Shawn Ryan Show - #189 Thomas "Drago" Dzieran - From Communist Gulag Prisoner to Decorated Navy SEAL

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Thomas "Drago" Dzieran is a retired U.S. Navy SEAL, author, and software engineer. Born in Communist Poland, he spent time as a political prisoner before immigrating to the United States in 1984. After becoming a U.S. citizen in 1991, he joined the Navy and served 20 years, including stints with SEAL Teams 2 and 4, and as a BUD/S instructor. Drago deployed to Iraq multiple times, earning numerous commendations for his valor in combat. He’s the author of The Pledge to America and a vocal advocate for freedom, using his tech skills to combat threats to free speech. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://roka.com - use code SRS https://tryarmra.com/SRS https://BetterHelp.com/SRS https://Blackbuffalo.com https://boncharge.com/SRS https://MeetFabric.com/SHAWN https://ShawnLikesGold.com | 855-936-GOLD https://Helixsleep.com/SRS https://hexclad.com/SRS https://hillsdale.edu/SRS https://PatriotMobile.com/SRS | 972-PATRIOT https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/SRS Download the app today and use code SRSRocketMoney.com/SRS Thomas "Drago" Dzieran Links: The Pledge to America - https://www.dragodzieran.com/book   ConnectZing - https://connectzing.com IG - https://www.instagram.com/dragodzieran X - https://x.com/DragoDzieran Website - https://www.dragodzieran.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When our 50s opened on the humvees, holy s***, that was like whole hell broke loose. I could shoot the guy, but he was not armed. As I'm working with the guy, the car comes in, hey Drago, you need to stop the Grom element that's moving on the backyard. And there are three guys in ambush lines. I'm going to knock his front teeth out,

and I'm going to make a necklace out of it. So actually I woke up to him, I very carefully lift his upper lip and just drove his two front teeth in, just pulled them out and... Did that affect you at all? No. No? Killing never affected you.

DRAGO DRAGO Drago! Welcome to the show. Thank you for the invitation. It's an honor to be here, brother. It's an honor to have you. So we have a ton of mutual friends and I've heard about you since I was in the SEAL teams and you just have a phenomenal reputation and I can't believe we haven't crossed paths until today.

Well, you know, I was watching you and I watch your channel, I'm subscribed to your channel, but I never thought, you know, some small guy, a little guy like me will show up over here, because, you know, the guests that you have, those are like world class leaders, world class people. So, I never even thought about it, and here I am. So I guess miracles happen. Thank you, brother, for the invitation. So I guess miracles happen. Thank you brother for the invitation. I would disagree with you. You're definitely not a small guy.

So. Physically, I'm still 65 years old, but still holding my... 65? Yeah, I'm 65. Wow. Well, you know, I mean, this is how the show started. You know what I mean? Was, nobody's a small guy, you know guy that we have on. Some people don't have the exposure that I think that they should have.

And when I started this, that's how I wanted it to be. I wanted to get guys that have, and women, that have had phenomenal careers and very interesting life stories and have been through a lot of just a lot of everything, operated at the highest level, traumatic experiences and how they got out of those because I think somebody like yourself that brings a lot of hope and we're both very aware of what's going on in the veteran community right now.

You know I think we're up to what 40 veterans a day commit suicide and I think that you know this show and getting stories out like yours it puts it on display and it brings veterans from all walks an example and it just proves that there's a way out of that rut, you know, in that gap from service and to finding success in the civilian world and that they're not the only ones that are going through that kind of experience. There's a lot of us and I'm one of them and I know you're one of them and pretty much everybody we've ever had on this show from a military standpoint is also one of them. And so I've been, you know, I saw when your book came

out and I've been kind of watching you from afar on social media and I just, I think you're a great person and so it's an honor for me to have you here as well. Thank you very much. It's great to hear it. I appreciate your kind words. I'm just a regular person. I'm American so I want to be like you guys and that's what drives me. You are like us, because you are one of us. I am one. I'm American, yes. So, yeah.

What, I'm, before we get, when did you come over? I came in 1984. How old were you? I was 24 years old. So I was living in Poland. I left prison when I was 23 years old. And then I came to U.S. Embassy, I I asked for help and I was given status of political refugee and flown to the United States when I started my life. The funny thing is I came

to America not knowing English, having no money. I had a 10 Phoenix German coin in my pocket and bag of clothes. Wow. Well, we'll get super in depth on that, but to start off, everybody gets an introduction here and a gift. You know, you got a gift coming if you watch the show, but Thomas Dragos. Jeron, you're a Polish born warrior who grew up under communist rule. You spent two years in jail as a political prisoner for standing up to a regime that tried to silence you with censorship and oppression. You came to America in 1984 and became a U S citizen in 1991.

You're a retired U S Navy SEAL who served with SEAL team two and SEAL team four running over a hundred direct action missions and Iraq is a lead breacher. running over a hundred direct action missions and Iraq is a lead breacher. You are a recipient of the Bronze Star with V for Baller. You are the founder of the Navy SEAL fund, giving back to the Brotherhood in Connect Zing, a platform fighting for free speech. You're the author of the book, The Pledge to America. You're a husband to Rachel, who is an Air Force Academy graduate, father of four, and most importantly, a Christian and devout Catholic.

And American. And American. And American. So everybody kicks it off with a gift. So those are Vigilance Elite gummy bears, thank you brother here in the USA by Americans you mind if I just open it I Had a bad I'm let me know all about sweets. You know like my I have embargo on sugar and sweet things at home But since my wife is not here What do you think oh, I love it perfect and then Since I found out you're a Catholic I wanted to give you this

so That do you know Dom Razo? He was it he was it too. He's my generation know the name. I cannot connect with the face yet Yeah, he's a little bit is brother. Thank you. You're welcome Yes, he's a seal and he he has these warriors rosaries made and and he gave me one a long time ago and I Carried her everywhere with me for protection.

I have mine in my pocket right here. It is beautiful, but it's also very important. Important for me, for me has extra meaning too. So I really appreciate it. Yeah, you know, I think that just, you know, I grew up Catholic, then I kind of fell out of it, you know, in the seal tombs, I think most people did, and then kind of found faith again a couple years ago.

And I'll tell you one thing, I just think the Catholic religion has it right when it comes to protection and talking about demonic entities and all of that kind of stuff. So I carry mine everywhere I go. So I wanted you to have one. Thank you. I appreciate it, brother. Dom's been a mentor of mine when it comes to... Dom?

Yeah, Dom. I know who he is. Okay, I got it now. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. Hi, Dom. I mean, yeah. I just like if you hear it, yes, I know who he is. Yes.

Cool. And so, before we get to in the weeds on the interview, which I can't wait, I have a subscription account on Patreon, and we've built it into one hell of a community. I think we're at about 60 something thousand members now, but you know when I was telling you and your wife downstairs, I started this in my attic and it was to basically shine a light on veterans who have done amazing things and are doing amazing things now. Back then when I was in my attic, nobody wanted to touch me.

Nobody wanted to fund anything, advertise with me. And so I needed some income to grow this. And so I started a community on Patreon. And that community has just carried me all the way from the attic of my house to the amazing team that I have today to this to this studio that we're in now and now we're we're building a seven thousand square foot studio out in the woods and and Those that community has just always supported me and always supported our guests as well and so one of the things that we do is

We offer our tier three members the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. And you had quite a few questions. Okay. So this is from Eric Alger. Do you see any parallels between the tactics used by the communist regime in Poland and what's happening in the US today? And then there's a follow-on and more importantly, how can the average american recognize and push back before it's too late? Thank you. That's very important question. I'm glad you somebody asked it

So yes, not right now at this point, but in previous administration there was a lot of things that to me seems like deja vu from my socialist state run by communists. I'm saying socialist state, Poland was never communist country. People need to understand it. Neither was Soviet Union communist country nor any country behind understand it. Neither was Soviet Union communist country, nor any country behind Iron Curtain was ever communist country. They were socialist state, very dangerous totalitarian socialist states, but they were run by communists. We say there's communist state, communist country, but in reality they were socialist state. That's

why the distinction now that is being made that communist was bad, but socialism is good, is very dangerous distinction. And yes, there are many things that happened in the last, I would say, four years, were very disturbing for me. And I talked to my wife about it quite often. So we agree that something needs to change because we're going to fail, fail like Europe failed, the Western Europe

right now into depravity and perversion. What are some of the things that stick out to you that you see? Censorship is the first one, is the big one. It is easy to explain for People who censor that the government doesn't censor you is just private organization like Facebook But I was heavily censored like LinkedIn. I'm still being heavily censored But the the problem with it is that they are being coerced by the government This is the very disturbing stuff. You know, like I'm running my own social media platform and definitely I censor people posting anti-American posts. I don't want them here

and they are faster than lightning gone from my platform. But I think that censorship is very dangerous. Branding political opponents as criminals, as terrorists is very dangerous. This is the same thing exactly what I experienced in a socialist Poland run by communists, like my father. So the censorship also denigrating moral values, denigrating patriotism, denigrating the family values. It is important for socialist state

to take control of people, but it reminds me the same thing that happened in Poland when I was growing up. There is another thing too I would like to mention. In America, people do not understand very well concept of desensitization. Desensitization. Desensitization.

Oh, I could be a president, President Biden. So I'm getting better. But anyway, so they do not understand the concept of desensitization and normalization of evil. And that's what it is. So first you talk about it, you give the different names, which is benign, and then you enforce the normalize the evil and the entire process. I give you example with work. What is work? Yes, what is work? Well, if you talk to somebody and tell them that the teacher is work, little bit work, it's not really alarming. It's just like maybe a little bit strange guy or woman.

But if you look behind that word, what it represents, what this word, the word is hiding, the depravity and perversion, that whole process takes different meaning for most of the people. It's different when you hear, oh, the teacher is a little bit of work, but the teacher is pervert.

That definitely perks your attention and say, maybe I don't want to send my children to this class. So this type of techniques is not well known and described here in the United States because people were never exposed to evil of socialism and communism on mass scale. And let's hope it will never happen. So those are the things where I talk,

the censorship, branding political opponents as criminals and terrorists, attack on moral values, family values, and most important, faith. These things that happened last four years were very disturbing for me because I knew where it leads. I knew what can happen if it continues. leads. I knew what can happen if it continues. So, yeah.

You know, I think the other question that Eric had was, you know, how can the average American push back before it's too late? There's many ways to do it. One of them, we are the, for socialists, for the evil, we are lost generation, we are old, we don't change. They attack our children, and this is what they are after it. So today, nowadays, after seeing what is happening in our schools, it is no longer enough for parents to ask child, hey, how was your school today?

Oh, mom, dad, it was really good. Okay, go play. You need to be inquisitive. You need to find out what is the child is being taught, what is being done to him. And they are great schools in America, but also they are perverted schools. You need to intervene.

And this is why there is such a big push from the evil side to get control of our children So we need to take this control back and if school doesn't let you change the curriculum or pervert the teacher You need to do it on your own you need to teach your own children I'm a homeschooling my children after I found out that school was teaching 73 genders and other perversion Perverted way of thinking to my kids. So we pulled the kids out of the school. Not everybody has meanings to homeschool their kids.

People have to make a living, they have to work, and they work hard. At least you can come back home instead of spending time drinking beer. Maybe you should spend time with your child, ask him what he's doing and correct what school did wrong to your child. This is important. We cannot, we don't need to concentrate on ourselves.

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BondCharge ships worldwide fast and offers a 30-day trial plus easy returns. Ready to feel your best? Visit bondcharge.com slash SRS and use code SRS to save 15%. That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com slash SRS and use the coupon code SRS to save 15%. These statements and products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. Interesting, Excellent answer.

And, you know, it seems I moved up here from South Florida, where there's a massive American Cuban population and they're all saying the same things. It seems like anybody that you talk to that moved here from a communist country or socialist, maybe not all socialist, but Venezuela, Cuba, Poland, they're all saying the same stuff. And it's really, it's just really interesting to hear. And I think it's an important conversation. So we'll leave that we will live through it. Those people live through it. They've seen the dangers, they've seen the results of such depravity like communism and socialism.

So they do sound warnings, but again, the censorship with today's technology and government coercion takes its toll. So people don't hear about it and don't know about it. So yes, we need to be more proactive, and especially with our children. Thank you for that. So Eric's a huge fan, the guy that asked the question, Eric Allger, so if it's okay with you, I'm gonna have you sign this at the end of the interview.

I'll be honored to do so, yes, absolutely. We're gonna send it to him. I'm sure he would love that. So, all right, let's get into the interview. So, born in 1960, grown up in communist or socialist at that time. Well, we call it communist. There's commonly known communist I just this a technicality here and people need to understand what we call communist states behind iron curtain

Those are socialist states run by mostly by communists The social we can call it communist state I call it do something what was it like growing up in in Poland? Well First thing I call it communist state, I call it to some things. What was it like growing up in Poland? Well, first thing to realize is that in 1960s, when I was born, it was only 15 years from the Second World War. So the entire generation of people who went through the brutality, to the to holocaust, to experience war personally live in that societies in Europe, in Poland, I'm talking about Poland, even more so because Poland lost around 6 million people, there's one fifth of population during during Second World War, murdered by Germans. And that was very, I would say there were dangerous time. I don't have a bad, I have more nostalgia, nostalgic feelings to this time when I grew up.

But I remember now from the perspective of being American, living here in peaceful society, I remember how, and I realized how sometimes depravity was taking over, the brutality was taking over. People were ready to fight on the moment notice. I mean, here you look somebody in the eyes and say, hey, hello, and say hello. In Poland, they would say, what the fuck are you looking at? That was the times that the typical reaction would be. And so, fighting, beating people on the streets

was nothing unusual. It was frowned upon. Nobody were like brutal, vulgar people, but it was very common to the point that when there was a fight on the street, and usually you can go in town and you can see two, three fights if you actually go through the town,

people learned to just across the street that they didn't even bother to call police. So it will later play a role in my upbringing when I get a little bit older, but 1960s was very Very brutal time for poor and it was the big transition from the wartime Brutality experience society to peaceful more peaceful society and it was also hindered by the socialist and communist ideology that

The transition was not very smooth in Poland. And also talking about it, I experienced the both worlds, living as a privileged kid when my father, who was a high ranking communist and government official, so up to seven years old when I was growing up with him being at home. Then when he left, and the poverty, the lifestyle that I experienced for the next decade, it's nothing unusual in Poland, but for me it was a stark difference.

And then I was sent to my father when I was I, 16 years old, to... Why did your father leave? Well, my father was communist. He was entrenched into their ideology, and my mom going to church with us was not acceptable to him.

There was two things. One was a fear that he can lose his career as a communist and as a member of Polish government at the time. It was frowned upon going to church, especially having family and kids going to church. Why was it frowned upon to go to church? Because church is very dangerous. The faith is very dangerous for socialist state. Faith gives you roots, a moral basis that are basically immutable, that you have

the morals that communists most likely can't change. So this is something that the first attacks in the communist state was on faith usually and children. And this is why they try to eliminate this. And faith is a dangerous concept for communists and socialists. And you will see that if you read the history of socialist states, the first attack usually happened upon people's faith and their families. I think we saw some of that here. Yes, we did. In the last four years, especially, there was something very disturbing for me.

And we need to be aware of it. How did your father leave? Well, he decided it was very dangerous for him, for his career, to stay at home with mom who was devoted Catholic, my entire family, even his own mother, they were Catholics. And they didn't approve what he was doing I tell you later when we get to it, but um So he was a decide that is that's not his way of living. He wants to make a career as a politician He wants to make career as a communist and when I was seven years old he decided to leave and he just to go

Leaving us me and the my two siblings. so it was three of us and my mom. So he abandoned his three kids and his wife. Yes, yes he did. And as a communist, he died as a communist. In 2021, when I went to visit, his views did not change. He would be ready to murder people on the spot if they were opposed socialism and communism. Wow. I will talk about it too, I don't really get to it. His view was very extreme when you get to know him,

but when you didn't know him, you would think there's a great older man, there's somebody you would like to have for the neighbor, very well spoken, very commanding Polish language, extremely well, because he was his major in university. So very nice man until we start probing his views and his internal thinking. That became very disturbing. Like somebody you would not want to have as a neighbor. So growing up, if he grew up as a...

Peasant. As a Catholic or a believer, I mean, what was it that got into him that changed his entire view? Do you know? It's hard to guess, but this is my understanding of it. So he grew up in peasant family, very poor. And what he was offered by the communist state is, hey, we make you somebody, we make you somebody big,

and you can progress with us. But you need to discard the faith, you need to discard all the attachments that are superstition. They call it superstition. So you need to be free man, they call it free man, so to accept socialism and communist ideology. And they were like helping him along the way. He was very smart.

So he was doing very well at school. And eventually they grabbed hold of him and he, like many other Poles, gave in. He gave up his faith, his moral views and accepted so-called relative morality. There's another term that is not very popular here and not very well understood yet. So he subscribed to so-called relative morality and that's where things start changing. That's where people, that way he become the person he was later in his life. What was it like for you when he left? So there was dramatic change right away. The first place...

What did he say to you? He didn't say nothing. He just didn't show up. Wow. So yeah, we didn't know where he was. Mom tried to hide it from us. And at that time in Poland, there was also stigma for people who were divorced, especially for the kids.

They had a special name for divorces. So I remember parents saying, hi, these kids are divorces, I want to play with them. They got the parents got divorced, stay away from them. So I remember that and that was very, for me, I learned to cope with it. But at the time I see the kids didn't want

to play with us, so that was kind of the way it was, you know. That was the reality. I didn't know any other. And so, I mean... But also life was different too, because from abundance of everything, from the legal protection because when I was a kid I burned the wheat field by accident. We were playing with fire, baking something in the fire in the middle of the wheat field. So we burned the entire wheat field. So of course the neighbor comes in and because I was living in the outskirts of little town

Giro Nagura that was established in 1200, year 1200. So it was a little town, Zsiro Nagura, that was established in 1200, year 1200. So it was a beautiful town. So I burned the wheat field. So when a neighbor came to complain about it, my father just chased him out and said, look, you've got problems. You'll have a secret police coming and talking to you. And actually they did send the goons from the secret police to explain this guy that we are pretty much untouchable.

So just leave it and plow the field again. Wow. This is how bad it was. But I didn't know anything about it. It was just my father was trying to, I guess, protect his family the way it is happening in socialist totalitarian states. You don't agree with me. I have more power.

If you don't agree with me, have more power. If you don't agree with me, I will send the police on you and you get either arrested, killed or do you disappear. So there was nothing uncommon. Interesting. But then it changed when he left. So I had no protection. If we did something wrong, we should get punished for it. And my mom would never agree with it. My mom was always, and it was the biggest fights that between the, my mom who was devout Catholic and my father who was totally opposed to any type of faith.

He only believed in the party and communist ideology. That was his God. So there was always fights. And I remember the time, time those before my sister was born So I had to be at least three years maybe they're on four years old, but I vividly remember that my grandmother From my maternal side came to visit us and of course she was even more devout. She was like I would say total fanatic

and say total fanatic and total zealot, but this is how they survived the Second World War. This is what helped my grandmother and her children, my mom, survive the Second World War. So when she came in, she had chased all of us to church. We are going to church someday. So my father, I still remember standing in front of the door with hand outstretched and say, no, kids not going to church and you are not going to church because if somebody sees you or kids, I'm going to lose my career, I'm going

to lose my job, you are not going to church. So my grandmother went outside, we were living on the first floor, my mom passed me a football through the window. So I thought it was fun, I was like, well, you know, let's play. And then my mom left. We did went to church. But my father eventually learned to tolerate it, but he was always on the edge, was always nervous, always wanted us to stop going to church. He called the religion a superstition. and also he used a technique that I see being deployed here very often. Basically, he was trying to find some articles,

some quasi-scientific articles, like, okay, we just find out new things about Jesus, let's see if Jesus was real. You can pick your curiosity, especially if you start reading and it's like totally-faith article or book. So my father was bringing it up and just tried to either shove it for us to read or try to read it to us, which against protests of my mother. But this is the technique they used to.

Wow. To actually remove people from faith and change their beliefs. How many you see? Two siblings. Two siblings, my younger brother and younger sister. My sister still lives in Poland. Actually I visited her not too long time ago when I went to, as I was testifying, I was going to come back to it in the criminal case in Poland against

a judge who actually sentenced me to prison time. Where's your brother? My brother lives here. He's here in the States. He owns his business. He has his great business. He's doing well. And he's doing good.

I don't really have much contact with him. Were you... So you're not close with your brother? No, no. I'm closer with you guys, with people like you, with fellow teammates. They are my brothers. As just a person living in the States. Were you close with your siblings growing up? Yes. What would you guys do? Did you guys have any fun?

Yes, we had a lot of fun. The nice thing about it at that time, we did not have, we did not have the direct strict supervision of our parents. Kids used to play, like I was what, six years old, and I was going to kindergarten by myself. I was working around the school, going over the major street. Actually, one of my little friends was killed on that street by the motorcycle. But we were doing ourselves. So we had like house shoes in one hand, holding hands with my brother, and just walking to the kindergarten. That was maybe like quarter mile. And through the woods,

not through the woods, but through the woods, but through different small streets. Mom taught us how to across the street. You look left, you look right. There's nothing happened. You just go fairly fast through the street, but don't run. And then six years old. As long as we're back at home before dark, we're fine.

So we were roaming the city. We were just sometimes, we find ourselves like a mile, two miles away from the home, God knows where, running some streets and just exploring. So that was cool, playing with fire. So we like to bake things in fire, potatoes and stuff. This is how I burned the wheat field by accident. But that time, father was still with us.

After he left, I wouldn't get away with it. So that was them. I have a fond memory. I was poor, but I didn't know I was poor. I thought it was just normal. This is how everybody lived. And I didn't see at that time, they noticed the richer kids or kids

of Communist Party members that I noticed later in the elementary school. How did your family make money after your father left? My mom was a teacher, so she had a little salary. It was not much and it was not enough to buy food. If she was quick enough in the morning to stay in line to buy bread. If she was a little bit late, by the time she made to the end of the line, there was no bread. So we didn't eat. But again, it was like,

really not a big deal. It's just, well, we don't have a bread today. Okay. Do we have bread from yesterday or something? No, we don't. All right. So maybe some potatoes. So mama always tried to make something out, but sometimes we went hungry to school and there was really nothing there. When I was in elementary school, I learned how to help myself and actually feed myself. But I'm not very proud of it now, but at the time, I basically was extorting sandwiches from the kids of the Communist Party members. How would you do that?

Well, I just beat them up and I told them, you give me the sandwich. But I remember in Poland at the time, people didn't want to be seen as poor, right? So a lot of us, including me, my sandwich, if mom got the bread, very often was a little bit water, sprinkle on it and sprinkle sugar. If it was good, we have a batter. If it was butter, a little bit sugar. If the sugar if it was good. We have a batter of those butter a little bit sugar if the sugar was put together and so like I don't want people to see it because I see some of the kids eating these Big buns, you know with ham with tomatoes mayonnaise salt. I mean those like today. I'm just looking it's like I would eat one, too

So this is something that I've seen it. I didn't want them to see that I'm having like bread and a little bit of sugar on it. So, or there's another technique too, like take a tea and like put the tea on the bread, put some sugar on it. I still like that. And so we're eating in the corners, like I don't want nobody to see that I have like that nothing sandwich, nothing and then most of the kids did too. I didn't notice that but then I was when I started feeding myself of the communist party, twerps, little kids then yeah I noticed other kids doing the same thing that I did and there's's a story that still touches my heart

when I talk about it. Because the first one I remember, I seen the kid, like a little fat kid with a big bun, you know, with everything on it. If you had the sandwich today, you would say, damn, that was really good. So I say I woke up to him and just like took it from his hand, just rip it half,

you can have it and just eat it like, wow, this is good. He was about to cry up there, but like, hey, listen, little shit. Tomorrow you bring two sandwiches like this. How old, so you grew up- I was seven years old at the time. You grew up fighting for food. I grew up fighting. Well, I didn't have to, if my mom find out what I did, I would be spanked.

I would be spanked so hard, I would be able to sit on my ass. But I had to hide it from her. She would not tolerate it. But yeah, I was hungry. So I figured out these people, the party member, kids, they have everything. You can tell them the way they dress, the way they carry themselves, the way what they eat, the most important.

So I figure I will just help myself. He has so much, he has abundance of the bread. So I'm sure he won't mind if I eat half of it. So yeah, I go up to him and he says, I told him that if you don't bring tomorrow two sandwiches, you won't have a sandwich, because I will eat entire sandwich. Today I just ate half.

