Right? I don't understand. You smoke? No, not since then. Yeah. Yeah, I don't either. Damn, I do love a good Parliament. Thank you. Every once in a while, it's kind of nice to have a cigarette. Sarah hates it, right? Every once in a while, I'm like, oh, man, I just like a cigarette. And then I'm like, smell like crap, right? You know, and hate myself. I'm going to have to burn one with you after this. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that. Let's do it. So December 11th, India Company had unknowingly bedded down for the evening across the street from Mujahideen, who had bedded down as well. And so the very first house of the morning all helped breaks loose. And these guys are in contact. I mean, they haven't even finished, you know, digesting their breakfast. And they're in the absolute fist fight with the Mujahideen. And it was, there's always like a survivor's guilt, right? Because I wasn't there this day. I was in a blocking position down the street doing what we would do every single night. And I couldn't be there for this. I couldn't have done anything either way. But, you know, a series of events had happened and it does get kind of hazy, but basically, they rocked into a hornet's nest right in the beginning of this, of this morning. And Marines were wounded very, very quickly. And Greg had a decision to make. There was a wounded Marine in the house. And there was a bunch of Mujahideen who were, you know, going to kill this guy or this Marine was already dead. And Greg had a choice and he made the decision to kick the door in and to go in anyway. And so my struggle when I talk to these young Marines and I work as much as I can is like the algorithm that we talked about, right, is like a striker, you know, guy, what is 11 Fox or, you know, or an 0311, right? They have some incredible, incredible stories of just absolute amounts of unhuman-like bravery. But unfortunately, their stories don't get told as much or don't get as much traction when they're told because it just doesn't, it just doesn't hit as well. And it's so hard for them because I try to, and that's what I write this about, right, is I try to tell the story from their perspective as best as possible because I would get to go with them oftentimes. And so sometimes we'd be in firefights with them and sometimes we wouldn't. But these guys would kick through a door. Greg went in, got shot immediately, fell to the ground, continued fighting. But then what happens is we have to continue to commit, so you have a decision to make. Do you commit more forces or do you leave the Marines to die? And these guys always, always chose to commit more forces because we had chosen, we had made a pact with one another to enter into the first circle of hell together and never leave a Marine behind. It wasn't just a slogan to us. These young men lived that. It was heartbreaking to watch this stuff because you watch these young guys 19 years old and just get fucking chewed up, man, absolutely chewed up going through this stuff. And they would take the first floor of the house, they'd frag the entry, they continued through the house itself, and the Muge would run to the top of the stairwell and start picking these guys off. Every single inch had to be earned that these guys went through. A friend of mine, Travis Pollock, he owns a company now called Texas Custom Rifles, and he makes long guns, right? He's a fantastic guy. He was considered the old guy. He was 23 years old. We were all 19, right? So he was the old guy. He had a bunch of tattoos and his mom hated his tattoos, right? Because he had him like all over his body and his chest. She hated his tattoos. But what happened was Travis Pollock went into a house as a lance corporal. He got shot six times in the chest, all around his sappies, threw his sappies, all kinds, six times in the chest, was bleeding out on the floor, and they're dragging him out, our corpsmen are dragging him out, you know, of piss and fucking blood on this linoleum or whatever marble floor thing. And the only thing this guy is asking about is his tattoos, right? He's like, no, my tattoo is okay, right? He's like on the edge of death, right? But the cool thing was, if there is anything cool about it, all of his tattoos happened to be over his vital organs. And so he'd never got any of his tattoos hit by any of these bullets. So therefore, none of his vital organs were hit by all the bullets that penetrated his body. And he ended up surviving, right? You know, he was medically separated from the Marine Corps, right, with a fucking six bullet wounds, right, through that. And it's just an amazing, an amazing guy. And one of the people that you would just walk by on the street, just a super kind, normal person running through any, you know, everyday life. And that's who these people are. They're just normal, good Americans, you know. And then they would take the first floor of the house, and then the Mujahideen would barricade, because they would, a lot of them were freshly shaved. A lot of them would have their Koran, a lot of them would have said their prayers, right? You could hear them screaming to us, right? We would literally be screaming at you back and forth. Our interpreters would be yelling at them, whether it be expletives, whether it be telling them to give up, right? I remember a scenario where we're in this house, and we're trying to take the second floor, and all of us are down there, they're lobbing grenades down, the Marines are charging up, they have to go up this stairwell. And these guys have M16A force, it's like a fucking musket, right? They're not CQB experts, right? They're doing their best, right? And so the way we would do it is they would climb the stairs, and they would grab up. Well, a Marine would be, the one man would be going forward, the two men wouldn't have his gun up, the two men would have his hand on the guy's collar, so that when he got shot, he didn't fall forward into the front of the stairwell. They would yank him back down the stairs to safety. And these guys did this every single day for four weeks, day in and day out. They fought and fought and fought, and I remember they were screaming, the interpreters, God bless our interpreters, fighting for a country that they believed in, right? Fighting for an idea that they believed in, knowing full well what America does to its allies when we're done using them. Screaming, pleading with the Mujahideen, literally saying, go up, give up or meet your God. And I write in the book and I said, the Mujahideen responded with gunfire, and the Marines responded with the only way that we could to arrange the meeting. And so they would throw grenades up top of the stairwells, come out, blow the balsa wood doors up, and have to take every single room because they were committed to death and taking as many of these young Marines with them. And I cannot overstate the amount of love and bravery I have for these guys, and what I want to do is using this to say thank you to them because of who they are. Man, I would just like to second that. I've said it, I know I said it in Cody's, I think I've said it in Prime Halls that it's fucking Fallujah, man. I've never seen anything like that shit. And I think infantry guys don't get enough credit, especially the Marine Corps, and it really fucking pisses me off, especially when you see, I can't remember, I counted them up one time and it's like hundreds of nonprofits for special operators, SEALs, Green Braes, Delta, Dev Group, PJs, Marsock. You just don't see that shit for the infantry, it's fucking bullshit, man. It is fucking bullshit, you know? It's tough, it's just a large demographic of people. There are 30,000 infantry Marines in the Marine Corps, it's just hard to wrap your arms around that as a 501c3, right? And I understand that it's the economy of scale, but the opposite effect, right? There's just too many to be able to handle through that. I'm just so proud of them, and it's just so enamored with what they're able to do because these guys would go through that, and then we get a 15-minute break to smoke a cigarette and reload their magazines. I mean, and every time I interview one of you guys, the best shit is from the infantry, you know? The best stories, the most graphic, you know? And it's still good enough attention, it's fucking bullshit. Good men, and you know, to me, that's why I look at whatever chaos is going around the United States or whatever, the vitriol or that stuff that we're hating each other for, you know? There is a purity in that love of one another. We would argue politics, because it was an election year, so we would argue politics all the time, right? And I'm from Northern California, so people would assume what I was, which is not true, but we would assume, you know, we would debate- Who the fuck is arguing politics? All of us. Because there's a lot of boredom, right? And so we're sitting staring out at nothing, they're like- I mean, this was 2004, so it was like Bush versus- I forgot who. No, I don't know who it was. And it was funny, you know? Like, when you're looking at the fucking stacks of tires burning, you know, and you're trying to figure out what to do with the next mission, you know? It was a good, good group of men, you know? So we lost Greg on December 11th, and the worst part about that was that December 11th is Jane Runne's birthday. And so Jane Runne, who lived in Littleton, Colorado, was having a birthday party at her home when the Marines showed up to her front door. And we have since tried our best, you know, life gets in its way, but we have, as a group of people who loved Greg, have tried our best to be in contact with Jane as much as possible, to try to change the day that her son died, you know, to being the day that she gets a phone call, a visit, a knock on the door from somebody that, you know, loved her son. And it's like these commitments that we make to each other. I talked with her three days ago, and had her like, we're both crying on the phone, right, you know, talking about it. And one of the things that I think that we could do better as a country is taking care of our gold families, because they are the ones who have paid, I would say, the most to be able to earn our way of life. And being able to take care of them is a debt we owe them. They have given their flesh and blood to us. We can't do anything for the dead, but we can do a lot for the living. And so I'm part of some organizations that do work with that, you know, as best as possible. But again, the infantry is just very large, and the units rotate so quickly that it's very hard to be able to wrap their arms around it. What organizations are you part of? So the Marine Reconnaissance Foundation is one of the organizations that I've been helping a lot as well. They are a 501c3. It isn't the difference between them is they aren't all volunteer organization. No single member of the organization takes a paycheck whatsoever. So there are natural business expenses and things like that that happen. But no, there's no, I understand why 501s have a C level structure, because they have to run like a business totally understand the compensation. The Marine Reconnaissance Foundation chooses not to. And because of that, they're able to have much more money that they, you know, get donated to them goes straight to the Marine or recon Marines specifically. So we have the the recon challenge is happening this Friday. And the recon challenge is like a big homecoming for us. It's like a 30 mile endurance course where we go and do all things recon. And it's active duty guys only right now. But they'll won't jump in, but we'll helo cast in swim ashore, and then start a 30 mile rock movement with a 55 pound rock and do, you know, anything from breaching to shooting to repelling to radios to land navigation, all in this competition, every single Marine carries an air panel on the back of their ruck that has a name of a fallen recon Marine who died at some point during service to our country. And the Marine Recon Foundation brings out gold star families from recon to come to the recon challenge, be a part of that, see their son or daughter or husband, sorry, son or husband's name running across there as with the Marines when they cross the finish line with that name, they carry the dog tags of the fallen Marine and they put it on a, you know, they put it on a, you know, the soldier's cross, if you will, and they kneel and they say thank you to that Marine. And then the Marine Recon Foundation, all self funded, takes the gold star families, flies them to Hawaii for a week for a family event on Lonnie Kai beach with a luau, a private tour of the Missouri, they go to the mountains in Oahu and they plant a tree in honor of their, their fallen recon Marine. And it's this creating a community within the community. A lot of these Marines died many years ago, but they keep coming back because this is their family now. Recon is one of the most special places I've ever been a part of in the Marine Corps because they don't just preach brotherhood, they breathe brotherhood and they mean it. So the Marine Recon Foundation is a really, really good organization that does that. I'm also, so to answer your point on the larger infantry, there are organizations that are starting that are trying to help. So I'm a Marine gunner, so an infantry weapons officer, the Marine Gunners Association is the same structure as the Marine Reconnaissance Foundation. No board members get paid to sing, I'm the treasurer for it, right? So I hope I don't go to jail. No, there is no, no compensation for us whatsoever. And we only help infantry Marines. Now, because again, snipers have an organization, Recon has an organization, Marsup, we help infantry Marines. And because of that, now the master gunnery sergeants, the operations chiefs, so our enlisted counterparts to gunners, are now starting, or in the conversation of starting their own organization. So it's like a rising tide raises all boats in this instance is now we're going to have two organizations that's directly support Marine infantry specifically. But it's a very large, I mean, small organizations trying to take care of a 30,000 Marine, you know, group for whatever issues, whether that be, you know, the Marine Recon Foundation helped me, I had a team member who took his own life. And by the time that I had finished getting the news on the phone call that my team member had taken his own life, I had airplane tickets that were booked for me without my asking by the Marine Right Recon Foundation to go to be with his family and to give him a paddle, which is a reconnaissance tradition, and to give him a paddle, their family of paddle in honor of the service. Like that's the stuff that makes America what it is, right? I don't believe in America because she's perfect. I believe in America because she's possible. And because people can do things like this, like the fucking hatred and the vitriol, the Republican versus Democrat, it tears me apart. I literally lose sleep over this because this is not who we are. We are better than this. We cannot continue to be reduced into this. A Republican is not an enemy. A Democrat is not an enemy. Like we are just people who look at two sides of the same coin, right? We're trying to work together, you know, through this thing. And I cannot stand trying to break one another apart because I've seen us at our best. I've seen Americans who have no conversation surrounding politics do everything and risk everything. And when they can't save them on the battlefield, they're there for their families in the end. And that's the stuff that matters, matters for us. That's cool to hear, man. I appreciate it. Very cool. Very cool. Should we take another break? I'm good to push. If you are, you can take a break. Let's take a break. A lot of people don't love the idea of getting put on medicine for their cholesterol long term. And I get that because once you start going down that road, it can feel like you're locked into something without really understanding what your options are. And I think most people, they just want to feel like they still have some control over how they take care of themselves. They want to understand what they're putting in their body and why, not just be told to take something and let's move on. So more people are starting to look for alternatives with ingredients they actually recognize like CoQ10, ginger, pomegranate, and omelette. That's what caught my attention with dose. Dose for cholesterol is a clinically backed supplement that supports your cholesterol using a blend of those ingredients. I've been using it and I like that it's just straightforward. You know what you're putting into your body and it doesn't feel complicated. It's simple. It's just a daily two ounce liquid shot, taste like mango, no capsules, no powders, and it's easy to take. New customers can save 35% on your first month of subscription by going to dosedaily.co.srs or entering srs a checkout. That's D-O-S-E-D-A-I-L-Y.co.srs for 35% off your first month subscription. See you later. I hope it's all this building. What do you think, Sean? We're high. All right, AJ, we're back from the break. I think we're getting ready to head to sniper school. Finally. After you've done a whole bunch of sniper stuff. I'm going to send you to sniper school. What is that like going to sniper school after you've done the job in the bloodiest battle in modern history? Do you even know how many guys you guys killed? No. No. People like the Abrams and Fallujah were just decimating people. There was just dead bodies everywhere. The dogs would eat them. We had to clear them as best as possible because they were IEDing them. We would go into rooms in Fallujah where there would be 10 or 15 dead guys who had been there for a couple of days. I remember walking into a room human bodies just excrete fluids and you would walk in and it would hit you. I remember a guy slipped on whatever the goo was and fell into this. But you have to keep clearing the room because they would reoccupy positions and stuff. The carnage in Fallujah was unlike anything I'd ever seen. Again, you become numb to it because this the amount of it. I think what shocked people the most was really the finality of death. That's where a lot of us. We had lost some people in OIF-1 but we had three or five had lost 19 Marines in Fallujah. It was not Vietnam numbers by any means but the largest numbers that we had seen in a very long time. It was just hard. These poor guys would get, I'd hear them. We'd sleep in the same rooms with them at night and they would sit there and smoke cigarettes and laugh. Sometimes you would hear people kind of like going through their own personal hell because they know that they would be afraid to go to sleep because they knew they had to wake up the next morning and do it again. There was really no, there was never any victory for them to get through that. One of the things that mattered in Fallujah was on January 30th, 2005. The city was deemed clear on, I think it was December 24th, 2004. We had cleared most of the city. It was now allowing civilians to come back in but January 30th was Iraq's first free and fair elections and 3-5 was lucky enough to provide security for that. And so you had Iraqis from all walks of life, women, men, having their little thumbprint and they would hold their thumbprint up to us. As they walked by after they had their opportunity to vote, they'd hold their thumbprint and they would say, thank you. Would you go back there? Would you ever go back to Iraq? Yeah. I have, I've become very close with a friend of mine, with a new friend of mine and I'd love to introduce you to him. His name's Mike. Mike was a young kid in Iraq. He's ethnically Kurdish, a very similar story. Ethnically Kurdish, taught himself English by watching movies and then in 2014, he was 18 years old and signed up to be an interpreter for the 101st, the 82nd. I think he worked with like six different SEAL teams, a Marine Special Operations team. His most American story ever and he was captured by ISIS, you know, broke out of prison, like all kinds of stuff. Get wild, gets adopted by a United States Marine. My old sniper platoon sergeant and Fritz Slayer was his name. So my platoon sergeant in Fallujah, I eventually went over to Marine Special Operations as a counter-intel guy and then met Mike. They became friends. He had now eventually like adopted him and gave him and worked with him to get his SIV. So he came to the United States and then what does this guy do when he gets to the United States? He enlists in the Marine Corps to become an 0311 rifleman because he's still, because in his own words, he's like, I feel like I didn't do enough. What are you talking about? So we met at the University of San Diego at the Veteran Center. We were just having like, you know, like trying to figure out how to pay for school and he's in a masters in cybersecurity and he's like 36 years old, just an amazing guy. He goes back to Iraq a lot and he tells me about it and he talks about how good it is now, how like nice it is and I would be interested in going back but I wouldn't go back without him. It's also hard for me because I don't like, do I need a gun? Do I need security? Right. It's weird to enter into that space where we never really technically ended the, I mean, we technically like left but I don't know if we like ended it, you know. I just meant, I guess, I didn't mean it's kind of hypothetical. If it was safe, you know, would you go back to Fallujah? Yeah. Would you see what that looks like? Yeah. It'd be interesting to walk those streets again. Yeah. I'll bet it would. It was a mess. I mean, everything was on fire, just decimated. It looked like Armageddon. We eventually had to like backburn because the Mujahideen would use the food and supplies that we would pass by. They would circle back around us and so we had to backburn a whole bunch of stuff. It was wild. It was absolutely wild. Guys used anything. The ingenuity, they would have to use RC cars. They would break into stores like the convenience stores and they would get RC cars and they would drive RC cars to detonate IEDs. They would drive RC cars with like cameras on them as best as possible. Just Marines just being in like having a bunch of ingenuity because we just stopped wanting to lose guys, you know, carelessly. Damn, man. So sniper school. Yeah. So I get my shot. So generally, you only get, you know, one or two shots in sniper school. They have about a 75% attrition rate and attrition at the time, attrition was the mission. And so it is a very tough course to get through. This is 2004. 2005. Yeah. So July 2005, I go to sniper school in Camp Pendleton. So now also there's the time there's four sniper schools in the Marine Corps and we had this like competition between, you know, West Coast versus East Coast, right? Of which will come into play a little bit later on as well. But I went to West Coast sniper school. We like to call it the real sniper school. But they are notorious for having a very hard physical entrance exam. And so without going into like too much detail, basically what happens is if you think you're going to get a, you know, if you go in with a perfect score, a 300 score, when you test with them, you're averaging about 50 points below that. In order to get into school, you need to have a what's called a first class PFT score in the Marine Corps, which is a minimum score of 225. And they don't count pull ups if you don't do a complete dead hang. If there's any kipping, like they are just by the book snipers. And I totally understand it, right? Eventually, I was an instructor there later on. And so I understood there that they just don't sacrifice on standards because if you, if you sacrifice on standards once, right, you know, then that becomes the new, the new, I guess, level. So through a series of weird events, I end up not scoring very well on the physical entrance exam. Again, my physicality was not there, right, you know, or for whatever reason, you know, it was. And I technically scored a 224. I think it was a 224 getting into school, which did not meet the requirements, but through an error, like they miscounted my crunches. And so like my crunches to get in, they, I thought I had a 226. I ended up having a 224. They made a clerical mistake. They added the math wrong. And they let me into the school unbeknownst to them. But then three days later, they were reconciling the record, like putting it into the digital thing. And they were like, this motherfucker didn't pass. And so I get a call. They're like, Pajada, right? I'm going like, you know, pick at the hatch, right? And sniper school is about pigs and hogs, right? So there are these things. So I apparently didn't pass the PFT. And I am standing in front of the chief instructor of the sniper school, who is like reading me the riot act at this point, like, you're a fucking liar, right? What's going on here? And I have this force recon marine who have never really dealt with force recon guys before, bald tattoos on his knuckles, he's got the jump dive, right, which is synonymous with us. And he's like just staring at me, right? Baby blue eyes wants to like kill me. The fact that we're having a conversation about a barely passing PFT score is like an abdication of his, you know, his entire being as a whole, right? So he, sniper school has a choice, they can drop me right now and admit they made a mistake, but they didn't allow other people to enter the course because I would, I had, you know, passed that threshold. So they turned other people away. So they could admit their mistake, or they could just thrash the piss out of me until I quit. And then nobody would ever be any of the wiser, right? So fortunately, they chose the latter. And they were like, hey, we're just going to make this pig quit. And so I was like a marked man going through sniper school. But I got a chance to meet another two people that profoundly impacted my life. The first one, let's jeopardize our integrity to teach this guy who we think jeopardized his integrity. That's actually a good one. Perfect fucking sense. That's like, if it's Marine Corps logic right there is what it is. So I meet Staff Sergeant Dave Slavsky, and then a gentleman by the name of Corporal Wesley Payne. So the way that we worked educational way that they did, it was very different than my early education in the infantry. What they did was they had one main instructor that would teach, I don't know, stalking or teach, you know, long range marksmanship or what, and then you had your tack instructors who would be like, these were a jack of all trades kind of guy, I'd have a marksmanship instructor who would teach us internal, external and terminal ballistics. And then we would have our tack instructors who were like our mentors through this thing. So we had, you know, Dave Slavsky, who was just the most sarcastic, unimpressed guy, you know, by anything in the entire world loved him, you know, absolute to death. And then a gentleman by the name of Wesley Payne, who I describe as a six foot three square jawed, like black Terminator is what he looked like an all like this guy in Fallujah. So he was a three one in Fallujah as a sniper in a gunfight, pulled shrapnel out of his own head, and then continued to fight for the next three weeks, right? Like this is the kind of person and he was the same rank as I was, I was a corporal at this time frame. And I'm like, there's no fucking way I'm going to make it through sniper school with people like this, you know, in this caliber. But those two guys like took me under their wing, they peteed me every single day, they were like, we're going to guarantee that you never struggle with the PFT ever again. So every day, and any single, you know, we had a piss break, I would be in the office, I didn't get to pee much in sniper school, I'd go to the office and they had me doing all kinds of things to make sure that I was nice, like, I, they knew that I was smart, but they were going to make me strong. And so I really appreciated it. I mean, again, hindsight, like I appreciated that. We go through everything and I have an absolute knack for it. I'm loving sniper school because what I say about sniper school is that the sniper school at the time was 12 weeks. While the subject matter was different, I believe that I learned more knowledge in sniper school in the three months of sniper school than I did in the totality of my high school career. It was just so much information to know to pack through and to understand because you were operating ahead of friendly lines in enemy territory, being the eyes, ears and potentially trigger finger for that battalion commander. And that was a ton of responsibility. And so their, their markers, right, and where they were at were like a wall of expectations to get through. And a lot of guys didn't get through that understandably, but I just took to these guys, they were making me in their own image. And so I was very fortunate to have these guys kind of go through that. Did everybody teach and have the experience that you had? At that time, we were in a really rare time in the Marine Corps where everybody was somebody, you know, everybody had some sort of experience somewhere. And we all knew we were going back to Iraq. So Afghanistan was kind of cursorily happening, right? You know, but everybody was going back. So we had Iraq veterans teaching sniper school to guys who were going right back to Iraq. And so it was really this like utopia right now. Again, there was pig hog. I got jacked up all the time by these guys totally understand it, but we were able to compare notes during sniper school. So Dave Slavsky and Wesley Payne were, we break it into field skills and marksmanship. And there's always a constant, you know, you know, bucking up because field skills is what we believe sniping is about, right? The marksmanship guys feel that's what sniping is about. So we're always kind of arguing with each other, but these guys were mission planning and employment. And so they taught us how to play chess proverbially. Like so they wanted us, they said, Wesley Payne specifically said, you exist to take chess pieces off the board. You are your primary mission isn't to be a killer. If you want to be a killer, go be a machine gunner. You're here to strategically remove pieces from the board to help the infantry unit. And so they taught us a lot about advocacy. They taught us a lot about like politics, like how to work through and get work. You know, part of sniping is being able to get employed. So getting a Marine Corps haircut, rolling your sleeves the right way, looking the part that the Marine Corps really, really likes, those things pay dividends when you're briefing a commander who's an infantry commander who's used to that. If I roll in there with my no boop, louson, I got some vans and long hair, they instantly attack my credibility on that. Whether it's right or not, it is the way that it is. And so they teach us about not wanting to lose our voice. We're always under observation. So we learned long range marksmanship, unknown distance, known distance, we learned to read the wind. And then we learned a lot about mission planning and employment. But this was the time, so remember that sniper rifle had disappeared in 2004. And during this period is when the first series of what would eventually be called Juba videos started to come to life. So what you know, Juba did, right, was whether it now again, I will be 100% transparent, whether Juba was a person or a cell is up to anyone's determination, right? So I think that it was a cell of people acting as snipers, but Juba may have been a singular individual of where the story kind of leads to. So we would, they would film these videos and I don't know if you've ever seen them, but they're fucking watched them this morning. They're fucking awful. It just, it's just just brutal. So they'd show us these videos, right? And you'd have the, you know, the guttural call to prayer, which was like a war hymn for them. And then you have the horses, name and then you have a dude, you know, with either an SVD, right? And they would draw these little shitty tick marks, right? And they would upload them to ogreish after or, you know, Al Jazeera and they'd film these poor Americans, you know, whatever service they were. And it was gut wrenching to watch these things because you're watching Americans in their final moments of life. And you know that, you know that this, they're going to die or something's going to happen. And they go and they're fucking pride and they're, they're, they're, they're laughter and they're joy and our carnage, right? You know, like it was, it was, it was, it was infuriating. But in their hubris, by uploading these things to the internet to try to, you know, scare us through propaganda, they gave us, they gave us intelligence. They gave us information to analyze. So as a class in sniper school, this was this professional, you know, academy, it was super tough academy, professional academy. Dave Slasky and Wesley Payne had us watch the videos together and analyze that. And they taught us to turn the map around, to try to look and interesting. So when we talk about masculinity or the non, we talk about like empathy and compassion, right? Turning the map around is literally empathy, right? In a different form. It's saying, how would I do this? Right? If I were to walk in your shoes as a sniper, how would I kill Americans? And so we sat as a collective group of 18 to 24 pigs and a bunch of sniper instructors solving a collective problem. That was what sniper school was about. It was this, it was this institution of thinking outside of the box or trying to solve a problem. The United States government had, you know, what they always do is try to throw money at a problem. They bought listening devices, they bought, you know, nets and, you know, Hasco barriers and all these things. And they bought these things like these acoustic trackers that if a shot rang out, then they could acoustically backtrack where the shot came from. And my first comment was, yeah, but doesn't someone have to get shot first? Right? You know, like, that's very reactive. And I know what they're trying to do, but someone's got to die first before this tool is even remotely successful. And then we have to like get everyone together and go like chase this, you know, you know, ghost story down somewhere. And so we worked through that whole process. And it was, it was fascinating to be able to learn that and to try to do what we call a red cell analysis, right? How would we, how would we do this? And Wesley Payne and Dave Slasky were completely instrumental in that, to be able to help shape that framework. And then, you know, we go to stalking and stalking was one of my favorite things in sniping, but I struggled with that as I struggled with a lot of things. And Wesley Payne was very, very kind to help me out on an occasion where I didn't need to. And so this is where things got a little difficult, right, or different is sniper school is a lot about science, but a lot about art. And this is where an infantry Marine commander struggles understanding sniping as an art form, because art, what I learned from my mother, right, is it defies boxes, it defies boundaries, it defies limitations. And so sniping as an art is trying to figure out how to hunt your enemy, how to figure out what they're doing against you, and find a unique or novel way to be able to stop them, or take them out. And that's what sniper school was about. So part of that was stalking and learning to veg in and turn blend into your environment. And it was super, super fun to go through that. But some of that nuance is that stalking allowed for sniper instructors to help out a student if they wanted to or not. And a very long story, very, very short, I needed to get a hundred to be able to graduate sniper school. I was like, skin of my teeth, right, not going to make it if I didn't like blow a hundred and getting a hundred is starting from 1500 meters out from the truck. And the truck has two observers, right, you know, think of like, Oh God, whatever the movie is, the hunted or something like that. And there's two guys with like, and they're not using like run of the milbon, they're using like like a vector tent, like super good glass. And they're just scoping this, you know, 1500 meter by 500 meter kind of plot of land. And we fall off the truck 1500 meters out. And we have to get to within 200 meters of the truck by, you know, skull dragging, weasel walking, whatever the techniques are to get to within 200 meters. And then we have to set up a final firing position and inside of this 200 meters. And then we have to take a shot on the firing a blank, you take a simulated shot on the truck. And then the truck has to ID, and I have to be able to tell what that ID is. So I have to burn a window, not like physically burn, but like burn a window through the veg, be able to see my target, they can't see me, I have to fire a shot, then they hold up at, you know, Yankee seven or you know, card or whatever it is, I have to be able to see that card, identify that card. And then the walker walks within 10 meters of us, of where I'm in my hide site. And then the sniper instructors have three chances to try to find me in that position. And if I pass all of that, I get 90 points. And then what they'll do is they take the walking stick and they touch the gun, they touch the head, and they touch, or they touch the gun, they touch the scope, and then they touch the head. If the spotters in the truck cannot see you through all of that, you get 100. And you have like 15 stocks in sniper school, you got to maintain an average. I was at the point where I needed to get an absolute 100. And so the story goes is this, and this is like, some people might get mad at this, and I don't really give a shit, right, is I am under 200 meters, I'm like, I'm in my final firing position, it's, I'm wearing cotton, burlap, vegetation everywhere, it's in the middle of summer in Camp Pendleton, it's like Africa hot, right? I've run out of water, I got a piss at this point, like it's just I'm losing my mind, right? So I get into position, and I'm, and I think I was in like this, the low sitting position, which is not comfortable, but I'm sitting there, I've got my drag bag all kind of together. And then I take my shot, my simulated shot with my blank, and in front of my muzzle, I didn't clear my muzzle. So basically, you need to be able to clear a line of sight about two meters in front of your muzzle because of the blast of the bullet. So I fired my blank and right in front of me, a bush wiggled. And I was like, oh fuck, like I'm dead. Because now what happens is I have to take a second shot under observation, like when I get the walker, he comes within 10 meters, I have to take, I have to ID and take the second shot and they do the tap, tap, tap, that's under direct observation. So if the spotter can see that, I only get an 80 because I fired an ID. It's an extremely complex process. But I fired my first shot. No, excuse me, I was laying in the prone position. I remember this, sorry, it's laying in the prone position, right? I had to get as low as possible because I was super close. So I fired my first shot, I see the bush move. And then I hear the walker coming towards me, right? And they're like, the walkers are non, they're, you know, just unbiased, you know, tools basically. So the truck will move the walker around if he sees something and those like, freeze, right? And everyone has to freeze. And then the walker goes and spots someone and that person gets like hide and seek basically, right? And the walker is the arbiter of that. So I hear the walker coming through the dried brush, I've shot my first shot. So I have 70 points at this place. But I've moved a bush in front of me. And there's no way that I can get, I'm done, I'm toast, right? And I remember hearing the walker come up and I hear him come over the radio. And it is Wesley Payne. So my tack instructor, Corporal Wesley Payne, right? But on the glass is Staff Sergeant Slavsky, who is known as the pig killer. So what he is, he's really good on the glass. He's a great observer and nobody gets by on Dave Slavsky, right? So Payne's walking up and I'm like, I'm fucking toast. And the walker's like, yep, we got movement. We're gonna, you know, have an ID, right? Let him get through the scenario. And I fire my second shot. And that stupid bush moves again. And I was like, this is it, I'm toast. I'm only gonna get an 80. I'm gonna about the fail sniper school. I was still the runt. So I only got one shot at sniper school, right? I'm not getting another one, right? And then they have to now walk the walker within three feet of me, excuse me, I'm sorry, they have to walk the walker within one foot of me, since I have fired two shots at this point. So they get next to me and they're like, he has a little walking stick and they're like, hey, Roger, pick at your feet, right? And he was two feet away at this point. And they're like, and Wesley Payne says negative, you get, and now the walkers, excuse me, the spotters get two more tries. And they're like, Roger, take one step forward, pick at your feet. I'm dead to rights, right? Wesley Payne's toes are now touching my ribcage as I'm laying right here. They've technically got me and they're like, pick at your feet. And Wesley is standing there and he goes, who is this? He doesn't move his lips. He's under observation. He goes, who is this? And I go, and talking on a stock lane is an immediate dropable offense from sniper school. And I go, scrawl at the shooty, you're a friend, you know? And he goes, and now Payne has to make a choice. And you can feel the weight shift and they're like, pick at your feet. And he says negative. And so now they get one more shot. And Wesley Payne and a lot of people may be mad at this or whatever it is. And again, I don't really frankly care is they say, Roger, baby step forward and Payne takes a baby step forward, puts his left foot on the small of my back and then takes his right foot and is now standing on my butt cheeks. He gains four inches in the process, right? And they're like, pick at your feet. And he goes, negative. And Dave Slavsky is now 200 meters away. I can literally hear him yelling at this point. And he's like, you're telling me there isn't a literal pig under your feet. And he goes, negative, that's three tries. And he walks away. And he like ends the thing. So I get the hundred. And what Payne says to me, is he says, this is your one shot, Pachuti, don't fuck it up. Consider yourself hugged, right? Like a pig hugger, right? He says, consider yourself hugged, don't fuck it up. So what happens is we gain a relationship during the time in sniper school. And I worked really hard to be able to try to emulate them as best as possible. And I'd kind of like won them over from like working. I wasn't good in the beginning, but I got better in the end. And I worked my ass off to be able to be a really, really good sniper. And he gave me a shot. And it eventually allowed me to graduate sniper school. The thing that I found out 20 years later, when I was telling Wesley Payne this story and reminiscing about this after he and I are both retired, he says, the funny thing is Dave Slavsky in the truck did the same thing for Wesley Payne when he was a sniper student, you know, three years beforehand. So it's this way of being able to pull people forward, right? And help them through this entire, you know, situation. I was fortunate enough that my grades were good enough through school that I was, I graduated as the class honor man, the highest GPA, thankfully stocking wasn't part of the GPA in that. And then they, they made me instructor's choice and instructor's choice was the one, like the one that meant something. It was the first time I felt validated, because it's something that all of the instructors vote on on the person they would most like, most want to serve with in combat. So my three months in sniper school, I had had this sort of, you know, almost epiphany, everything that I had learned up into that point with three, five and, you know, Fallujah had really culminated in this moment where I got a chance to prove myself and I proved myself to the sniper instructors and they saw me as one of their own. And so when we graduate sniper school, we have a former Marine sniper from the last war, he gives us what's called a hogs tooth. Are you familiar with a hogs tooth at all? So a hogs tooth, again, hog is hunter of gunmen. A hogs tooth is, it goes by the idea of live by the gun, die by the gun. And it came from World War One with British, originally British snipers. When they would kill an enemy sniper in World War One, and they had the opportunity, they would take the last round chambered out of the sniper's gun, and that would be their trophy, if you will. That was the bullet that was meant to take their life. And if they wore that bullet around their neck, they could never die. And that was the thing that protected them in combat. And so the truest definition of a hogs tooth for us is killing an enemy sniper and taking the last bullet out of that gun. And so what we do as a symbol of that is when we graduate sniper school, every sniper gets a hogs tooth, a 762 by 51, 762 by 51 hollow point boat tail, and a sniper from the last war puts that on 550 cord around their neck. And that's the graduation ceremony from sniper school. And so I had a Vietnam sniper that did that. And he whispered in my ear and he was like, you know, good luck and good hunting. And I graduated sniper school and deployed to Iraq three weeks later for my third tour. Damn, that's cool. Yeah, it was fun. Again, it was like, it's these moments in time that like, when you have, there's like letter of the law and spirit of the law, right? And they made some concessions. But when I say I wasn't supposed to be, I'm not supposed to be in this share, you know, yeah, I worked my ass off, right? I didn't get anything for free. But there were people through that entire process that helped me along the way. And I would be remiss if I didn't, if I didn't share that story, because I think that helps turn other people around and saying, how can I help somebody else out? How can I make them better than me? Wesley Payne and Dave Slasky wanted to make me better than them. And they did. And they, and, and, and my job, my way to pay that back was due to the same thing to the next generation. You're going back to Iraq. So you get back to Iraq. Finally a sniper. Finally a sniper. My God, it was a journey. What's your loadout? So that timeframe, M16A4, sniper with an M16. Yep. It's the Marine Corps. That's shit. Sniper with an M16A4 with an RCO and a nice armament suppressor, an over the, not an over the barrel and extended suppressor. So I had like, you know, like, you know, like a black powder. What's an RCO? Rifleman combat optics. So like a Trigicon, you know, early versions of the Trigicon fixed three power. I don't know if it was first or second focal plane. I don't remember. And on a Picatinny rail, and then I had an M40A3. So that had bipods on it. It didn't have Remington 700. Right. Yep. Remington 700 short action designed by the Marine Corps shooting team, a very different kind of process. But the Marine Corps shooting team likes very heavy guns because they're more accurate when they're in a bench. But they designed them and we carry them. So I had a 24 pound sniper rifle. Holy shit. Yep. It weighed as much as a 240 Bravo. Right on, man. Yep. So I had that and then I had like an M9. And I was a terrible shot. What's an M9? That pistol, the Beretta, which yeah, I would, like the Beretta sidearm, like I would sooner throw the pistol at somebody than shoot it. Suppressed? No. We had to pump the brakes a little bit. This is the Marine Corps. Right. I didn't have any bluing on my M9. This shit was silver. I looked like Saddam running around with some silver ass pistols. Nice. Well, I got you a present. Really? I did. You want it? Yeah. Holy shit. It's not the Marine Corps here, baby. Oh my god. Oh, God. Clear and safe. Here you go. Wow. That is the P365 macro from Sig Sauer with the brand new optics line. Holds 17 rounds of the magazine, one in the pipe, plus one in the pipe. And you know, I got a buddy over at Sig. I love Sig's. They're the shit, aren't they? Oh my gosh. And so he wanted me to give that to you. And I got another buddy over at Silencer Shop. Are you familiar with Silencer Shop? I'm not. Well, they gave me the Sig Sauer can to give you. I mean, I figure you're a sneaky guy. I appreciate that. Lots of sniper work. I mean, hopefully that doesn't come in handy anytime soon, but you know, always a good thing to have. This is so freaking cool. So Silencer Shop, they have these kiosks all over the country in these gun stores. And basically, they really streamline the process to get suppressors. And if you go on there, they got a pretty damn good selection. And the other thing they do is they also fight for gun rights. So it's a really cool company. Wow. And they were ecstatic to hear that you were coming. Really? Yeah. Well, thank you so much. This is super kind of you. I am. I was not expecting this. This is great. And it fits. You weren't expecting a Sig pistol with a Sig suppressor and not a bad podcast to come on, huh? Oh, kidding. Thank you. You're welcome, man. Break that in here in a little bit. Oh, God. Does it have bipods that I could put on it? Because I usually better with bipods. I could probably get you one. Thank you very much. Yeah, man. I greatly appreciate that. You're welcome. Wow. So we go to Iraq 06. And it's police operations we've talked about a little bit. You know, the sandstorm was the first two weeks of that deployment. A lot of consternation, a lot of trying to figure out where we are and what we look like. But that was a very good deployment for snipers to be hunting. Because that's who, but that like the infantry didn't have an offensive capability. They were predominantly maintaining firm bases, right? And then driving roads to maintain the patrol bases that would get blown up to keep the supply lines open. It was this whole like these poor guys were just super frustrated through that. And so they looked to snipers to be their offensive capability. And we we hunted every single day in the Zidane and we put they just weren't expecting us down there. And you know, different units moving into specific areas. But that was like, that was a sniper deployment, ghillie suits in veg. Yeah, ghillie suits in veg near the Euphrates. The Euphrates when they would come from the Zidane to Amaria south of Fallujah, they would have they would ferry weapons in the in the evening. And so our sniper team would just post up on a long axis on the Euphrates. We did have cans on the M on the M16A4s. And so a lot of people met their end in the Euphrates there. And it was it was it was a hunting trip down there. You know, it was it was for so Jimmy Proudman, Gabe White, Tony Scardino and myself were the four man sniper element down with India Company in that area. And I had a really good working relationship with a guy named Captain Len Coleman. He was the company commander. And what I mean, talk about trusting your your attachments. So as an attack means as a seal, you get attached to a unit and they're sometimes potentially distrust or you don't work together well or whatever the thing is. We were always attachments and Captain Coleman trusted us explicitly. And our rule was we would never lie to him, we would never ever violate that trust. And so we kept that and he allowed us to hunt a lot down there. You know, there was a moment where, you know, I joke, you know, a knife to a gunfight. And I think we were talking about that earlier on one of my like Lee less cool moments. But again, the team comes together. We were in the Zidon. And we had just played the idea of turning the map around. How do we how do we hunt these guys, right? We're sick and tired of getting hunted by them. Let's be let's be aggressive. And so we did some map studies, we had already taken out a couple of IDM placers in the iron and zinc kind of intersections. We had let them know the Marines had landed pretty quickly, right? We're an aggressive, you know, force of people. And so we established that baseline. And then we started to start, we started to spread out a little bit and hunt them in their own backyards. And so we got into this, you know, huge like vegetated area near kind of a farm field and on the cusp of a small little village. And we found it in the middle of the night, I get we have like a six man element at this point. Sometimes a lot of the commanders in OF one snipers, up and Marine snipers operated in two man pairs, a partner pair in OF two in Fallujah, they were required to be in four man elements in, you know, OF whatever it turned into in 2006, we were mandated to be in six man elements at a minimum. And then in Afghanistan, when I was a reconnaissance Marine, we were minimum, we were mandated to be a minimum of eight man elements. And these are all levied on us from higher echelons, not understanding that our stealth is our security. They think that security equals numbers, body armor, helmets, throat protectors, groin protectors, these are all leveled requirements that we have to wear as snipers operating in Iraq in 2006. Absolutely wild. And there was no way that we could ask for waivers, or have any kind of deviation from that, because we're not, we weren't SOCOM. And so SOCOM has waivers because they're SOCOM, right? We're a conventional force operating and doing a lot of the same things, but we're a conventional asset that's owned by army or Marine commanders. So there was just was no leeway on that. So I'm in like this fucking Robocop outfit as best as possible, trying to stay concealed in all these different places through the Zaidon. But what that does is when you have a society that has too many rules, you know, you make everybody criminals, right? And so in this thing, it's like, if I need to be effective as a sniper, I would have to take my helmet, or my chest rig, or my plates, or whatever it is, and leave the wire with that, take a security halt, take all that shit off, put it in my rock, and then continue to patrol if I wanted to, because they wanted us to stalk in a ghillie suit with a fucking flak jacket on, you know, either under or over, and you're like, that doesn't, I get it, I get what they're trying to do, right? But none of that makes sense, right? So we're sitting in this hide site, and I'm sitting there, and I'm, you know, I have my, my musket next to me, right? It should have been over my lap. 100% should have been over my lap, right? You know, we don't sleep without our gear completely on, right? We never take our boots off in a hide site. We never, like, these are lessons that we've, we've learned in blood over this period, right? Our gear is always on, we're always ready to go. So I'm sitting in a ghillie suit, or some sort of, like a quarter ghillie, and I have my rifle, and I place it next to me. It's the middle of the day in the sun, like, early spring, so my team is mostly on a rest cycle, and I'm like the only one up. It's not like, everybody goes to sleep during the afternoon in Iraq, so nothing's happening. So I'm chilling there, and I'm like, literally, I got a strider knife, right? And I'm like picking my nails. I'm not like looking at my nails, I'm just picking at my nails, looking out, right? Just the radios on my, you know, we've all been there, right? You know, just kind of sitting there bored on mission number 800 while you're staring out into nothing. And then about 40 yards ahead of me, two men round a corner, and they start walking towards us. Now, they can't see us because we're all ghillied up and we're in defilades, so we're super well-vedged and