Well, he brought us two sandwiches. He found me himself and just gave it to me. So, from then on, it came to the point that I had to tell him. That started at seven years old. Yes. Well, and then, From then on, it came to the point that I had to tell my... That started at seven years old. Seven years old, yes. And then, so I started noticing other kids doing the same thing. And there was a kid in my class, the first grade, who we call him all kinds of names. This guy was smaller than rest.

We torment this guy. We're talking about bullying. And so it's brutal. Like you have no empathy. At least I did not have any empathy for bullying to the kids that were bullied. It changed. So one day So he was like the the black sheep in the class nobody want to talk to him Even those poor kids other poor kids they call him all kinds of names so one day I was just coming up back from from from school and I had to travel across town had to take a bus and then another bus and travel to travel to travel home.

And I don't know, that was I think second grade, when I noticed that. And my bus took off, I was late. So I started walking home and this kid is walking and he's already scared because now I'm walking behind him and we determine him. But I said, well, you know what, hey, what's up? Do you live somewhere here?

You don't wait on the bus? I say, no, I'm living maybe a quarter mile from here. I said, well, cool. So let's go. I started talking to him and find out that he's just trying to survive with his mom. He doesn't have a father. My curiosity peaked. hey, can I just read where do you leave this building? I once we made to his place. He say I'm going to right here. So let me see how you leave I was curious so okay, so what walking is like one room like half a size of this room here

There is a table There is a one chair and one bed. That's it. And the sink. Sink like you see in the janitorial closet. There's a deep sink when you keep them up and stuff. And on the table, dirty table, there was a full can of cigarette butts. So I say, oh okay well, I see one bed, where do you sleep? I say I sleep with my mom because we cannot afford another bed. So, you know, this is something that still touches me because this guy was, we gave him so much hell. And then I say, okay so where do you eat? I see one chair. I eat on my mom much hell. And then I said, okay, so where do you eat? I see one chair.

I eat on my mom's lap. So then he says, I say, okay, well, where's your toilet? We have a toilet outside. So where do you keep your food? I don't see any food. Well, we eat every day the food. So we don't have any reserves. We don't have any leftovers.

So I said, hmm, okay. So this is actually when so that I think it was the second grade or something changed. And I say, okay, well, I hook you up. So, so then I went to another kid who I knew he has like the same type of sandwiches you can tell these kids that there is better, they have better food. So I have to say, hey, look, tomorrow you bring two sandwiches one for yourself one for this kid so he mouthed off to me and I just beat him up and dragged him in the toilet up there because and because in Poland during the breaks all the kids walk on the hallway just they have to walk so I dragged him

in the toilet and just beat the shit out of him and say tomorrow bring the two sandwiches and he did so I said wow that worked so i gave him the sandwich i said look from now on he will bring you the sandwich if he does not you let me know because i'm going to give you half of his sandwich or just entire sandwich to you he was very grateful he said well i don't know why you do it and then you know i didn't let other kids know, I didn't let other kids touch him. I didn't let other kids to bully him anymore. And it's changed. So from then on, I think I look at the kids a little bit differently than until this time. And that was in second grade. That was a second grade. Yeah. But I was pretty violent too from the beginning as well. I remember in the first grade when we first class up, our class become...

Like when you go to your first grade, so they divide you, okay, you class A, you'll be with this group, you'll be with this group, class B and C. So one of my friends from kindergarten, they say, oh, this girl has a crush on you. I think she's your girlfriend. I got so mad, but not at the kid, but at the girl. I went to the girl and just kicked her as hard as I could. She fell down. They took her to the nurse room.

And this is another lesson that I learned very quick. So she came back all crying to class. This first time in the class in our lives, her name was Bogusia, and she's crying at the bench. And I was like, being somewhat callous until my mom walked in. She was a teacher at that school. So she just looked around the class, say, look at me,

and say, who did you hurt? And the entire class like, that's it. That girl right there. So I was pulled from the bench by the ear, it was just a method in Poland at the time, walk in the middle of the class, my pants were dropped, and I was being spanked so hard for so long time until I broke down and started crying.

When I started crying, she's like, now put your pants up and go out there and apologize. So I did when I apologized. And then I got spanked again when I get home. So I had a bit more explanation why I didn't do that. I never did it again. And that worked. Part of the reason I do what I do is for my family.

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use code SRS for 20% off site-wide at checkout. That's roca.com. So there was things that the times that I still remember still affect me sometimes. And the second grade later we moved when I was living away from that school, so I had to take the bus to school. This is where my father was already gone, so the kids start picking on me. On the way to school, usually not because it's early in the morning, on the way back from school, I get my ass kicked sometimes by the older kids. They just thought it's funny to beat up on me. So I feel like, okay, I don't have a father, so I don't have an older brother to go and stand up for me.

I just have to handle my own. So what I did, I went find like a rebar, maybe it was that big rebar, and I started carrying it with me. I was carrying it in my book case when they, on the way back, I could expect they would harass me, they would try to kick my ass. So I had this thing with me in my briefcase, and I knew they were walking, this group of kids was walking behind me. So I walked into, in Poland, those buildings, there was like fairly new buildings at the time. You have a stairway, so you walk into the stairways,

you go up and then you walk to your apartments. So I just walk in the stairways, I just wait with this thing in it. As soon as first kid walked in, I hope he's alive today, but anyway, so that was it. And so I knocked him out. Yeah, the blood was everywhere. I remember that. And then the other kids run away. And the next day, they repeat themselves. The guy was okay, I guess, because he showed up with the head bandaid. So same thing happens again. So I just walk into the, I see these kids walking and they're already making those warrior

grunts. So I walk into the stairways, just wait until they walk in. I got two of them this time. So they let me along. After that, they decide, well, we're going to find another victim. But what they told me is that violence works. Violence always works. And if it didn't work for you,

means you didn't apply enough of it. So that was my lessons, I think the first lessons from my childhood that you just have to be violent to accomplish things. That if you can, that violence works and they just need to apply it in the right place. Wow. So, but I was what, eight years old, nine years old,

those are the first lessons in my life. But society was brutal at the time, it's not excuse. I get a lot of flak now in today's society when I talk about it in Poland. There were podcasts in Poland that I went to and people are very disturbed that how a kid like this, eight years old, almost kills somebody that is so violent. Well, they don't understand that there were different times.

But the way I look at it today is this is good. The Polish society is different. They don't tolerate violence. You know, my mom wouldn't tolerate either, but there were things that she did. And that was my upbringing. And when I see today people complaining about this and pointing out how bad and evil it is,

I agree with them, but I'm also kind of happy that they can speak to it, that they can verbalize this and they don't afraid to speak that there's a government goon somewhere behind them looking to how to put them to jail or how to persecute them. They can speak their mind. Their minds, they don't have to agree with me, and very often they don't. I'm kind of happy about it because the Polish society is slowly changing more like in America where we can speak, we don't have to look over our shoulder. Well, maybe not the last administration, but we don't have to look on our shoulder. I tell you, you know what?

Even the last administration, I never felt that I'm saying something that can put me to prison, to jail. You know, I can say something, I can lose my job, but I'm not, because being the, I never put myself in that situation, but I never worry about Being what would get you thrown in jail and pulling for well It was a line for bread like my mom and you complain that let's say This that there's never food. There's never enough food for people here. What this government is doing well, if there was a neighbor who next to you or somebody who knew who you were

and over-handed and he was working for secret police or he was a snitch, you could get arrested. It was nothing unusual that police show up on your doorstep, they took you on the police station and say, hey, tell us about your comments here in the breadline or tell about your comments you made at your work about the disparaging communist party members. So in my book actually I described the case when one of my fellow political prisoners was testifying in his defense. His defense was not defense, it was offense. It was actually laying straight truth to the judge. And judge even said, I remember judge asking, well, but this is offending the party member. Do you think it is right? So we can see that the way

the socialists they work up there. So you could put you to jail that, you know, that was like people were afraid the most to get on the political list in Poland, because once you find yourself there, you are always that troublemaker, the anti-socialist, anti-communist. Wow. Take it. You had mentioned people disappearing, being murdered by, it sounds like the state. Did you witness any of that growing up? Even today, even today, people disappearing, being murdered by the, sounds like the state. Did you witness any of that growing up? Even today, even today, they are still looking

for the mass graves of some of Polish heroes who were executed by socialist state. Just, I think recently they found the grave of big Polish hero, Rotmistrz Pilecki, Captain Pilecki, a big Polish hero Rotmistrz Pilecki, Captain Pilecki, the man who volunteered to go to be locked up in Auschwitz so he can write reports what's going on up there and then he escaped after a while. But those reports went to the West on Churchill desk So they knew what was going on in those prison camps. So this guy later fought in Warsaw uprising in 1944. He became a hero in Poland.

So after communists took over, he was promptly arrested and executed, sentenced to death and executed like many, many people. And his grave was never found, I believe, until recently. But there are still people that are missing and their graves are being found in the prison yards, digging somewhere in some unspeakable forest in places. So people are still looking. There's an IPN organization in Poland, the government organization, Institute of Polish Remembrance, where they pursue still the searching for Polish heroes who disappeared under communist

regime. So, there was nothing uncommon to disappear. And also, please remember that every communist system, whether in Poland, a socialist system, whether in Poland, whether in East Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia, they had those almost given every four or five years, 1968, 1970, 1976. The people went on the streets and there were more the protesters. They were brand insurrectionists, bandits, terrorists

and shot at. So every so many years, this upheaval happens. And every time that happens happens the new crew comes in and say okay socialism is great these people just didn't know how to social how to work in socialism system so we're gonna replace and sometimes they would that government before was either killed or imprisoned as well and the new crew came in to build the better, the real socialism and it repeats itself every so many years and every time the new crew, the new gang came in, the socialist gang came in and they were telling people that we will do it

the right, the socialism the right way, we will build socialism the right way. You know, that's, you never hear in, and there's another thing people need to know, they were not communist states. They didn't even pretend to build communist states. Even in Soviet Union, you can see if you read the literature from that time, they all were building socialism, not communism. Communism is, the way my father explained to me, is just a stepping stone to further

societal development into communism. But you cannot omit socialism. The socialism is very necessary step. So that's how it happened. And you mentioned about the, asked me about the parallels. I've seen a lot of parallels in the last administration that were very dangerous. I was afraid. Are you familiar?

I'm just curious, the sidetracker, are you familiar with what's going on in Romania? Have you been following that at all? Yes. It's the USAID with European Union, this mandel action, they removed the candidate. This is what I'm saying, the European Union, it reminds me more of the Soviet Union right now than with totalitarian control than the European Union at its inception. I mean, look at it, people are getting arrested in European Union for Facebook posts. And there's no like, well, maybe somewhere you had about it, it's documented.

You can see even on the videos, there's video when police coming in arrest people for Facebook posts, let's say in Great Britain. The decay of that society is immense and I don't know how long it will last. But seems like the days of European Union are numbered, I think. That's maybe not that good, but you see what happened in Romania, you see what happened in Georgia, you see what the assassination attempt in Slovakia when the Prime Minister Fico barely survived. And the same thing in 2014 in Ukraine.

So the USID, and there's another organization to working hand to hand with it, I think END, that did a lot of harm to people trying to subdue them and convert them into the compliant masses. Yeah, yeah. Sounds like it's on the cusp of that. I went over to Romania to interview Colleen Giogescu. He had a commanding lead in the election.

Then they froze the election. And then I guess they unfroze it and they just pulled him. Yeah. He's not running anymore. They just completely pulled him. This is what I call, like here people don't hear this term. We call it socialist elections. Socialist elections are elections where communists and socialists always win.

So there's a socialist election and all the mechanism behind it Was you know if you would accuse let's say in Poland was the same mechanism? Are you you cannot vote somebody who you really thought could be good person or politician? You have you are voting for people that they told you to vote and there were the mechanism was set up this way that no matter what, that person would win elections. If you notice in Eastern Europe, first thing they did when socialist grabbed the power was start changing the rules and laws to give them the advantage and give them the opportunity to falsify election even if they have to stay at power.

Because they know after four or five years of their socialist, communist ideology people had enough. They didn't want any of that and any of these Marxist goons. In Poland, when I was growing up, I remember people would hang those Marxists from the latin posts if they could get away with it. This is how much hate it was. But there's always segment of the society, like my father, that go get along to go along and try to stay afloat and they will do whatever it needs to take to stay in the control and control the society.

Because we need to notice that most of the atrocities committed in Poland were not committed by Russians, were committed by Poles. They were trained in Soviet Union by, and not necessarily Russians, there were different nationalities. Ukrainians, there were Belarusians who were in Soviet, part of the Soviet Union at the time, who train and who installed that type of the government in Poland at the time. So in Poland,

the most atrocities that happened were committed by Polish communists on Poles. The Soviet Union. The most... I think no other nation experienced the atrocities and danger of communism, socialism more than the Russians. They were the biggest victims of that system. So there was no Poles murdering Russians, there were no Ukrainians murdering Russians, there were Russians killing Russians because evil ideology will do it to you. This is when you subscribe to so-called relative morality and this is what you become part of the system that will actually twist you into this type

of behavior, this type of morality. So that's very dangerous. When did you, so when did you get sent back to your father? I was, I think I was 16 years old at the time. I was still in the eighth grade of elementary school, but my mama just could not afford to feed three kids. So he said, you are the oldest one, so we can go send you there. And I didn't really want to go, but I had no choice.

The funny thing is because my father came, picked me up, so we traveled from my city lots to after all the court proceedings were done to his apartment in Warsaw His wife opened the door. He said okay, so he's He'll be living with us from now on I can remember the screams like what? What what are you talking about? Nobody's going to live here with us. so it's so you know the tension already started that was not very pleasant you know walking to the house and this you see this this weird women screaming and yelling but I had no choice so I stayed there and she had the son so she was you know giving me a hard

time so I was beating up his her son And I was kind of like equalizing. The more I get punishment from her, the more I beat up that other kid. And eventually I had had enough, and they had enough too, so they kicked me back to my mother's. That was one year, but also I could see at the time my father's mental state and his values system.

Like I mentioned earlier here, when you seen him you would think, well, this was a nice, clean man, well-spoken and educated man, somebody like, would be great to have as a neighbor. But when I start talking to him, I remember I had a conversation at the time that he says, I asked him, you know, what if people were resisting socialism and communism? There are some people who will not buy into it.

I don't buy into it. Or he says, well, we have methods to convince people. We will make them do that. But if that doesn't work, we have prisons. So what if prison doesn't work, if we still don't change him? Well, the social system is such a great system that is worthy sacrifice, so we just eliminate physically these people. That way they don't interfere with us implementing such a great system for everybody.

Once people get into the social system, they will love it. We just need to eliminate people who oppose it because they derail our efforts. So he wouldn't mind these people being killed. And also what I didn't know at the time, my father was responsible for censorship in Poland at the time. He was a minister of art, culture, art and culture in Poland. He was a director of the department for theaters, movies and libraries. movies and libraries. So if you wrote the book that my father did not like, your book never showed up. Not only that, if that book was skeptical of socialism and communism, none of your books were ever showed up. And if you argue about it, you could end up in prison. So movies, somebody pointed out not too long time ago, older person, that do you know that

your father was responsible for censoring the very popular comedy that was in Poland at the time, Samis Foy, it was named like all hours, as I lose translation. He was responsible for removing parts of that movie and he was arguing with the director that this does not support the socialist point of view. It opposes what we would say the nice transition to socialist and communist society. So we need to cut this, this and just told the people what to cut the movie and they had to comply. I didn't know about that movie. I knew that he was censoring things.

Censoring books, censoring artists. So a lot of how the things that happened in Poland at the time in post-war era was you either could adopt the art and people to socialism or you eliminate it. So there were statues that socialists, the communists like my father decided they do not support the communist narrative, the ideology. One just destroyed and remove it so people don't know about it.

Or change the meaning of it, knowing that author had the, creating the, let's say that painting, had this on his mind. Well, kill the author and explain to people what really we think that picture means. So those are just normal methods. And if you were not in line with the socialist state, the terror state, you were cancelled. So it's not much different than what could happen today, that happened today under the

LASA administration. So I'm talking about the LASA administration. I know we're going to get a lot of flak for it and I think the YouTube may flak this interview, but I don't know. The bottom line is that a lot of the things that happened in Poland, like you asked me earlier, was like deja vu from, almost like deja vu, I could extrapolate on what is happening in the United States under last administration.

The difference is this, that America was built by free, strong people. The culture of freedom, the understanding of freedom and the yearning for freedom is so strong that it's not as easy to subdue and change and derail it. So people survived that four years and now you can see what is happening. People are raising up, I would say, standing up again against some of the methods used by the previous administration. And they have to because if we fail, we have no place to go.

Wow. How often would your dad and you have these conversations? Quite often because I wasn't a good student. So always to get him over my back, whether I did the homework or the homework was bad, I asked these questions and we started arguing about it. I just rolled him up. But it also allowed me to understand a little bit more the way he thinks. And it was scary thoughts at the end. The guy has no scruples

in implementing the ideology that he was subscribing to. And he want everybody to subscribe. If you didn't, he will force you to do it or he will eliminate you. So you don't derail other people from it. It's very dangerous, but this is how they operated at the time. You could lose your job, and you will not be able to find your job. You could not open your business.

You couldn't attend the college. Matter of fact, the education was a very big thing for communists and control of the students. So to get to college, if you were not a member to get to college, if you were not a member of youth socialist organization, your chances were smaller to get into university than somebody who was activists and openly, how to say it, virtue signaling that he is a communist and pro-communist. So these people were sought after and they were given priority to join the universities. There were also people who did get into universities being opposed to communist system, but there were very rare and few in between. So they control everything and they control from the schools.

It happened to me. You know, when I was in fifth grade, I remember this was the time, fifth grade is the time when kids in Poland had to start learning Russian language. It became part of like math, Polish, physics, mathematics, you had to learn also Russian. So me not being the greatest student,

I got pissed off because I hardly have the time and the ability to do homework from this math, physics, the Polish language, and now it's Russian. So, I just don't like it. And I piped up at the school, I said, why do they teach us the Russian language or we don't speak Polish very well yet And on the top of it is a language of occupiers. My grandmother always called the Russians occupiers at the time so I

Didn't think much of it. There was nothing political at the time about it but the repercussions were because the teacher walked right away to my bench and grabbed me by my ear and holding my ear through the whole hallway, took me to principal's office, explained what happened, the principal got on the phone and called police. So the police came, but on the way to school they stopped my mom. This is fifth grade? Fifth grade, yes. So, what was it, fifth grade, it's like 12, I guess? Something like that, yeah.

So they detained my mother. They brought her with them. So there was two secret police, there was two police in uniform, there was four of them. My mom was sitting in the middle, I guess, in this small car they were driving. So they came, they started yelling at us, you know, and they told my mom very straight, if you don't instill more love to socialism in your kids, we're going to take them away, we will educate them the right way. And, you know, don't do it. There won't be any warning. If we run across that similar situation like this, you're as a parent, your parenting will be done.

My mom cried. I cried because I didn't know why my mom was crying. I was scared, but being a kid, I really didn't still conceptualize what was really happening until later my mom explained to me. But this is something that from then on, my mom was always, before I was going to school, saying, do not talk politics at school. Do not harm our family. Do not talk politics.

And that was before we were leaving the school in the morning to school in the morning. Every time I heard this, just as a reminder, it tells you the fear people were living in of the totalitarian socialist state. And that was not the exception. I mean, all my friends were giving the same advice as when I talked to them, they said, well, like, my mom told me not to talk about politics because it's dangerous.

So yeah, that's happened. Wow. You know, you see a lot of that going on on the West Coast right now, you know, with that and, I mean, Washington, you know you see a lot of that going on on the west coast right now, you know, with that and I mean, Washington, you know, if you don't subscribe to the gender confusion stuff that's going on right now, then the state will come in, take your kids. That's your kids, yes. And also the cases where actually kids were being converted in their gender.

That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, behind parents back. The parents even didn't know about it. So I'm aware of the case where a girl or the boy was transitioned behind parents back and eventually committed suicide because of all the things. You know, this is something that is very tragic, but I think we need to stand up to it. We need to understand what is going on. We need to understand that normalization of depravity, especially if you have a therapist

that they are not allowed to treat mental illness because it's politically incorrect and you can lose your license. It tells you how far some of the groups in our society have fallen and that's pure evil this is what I'm talking about that this is not the struggle between the Republicans and Democrats really they are good people on both sides this is This is a struggle, evil against good, good against evil. And evil is not intellectual concept. It's not something you just think about. Evil is real, and we face real dangerous times right now,

because it seems like sometimes the evil side, the evil has upper hand. But, you know, I'm looking with hope and I understand that this is not going to take roots in America. American psyche is much stronger than that. You can throw these things on some people, some wicked people who will cave in, but Americans and American people will not. That freedom on which America was born, from which was born, the quest for freedom, quest

for being strong, independent is much stronger than evil. We will win. America will win. And so, when you moved in with your father and his, was it his wife? Yeah, it was a little more, I already learned my techniques too, how to extort sandwiches. By this time I was extorting wines, wine and drinks from other kids at school. Well it didn't start this way, I just didn't know much better. I was doing boxing at the time, I was training boxing and I decided to, I remember one time

on the football field, soccer field, there was some little kid making, not really little kid but he was like at my age making fun of girls So I was trying to be a tough guy. Oh God, but just knock him out Well, well, I didn't know the guy was part of the gang at school and that's that see there in the war So they had those gangs so I then They they surrounded me I said, okay, well We just hit our guy. so we're gonna go and we need to talk. Well, I didn't wait, I just knocked another one.

So that just put them on the back foot. But then they say, okay, now to mend our case, we'll cause you any problems, you just bring us a bottle of wine. So I say, a bottle of wine, I just knocked the next one of you. I'm not going, you just bring us a bottle of wine. So I say, a bottle of wine? I just not gonna, next one of you, I'm not gonna, you're not gonna get shit from me. But then I was thinking like, hmm,

that kind of work like I used to do with sandwiches, so maybe I should talk to them. So I did get them wine. I did get them wine, and then we started extorting wine from other kids. So that's, that was the, again, violence works. If it didn't work for you, means you didn't apply enough of it. It has no place in American society.

I have to be open about it and I have to state it openly. It wouldn't work here. America is different. But at that time it worked for me. So it lasted with your dad for about a year. Yeah. And then you got sent back at what age? Seventeen now? Yeah.

No, that was like seventeen going, yeah, seventeen years old, yes. So by the, before I get, so before I get back to my mom, I finished my high, my regular elementary school, and the high school that I went to was very sought after. Only kids with the best grades could get to it. My grades was like the worst of the worst, but I had a father, communist father, so we just take one visit to school, and I was greeting like a hero at school, just come on in, pick your class,

you know, what do you like to do? And so I was treated like very well. And, but again, didn't last long because eventually his wife got tired of me, his kids got a lot of bumps and black eyes many times, so they just sent me home. And then I start my Life back again with my mom. How was it starting a life back again with your mom? Well, there was Again, I have a phone found the memories of my childhood. So

Today when I when I look at it back, yeah, it was poor, it was violent, but when I also, I had the nostalgia for it. So when I came back home, I didn't go back to do boxing. My home at that time was in Zielona Gora, a small town. So I didn't go back to the boxing because the first karate Kyokushin, Kyokushin Kai, was born in Zielonaagura, in the town. So I said, I need to get to it. But because you have to be 18 to join, I took my school ID and I scraped the date

and I changed my date one year earlier. So I was actually 18. So I didn't tell my mom about it because my mom was very strict about these things. And I said, I told my mom that I want to go there, but we couldn't afford it. But she said this, if you stop drinking and stop smoking, because I was a drinking smoker, if you stop drinking and smoking and I see you try to pay for your training, I will help you. So then I was selling the, what do you call it,

like papers, you get the papers, like recycling. I was doing the recycling and I was just getting money for it, you could do it in Poland. It took a lot of stuff to carry, heavy stuff, to make meaningful money, but I learned I can steal the newspapers, the stack of newspapers, because in the morning, it was like six, five o'clock in the morning, there was no electronics at the time, there was no internet.

So they just throw those newspapers by the places where they are being sold. So I just wait until the guy left and just grab a couple of these bags, each one maybe like five, six kilograms, that's a lot of heavy weight. And I just run away with it. I hid in my basement. And after two, three days, I just run up to the place where they were buying their recycling and just start making money just to supplement

my karate training. And it worked. My mom seen it, she seen that I tried. my karate training. And it worked. My mom seen it, she seen that I tried, I stopped drinking, I stopped smoking. Just like this, just one day I stopped. And I started doing karate kikushinkai. It was fun and it was something that I very fond memories of it.