super well-hidden, and they're walking directly towards us. One of them has an AK, I think, right? Like, I see a sling, and I can kind of see, I don't know if it was an AK-47 or 74, I couldn't tell you. But they have an AK slung on their back, and they have like this little black box in their hand. And I didn't know what it was, and so now I see them like coming right for us. And I start clicking. So we had to like, instead of being like whistling or whatever, I would click, I would click at my team, and that was either a squeeze like on the thigh or a click, but I couldn't move my hands, right? So I'm trying to reach for my weapon system, these guys are coming towards me, and I start clicking and my team isn't hearing me click. And I can't click louder because they're getting closer. So I get this point of like no return, they're 15 meters away from me, and the only thing that I can think to do is jump out of the bush at them and start chasing them. And I'm yelling while I'm doing this, right? So I'm like, yeah, right, never would have occurred to me. I don't, because I, they're, they're looking right at me. They are literally coming into my hide site, because apparently my hide site was also their hide site, right? So they're walking to me, I'm trying to like not grab. And again, hindsight being what it is, I'm like, right, I jump out and I have a fucking knife in my hand and I start chasing these guys. And they freak out because again, a bush just jumped out of nowhere. Yeah, they freaked out. They start running. And then I realized as I'm running, I go, shit, right? Like I've got a knife and I'm bringing a knife to a gunfight here. Luckily, they were super panicked and they didn't do much. But my team, Jimmy Proudman jumps up, Tony Scardino's got the parasol. And he come like, God, these guys, again, the team, they come up and they start, Tony's like almost like hip fire, and he's coming up like this with the saw. And he just lays down a line of lead. And one guy zips right through it, zippers him up, right? You know, falls and dies around the corner. The other guy turns and books it, right? He's the dude with the AK and he's booking it down here. And then Jimmy Proudman, who is an amazing sniper, right? He's actually on the cover of a book called Hunters by Milo Afang, right? And it has him in this like perfect shooting position. And he gets into this like kneeling position, this dude's running, right? And you know, has this, he's, he still has this black box and he has this AK and we don't know what this black box is. And he takes him and with the M16A4 lines up and goes right and then clicks the guy right in the back, severs the spinal cord, the guy dies immediately on the ground. And we go up to go do, you know, an analysis on who these guys are, dead check, one dude, he's got nothing on him. We go over to this other guy, we open up this camera. It ends up, the black box that I see is a Sony handy cam. And we press play, we were whined, we press play. These two guys were the IED instructors in the, in the area. They literally had like the green flag and they're like, this is how you like, they had like the whole like how to make an IED at home kind of thing. And they were the two instructors of us. We take their pictures, whatever it is, we have this whole intel analysis. We absolutely decimated the, you know, the resistance in the area because we were able to be aggressive. Like the thing that Marines have over any other person in the world is we are aggressive. And we need to be able to be allowed to be aggressive at certain points to allow that to, you know, create the space that we want. Because we were aggressive and went and fought and hunted them, we were able to stop an IED team because they literally walked. I mean, it wasn't skill or anything. They really walked into my hide site and these guys were able to, you know, they got the kills, right? You know, we were joking about it, you know, like this dipshit, you know, brings a knife to a gunfight, but we killed the IED cell in the area. And then everything was quiet for like a month, like nothing happened in the area. We had killed any IED emplacers. We had killed them bomb makers. There was nobody that wanted to play there. But the problem with sending combat troops to do, you know, police security operations is when it's secure, when the area doesn't have any more bad guys, we have to go. And so now we had to leave this area and go and move somewhere else in Iraq. And we had to abandon the, you know, our little hunting trip by the river, you know, came to an end. Damn. It was super wild, fun, you know, fun kind of fun stories in there. But I don't know too many people that were running around in a ghillie suit in Iraq. It was just because it was the spring and the Zidane, you know, on the eastern side of the Euphrates itself, it was the same. Recon, first recon and second recon worked out of there a whole bunch. We would talk to them at night, you know, we'd find their freaks and, you know, recon and snipers didn't always have the best relationship. So like battalion snipers and recon would always, you know, you know, chirp up. We go to same schools together and whatever it is, but we just went to chirp at one another. It's a normal, you know, normal thing. But yeah, they worked a lot in the Zidane down there. A lot of green side patrolling. It was not something you would expect in Iraq. Everyone thinks it's all deserts. And that was a very fun, you know, fun deployment for us as far as hunting goes. Yeah. We got to do a little bit of that. Yeah. Ghillie suits in Iraq. Oh, yeah. Fucking wild times, man. So where do we go from here? We move to Habaniah and we start, we run into Juba. Let's take a quick break. Cool. I need you to stop what you're doing for a second and really listen. If someone relies on your income and you don't have life insurance yet, this needs to move to the top of your list. I've had to think about that myself, making sure my family isn't left dealing with everything. If something happens to me, fabric by Gerber life is term life insurance. You can get done today made for busy parents like you all online on your schedule, right from your couch. You could be covered in under 10 minutes, often with no health exam required. If you've got kids, especially if you're young and healthy, this is when locking in a lower rate actually matters. 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Seems pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Gotta silence it. In another lifetime, I did gun reviews for a living proprietary magazines, supposedly the best engineering in the world. When that breaks, you're and now we're bringing them back. It does look pretty cool. I got it. I got it. I've met that. So tell me about juva. When did he pop on your radar? So it was the he really got on our radar in you know, sniper school, you know, in 2005 when we checked into so when we left Amaria and the Zidane, we moved up to a place called Habania and Habania was just north of Alta Cotum. So if you think MSR Michigan that ran between Ramadi and Fallujah, there was TQ and then Habania was an old Royal Air Force base. And so we took this area over. There was an Army National Guard unit that was, you know, finishing there like 13 months. And so three five was sent in to relieve them and own and take over that battle space. We first checked in. And now I had to I had been promoted to take over my own team. So I had taken over Banshee for Jimmy Proudman was still Banshee twos team leader. And him and I had a really good working relationship. He's a fantastic kind of mentor to me. We check into what the Army calls a talk, the tactical operation center, the Marine Corps calls it a COC. And we check in with them and we're doing like an intel and you know, intel dump. We were very much the idea of trying to get as much information as possible, wanted to, you know, not show up and be like, Yeah, yeah, we'll figure it out. I want Iraq is the same as other Iraq, like we really dove into that. And we had a gentleman by the name of Mike Musselman and Mike Musselman was what's called a Marine Gunner. And a Marine Gunner is a very rare rank in the Marine Corps, there's only 100 gunners in the entire Marine Corps out of 175 or 210,000 people in the Marine Corps, there's only 100 gunners. A gunner is considered an infantry weapons and tactics expert. They have to have been enlisted for a minimum of 15 years as an infantry Marine. And then as an E seven, they can apply to become a chief warrant officer, and then get selected as a Marine Gunner. We're the only rank in the Marines that has a rank and a rate. So the rate almost like the Navy is a rate is a gunner and the rank is chief warrant officer. Okay. So Gunner Mike Musselman is a infantry extraordinaire, right? And he works for the infantry battalion. So we use a little bit of his rank to set up a brief from this National Guard unit to kind of give us a you know, what's going on in the area. Well, when we go in for this brief, there's like Manila folders, there's after action reports. There's a ton of this unit was kind of leaving with their tail between their legs, they seemed like they'd been beaten up pretty bad while they were there. And when we go inside the COC, there was a, you know, four foot by four foot plywood table that had an ISO mat or a mat underneath it and they had laminated maps laid on top of it, and you know, taped on top of it. And this was their map that identified significant events. And they, you know, I don't remember all the colors, but whether it would be like IED strike, IED find, weapons, cash, and then sniper attack. And sniper attack was red pushpins. And when we looked at the map, it was covered in red pushpins. There was a sniper, when they go through this brief, they said there is an active sniper and he is killing everybody. Like he is out here decimating this unit to the point that. Where's he getting them at? So basically, Convoys. Yes, everywhere. Static positions, convoys, security patrols, mounted patrols, dismounted patrols. He had. Always on a movement outside of the wire. Oh, no, even, even when like nothing inside the wire, but posts on the exterior. Oh, shit. So he would. He had his. Yeah, he had his run of the area. Fuck, man. You know, I remember, I remember talking with them and they were, they were just, I mean, absolutely, you know, decimated by that to the point of where the last month of their deployment, they didn't run a single patrol. And that's really bad because what happens is that allows the enemy to play freely lay IDs, right? You know, again, gain us, you know, an advantage, a tactical advantage over the area. They basically shut down because they were smelling the barn and they wanted to get home and not lose anybody else. But the problem is, again, that's an abdication of responsibility. That's not taking care of the next unit. That's not taking care of us. And so when we showed up, we had massive amounts of casualties because the Marines had landed and we weren't backing down. We needed to show the Mujahideen in the area that we were a different breed. Not only were our camis different, but there was a different breed. And so we started this cat and mouse chase. They briefed us on all these things. And then we sat and, you know, earlier in the deployment, we sat with all of the Juba videos and they were all our Intel shop stitched them all together for us. Hold on. I mean, I asked one Juba popped up on your radar. I know that was sniper school, but I mean, it's real, but it's different when it's in a schoolhouse. Now you're deployed, first deployment as a sniper, and you're hunting the fucking guy that you were studying in sniper school. Exactly. That's pretty surreal. I think it was more we didn't get caught up in that. I think what we got was, oh shit, right? You know, like there's this guy here who has complete control of the battlefield. We, and he's going to hurt our Marines if we can't, if we don't stop him. So it was almost like a running clock for us. The weight was felt, you know, and you're right. It was surreal. We didn't want to give him too much credit, but he was very much in our thoughts. I mean, I just want to say a couple things. I mean, this is the sniper rifle that was taken off the body. One of your guys, right? We didn't know that. Yeah, but yeah, didn't know that. And I mean, one of the snipers using it becomes the most lethal enemy sniper of the Iraq war, publicly known as Juba. Juba is credited by insurgent propaganda with killing well over a hundred Americans. You've cited figures of potentially 140 plus Americans. Juba is the inspiration for the enemy sniper character Mustafa in the film American sniper. I mean, this guy's got quite the reputation. Now, we took that very seriously. We watched every single video that he put out. And that was the hard part. What's that? Is there a lot of them? Yeah. Well, like so what our S2 or Intel shop did is they stitched it all together for us and we would sit. Our four man team would sit and smoke cigarettes and it was not a jovial time for us. We would sit and watch every single video go and go and go and we would analyze each one. We would take notes. The thing that got us. So the book is nonfiction. There is one fictional portion of the book. And that is when I describe a green beret getting killed. The reason why that is fiction is I would never publicize the way an American died. That is a an amalgamation that is a in a culmination or an accumulation of multiple different stories into one. I would never want someone's mother or father to read the story of how their son died. It's the only portion of the book that is contextually linked together from multiple different videos. And that was a conscious choice because sitting and watching Americans die is not something that we would sit and we would eat chow and then we would like dread going up there. But it was our duty. We would sit on this couch and we said cigarette smoke and consideration. This old cigarette stain green couch and we would sit on it and the four of us would just like I said we have a Panasonic Toughbook and we'd press play and we'd turn the music off right when we wanted to and we would just watch every scenario. And what eventually stood out to us was not we didn't care about the the marking things. I just wanted to see the kills. How was he doing this? We had a saying that we kind of came up with is is you know the the National Guard unit that we were relieving was like they said that he's a ghost and my response to them was snipers don't believe in ghosts. We believe in patterns and so that's what we needed to do was we needed to put his patterns together. It's all just math. It's a it's a recognition of a pattern and humans have them. Nature has them and if you pay attention close enough you can find out what those patterns and you learn to read them. And so we sat and we went through every single one of these things and we started to notice a specific trend. First he was well under within 200 yards is what we guessed between each engagement. Now each one of these things leads us to a series of potential questions. This was like a almost we almost had like a board and we were kind of like workshopping different things right. So the first one was his distance 200 meters ish. Okay what was what was the thing that led him to be 200 meters was it that this was he not a good shooter? Was the optic destroyed? Was he firing iron sights instead of you know because again we didn't know he was shooting an m40 at this time. We just knew single well aimed shots were killing Americans. And so we had to kind of piece this whole thing together. Was it was he shooting iron sights? So that's why 200 was his preferred distance. Was it the limitations of his weapon system? Did he have an AK? Was he shooting a sniper rifle? They showed Draganov or an SVD but those weren't super prevalent all the time and their scopes inside of those things were a little wonky. Was it the limitation of his camera? Could his camera only zoom in so far? One of the things that we noticed was he was videotaping and the videos were normally at what I would say hip level. Hip to you know nipple level on an average size body. And we noticed that so he wasn't shooting from above. He wasn't shooting from below. He was generally always around a specific height. Then we noticed the population. The population was walking in in front of the camera you know and so either they were complicit with knowing there was a sniper there and they were just acting nonchalant. But that's not something humans really know. No Iraqi wants to be around that they know how we respond to gunfire. So then okay so he was concealed. He was concealed from civilians. He was about hip to nipple high is where he was at. And the thing that tipped us off the most after the shot rang out chaos would ensue right the head that stupid little red dot or the red crosshairs or reticle they put on there and the shot would ring out the Marine or soldier or airman you know or sailor would fall and then he would move away from the scene at a steady rate of speed but not bouncing. And so to us that went okay so he's not walking right because these aren't stabilized gyro cameras right this is this is like 2005 2006 right. So we I literally leapt off the couch when I was watching and I went holy shit he's shooting from a car. So if you remember in and around that timeframe if I'm not mistaken then or just beforehand there was the DC sniper that was like shooting people at gas stations he was shooting from a car. I don't know if it was before or after but there's a strong potential that he had learned from that you know tactic and technique right. But that was kind of you know in our in our mind in that. So once we realized that he was in a car that's what again almost like appears to be right you know like it's kind of our we think that he's in a car you know we're not going to not you know we're going to wave our hand and say he's only in a car. We started going to every single one of those red dots. I read every single after action that associated to one of those red push pins on the map. Where was he hitting the victims. So a lot of times all over the place well predominantly high center chest between the plates or in the face. So he'd move around the plates whenever he could. There were some times where I'd see a guy get you know hit in the plates dust and shit fly up and then he would like scramble away. But he wasn't reengaging very fast. I didn't see multiple shots right. I saw one shot chaos ensued civilians would scatter the marines or whoever it was would respond to the thing and I didn't see follow up shots. So I was like okay he's potentially kind of exposed right at some level right there's you would either shoot in the side or the head. Yep. So iron sights at 200 is pretty much out. Right. It gets a little harder right. So when we start looking at these all of it is this like maybe we're not 100% sure but it's starting to paint a little bit better of a picture. He's not a click out. I mean that makes that would make a difference for us if he's a click out and we could see mirage in the camera or something like that. If he was sitting at a super long distance that would have been very hard for us to be able to manage but he was close. So that meant that he had to get close that meant that he had to be near our main supply routes that means he needed to be able to scout and infiltrate and find static positions. When we were changing over with excuse me that Army National Guard unit while we're doing our change over with them there was a soldier on post they were going home like the next week a soldier on post they had cammy netting up every you know this the coalition was afraid of this guy. Side sappings became a thing the bulletproof glass on the you know any post because cammy net everywhere became a thing because this guy was changing all of our techniques because he was just killing us at random. So this unit's about a week from going home one of the guys one of the soldiers is on post and their NVGs like the sun is starting to set the NVGs that he's about to put on roll out of his little window and onto the sandbag in front of him and he reaches his hand out and he gets shot in the hand and it mangles his hand and we were like okay this dude doesn't play like he knows what he's doing he's able to pick now let's say size of a hand at 300 meters that's one minute of angle right you know mayish right you know with movement all this kind of stuff like he's either very very close or he knows what he's doing or worse he's both so we started to follow these pushpins every single SIG act that had a pushpin on it we went to that site and we would literally try to turn the map around my team and I would go out in the middle of the night and we would go to where one of the ones was an intersection and I'm standing in the intersection at the exact place where a soldier had lost his life and I'm looking around could you reference the videos no I couldn't I wanted to maybe technologically now we could I couldn't geo reference the videos that would have been great but all of it looked it was super zoomed in right a lot of it was just washed out but that's a no great question you know no one's ever asked me that before but that would have been very nice to have because they didn't have any like geotags or anything then we would go to people's doors so our team did a lot of knock and talks I had no interest in clearing their houses right it was a very different time frame so I'd knock on their door and through like my broken Arabic I would talk to them and and and the word for sniper is kanas right and so I would say you know whatever the Arabic was and I would say kanas and people's eyes would widen and then they would shut the door in my face and they weren't rude about it but they were like nope nope don't know don't want to talk about it he was working in and around the area and people were very scared of him because the way that the mujahideen worked is if you talked or you spoke with the coalition or if you gave them any information against the mujahideen they would kill you and your entire family right so we didn't do that we tried to be you know a better force for that to be able to have them like win over their hearts and minds but they were just so afraid they wouldn't touch it la la kanas is what they would say and they'd close the door another trail cold so for about two months maybe two and a half months every single night that I could get a patrol out there we would go out and and and hunt this guy and go to every single sig act so one night I'm standing in an intersection and I'm looking around and we're frustrated I mean at this point there's just like we're just not getting really any leads in this thing there's not a lot of tech to follow we don't really have drones like we have like a few but it's nothing like persistent you know all weather observation but he's still shooting people not in our area right but he's shooting people in adjacent areas and we're getting those sig acts in so we're standing in this intersection it's the middle of night and we're like it's like washed in orange like the orange street lights right and I'm standing under this thing and I'm pretty brazen at this point right you know I've been it's my third tour it's middle of night the optics aren't super great on any enemy kind of stuff so I'm standing in the other section and we're looking around and I'm sitting next to my partner Gabe White and and I lean over at him and I look and I go God like that like it wasn't like anything other than I think a stroke of luck like I look in a specific direction and I go man that it's a it's a it's a building it's set back from the street so it's not right over the street it's set back but it has a pretty good line of sight let's just go check that out and this is what we did like almost every single night and we eventually get to this building we knock on the door and then this one is like we're a little curious we go inside I work with the family because we have to wake them up it's middle of night we're also not assholes like I'm genuinely not an asshole so I'm not like you know you know fucking fucking like no like I don't want to create more terrorists right so we're like hey we're just going to be here for a few minutes we start going to the upstairs where the position of advantage would be and so we get to the second deck can't really see what we're looking for and then I go to the roof and if you remember the roofs in Iraq they were like the exposed brick and they had that kind of like thin wall and then they had tar on the you know the black tar on the roof well a lot of Iraqis in the summer would sleep on the roof because they didn't have air conditioning so they'd sleep on the roof so when I walked up there and I saw a mat on the ground it wasn't exactly out of place but I have my like shitty seven bravos and my you know I don't have a sniper rifle at this point I just have like an M an M16 you know on my back um and I'm looking around and then I see and I walk up and I put my arms on the uh on the on the parapet on the ledge looking towards the intersection and then I look down and when I look down I see a spider hole about three inches in diameter at the base of this oh shit at the base of this thing and then I look back and I see that mat for a second time the mat is not a sleeping mat if you imagine like you've ever seen cavities that have like the little ball uh thing it's like the walnut ball looking things like that's the mat that's laying on the ground and I'm and I perk up Jimmy Proudman is now up here right and I'm like yo do you check this out and he's looking around so I do what any sniper does is I get in my sniper position on the mat and I look through this hole reminds me it's like pitch black right there's no lights up there and so I I get in the push-up position and I get down and I look through the spider hole and I can see the intersection and as I go to get up I put my I move my hand to get back into push-up position and my hand rolls across two pieces of brass no fucking way I push myself up I stand up I look at the brass and I have my little red lens on the back of the brass it says LC Lake City ammunition manufacturing plant Lake City I think it's Missouri if I'm not mistaken and I call Jimmy over and I say oh shit that's when I knew it was an American rifle using American ammunition so the m40s can actually shoot D linked 762 ammo so you can shoot machine gun ammo out of an m40 obviously less accurate right I couldn't tell I didn't know at the time whether it was you know long range I don't remember it saying lr because it would say lr on it I don't remember it saying that but I remember seeing LC so he's probably shooting D linked 762 which is pretty prevalent around Iraq finding you know 762 long range is not like snipers keep a pretty good inventory of our bullets right um but machine gunners just shit falls off right um and so I was like okay he could so the 762 machine gun ammo is pretty accurate like you can get 700 out of it you know it's not going to get you a thousand but you can get 700 you can definitely get 200 and so Jimmy and I knew right there that we were we were hunting somebody with an American rifle what was the distance about 200 maybe even less right into this middle of this intersection but he was far far back enough that a person in the chaos of whatever was going on wouldn't see a three inch spider hole and I went oh shit so remember at sniper school right we have it saying at saying at sniper school called pain retains right and what we found was something called a target indicator anything and this has been ingrained into my memory right anything a sniper does or fails to do that reveals his presence equipment or location to the enemy at sniper school specifically with the m40a1 and the m40a3 with an internal magazine we were always taught to shoot to load to shoot to load to always because it's a five round internal magazine shoot to load to you always have something in the gun and you never ever leave your brass that's like a a death sentence in sniper school for you and so then I knew that no American sniper would have done this because the army sniper schools just as good right the navy sniper schools are just as good this is not something that we we don't leave our brass laying around and I went okay we don't have a sniper we have a trained marksman which is a difference because the sniper wouldn't have done that but he left his target indicator for us and now we were salivating so now we move out and but I still have normal operations I have to do right I'm still working with the infantry so a long msr michigan between ramadi and feluja the marine court owned to the 5 5 easting and then it picked up ramadi and then army battle space and so from habania to the 5 5 easting was like a bunch of kilometers and so we were getting a lot of ied's in there so what the marines decided to do was establish patrol bases on the north and south side kind of ticking our way out to the 5 5 easting we're going to establish eyes on so that they can't plant ied's in this thing and blow us to you know blow us to hell so we established three different patrol bases with india company uh uh len colman was from chicagos he got to pick the names right so op falcons are op bears and op cubs and then i worked out of a place called op falcons on the southern side of route michigan and now op falcons was an old it was a government building that hadn't been finished yet so it was like moondust and exposed brick but that's where the infantry platoon lived no electricity no running water and the platoon just lived there day in and day out for like the next three months and we'd rotate people out well we rotated out with them and we would go there we'd stay there for a week and we would go hunting at night and go try to find ied in places and during the day we had our own spider holes and we had our own areas to be able to watch because that was part of our job was to we didn't think that we were special we wanted to help the infantry out as best as possible and we had long range optics and guns so we get into op falcons and we established this thing and so we had pretty clear line of sight we're on a hill you have pretty clear pretty clear line of sight to our west pretty clear line of sight to our east but we're on this hill back about 200 meters from the road and in front of us is about 100 to 50 to 100 meters of dead space something i can't cover with direct fire or observation it's just there's buildings in the way and i just can't see this little spotter road so very early on into falcons remember that the the musha hadeen is very active in this area ied strikes all kinds of stuff we were really hunting ied in places as much as possible through there i get a shot that lines up it's like 847 meters or something it's not an easy shot plus i'm shooting through a spider hole over buildings across the street right like a like msr michigan and then down across a wadi i see a guy digging a fucking like pulls up in a car digging an ied and i'm like i got this dude dead to rights but here's the challenge that's a very long shot 847 meters is a very long shot through all of these different you know mediums so i have it's super embarrassing right i can tell you you can tell where this is going right but i'm like hey i've got this thing i catch him through observation we radio up to higher we get approval second platoon has been sitting out there for a week just in their underwear baking right and they're like oh my god we get to kill somebody right we get like finally right and i have an entire platoon of infantry marines surrounding me and the lieutenants like pashute you're cleared cleared to clear hot take the shot right and i'm i'm going in i'm zoning in my other sniper member a sniper team member is getting up on his gun jared ramsey's his name so i see him so i'm not i don't get like first dibs this guy's just moving quick so i'm trying to get around adam jared's getting his gun ready i'm walking him on while the whole platoon is around us i'm giving him the distance i've already shot it with my rangefinder i'm kind of giving him some wind but because he's on msr michigan is elevated and then there's a hill on both sides it's just like a you know wadi on both sides but the challenge is since he's elevated i can't get a very good wind call because i can't see what the wind is doing below it i can't see what it's doing above it because i'm in a spider hole i'm making a whole bunch of excuses right for basically saying i'm taking a really fucking hard shot and the probability of missing is very very high i go ahead the platoon is behind me and i go and i take the shot and like a deer what happens is i send the round and i and i and i watch him it's like if you ever shot over a deer's head or a fox or whatever it is they stop and they kind of like snap down the round shot right over his head which is fine i i'm i'm okay with missing there because he told me where my miss was when he ducked down like that he heard the snap over the top of his head which gave me an indication so now i worked with jared and i'm yelling because i'm racking my bolt and i'm getting another shot down range because i have seconds before he darts somewhere because this the snap the snap happens before the report of the rifle right and i can conceal the report of the rifle because i'm inside of a brick building to a certain extent i have like a couple of seconds jared's on the gun and i'm yelling to him to be able like a 47 i missed over his head so we use a technique called frame shooting and frame shooting is when you can use it for two different you know two different ways frame shooting is basically two or three different snipers however many you want who if you don't know the distance or your elevation you can have somebody aim belt buckle and somebody aim head now we're both ones aiming low and ones aiming high and we're hoping that either one of us will split the difference and hit the target where we want or i can aim high or he can aim low and we have a wider window if that makes sense also when you have windage you can do frame shooting there if i don't know what the wind is doing i can say i'm going to hold left shoulder you hold right shoulder we'll send two bullets simultaneously down there and one of them will get them if you don't know windage or elevation or you're you can you're you're guessing on both you can do diagonals left hip right shoulder same it just basically gets you a wall of lead down there so jared's on the gun he's like i'm good someone's five four fire on the three on the tia two three two with and this all happens within seconds we send two rounds out there this guy falls to the ground drops and is like bleeding out on the ground the entire platoon cheers screaming and runs over to jared and they're like yeah nice shot jared up like what the fuck like we don't really know if i made the shot or not but i had missed the first one so everyone's like fuck this guy right they're like high five and he have a nice job jared you suck but you didn't right you know so right after that a vehicle screeches up while this guy's laying in the street vehicle screeches up and two guys get out it's like a truck right and i'm watching them we already have our windage and elevation pretty well locked but the rules of engagement were so convoluted at the time technically he would be the people picking him up out of like for the vehicle that pulled up by the way that i interpreted the rules of engagement would they were a medevac platform so they were a non-combatant that i couldn't engage now again i i don't know what the right answer is but i know that a lot of people are starting to get to go to jail for things right and there's investigative every shot that we take we have investigations on like we had to do like anytime that we fired we had to do a full report on it this was not oh i f1 or felucia every bullet had to be counted for after every single firefight and if you were short on bullets then you had to answer some questions for it and if the person that you killed didn't come back with gun residue on his hand if they got a hold of that and he didn't come back with gun residue and they couldn't find a gun you're flying to bag dad and you're getting you're having to answer some very hard questions it was a tough spot for us in this place rule books weapons in our hand and rule books in our pockets so i made i was this the senior guy i guess so i made the decision like hey we're not engaging there's two guys that loaded this dude who was shot up into the vehicle and we let him go two days later the battalion commander comes out on a you know on a on a patrol and we explained to him the story and he's like hey nice shot on that i heard about that right you congratulates jared right uh and then we tell him about that and he kind of like yells at me and he was like why didn't you shoot them and i said because they were a medevac platform and he goes no unless they are a marked medevac platform with a red cross or a red crescent then they are within the geneva convention and i was like i don't know man you know like these are so i don't know if he's right i don't know if i'm right i know that i got questioned for not pulling the trigger in this in the scenario um but all this shows like how confusing this time is for all of us and what we're trying to do and this will become important later on so we go by another week all in this time frame we're still hunting this mysterious sniper we're still going out on our night patrols trying to find this as best as possible we're back at op falcons um and it's like the middle of the day nothing's going on um and all of a sudden we have a uh track rolls by in front of us on route michigan and they hit an ied and they hit an id in our dead space and the dead space that i'm trying to watch i'm watching the road and i watch this explosion shoot up into the air and fucking pieces and parts and i and they're in my dead space and i can't there was nothing i could have done and i'm fucking losing it because i'm i'm their sniper i'm the one that's supposed to protect the infantry and i failed at my job so what happens is this vehicle we end up getting a medevac down to these guys this trackers are their uh trackers with the amphibious assault vehicles they're fucked up right we've pulled them back my we get them back to our firm base we're starting to call in an aerial um you know medevac and i'm standing there helpless i'm watching this dude who's got trapped all up his body's fucking bleeding everywhere my platoon corpsman a j barth right who's in my team is working on him and i'm trying to help i don't know what to do i mean i know what to do i'm not an idiot right but like i'm trying i want to get to help and barth comes to me and fucking get the fuck away from me this is my fucking patient now i get like i just didn't know what to do i felt personally responsible because they fucking hit this guy on my watch in my dead space we get the medevac platform we get him out to the bird he ends up surviving doc stabilizes him saves his life we get him to the bird what happens is when that id went off the way that we got the medevac to us was at the five five easting what the marine corps did was we parked an m1a1 or a track at the five five easting at the western edge of our battle space and it stayed there in a static position when that track hit the id in our dead space that track left its position to come here and render aid to their brethren and then bring them back to us for the medevac they were gone for 45 minutes by the time they come back and they go back to the five five easting another id so what happened was they had the enemy had identified our a gap in our lines once they left that area it left it vulnerable and they came back and hit another id and then all of a sudden within 45 minutes we have another urgent surgical another marine who was on the edge of death that we're trying to bring back and i am beside myself i am like standing like i am you know like tears of rage screaming like they're fucking toying with us there was nothing that we could do with these ied's they were so prevalent and they were so quick and i was so angry so jimmy prowlman and i he was now we were again running two sections he was banshee two and i was banshee four we started talking and we were mad how the fuck do we do this how do we get this id in place i want to kill this motherfucker right he's done this to me twice i'm going to bury this bitch we come up with a plan and the plan is this we want to run a bait mission i used to teach later on i taught sniper employment at sniper school but my favorite class at sniper school was mission planning and sniper employment because sniper employment is the way in which we can affect the enemy one of the things that snipers can do is they can fill gaps in friendly lines one of the things that we can do as well is we can fill the gap through an overt position which we don't like to do or we can create a gap and then fill that gap with the sniper in a clandestine position so now the enemy sees that as a natural line of drift or a point of weakness they try to exploit that weakness and we're waiting for him so we devise this type of mission jimmy and i plan this whole thing we brief it to captain colman captain colman's a fucking gangster and he's like absolutely we're gonna run this mission we ended up running this mission up through the chain of command now mind you we're three weeks from going home like we are starting to smell the barn right things are we're starting our new unit is like in route to come relieve us like we are getting ready to leave so by no fault of the unit i don't know where it got shut down but the mission was scrapped uh they said no we're not willing to take that risk i don't know why there was no risk involved but they was they didn't want to take the risk and fucking colman we get back we're pissed we even briefing with him and he says i don't give a shit pashute that's a fucking good plan you're gonna run the mission sounds good sir you're the captain right you're the skipper right so proud of me and i leave a few nights later from op falcons we patrol i think it was six kilometers through like the desert by lake habania and we move west out to where we've identified the five five easting and this is the western edge of our battle space and so we're going to get into position i'm going to bring two bolt guns with me he's bringing two bolt guns with him we're bringing four uh uh security patrol like four infantry guys as security with us so i can put four snipers in four fucking windows covering this thing on each hide site so jimmy's got his team set up and they're looking north and west into kind of into ramadi i'm looking north and east we're both we've got this like web setup and now i've got my security covered for me i bring a squad from uh kilo company and jimmy's got the same thing we move out at a you know we're trying to get into position by uh generally sunup we don't want to be moving with sunup but i also need to wait for the quietest portion of the evening there's the more like the time the hour or two before beginning morning nautical twilight is like when truckers fall asleep it's like the two to four a.m time frame it's when the body's just at its natural circadian low that's when we have to step off i'm trying to get nobody to see us so we patrol low and slow as an eight man element and he is ahead of us as another eight man element he leaves a half an hour ahead and we move into our positions now again we don't have a lot of like overhead imagery we don't have a ton of we've got like maps and like falcon view at the time and we're kind of guessing there's no like whiz bang line of sate or line of sight stuff we're just kind of trying to figure it out so now it's like five o'clock we get there the sun is starting to creep up things are starting to get like i'm starting to get nervous because i have to go to these hide sites and i have to look at them in the middle of the night not getting seen being like does that window have where i want and i have no idea like i'm trying to figure this thing out so we finally find a house that i think is suitable enough and so we go up and brett stedfold my my point man you know opens the gate to the courtyard we go inside the courtyard and i have my like oakley gloves so i need to show these people that we are not their enemy and so i make a conscious decision to show vulnerability first so i have my team around me and i'm protected by that i have my bolt gun slung across my back i have my like an m16 a4 slung down here and i've got my m9 barretta here and i take all my weapons off right i have them all slung and i knock on this guy's door and then i wait five seconds and i knock again i want to make sure that he knows that i'm not going away and then the door peeks open just an eye just like an eye shooting through and the first thing i do is i put my hands up like this and i go like this i'm not here to harm you i need you to stay quiet and he opens the door and we in my best thing i said we're coming in we go inside this house and my team starts moving in as quiet as possible remember we're setting a trap there is a track still in front of this place right now they're sitting there right now even the marines they know that we're in the area but i can't get seen by the marines because i don't want them to shoot my ass either because sometimes word gets kind of messed up so there's still a track sitting somewhere at the 5.5 easting and we're trying to hide from them as well we go inside the house i get sergeant kevin homestead who is the squad leader for kilo company whatever squad it was he's like he's a buddy of mine right and he's like a fantastic hunter right i'm from california right i mean it's northern i've never hunted anything in my life the only thing i've ever hunted to this date walks on two feet right so i've i don't so he like talked to me about mule deers and white tails and he's explaining the difference and stuff he's just a good old boy right and i love hearing about this stuff it's just not my thing right but i know he knows what he's talking about so he takes the squad and he's in charge of putting the family we take them all out of their beds out of their bedroom we put him in one room and we have to keep them quiet because they are imagine some dude armed to the teeth showing up with your house at your house with your children there's a couple of options people would make on that americans might make a different choice right you know nobody's coming into my house without a fight right and we have to keep them quiet so we're super respectful through everything we're trying arabic as best as possible we're showing how compassionate we can be to them and we put them down put them into their into their room bring beds and shit like that and then my team goes to work immediately kevin's handling that my team goes to work we're setting up our hide sides brett stidpholes covering east long axis down michigan huge he's got two kilometers of visibility down michigan and we've got like a vector range finders with gps guided whatever's i can get a grid mission in 30 seconds to hit wherever i need that's what i'm trying to do if my bolt gun can't get you to click my optics can get you at three and so that's what we're trying to be able to advertise so i get into my position and now it's like six a.m. we're back on track i'm feeling more comfortable and i have my little space and i'm kind of like i open this window you know like the movies people like oh it's just perfect and it's and you have this perfect overwatch it's like not that at all i've got to like make this thing happen so i have this like little iraqi window in their bedroom it's still warm from when the husband and wife were sleeping so i'm sitting on the corner of their bed and i have this little iraqi window i'm like and i'm opening this thing up well luckily for me it's got a screen in front of it right so that helps me for creating a clandestine hide site and then through what i won't go into you know on on you know on the show but we have our own way of setting up our hide site to be able to maintain our you know concealment behind there so i go through that process and i set up my concealment and this is not a good hide site like i'm just trying to make i have a nightstand and a fucking pillow as my bench rest for my gun right and then i have i've like scooted the bed over as quiet as possible and i'm just sitting at the top of the bed but i'm looking right at this uh at the five five easting i'm like on it and i'm and i'm looking at this market and i can hear the track in front of me i know where they're at but i can't physically see them i can only get an antenna or something like that they're technically in my dead space but that's okay i'm covering this area so the plan is this at exactly 07 a.m our guns both teams will all be set everyone set set set at 07 a.m the track is going to screech out of there like it has somewhere to be as fast as human lips rubber or whatever it is right and going to leave as fast as possible and leave the area open until we tell them to come back and this is like a couple of days kind of thing i want like we are here i need to kill this id in place here and so we go through this kind of rotation i sit there it's now seven you know the track takes off doc barth is my partner in this scenario right also named a j um and a very very good friend of mine but the way that we treat our corpsman in the marines is you can insult me but you can never insult my corpsman the relationship that we have to corpsman is is is the reverence that we have for them the two people that marines cry for when they're dying is their mother and their doc there is nothing higher than a navy corpsman to us my breath my blood the challenge with corpsman is they kind of take on the team mom role right and which is great but when what doc says goes it outranks anybody if doc says you need to sleep or you need to take a knee or you need to drink water you need to do you needed to do it a few hours ago so doc comes up to me i haven't slept yet it's seven a.m the trap has just been set and he comes up and he says hey p uh why don't you why don't you go down in your rest like oh no good and he's like hey you haven't slept yet you're no good to us you know exhausted right so i was like our roger that you just don't argue with doc right and so i go down all by by going down i mean i roll off the gun into the warm bed behind me and i like put the blanket over you know on below me and then i just fall asleep but the challenge is at the time we didn't know a lot about this stuff we were doing hour on hour off was the cycle we understand now that you need more than an hour to be able to get some sort of restorative sleep so i should have been doing at least a two hour increment between between breaks whatever it is but we were doing a 50 percent so both snipe each guns had one sniper on it and the other guy went down for a rest cycle for an hour but also when we're in the day and whatever it is if you're feeling good you kind of just keep going you help the guy out but what doc did is our rotation was hour on hour off which meant i should have been back on the gun at eight and been down uh yeah from eight to nine i should have been on the gun but what doc did is he was like he wakes me up at nine a.m he squeezes my thigh right because we had a couple of signals was like hey it's if you squeeze my shoulder shits in trouble right wake up now if you squeeze my thigh it's friendly and it's okay so like little subconscious things so he squeezed my thigh twice and i woke up and i'm looking at my watch i'm like it's nine a.m what are you doing he's like i was feeling good i got you an extra i got you an extra hour i was like oh cool appreciate it so it gives me this kind of rundown we've got a sketch we got a range card our range card goes to 300 meters i don't have a ton of visibility the place i'm actually thinking is going to get something is Brett Stidful in the window next to us because he's got three clicks of visibility i just have to cover this market because i don't know what the fuck's gonna there's if there's also a lot of stuff there so i don't know what's going to come out of this market so doc finishes up his little brief he explains to what's going on hey the chai shop's been set up right everything the market's now open people are kind of milling about um and he points at a car and he goes yeah this guy just pulled in this guy's over here driver got out and he's grabbing some chai and i said okay cool that sounds great and then he gets up and in like the most midwestern way possible he's like all right i gotta go take a shit and he like and he stands up and walks out of the room and then he pokes his head back and he goes hey try not to kill anybody while i'm gone and then he leaves and like goes to do his thing right within you know now it's it's like nine a.m it's starting to get hot do you remember the we called it formaldehagan it was the copenhagen but it was like the expert whatever shit they put in it japanhagen we called it as well so i throw in a lipper right it's it's nine a.m in the summer so it's already africa hot right and i've got like my bathwater you know now gene bottle that i'm trying to drink and i'm just doing my thing i get back in the gun i'm doing the 50 meter overlapping strip search right so like reading from right to left right so i can catch any movement along the way i'm just going through and getting an analysis of the area and i'm there for like 15 minutes you know cruising through and i noticed the car that had been parked there a little gray i think was an opal um had been parked there nothing out of the baseline just a normal market on a normal day well then what happens is i hear a track rolling down the down msr michigan and they have that high pitch wine like they're cruising down and they come up and they park at the 5 5 easting i'm like hey red one red one this is banshee four we're running a mission here uh i need you guys to get you know i need you guys to not be here and the guy that comes back over the radio is a dude named kyle burton kyle burton and i had done like two tours already at this point and he was like a squad leader with india company it was absolute savage like just a hero in felucia right now he's got his own squad and he's like hey banshee this is red one we're just cooling our engines down we're gonna be out of your hair in like 10 minutes and i said okay no worries just running a mission i need you not to be here for a very long time this is fine it's still okay i just need you to leave and he's like yeah no worries so then i'm back to doing my thing right kind of 50 meter overlapping strip search and i'm working my way down and then i get to the car and as i get to the car i look so the car is now parked uh parked away from me yeah it's like this no it's like this sorry parked away from me kind of like uh you know 70 degree angle if you will but the front end of the car is pointing towards the market the back end of the car is pointing towards me it's a little four-door gray sedan and you know just like a run-of-the-mill iraqi sedan well what i notice what like i have my at the time i'm using a schmittenbender variable power optic we just the schmittenbender 8541s we had just gotten those first time marine snipers had a variable power optic so i'm looking through my vectors doing my work kind of cruising through the vectors and then i'll all of a sudden i catch like a little glare like nothing nothing like in the movies right but i catch this little thing i was like what was that and so i get behind my gun and i have three