And that's how my life moved. And then you found yourself in prison. I found myself in prison after that was 1978 and that was when John Paul II came to Poland. At that time when you were watching on official TV his interaction with people, you would think the way that was explained by Communists was one crazy guy in a funny dress showed up and few people showed up to talk to him. When the TV shows, yeah, a few people here, a few people there, but even more protesters like, yeah, the Pope is bad. And that was the communist propaganda.

If you look today, and some of the pictures on the internet, there were masses, there were, if not millions, there were hundreds of thousands of people coming to meet the Pope. If not millions, there were hundreds of thousands of people coming to meet the pope. But you wouldn't know it from official press, from fake news media in Poland at the time. The impression was that there's nobody interested in just funny dude in the white skirt. That's the way how it was explained. But that was very meaningful for Polish nation because by this time, no matter what the famous media say, people do not believe that.

If they say this is white, people usually comment that it's got to be black because the communist says white. But people had the chance to gather together in those meetings where thousands of us show up to meet the pope. And they had the chance to see that there's not only few of them, there's most of them. There is entire society that opposing that depravity and that socialist terror.

And they start talking, they start dreaming again. And the words that I still remember the Pope said was you know don't be afraid stand up get up your knees fight for your rights don't be afraid this is why what the vice president JD Vance when he say the same thing to European Marxist goons in that room during that visit he was not speaking to those turds and baboons sitting there. He was speaking to people in European Union, stand up, fight for your rights. Don't let these goons and baboons bully you.

So those words what the Vice President JDance say, resonated with me and still resonate. What was it that got you in prison? So after John Paul II visit in 1978, people start actually organizing. They say, you know what? He's right. We don't need to live on our knees. It's time to get up.

It's time to fight for our rights. We don't need to live on our knees. It's time to get up. It's time to fight for our rights. We don't need to be afraid. And they start organizing groups in the different places. And eventually they say, well, why don't we just legalize our organization as a trade union? Because mostly there were workplaces, factories. So let's organize and let's legalize. Let's just say, fuck the communism.

Let's make your organization independent from communist party. And they did. So they start building slowly. And of course, it was a price to pay too. The persecution, the present times. Sometimes people are beaten to death or suicided. So that's, but that was the price worth to pay.

What do you mean, suicided? Well, for example, a student, I think it was 1978, his name was Pias, so he was active in opposition, working, trying to, he was a student, so he was found dead, and the official cause of death, he fell off the stairs. So there were many cases like this. So they were not afraid to go and kill people, just like my father would do it if he had the opportunity or if he was required to do it.

I have no doubt that if he wouldn't do it himself, he would find somebody to do it. So that was normal. But people started organizing. And in 1980, finally, people had so much, so enough of the socialist state, they started doing strikes. They went on strikes here, there, in Gdansk, Gdynia, and eventually the entire economy started collapsing. So communist government at the time in socialist Poland said, okay, let's go get some agreement.

Let's just do something. Let's try to work it out. So you guys can go to work. We try to change the socialists and be more humane. We now know how to fix the socialism. We make socialists better now, like every six years. So people say, well, no, not really. Now we need to be recognized as a trade union's solidarity. They call themselves solidarity. So that trade union was born. Eventually the government had

to give in and approve. It was the first organization in entire Warsaw Pact that was totally independent from communist party. That was the first one. It was the first break that was kicked out from the communist terror wall. Poland did it and eventually the entire wall crumbled. So yeah, so this is how it started. But they never give up.

They start making lists of people inconvenient to socialist state. And eventually in December 13, 1980, they impose martial law. So at midnight, they start arrest, people from the list. There were secret police, army involved, the regular police. They were raiding apartments across entire Poland, arresting people and detaining them. That was at midnight. I remember I was at the Solidarity Headquarters at the time, the trade union movement, which turned into the social movement.

I was on the phone with a friend, with Austria, and at midnight I just clicked, everything is gone. I didn't think much of it because communist socialist equipment didn't work well anyway. So I was like, well, another, I'll call him maybe later. And then people start coming into our building headquarters, say, hey, my son was arrested, or my father and my mother were arrested. Sometimes they were arresting people leaving kids in apartments with no supervision. So that was very, really bad because all the telephones, radio, everything was cut at midnight. A lot of people died. People have a heart attack or emergency.

They had no means to get help. People were shoving to the back of their apartments. You could not be on the street past a certain time. If you were, you could be arrested and you were most likely arrested. And this is where I got even more involved. This is where I started getting involved in underground structures and building the resistance to communist takeover through martial law of entire Poland. And yeah, there was a lot of people arrested, a lot of people were shot and killed,

but they were able to subdue the society yet for some time. And this is where I got involved. And I started building the structures, eventually we got caught. We started printing a duelet in. Or printing a duleton. A bulletin. A bulletin, yes. It was behind the censorship of official fake news media. So there was basically challenge.

They were saying one thing, but what we were doing basically collecting the names of people who were arrested, detained, sent to internment camps, and what happened to them, the court cases. So this is what we're printing. It was very dangerous for communist state. Anything beyond what they can't censor is perceived by socialists as very dangerous to their detrimental to their power. So of course they track us down and I got arrested.

And I call it bulletin, they call it newspaper, but it was just a leaflet. It was a leaflet with two, I think two pages maybe, but it was dangerous enough to give me three years prison sentence. Pete How did they arrest you? Vlade They arrested me when I came on the point, because you know, we didn't know much about how underground works and how to protect ourselves. So, we printed out and just went on the street and were giving to the people. So, they track us down and say, okay, these guys are passing So they they they track us down say okay these guys are passing the those illegal newspapers, so I Guess they follow us and I walked to the point because we supposed to print the next

batch of the newspaper Then and as I sing as I'm not going the door I was just like people are here people running from upstairs from downstairs the doors open with the gun in my face It's like whoa, okay So, okay, they throw me on the ground and after a few kicks they handcuff me and they dragged me by my feet to the apartment they shut the door and they were waiting they were hoping that some of the holes will show up and So one of those Secret Service And so one of those secret service Guards he was sitting the chair like I see right here

But he put me in front of it as I put his feet on me and just like so I was working as a foot footstool For his feet for quite a few hours and then nobody showed up Because it was only us so they took took me back to, they took me to political, not political, they took me to secret police headquarters in my city. That was my first really stand with the communism and prison. And it was, you were there for three years. No, I was there for less than that because there was amnesty. So after around a year and a half, they kind of started releasing us right before the second visit of Pope to Poland.

He demanded that before he visits Poland, they need to instill amnesty for political prisoners. So they slowly started releasing them. What was it like in prison? Well, there was like, I didn't have any problems. I just, if I had to beat somebody up, I did. I didn't have a scruples about it. But I remember the first one, even when I was arrested, they put me into this holding tank with other prisoners.

And this is normal technique of secret police they will keep you not freezing but they keep you cold they will keep not keep you starving but they will keep you hungry so they slowly they will break down your resistance that way if you are easier to fall down and they so remember they throw me like two o'clock in the morning, it was dark, no windows, so I just like didn't know even where to go. Somebody say, I just go along the wall, find that empty spot, sit down and sleep, you're going to figure it out tomorrow. I say, okay.

So we got up tomorrow in the morning and this big dude comes up and say, hey, I didn't eat quite enough, so I'm going to eat your breakfast today. You are well fed, I guess. You just came back from outside, I'm going to eat your breakfast today. So like, I didn't have much experience with prison time, so I figured out I just knock him out

and just assert myself that nobody's going to eat my breakfast. So I knock him out, but I have to... So he was laying there, and I was thinking, like... I said, well, I'm going to knock his front teeth out, and I'm going to make a necklace out of it. So actually I woke up to him, I very carefully lifted his upper lip and just drove his two front teeth in, just pulled them out.

And, well, I got caught with them, I think in the next prison time, because they wanted to transfer me to a real prison. This was those, they started like searching as much better and they found my teeth. So I'm sorry, I don't have my necklace. But that was the, but you know, like it never bothered, nobody never bothered me with taking my breakfast.

It would be very unlikely in prison that somebody like a real prisoner would just go and try to take your breakfast. There was some punk who think he's somebody. But he was threatening me, yeah, when you go to real prison, I'm going to pass to these guys and they're gonna fuck you up. I was like, all right, I'm gonna you say it again I'm going to knock your bottom teeth out. You want that? He let me on now. So then I was transferred to eventually when they When they finish with me they transfer this intermediate prison where I was waiting for my sentence sentencing And then after that they they took me to political prison,

political prison on Russian border in city Khrubyshev. That's where the pictures in my book and on my websites are from, because when I visited that prison in 2022, I had the chance actually to go inside and tour the place where I spent my time as a prisoner. Wow. Yeah. What was it like in that prison? inside and tour the place where I spend my time as a prisoner. Wow. Yeah.

What was it like in that prison? Was there like a re-education program or anything? That was, but it was not official re-education program. So from intermediate prison I was transferred to, after sentencing, to that political prisoner. But then they kept, there was no, one of the harshest prisons in Poland, this is where they kept political prisoners. They were kept all over the Poland, but it was like the most known harsh prison. And then they, so this is where I met people, professors, engineers, people with a stature that accomplished something in their life, and even politicians.

So that was very educational for me. It stopped being, I didn't think about it as a punishment. It was more like education for me. I learned about the real history of Poland. I learned how twisted the official history of Poland was. That helped me. This is what shaped me in the big part to who I am today. I met a lot of brave people. When I was sitting in prison, I didn't have a family, I didn't have a wife or kids. And now we have kids, we know how it is, I understand how it was difficult for all those

engineers, all those professors who never had a contact with prison or law enforcement, suddenly being on the receiving end, sitting in prison and worrying about their wives, their kids, and still not giving up, still fighting the system even from prison. For me, that was inspiration. So yeah. I was so inspired that eventually the prison administration sent a letter to my mother that basically come and help out because I'm not following the rules and my behavior is highly negative, not up to standard to socialist regulations and stuff.

So I still have it. I need to find it because we just found it maybe like a year ago. And I said, okay, I'm going to keep it. And I put it somewhere in the safe place, but I don't know where the safe place is now. But I have that letter from prison administration to my mom calling her and asking to influence me to come here and talk to me. So it was funny because they got extra visit from my mom. I didn't expect that, get a visit once a month. And suddenly my mom show us,

hey, you need to go and visit mom. So my mom sees her crying and say, well, I'm very proud of you. I said, well, I'm sure you are, but what's up? She say, well, this, and she just pulled this letter up. So I'm very proud, twice as proud now. So keep doing what you're doing. Don't give up.

So yeah, and then we were actually start fighting back. I remember we went on the hunger strike. So we're like for, I don't remember, it was three weeks or month where we didn't refuse to eat. We were trying to, it started from beatings. So one of the political, some of the political prisoners got beat up by guards. So we're not hunger strike, but then we say,

okay, well, we are ready for like eight, nine days. So why don't we just attach the request for status of political prisoner? We are political prisoners, so let's fight for that. So now, so we wrote the letter to administration that the strike will continue until we receive that, until we receive the status of political prisoner. And they start breaking our strike,

starting with the older, more sick prisoners. Some professors were taken to the room and say like, the way they, by the Polish regulation at the time, they have to feed you forcefully, feed you after I think two weeks. So they start that, the way they do it is the big pipe, looks like a vacuum pipe, but a little bit smaller, corrugated pipe, pipe and the funnel on the end. So they handcuffed you to the chair, they took this pipe and they show you, show the thing up to your stomach and then they have a big, what, what do you call it, like big thing where they cook stuff, like a yellow glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue,

glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue, Why don't you just take this little cup so I won't have to pour it in and just drink it? People who are older people say, well, this is very painful, so I just drink it here and I'm still on strike. So usually they don't even let them finish that drink because as soon as he grabs that cup, puts it in his mouth and makes two, three sips of it. Say, okay, now you are not on hunger strike. You feed yourself. Your hunger strike is over. And in transport to different prison or different pavilion or whatever, they just start separating

these people. So a lot of people went this way. They were like treated this way. But eventually the letter from the church, the Catholic Church in Poland came in, guys, you will not get status of political prisoner. You can accomplish other things, but that's not. You need to stop that because you are wasting yourself. Because there are people taken to hospitals, to emergency rooms because of that.

And that's how we, eventually the site case is over. We will stop the hunger strike. Well, what were you guys, how would the hunger strike have worked if they were censoring all the media? How would anybody know you guys were on the loose? The priest that was coming to, they were allowed once a week on Sundays, the priest to come in. The friend who was passing him the information was his friend of mine, who we are still friends. That's how the information was getting out. They would leak it to a priest and then the priest would disseminate it through the church

and to the people. Passed it to underground because Poland at the time already had pretty strong underground structures. They were eventually infiltrated by the secret police, but they were working and they were still effective. So those were being spread out through alternate media. So basically the fake news media, of course, we know what to expect, but there were still those bulletins like mine, they were being printed and disseminated to people

or being just left thrown the street here so people could pick it up and read it and that's things spread like wife or wildfire but also you know there's another thing. What would the consequences be? If they caught you with it? No no no no no what would the consequences be for the government if people knew that I mean they're already arresting they shut down communications at midnight that day. Right. And did mass arrests.

Right. And so, I guess what I'm asking is what would the consequences have been for the government had the, when the church would leak out that there was a hunger strike? That would be... Other than just a bunch of pissed off people. when the church would leak out that there was a hunger strike? That would be not so much within the country, but outside. It would be okay. The Western media, yes, the Radio Free Europe, Voice of America. Your Voice of America in my life plays a very instrumental role because The the things that started learning about the communist regime about the real history of Poland was

Started with the voice of America where it was transmitted to Poland With real true information what was happening in Poland? What was the real Polish history was very interesting, but it was illegal to listen to it So they they did not want this information government to leak outside, beside the sanction against communist government by President Reagan was paying big role in the eventual collapse of the communism and socialism in Poland. But yeah, there were repercussions, they were afraid, and they had enough. People were fighting them on every step they could, maybe not physically, but intellectually. They call it now, in Poland it was coined the name internal immigration.

So basically, people were shutting themselves down away from the government, not cooperating with them, and the entire economy was going to shit. And so they did not want that. cooperating with them and the entire economy was going to shit and So they did not want that they that eventually they realized that they cannot this minority You didn't know really listening to the fake news media But that minority cannot rule over the majority that people are real. I were realizing there is more and more of them versus the small group of elites, socialist elites in Poland. So yeah, they were afraid. They didn't want that.

And then eventually that thing collapsed. Wow. So you were part of the collapse. I was part of the collapse. Well, by this time I was already in Poland, but it totally collapsed in 1987. I believe, this was the transition from communist, from the totalitarian system happened towards democracy. By this time I was already living my American dream in America. And how did you get out of prison? So was the Pope?

Amnesty. The Pope was coming in and they start releasing political prisoners. So after coming out, it's actually a funny story because I was arrested in winter time. So all the clothes I had was just winter, and a big old coat, big boots, the strings were already broken, the hat, the cap. And I remember they let me out and they say, okay, this is your clothes. Now, this is a ticket to your city and buy, get out.

So when I left, I looked like a bomb, you know? So I remember I was walking, I was showing my shoes because they were falling, they had strings in it. So until I get to the town, I had to walk from prison, maybe like three miles to town to get the train, and then change the train. So yeah, I do look like a bomb, and people are like, look at this guy, no, he's a bomb.

In Poland, it was normal for people, even if they went to take trash out, they wanted to look good. They wanted to dress, and they just dressed themselves so they look decent. They was not like sweatpants or something, it just goes, I do it now, right? But at that time you always put something, some nice clothes, wherever you were outside.

Like for me, I remember I have a special clothes for the Sundays to go to church, or like a church clothes that I was not allowed to wear at home or anywhere else except going to church because it was a special occasion. So people are there. So seeing me as a bomb, working with shoes, anti-shoes, you know, big jacket in the summertime, it was, I think, a lot of sight for a lot of Polish people there. So, yeah. Where did you go? Do you want back? I walked to the train station, then I took the train to my city. And there was no cell phones at the time.

So like my mom didn't even know anything. And, um, yeah, I just, uh, took the, I didn't have the money to pay for the bus ticket. So from the train station, I just, uh, took, uh, part of it started walking, but it was so unpleasant. And eventually you'll jump on the bus and said like two, three stops. I just went and then I went back home. That was it.

So my mom was very happy. She couldn't believe, you know, my siblings too. And, uh, but yeah, that was it. Um, and I, now I thought, okay, so now I'm done with prison. What's next? So try to find a job, try to do something, try to set my life again. And, uh, of course I resume training, the Taekwondo and kickboxing, I switch Kyokushinkai to Taekwondo because I like it better. I like the people there.

They have a similar mentality to mine. They didn't mind to fight. They like to fight on the streets. So that was just like a more like a good group of people, you know, less sport, more fights. And so I wouldn't try to resume my life. But then coming out from the trainings, very often I had the police car or sometimes civilian cars pulled in, get handcuffed, thrown in the car, drove around the town for a few hours, sometimes drove outside the town and drop, or usually they drop me off outside of town. And then I had to walk back home. But it was not so much to terrorize me. They knew they cannot terrorize me. But there was to terrorize people around me. I say, yeah, you know what,

don't do that. Don't be still hang out with this guy and Eventually And they time was okay I can take a bus or something go back home, but the night where the buses are working sometimes I had to work four or five miles To home so eventually I decided one day. I may not come back from those excursions it's time time to go time to leave and I went to US Embassy asked for. And I went to US embassy, asked for help. I went to US embassy because at that time, America was, it always is, but it's that beacon of freedom.

This is where people look up to. I remember dreaming like, why Poland cannot be like America? You know, and what happened too, when I was going to this very exclusive school in Warsaw, then my father set it up for me. I had to travel to change the buses,

and the change the bus was, the stop was by the US embassy. So I remember I loved just to go up there because at that time they had those glass displays where where they were pictures from America. They were information America So I remember even before the martial even before I got political I just love to look at it and see wow, you know, I love to dream So sometimes it was so nice that I remember missing the bus, you know, I said fuck this bus You know, I just me I want to read this so I was the I did read that and and I was always fascinated

I like to pick to the fence and they see the big powerful beautiful cars. I was like mine this This is a this is the country. Those are the free people. Why are we that today those? glass displays are taking down for security reason, I guess. And I still, when I went last time, I went up there because for me it's very nostalgic. But yeah, that was gone. Wow.

And so you got, you put in and- Yeah, I asked for it. I told them what happened and I said, I would like to escape Poland. I would like I need help They you know, I didn't even the wildest dream. I think they will allow me to come live in America It was just like well, but I have to try so so I went to ask you know I find out like I asked for the they asked for documents and all that stuff I did.

I got within a very short time documents stating that, yes, the visa will be granted to me when I get Polish passport. So that was normal procedure at the time. A lot of political refugees came to this way, either to America or different countries. My choice was always America. And so once I got that promise, I could apply with that I could apply for passport, otherwise you cannot get the passport in Poland. So with this I apply for passport, the passport was given to me, and I got the visa, I got the green card, and actually I-94, that was the first document,

which was a later exchange for green card, eventually I became US citizen. But yeah, so this is where my journey became. There's one thing I would like to mention too during martial law. You know, when everything was banned, like the solidarity, insignia, solidarity, like lapel pants, they were just forbidden. You could not wear it. So people started wearing American flag as a resistance, as a show. Yeah, we are free,

you know, we want to be free. So I remember that. So we all had the American flags. Communists got tired of it. I remember my city because the martial law, they had the roadblocks. So they, once every while they stopped bus or something. Everybody has to disembark. They were checking documents. And so if they found the solidarity trading in your pain, you could get beat up and hold up your ass to jail. But with American flag, they just could not really do that much.

At least they did not. To the point, because I remember with the time that I got stopped on the checkpoint, when they pull us out, they rip our flags, American flags off and they stomp them in the ground. So the funny thing, that's not funny, but so we're back on the bus and then the guy, as the bus was moving, the guy say, yeah, fuck you, we're gonna get more, we're gonna buy more American flags. And when they stopped the bus, they pulled everybody out and they grabbed the thing. I don't think it was the guy who mouthed off to them. They just picked the first guy they could easier grab.

They grabbed him, they dragged him, and they dragged him to the police van while beating him with those rubber sticks all the way on the way to it. So now you can leave. So we're like, okay, well, maybe we don't say anything. We just buy new American flags. So yeah, that American flag was always for us, for many of us, that become a freedom, that drive. And then I came to live here.

Did any of your siblings or your mother come with you? No, no, they stayed. That time they stayed there. And my sister is still there. She's still living her own life. She has her own business now. And they have peaceful, nice lives. So they enjoy it.

And I'm here. When I was living in Poland, I was saying goodbye to Poland forever. I had my passport. I'm going to post on my website. My passport is only one way, so it's a stamp in it. You can cross Polish border one time only. So I say, well, that's it.

Wow. And yeah. Was it hard to say goodbye? Well, I was anxious, not really that much, but it was more difficult for my family, my mom, because the way we understood, we're never going to see each other. So for me, it was like, well, you know, I have to go because if I don't, then I may not last long. And yeah, I remember, I just had a bag of my clothes

and I had the $20 because if had a bag of my clothes and I Had the $20 because you had to have a $20 and I woke up to the plane and left. That was it Wow So yeah, that that's how my journey started The funny thing is that I always was dreaming about having a tape recorder like a little tiny tape recorder The funny thing is that I always was dreaming about having a tape recorder, like a little tiny tape recorder. Never had one. So I said, well, you know what?

I have $20 in Germany because I flew to Germany. I stayed in Germany for like three weeks. And I said, I'm going to buy me one. So all $20 I spent on tape recorder. So when I landed in New York, I had only 10. The change that I got for the tape recorder was 10 Phoenix. So this is like, I think, five cents. It was German coin.

So that's how I landed in New York. Bag of clothes. And I didn't speak English. Well, let's take a quick break. Yeah. When we come back, we'll get into the USA. Yeah, that's that's the no you can cut out from me that whatever you want to cut out but we're not cut

anything yeah that's that's uh wow well you know what like my story whether in the book or taught here I don't want to see as a word the guy just came and bitch about the socialism and communism. We all know the communist bed. I want them to see this to be a prism, a lens, so they can see America maybe from different vantage point. Because I see very often people, especially the younger generation educated with these anti-American universities, they hate, outright hate America. So I want them to see America through, I would say, different eyes, different vantage points, so maybe they can change their mind because you know, that's I tell you I've asked some of the hate

Towards America I've seen from our own citizens. I didn't seem to the terrorists we were hunting in the Middle East So that's that's what is disturbing for me Not all but I did run across people with so much hate towards America our own citizens And this is a product of these universities, this anti-American universities, this Marxist, with Marxist communist band and communist professors and teachers. So, geez.

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prices subject to underwriting and health questions. All right, Drago, we're back from the break. So a couple of interesting conversations we got to revisit that happened off camera. One, you said you're a bad student. Now you're a software engineer? Software engineer, yes. Well, you know, I was a bad student because I think that I didn't like to learn.

That was maybe my personal challenge to stay focused on something, and especially something that I didn't like to do. I like to play soccer, I like to cake box, I like to fight, so I didn't like to do it. I like to play soccer. I like to cake box. I like to fight. So I didn't have, I was not the best student, but yeah, this is like, software engineering is fascinating. It's like having a puzzle and you solve the puzzle and it trains your brain to memorize

things, to remember things and using the tools. It is fascinating and you build things. You are a designer. Software engineering is more like an art than a science, but there's also big art involved in it because you can solve the problems. It's about solving the problems. You can solve the problems in so many ways, so many different things you can do to accomplish your task. It's fantastic. I love it. I mean, this is something that was very fascinating to me. Matter of fact, the way I started it was in the SEAL teams.

So I was the only SEAL who, having a cruise box with gas, have another cruise box with books, and another one with full computer. There were no laptops at the time. Maybe there were, but I couldn't afford one. So I had a big monitor, big computer, keyboard, mouse, and I travel with full computer. There were no laptops at the time. Maybe there were, but I couldn't afford one. So I had a big monitor, big computer, keyboard, mouse, and I traveled with it. If we deployed to, like when we deployed to Germany

or to Bosnia, I had that all shebang with me. Matter of fact, when we came back from deployment, we were carrying guns back into the SEAL teams. So we picked the case with the guns, with the guy who just carried in then pick my case to Get to my cage and say what the fuck is in this box? You have a gas in it or something say now it's just my laptop and my books because there was no internet at the time So I have a book so I carry books with me

But I love it this is fascinating world and then And then we had a conversation too, we have to get this about Taekwondo. And I was talking about Palmer Lucky's cameras and then somehow that morphed or a helmet and then somehow that morphed into, oh yeah, morphed into cameras. And then basically you guys critiquing yourself on the street.

Right, we're talking about the cameras. Yes. When I was growing up, there was no cameras. You can have a camera, maybe like the one with this little crank on it, and it was hard to get, like I never had one. And I didn't know even anybody who had one. So for us to progress in fighting,

in the kickboxing, in Taekwondo, we just need to critique each other. So Matter of fact, this is why I switch from karate Kyokushinkai to Taekwondo at the time It's not like this today. I need to I know I don't want to offend anybody Who is practicing Taekwondo today in Poland took today Taekwondo is very inclusive to all kinds of people and is very, very, I would say civilized, is very, not only educational, but also very healthy. But at that time, we just decided to, especially when our teacher from Laos claim and was telling

us that fight on the ring is one thing it's fairly safe but you need to be good we want to be good fighter you need to fight on the street well he didn't have to say twice to us that why we just like okay right on let's let's do it so the way we did it it was just pick the people on the street who look more rough or like trying to somebody who was willing to fight and it was not difficult to find people like this in Poland at the time. So we go and the way we did it is like okay so I'm going to go first I'm going to beat up this guy and you guys will watch this is what I'm going to do I'm going to use this

technique this technique this technique and you grade me basically. There were the cameras of our, the eyes of my fellow buddies from Taekwondo. They were the cameras of our times. So you know, you got there, you use your technique, you beat the guy up. And again, I'm not proud of it today, but I have to say clearly, but that was the way I lived the life at the time So and you critique me and and so after the fight was over the guy was laying unconscious The guys come in as okay. Well, you miss your technique right there You could emphasize a little bit more that kick was not very strong or you miss the guy here where you could actually do more damage or do this this so there was our techniques and

That's that's how we got really good at it. We got really good at it to the point that we didn't look for a single people anymore. We just wanted like, let's challenge ourselves. They just beat two people at the time. So sometimes it was difficult to find like a group of people to beat up. So if we found one, usually it was like whoever caught first was able to beat them up. Sometimes it was so hard to tell because we were like, the mind, the mind.

We had to draw the straws who would be beating them up. And this is how we practiced. So we just go up to the guy who started the fight. And in Poland, again, it was not very difficult to do it because almost everybody was fighting everywhere. And then we practiced our technique or two, three guys. And it was become more actually interesting. The beating just one of the guy, it was very simple thing.

But now we have two or three guys. And now you can show your art, I would say. You can show your way of how you master your techniques, your reaction time, and all that stuff. So that was very interesting. And some of them, we didn't know, we didn't pick people who, because you couldn't know if the guys to be dub

were martial artists too or not, but we did, we just, like,, like taking chances and sometimes the guy had actually martial training, was more boxer or wrestler, so they were hard to beat up sometimes, you know, sometimes like you have two, three guys and one of them is like, you know, is not really reacting to your punches, you have to actually strain yourself to knock the guy out, but that was our training, that was our training. The cameras were our eyes.

And the review was by our critique how the fight went. Wow. That was... You know what? Again... Whose idea was the safety pin? I don't know where it came from. Oh, yeah.

That was came from... You know, when you fight... When you were fighting in Poland, when I was fighting in Poland, I, you know, I learned very quickly that, and I'm sure you experienced that, when you start to fight the guy gets beat up, you better say, okay, I had enough, thank you, you better, let me walk away, I'm fine. That's very dangerous thing to do, what I learned very quickly because usually the guy recover and attack you again or come back with his friends. So then you have a fight on your hands or even more people to beat up. So when we fought, when you used to fight there, we used to fight until the guy stopped

moving. So it's not that I had enough, enough, enough. No, no, no. You don't tell me to end the fight. I will tell you when I end the fight. Most likely you will just be moving again. So you just beat the guy until he doesn't move, right? No, he falls down, doesn't move. But then we find out, and it happened to me actually, that one of the guys, I think, the tongue fell in,

and he was already getting turning blue, and I panicked, I didn't know what to do, I didn't know what happened. And thanks God there was a nurse, and she said, give me a safety pin, give me a safety, somebody's safety pin, so somebody puts her safety pin, and she kind of like, hook his tongue and pull it out, roll it into the side, it was good.

And she said, if something like this happened, you know, you need to make sure that his tongue doesn't, that person's tongue doesn't fall in. So I, uh, I say, well, that's pretty cool, but you know, we're like, if you need to run and what do you do? Well, I guess you take the safety pin and pin his tongue to his lower lip and now he will leave too. So this is how we start doing it and sometimes Police in Poland at that time seldom intervene People were so used to violence there that if there was a fight on the street and you could see two three fights when you walk

through town usually People just across the street go around you and keep walking down. They're like, it's not my business. Two people, three people are fighting. Let them fight it out. Let them duck it out and just move on. But sometimes when police was coming, then you have to leave unconscious guy on the street. So we learned very quickly that the best way is just to use the safety pen, pull his tongue

out, pin it to the lower lip, roll him to the side and just leave him there. He will leave. He is not going to die. So that was kind of like a technique that we learned very quickly and it's effective. It's a life-saving technique. I think the last one I applied in Horton Plaza in San Diego already being a seal. I have to say, it never occurred to me to pin a guy's tongue to his lip after I beat him up.

So it doesn't chunk to death. I didn't think either until this guy almost died on my eyes. So that's, I learned there's a safer way. I treat the safety pin as a safety device, you know. You just ensure the guy doesn't die, that he's fairly safe, that his tongue pain to his lower lip is not going to hurt him. He wake up and I never had anybody complain about, well, maybe they never saw me after. But it was effective, 100% I guess.

So that worked. Yeah. So let's get to, so you came to America, you had $20. In Germany. I spent on the tiny tape recorder. You bought the tape recorder. So you had, I think you said five cents would do it. Five, five Phoenix.

So Phoenix is like German mark has 100 Phoenix So I had the five Phoenix in my pocket bag of clothes from like all clothes from 1970s or whatever my mom could You know prepare for me. So I had a sweater I think I still have it till today somewhere in the closet because I didn't want to throw it away With my mom made by his head by her hands. So that's yeah, that's how I came to America by her hands. So that's yeah, that's how I came to America. Knowing nothing, knowing no English, only knowing that America is a free country, the people are living free here and I can live as a free man

here on this land and hopefully one day become American citizen if I'm good enough. Where do you go? No family, no money, no English, nowhere to live. People were waiting for me actually. So when I came in, because I came legally, they organized like an apartment for me. They organized the first, helped me find the first job. I didn't complain or how could I complain? I got the job as a janitor and I was happy as I can be. Sean, I could pay for my own apartment, my own money. I didn't have to borrow the money.

I could buy my food. I was living in an apartment with air conditioning, with telephone. There was something unusual in Poland. Air conditioning, I didn't even know how it works. I never seen air conditioning. I heard about this climatization in apartments, but having apartment with air conditioning, good God, I felt like a king. There was a project.

There was an apartment that was $ like a king. You know, there was a project, there was like an apartment that was like $180 a month, and there was a bunch of, you know, a lot of crimes, drugs, and prostitution. But who cares, you know, I had my own apartment and I could afford it, I could live in it. And then, you know, so my goal become now to learn English and to get different job, get better job. And to start English because I was working as a janitor, so really, you know, physical work.

So I had the cartoons in my back pocket. So I had a map in one hand, it's like, Jane loves Joe. Joe loves Jane. And I was just mapping the floors. And that's like, okay, so I need to memorize that. So this is how I learn basically how I learned English at the time and this is why my grammar sometimes is still like the fans of Rachel my wife she's like hey you don't say it this way you have to say it certain way.

But yeah, this is how I started, this is how I learned English eventually. I improved and I went to school, but that was my first beginning. And I tell you, the patience of American friends who helped me, who set me in my life here, I mean, it's so incredible. Sean, I offended so many people unintentionally, not even knowing about it. I remember I was invited by the church after the mass on Sunday in the room so I can the parishioners can meet this new polish immigrant and

Staff in I can mingle with those great people great American friends so I walk into the room and the pastor came with a big plate of cookies and just like so happy now everybody is like smiling and happy so I took this cookie and In polish language is not such sound like th so somebody advised me to use F like thank you That came out like a fuck you and that's when I took this cookie I could I knew that I say something wrong because right there I Could hear the gasps Like everybody so I'm holding this cookie and like,

what the hell did I say wrong? I say thank you, but now there was a fuck you. So but there's like older gentleman came out and say look, what he's trying to say is, he looks at me and say, thank you. So I'm like yes, that's what he's trying to say. So you know, like there were things like this, the borrowed moments. I was invited to party, like swimming pool family party from the parishioners.

And they have a grill set up and everything. So of course, I want to represent myself the best I could and, you know, be that good American I want to be I just want to look good there so I went and I found this skimp is the shortest shorts I could find I would you would call it banana hammock I guess today and I thought this is really cool I will look really really good. I think these people admire me. You know, that's like, they really represent myself well. So as soon as I walk into that pool,

I can see a whistle and people being ushered out of the swimming pool in there, behind the building somewhere. And somebody calls me and say, hey, come on here. We have a shorts for you. So they took me to the room. They gave me big shorts.

Oh, I didn't argue. I was just like, yes, sir, yes, sir. You know, in Poland at the room, they gave me big shorts. I didn't argue, I was just like, yes sir, yes sir. You know, in Poland at the time, in 1980s, the shorts like we wear today, only fat people and old people wear. So there was no, if somebody's seen you in those shorts, they think that you are just like weird guy. So everybody was there, the skimpiest, the shortest,

the smallest, the swimming trunks, the better. So I just didn't know. And another thing too, I remember first few days I was staying with older family parishioners in the church. So, sometimes they give me a ride around the Memphis and they give me a dictionary, a first dictionary. I have it today with their corrections on it. I have it in my home. Actually, I'm going to post on my website. So, I was trying to tell them, impress them that I'm learning English, I'm using this dictionary. So, as we drive, I'm looking and say, this is house. It's like, yeah, yeah, it's good, you know? This is man, this is woman, you know?

And just like reading and trying to find out what it means. And they were pretty happy until we came and I see the black guy walking on the street and find out what is the black guy. Okay, this is an ugly word. I was not the ugly, it was the ugly word. You know, there's something very offensive to, I guess anybody, to me too.

But at the time I didn't know. And they almost wrecked the car. This woman jumped out and say, where did you, she's yelling at me, I don't understand what. She takes this dictionary from me and slowly, this is bad. No, no, no. And she scratched that word and wrote black man.

I say, I say black man. This is black man. And you know, it was, the last thing on my mind or in my heart we to offend an American or anybody, especially American, especially friends. So I just didn't know any better. So as you can see, my progressing through my learning how to live in American society, It took its toll on me too, because I was trying to be so good, and sometimes it just backfired at me.

But there was never intentional mistake. Maybe one when eventually I got the job as a sub mechanic. There's a story just in itself how I got the job. And then, so the mechanic, the shop fore foreman invited me to say hey let's have a steak today there'll be a couple other mechanics come in so let's go have a party say party yes so show up and with he gave me a steak Shawn there was the first first time in my life I seen dead one, big piece of meat in one piece.

So I'm looking at it, it's like, I think five or six of them, but I'm, so I'm like, Jim, by this time I'll speak a little bit of English. So it's like an entire town is coming here to the party or what? He say, no, no, it's just, so are you telling me I can eat the whole steak? In Poland when you had the meat, you slice it like a razor blade and you use the meat,

at least in my home, not to fill yourself, use the meat for the taste, but you fill yourself with the potatoes or bread. So I'm just like, how be eating beating and type it was the first time I didn't tired big chewing like a brick of meat in my life So I was so grateful to him So they knew I was doing kickboxing earlier and they saw show us something, you know something show us something You know, we have a few beers. I say, okay I show you I show you the basic punch would I like to punch people with and Can I punch this wall? He said yeah, sure. I thought it's a concrete wall in Poland The walls are concrete or those concrete plates

Sound loud on this wall boom but there was a freaking Dry sheet wall so my fist went through one wall and went out in his bedroom on the other side That was embarrassing. I would say, dude, I am so, Jim, I am so, so sorry. I didn't mean to destroy your house. I just wanted to show you the punch. I thought there was a concrete wall.

They thought it was funny. I said, I'm going to go and fix it, but they say, no, no, no, that was fine. I will keep it for a while so I have a story to tell. So yeah, so the things like that were a little bit different. How old were you when you came to the US? 24. 24 years old. I'm 23 going 24. How long did it take you to learn English?

I'm still learning English. Enough to be able to communicate. Yeah, but to be able to communicate. I think it took me maybe to be fairly efficient to convey my thoughts. I think maybe six months, seven months. But please remember, I had to do it on my own. So the bed is easier to learn the right way than learn the bad way and then correct this. So I still make a lot of mistakes when I speak and which is obvious to people around maybe not for me so much but my wife always says like well you know you just you're just funny so I'm not

going to correct you because sounds good sounds sounds funny so keep going. So yeah she's uh she she domesticated me so I'm like fully I well I consider myself now fully domesticated me. So I'm like fully, well, I consider myself now fully domesticated. She always, when you ask her, she will tell you that I'm still project under construction. So I'm still, I still have edges to polish, but I'm working on it. So where did you go, where did you go from New York? From New York, I went to Memphis. So Memphis, Tennessee. This is where I started my American dream.

And again, this is something that I always say it, I would never succeed, maybe not the way I succeeded if not American people, if not American culture, if not the help I got from people who didn't know me from Adam. There were people coming to my apartment. I had no furniture, so I was thinking, well, this is my apartment. It's great.

I can sleep on the floor. No, they brought me a bed. They brought me a shelf. Everything that I had is apartment I got from my American friends. They were coming to me, bringing me clothes because the clothes that I had from like from 70s and really wasn't, didn't fit in I wouldn't fit between people so they were bringing me clothes they were bringing me food if I was because you know I think I had like $20 a week left after I pay my bills to buy food so they were just checking my

freezer's coming in say hey you know what I think you need this let me bring you some hamburger meat let me bring you a hamburger meat, let me bring you a cereal. Well, with cereal itself, this is something that I never seen before in my life. And then, when I was taken first time to grocery shopping, for me it was like going from the normal world into sci-fiction Into science fiction movie right inside it. I've seen so many things I never seen in my life and happened I was on the aisle with the Cereal box. I didn't know what it was, but it looks this boxes looks so nice So good that there's loaded on my home card with the boxes my American friends who helped me with the shopping They were just laughing say It's like, dude, you see, like, okay, if you want it, yeah, you got it. So I just load my

whole shopping cart with the cereal. I was eating the cereal for a year later, but I learned to like it. So my favorite was the Crispies. This, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. And then the one, that one and the chocolate one. So there was like milk with it I love that. How did you wind up at Memphis? well when I came to my Journey started in Warsaw To Germany in Germany the political refugees they had the center that they're just only for political refugees Where we spend time waiting for sponsor or somebody to help us assimilate in American society.

So we had the people from the State Department coming in through these three weeks telling us about America, what to expect in America, how to live, what's the best way to go about things, what we need to do when we arrive to America. So it was a great help. I was like sponge trying to soak all the information. And then I remember I was calling the office and say, do I have any preferences where I would like to settle down in America?

I say, my preferences is to settle down in America. I say my preferences is to settle down in America. I don't care what I'm putting, but if you ask, because I was speaking Polish, if you ask, I would like to go somewhere where it's hot, like hot, hot. I'm tired of being cold. In Poland we didn't have a good clothes. I was always freezing.

So I'm like, I'm so sick and tired being cold. Put me somewhere where it's hot. So it's like, well, what do you think about Memphis, Tennessee? So they took me to the map, showed me the map. Do you know anything about Memphis, Tennessee? Well, I know, I knew that Elvis Presley was from Memphis, Tennessee. So I told him, ah, I know Elvis Presley is from Tennessee. Yeah, great, you know it.

But it's hot up there. I said, yeah, it's very hot. I said, sign me up. I mean, and they shipped me off to New York back to Memphis. This is where I started my life. Got my first job as a janitor, then as a parts man, then as a mechanic. There's funny things like I didn't have, I never had a car. I didn't even know in Poland anybody and if I didn't I did not have a friend in Poland who owned the car

So that's but those are European cars. You would you like to can you work on European cars? Absolutely. Yes So they they they got me in the interview. There was a shilling Company of the shilling the Porsche sub and Audi so the Porsche, Saab and Audi. So the Porsche guy come in, say like, well, it's kind of expensive car. The guy doesn't speak English, know nothing about cars. So maybe we just set it, maybe not today. So then the Audi mechanic came in, the same thing.

And then we're waiting for the Saab mechanic to come in and I hear this big Sound roar of the Harley Davidson. There's more. So I just run in the next to the In the garage up there the guy looking like a Sasquatch Taximabys looks like seven feet tall walks in I say hey, so That guy Yeah Sab I say, yeah. He looked at the, Tim Presley was the service manager

at the time, I still remember his name. He looks at the team and the manager said, I need a slave, sign him up. And here we are, so we become the really good friends, if not the best friends. He told me everything about cars. I was clueless. I had no idea.

So he told me everything about sub. I became a really good mechanic to the point that even Mercedes came later and asked me if I want to work for them. So this guy, there's the guy who invited me for the steak party when I broke his house with my fist, but so he, I remember trying to learn English. My English was still very difficult. I said, Jim, I have idea.

You gonna read me the manuals and I will record you. I can listen to it. I thought he would kill me. It's like, what did you just say? I'm going to read you like a mama story to children I read you the man and on the top of the Sabam Sab manual I

Say yeah, he said Yes, thank you for that. Okay, but if you tell somebody I fucking kill you So so I still have I still have a Jim's recording somewhere there. Because what helped me, I was explaining to him that if I read the words and I'm listening at the same time, it's easier for me to understand what it is, and also I'm learning English at the same time. So this is the guy, half gangster, and the guy who just wouldn't mind to go

and just kill you if he had to and become like my bigger brother, you know, helping me out. So there is many things that happen later in my life that would not happen if not this guy, you know, I owe this guy so much. We lost contact after I left for the Navy. But if he's there, if he's listening up there, Jimbo, I remember. Wow. Yeah. That's cool, man.

It wouldn't surprise me if he's listening. What's that? It would not surprise me if he's listening. Hopefully, or maybe he, I know he had a son too, so there's great people. I owe them so much. I owe Jimbo My I think the way my career moved on in America is because this guy so yeah Where did you go from Mechanics from fair from my fist straight to the Navy

How did the Navy pop on your radar? Well, you see, by this time I already became US citizen. And I was living my American dream. I had everything I wanted. I was skydiving even. I was teaching skydiving. I was teaching AFF. I was AFF jump master. So I was living my life out.

And then the war broke out, the first Persian war. So I said I am American and I have such a great life so what can I do for my American friends and for American? I think I can serve in the war. I remember this funny thing because I decided to join the military. I didn't know Navy from Army. me was military was military army was everything so I was just one day in the post office and I see this Uh, what do you call the draft cards where everybody needs to fill up? high school kids

So I say, oh wow I mean they're they're recruiting people even from post offices. I fill it up. I sign up for the army. The war is on They're gonna get me soon offices. I fill it up, I sign up for the army, the war is on, they're gonna get me soon. So I fill it up, mailed it off, came back to my apartment, I was living with some other skydivers, and I start packing myself. I said, like, what are you doing?

You cannot just move out, you know, we have a contract here that we had to pay the rent and stuff. No, no, no, I said, I'm not moving out yet, but I'm packing myself because I'm going to war. I'm going to war to fight for America. And it was like, wait a minute. We didn't know anything. How did you sign it up?

I said I went to the post office. I filled it up, I sent it off, and I'm just waiting for them to just come and get me. Well, I said, no, that doesn't work like that. You need to go actually to recruiting office. And the actual letter came in that, well, thank you, but no thank you. You are not required to fill this card. You are already too old for that.

So I was like 32 at the time. So I say, okay, well, the war is going on and I want to pay my freedom back. So I want to help and support my country, my America. So, uh, I, I went to the army recruiting office and I said, Hey, this is who I am. This is what happened to me. This is why I'm here. And I want to join military. I want to go to war.

So it's like, where would you, okay. Well, sure. There's only you need preferences, preferences, where would you like to serve? I say, well, whoever goes first in combat, sign me up. I had no idea. But it's like, yeah, sign me up, wherever you go. I want to go to war, fight on behalf of America and American people.

So they're're like okay infantry I said I don't know what infantry is but if you say so I'm sign me up. So they proceeded with the paperwork and everything and that was pretty close to everything being completed and then Navy SEALs showed up in Memphis, leapfrogs they were doing some demo jumps, so they came to our drop zone to do some jumps. I started talking to them. I still remember a guy, I know him as Tim Ohara. He was a firefighter in San Diego. He's the guy I talked to and I was fascinated. He was a really good skydiver. We did a lot of jumps together also with his guys and he just talked me and said like look you want to go

in SEALs because you want to skydive right in army you want to be skydiving but you like skydiving to combat parachute jams and stuff why don't you go join Navy SEALs like I didn't know what the SEALs were for me it was not important to be a SEAL it was important to serve America. So I say okay, so About I had to go to army guys and tell them like all this work you did for me I'm sorry, but I'm going next door so they Was awkward because I made friends with them, but they said well, okay, I'll do it I want to join the Navy so when I grab the paper went up there and to join the Navy. So I went and grabbed the paper, went up there and they finished it up and they were fair with me because they say, okay, you are 32 going 33, so you are

not eligible for seal program because you are too old. The cut of age is 28. But if you sign this paper, you go to boot camp, they make a seal out of you. You know, you look strong guy, so they're going to make a seal out of you. You know, you look strong guy, so they're gonna make a seal out of you. I said, okay, again, my goal was not to join Navy SEALs, my goal was to go join America in the war and support. So I said, yeah, that's fine. If not, I will serve wherever America needs me. Because that was my idea, I didn't know where to go. So I signed it up. And they told me, okay, we'll be fair with you. If you go as an undesignated,

the Navy will put you a scraping deck, so we'll do something that you might not like. Why don't you go pick the job in the Navy? So after boot camp, you go to your A school, and then you go into SE still training if you fall out I couldn't go in see your training at the time But they didn't tell me that so you're gonna see your training you fall out you fall back on your job So you don't go scraping decks you will be doing whatever in the Navy train you to do

So I say okay, so what's the best job? I say well you like skydiving right? I say yes parachute rigger Say okay sign me up parachute rigger and So but they say okay if you want to go parachute rigger you will have to leave So we will proceed Doing the paperwork maybe like three weeks later They count your month later, say okay.

To be a parachute rigger, there's two options now. You can go to boot camp like next week, and right after the boot camp, your A school starts, the parachute rigging school, or you have to wait like four, five months, and then wherever the next parachute rigging school is to coordinate it with you going to boot camp and to school. So, I was thinking like,

shit, the war may end by this time, so sign me up for the closest one. I call my girlfriend and say, hey look, I'm leaving next week, I'm joining the Navy, I'm leaving next week. She's like, what? I say, yeah, let's get married. So, we just got married.

We ran, that was a Monday, I think. Tuesday we ran in the afternoon after her work to the office in Memphis. We found the judge who was already leaving, but I think we looked so desperate. He said, okay, let me go sign you up. So he married us. And then I went on, I think on Friday, I went to depth into depth. Then I was sworn in and I think Saturday or Sunday I flew, they flew me and a few other guys from Memphis to Great Lakes, to Illinois. That's how my adventure started. So that's my beginning of my Navy time. And

again, I just wanted to serve. It really didn't matter where I served. I would say my idea was to serve where America needs me. That's whatever day I can be useful. But I passed the test, the SEAL test. And they did let you try out. They let me try, yes. Yes, so what they say that I will have to ask for the waiver for my age. And this is where I met, so in boot camp,

but then I had a kidney stone. So they say, okay, now, and I still have this document today that does not disqualify me from SEAL training, but then I had a kidney stone. So they say, okay, now, and I still have this document today that does not disqualify me from SEAL training from the program, but I have to wait for at least a year or two before I can reply again because the kidney stone may recur.