power on uh at the on the schmittenbender and i'm looking at it and then i zoom in to like eight power and then i zoom in to 12 power and i go holy fuck it's a sony handicap so what happened was if you imagine the back of the sedan do you know where like in the back seat of the sedan you have that little back rear triangle window so you have like the front passenger's door you have the rear passenger door and there's usually like a triangle window that helps wrap it around to the trunk you know and there's that flat platform whatever every single window in this car is tinted like california illegal tinted kind of thing right except this rear triangle window and on and inside this rear triangle window is a like almost like a little carpet laying on this little kind of rear area and a sony handicap with its window open and it has this like viewfinder or whatever it is open and i freak the fuck out right i zoom in on this thing and i go oh shit first thing that crosses my mind was ied oh my god another one snuck in they got underneath my nose again they found my dead space they're gonna kill these guys holy shit so the first thing i do and i'm like hissing this because i'm in a sniper hide site and i go red one red one this is banshee four button up right now you're about to get hit and i don't know why they didn't do it but their first response was what and i was like button up right now like get down and then i hear him his mic is keyed and he goes and he's like he looks left he looks right and he goes brace for impact and he like closes his the tc hatch so he's in the troop commander hatch of the track and the track is just you know uh it's like the engines are just cooling down and i can hear him yell this and then all of a sudden i'm alone it's me in this room Burton is now in the track and i see a sony handicap i have no confirmation that anybody is inside of this car i have not seen anybody touch it i've not seen anybody leave it doc told me that the chai shop the driver and whatever it sat at the chai shop and i was like all right i'm i'm like on the radio i'm kind of trying to walk this in at the firm bases or the little patrol bases we have squawk boxes so people don't have like hanging the radio on their neck and they're hearing this right and so captain Coleman hears this gets up on the net and goes banshee four banshee four this is diesel six what's going on and i said i have got a sony handicap recording our patrol there are some things about to happen now everybody looks like super cool in the movies and how all these things like this is not like we weren't prepared for this right you don't know that somebody you think that this is i'm about seconds away from a fireball right and killing 13 marines in front of a fucking sniper so now we begin this like three-way standoff again i don't know that anybody's in this car so what i start doing is technically a camera is positive id i can destroy this thing but i can't shoot anything i don't know that anybody's in the car so i can't shoot it what am i going to shoot at right so i start spit i hear cobras in the distance right and we're near tq where all the cobras are out and i'm like let's get a fucking hellfire on this guy now so i start calling captain Coleman right india company is jockeying up they're throwing all their gear on because something's about to happen and we're not about to be victims so they're spinning up all the platoons are like getting the react moving people are dressing up and this is matters of moments right and i'm like you know calling in i've got my like a vector so i got a fucking 10 digit mensurated grid right like there's no math i need to do in this thing i know where this thing is at get me a cobra well cobras are like bingo on fuel or something like that right so they can't come in to hit and immediately i switched to india fires india fires request immediate suppression so i'm not doing a polar i'm not doing a grid i've got immediate suppression get me rounds now immediate suppression grid you know 11 seara whatever it is right and i read this thing back they start spinning their mission up now they have to go to tq because tq is where the artillery is at so tq starts spinning the mission up and again all of this is happening in minutes well i'm waiting the track is still gurgling there's no movement in the vehicle i don't know what's happening i've just got laser eyes on this thing and i'm in the room by myself and what happens if i mean it seems like an eternity goes by captain colman comes over the net uh banshee for immediate fire immediate suppression fires denied you're within a no fire area and i went what and i look at the map 400 meters north of us of the 400 meters north of the car is a mosque and a mosque has a 500 meter no fire area on it meaning i can't do shit like i have to get you know permission from like the queen of england if i want to shoot inside of this thing so that's not happening especially with artillery even though i've got a 10 digit mensurated grid so then i'm sorry i i've got 60s at op falcons i've got a mortar section that's low low ordinate right i i can guarantee where they're gonna hit india fires diesel sorry banshee you know adjust fire polar right i'm trying to do a polar mission all of my sniper training is coming through i'm trying just get me fucking something on this solve this get me some he to solve this problem and as i'm spinning this mission up i see a left hand an ashy left hand come forward i didn't again i didn't know anybody was in the car i can kind of see a sony handy cam and then i see what i mean now i know what it is but like i saw like like a almost like a like a two by four kind of look at that i didn't know what it was right but i saw something right like a an oblong two by four looking thing and i see an ashy finger come up and start messing with the camera and then i'm like oh diesel you know we've got movement right now and he kind of breaks protocol on this thing because what's happening is by no fault of anyone else's the battalion commander is actually on a local patrol he's driving down route michigan and he's turned tuned in to india attack and so he's able to hear all of this happening and because he's a good commander he's trying to like not have civilian cows you know he's trying to not necessarily delay right he's not denying any of our fires he's also trying to get there so there's a little bit of hesitation in what's going on the cavalry's literally on its way and then all of a sudden i see a hand and captain colman comes in i was like break break break we've got movement i've got a hand you know i'm not yelling this but like we've got movement and he's messing with the camera and colman breaks the total protocol and he says poshudi take the shot well he buys the bullet at that's at that point right and i totally understand it right so what i have to do now is i have this triangle window i can't see anything else in the car except a hand that's the only untinted portion of the car and so what i do is i'm imagining where he's looking at because the window the little sony handicap windows tilted up like this so i'm trying to guess where i think somebody's head is at because he's not looking through this i'm trying to guess where his head's at his left hand is this he's looking at this i'm and now i'm trying to punch through this window and i said hey i'm going to send one bullet through to try to break the glass uh and then send two more right after it the challenge is there's fucking civilians everywhere it's an active market and i've got to send a 762 into a medium tempered glass i don't know where that bullet's going to go the math stops mathing at that point so i could literally ricochet and kill somebody and we've already heard how all the investigations are happening so there's a ton of weight and a ton of indecision it's not like yeah blast that fool like it's like i've got to weigh all this it's going on so i you know i go through and i'm trying to kevin homestead now comes into the room and he sent hears hearing all this and now he comes into the room breathe in i'm trying to steady myself my heart to my throat breathe in breathe out fire on the natural respiratory pause boom i slam one forward and then i slam two right after it within a minute of angle like one goes through like one's an inch high and the two more right after it and then all hell breaks loose because the nobody knows that we're there the family below us starts screaming because they think that we're in a gunfight the family next door starts screaming because they think americans or whatever's executing you know the family inside the house people are the block starts screaming right and and the radio is going crazy i'm trying to get you know bern i have now shot into this car and i said red one red one i need you to get over that vehicle now so what they have to do to get over to that side because there's a wadi in between the way that they have to get over they have to scream 200 meters down the road to cross the wadi to come back up the surface road to go where the car is at at the market so all of this picks up i get off of the gun because now i'm trying to control the scene kevin get on the gun now in the marine corps community this is like a big no no we like snipers get all weird about having non snipers get behind a gun but i don't really have an option at this point and kevin's an avid hunter right i don't really give a shit cover this it's it's 197 meters it's not exactly you know a hard shot for us so now i'm on my knee i'm trying to be able to get the track around we've got the battalion commander coming down we've got the cavalry's rolling in and i'm trying to coordinate all this because i still don't know what's going on i still think an ambush is coming i don't know i've not confirmed it's a sniper we don't know any of this stuff because an ied can start an ambush it's like the the textbook way of doing this so i'm trying to cover their shoulders and the track leaves the scene and they scream out of there leaving the scene and then what happens is kevin taps me on my shoulder and he goes hey pee check it out the dude the dude sitting at the chai shop finishes his last drink of chai stands up and starts walking towards the car super nonchalant he has his prayer beads in his hand he's like wiping the crumbs on his little calf tan right and he's got this smug look on his face but if you think about it there were three shots fired from an unsuppressed m40 series sniper rifle and then what happened was a track slammed the door shut there was chaos in the street and they took off screaming down the road this is par for the course this is their mo this is what happens every time that they shoot so this spotter if you will has no idea that nothing everything is different so he walks towards the car and remember the conversation for before i said kevin as soon as he touches that car plug him he becomes a combatant he has made his choice i am now just a hammer he opens the side door of the car up looks in the back goes like this kevin shoots him in the side of the chest he turns puts both of his hands on the roof of the car and the door of the car falls back a little bit kevin puts another one in the center of his sternum breaks his sternum the dude falls to his knees more screaming right more chaos everyone's freaking out and then i'm like hey dude get off the gun i need to grab this right and so i because i don't know the situation is like super deteriorating at this point so i get behind the gun and now this guy crawls inside of the car and mind you the car is parked like this to me so i can't see the driver's seat i don't know what's going on in the back seat i can't see shit i fired three rounds into it kevins plug this guy twice and he's still moving he crawls across the front of the car and now what happens is he kind of like lays his butt in the driver's seat and he has his feet over the center console into the passenger seat but i can't i can't get a clear shot to his i'm trying to kill this guy like but i can't see through the window you know to be able to get a clear shot his head the only thing that i can see are his knees i can see his knees and his feet i've got a squad of marines coming around the corner i don't know if he's a suicide bomber i don't know if they have some sort of trip wires from daisy chain i've got this track that's now coming up at 13 marines are barreling down this side street to get there the only thing i can think to do is continue to plug this guy i blow his right knee away i blow his left knee away he's immobilized at this point and then i'm trying to like i don't know curve the bullet like wing things through the rear side window to try to catch this guy because he's like this i'm trying to catch him in the head because i don't know what's happening and i'm just trying to control the situation Burton's guys scream up the tracks like you know you know duke's a hazard right turn into this thing the back opens up the marines pour out and i'm talking to Burton i'm like hey you've got one guy unconfirmed we've shot him a couple of times in the front there was movement in the back of the car i have no idea what's going on inside of there and so he comes up and he's got his you know saw gunner and they open the front door and the the spotter has now died he has got his prayer beads in his hand and he basically like drowned in his you know we long shot at him twice and so he basically drowns and he's and he's gone and i'm like hey dude back of the car don't know what's happening they open the door and they go oh yeah there's another one back here and he's dead so from there the scene is like now we've got the cavalry starting to show up there's a lot more going on i'm feeling a little bit better the marines are now safe there's the the the the ambush potential starting to fall and and i said hey like i'm over now uh kyle burton's left shoulder i said listen dude let me i'm now i'm his like guardian angel and i said listen in the back left rear window of this car back right rear window of this car you're going to find a sony handicap i need you to grab the sony handicap and hold it up in the air for me and he goes yep it's a sony handicap got it and then he puts it and they like put it in the track right and then he goes yeah there's something else in here now it's backs to me so what he does is he grabs this thing and he takes it now he's not on like we're not like super we're not navy seals we don't have like cool headsets at this point we're like grunts you know like we have like shitty radio antennas and he's got like an i-com radio you know like a walkie talkie and so i'm so he's doing things and i'm not trying to bother him super much so he takes this thing and he goes yeah it looks like a rifle and he grabs it and he moves it into the track and i go stop for a second pull that back and he turns around and i said hold that above your head and he holds the rifle above his head macmillan stock remington 700 short action barrel a scope i don't recognize no bipods on the front olive drab sort of multi tricolor green and i said holy shit i said kyle i need you to read me the first serial number the first digits of the serial number from that weapon system so m40a3s had i think it was echo 676 if i wasn't if i'm not mistaken was the first four digits of a marine sniper's serial number the m40a1s were a november 6 or november some series of that he says remington model 700 november 8 or whatever the numbers are and now i've got my entire team in the room at this point and we realize right there it was two four sniper rifle it was tommy parker's rifle so the situation continues to deteriorate now there's kind of a riot kind of starting to form people are angry they think that we're just killing they were not happy with us at the time frame especially near ramadi so we got to get out we got up now we're now we're loading up into this track right they load us up in this track and they hand me the rifle and the first thing i do is i look at this rifle and i'm like blown away from it like blown away by it the first thing i do is i take the last round chambered inside of that rifle and i take that that bullet and i take the next bullet that bullet so technically that would be my hogs tooth by the definition i killed another sniper i took that hogs tooth from him that was the round that was meant for somebody else but what we did with that was we ended up getting that and being it got it put on a plaque that had the single bullet vertical and then it had two four and three five because the way that the marine corps regiments work is even though it's second battalion fourth marines they're part of the fifth marine regiment they're all in the same camp with us in camp samiteo in camp pennilton california they're a sister battalion that round was never mine the round belonged to fifth marines it passed from two four it went to three five and we brought it home so the last bullet chambered in that thing was placed on that plaque and then given to the regiment regimental commander later on the worst part about the whole thing is that juba's hand was turning the camera off ins when we did a post analysis of that um you could see kyle burton he was the next target he was in juba's sights and he was going to kill kyle burton when i saw the camera and had kyle look left and look right you can see it in the camera he looked left in the right and he slammed the tc hat shut his shot went away and something spooked him he was starting to sit there we were in a three-way cat and mouse game the best part about that was inside of that video you could see my hide site you couldn't see me but he was looking directly at me so in his field of view for that camera i was behind it kyle burton was the target the only bad part is that he turned the camera off because you would have seen the report the flash from my rifle coming out of my window and into his car and blowing that whole thing up right and going through that process but he turned it off but that's eventually what got me to shoot him was seeing his hand coming through but by an unimaginable you know stroke of lock or timing we were in the right place at the right time and we were able to return that rifle wow wow you fucking picked up a small handicap in the middle of an active market wow holy shit you're a fucking observer wow i appreciate it city boy learned it in sniper school holy shit you know if they if they have that feel man so we were hit right away yes and no yes it did the first call i made was not to my family the first call i made was to quantico sniper school they're the lead school house mild sniper team leader sergeant blake kohl was a sniper instructor at quantico he was my first we got on the iridium he's my first phone call jimmy and i got on the phone together blake we got him and we gave him a full after action they briefed everybody on what was going on and it was the shot heard around the world for the marine sniper community because it came we lost four marine snipers when that thing went away and the poetic justice that it was taken back by a fucking marine and brought back to our hands was so perfect for us nearly two years to the day june 16 2006 june 24th 2004 is when it was lost the best part of this story well there's an interesting kind of thing the rifle was actually lost for a number of years we thought that the marine corps had lost the rifle because it went into an armory and the marine corps does it the marine corps sometimes does and isn't the best about it a long story short i get a call from quantico virginia and a buddy of mine another sniper it's like legend in the community calls me up and he says hey man not many people know about it but a rifle just arrived at the museum we think it's the one that you got back and i went what i like effectively what happened is fifth marine regiment owned that rifle when it came back and it was at display kind of like some of the displays in here at the regimental headquarters i had brought my mom to go visit that rifle at one point it's like on a weekend dude marines are asshole sometimes right so it's on a weekend and i'm like visiting fifth marine headquarters and i'm showing my mom is like four foot nothing right you know and i'm showing her this gun and i'm in the regimental headquarters and like the regimental duty comes down he's like can i help you and i'm like oh i'm just showing this thing you know whatever here and i don't really tell the story i was like i'm just showing you know this rifle here and the guy's like a dick and he like asks he's like i need you guys if you're not if you're not any business being the regimental headquarters i need you to leave and i was like all right cool you know like have a good one my mom was so mad at me she was like why didn't you tell him i'm like it doesn't matter you know like so it was on display at the regimental headquarters but then the regiment deployed to afghanistan as a regiment well when they do that they put everything into storage and the rumor was that they didn't pay the storage bill so for 10 years i thought this thing got storage wars right and some asshole bit on this thing and got this piece of marine corps history right um but through a stroke of luck somebody found it in the regimental armory randomly super rust did not taken care of right and just like in the back it just wasn't nobody really took it that seriously it was this weird phenomena and um then we you know i had a conversation in 20 i think it's 2022 and they're like hey we think we we got it here so i email like the marine corps dear marine corps museum right and they're they're super suspect of like some rando who's like hi i'm the guy who got the rifle bag right you know and again nobody knows my name like soldier of fortune magazine picked it up and they have a they did a whole article on it but in the article i deny i i i deny anything to do with it it just says that's my battalion commander great guy by the way like wrote my letter of recommendation to become a gunner later on that's the last bullet chambered inside a juba's rifle no shit yep and what we did was it was it was a marine corps victory and so we wanted to give it back to the marine corps and so i think in the article it says a 21 year old marine sniper from san jose i think that's all it says that is fucking badass it's it was just it was something that we wanted to give i think to the unit and when you know and again i think we talked about it a couple of times to anybody that's uh you know mad or whatever the validity of the story sure but you know like i said here's my gunbook and here's my gunbook from that gun from that day and you'll see over here above the black it says june 16 2006 and it says two kills next to it and i'm not supposed to have the gunbook the marine corps may want it back but it's supposed to stay with the gun and then that is pamphlets that we dropped that the that the service dropped or started to spread out there uh to let them know that you know we got it back and we killed juba that's the car that's the car that's the rifle that's the car there's the body wow what does this say i have no idea honestly it would it wouldn't take too long to google translate it um and then here's my muzzle velocity randomly from that gun it's just things we kept the cool part the coolest part about this whole story was when we got it and it was confirmed the marine corps told me and i got a chance to go see it in the if you ever get a chance you may have the connections to do this and i'm able to connect with the people the marine corps museum has an armory of all of our historic i mean water cooled machine german cool german water cooled machine guns from world war one uh um smedly not smithy but like uh the original mammaluk sword right like the pirates guns with the you know the the pistol with like the cone or whatever the the scatter guns from pirate hunting days in the 1700s this armory has everything it's freaking amazing and they had the weapon system in there i had to go through some like pretty heavy vetting because they were like all right yeah nice no one's claimed credit of it you know for it you know now this like rando 20 years later or 15 years later is like talking about it but i showed them some of the things that we showed here and we had a good conversation i showed them i have a picture of me with that rifle from the day that we killed juba me holding that rifle to be able to kind of tie the whole thing you know to kind of gather and that was the piece when we talked to the marine corps museum about putting it in the museum i was adamant that i wanted my name nowhere near it because i the reason why i started stepping forward was because one some people were monetizing it they some people were taking the story and taking it making whatever it was and i just wasn't comfortable with that but really what happens is there are three parts to the story the first part of the story is how the rifle was lost and whose rifle it actually was the second part of the story was what that rifle did while it was in enemy hands and the third part of the story was how we got it back people only wanted to focus on the third part of the story so when it got put into the marine corps museum i made sure and i were and they were they were and again like i didn't really demand anything they were very easy to work with on this it's tommy parker's name that's next to that rifle because it was never mine i held it for one day for 10 minutes that was his rifle and he died protecting it and now you know i saw on the internet recently and i haven't shared this thing but i saw on the internet recently uh is his brother and his son went to the marine corps museum and stood in front of his dad's rifle damn that's what it's about man that's brotherhood that's like i get to live on that was you know i get to move on with my life and and go on and live and i think it was his brother and i'm not mistaken it was his son that got a chance to be there in front of his dad's gun and his brother's gun and it's not going to bring him back but that family knows that his death was avenged that his death was not in vain he was a you know like a good man with a kid i think it was god i think it was son forgive me on that um but you know and now they have a place like and that belongs to the marines if i put my name on it it belongs to me and that's not what the marines are about if i put his name on it belongs to the marine corps good man good man wow dude that is something i appreciate it congratulations oh thank you thank you i still have the second bullet the first one they got to keep the second one i made sure i kept that one i got that one at home cool let's uh let's take a break cool hi i'm sarah adams the host of vigilance elites the watch floor where we highlight what matters it became a permissive state explain to you why it matters and then aim to leave you feeling better informed than you were before you hit play terrace hostile intelligence agencies organized crime not everything is urgent but this show will focus on what is need to know not just what is nice to know oxford montessori school is now oxford millwood school a new name the same genuine care academic ambition and belief in every child set within a beautiful rural campus just 20 minutes from city center our small classes personalize pathways and strong send expertise give pupils the support challenge and confidence they need to succeed especially those who may not have thrived in larger settings find out more at our open day on may the 21st search oxford millwood school open day oxford montessori school is now oxford millwood school a new name the same genuine care academic ambition and belief in every child set within a beautiful rural campus just 20 minutes from oxford city center our small classes personalize pathways and strong send expertise give pupils the support challenge and confidence they need to succeed