I have the document at home. And then, so I say, okay, what is that? It's not a big deal. I just want to serve. And so I graduated from bootcamp as a number one recruit. I'm very proud of it because, you know, like my English was still not perfect. But I always excel in the academics, I excel in the PT, I excel in everything I did. So I was selected to be the number one graduating recruit

from the entire batch. So I got the Military Excellence Award from bootcamp. I'm very proud of it. And then I had a good instructors too. So then I went to A school and this is where I met Jason Cabell, my friend of mine, really good friend of mine. We later met in Iraq and Baghdad doing combat together. So I couldn't swim very well

because I never seen the ocean, I never seen the sea. He says, but he was so sure he is going to make and he couldn't swim, he swim even worse than I do. So he was like very, for me it was inspirational because he can, I look at this guy struggling to just stay on the surface and he's going to be a seal. So I'm going to make it too. So we were having, I will try to swim and all that stuff. We got better of course.

He went to baths. I had to wait for my orders first, but even before I wait for my orders, I went in Millington in the A school. I found the CL motivator, it was Les Barrios, a resident peace brother. I went to him and said, look, I have a document. I would like to be a CL if possible, but my documents, my medical records say I had a kidney stone, so I cannot apply for the program for like a year or two years.

And he like me and say, okay, well, can you pass the test? I say, yeah, I pass the test. Bring me your documents. At that time, there was no electronic document, so he wrote me the check. I ran with it to medical, got my medical record, came to him and said, okay, here it is. I said, okay, step outside. I step outside and just listen.

I get like, all right, come on in. So, look, he's sitting at his desk. It's like, look, I looked through your medical record. I really can't find anything about the kidney stone. Can you help me find it? I said, yeah, I'll look through your medical record. I really can't find anything about a kidney stone. Can you help me find it? I say, yeah, it's right here. So we look and say, no, it's not here. He looks at me and say, are you sure

you had the kidney stone? I'm by this time, I'm like, I'm sure I didn't. Okay, that's good enough. So, so, so yeah, they put me on hold after the graduate from, I also graduated, I think, one on the top on the class So then I was waiting for the waivers and I think the waiver was granted To me because I excel in everything I did I did so well and

They I think they seen that maybe maybe this guy because of his age Maybe his age will not Uh inhibit him a lot, but we give him a chance. So eventually after maybe two months being on hold in the A school, I got my orders to Bats. I called Jason Cabana, I said, brother, I'm coming after you. He gave me a tape.

I still remember the tape. I still have it at home, the tape that he gave me. It was the little cassette we used to play so I was just playing it on the on the on the road because I was driving to California to San Diego, so that's how my Navy career started how my seal career started Did you have any idea what a seal was at that time? No other than skydivers? No except them well, they show me the video in the recruiting station. I say, wow, this is really cool, but what's the difference between the army? And I was like, it looked like an army to me.

But it was the unit that this guy recommended to me, and if I could get up there, it's fine. But again, that was not the driving, that's not motivate me to join the Navy. So for me, it was not really that important, but the way I imagine sea or training was they will be at present. So I couldn't think of any other way, those are special forces, so they will lock you up there

in some camp and you will be just going through all these evolutions, you'll just going through all these evolutions. You will be going through all the training, totally isolated from people. That was my imagination. And I was thinking like, well, you know what, I'm married now, so it'll be kind of sad for my wife, but well, I survived communist prison.

At least here, they don't try to kill you, right? They just try to make you better, unlike in communist prison. So I say, I'll be fine. Well, that was just, as you know, is not dead. There is no prison. Actually you have enough freedom. They give you enough rope so you can hang yourself if you are not careful with what you do in baths. You just have to manage not only the training, but you need to manage yourself as well. So I remember a lot of guys going out and partying and drinking, and I would love to do it too.

And I did sometimes too, but for me it was more often it was a gay, you know, rubbing on my muscles and like, oh God, I need to survive. Tomorrow will be maybe better. Tomorrow I feel better, let's hope survive. Tomorrow will be maybe better. Tomorrow I'll feel better. Let's hope so. So like as they were drinking, I was rubbing the Bang Gai in myself, trying to bring myself better in the bed

and trying to go to bed early. But it helped, you know. I did very well, you know. It's like never, I was rolled back only at the beginning of the first phase because I get infection in my leg They got the man. I got a Mercer on the back of my arm So swollen so bad that I I couldn't put my pants on so actually I had to cut my pants to go to medical But I figured out this okay. I'm not going to tell them anything. I just go through the rest of this week

It was like two more days with the leg like this. On Friday, right after they shut down the evolutions, I ran up to Balboa to hospital, let them fix it. So I will have three days basically to heal and I should be okay. Well, didn't work that way. I went up there, they did cut this big piece, the big white piece out of it, and it was thick like my pinky. And my leg was coming down a little bit, I could put my pants on. But then in the morning, Monday morning when I was driving to Baza Swole again, so I had no choice but I had to go to our medical in Baza and tell them what happened. So what I find out is Balboa, they cut this out and just let me go instead of irrigating

it for maybe like an hour. And that's what they did. They actually gave me antibiotics. They put me on the gurney and they put the IV into my, in that big hole in my leg. And they keep irrigating for like two, three hours. And like my legs, the swelling came out and everything was good. So they bandaged my legs and I came back

and said, we have to roll you. I said, you can't roll me. I said, no, we have to. We have a mat flats where we are going to. You cannot go with like like this. And the hell with your legs. You cannot go to hell with your leg like this. So I was really like broken, you know,

I was like, holy shit, and I don't want to be wrong. I said, please let me stay in the class. So I think it was instructor Graves, no, it's instructor Fitzhendry. He says like, okay, if you can run here five, sprint around five times around this thing, I might keep you in the class. So I say, right on, you know, so, but I had to still get a cut on my pants because, you know, I had to, I couldn't put

them on. Uh, and I ran, I ran through all these fives and stuff and said, can I stay? It's like, nope. One eight five. So there was from my one eighty four right at the beginning before the mudflats, I got rolled one eighty 185 I had to start again but it allowed me to heal my leg I don't think I would be able to I would make through Halloween with this big open wound on my leg with infection in my leg and like swollen like the elephant leg wow so yeah so there was there was my uh my first phase and what did you think? What did you think about? Did you find it difficult being from your... I found it physically very difficult but I didn't find it mentally difficult because maybe when I came to Barts I was

thinking that this is going to be hell that is in the hell. that this is going to be hell, that is in the hell, that this is going to be extremely, and it was physically, but mentally, for some reason the instructors yelling, calling names and all that stuff didn't faze me. I kind of expected it. I thought that this is, actually I thought it was funny because I didn't do anything, I yelled it for nothing, so I didn't show it to instructors that I think I'm fine I took everything seriously when they say drop down adding questions. I drop down and push it out whatever I was told to do and I did I think very well actually one of the instructor instructor Turner just look at me. I said drop down

50 so I just look 50. I think it was a first phase. So the first phase you don't do 50 But so I did it, I stood up, who you are you still to clown her? Just look at me, I said, well you know what, I think I like you, get the fuck out of here, go back in the class. So and then in the hell week, you remember that there's a time after maybe two, three days

when they get you together and they ask you, okay tell me why you come here to BATS? And I just have to tell them, what's this? So I hear, guys, well, I came here to try to be the best. I'm here to, and I will try to finish this training, give my best, and so on, so. And so when they ask me, I say, fuck, I didn't come here to try,

I came here to become a seal. And either I will, my body will break down, or you kick me out, but I will come out of this as a I will graduate from this program I didn't came here to try I mean I didn't come here to try they got mad But they I know they liked it because I can see they're like right on and then you know So there's a lot of things like this with the knives, you know, we had this knife inspections And then, you know, there's a lot of things like this with the knives, you know, we had these knife inspections So they always called me because my knife, you know, there was like cheesy knife But fairly cheap and they got it. You have to maintain them very well

I could put my knife just the edge like on my hand on my arm and just let it slide and we shave your hand They were that sharp. So they are the car they were calling me sometimes to demonstrate to other classes how to maintain the equipment. Also on the swim, remember I couldn't swim very well, neither was Jason Cabell. And not only that I couldn't swim very well, I could swim only on one side, the side stroke. So then on the top of it, they put the mask on me. I have never swim with mask in my life.

This is the really thing I thought I would drown. Because I remember I was swimming, I couldn't breathe, the mask closed my nose, and I was breathing as much water, I think as much air. And when I came out of that pool after the first few swims, my belly was so big that I could feel water sloshing in it. And there were times that I remember I was swimming, I was like, I'm about to pass out. I have so much water in my lungs and I have black spots in my eyes. like if I stop, they will kick me out.

So I know they are watching, there are instructors there. If I pass out, I'm not going to die. So I just like, you have to trust them and slowly become easier and easier. By the end of my, that was in the fourth phase, that was the pre-phase, when we finished, I was asked actually to demonstrate the new guys coming into the training, how to do the side strokes.

So I was very proud of it. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And Jason Cabana too, he became a really good swimmer. We are still friends, so we talk to each other. And great guy, was very inspirational for me. So, yeah.

So you graduated BUDS at age 33. Yes. Is that correct? I'm going 33, yes. And we are checking to team in March 2000, March 1993, SEAL Team 2. Well, not very many people get through buds in our 30s. No, it's I think there's There is very few people that made it I think I'm one of That few that not only made two buds and might really seal teams into the seal teams because as you know

very often people who made two budsouts, they still don't cut. And they are either removed from SQT, or today before was SQT, or they were being removed while in the platoon, either pre-World Cup or during the event after the deployments. Like, well, you are not the guy, so you need to leave. And I have friends that came with me or after me who made to the selection, checked into the teams, and they were sent to the fleet. That was not easy for me being old, because especially with my English too.

I need to say that, but at that time, I was still at the stage that when you talk to me, I had to translate myself in Polish before I speak to you, I had to translate on English. But I guess I did it so fast, I was able to do it so fast that people seldom notice that. That the issues show up in CQB where you have to be on your feet, you have to be very fast.

And that's when I really start occurring to me that I need to improve my English. I need to get better with my English. Matter of fact, when I came back from the first deployment, when you come back from deployment, you pick the the schools I want to be a sniper I want to go to diving schools guys jumping school I want to be instructor here there well for me I didn't have a choice I was sent to English 101 school right away so it's like the guys were leaving hey we are going to the sniper school

you were going Drago so I was walking to the center up there, it's like, English 101. But you know, it helped me. It did make the big difference and it allowed me actually to be successful in my career. How were you greeted at SEAL Team 2 when you showed up? I think like most of the guys I was beat up pretty much No, you know not there like a bid up, but I remember I didn't even make out of the building so check the quarter that I check in the With master chief I think with XO and I was told to Later go to the supply get my gear. So as soon as I walk out in the building, the big courtyard in the SEAL Team 2,

there was other guys waiting up there. I say, okay, yeah, new FNG. Hub on the bars. I already knew, you know, that's like, you don't argue with these old SEALs. You just do what they say. So I jump on the bars, the pull-ups, sit-ups. Basically, I did the whole PT,

the PT test that we do every year. And then they wanted my uniform, that was the nicest uniform I could have. Chain seal team two, I just pressed it, I just peeked every little thing to make sure that it's so perfect. So after this forced PT on the concrete, that looked like shit. It was really bad. You know, the store up, sweaty, dirty, dust everywhere. And you know, my nice shoes scuffed.

And so they didn't want to walk me to quarter day because that was frowned upon. So they took me to the back gate, they woke me up when we started three miles run. And I said, okay, now you run, we'll see your time, what you you have so now you see the dude with the torn-up uniform holding his hat to his head running like crazy on the on base because it was on the on the there was nothing that he was in the base

outside the seal teams so I'm sure people were thinking what this crazy guy what happened to this guy here so I I did that three miles round, came back, and said, okay, I'm going to continue with your stuff now. So I went to supply, get my guns, get all my weapons, all the gear that I needed. I was assigned the cage in SEAL Team 2, and I moved my stuff there, and that's my career, my adventure with CL team started So that was my welcome to CL teams and you know very often that was Other new guys to a lot of our new guys and one day they say

Okay, guys, you are invited for Friday kegger at that time in CL team 2 and all the CL teams I think Friday and ended at noon So by then after PT you just clean your gear, clean yourself, and you can go home except in SEAL Team 2, you're required to attend the kegger. So kegger of beer was waiting in the highway. So they said, you guys invited for the kegger today, Friday, so me and other new guys like, dude, so I think they like us, they invite us to

have a party with them, to mingle with these old guys, these old experienced sales. So I was so excited, I think we all were. But as soon as we walk in, we got to jump, tape, a little bit kicked and beat up, hang on the chains and just like bats upside down, pull up to the roof of the highway while these guys were drinking. They were drinking, laughing, we just were hanging like a bat, all taped up. Once every while they roll us down on the chains, the chains, they have the dragger bag, the bag from the diving rig with the pipe.

So here, new guy, stick in your mouth, mouth and his mouth, they put the beer in it and just squeezing, so it goes everywhere. All right, drink enough. Let's go back to rest. So that was our first days in the, in the teams. Today it doesn't happen. I at least were not to that extent because it was frowned upon, but at the time there was like regular welcome to CO teams. And I didn't mind it.

I mean, it was okay. I've seen worse. So where was your first deployment? First deployment we deployed to, there wasn't there when the Bosnia happened, we deployed to Italy. And there was the same time when our pilot got shot down. So my platoon was one of the platoons that were flying over the Adriatic, if we could

locate him we could pick him up. So we were searching for him. The other unit actually was tasked with recovering him, but we were on standby ready to recover him. That was my first deployment. So we were normally we deployed to McRae Hanish in England, in Great Britain, but this deployment was they put us in Italy. So this is where we stayed there, stayed throughout the first deployment. Again, we didn't find a guy that somebody else pull our pilot out, but I'm proud of participating in these efforts. Mm-hmm Mm-hmm were you

Were you upset that you missed the war? Well at this time my concern was that I'm I'm serving America I'm doing good things for America. The war, yeah, I wish I could get on it. It was kind of too late. What I learned later, too, if you chase the war, you will never find it. The war will find you, just like happened to me later. But I was happy where I was.

My idea was to join the military for the time of war. I had such a great life that after the war I would come back and I would resume my life. But then the life that I started in the Navy was so fascinating that I never left. I left 20 years later. So I was not upset, but I wish I met that war. I wish I went to that war, but I missed it. And how was your wife? Did she follow you through all this?

What's that? Your wife. My wife, yes. I married her too. Yeah. So that marriage didn't last long. You see, the way, as you know, our schedule is constantly on the road. You're constantly somewhere. The thing is, what I learned to understand is, as we do not have that routine, because

our lives change every month, every two months you go to something else. Our spouses usually stay in the same place, they have the same routine, they go to the same places and eventually they meet somebody they are interested in and very often that marriage ends this way. So I didn't understand at that time I was really upset but that's what eventually happened. So we did get eventually divorced. And that's actually what, it was later in the SEAL teams, when I came back from my deployment,

then the thing fall apart. But- Well, we'll get there. Yeah. When was, where were you when September 11th happened? When September 11th happened, I was in the gym in SE CO team two. We were working out. I still vividly remember that. Somebody came in and said, hey guys, I just came back

from quarter deck. The airplane hit one of the twin towers. So like most of us, some pilot of small airplane got lost and killed himself so sad but let's go to work out. And then the other guy said there's a those big jetliner that hit the towers and something is going on so we left the gym went to went to quarter deck and see our team too. We're watching. I was actually watching when these fucking bastards around the, uh, the second airplane flew the second airplane to another, the second tower. I was watching it.

I knew we're going to be hunting these scumbags. I knew that their time is up and we'll be killing them hopefully soon mm-hmm I was watching that and it's still very vivid in my memory yeah what were the prelim conversations that were happening after that at the SEAL team? It's time to start killing these bastards. You know, SEAL teams, I think the attitude is a bit different. When I went to Iraq, especially after what I witnessed, what I seen on September 11, I did not go there to win hearts and minds.

Fuck their hearts and their minds. I want them to kill them. To kill the terrorists. That's all I was thinking. Kill as many as you can. The only regret I have from Iraq, we didn't kill enough of them. Because, and I'm taking it very seriously, because even today, decades after the war, what happened there, I still question myself, what if we get that son of a... If we kill this bastard, if we didn't let him get away, if we kill this son of a bitch,

maybe one of my brothers, our brothers, would come back home, whether it was army, marines, or the Navy. That's for us, they're all brothers, and we're all in that fight together. So sometimes I dwell on it. You know, maybe if we could kill the bastards, get rid of them, then some of our brothers would come

back. You know, because I believe that the best way to win war on terror is to terrorize the terrorists. I am a terrorist, a terrorizer. I have no qualms dealing with these scumbags. You cannot reason with terrorists. You just have to kill them and get rid of them. And that was my attitude when I went to Iraq to fight on behalf of America and American

people. And so how long was it after September 11th that you... Well, so the West Coast was already in the war, right? They were fighting. I think, I don't know when the invasion happened, like March or something, 2003, in Iraq. Something at the beginning of the year. We deploy, my platoon, Seal Platinum deployed to Central South America at the time. So we're working there.

In the middle of deployment, I get a call say, hey Drago, there is a Polish unit, SF unit operating with Seals in Baghdad, and I think we need you there. I want you to go and help us out, coordinate the stuff with them. So you pack your stuff, you are three months into deployment, I think. So you're going to be there for three months to keep up the six-month cycle. And then you can come back and start your regular workup with your new platoon and stuff. So in the middle of the platoon, in the middle of deployment, you can imagine the guys being

pissed off because we are aggressive guys. We are type A personalities. So everybody wants to get into the war. Everybody wants to fight the war. So when they find out that I'm just the only one living to bug that, they were like, Gregor, I want to go there too. What the hell? How did you pull this off, you know? Well, I didn't, I was just asked,

I was ordered to go there, but they all wanted to go. They, I don't know a CEO who would not want to go to war. Me neither. So, I know they were kind of like pissed off, but the good way, you know, they were very supportive. And then, so I left after the, like three months in deployment for the three months. And that was, we are very busy. We are busy every single night, pretty much.

And then when the three months came in, like, I don't hear anything from my command. And I was calling sometimes Rob O'Neill, we're really good friends, and we did the entire platoon with Jaco together, that was the second platoon. And then the platoon I'm talking right now is my third platoon. So we, I call him and say, hey, Rob, just tell the command I'm here, I'm doing fine, I don't need anything. I say, yeah, I got you Drago. But then three months passed, I don't hear from my command anything. They asked me if I would extend my stay in Bagdad, the West Coast guys.

I say, absolutely, yes, sign me up. I want to go back. So then I call Rob and say, hey Rob, I'm still here. Just don't tell them anything. Just keep it quiet. I'm still here in Baghdad. So he says, yeah, right on, Dragon. So as every while I call Rob O'Neill and I write him notes, yeah, I'm still here. I'm doing good. Don't tell them anything. Don't tell them I'm here. And so there's like this from this three months down to five, six, seven, eight, nine months. And I think I will stay there longer, but my NVGs broke, so I had to call the command

for new NVGs and they got me. They said, hey, where are you at? I said, I'm back. How long? Or like almost a year on deployment. Well, hold on. So you want to... You deployed to Iraq?

In 2003. With who? I deployed to Iraq. In 2003. With who? With, I deployed by myself. They sent me there to work with the CLT-5 and to help coordinate CLT-5, the missions between CLT-5 and GROM. But we skipped the one platoon because there was a platoon with JAKO that I did right before that. So there was the platoon with Jacko that I did before I before that So there was the platoon to Middle East to there was a fair sealed into strike platoon and we

This is the time when we hijacked the new Russian tanker the Volga left In the year 2000, so those it was a there's a very good platoon. So was Jacko And with Jaco and... One second, so that was my first. That was my fourth platoon, I think. It's getting mixed up. So first was to Italy when the O'Grady got shut down. The second one was to Bosnia.

Third one was with Jaco. Okay, so the third one was with Jaco. So after the first platoon, I deployed to Yugoslavia to Bosnia This is what I met the strongest guy. I think I ever met in SEAL teams that was a guy who When went to Frenchies to was a Lorien to train with the Frenchies this wasn't ugly guys so Chris What an ugly guys. So Chris, he put so many plates on their bar to do the bench press.

He bent that bar, the plates start falling off. So the French has got all pissed off that we intentionally are destroying their equipment. Another Rob just was doing the military presses, like 225 pounds or something. I mean, we were strong, we were big, and these little Frenchy guys, they look like the ballerinas, they have those spandex little pants. Well, yeah, I mean, and you know, the nasty part of it is that when they're on the pep bill, we had the French officer with us and Silt into and we just try to help him and cater to him the best we could Get him the best trips best per demon all that stuff so when we he left to France and then maybe like

Six months later when we deploy to Bosnia We actually had that decide to have some exercise with the French guys, where this guy was stationed. So we called these guys, hey, we're coming, you know, are you excited? You know, gonna see your old friends? It was like, okay, yeah, just come on in and click. We show up on Lorraine, the gate of their things. It was a winter time, it's sleet and raining. We sit on our bags and on our on our gear for like three hours before the bastard showed up. And he showed up not to welcome us,

he showed up and say, all right, I know you guys, I know you sales, if you fuck up any of our equipment, you're not gonna leave this base until you pay for all the broken equipment that you break. We're like, that's a nice welcome. And then they didn't want to work with us. You know, they, but, you know, work with us. I mean, look at these guys.

They were like 110 pounds ballerinas and they did actually wear the spandex, like always tight pants. So, I say, just give them the tutu and you have a perfect balance. So yeah, and then we walk into their gym and they have those like jumping jugs, you know, their weights like what they were using was like five pounders, six pounders. And we have one of the strongest guy in the SEAL teams, Chris, and he walks in, he breaks their freaking equipment, they get even more pissed off, they didn't want to jump with us, we didn't do anything with these guys. So they didn't really like, I guess they didn't like us and we stopped liking them too.

I remember one of the guys asked Chris, Chris Strube, I can't say his name because I asked him for permission for it. So again, that was one of the strongest team guy I have met. Also he created the programs for us, how to get big and strong. By the time we finished that deployment, our entire platoon was over 200 pounds each. So that was Chris's big contribution to make us stronger and better. So they, they, they just, we just couldn't get along, I guess, very well. And one of these guys asked Chris, well, you are so big, can you run?

I said, I'm like, you, we don't run away from the battlefield. So we know I don't have to run that fast, but I can beat you up. It's like, okay, okay, okay. And then, you know, we had a international incident, two of them actually. So first one, we're going to St. Moritz to do some exercises there in Switzerland

So we decided we'll fly one C-130 and we jump on the lake in San Moritz This big frozen lake and it was pretty beautiful because the C-130 was flying below the top of the two mountains on both sides And right in the middle of it. So when we jump out of it, we have maybe five six second delay We could see the the mountains just going on both sides in free fall then we open parachutes well what did we didn't know and we decided to get a shortcut instead of fearing our ammunition through the convoy through the roads from germany to switzerland and say well the hell with it we just loaded up our guns we put the ammo in the in the rucksacks and we jump in so we did and there was bunch of civilians on this lake walking you know doing that there were like a trails made up on this lake on

the ice so we basically jumped right into the civilian population and they look at us so just unload the gun you pull the you know unload the guns make safe and They seen it. Well it turned out to be that you are not allowed to bring in Switzerland guns and ammo in the same place, especially loaded guns, so I Think we're the first troops in Second World War that landed in Switzerland with loaded guns This was like alright. I know I never mind Platoon H, it will do a lot of explanation to do. But then we are invited to,

it was the time when Switzerland was accused of stealing gold from Holocaust victims. And there was even lawsuit going filed because of that try to recover the gold that supposedly Swiss stole from Jewish people and Holocaust victim but we were invited to dinner up there we already got over the jumping into the San Moritz into. Moritz with loaded guns. So we got over, we barely got over with that. We are invited to dinner now.

So they, they, they run like a top of the mountain. So we go on this little train, like a choo-choo thing and go straight up. So we go up there. We are the best restaurant supposedly in St. Moritz. And the guy who was guiding us say say hey um so this is chef senso he's such a great chef known in entire world and he has like five golden spoons here chef can you go run up bring the spoon like i never hold the gold thing maybe ring but entire spoon of gold and never hold my life. So I was like, holy shit this heavy

Solid Wow, you know I can brag about it. I was holding the gold spoon in my hand So when the spoon went around everybody until went to Chris The strongest guy he look at this say like Worshef, so how many? you think That gold of yours, how many Jewish teeth went into that spoon? That was like, I got quiet. The guy woke up, took the spoon, he left.

We never seen the guy again. We just usher out very quickly out of the restaurant, go down and we never were allowed to go to the restaurant again. Holy shit. But you know what? There was legitimate, I guess, legitimate questions. I believe, in my opinion, the Swiss were stealing that Holocaust victims' gold and they were benefiting over the Second World War.