especially those who may not have thrived in larger settings find out more at our open day on may the 21st search oxford millwood school open day hard a j that was uh quite the accomplishment there i appreciate wow i mean i know i think i already said it in the last segment but i mean to pick a handy cam up as a sniper and i mean you just showed me the vantage point you see the photo the vantage point and wow i appreciate that that's impressive man i was just doing what the training said you know taking an opportunity to run the 50 meter 50 meter overlapping strip search just honestly it was something that i had learned in sniper school and um you know one of our sniper sayings is you know suffer silently and silently suffer and patiently wait is is what our thing is our job is to do that um and what was interesting about that was it was a three-way standoff and each person was waiting for the other to flinch and we just had to make sure he flinched first uh now we were doing a lot of things to try to get him to flinch earlier with you know missiles and artillery and things like that but it's it's it's just kind of i think patience is the virtue in that you know um and it kind of you know plays back to the testament of you know the sniper ethos is just you know patiently suffer and suffer patiently right on man so then you move over to recon uh i go to sniper school as an instructor so i get asked to come back as a sniper instructor and i was a sniper instructor for about a year um and then now first sergeant jackson so remember gunny jackson from earlier on so i'm a sniper instructor at camp pennilton uh and i'm teaching employment i'm with westley pain and dav slasky so the guys that brought me up now i'm working under them as a sniper instructor and about six months into that afghanistan starting to pick up and then what happens is uh now first sergeant ricky jackson comes and pays a visit to scout sniper school um and in that visit he's just coming to check on me he's been keeping tabs on my career and where i'm at so he walks in and uh we have a conversation and i let him know you know that i'm thinking about you know going over to recon and his answer was oh man you know you know p shoot you just love getting your ass kicked right you know and so it was a goal of mine once i had become you know a sniper it was it was like this kind of pivotal moment when i was going through sniper school and i think that what westley pain taught me was when i was going through sniper school he told me to write whatever it is that i wanted most in this world he told me to write it on my mirror and so he said part of being a sniper is visualization right we have to visualize the path of the bullet the arc right the rotation of the earth the way that the wind works part of being you know a sniper in life was visualization so as a student he had me go home and he had me write scout sniper in a non-permanent marker on my mirror so every morning when i was shaving what he said my my nasty little pig face i'd shave my face i'd visualize that so i came back to sniper school after everything you know in the deployment and you know he helped to reinforce that gunny jackson came back talked to me and he said you know in our conversation of what i wanted to do he said okay p shoot and he said this is something you really want to do and i said yeah and he says we've already been over this he says every man is in charge of his own destiny i'm going to come back in six months if you're not here i'll know where you're at and so gunny or now first sergeant jackson gave me permission and kind of helped me to you know accomplish my next goal and kind of you know join the reconnaissance community and so when i got to brc or the basic recon course i'll probably just say recon school because it's easier here but basic recon course um i did what westley pain told me and i wrote reconnaissance marine on my mirror and so part of that visualization was every day reminding myself that that's what i wanted to do um and we pushed into that and so for those that don't know this is fun as we have a seal and a recon marine um kind of having a good conversation about this it's a good chance to talk about for me uh of what recon is what it means to me like some of our lineage and where we come from so recon as a whole it's a very interesting organization within an organization what i found from a um you know kind of anthropological kind of study was that recon marines always revere navy seals um because they have um a very good community they're a tight knit group of people i think that there's roughly 3000 navy seals if i'm not mistaken i think there's 800 reconnaissance marines um and we look to seals in a lot of ways as a as a partner pair because i think that we you know competition breeds excellence when i talk to people about you know the joke is so a good friend of mine and i'll just say his first name is john he's at uh seal team five currently and he heard me say this one time and i'm probably never ever going to live it down but i was the thing that kills reconnaissance marines is our motto is silent professionals right so like on our solaris lens mortalis right swift silent deadly is kind of another one of our things but the joke is whenever i'm talking to someone and i have to explain what a reconnaissance marine is or a force reconnaissance marine is they go okay cool and i look at them not not registering that in their eyes like okay neat like they're just kind of giving me like the north south to be nice and i go do you know do you know what a navy seal is and they go oh yeah i'm like we're like the marine core version of that it's like every time that i have to explain what a marine or a force recon marine is i have to use a navy seal the cool part is recon and navy seals have grown up together in the special operations realm so in 1938 was around the first time reconnaissance marines came into existence and it was when the marine core was developing their amphibious warfare doctrine now this started in you know in the early 1900s and moved into the late 1930s the first i think it was called observer group one started in 1938 and then eventually in 1942 what we needed to do was develop an amphibious reconnaissance capability before large landing forces made the island hopping campaigns so i think it was if correct me if i'm wrong but navy udt teams or underwater demolition teams you navy udts and recon marines or observer group one or amphibious reconnaissance worked together in the pacific a lot of us coming out of naval shipping or submarines so specifically reconnaissance marines when we see each other it's an inside kind of greeting that we do like the marine core likes to do u-raw right um recon marines say a ruga to one another and that comes from our tradition of originally being born on submarines or coming out of submarines because what happens is when the submarines would dive or they would surface they would say a ruga a ruga right with their kind of their whatever their horn was and so recon marines adapted that so recon marines when we see each other in passing we'll say a ruga and like do a little fist bump it's kind of a of a lineage back to you know where we came from um and so stepping into that role as a reconnaissance student uh coming from the sniper community i had kind of a leg up i did what's called a lateral move so i was a sergeant before i moved over to become a reconnaissance marine i was a little older than most people but i had a little bit more experience than you know the average uh marine coming through it and then i met this person who i instantly um competed with and i would say at times i i hated his name was matt engham and he was a uh an east coast sniper he was also a pistol instructor for high-risk personnel which was a course in quantico virginia and so he was an east coast sniper and i was a west coast sniper and we had very similar kind of upbringings in the service and similar experiences and we both checked into the base reconnaissance course together um and so he and i kind of you know were both vying for honor grad we wanted to be as good as we could through the process and we competed with one another relentlessly through this entire thing well during the course which at the time was i think four months now brc's around five months in its whole or in its totality um we somewhere along the way we became really really good friends and so since he was an older guy from the east coast he stayed at my house like slept on my couch we would study together and he was this kind of guy that like was always always always nipping at your heels to be a little bit better and it's really fun when you're in an environment like that to find someone to compete with matt was my like polar opposite in a lot of ways i'm like boisterous i talk with my hands right i'm all over the place matt was the silent professional type when we were going through brc and through the course you know we do an amphibious phase in coronado um and then we do you know land phase up in northern or up in camp pennilton and then we do a lot of pool phases a lot of very similar training um i don't know that our training mirrors buds in as far as the sequence of events and i know that you guys have diving inside of your basic course those are follow-on schools for us so our what we would call pre-brc or our reconnaissance training and assessment program is like a four month or excuse me a four week kind of gut check that's our weeding people out of the system and then you enter into an individual skills phase you enter into a land navigation excuse me a patrolling phase and then you have an amphibious phase down in coronado and the fun thing i like to do is you know everybody knows the navy seal boats right you know you guys are always carrying them on your heads and so the funny thing that we like to joke with and especially as a reconnaissance instructor later on is we liked to kind of you know joke around that we're art we're carrying our actual zodiacs and so i think your guys's boats like 195 pounds the reconnaissance marine boats are about 380 pounds and so there's always like a joke back and forth we have to take a lot more people underneath that to be able to carry that load but running the zodiacs one of the things that our instructors would do is in the pacific when we would go we're on the silver strand actually on coronado we're on the dry side of coronado where you guys are on the wet side of coronado on the on the on the strand itself so we would come out into the surf zone and the recon instructors and the seal instructors would always somehow link up and then we would go hand in hand or arm in arm the recon marines would go into the surf zone with the bud students right and so it was you know thrashing together kind of thing so it's always been really fun we've never actually you know any of the stuff that people see on the internet between like recon versus seals that doesn't really exist for us in in the in the community itself it's always been you know yeah we compete for missions when we go overseas but we also have different bosses so i think a lot of people get confused as to where recon falls inside of the marine core hierarchy so we have marsock who are raiders now and we have recon so the way that i would describe marsock is they are a special operations unit that works for socom they are marines who work for socom we are a special operations capable unit that works for the marine core when we created marsock from uh from um the force recon companies in 2006 and 2007 we had something called marine core detachment one and debt one was this experimental unit of the you know the top dogs of of force recon companies and brought them together and had this experimental unit in 2006 it was a rumsfeld initiative and that eventually turned into marine special operations command and then eventually turned into raiders so the best thing when we did that what we realized and and the marines then worked for socom what marine commanders lost was they lost a special operations capable asset that worked directly for the marine core and so what recon does now and what they're currently doing now is a lot of special operations missions or clandestine missions around the world but staying working for marine combatant commanders so that a marine general or marine colonel can always have access to snake eaters we lost that when we when we allowed marsock to work for socom a very different role and there is no again i know the internet tries to do some stuff there is no bad blood between recon and marsock we have very different jobs there are areas where we have similarities but i would compare a lot of what marsocks roles are is very similar to the odas are really similar to the green berets where i would say that recon falls a little bit more in line with navy seals and so we have the visit board search and seizure we have you know you know long range reconnaissance parachute and dive insertion all those same methods of insertion and extraction we just happen to work for the marine expeditionary unit or the marine expeditionary forces themselves so it's kind of a fun you know nuance through there and matt and i got a chance to learn this as we were kind of going through the basic reconnaissance course together right on what did you think of the reconnaissance course well like all courses that i've attended in the marine core i was terrible at first so i'm not an aquatic you know monster so what thankfully what happens is we have a very steep pool phase in the beginning and our pool phase is again the kind of the great equalizer meant to weed a lot of people out and so i got really really good at you know treading really really good at our underwater you know crossovers brick treads all that kind of stuff the thing where i struggled the most was our open water fins and the way that recon does open water fins is different now than navy seals do their open water fins so we have to use i think you guys are familiar with like rockets and jets like the fins that we put on those things are like two by fours right um when we when i was going through brc seals were experimenting with a type of stroke that was i think was called the combat side stroke and it was this like interesting hybrid of a full almost like a crawl stroke but they were doing it on their side and it allowed for a lot more efficient movement the recon community didn't allow that as part of their testing criteria so there was no side stroke or combat side stroke allowed and then going into the amphibious portion down in coronado pushing all that weight i had a smaller frame and i had extra large jets and so my legs weren't able to wait how were you guys swimming if you weren't doing a combat side stroke we put our rucks in front of so the way we all of our fins is a two kilometer ruck swim so we put our rucks in front of us we have a rifle you know mounted on that and we have all of our our equipment we're wearing it and we push this rucks so we're just like this this like you know wake coming through the surf and that's part of our of how we get to work right and how we you know we move with these things and so that just always becomes the requirement we're really never we're always finning with a ruck we're always finning pushing a ruck because it's part of their you know part of the idea of that's that's what we're going to have to do eventually anyway so it becomes part of the curriculum very very early on right on um but brc was fantastic a really professionally run course really enjoyed kind of going through that um and i had some really good recon students with me that again helped me through the process um what we've started to realize is there was a shaping of you know early on i think in a young males in a young man's career is they start kind of chirping at one another or finding areas of weakness in one another what recon does is we try to find each other's weaknesses but not exploit them but find places to be able to fill that gap and wanting to be able to make sure that the team as a whole you know we took the term from you as you know boat duckers right you know it's a negative term in the seals you know is not carrying your own weight what we would do is when a reconnaissance marine in training would start um putting themselves ahead of the team we would have six marines carrying the you know 380 pound zodiac if we noticed you know if as a student if the instructors notice a student not carrying their own weight they would pull that student out of the boat team and have them walk beside the boat team while the rest of the marines now five marines would be carrying the 380 pounds and if another person was doing the same thing that started to compound what we really really emphasized was that the team was above all else and that changed our mindset from being individually focused to saying if you have a weakness my job is to be able to ensure that I can cover that gap because the team lives or dies by each other not by individual skill sets themselves and so that really started to shape a mentality towards even though I was a sniper team leader you know and it operated that environment for a long time snipers are relatively you know it's a solo craft at some in some periods and you have you know ebbs and flows but as a reconnaissance team we require and rely on one another 100% of the time all the time and so that really built I think a framework for how I was going to carry on for the rest of my career was learning that earlier on in in BRC right on where do you go how many recon units are there so there are technically four reconnaissance units there's three active duty reconnaissance units and then one reserve reconnaissance unit and there so the three active are first second and third out of camp Pendleton camp lejeune north carolina and then okinawa japan and then fourth recon is split between a number of coasts but primarily headquartered out of san Antonio not a lot of water there but that's where they're primarily headquartered out of where did you go okinawa japan and so immediately got stationed okinawa japan and when I graduated BRC I ended up graduating as the honor graduate from BRC and Matt Ingham graduated as number two and I beat him by one like a half of a of a percentage point so like one answer on a test or one you know rock runtime or whatever it was now since we were heavy competitors what I did was I made sure to kind of rub it in his face and I always called him number two right he had this again a very stoic kind of mentality he had this like snaggle tooth he had an extra like canine or a canine that was it'll up and his lip would catch on this little snaggle tooth and so I'd always know when I'd piss him off when I'd call him number two and his lip would catch up here it was always kind of a fun little banter but what happened is when we went to third recon battalion third recon at the time was we're in this like middle period between Iraq and Afghanistan where Afghanistan starting to heat up we haven't had a lot of the surge hasn't started yet but what happens is we have kind of an atrophy of of combat veterans in the service once Iraq starts to kind of pivot out and so now when we get to okinawa japan we have a relatively green reconnaissance unit so a lot of the Marines themselves are on their first deployment their new reconnaissance marines and Matt and I fall into a very heavy I would say mentor instructor role as junior reconnaissance marines ourselves the benefit was we were both snipers you know beforehand so a lot of the skill sets transitioned over quite nicely but immediately getting to third recon we started the transition for what would eventually become the plus up in Afghanistan and we started training across the pacific you know going everywhere that we could to be able to train for the mountains of Afghanistan right yeah what year did you deploy to Afghanistan so the end of 2009 so I graduated BRC in 2008 and then October 31st of 2009 I deployed to Afghanistan and I deployed part of our our advanced party I got to camp bastion and then eventually camp Leatherneck about a month before my unit did and I was I ended up being attached as a special operations L&O or a liaison officer with the SAS and the SBS and so I got a couple of opportunities to run some long-range reconnaissance missions with the SAS and southern helman and it was you know a wild experience to say the least the SAS at the time worked with the afghan national commandos and they had their own version of the SAS inside of them and they were some of the best you know partner forces I'd ever seen the Brits had a long history of desert patrols so like Lawrence of Arabia right so like part of the SAS is excuse me part of the SAS's history was rooted in long-range desert reconnaissance and so when I went on this you know you know the the liaison officer position with them my my role was to learn as much as I could about you know desert patrols with the experts themselves and it was fascinating to be able to go with these guys we did something like 400 miles we drove for two weeks basically down to the southern end of the helman province on the border of Pakistan doing drug interdiction and using a lot of the SAS's assets to be able to interdict and getting a bunch of gunfights with a whole bunch of you know really really rooted Taliban in the southern portion of helman province you know and then at the end of that mission we got a number of gunfights but then we drove they had a thing called god they were called cannibals or jackals was this open air four by four buggy with a heckler with an h and k mark 19 variant on that open air right you know like so you know dust mask or shmogs over your face but the funniest part about the Brits is these are British designed vehicles and they had a portion of their radiator that was routed that the radiator would would through whatever you know method that they had would always have the opportunity for hot water so as we would be doing this you know 18 hour movement a day down to southern helman province chasing drug dealers or drug interdiction we would stop every four hours for what they called a cuppa right so they would stop for a cup of tea like literally in the middle of Afghanistan we would stop in the middle of the desert and everyone would stop and have a piece of chocolate and a cup of tea and that was their you know their whole you know it was really fun to see like the culture come through that i got to work with the royal marine which was interesting because the royal marines commando how they're shaped and function and how they're formed as as an individual unit or as an entity i think the united states marine corps could learn a lot from they are all infantry first and then they come and then have the opportunity to have other jobs or other skill sets afterwards one of the guys that i deployed with had or on this mission he had the word boot uh tattooed across his neck now the brits can have a lot more tattoos than the americans right but he had boot across his neck and i asked him about it and i remember so boot was a negative term for us but in the british royal marines they were called boot necks we were called leather necks and the reason is exactly the same they would take boot leather and so like the marine corps like high collar that you see in our dress blues that used to be leather and that was there for protecting against scabbards right or you know sword slashes when we were pirate when we were eventually when or essentially when the americans and the brits were fighting each other and so boot necks came from the same thing it was boot leather so they're called boot necks we're called leather necks and it's this really interesting kind of uh you know historical kind of dichotomy between two nations that are now partners that were once adversaries a number of years ago what do you think it'd work with special ops now from a conventional unit so i really like the idea of how they thought i think that the idea of thinking outside the box of seeing a problem and being able to not have a templated solution so in the infantry a lot of their speed was generated by having templated solutions there was an action and there was always this templated reaction and that matters especially when you're dealing with a lot of you know marines that are on their first enlistment we need instant you know kind of you know instant and willingness like to be able to respond to a stimulus and the special operations community kind of like what i alluded to a little bit early on was we were taught the word why from the very very beginning the thing that i can say is the difference between a reconnaissance marine and a conventional infantry marine is simply just the word why we teach reconnaissance marines from infancy to ask why and it's not to question the commander it's to seek the commander's intent because if the reconnaissance marine can understand what the commander's intent is when clarity falls away they can still solve the problem or try to solve the problem to what the courts try to solve the commander's intent through a non-conventional means or trying to be able to figure that as best as possible that doesn't necessarily work with a larger marine corps because that's not how the service is built itself part of us is recon is not you know i dare i say like complaining and i wouldn't want to come i'm not here to complain recon isn't really uh generally liked by the service by the marine corps itself we may make their recruiting videos we may fall into you know the ball videos there's a lot of jumping and diving and shooting and stuff like that which is a lot of the predominantly recon spaces but what happens is i did a an lno tour with a seal up in uh up in virginia beach and we were doing like a like a virtual exercise this is later in my career so it was a seal chief right and he's got his trident right and i was a force recon you know chief or sorry gunnery sergeant and i had my jump dive and as we're walking on this ship we're walking down the p-ways the navy personnel are like falling out of their way to allow the seal the opportunity to cruise down the hallway right well the the marines themselves didn't provide the same opportunity for the recon marines and it's in it again this is a very isolated incident and i'm not speaking for the entire service but the way that i looked at it was the marine corps itself is built to be a war fighting force and is specifically a ground war fighting force and they tell us and we act as such is the most you know violent most lethal best fighting force the world has ever known and you have 30 000 infantry marines who believe that right and they and they do that but then what happens is you have a small group of people where they're like well who are those people like well those are recon marines those are the best of the best well we're like i thought we were the best of the best right as the infantry and the marine corps and they're like well those are the best of the other best and so at some times at some points an animosity can can occur because people already thought that they were the best right and and didn't want to be able to associate that maybe they weren't you know the peak of the of the pinnacle um at some level seals when a 400 000 person organization in the navy there are 3000 navy seals the reverence that the navy we believe this is from an outsider's perspective the the reverence that the navy has for seals is not shared with you know the reverence that the marine corps has for recon if that makes sense does does make sense now we love the service but it's just not we have a very small budget inside of the service we have a very small number of people and we're constantly having to fight for our own advocacy and that model that i mentioned earlier silent professionals actually doesn't do us a lot of justice because what happens is later on when we'll see in Benghazi and the incident