So the guy had the balls to ask about it. But you can cut it out if you think it's too controversial. But that really happened. So there was like, well, we were all stunned. But like, well, you know, he's right. It's a legitimate question. Because that basically, that gold debt, in my opinion, was stolen by Switzerland from Holocaust victims. That's interesting.

I didn't know. I don't know much about that. Well, actually, there was a lawsuit filed by people trying to recover the gold. I don't know. I think it came to some agreement, but you can Google it. I read about it just not too long time ago as well. There was a time, but I remember it was very common to hear this accusation in 1979 1978 I'm sorry 1998 timeframe, so yeah, that's Wow, I had no idea I don't know anything about that that's yeah. Yeah, you know, it's just it was asking a question

Yeah, they were just asking the question because these people, they suffer so much. The Holocaust, it's hard to imagine for people, but there's millions of people. They were murdered just for being who they were. This is something that could only happen in socialist state Please remember that Germany was socialist state adult Hitler was socialist So we talking about national socialism, but you know, whatever flavor of socialism it is This is they all have many things in common as we talked earlier the censorship persecution of political opponents, jailing political opponents, and those are the hallmarks of socialist state. So was your Iraq deployment the first time you saw actual combat?

Yeah, that was the first time I saw the combat. And so let's talk about that. So you've done four deployments and then you finally go to Iraq to see actual combats. Yes. We've seen a little bit of, in Bosnia, not so much combat, but we've seen the war scene. We've seen some of the atrocities committed there in Bosnia. We hijacked the Russian tanker and that time it was like, holy shit. Some of the atrocities committed there in Bosnia. You know, we hijacked the Russian tanker and that time there was like a holy shit the the Supermission, you know, like today is really not a big deal. But at the time, you know to go and

Do VBSS on Russian tanker was early. So let's talk about that then That's that's the Russian tanker. Yeah, that was actually funny so there was the Jakos platoon. Jako and Mr. Queen F. This was field team 2? Field team 2. I didn't realize Jako was ever on the East Coast. Oh yeah he was my AOC. I've never met him. This platoon yeah. I tell you it is great guy. He's a great leader. That's what I hear. Yes yes I was honored to serve under his command very aggressive guy. I will have that so We this when we when we got the permission to take down the time tanker You know, there's always competition between the team guys, right and this one squad another squad was like, oh yeah

We are better. No, we are better. So my squad was taking it down because we had like three Russian speakers. I speak Russian, I speak Russian, Polish, and Japanese. But so I- You speak Japanese? Yes. What did you learn Japanese?

Oh, when I was doing kickboxing and I figured out then karate, I was in karate kushinkai, some of those commands, I said, well, I can understand the commands, but why don't just learn the Japanese? And it happened that my mom, she was a teacher. She had a PhD professor from Hokkaido University working with her doing some study on Polish educational system. So I connected with him and he was teaching me Japanese. I was very proficient with Japanese. Actually, I was guiding Japanese students around

my city a lot, especially those new who came. I did not speak Polish, so I was able to help. I forgot now, it's like 40 years now, but I forgot a lot, not everything. I forgot now it's like 40 years now, but they forgot a lot not everything but so I was a Russian speaker We had Rob who was a Russian speaker and our OIC mr. Queen f great officer He was the Russian speaker. So we had two Russian speakers on the initial assault And the problem was is that they were they knew they were looking at them. What was the well, hold on What was the tanker a Volga Ne? I think we're gonna have 142 Well, you can Google it up. It's online. I'm in fact there's we're in balaclavas But there is picture of me standing on the bridge in the in on the vulgar left

What were you taking the tanker down for they were smuggling oil from Iraq illegally? There was a Russian tanker who smuggled oil So we're tasked to take it down, but they knew it already. We're on the Monterey I Think forget forget forget forget forget and The I like the captain he is like, okay I was told by command that we cannot come closer to the ship than like a maybe mile. So, but if you want, if you want to get closer to it, I can close

because they told me mile, but I can measure that mile with my own stick. So he just put almost next to them. So we look at them and say, yeah, there's a bunch of like younger guys and there were some women, but the concern was because this is a Russian tanker and the Russian flag and young people who might try to resist. So, you know, maybe has their own boarding teams. They could do really easy, but because the concern that maybe a firefight can ensue, we're gonna take it down. And another thing too is they already knew that we were looking at them, so they were skirting the territorial waters of other countries.

Basically, they could just turn left or right, whatever, get into territorial waters, we couldn't get them. We would have to jump off the ship, not to cause the international incidents, no foreign forces invading or getting into another country. So we had to be quick. And I remember two o'clock in the night, Rob O'Neill came and he woke me up, say, dude, let's go, we need to go get dressed.

So it's like, I think it was nine of us, with Jaco was one of them, Mr. Fionta, we just got like a team. And not like the other guys were the team, everybody was a team, but they just pick us up on the, like what we can do and stuff. So we flew over it, we fast-rope on the tanker, we got this tanker down under I think two

minutes if not a minute, and they were already turning into the territorial water so we just had to go and learn how to turn it over. I have a cool picture with me actually at the helm steering that tanker and we did, we turned it over and then we searched the ship of course, make sure there's no weapons left or anything. And this was the competition between the team guys and the squads coming in. So we took down the target, the target, now we need to change because we were changing like every six hours or every eight hours whatever the shift was So we say okay. Well, let's go bring that other squad the other guys came in we pack we left

The other guys came in we are going to change them So we are going there and it's like dude You just leave all the guns all the weapons there you didn't search the ship very well and can hear this They have a big bag is a clinking clunking shit in it so like well what did we miss you know that not really good doesn't look good and so we look into the bag it's like freaking spoons forks and butter knives I was like dude that's not the weapon well it can be used as a weapon your squad didn't do that well because that could be used as a weapon even the butter knife

It's like come on. All right, so so just whatever about the jackal Staying on the on the bridge the guy is still clunking that weapon. He takes the binoculars Okay. Oh cool guys, you like stole the butter knives But what about those axes hanging on the doors up there? Did you buy to take that? But what about those axes hanging on the doors up there? Did you want to take that? It's like So we go and change and the first thing Russians are pissed you know, they were they were very there were good people I think they were just Good people. They were thieves. They were smuggling oil, but they were

So they they are pissed They were compliant, but when we come back they're pissed So like what's going on? We want our forks and knives and spoons back. I was like wow Why do you know we need to eat or eat with your hands? Can you eat with your hands? We speak in the Russian and they say well we would but we don't have teeth. And just like pull out, it's like they had no teeth. It was like if you put all the teeth together from the crew, I don't think you would have a one full set.

So I talked to Jack, I explained to him what happened. He said, let's get him the knives back and their forks and their spoons. So we called back. the boat came in, and just we hauled the big bag with our spools. And they were happy like they can be. Like there were no issues with them whatsoever. How many of them were there? I think maybe like 15 or 16, something like that.

It was not that many. And then I had the argument with the- How did you board the ship? Heal, we fast rope on it. And I thought it was planned already because I was the air ropes guy, so I was told to rehearse guys on the very tall fast roping. So we're using the 120 foot rope in Bahrain, I think we were in Bahrain at the time, we're using 120 foot rope just to practice

the fast roping right on the mark, and the heroes were practicing it too. So that was sort of the plan I think ahead. They knew this ship would come out of Iraq with the Iraqi oil, and we're gonna try to intercept it. So we practiced that, and then it was easy. We just, at two o'clock in the morning, rolled in over the ship, throw the ropes

and just slide down it. It was pretty cool at the time, yeah. Right on. That was pretty cool. Yeah, you know, I never did any VBSS in the SEAL teams. Just one training out, that's it. Yeah, yeah, so that's for us, it was, at that time, it was a big deal because we did suck small one,

we did got couple of dows with their, they were smuggling maybe something, we didn't bother with that, but take down the big tanker and the Russian flag, there was something. So we did that, we didn't torment the crew and the crew was not really, they did what they had to do, but they were not cowering or anything.

They were just like normal people. Let's take another quick break. When we come back, we'll pick back up in Iraq. I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits like behind the scenes

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All right, Drago, we're back from the break. Let's pick up to your first deployment to Iraq, where you saw a lot of combat, it sounds like. So you went from South America to Iraq to be a liaison with SEAL Team 5 for the Polish Grom. Yes. And so, a lot of questions, but I just, let's start with what was it like for you to go to combat and to be a liaison with the Polish Grom? Well- Being Polish. Yeah, well for me, first thing I didn't know what the Grom? Being Polish? Yeah, well for me first thing I didn't know

what the Grom was. I was told there was Polish Special Forces so and when I checked in Baghdad I had a brief from my commanders and they were kind of a standoffish who say we don't know who these guys are and they briefed me on what's expected, what we need to do. But then I was thinking like the best way to find out is just to go on the up with them and do the work with them. But I was like, wow, we don't know these guys that well, you know, we cannot risk your life because you know how it is.

It is dicey, you knowy in those missions sometimes, especially the assaults and the redaction mission. And I understand that because if something was to happen to me while I'm working with Grom, there could be some repercussions to my commanders too that they allow these things to happen. But I was able to convince them. I said, like, no, if we want to be effective, I mean, we need to cooperate closely, but I need to be with them too as well. So they allowed me to for maybe like first three missions. And then it was like all out.

Say, yeah, these guys are great. Go ahead. Yeah, do it. You know, that's fine. Let's coordinate it. Let's do it. We did start doing assaults together. So very often we needed more people.

We bring the Grom guys. If Grom more people he use us on the salt and then what one night? We did the set up the perimeter and the Grom was doing assault I was doing it and then next day was the vice versa the Grom was the perimeter and we were doing assaults So for me, it was pretty great. I was like double dipping on the missions and I was, I loved it. So, uh, how were they? Was that? Did they operate the same as we did? They operate pretty much the same way. We find out that their tactics are good. Their weapons are pretty much the same. Their manufacturer of their M4 was different at the time and they had some issues in the desert environment with it,

but there was just I think something minor. It was noticeable to to them, we didn't really register it. And they were quick too. Their assault techniques were very fast and I would say, I don't say brutal but these guys are consumed professionals. They don't tolerate any deviation from their SOPs unless there unless some flexibility is needed to save lives or to accomplish the mission. But otherwise, they are well-trained and again, like I say, they are fast. The funny thing is when we sometimes when we snatched the bandits, terrorists, we had to get them with us.

So if we got the call and it happened that, hey, we have bad guys moving on the location, you need to bail out, you need to stop what you're doing, get out. So to evacuate, sometimes they just, once they handcuff the guy, we handcuff the guys. So when we walk them down the stairs, ground them, just toss them to the window. The other guys were waiting, they caught them, throw them on the Humvee, and here we go. So the other guys were asking sometimes, why they get so fast? I say, because they don't fuck around. They're just like, when they have a terrorist in their hands,

they just, the guy is just flying out of the window to into Grom's carrying hands, and they put him on the Humvee, and they are ready to go. So that was kind of surprise for me too, because I didn't expect them to be so well trained and so well coordinated. Their assaults were working just like ours. You know, very similar, if not the same tactics, because they learned from the same people. So they had the exposure, also more exposure to SAS and German Special Forces. But this was not, that was good because we can actually

benefit from their experience as they were benefiting from our experience. It was a mutual, I think, cooperation and work on accomplishing the mission. So our missions were together. Interesting, yeah, I never got to work with them. But I remember when I was contracting for CIA I saw them they were co-located to an adjacent

Ford operating base and those guys were busy. They were going out. They loved it Yeah, several times a night. They had these dune buggy looking things and they were just tearing it up. Yeah. And made me extremely jealous to watch. But I was like, oh man. Yeah, so what about their team dynamic? Do they have a good camaraderie? Same like ours.

That's very similar. Much different, yeah. They are very close with each other. I would say because they are way smaller than us, they are very close with each other. I would say because they are way smaller than us, they are very close. These guys know each other better than they know their family members. Just like us too. So yeah, that was very, not only educational for me, I think for all of us to work with them. It was also very pleasant, very nice to work with them doing the assaults,

take down the targets. We really enjoy working together. And it was getting to the point even that some of our guys were coming in and saying, Hey Drago, can you help me? Can you talk to Grom guys so I can do assault with them and just so I can put my record that I did war with Grom, I did the direct action missions with them? So yeah, I think they didn't have a problem with them because they trusted us. So we have quite a few guys going on targets with them if they wanted to and I have quite a few pictures of it too as well from our guys

Working together with grow did they did they speak English at that time? They did not today this requirement. You cannot be in the grown Without speaking English, so they are very proficient I would say some of them speak better English than I do because there's a requirement as they go to regular schools and besides the training day everybody had to learn English. Besides in Poland now English is very popular. Like before everybody had to know Russian, like in my case we had to learn Russian. Today nobody forced people to learn English but people want to learn English because it's so productive, because it's so empowering. What were the, I mean, I'm just curious, what were your conversations with them?

I mean, did you have conversations about your childhood? Well, there was very technical ones, because, you know, doing the assault mission with the direct action mission within the foreign unit, this could be very dangerous. So we did rehearse things, they had to learn their way of communication, their tactics, but because I speak Polish, then there was no issue to learn that stuff.

But the first conversation was just, yeah, incorporate me into their structures. And that was, yeah, that was a little bit intense, but they were great guys. So they were very helpful. A lot of fun too, a lot of laughing because my Polish was very rusty at the time. I still do say things that means totally different things that I intend to say. But at that time, yeah, so they were very helpful. But then we started drinking together, we started having a party together too whenever there was a chance.

It was a bit of a lull if we could. And that was like, this is how we created bonds that persist even today between those team guys who work with Grom or even those who didn't but had about our missions with Grom. That big friendship didn't but had about our missions with Grom, that big friendship continued too. They still come here sometimes to the States. When we go up there, they are always helpful, try to help you and accommodate our guys. So the friendship that we create on the battlefield continues and still we're very close.

You had not been back to Poland since you left, correct? Yes. So did you have a lot of questions about... I did. Yes, I did. I was asking them about stuff. Well, I did when I went to with my SEAL platoon in 1995 for a brief couple days, three days visit in Gdańsk. We didn't work with Grome. We worked with their commandos from Formosa unit. So

I kind of like that scene. For me it was surreal because I left as a felon, a criminal, and then I was greeted as a hero in Poland when I came back. Not maybe as a hero, but I was greeted as a valuable, respectable person. That was very kind of different for me, that first visit. And then, but yeah, that was a very short visit. So the first longer visit was later on when I retired from the Navy. So would, I mean, did they have questions for you about what it was, what your childhood was like in prison? For them, the most significant thing was that I was part of the Solidarity Trade Union movement in Poland in the 1980s.

For them, the big deal was that I participated in underground structures and I resist communism. For them, it was very fascinating that I spent time in prison fighting for Polish freedom. So they were very Respectful of that and but otherwise there was a lot of questions about America, you know, how do how is the life? How are the people how is the How did it happen that I succeed? They became who I am and where some people were not that successful and So there was a lot of questions that I had to answer about America about my life in America and about my America

Did they have I mean But I thought there was a lot of Chatter back and forth about it. Were you very curious about what Poland was like now? Or did you already know? At that time I was curious because, again, remember they were part of the Warsaw Pact. They were opposing us, NATO. So they were trained to fight us.

And suddenly here we are working very close I think that I think we work so close with them I don't remember in combat working any other forces from different countries working that close with us with seals As Polish Grom did so that's they are not of respect In our community, but also I believe we are a lot of respect in our community, but also I believe we earn a lot of respect for them. For them it was curious how the foreigner like me can come to America and join the more secret forces, the tip of the spear that America has. So they were a little bit fascinated by this.

How is it possible? We know in our units, the foreigners cannot serve. You have to be a citizen, you have to have access to secret clearance, you have to have a secret clearance to serve in SEAL teams. So that's something that for them was very fascinating. How did I pull it off? I said, dude, this is America.

You can be whatever you are able to be. There is nothing holding you back. And if you can't do this or that, there is no politicians that are saying that you can't. In America, there is nobody there holding you back and saying you can't do that. As long as it is legal, as long as this is something that is beneficial, hopefully it's beneficial for the country, for America and for other people, you are encouraged to succeed and people will help you to succeed. This is the big difference between other countries. This is what I want to, I want people to use this book as their vantage point to see it, how different we are.

The America that was built on goodness, on personal freedom, on being strong and independent and on the faith that make America so great. This also rolls into the way people in America treat other people with with compassion With help and I experience Every single one of this. So yeah Do you think they were fascinated by this did any of them want to come over? Yep Some of them did no kidding asking about hey, how can I be a I said, well, why would you want to be a SEAL? You are the one, the top tier of the special forces.

And, but you know, somebody was asking, they say, is it possible? Because this is something- What did they say when you asked why? Was that? What did you, what did they tell you when you asked why? They say because SEALs have the reputation they have because we are the best. I didn't inquire too much into it, but some of them were like, hey, if I could do it again,

I would just do what you just did. I say, well, no, I didn't do it because I did it because I left Poland because I had to leave Poland. But you don't have to leave Poland. There is no reason for you to do it. I joined the military because I had to, my debt of freedom that I had to pay back. But you don't have to do it.

You're living in the free country. Wow, wow. So that's what I told myself when I came to America and that's what I follow with today. That's my pledge to America and American people. So let's talk about, so you got to Iraq, you start seeing real combat. What was your first engagement in Iraq? I think first we did snatch a couple of the guys in the high riser so we did breach. We get the guys out of the... We were so quick that they had no chance to do anything. So we

got them and this is where I learned that not everything that we learned in the breaching school actually works like that. Some in the breaching school actually Works like that some of the breaching charges for example. I don't want to go into details here We're not very effective. We're not or were outright dangerous to To not so much to us but to people on target We find out we found out that most of these targets were hitting there were terrorists Hiding behind women and children and they tend to put them in the front next to front door found out that most of these targets were hitting, there were terrorists hiding behind women and children, and they tend to put them next to front door or somewhere close so they can have a round of escape while we stumble over their family members.

And breaching the way we used to do was very, could be potentially life threatening to people there. And we had to change the matter of fact, we had army guys, the in-charge of the theater, I think they call us to scale down with the breaching because they don't want civilians to get hurt. So we had to actually change some of the methods we were doing, make it safer for them, but also for us, but also the breaching charges that actually I was instrumental in developing

it and make the charge available to all of us. And that was widely used later by SEAL teams in Baghdad and in Iraq. So that was pretty good stuff. I remember I was breaching the steel door with the woman. We didn't know at that time yet, but she was maybe like three feet, two feet away from the steel door. And we breached the, I breached the steel door. When inside she was an injured, well, we trample over her because she got scared and fell down on the floor as we rushed into the apartment, to that house. We trampled her a little bit, but otherwise she was untouched. If I use any of the other charges that we used to train with I would kill that woman. So for me it means a lot to that I contribute not only to killing these people, but bad

guys, but also to saving those lives that were innocent on target. What was the daily life routine there? Were you guys going out all the time? We became vampires. But also, the way I look at it is like customer service, like government customer service. But my customers, our customers, were always wrong and we got to kill them, so that's kind of good things.

But the life was, we wake up in the, maybe three o'clock, sometimes four o'clock in the afternoon, get ready, rehearse what we need to rehearse, plan for the mission. At two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, we staggered the time, we didn't use the same time. We got in the Humvees, we rode to the target or close to the target, we moved on it and we either snatched or killed the bad guys and then moved out before they could catch us. The thing is that at that time we didn't have armored vehicles. So we were exposed to the IEDs very much and also to the enemies. We actually had to remove the

doors from our Humvees. So we had a few guys on the back and our seats were facing outwards. We installed the skids on the side of the car outside so we were sitting facing outside with the guns. We actually look like a porcupine. Each Humvee was looking like a porcupine. HMV was looking like a porcupine. I have like 17 hours video from my helmet camera from those DAs. So this is something that when I'm looking now it's just it's incredible how we could get away with stuff that you know today as the battlefield requirements and the tactics change may not be able to do so. But at the time, we were, sometimes we were just lucky to do it. What was the first stop where you killed an enemy combatant?

That was, we breached the, we breached the, those two apartments next to each other. We breached one. The other guy, there were two doors breached. The one guy kind of jumped away. The holes were pre-made in the opposite wall, the long hallway. When we went in, it just happened. The guy was just standing next to me. So another one was in the Humvee. We were driving, I think we were

right back to base and there was a vehicle came in and just like trying to pull next to us, pull next to us and he just didn't want to stop, didn't want to bug out and there was kind of suspicions at the time, it was I think like three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning, on the way back. No, I'm sorry, we're just driving on another mission too, because we were hitting multiple targets at the time. So I just have to stop him and I stopped the guy.

So. Did that affect you at all? No. No? Killing never affected you? Not really, because I did what was right for America. We were all prepared. I never seen in Iraq anything that I was not prepared to see. I never did in Iraq anything that I was not prepared to do by the US Navy. So I really, not really,

that didn't bother me at all. I wish I could kill more of them because, like I said earlier, if we, if that one that got away, maybe we were able to kill him, some of our brothers would come back home. Maybe that was that guy who got one of us. So that weighs on me. Sometimes at night, I think about those who got away and I would like to kill. So you guys were doing multiple targets a night? Yes. Sometimes, sometimes at night,

sometimes daytime. Hitting daytime targets too. It depends, you know, like, our missions were dictated by the circumstances. So if we need to get somebody, it was only chance to get him at daytime. We did that daytime. He didn't get the guy. Uh, we prefer nights. Of course, most of our missions were at night, but there was nothing unusual to do something in daytime if we had to do it, we were prepared for either way. You guys did over a hundred direct actions in what amount of time?

What about a time? The time frame? How much time? Yeah. Well, that was within the first year in Iraq. Wow. Most of it. What was your Bronze Star for?

On target, it was a hand-to-hand combat with the insurgent. And we needed this guy. We needed this guy alive. So I was able to go and basically kick his ass, bag him, and take him out. Could you be a little more descriptive? Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to go into too much details because you know, today's environment. But basically he tried to first try to move away, we need to stop him and I was on the way so when he rushed through me he didn't make it. He ended up actually trying to do it again and he was pretty aggressive.

So the easiest way was to kill the guy, but we needed this guy. So I was able to go take him down and eventually, yeah, pummel him a little bit and handcuff him and bring him down. So yeah, that was the guy what who was it? That was I don't remember who he who he was but we have the least of the guys That was There was so many of them I just don't't remember this particular guy, who he was. I see his face. I still vividly remember that. But yeah.

How did you get him down? With my fists, with my legs and my gun. So I didn't want to shoot him because again, that there was not the guy who wanted to shoot, but it came to the, to the, yeah, to the hand to hand combat. So this is what my bronze star actually says that, that, that, that what happened that describes that. Drago, welcome back. Nice to be back. But man, I was hoping you would come back.

I mean, one of the hardest parts about interviewing special ops guys that have done just phenomenal stuff is trying to break through the humility. Nobody wants to talk about the veracity of what they've done in combat. And we very lightly breezed over your Bronze Star. And then I was hoping I would get a call from you saying, hey, we should probably go into a little bit more detail on that. And I know it's hard to break through the humility. And, but at the same time, I mean, it's important.

It's important that people understand what the sacrifices that were made over there are and what it's like. And so I just wanna say, I really appreciate you coming back to give us the full scoop on what happened that day with your Bronze Star of the Dollar. Yeah, thank you. You know, this is something that, of valor. Yeah, thank you.

You know, this is something that is... The way I see it is the stories are being said, some of the stories are being said quite often, and that makes almost desensitize people to what we go through. We are just human beings, just like anybody else. But people listening to these stories, listening, watching these movies, they don't see us as human beings often, not everybody. They see often see us as just a little part of the machine.

If you fall out, you fall. That just, well, just expect it. Let's get another guy. And that's what I think is important that our society doesn't see us that way. We are all individual people, we are all human beings. And everybody that falls is those heroes, they shouldn't be seen as just little pieces

of the machine that can be easily replaced. So I was never, yeah, I try not to talk a lot about these stuffs and nobody ever asked me about it. It's important, you know, it's documenting history, you know, and I don't think anybody sees any of the guys that I bring in here is just part of the machine or, or invincible because we do the, you know, we started childhood and go all the way through the career and then the pitfalls afterwards. And, and we did that with you and I do it with everybody too. And the reason I do that is to humanize, you know, to humanize who I'm speaking to and to humanize them in front of the audience and so

But let's let's go in. So let's just start at the very beginning Yeah, that was the fact that I remember that you know, I did so many of these da's That they got 20 years later all get blurred out. This one kind of sticks out because As we so we move out like we always work. We try to work because as we, so we move out, we always work, we try to work. We did some daytime missions too, but we try to avoid. So at night, the cow came in, we had to get the guy. He was like one of the leaders in finance shares, I believe, who we don't want to kill him, we just need this guy.

So we came to the set point and then... Was this a capture kill? It was capture kill, yes, yes, yes. Preferable capture. But you know, we never had this type of priorities that you cannot kill the guy, you have to capture him. That's a very dangerous concept. But so for us, if we can, we try to capture the guy, but we'll really try it. So we came to the site point with this embark and patrolled towards the target. And as we patrolled, we made maybe like 20, 30 yards from where we were supposed to cross

over the fence, then the whole hell broke loose. And that was just like the bullets were flying everywhere. And you know how it is that you don't, in urban environment, it's kind of sometimes difficult pinpoint where the shots are coming from, especially here from behind you in front of the sites. And then you don't see mazoflash. If you see mazoflash, yeah, you know where

it is coming from. So we just hung it for a second on the side of the fence and we're not going to be waiting here forever. It's time to go. So we just move along that fence a few years back. We put the lad we why does all the shit is going on we cross that thing we approach the doors I breached the door we blew the door up what'd you breach it with was that what did you breach it with explosive explosives yeah yeah yeah we bridge with explosives at the time most of our bridges were with explosives you know it gives us that extra a couple seconds when the enemy is disoriented, where the terrorists

are disoriented, so we can take advantage of it. So it was a preferable entry method for us. So as we bridged, we entered the house. It was a pretty big house. And we kind of knew how it is set up because we had from that the Intel know what to expect Inside even inside and there was like as we entered was like short the hallway Then it was like it may be two feet to the right and there was a wall up You can see the wall the guy was standing behind the door when I blew the door. So he just backed out

Basically to throw him off a little bit, but he was still on his feet So there I was coming into the house as a second guy. So the guy went left, I went right, and up this guy. So he's doing nothing just standing there. He's blind from the flash. And so I throw him on the ground, I bag him and tag him. And then I move on to the... What do you mean bag him and tag him?

Well, just basically make him ready to be move out. And what does that entail for the audience? I know what that means, but what does it mean? Oh, okay. So basically subdue the guy, hand-capped the guy. You know, you can say bug and tag, basically kill the guy, put him in the body bag and move him away, but that's not what I mean, I guess.

Just, you know, throw him on the ground, hand-cap him, get the guy ready to be move out So we did that I joined the guys and clearing the house and the shed is still going on outside so when I We walked to the second floor. I don't remember was two or Three floors. I think it was two floors was a big house. So as we clear the rooms floors, I think it was two floors, but it was a big house. So as we clear the rooms, on one of the rooms as we enter it, there is a crazy, I think the craziest thing, one of the craziest, the crazier thing that I remember. The guy just charges at full speed and I don't know

if he's trying to charge me or he's just trying to run away from that room. Anyway, he just bumps into me, so throws him on the ground, he drops the gun. So now I look at this guy, he has no gun, the room is pretty much clear. So as I'm getting this guy now, he jumps back again, kicking, screaming, and punching. So as the fight is going on, I'm getting the call. No, I could shoot the guy guy but he was not armed so really that's there was no no need to shoot the guy and as the cowl as I'm

working with the guy the cowl comes in hey Drago need to stop the Grom guy Grom element is moving on the backyard and there are three guys in ambush lane so tell them stop them tell them to wait the hero is coming to laze them, put the laser beam on them, so the guys know where they are. So I'm here trying to get this guy compliant and at the same time speaking on the radio, so I put my gun at the time kind of to the side, I had another guy in the room too, but he was busy still doing his stuff. So, and at the same time as I'm talking to on the radio to Polish guys in Polish,

don't move on the bag, just hold on, the hero is coming and I will get you there to, they will let you know where the guys are. So they stop and at the same time, and the bullets are flying into the room through the windows too. So I remember I had like two of them came and you don't hear the, there's not a whistling like

you can see on the movies, there's just a crack and there's just the impact on the wall. So, and then the Grom guys is calling me too, You can see on the movies, there's just a crack and there's just the impact on the wall. And then the Grom guys is calling me too, telling me that, hey, we are moving on this on. We see these guys now, we know where they are. There is element maneuvering to the side. So taking the crossfires from the side.

And then so then I relay this to our guys while I'm bagging the guy. So eventually, yeah, I bag him, tag him. That was the guy. But I don't know which guy it was, the one that we're after, but I think we're after all of them. So I think we hauled from this target maybe like four guys or five guys. We left, I think, some guys there. They were like, for the non-important. But anyway, the call came in high, we need to move out because I think there is a group

of guys coming on us. You know, we have a limited number of people, so we are not set up to run and gun for like an hours. It's very surgical. Yeah, very surgical. So we just grabbed the guys whoever we had and bailed out and left. The whole neighborhood. Yeah, because the guy was very important. So they had the, he had a set up, he had security set up inside the house and outside the house in the perimeter. The perimeter was the one that opened up on us and our external security actually was duking it out with them, took care of them at the same time while we were clearing the

house and banging and tagging the bad guys in the house. So yeah, we got them and I say nobody got hurt. Those Iraqis in the ambush, they pretty quickly realized realized that's not a good idea, so we got them too. And that was, you know, that was memorable. What was like one of many of those missions that they, you do it for so long time that it is, it became like almost like a normal thing. But it's not the most memorable mission, like the most impactful mission that I did.

When did you find out, what was it like leaving, before we got there, what was it like leaving with the whole neighborhood shooting at you guys? That was pretty dicey because at the time when we were leaving the house, there was still shit going on. But as we were leaving by the time like when we're leaving the house there was still shit going on But as we're leaving by the time it was everything was suppressed. So there was not so much There was patch shots here and there you can see you can hear the bullets cracks You can hear bullets cracking here and there but there was no The intensity that was at the beginning was at the beginning was especially when our 50s open on the humvees

Holy shit, that was like whole hell broke loose That is where we're breaching the door at the same time. So yeah, that was, yeah, I remember that. I just never pay attention to like each particular mission for me. You asked me- All blends into one. What's that? It all blends into one. All blends into one, particular mission for me. You asked me- All blends into one. What's that?

It all blends into one. All blends into one, especially if you do it for so long. And another thing, like I say, the thing more impactful for me was the one time we're in the house, clearing the house. And I was on the left side of the house. And I was on the left side of the hallway, there was a guy on my right, on the other side of the hallway. And you can see commotion in the end of the hallway, it's a hallway.

It's like maybe 30, 40, 30 feet maybe. That's pretty long hallway in the dark. And you can see the commotion, you can see like feet coming out. And then coming out, you can see like have dresses. And then you see the gun. And then the people come out and you can hear the guys just like, hey, drop the gun, drop the gun.

Those Iraqis, I don't think they understood what he was, what we were saying. Besides, he was so stressed out. When I look at this, this is like old man and old woman. He's holding her hand. He's walking with this gun and pissing himself at the same time. He looked like, to me, 80 years old guy. So, and I can hear that, so I had the guy on the top,

I had the guy low on the opposite corner, and the guy who came low later, I could almost hear the click. I said, I just didn't want the guy to get killed. So, I just say, I got it, I got it, and I'll step in front of these guys barrels. I could walk on my side. I just didn't want them to shoot this old man.

So I walk up there, I walked to this guy. I had my, it's very short and force. So as I was walking up to this guy, I am in his heart. I mean, I would just pull, if he would just try to do something because he was holding the gas, he didn't aim at me. He was just for maybe that little bit,

little bit down. So I woke up to him, I took this gun away from him. And then, so when we took the guy with us, it was one of the guys we needed, we went after. So when we were leaving, his old wife came up to me and said, like, thank you very much for not killing us, because I told him to put the gun away, but he thought that this may be some insurgents

or some people got to kill him. So thank you for not killing him. Wow. And I got a lot of flak from our guys too, because you know, think about it for a second. There was kind of selfish on me, but I just did not want this guy to get killed. Because those very quickly point out to me on the debrief,

what if this guy were just there and there was other guys just waiting in the dark hallway where you can't see it we had a we had a flashlight too so we hear that commercial put the plunge we see the gun right so and and that you were right in front of our guns we wouldn't be able to do anything you can't do it I understand I agree with them it was not tactically there was wrong thing to do I Don't know he felt it. I just felt it. I just felt I don't want this guy to get shot He's old wife, you know, they holding hands each other

This guy is just barely walking to have still those house shoes those flip flops on and then Yeah, and he's holding this gun and shaking like this and I remember, you can see the dark spot on his, his pajamas. And I think he still had this funny hat with his, like this little funny ball, you know, just like you see in the cartoons. So yeah, that sticks out to me for two reasons. One is that, yeah, maybe what I did was wrong

because it could endanger me and maybe other guys in the house. I just did not want this guy to get shot. And I think, I was afraid he was about to be shot. And you know, this woman standing by him. Wow. So yeah, that was very impactful on me. I don't know what's brave, I suppose I was stupid, but it was just, I just

felt it was the right thing to do. You know, if I could get shot, because you know that these guys are not worrying about this stuff, if there was somebody there, there was many times they just shoot their own people just to get to you. So there wouldn't be any hesitation. And yeah, I agreed with the guys that yeah, I was on the wrong. But it was- I mean, I think it was brave. I mean, you know, maybe you weren't thinking about it at the time, but I mean, not only getting shot by your own guys because everybody's hyped up. I know I wouldn't maybe when the firefight started They may do have to fire above me, but I trusted these guys

I know the possibility that the that the man would have had a suicide vest on true You know and but you know I didn't think about it. I just see this lost old Grandma and grandpa working with the gun scared shitless So yeah, and and you know he didn't drop the gun, it was the cows being made. I don't know if he understood the English. No, he didn't actually, because we talked to him later before we took him. And he could barely speak English, but his wife spoke English. So, but the wife, they were so scared they wouldn't be able to with the reward up there.

And they were working on our guns So when you got back From the from the mission. Yeah, when did you find out who it was that you had talked? We already knew who this guy was. I just don't remember. There was the guy who He was one of the big financiers of those i.s and those terror groups in Baghdad. So he knew a lot. So in the house, we didn't know who is who at the time. So we tried to bag everybody and bring in whoever we had there.

He was identified later. So, but you know, like with the names, I knew their names because we had to learn for the mission so you can call. names because we had to learn for the mission. It was just normal for me, but now, 20 years later, there were so many of these Muhammad's that I don't remember. Yeah. I'm just curious, do you remember what the write-up says? Not really. I know what it says, but it's like I don't dwell on it. You know, so

it says nice. I think I'm sure nice. I read it. It's just like, yeah, it's, you know, I'm sure somebody else could say it in a much better eloquent way. I'm still better with bullets than words. So for me, to come and speak about anything is pretty scary. I think one of the bravest things I have done being just be able to go and face the camera and microphones and speak but I'm better with bullets so you know maybe somebody else can tell the story better but it is what it is you know we're human beings we are not robots we are just just the people. And how long how many times did you go to Iraq?

I went there three times, back to back. So I spent the year first and first deployment came back. It was another SEAL team coming out and they were slated to work with Grom as well. So I asked them if they can just take me for, I just wanted to go back. And if they can take me for... I just wanted to go back. And if they can take me with them, they said, yeah, sure, absolutely. So that's supposed to be like two weeks, just the fam, let them have...

Help them settle down with Grom. But then like four months later, it's like my team is calling and say, hey Drago, you need to come back because we are about to deploy after these guys. There was the time when entire CL team was deploying. calling and say, hey Drago, you need to come back because we are about to deploy after these guys. There was the time when entire CL team was deploying. So they say, you need to come back, second back and then one back with my platoon again. The missions changed, the tactics changed at the time. So we're tasked with protecting Iraqi politicians.

So my platoon had one of those big weeks, Iraqi, that we're protecting those PSD missions mostly. Although, wherever I could, I would just like to get away from babysitting the old grown man, old grown fat man, and try to get on the DA mission. So I was still able to do that. And some Iraqis, even now, that I was just doing my own DA missions on my own, but it was not really that much on my own, but I was trying to get as much into those missions as possible.

But I paid the price for it too with being a breacher, the injuries that we sustained that we didn't know at the time of how dangerous it can be. So that was when on the first deployment, I think I started feeling first symptoms, first things. But like I say, I was afraid to say anything because I didn't want to be pulled out of the missions. What were the symptoms? What were you feeling?

First was I was not able to read. So when I find out that I was trying to read, but I couldn't concentrate on the text, it seems like that thing was jumping. And so I figured it out that maybe this is because the lightning, because we're living in the tents. Outside was very hard and bright, very hot and bright, so most of our activities during the, when we sleep or eat was in the tents or inside.

So I said, well, maybe I just, my vision is bad because the dark environment. But then I noticed that I cannot read, even if I can follow the letters, because I forget, if I read the paragraph I forget what it was paragraph about by the time I finished it. So that was kind of weird and so sometimes it took me an hour to get to the page. So that was odd but I didn't make much of it. I kind of Brushed it off. I still was strong. I was Thinking fairly clear. I just couldn't read so there's no big deal. It's not like I have to read some manuals to terrorists

Right. So so I was fine and Then the balance issues start issues start showing up that much later And the sleep disturbance. That was an irritability too as well. That's when I start thinking that something is not quite right then. Yeah. But we were sometimes five feet, six feet from the breaching charge. And besides me as a breacher,

I learned very quick in Iraq to calculate the charge and the stand of distance for my team, for my guys by the manual, by the book. But I also did another calculation just for me. If I can't get in the cover, was the minimum there is that I can still breach the door without injuring myself. It happened to me not once, but there's one

very dramatic time where we actually were assaulting the target, we still ask, we look, you know, we get the intel photo, intel pictures, so we look at it, we just, from our best ability, this is what we make, we just, from our best ability, this is what we make. We're gonna go and solve these doors. This is how it's going to go. And this is where we stag our guys.

This, as a breacher, I had to brief it before the mission to our guys. And we did, you know, we had a secondary entry point. We had all that stuff pretty much ready to go. And the picture shows this empty space, maybe like that wide between the concrete wall and the building itself. And then there's a corner here

where they just walk straight to the door. So I say, well, I'm gonna stack the guys right there, the way I breathe, they're gonna go to the door and blast the door, go inside. It's just a standard mission. We did tens, hundreds of that. And that one time, we didn't know that from the pictures, but that space was filled with the robots. There was just enough space to stack the guys and there was no space

for me. So we go out and I kind of see something is not right here. So I go with my, with the security to the door, you know, place the charge We're going back the guys go in but like there's no place to me. So I said Climb the wall is maybe like six seven feet tall We found a way later to do something similar I can talk about it, but that that point was like infeasible I we can if we linger the longer willing get the bigger chance that they will be alert and If we linger the longer we linger the bigger chance that they will be alert and You know somebody gets killed. So yeah, so I just it's no big deal I mean I knew the distance was still safe for me

so I got on my knees I put the gun in front of my face and cooled up and blast the charge and So yeah, it's turned me a little bit but Like I described it in the book, but it's not maybe as dramatic as it is in the book. I did have my nose a little bit bleed, my ear did, but it was not like I was gushing blood or anything. It was just I was a little bit stunned, but not enough not to participate in the assault. So I still catch up on the train, on the back of the train, and we did assault.

We took the target down, we got the guy. So, yeah, that was... But these things repeating over and over and over, when you stay in close proximity to the bridge, it will affect you eventually. And at that time, there was very little known about this. Matter of fact, when eventually I became a SEAL instructor in BATS, but I still have this issue with reading, with sleeping. So I talked to Howard, what do you do?

You just got to your family. My family at that time was SEALs. I didn't have another family. So we say, hey, what happened? I have this, I wake up every two o'clock in the morning and stuff, so we're like, well, maybe you were drinking too much. No, I was not drinking. And this happens every day. Two o'clock in the morning and stuff. So we're like, well, maybe we're drinking too much. No, I was not drinking.

And this happens every day. Two o'clock in the morning, I'm wide awake. Or maybe this. So finally we agreed there was a ghost. The apartment was haunted and there's a ghost up there and the ghost is waking me up. So that was the conclusion. So then I realized that, shit, I'm scared of ghosts.

I need to find different apartment because I don't want to be scared sleeping at night that some ghost comes here I'm too scared the hell out of me. So I didn't find an apartment So finally I resigned myself to living with the ghost which eventually turned out to be a TBI the traumatic brain injury that Caused me a rag that way. So That tells you how little we knew at the time. It's not the case today We know we are acutely aware the danger and the damage that can those explosions cause.

But at the time, it was not that... The funny thing is that I think the NSW came out to conclusion the biggest damage occurs during the breaching course, because people are exposed to those breaking charges constantly day in in day out. Well, that is just a baby walk next to what we did in Iraq where we just have these things going multiple times every night and it's not just for like two weeks, three weeks or

for the month. You spend a year doing it, eventually you start feeling it. So that's what happened to me. I don't complain. I would do it again if I had to do it, but at least now we know what it is and we can actually do something about it. And not the only one who suffer from this, we talk to any breacher,

I think they even come with the term, breacher brain right now, that's something like this, that's what they call it. Again, I don't complain. This is not complaint. It's just the fact. Maybe somebody who suffers it can recognize the symptoms and things and get himself a help. That's what I'm saying. So after all your Iraq tours, you went to BUDs to be an instructor? Yes.

Well, I had a slight, my orders were to bridge in school to be instructor, but I already knew that something was wrong with me, like, and even shot, shooting guns next to my head goes like the headache for a day. So I asked if I could change my orders, go somewhere where I am not exposed and the break from the noise, from explosions, from the shockwaves. And they said, why don't you try Bud's? This BCL instructor said, sure. But then the problem was I already had my orders cut.

So I had to actually call. I went behind the back a little bit and the chief one of the chiefs He passed away today. He was in Millington. He was became the detailer in my tone So I call him I say look this is what happened to me. This is what I want to do This one will change and I need your help So within like a month I get them the change of orders and he called me say dude I got you you're going to baths. So that's how I end up in serial training. How did you like your BADS tour?

Was relaxing, you know, it was fun too. I kind of, I miss the combat. I miss the engagements in Iraq that you don't have it here. But what helped me get through this assignment was understanding that I might be saving lives. I might be making these people as good as possible. So when they go to combat, they will be extremely effective. They will be mentally prepared. And those who could not achieve that type of readiness,

they will be removed from the SEAL training. So I was pretty harsh, but I was very fair instructors from what I was told by fellow students who today are very successful. SEALs, some of them already retired from SEAL teams. But I have a fond memory of the young guys going through baths.

Matter of fact, I tell you, this is very humbling experience because the way when we go through baths, it's most of, at least for me, it was a blur. You just go do every day, do something, you just try to survive a day, just to the next day from meal to meal, from hour to hour. And it just goes quick. You just, it's like almost you walk in the room, you get a kick in the balls a few times,

then kick in the ass out of the door and you don't. Well now you are the one who is actually doing this to these kids, who is demanding from these kids that sacrifice, that pain. And it is very, again, very humbling because you see these young kids and they don't quit, they just keep going. No matter what you throw at them, some of them falter, some of them quit, some of them get injured and being removed. Most of the people I notice in baths, they don't resign, they don't quit, some of them get injured and being removed. Most of the people I notice in bars, they don't resign.

They don't quit. They get injured, they get removed from the training. But seeing these guys and you could not make them quit no matter what, some of them, it makes you think that, yeah, America is safe. When did you, what year did you retire? I retired in 2011. So by this time I met my wife. How did you meet her? Well, there was a story to itself because so I was in baths. I didn't have a family at the time. And finally I came to realize since like a year and a half I'm retiring, I have a family at the time and finally I came to realizations like in a year and a half

I'm retiring and I have no family so I have to find me a wife. So it was not that easy because like, you know with my English, my the way I was I guess I was not very attractive guy. So I asked for my friends and no, my teammates and my teammates. And they said, okay, Drago, the best way to do it is go online, you find yourself a chick and if you like her, you're gonna marry her. I said, sounds good, so let's do it.

And so I had incidents, I mean, I had those misfires, what I would say. So there was a girl I was courting for a long time and eventually agreed to meet and then and we scheduled and tried to meet first time in the coffee shop like safe for her place and It was a lunchtime. Good God. It was the place where it was bunch of like executive

chicks were coming in like very of like executive chicks were coming in, like very super nice place, bunch of offices around. I didn't think much of it, but these girls who I look at the picture were so beautiful. I said, I'm going to go and pretend I'm smarter than I am. So I took the book. I couldn't still read it, but I just pretend I was reading, so I look smart. And then she's coming. And so every girl, these girls are coming, I say, oh, this is it, so I just try to get myself bigger, look better. And then there's none of these girls. So I find like, well, it's almost like 10 minutes late, maybe she won't show up.

And then I see the girl walking, but she had to like walk sideways through the door. So I said, that's said, that cannot be her. So I just like sitting up there and just look at the book that I brought to make myself look smarter and all these nice good looking chicks are lined up next to my table. And she's coming and coming. I see the big shadow comes up. It's like, are you Thomas? Drago?

It's like, yeah you Thomas? Drago? It's like, yeah, how do you know me? It's like, who are you? I'm Wendy, whatever the name was. We talk about it. I was like, damn, and all these chicks, I can see already the smirk on their face. It's like, dude, what you got yourself into it?

And then, so I said, well, Wendy, just have a seat, sit down. And I'm thinking like, fuck, I mean, how do I make it look like a business meeting so these chicks are not laughing at me? And so I say, so Wendy, tell me, so talking about your company, how many employees do you have? How many people do you manage? Just look at me like an idiot. It's like, we're supposed to have a date,

not talk about my job. So this guy was just laughing out loud. It was like, dude, do you just... So I was like, okay. Alright, a little date. Okay, let's make it a date. So we talked for a while, and I just wanted to end this thing.

It was so humiliating. And then, she was so loud, you know, and she was like, oh, you're so beautiful. I was like, Tim, just go. And so we go back, I say, could you give me a ride? I have a car on the other side of the mall. And that was in San Diego. I was like, yeah, okay, yeah, I'll give you a ride? I have a car on the other side of the mall. And that was in San Diego. I was like, yeah, okay, yeah, I'll give you a ride.

So we go to my Jeep. My Jeep is not even on the lift. It's just like we had bigger tires at the time. She cannot get into the Jeep. She's just like trying to push herself back, but the doors are too narrow for her. She tries to pull the leg with her hands, put in the Jeep, and hopefully I can push her in it,

but that didn't work. She almost fell down. And I was like, I'm getting put in the Jeep. I hope I can push her in it, but that didn't work. She almost fell down. And I was like, I'm getting ready. Like, what the hell? I got myself into it. And then she said, well, I just walk. I say, yeah, thank you. Just go.

And she left. She called me and hey, it was a great date. You know, you do, you want to meet again? Let's have a date again. I was like, listen, Wendy, first of all, you misrepresent yourself. meet again, let's have a date again. That's like, listen Wendy, first of all, you misrepresent yourself. We could be friends if we didn't lie. You know, I don't mind befriend with you

if you were honest, but you send me all these pictures of some other chicks pretending that this is you, and then you show up and look like a jab at the heart, and that's not you who the, and so, and I don't want to be rude to her, but I had to tell her I'm not interested in any dates with her, so I told her that. And then, you know, as instructors in PULCOM, you remember, you spend almost all day in the water testing students. So we have students who are broke dicks, guys who are some injuries so they cater to us

So they like you have a phone call. They say in super Drago. You have a phone call here Give me the phone so you still in the pool You eat in the pools like all day for these two days of pool comp and the one of the guys say super Drago We have a call a message here. I said, okay, bring me the phone. So he brings the phone You look and I can see his face like by this time I was dating Rachel already so I will come back to it how we met and this so I'm looking as I see the tits like so I was like what the hell's this I call Rachel say Rachel don't send your naked breast here the students are looking every time they pick the phone. They see this

Like whose tits are you having they're receiving the messages from then I look at say, oh shit. There's another page on this So that was that fat chick Telling me about the it's trying to send me the message. So I telling me about the, trying to send me the message. So I just say, call her, tell her, delete her, they tell her not to call you again. So I call her, I say, don't call me anymore. And don't send those naked pictures of you. I say, oh yeah, I'm so sorry, my boyfriend is

right above your name and I just by accident send you my naked picture. I was like, yeah, right on, you know, just stop lying, just don't call me anymore. So know I had a problem so like this so then when I met Rachel online so I see this chick I was like holy shit I'm in love with that one so you know I try to wing to her she did nothing going to her again nothing so I told to the guys hey who do I talk to? I talk to my family, team guys, sales. What do I do?