that happens in Benghazi is nobody at a higher level really knew what the reconnaissance element was um and it and it caused us some issues in a in a in an area that needed a little bit more clarity but so matt and i deployed to afghanistan in 2010 he shows up matt is so part of our kind of our arc right so matt and i are fierce rivals right we're both in the same platoon we're in bravo company third recon we're in third platoon and the way that a recon platoon works and i don't know if it's the same in the seals but your number one team is your your go-to team it is the you know the pipe hitters of the group and then they have like an order of precedence team two and team three and and so on the way that our organization worked is we had a smaller platoon of you know i was a team leader and matt was a team leader but we had bounced all throughout the pacific and our training you know regimen as we were getting ready to go to afghanistan and our platoon commander and our platoon sergeant the o3 and the e7 um didn't denominate who was team one and who was team two and what they said was they were going to allow us to compete with one another so i was team whatever and he leader and he was team other whatever team leader and so we had this competition throughout the pacific as we were training we get to hawthorne army ammunition depot and there's a training area hawthorne looks extremely like uh hawthorne nevada looks a lot like the southern end of the hindu kush mountain range specifically nowzad where we were going to be operating and so it's our final day of training out there we've been training for nine months a year ready to go on this first deployment you know to afghanistan and the platoon commander platoon sergeant gather all of us together and they're like all right here we are we're going to decide who's team one and who's team two and so matt and i kind of gather around we get our teams together and captain kevin kinkade you know the platoon commander he pulls us in he says okay you guys are neck and neck you guys have both had good qualifications bad qualifications we can't there's no air between the two of you so what we decided to do is we're going to flip a coin right and i'm furious about this i'm like throw my hands like this no way i'm going to associate this you know flip of a coin we're both arguing like i should be team one right because my team's done this and this and matt's messed this up and yada yada is and we're doing the same thing so we all gather around what happens is the platoon commander's like all right here are the rules right we're going to flip the coin in the air we're going to allow it to touch the ground and bounce and then whatever you know whatever lands is how it's going to break up and he says ingham you know to matt he goes ingham um you know you know you pick and he goes tails never fails right so kinkade flips the coin in the air it falls to the ground it bounces off of a cot right the whole platoon jumps down we're all trying to figure it out people are covering it up and it ends up being heads and matt is furious right he's like no you're like you know kids like interference right reflip and i'm like i've owned team one i fought for it i've got my win i'm going to hold on to team one you know with you know life you know forever and ever and so then eventually he gives up on that fight and then what happens is the platoon commander's like also we've come up with our call sign and we couldn't decide on a call sign you know some people try to pick like badass call signs or whatever it is our call sign that we've decided is going to be we had to look and say what is this the best animal on land and the best animal in the water so we've came we come up with the term bear shark and i was furious i was like this is the dumbest fucking name i've ever heard in the entire world i was like what was bear shark or bear killer whale already taken right so eventually and matt loves this because he knows it pisses me off so we eventually turn into bear shark and that's our platoon call sign as we go into afghanistan but as we cruise over you know matt and now we're in afghanistan i've done my mission with the sas we got in a couple of gun fights with them the brits are fantastic with what they're able to do um and they you know had a ton of you know opium and black tar heroin that we interdict interdicted down there fighting a lot of the drug fuels that were feeding into iran and eventually feeding the taliban itself or funding the taliban itself now the whole my you know the whole battalion shows up or my excuse me my company shows up into afghanistan bravo companies there and we start parsing out where we're going to go well bear shark gets slated with going to nowzad and nowzad is kind of a no man's land and it is like i said at the southern tip of the hindukush mountains and part of that is there is one lone infantry company from an infantry unit from third battalion fourth marines and they're out of fob or a forward operating base called fob kafireta and fob kafireta is kind of at the bottom of this valley and nowzad and nowzad once had something like 30 to 40 000 people inside of it and now it's a total ghost town the brits fought there the estonians fought there and then now we're fighting there and the taliban were ruthless in the area tons of ied's not a lot of snipers that we saw in the area but were the afghanistan was not iraq and the fighters in afghanistan were very very different than iraq the taliban were a a hardened group of fighters and they would stay and they would fight they wouldn't break contact and they would go toe to toe with us as often as they could they i they'd earn my respect as an adversary and so what happens is now we're going into full green side patrols in afghanistan we're working its winter time in the southern hindu kush so it's exceedingly cold and so what we have to do is as an now eight-man reconnaissance element we are required to you know keep all of our kit and all of like our helmets and our sappy plates and flak jackets and all this kind of stuff but we're making 15 16 kilometer movements to be able to get into these mountain ranges so what you have is in afghanistan you have or in nowzad you have on the eastern mountain range are called the white mountains and on the western mountain range are called the black mountains and inside you have all these little villages that are pockmarked with taliban and taliban networks kind of ranging all the way up to a place called dosang well we get into this area and we start working and as we're working through december we're going up into the mountains we have some success at some limited success with call for fire hitting id in placers hitting smaller you know limited scale raids and things like that but the terrain is just unyielding and unfortunately what happens in afghanistan is compromise was something that happened almost instantaneously you would patrol all night in the sleet in the freezing rain and you would get to the worst tallest mountain range that you could in the worst possible position so that nobody would ever find you and you would wake up in the morning and there was a kid goat herger with like you know a random pack of goats and you're stuck with this like what do i do right you know you're not gonna you know you're not gonna zip tie the the kid right you know because then people will notice and you know you're stuck in this kind of you know rock in a hard place as you go through these processes but over time you know bear shark worked with a unit called scarface scarface was our our cobras and huys and we gained a relationship with them as they were i think afghanistan was different for us because we were able to generate habitual relationships with units that worked together over and over and over again and iraq we owned a lot of each individual unit owned battle space and so we worked as more homogeneous units in afghanistan we had to rely on a lot of external assets but we worked with them over and over so we were with three four and we had their sniper platoon that we worked hand in hand with as well as scarface and so scarface would insert us with their they had the new huys the first time that they had the yankies i think it was and so they would have a heavier lift capacity and they could take a full recon team and they would insert us deep into these mountain ranges and then we would patrol in other 15 kilometers to get into position and it was bounty hunter was the was a three fours call sign with their sniper platoon and bear shark and we just owned the mountain passes and the taliban hated us for it they called us tree people whatever the you know poshtune word for tree people was because they always knew that we were there they knew we were always watching and they hated us you know for that and we worked with that for about six eight weeks and we're pretty successful at limiting taliban movement you know we killed a number of them through that but it was relatively limited through that section um and so matt and i would alternate teams and we had a really good working relationship where he would be forward for six to eight days at a time and since the mountain ranges were so cold and we couldn't bring sleeping gear we couldn't have fires um we had to bring a lot of communications equipment and a lot of batteries and the batteries were incompatible with one another you know like the military industrial complex right so we had a fucking ton of batteries that didn't work with it with one another or in the individual you know the optics the radios whatever it was and so the thing that we had to choose to leave behind was food so we literally survived on like cliff bars that we stole from the chow hall and that was the only because they also they wouldn't freeze at night right and they were some sort of sustenance for us to survive on so whenever a team would come back from we would alternate alpha and bravo elements whenever a team would come back the other team would like make a feast for them we had like a 55 gallon drum that we cut in half and we would you know barbecue for them do a whole bunch of stuff that was just a lot of like this family kind of unit that we built and so right before Christmas we get a care package that comes in and now matt is like this big stoic right he's just a very quiet guy he he kind of had like you know not like resting bitch face but like he just kind of looked like he was generally not in a good mood all the time but he was a genuinely jovial person he just had kind of rbf right and was and i'm more of the emotional kind of you know boisterous guy and matt was a good counter to that so what happens is right before Christmas we are sitting in in our fob and there's this huge commotion because we're trying the the coalition effort is trying to get our christmas care packages to fob kafferetta uh where we're at in this isolated patrol base in the middle of afghanistan but you can't land there because the taliban is too robust that if anybody lands in the area for more than a few minutes they're getting rpg's or they're getting requitalist rifles you know in our landing zone so the way they're working this whole thing out is they have a whole bunch of c 130s that they're flying over that that all all of our resupply is done through c 130s and they parachute everything in and so i remember standing in you know the drop zone as we know you know our our next drop is coming in and as they're flying over i see three packages or three bundles come out of the you know of the aircraft and i'm looking up on my nvgs and i see three come out i see two good shoots open up on two of the bundles coming down and then i see one that's got like a cigarette roll or cigar roll and i'm just watching it flap on my nvgs and my only question my only statement was i was like please don't be the male right and so this thing back in lawn darts into into the lz and like explodes across the and this is all of our care packages right everything for christmas and so we're out there on like a working party in the middle of the night trying to pick all this stuff up so in this care package so my high school in sunny veil is called fremont high school the one that i graduated from their um leadership class if you will um my mom worked for the school district at that time frame and so they knew that there was a connection and they wanted to help and support the troops somehow so they contacted my mom and they got my address in afghanistan and so this group of you know high school students made us care packages and one of the things that they made in their care package was this big poster you know and you've seen the posters are like we love our troops and they have like hand prints and really nice notes and things like that across it and i and they asked me and they sent it to me and they asked me to present it to the platoon and i remember presenting it to the platoon and saying hey this is from them you know sometimes we just don't carry those things we don't have room or space for them or whatever it is and matt was adamant matt was like hey we should hang that on the wall and it was something that was uncharacteristic of matt um because he said hey you know it reminds us of home it reminds us of why we're here so we posted this poster up next to our little like you know fire pit that we had in our little compound in fob kaffareta and so right before christmas matt is out on a mission and we got an opportunity to run kind of our own intelligence we had places where we were just hunting taliban as much as we could and so we would go to new areas we would pick up intelligence or you know from briefs or from local sources and so matt wanted to go deeper into um into what we would consider enemy territory so there's a town called uh dosang excuse me just for a second let me check on this i want to get the names right bear with me i apologize so a town called bar now's ad which is like northern now's ad and then a town called dosang but what matt had discovered on one of his you know on his like eight day reconnaissance patrol was he had found what we had considered the enemy's rear area so bar now's ad was kind of this black market bizarre it was the the taliban moved freely through there and they were pretty easy to identify you know they wore a lot of black there was weapons that they were carrying out and they had kind of a black market bizarre but what he had noticed through pattern of life analysis was that a lot of the leadership that he was able to identify would move to a town called dosang and that's where they would bed down at night so information drives operations and so reconnaissance helps drive that as well so he comes back you know christmas eve from this long mission and he briefs you know the battalion on we've found an enemy rear area they're not expecting us they're they're literally walking around with ak's on their back right like this is prime target for marines to be able to conduct like a huge radon which develops this very large um you know hella born assault you know in the in the new year so we run all of these kind of you know pre-planning everything that we're going to do it's going to be two companies are going to do a helicopter assault one's going to land in bar now's ad and clear bar now's ad like like felucia and the other is going to land in dosang and we're going to disrupt this uh this taliban network and this is all generated from matt's intelligence so we get back we plan this whole mission it rotates into the new year and as we get through this we the decision has not been made on who is going to take dosang dosang is the rear area this is the hornet's nest and we absolutely know that and matt and i both want that fight and we're art we go back to this now we're arguing back and forth with our platoon commander and the platoon sergeant advocating on why our team needed to be there we both wanted the fight dosang was the main objective bar now's ad was you know the alternate objective still integral but kind of the alternate the the lesser of the two and so what kevin kinkade decides to do is he says hey we've solved this this way before we're going to flip a coin and so we had we didn't have like quarters but remember those pogs that they had overseas that was like the currency so we had this like pog um that we ended up flipping and i argued incessantly against it like i was like you know we're fresh we've got good legs i've got a good team let's get out there send send my team out there and matt was like dude f you like we've been there we know the terrain this is our mission we found it you know how it goes you know two two guys you know bucking heads you know through this piece and so what happens is we go to the coin flip again and uh kinkade you know says the same rules and and matt says the same call and he says hey tails never fails and what happens is this time the the coin flip ends up landing on tails so matt gets this mission and so as this battalion mission is kind of starting to plan everything's coming together we've identified where matt's going to go and you know bear shark team two is going to go um the intelligence is coming in and then we just know that this is going to be a huge fight so we're bringing you know rockets we're bringing a tons you know tons of machine guns this is going to be this is going to be a big one for us so how this whole thing starts is on january january 10th uh 2010 we're going to do two different inserts matt is going to insert via helicopter and so he's going to take a uh a pure section of of of huys and they're going to fly you know the 20 kilometers north whatever it is and they're going to drop off and then they're going to patrol on an offset of like 10 to 12 kilometers into dosing and they're going to do pre raid reconnaissance for the helicopter assault that's coming the next morning i'm going to take a vehicle convoy up the eastern side of this valley and we're going to get into position and we're going to get into uh bar now is that the challenge was we had this um we had a pretty poor relationship with our supported unit that the unit that we were supporting so in the marine corps we have something called direct support or attached and these are operational terms that matter so what happens is when you're direct support what ultimately happens is my platoon commander has denial authority he has the ability to say no when you are attached you become part of that unit and then you fall within that unit's chain of command so now our captain has less authority to speak and have a little bit more autonomy if that makes sense so we are attached to three four for this mission and we had had some interesting conversations with them it was an organization like i had mentioned earlier that didn't trust recon we had never worked with them before we deployed with them we had we had a pretty adversarial relationship because we looked different we had non-standard gear non-standard boots we rolled our sleeves we didn't wear rank we had longer hair and this was something that the infantry battalion did not like and they didn't and because of that they didn't trust us and it led to some pretty hairy conversations over the radios some arguments back and forth with the operations officer and the the trust was absolutely just not there and we actually before this mission we began conversations to try to pull our platoon out we had seen that we were running headlong into a problem our unit that we were supporting didn't trust us and we didn't trust them and it was a really really toxic relationship that's a problem yeah yeah and so we went ahead with the mission and we were going to you know see how this mission went essentially and so what happens is matt's team so it's january 10th right and i'm in our coc and i'm watching the drone footage as matt's team is inserting what they're supposed to do is they're supposed to do three dummy drops or it's technically two dummy drops you know the helicopter lands it hangs for 30 seconds picks up goes to another lz does that for 30 seconds they're supposed to drop matt's team on the third dummy drop and then they're supposed to do another drop afterwards trying to conceal it's an old vietnam tactic that recon used to use and nsw used to use as well and it's a good tactic it helps confuse people on knowing where the absolute landing zone is the taliban also knew that we flew special operations flew in small aircraft right little birds right 60s huys for us so they knew that tree people flew in these things so i'm watching on the drone feed as this mission kicks off and it's you know zero dark 30 or whatever it is and matt's team takes off and they move in and they land at the first lz and the bird sits there for 30 seconds and then it sits there for a minute and now it sits there for two minutes and this is something that nobody likes to do right the bird is burning this this lz right we're letting everybody in these valleys know where we're at and eventually what happens is there's a miscommunication through some of the coordination between the unit that we were supporting that the three dummy drops or the two dummy drops in the third after uh wasn't communicated effectively so the pilots didn't know that we wanted or the plan had changed somehow and so they're sitting in the wrong lz with a team that is now matt is arguing with the with the pilot saying this is the wrong location we're not supposed to be here and he had this equally bad two equally bad options stay on the bird wax the mission or scrap the mission or you know have this large footprint or get off and start moving early in the wrong lz at the wrong location at the wrong time and so he chose to get off of the bird which i think was the right call at the time because again you're sitting and there's always you've seen it you know where you're on a bird and there's some sort of confusion and there's chaos going on and you're like just get this fucking helicopter away from us right because this is telling everybody in the valley where we're at so matt gets off the bird and i see him you know start to get his team together and then i watch them on the drone feed like move off into the valley but now it's my turn my insert begins and we're taking a combined anti-armor team in m-wraps and we're driving up the eastern you know valley to get to our uh our location about 20 minutes into our insert um my vehicle hits an ied and it's luckily we're in a v-shaped hull but we hit what was like 80 pounds of homemade explosives and it rips my vehicle into the sky it knocks me unconscious we fall to the ground my point man and my radio operator in the vehicle with me they're both knocked unconscious we have a gunner in the in the turret of the vehicle who's cut up beyond belief he's bloody he's you know facial lacerations so he's bleeding everywhere we pull him down and start to work on him but what happens is we're not allowed to leave the vehicle because the Taliban at the time were using a lot of tactics like tow poppers right so they would have a large ied and they would have the smaller ones to get any of the people you know and blow our legs off that you know any of the first responders so we're stuck inside of this vehicle we're all pretty you know our bells are pretty rung and then you know i check on the driver and the a-driver right and make sure that they're okay i'm the senior guy in this vehicle and all of a sudden once they roger up that they're good you know the the smell hits as almost as much as fast as the yell is that an electrical fire starts in the front of the vehicle and my team is all green side r&s so we're all wearing quarter ghillies right so i have a ghillie suit that's covering up the top of my body and we're full of burlap and this fire starts to spread so the driver and a-driver get out of the vehicle we get the gunner out of the vehicle on the top we hand them to the driver and a-driver and then the fire spreads to the back of the vehicle it's moving towards the ammunition and now we can't get the three of us in the back of the vehicle can't get past the fire to get through the turret of the vehicle and so i lean over we look at the door the vehicle is now on its side right i'm able to get the door open enough to get johnson and jacob's my point man and my rto out of the vehicle after they get out of the vehicle the vehicle shifts and the door seals on us our seals on me and i'm the only person left in the vehicle and so what i did was i sat there and i looked and i was i'm stuck there's nothing that i can't go forward because the radios are starting to melt right the fire is moving towards the radios it's getting towards the ammunition my my exit is now sealed and so i start bringing you know i have a sidearm with me and i grab my pistol and i'm gonna kill myself right and i end up that moment you know i um i think of a riot right i think of my mom i think of where i go when all of this is over and i start having this moment of like i'm you know this is a very quick rapid succession i'm i'm gonna kill myself i'm gonna take my own life because i'm not going to burn through this well unbeknownst to me about 200 meters away we have a young marine by the name of lance corporal chris o'connor and in the recon community we have this thing where when a new guy comes to the unit or a young marine graduates brc we instantly trust them and we have to because if we don't trust these marines it would be an abdication of the training pipeline itself it would be saying that brc is not adequate enough to make a reconnaissance marine and so this is an exact example of that i i loved chris o'connor and i trusted him explicitly and i'm so super mad at him for what he did but eventually what the fire starts to accumulate we see this they now see that i'm trapped the radios are crackling right the whole team is trying to figure out what to do chris o'connor leaves his vehicle leaves his weapon in his vehicle but grabs a fire extinguisher out of his vehicle and runs across the 200 yards of ied field to get to my position and my two team members are on the back like using their m4s they're trying to like wrench the door open to get enough they're able to get the back door open just enough that he can take the fire extinguisher duck my head down and shove the fire extinguisher over the back of my neck and try to extinguish the flame for the first time in my life i was happy to be the small guy because chris o'connor is like square jawed he just like looks like a recon marine right you know like the quintessential just good-looking square jawed american grabs me by my caller and yanks me out of the vehicle like i slither out of this vehicle and then they're able to put the rest of the fire out at this point my team is severely concussed the team leader of the point man and the radio operator we're seeing stars our ears are bleeding our noses are bleeding we've perforated your drums we're pretty fucked up at this point we have to wait another hour for eod to get into position to be able to help clear the vehicle get us out of this place and they eventually pull us to a compound and now at that compound i'm sitting there and i am having a conversation over the radio with the operations officer so i have my platoon sergeant with me because this is a bigger mission and my platoon commander kevin concade is with matt's team so we split up the leadership but i'm still the team leader and they let me lead this so i'm sitting there arguing with the operations officer over the radio because his words to us was we are and i'm asking i'm saying we need to roll this thing 24 hours our first team was inserted in the wrong location and you know at the wrong time they have to make a long movement that's only going to give them three hours of pre-raid reconnaissance before the cavalry shows up which is not what we like to do we like to have a lot more time on on the objective to help our grunts out my team is severely concussed i can't see