How can I get her interested in me? So one of the guys look at the profiles. First thing, get yourself some few years off. So make yourself like maybe eight years younger. I said, okay, eight years younger. Then write her some nice letter where I really can't. Can you help me? So this is how it started. So then I had the team guys writing the love letters for me so I can send it to her. She was writing back to me and actually she liked the

letters. So we continue this way. With my English, I am proficient with it. I'm proficient in combat, but I'm not really proficient in those lovey-dovey things that, you know, like... Robots. Yeah, yeah, romancing, especially romancing online, you know, so that's something that I had, I talked to my fellow teammates. And so, she wrote me a letter, whoever I could find, said, hey, write me the response, write me some nice love letter. So I typed very quick something in and sent it back.

And it continued, it worked! So then eventually the guys got tired, so Drago, we don't use so many of these love letters. Now you can make any letter out of it, just copy and paste. So I say, okay, I'll try, I was nervous. So I did that, and her profile disappeared from those American singles website, I remember still. So her profile disappeared.

It's like, oh damn, I was already, I was writing the emails. Well, team guys were writing the emails. I was reading her emails. So it was kind of like I was falling in love and then her profile disappeared so I was like Cut one of the guys and say hey, you know help me out with this this is the email I sent to her and I

Think maybe she doesn't want to communicate with me anymore. He just look at look at this like Yeah, dude. Yeah, that's That's fucked up. I think this is why. So I was mopping for a few days and I was still checking online, she showed up again. And I was like, shit, I just need to talk to her, I need to tell her, maybe that letter that I wrote because of my English, so she talk to her, I need to tell her, maybe that letter that I wrote because of

my English. So she needs to just, I need to talk to her. So eventually I coerce her to call me and she called me on the private lines as I answered. So we talked for a while and I say, hey, wait a minute. So let me get it straight. You are not on drugs. You're not drunk when you write to me. You just don't speak English. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. You You are not on drugs. You're not drunk when you write to me. You just don't speak English

It's like yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's it You know that's it So we start talking on the phone and that's eventually I asked her to come and visit me San Diego She did come and this is what I find where was she was that where was she? She was living in Ohio in Dayton where I was living So I flew her to San Diego and it was funny story actually because after the bad experience with these chicks that they were not who they told me they are, I asked one of the team guys, hey, can you go with me if this is another Jabba the Hatt, if this is another person that really lied

to me, I need you to bail me out. I will run and you tell her that I was called for just some combat mission in Iraq, whatever, just tell her something. So we both are waiting and here she is going down the escalator. He recognized her first. He said, dude, it's that chick.

I said, yeah. Did you just rub the cradle? Dude, she's decades younger than you are. How did you pull it off? I said, well, you wrote the love letters and now you lie about my age at work. So, here we go. I said, okay, Drago, you got it.

You're on your own. She's hot. And he just left. And I was, I remember, so nervous the Deonero, she's hot, and he just left. And I was, I remember, so nervous because, you know, I had all this with my emails when I just wrote the email, it was really like not up to speed, up to her standards. Now I'm supposed to go and talk to her in person. I was very nervous.

So when she came out, I was like, to be like super gentleman, I was just like very stiff and saying, hi, Rachel, I am Drago. And she just look at me and say, yeah, cool, but I didn't fly 2,000 miles to shake your hand, give me a hug. I was like, holy shit. So I give her the big Drago hug. And then I remember, so we start talking,

but she just step back and say, wait a minute. I think I know you. It's like, you know, for team guys to meet the girl who you don't recognize. And she says, she knows you. The first thing through my mind was what did I do to her? When? But they say, yeah, you know what? When you were in the Hubs training, you are the new guy in your

platoon with your group of guys. You went to Habs training and this is where I met you first time. I remember you for your accident and belligerence. I said belligerence? Yeah, because you know like in the Habs training, Habs training is the high, you know what it is, right? There's the chamber ride when they ride you to like 20,000 feet, the air pressure. And then so you can recognize if you have a problem. Let's say if your equipment malfunctions in the real life in airplane, you can recognize because you learn the chamber, what your symptoms are, how you will react.

Then you have a few seconds actually to remedy the situation or step away from the ramp in the airplane. And so we're sitting there and they took us up. Rachel was in the chamber actually. And when they asked who wants to be volunteer to demonstrate the hypoxia, I mean the lack of oxygen. So like every other, I was the new guy. So like that guy right there It's like okay, so they told me they drove us back to 25,000 feet

I took my mask and then I had to do those toys, you know, like throw the square peg into square in the ball square bracket things they sign my name and stuff and These guys start egging me. I say yeah and stuff and these guys start egging me. I say, yeah Drago you can blah blah blah. And I got mad and I was like, I was starting to kill everybody of them in the chamber. I'm going to kill you, I will do this and this and this. And then, you know, I passed out.

So they just put the oxygen mask on me for a quick. Other guys were on the mask so I didn't know who was saying this. But they're just saying, you know Drago, you know, you're gonna pass out, you're gonna do this, you know, I was getting mad. And so when I came to, the crew in that center, they were, they were excited, they were like, dude, this is awesome. Well, we have example of almost every symptom of the, of that hypoxia, right? Hypoxia. Hypoxia. Yeah, but we never had the symptom of that hypoxia, right?

Hypoxia. Hypoxia. Yeah. But we never had the belligerence. Now we just recorded your belligerence. So this is a great educational video. So I'm floating somewhere there being as the educational aid to show people what the belligerence look like.

So she remember me from there. She reminded me. And then we walked to the car, I was very nervous. I couldn't talk to, hardly could talk to her from being scared. And so, but I had a flower. I had a flower in my jeep because I say, if the Jabba the Hatch shows up, I will run

and I'll just give the flower, throw it away. But in this case, I was so nervous. So I grabbed this flower and say hey and this is for you it was like a great paper right wrapped up and I just I was so nervous I did not wrap it I still have it upside down just give it to her say here she just look at me what's this that's like flower so she did this okay hold on a second how long a second She told me to wait she unwrapped it throw the paper thing Flip it upside down. She grabbed she grabbed my hand. She went. Okay, try it again. That was like

Okay here I tell you now I was more scared at the time that I was before the assault, before the entering on target, because that was so unusual for me. That was so foreign and scary. But so yeah, that was like pretty scary experience. But that's how I met my wife. And then we start dating each other. She was coming to visit me.

I was coming to visit her. each other, she was coming to visit me, I was coming to visit her, and eventually, yeah, we got married, and we have, I consider myself fully domesticated now. That is what she, but if you ask her, she say, well, yeah, but I'm still the project under construction, I'm still being domesticated. So she's making me a better person every time. So yeah, that's how it works. But I still have my pitfalls with English. It seems like so 40 years, but things that I sometimes say or the way I pronounce things still get me in trouble sometimes. So I remember I asked her sometimes one time to fix me a dessert.

I said, well, what would you like for dessert? I said, well, no, I want to eat Kimberly. I see her like terror in her eyes. Who is Kimberly? I say, who is Kimberly? You know, the dessert we had in the restaurant two days ago or so. Like, you mean Kimberly?

It's like, yeah, that's what I say. No, you say Kimberly. You don't eat Kimberly. So, you know, I still get that shit. I'm better now, but she's still working on me. She still has the project under construction. So now we have two kids together, 15 years old, beautiful girl, very smart. I could not beat her in chess games since she was, I think, eight years old.

I still can't. I think she's the only person who check made me in, or maybe five or six moves. moves So I'm not bad player, but I cannot beat this girl and I have a son. He's doing gymnastics He's 15 years old. So and we have also from our previous marriages the oldest son Adam my oldest son he lives in Tennessee. He's running his own detailing business my other son Blake is Actually a student. He was Marines. He spent one year in Afghanistan.

He's working now. He's studying electrical engineering in Ohio University. And I have a younger son too, who is still active duty Coast Guard. So I'm very proud of my kids. How long have you been married? Oh, that's a dangerous question. Now we can't mean trouble because now... She's down there listening.

Yeah, she's down there listening. And if she listens to the end of the podcast, then I get myself in trouble. Those are the most kind of dangerous questions for me. But I think since 2007. So we got married in August 18. A kind of funny story because August 18 is the Presumed date when battle of thermopylae Thermopylae started when 300 Spartans with 5,000 other Greeks defend the Greece against 250,000 Persians so that's the this presumed date when the battle started and there's my date of when we got married and Then the place we got married is Laonidas like the name of the Spartan King. Oh wow, wow. Yeah also the one when we got engaged was another story too because I'm kind of struggle-died I'm kind of like it I'm not very big into this nice nice things

because I don't know how to do these things. So I asked the guys, what would you do? How can I, where's the best engagement? Dude, you need to go to Cancun, you need to go there, get the restaurant, you need to make it big. I said, dude, I don't have the money for that. I just have barely money to buy the ring.

So I was thinking, I say, what I'm going to do is I'm going to invite her on the range to Niheland and let her shoot every gun that we have. And the last gun, M48, will be, when she opened the tray, there's going to be a ring hanging down and there's going to be a piece of paper that will marry me. So I ginned it up myself. So I said, I have to see your way to getting an as girlful to marry. So I brought her to Ireland, she had no idea.

Then we had to prepare the range. So with the guys, I put her in the room. I'm still amazed that she didn't complain or anything. There was one old shooting magazine. It was nothing there, like an island out there there's really no place to live. And she's sitting in this room while we are setting up the guns like M4,

you know, M this and this and this. Almost every gun that we had, every type of gun we had inverter, we sign up, line up online. Then I brought her in, you know, which I have actually video of it. I'm going to post it on my website one day. So she goes from gun to gun and shoots.

And actually she should, the M4, she should pretty good, you know. That was like all on target. My heart skipped a bit, skipped a bit. And so we go from gun to gun and the last gun, when she opened the tray, I'm like next to her and she sees the ring. And then this piece of paper say you marry me and I was like that I said would you marry me and she said yes beautiful yep so there was the zero way to get married and I got away you know like I didn't have the money so turn out to be not very

expensive way but was very memorable way was very memorable for her so yeah so you remember 2007 so that's what I was seven two thousand seventeen and eighteen years yeah eighteen years yeah congratulations it went so fast it went so fast. It's just the time goes by. Here I'm running and gunning, kicking doors in, and suddenly here I'm being married, taking care of the kids and enjoying my American dream. So what's your secret to a successful marriage? To successful marriage, I think understanding and being reasonable and being loving and being accept that she's another human being that needs respect as well. And we just enjoy our lives

together. You know, this is something that the longer it takes, the better it is, seems like. We fought tooth to the nail at the beginning, and now we really don't. We mesh so well together that I think that's love. So yeah, that's pretty much my story. Again, I'm telling it, I'm telling this because I want people to see the beautiful America, the America greatness, how unique country it is, how powerful it is. And sometimes it is hard to see if you sit in the trenches, if you are part of it. But when you have a chance to step aside take a different vantage point You can see how beautiful country we have Yeah, that's some positivity we don't hear very often here

Yes, you know there's another practice that I live as a free man, I can live as a free man only because I live as a free man. I can live as a free man only because the founding fathers because the ideals the founding fathers were fighting for and The ideas that were have been carried to this day by American people by Americans like you like other Americans Thank you I saw that, did you do an Ibogaine treatment? Yes, I did. I've done it, but some people say how great experience they had.

For me, it was not really a nightmare. I didn't meet, like some people, I didn't meet Jesus. I met demons, and it really scared the hell out of me. But yeah, that also changed me. I remember after this treatment, I called my wife and I say, well, she always say, she doesn't like when I'm being called Drago. She said, Drago is gone, you know, you are Thomas.

And she did say, we're gonna lock Drago is gone, you know, you are Thomas. And she did say, we're going to lock Drago in the cage and you are Thomas from now on. I said, I'm not sure, my wife, you know, she's the boss, whatever you say. But then I called her from there, after the abogaine treatment I was coming back, I said, look, I buried Drago in the desert, you know, in the abogaine there, Thomas is coming back. Did you get any benefits out of that with the TBIs? I stopped drinking immediately. And there's another thing too. It's difficult sometimes to admit.

I think even more difficult is to notice that you can be alcoholic. And for me, it was like I had to drink, but I didn't feel like I had to. It's such a cool thing. I have a few shots here, you know, a few shots there. And I can stop anytime. I just don't stop it today. I'll stop it tomorrow. But tomorrow, I'll say, well, you know what? I'll take a couple more shots and I'll be fine.

I'll just stop it tomorrow. I can't stop it. It's very easy. I just told myself I'm not drinking. And it continues. And I couldn't stop. So I came back without drinking. I don't drink, I don't have to drink. Now I can have a glass of wine with my wife if I need to, but there's nothing that compels me to drink. I start sleeping better.

And also the peace that came in with, I would say the acceptance of who you are, where you are. And also, but that's not just the abogaine. I think the faith and God plays a big role in my life right now. And this is only thanks to Rachel, to my wife. So, yeah. Did your faith strengthen after the abogaine? Yes, definitely yes.

And, you know, this may be a... I don't think she gets mad if I tell her, but we read books, like, on faith every night before we go to sleep. So, sometimes... most of the time she's reading. And sometimes I, because of my English, let me try to read this. But mostly she's reading and it's so peaceful that she's like, why are you not listening? You are falling asleep.

Because when I snuggle up, she start reading. It's like, hey, you know what? I'm just fading away. But yeah, so yes, definitely yes. And the faith plays big role in our life. And I think this is also another reason why my marriage is so successful. There's two things actually, the faith that we both share and her

emotional intelligence. That's something that, how to say it right way, she knows like if I am angry or there are some emotions online She can disarm me. So this is something that is great. I mean, I love the life. But I think we together work as a team greatly. And I credit the abogaine treatment with in big part for what happened there. And I think it's important that we pursue it

because as a veteran, I know that different people react to different things. The different things will help me, may not help you or may not help somebody else. This is why we cannot restrict people to only one cookie cutter treatment. If you have, let's say, TBI or PTSD or whatever, this is what we're going to do to you. It might turn out now witness that things didn't work for some guys, but they found

relief and help doing different things. So we, the abogaine, I think, is important that we continue with it and try to allow or bring it, allow people to get this treatment in the United States so they don't have to travel to Mexico like I did to other places. Yeah. Yeah, I hope that happens. We have the secretary of the VA coming on soon. That's a big discussion I'm going to have with him. We need that, I think, because it is very powerful.

I was very skeptical initially from a friend of mine, another team guy called me, said, Drago, I need to tell you something. And the guy is just as knuckle-draggers as somebody can be. You don't want to fight this guy. This guy is just a bad-ass dude. He calls me and said, Drago, I need to tell you, I met Jesus. I was like, what? I talked to Jesus, man.

I was like, Rachel, get Navy SEALs fund ready. I think we have another going out of rails. I think that we have a guy and he will need help. And then I talked to him and that changed my life too. So we talked for quite some time and he explained me what it was. I didn't know anything about abogaine at the time or ayahuasca and eventually another friend of mine rest in peace, Dan Cerillo, taco, he called me and said, how did he say it? He said, Drago, you need to go. I mean, if you don't go, I'm going to kidnap you. You need to go to this treatment. And you are coming with me. So he took his time from his work, from his family, just to help me get to Mexico and get this treatment. So yeah, I owe him a lot too. Man, he was a good friend of mine. He was a good friend of mine. Yes. He was for a while there he was my only friend here and then he died of a heart attack on the range with his son. But on a hunting trip. On a hunting trip. He was doing things for other people when he died.

He was an awesome human. Yes. And I just, I never served with him. But I did. And that was a warrior. A true warrior. Yeah. Yeah.

I miss him. Yeah, me too. I miss him too. I miss many guys, you know. There's something that I think we will ask for. It's almost like a survival guilt. You know, like why I survived? Why me, not him? Why he got, why he was killed, not him? Why he got? Why he was killed not me we asked those questions that I think we always ask until we die, you know, but

There's the faith, you know, and that's how the life goes He was a big part of me finding my faith Yes, he was I had a He helped many guys. Yeah. He's a great guy, man. But this is about the teams, you know, what people don't understand. I worked some of the programs, some podcasts too with fellow team guys, and this always ends up pretty heavy, you know, but people, so people tend to forget that We're normal people, you know, we just do our job sometimes

There's the way I look at ourselves. It's like we are not Sheepdogs that is other people had capable of doing it. We are wolves and we had wolves sometimes nations of doing it. We are wolves and we hunt wolves. Sometimes nations need monsters to fight other monsters because this is the only way we can fight those monsters. So I think sometimes we have to become those monsters to protect our society, right? So that's the way I look at it and yeah that's sometimes that's life you know and we all knew what we are getting into getting in SEAL teams with us we we and we all were ready to do what needs to be done to protect our citizens, to protect

America. And I'm proud of it. Well, I'm proud to know you, man. I think that's the perfect way to end this. And I just want to say, Thomas, it was an honor to interview you and just get to know you. And like I said, I've just heard so much about you and your reputation speaks for itself. And so I just, I'm really thankful we met.

Thank you so much, but I'm just a product of SEAL teams. I always wanted to be like you guys. I wanted us to keep up with you guys. So I'm nothing special. I'm not different than you. I'm not different than anybody else. So I'm just one. I'm not different than you. I'm not different than anybody else So I'm just one of the committee members and one of the seals former retired seals now But we are all the same we are from the same cloth and we did the same job

So it was honor to be here. I thank you for the invitation, but it gave me also the opportunity to Maybe You needed to maybe make people pause and look at America from a different vantage point. Look at how great America is and is worth protecting. All right, Drago, you got an update on the judge that prosecuted you in Poland. Yeah, I was sentenced to three years of prison time and what happened at the time, there was nothing unusual because those so-called activist judges,

they work for the party. They didn't openly work for the party, but they did what the political party told them to do. They were just doing their bidding in the society. So I was not the only one. There was like thousands of people sentenced by these activists, judges to prison time. Some of them were sentenced to death, especially people coming back from the Second World War who experienced the Western freedom, who experienced the Western way of life.

The communists in Poland, like my father, they did not want these people there. So from the very beginning, they were finding cases to murder them, to kill them, to put them in prison. For example, the top-scoring ace them, to kill them, to put them in prison. For example, the top-scoring ace of Polish Air Force fighting in Battle of Britain, he was arrested very quickly after he returned to Poland and sentenced to death.

His death sentence was committed to life in prison. Then I think he was let go after 10 years in prison time, of prison time or 15 years in prison. No, I don't remember how many years, but he spent few years in prison and on the death row too. He was lucky because many of those people were executed and very often just outside the prison cell with the shot in the back of his neck. So that's what happened. And those are so these activists judges, you would never think you would never think that

something will ever happen to them. They were the masters of life and death for so many polls. But the night 2024, I got a call to if I could come to Warsaw and testify in the case of one of such judges. It happened to be the same judge who sentenced also me to prison time. So yes, I did absolutely. So me and Rachel flew to Warsaw and the guy, the judge was charged with communist crimes crimes against humanity crimes against Polish nation and The judicial terror judicial terrorism, that's what they did those activists judges so you It was surreal but also like bittersweet

because when I walk in with my wife in this courtroom, you know, I had my American flag and there was like, you can't do anything to me anymore. But it's not the Poland is different now. Poland is very, how to say, low, they're low abiding citizens. They go by the law, but they want to protect themselves from totalitarian systems like communism socialism nazism they don't post on wanted that they experience it already. So there is actually in constitution polish constitution i believe i forgot which point it is that prohibits promotion. point it is, that prohibits promotion of totalitarian ideologies in Poland. You can't do it.

I went to Warsaw and I testify against this judge. Although this guy, I don't know what age he is now, maybe like eight years old. It was 40 years ago. I would never cross my mind that judge who was sentencing me to prison time, he will be prosecuted for judicial terror and I will be testifying in his case. Also I learned that I was tortured. The beatings in prison, beatings from the police, I never considered a torture. I thought it just normal.

This is how things works. You know, you get caught, they'll be beating you up, but never, but now when testifying, that was classified actually as a torture. So that's something else that I've down on me when I went like a year ago, when I went a year ago to Warsaw. So I asked also, I testified in the court. My wife was there too, Rachel, and she was very proud of me.

We both had the American flags, you know, sitting in this courtroom. But I asked for not putting this guy in prison. I asked for not putting this guy in prison. I asked the judge to, no matter what they're gonna do, there's no need to put 80 years man in prison. He asked me if I have some against this guy still, if I have some feelings and some anger against this guy. And I said no. feelings and some anger against this guy.

And I say no, you know, 40 years in America changed me. I am different person than I used to be when I was, when I came to America. So, you know, forgiving, I think I learned too in America. You know, if you can't forgive somebody, you leave that hate or you leave that part, it becomes part of your life, destroying your life. We just, like following the God, Jesus' teachings, you need to forget. You may disagree with the sinner, but you don't condemn the sinner, you condemn the sin. And that's what I ask, condemn what he did, but as a human being, in his age, really, there is

no... I think there will be... I forgave him, so there is no need to put him in prison. So I don't know what happened and I didn't follow up on it. For me, it's just like I learned how to forgive and that's America changed me. A lot of people need to learn how to forgive. We know if you don't, you did that that that that's Things goes with you wherever you go, you don't leave us a free good man Good man being free you have this thing on there on your shoulder So if we can learn how to forget how to forgive

People I forget about how to forgive. I think we are better people. America may be a better person. For yourself. When you forgive, you free yourself. You know, you also, you asked me about what I feel when I kill the guy. Oh, by the way, I was thinking about it too. I get so mixed up. The first guy that I killed was the guy in the car who followed us. He just pulled from behind the corner. I was in the last car. It was so fast.

Then as he was coming at the, you know, like car 50, I think I was on the 50. So I was on the last car. He pulled out next to me. He was coming to our right. And I see with the flashlight, I mean with the lights that we have, but also the street lights, there's a guy on the right sitting with the AK, sitting with the AK. So it was like surreal, it's like what is he thinking?

I mean, we can just obliterate these guys, but anyway, so he started pulling in. My concern was that if he has, if this is IED, VBID, we can all get hurt. So I didn't think much. It was almost so close. I just pulled the pistol. I killed the guy on the right seat with the gun and I shot the driver. So they went to hit the light pole.

The kind of funny things. It's like, so we're driving, I didn't think much of it. I said, okay, guy's gone. And I got a call from the front, from the OIC, say, hey, do I hear some shots being fired? What's going on, guys? Everything is okay? I said, yeah, I just stopped the guy.

He was just coming. He was coming on us. So I stopped the car, say, okay, no problem, no question. Because we are actually driving, I think, from, no, we're driving to the mission. So yeah, we didn't want any interruption. Say, oh yeah, let's see what happened to this guy. There's no time for it. You just take care of the business and move on.

So yeah, but the thing is what you asked me earlier too, I was thinking about it, about the feelings of it. I was never like a feel-touchy guy. For me, there was no, I say I didn't feel anything. I didn't because I was thinking about it. I see myself more as a technical person. So for me, the dwelling on it was more like, what could I do better?

How could I kill him better, more efficient way? Not like, oh my God, he's dead now. That, you know, I, I, it was my priority was always live American citizens, the wellbeing of America, any foreign entity has no value to me in, in, in, has no, I say no value. Um, I understand. has no value. It comes second. I'm not so eloquent, but yeah, the American life will come before any foreign life. Number one priority.

It's number one priority. American citizens. Well, Drago, thank you again for coming back and setting that record straight and being open and vulnerable. And it'll lack for better words, setting humility aside for the full story. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it was kind of difficult. Again, like I say, we're talking about this often and people watch all these movies, they stop seeing us as human beings.

They see us more like the, just part of that machine that if you're just broken, something happens. They'll just bring another one. Some people almost expect you to be hurt and replace with somebody else. So that's something that maybe I don't like people to see. This is why I don't wear the Trident. I was mentioning about it earlier. I wear American flag because American flag encompasses the Trident and everything that

is good. And I want when people see me to think about me as American and not the Navy SEALs. I'm no longer Navy SEAL now, of course. You know, I lived that life for 20 years. I loved it, but now I am just American. There's no hyphen in front of this American. Thank you. Thank you.

NBA veteran Jim Jackson takes you on the court. You get a chance to dig into my 14 year career in the NBA, but also get the input from the people that will be joining. Charles Barkley. I'm excited to be on your podcast, man. It's an honor. Spike Lee, entrepreneur, filmmaker, Academy Award winner. Nixon!

So, now you see it, I got you! But also how sports brings life, passion, music, all of this together. The Jim Jackson Show, part of the Rich Eisen Podcast Network. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.