straight i'm sure it's just rolex 24 hours give us 24 hours we will reset we will redo this thing and his answer back is negative you will reinsert and you will conduct a foot movement from where you're at to get to your position that adds something like seven additional kilometers to our already 11 kilometer ish movement to get into position and i'm hours behind schedule so the only way that i can get to this position is to literally ruck run with my eight man team and we're in there we're planning on a on a four to five day mission so i've got patrol rucks 110 120 pound rucks loaded to the gills with ammunition and supplies and so we have to ruck run basically the seven kilometers to get to our initial position our initial insert location and then climb these mountains to get into position and i remember trying to you know navigate by the stars the world is spinning right you know i'm vomiting on the side of the rocks i'm fucking completely concussed to this point and still trying to figure out which way is up and down eventually by like the rate is supposed to start at around nine a.m that's kind of time on target i get into position about 8 30 in the morning and now because we were so the mountain ranges were so close to the objective we had to get to the forward slope of the mountain ranges themselves which is exposing our positions and i can't hide i had eight reconnaissance marines two radio recon marines an interpreter and two signals intelligence marines as well as afghan commandos so i've got i think 15 16 people like i can't hide 15 16 people in a in a you know in a barren mountain pass on the forward slope so we're like immediately compromising our self and matt had the same predicament so we get into position very very you know very close to this raid kind of kicking off and i can't communicate directly with matt vhf is we're out of line of sight he's too far but what i do have the ability to do is listen through hf communication so matt was also a j tech and so he's communicating with the harriers circling above and so i can hear his communication sort of and i can hear the harriers talking back with him so i know the team is okay and what i hear matt talking about is i hear him explaining at the time we had these things you know we had a troops in contact right and troops in contact is a way to associate all of the air assets in the area to help break the back of whatever's going on when matt got into position his position was camp compromised very very early on and he was in dosing right and so he was in the enemy's rear area so with a rifle in our hand and a rule book in our pocket he was the taliban know our rules of engagement as well as we did and so what they started to do was move men in two by two which if they were a group of three that would tick our roe if they had weapons that would tick the tick our roe but they moved in two by two to get into position and he was watching upwards of 40 taliban fighters move into an area but he didn't have positive id and because he didn't have positive id on a weapon system he couldn't declare a tick at the time they were also using children to probe his dead space and to find his weaknesses so they were sending kids up and down the mountain and i could hear them explaining this to the harriers to try to get slew sensors on to help declare a tick matt tried to declare something called an imminent tick like we need as many air assets as right now we are not in contact right now but we are about to be but the challenge was um that had to go through our higher command and the higher command changed the priority uh of that imminent tick or the priority tick or whatever it's called and reduced it down from service within 15 minutes to service within an hour um and at that moment our harriers that were on station had to go get gas they were bingo on fuel and so the taliban recognized that we were without air coverage or matt's team was without air coverage so on the western slope we have matt's team bear shark two we have bounty hunter a sniper platoon or sniper team that's about seven kilometers from matt and i'm another seven kilometers from them over in um bar now zad and i'm listening to all of this kind of unfold and then about nine a.m all of a sudden i start hearing um you know the difference between an rpk and a 240 bravo is pretty distinct on the rate of fire i start hearing uh you know a huge you know troops in contact start you know developing over in matt's position and these are kilometers away right i'm seeing green tracers pop up i'm hearing radio chatter um i'm listening to matt plead with the aircraft to try to bring them back on station and watching this situation start to devolve and i'm stuck in this dilemma because this is around nine a.m we had all of our air checkoff stations so that we could have air with plenty of fuel when you know with plenty of with a lot of reserve fuel when we began the air assault itself so we had no air coverage during this time frame and the taliban recognized their moment and so what we understand is you know we don't really know but what we estimate was 40 to 50 taliban fighters um enveloped matt's team and um and ambushed him and they were you know two positions that were separated by you know 500 meters apart mutually supporting and they ran towards matt's team specifically where he was at and i remember listening to matt plead over the radio trying to slew sensors trying to bring aviation assets back all while this is kind of going on and i had a choice to make because i was listening to my best friend who was decisively engaged by a larger enemy force and you understand this right as a as a seal team you can only handle so many people right our job isn't necessarily to on a greenside mission isn't to get in gunfights right our job is to be able to bring other assets if you bring too many people i can't fight that back and so what we estimate was 40 to 50 fighters you know enveloped matt's team and uh his specific five man element that he had you know put out as as a leader's recon and i and i listened to him fight and i listened to the comms and i was watching the rockets or hearing the rockets explode you know as they're fighting through this process and i faced a choice and the the choice i had was break down my position and try to get to matt or hold my position because my role was staying in position when the air assault started started and i needed to be there for the infantry marines so the thing about recon and the reason why recon has stayed working for marine combatant commanders is our loyalty is always to the rifleman is always to the o3 11 our job is to live sleep eat breathe and potentially die for the o3 11 they matter there are reason and so i was faced with this dilemma run to save my friend or potentially save my friend or stay in position for this mission and as i'm going through this i'm having this conversation i'm having this moral dilemma i have two ch 53's rocketing in over my right shoulder as the air assault begins and so what happens is as this thing starts to unfold the assault begins on the town in front of us and we're trying to do our best to support the young infantry marines while this is going on while my left ear is listening to matt and his in his situation so eventually i stopped hearing matt's voice and the last things i heard was scarface our huys as they came in as our 53's came in the huys and cobras broke off to go support matt's team and to get as much firepower as possible as much as firepower possible to matt's team and i heard scarface yelling bear shark's name saying bear shark where are you bear shark identify right we can't see you we can't engage if we can't see you so all of these people that we've built this relationship with are doing everything they can to be able to help save this team that is now cut off from everybody and then what happens is we get a call from kevin concaid comes over the radio and i no longer hear matt's voice which instantly sinks my heart and then i hear kevin concaid's voice and he comes over the net in i mean in the middle of a gunfight and is saying we've got two friendly kia one m i a and we don't know what's happened to you know this this other marine and so every single asset is now trying the infantry has landed at dosing the infantry has landed at bar now is that matt's team is decisively engaged bounty hunter is given direct orders to stay in position and fight for this landing force and bounty hunter is the sniper platoon some of them were my sniper students beforehand they chose to to defy the direct order and they run the seven kilometers across the mountains to get to matt's team and they're the first you know american forces to help break the contact and they helped to try to find and figure out what's going on every single asset together is one of the proudest moments i had as a marine because what happens to us is when we hear that call as a marine that another marine needs help we drop everything to be there life limer eyesight to get there we had a cat section that was blown up the night before with us reinsert and come back into the battle position fighting their way through bar now is that fighting their way through dosing trying to get to matt's team the harriers come screaming out of the sky after sipping gas and they run across my field of view at like a sonic boom level trying to do anything the amount of assets they put in to try to save this recon team was was one of the most impressive things i've seen in my career but my focus was on the infantry marines of my specific mission set and so for the rest of the day we sat and had to clear the rest of bar now's ad with this with this infantry company all the while knowing that we had two friendly k i and one enemy or one friendly missing an action and we didn't know who and so for the rest of the afternoon and the rest of the evening we eventually linked up with our um with the other company we made this really long like arduous movement another 10 or 15 kilometers to get to bar now's ad or excuse me to get to do saying where we linked up with this company and at that point the m i a had turned into a k i a they had found this person's body so now we knew that three members of our platoon of 18 men were dead we just didn't know who so what happened was we get into the the the firm base for the night the infantry is a good unit right they're a good marines but they wouldn't even look us in the eye they were they were they were just they knew that we had lost members of our platoon and the the way that they looked at us was you know sad was like pity was was guilt was feeling and we stood in the middle of this like mud hut kind of farming town in the middle of nowhere on a dot on a map that no one will ever remember right is my assistant team leader joe galouli my platoon sergeant effraying martinez and i go to the radio the company radio that has you know higher power radio and we have to go and have to ask who what the line numbers are we're going to go find out who the marines uh you know that were killed and matt was always meant to be an infantry marine some people are just meant to be marines so we have you know line numbers or kill numbers or zap numbers whatever it is and it always started with the last the first letter of their last name and then the last four digits of their social security number is what we used at the time we don't use that anymore but matt's last four digits of the social security number were o3 11 and so the infantry the mos designated for infantry riflemen and so we always joke that he was meant to be a grunt and i remember standing there asking for the the numbers and my platoon sergeant and my assistant team leader joe we had our arms around each other we kind of took a knee and we were going to find out this information together and i remember the first night the first line number coming over and it was india zero three eleven and i didn't hear anything else after that my ears started ringing you know i felt like the stomach you know fell out didn't know what to do at that point and then i realized that i had to go tell my team so the rest of my team is standing in this courtyard in the middle of winter in the middle of afghanistan you know full of cow shit and dung and whatever it is and they're standing there and they're waiting these guys were on their first deployment they'd never experienced this before and so i realized my role as a team leader was now to teach them how to grief and so i came to the team and i and i told them the names of the marines that had passed and it was staff sergeant matt engham was killed um corporal jayme low and corporal nicolas yuzhinsky and the three marines were some of the brightest spots in our platoon and the some of the best marines that we had inside of the platoon itself and it just ripped my young guys apart and they just didn't know what to do with themselves and one of the things that i remember was the kindness of the infantry marines you know as a reconnaissance unit we always fall into their um you know their security plan we stand watch with them we do all of these things with them we don't want them to think that we're better than them so we do everything with them they gave us the night off that night and then they let us kind of grieve together and i remember we were somehow out of food at that point and so i remember going into the small you know the small hut mud hut and my team was just laying there on our backs and we had you know surefire you know lights or whatever it is you know the lights on the bottom of the m4 we had that you know turned on and that was the only light that we had inside of this thing and we shared a pack of m&m's and um and a pound cake and we passed that around as a team as the large team and we sat and i taught them how to grieve i taught them to share the stories i taught them to laugh i taught them to cry we had this moment together where we had you know the evening to remember our friends and the shocking finality of death um and kind of go through that process and then the next morning we had to compartmentalize that because we had to continue the fight in you know in dosing the next morning and we fought for another few days one of the things that the sniper platoon did for us was they um they were the first people to get to matt and matt was wearing his hogs tooth as a sniper and what they did was they took his hogs tooth off his neck and they gave it to me and they gave me his hogs tooth so that i could take it home and i could put it on a paddle and i could give it to his family and i'll never forget you know their platoon corpsman was the one that did it and and the reverence and the the the honor that they had with that was some of the most respectful and profound moments of my career and i remember after that i was broken uh matt was my rock matt was better than me in every single way um and and i wished more than anything that i had won that coin flip because matt had a wife you had a family the team members themselves they were just put in a bad situation and there was nothing matt was the he represented the best of us and there was nothing that he could have done to salvage that situation and it broke my heart and the platoon looked to me to be able to guide them through this and i had nowhere to go and i didn't know what to do ultimately we got back to now zeb i had to inventory all of his equipment all of his gear all of his personal effects and we fly back to camp leatherneck we leave the unit we are not working with that unit anymore a number of things ever as an investigation that happened that got real weird um afterwards or as a lot of cover your ass kind of stuff and if i'm not mistaken i think the reasons why in my in my research the reasons why i think you started this podcast or one of the reasons why was because you didn't like other people telling uh your stories and doing a disservice of telling those stories or telling them in a specific way that may not have been truthful and so the reason why i speak out and the reason why i talk about this was the very easy thing to do is to start blaming the special operations teams and saying that they were cowboys or they were sleeping or they did whatever and that they had somehow fucked up but i listened to the whole thing unfold and i listened to that situation deteriorate and like holding water through your hand you couldn't grasp it for you know very long and i watched that happen and then i watched that unit close ranks and protect themselves uh at the expense of the reconnaissance unit um and that hurt and so we got back to camp Leatherneck and that was month three of our seventh month's deployment and so i had to carry on and the teams you know the platoon was like kind of looking to me so this where it goes into the second part of this story is in the power of of connection of community why we do these things is i got back to camp Leatherneck and part of the things that they have at camp Leatherneck and i i don't know if you guys have seen it we had these things called any marine boxes or any soldier boxes whatever it was and people would send care packages or they would send letters and oftentimes school children would send letters um to you know any marine they were addressed as any marine and they were being a box and so we had a random box that was you know outside of one of our tents that we were back at camp Leatherneck where the rest of the company was at and i you know guys would reach in every once in a while and they'd grab a card they'd grab a letter and they would steal a moment away and they would read it and it was some cute kid somewhere that was writing something um you know about uh you know just saying thank you or whatever it is so i went and i reached into one of those boxes and i grabbed a letter and if you don't mind i'll read a portion of the letter to you it says to whomever gets this letter hi my name is angela and i'm 14 years old and i live in sunny vail california that's the bay area lots of people don't know that i'm writing this letter to you at exactly 10 48 p.m because i found myself lying in bed remembering what my teacher had told me the day before you see our class made a poster for the troops especially for this one guy that graduated from my high school we wrote things on there like thanks and good job yesterday my teacher told us that the fremont graduate that's my school fremont high had lost his best friend in the war but what she told us next really hit home for me she told us how much joy the poster brought to the troops she told us how every morning the friend would just look at the poster and that poster would bring a smile to his face it turns out he did this right up until the day he died that's when i started crying i never realized how powerful the words of a freshman in high school could be so i decided to get up and write this letter to you while my thoughts were fresh in my mind now i know this isn't some fantastic poster but the intent is the same after hearing what my teacher told me i hoped i could touch some of the troops or at least brighten their day so that's what i'm doing in this letter and i hope you hear these words that i'm about to say a lot but thank you thank you for being so brave that you can stand up and fight for our country thank you for being so brave and selfless that you let your lives and love ones you leave your lives and love ones to fight for people you don't even know the bottom line is thank you for all that you do because every time you have to do something like stay up all night or look out and witness death and destruction you are protecting and saving me this little girl angela wrote an anonymous letter that sent out to afghanistan somehow ended up in an anonymous box that i grabbed on the way in to a random tent in iraq and she wrote me a letter she wrote an anonymous letter about me and i carried this letter with me for the rest of the deployment we went into marja and we fought in marja a few months later in february which was considered afghanistan's philuja we lost more marines in marja killed more people fought through everything we could and everything i did through that i kept this in my flak jacket the entire time because i think for me what it was was that it's a simple gesture it's a young kid you know who doesn't understand what it is that we do or why we do what it is that we do and that little piece of home that little piece of of of what she had done what she had written was the thing that solidified why we joined who we fight for the red white and blue these people back home and that woman and actually that little girl 14 years old she saved me she saved me and when you know i used to think that after matt died like i said i was broken but i lived for matt for a long time because i wanted to live as good of a life as i could in honor and remembrance of the dead the marines have a slogan that was from world war one it says for the honor of the fallen for the glory of the dead and that's a tattoo i have across my collar it's what the marines would yell before they would leave the trenches in world war one to fight and you know start another you know another another attack and then what i did was i realized as i moved through later in my career and i fought issues of um substance abuse you know earlier in my career or potential suicidal ideations or whatever it was harmful thoughts those kind of things i realized that i was no longer living for matt what i realized was that i was living for angela because that little girl and her hope and her determination and what she felt in that was something so powerful you know i told you initially that i wrote the book dark horse because it was a love letter to tell the marines and the people that i served along the way thank you for bringing me to where i'm at bringing me to this position because i didn't do it alone this 14 year old girl has the thing that gave me you know permission to continue living and permission to find a good life and i got a chance you know many many years ago after i got back from that deployment i got a chance to visit angela and have a conversation with her and i've since lost contact with her but she's ever out there i want her to know and i wrote that as part of the thing and it's in the book as well and i want her to know how much she meant to me and what that letter did for me and it was something that you know she goes on to talk about movies and cell phone companies and sleeping with stuffed animals and whatever a 14 year old kid talks about but that purity that thing that was was was the reason i think why we fought and what really about me that's some heavy stuff it's a good kid it's a good kid i'm sorry matt was a good marine um his wife's name was yasmin and a fantastic marine i mean absolute representative best of us um and sometimes and i know that you've seen it in your career sometimes you can do everything right and still fail i'm sorry man take a quick break yep what more from the shan ryan show join our patreon today for more clips and exclusive content you'll get an exclusive look behind the scenes where you can watch the guests interact with the team and explore the studio before every episode plus unlock bonus content like our extra intel segments where we ask our guests additional questions our new srs on-site specials and access to an entire tactical training library you will not find anywhere else in the best part patreon members can ask our guests questions directly your insights can help shape the show join us on patreon now support the mission and become part of the shan ryan show's story oxford montessori school is now oxford millwood school a new name the same genuine care academic ambition and belief in every child set within a beautiful rural campus just 20 minutes from oxford city center our small classes personalize pathways and strong send expertise give pupils the support challenge and confidence they need to succeed especially those who may not have thrived in larger settings find out more at our open day on may the 21st search oxford millwood school open day well a j you've had um one hell of a career and uh wow that's a hell of a ride man that is a hell of a ride and i know we're not even done yet but um i think this is a really good good point to end this i appreciate that and you know usually i ask you know when when we talk about losing a com around a friend you know what advice you have but you already gave it and uh ironically it's the same advice i always give you have to live for your friend you know and and honor his sacrifice and uh it sounds like you did that appreciate that so i'll ask you for another piece of advice we talked at the beginning of this about the wars that we're starting to engage in right now seems like the machine's spinning right back up what advice do you have for future marines that are gonna face the same the same type of stuff that you did you know the sometimes the reasons why and all of the other chatter is just noise at the end of the day it's always been about that marine to your right and to your left and ensuring that they have the best opportunity for success to get through a shitty situation it is a tale as old as time that um you know governments will put their best into the worst i would say the fabric the best of the of the countries that they represent into the worst scenarios at the end of the day um locking eyes with shaking hands and fist bumping or shoulder bumping another brother another comrade in arms that bond that we share is something that is special and should be cherished and should be um i would say respected and part of that is continuing after the fight and being with each other throughout after the fight the strongest communities that i have are the people that i've walked with you know through hell it's um it's a tough thing you know going into this i know that no matter what i say every single young marine out there is going to want to get in the fight and that's just who we are i wouldn't have listened to the same advice that i would be giving now right i would still want to do that be careful what you wish for be careful what you ask for and at the end of the day every decision that you make you will have to live with for the rest of your life so choose wisely that's good advice man you know just reflecting on your story here for about 30 seconds you know i think i'm not a marine but if i was to give any advice to the upcoming war fighting generation it would be give the motherfucker a chance because somebody gave you a chance and it wound up panning out yep what was his name gunny jackson gunny jackson yep that's who i'm talking about yep he took you under his wing and then when it was the right time you took guys under your wing yep you passed the buck on and that's what this shit's all about yes sir may j got blessed brother thank you very much for having me on the show anything that i can do for you and the team in the future this has been an absolute honor um one of the most professional organizations i've i've come in contact with thank you thank you for this thank you you've already done enough got her blessed brother thank you sir it was an honor yeah thank you no matter where you're watching the shan ryan show from if you get anything out of this at all anything please like comment and subscribe and most importantly share this everywhere you possibly can and if you're feeling extra generous head to apple podcast and spotify and leave us a review oxford montessori school is now oxford millwood school a new name the same genuine care academic ambition and belief in every child set within a beautiful rural campus just 20 minutes from oxford city center our small classes personalize pathways and strong send expertise give pupils the support challenge and confidence they need to succeed especially those who may not have thrived in larger settings find out more at our open day on may the 21st search oxford millwood school open day